Liuxian’s arm tightened around his waist.

"Do you want your husband to smell of other Omega pheromones when he comes home from work?" he asked.

His voice was entirely reasonable, as though he were raising a completely logical point in a business meeting.

Guiying’s lips twitched.

He pushed at Liuxian’s chest. "You are suffocating me."

Liuxian chuckled but did not release his hold. With his free hand he reached across the desk and picked up a fountain pen, pulling a document toward him.

"Hubby has to work," he said pleasantly, "so he can make some dough for his wifey."

Guiying’s expression said everything his mouth did not.

The sheer volume of cheesy things that came out of this man’s mouth on a daily basis was genuinely concerning. He was thirty three years old. He ran one of the most powerful corporations in the country.

He had the face and the voice and the pheromones of someone who could reduce a room to silence without trying.

And he said things like that.

Guiying looked away and focused on something else, which happened to be the document Liuxian was signing. He watched the pen move across the page, the signature forming with a fluid and unhurried elegance that had no business belonging to someone who signed as many documents per day as Liuxian presumably did.

"Your signature is something," he said.

"Mm?" Liuxian glanced at him. "You like it?"

"It is beautiful actually."

Liuxian smiled, small and genuine. "At least twenty years of calligraphy training was good for something."

Guiying looked at him. "You studied calligraphy?"

"Was forced to," Liuxian said, moving to the next document with the same unhurried ease. "When you are a Liu and the firstborn, your free will is stripped from birth. Calligraphy, fencing, piano, horse riding."

He turned a page. "I know seven languages. I genuinely hated learning every single one of them. I only use English internationally at this point."

Guiying looked at him for a moment and then laughed, a short and genuine sound.

"The suffering of a privileged child," he said.

"Extremely valid suffering," Liuxian said, without missing a beat.

Guiying shook his head. He could not be bitter about it, not really. Liuxian had lived a good life by any measure. Everyone had their own version of suffering and their own right to feel it.

The gilded cage was still a cage. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"Say something in one of them," Guiying said. "Any language."

Liuxian set the pen down.

He turned to look at Guiying, and something shifted in his expression, that particular shift that happened when he decided to do something and had already decided how he was going to do it.

He leaned in slightly, close enough that his voice dropped to something low and unhurried that settled in the chest before the brain finished processing it.

"Tu es la chose la plus inattendue qui me soit arrivée." he said, in French that was smooth and completely effortless, the kind that did not sound learned but lived in. "Et je ne suis pas encore certain de savoir quoi faire avec toi."

Guiying stared at him.

He had understood absolutely none of that.

Not a single word.

But whatever it was, the way it had been delivered, that voice, that tone, that completely unreasonable closeness, had done something to the air in the room that his body had registered before his brain had even finished noting that he did not speak this language.

His ears were red.

He was aware of that and deeply unhappy about it.

"What did you just say?" he asked.

Liuxian picked his fountain pen back up and returned to the document with the composed expression of a man who had said a completely normal thing in a completely normal tone and saw no reason to elaborate further.

"Nothing important," he said pleasantly.

Guiying stared at the side of his face.

"Liu Liuxian."

"Mm."

"What did you say?"

"Hubby is working," Liuxian said. "Don’t disturb him."

Guiying shifted in his lap to look at him more directly. "What did you say to me just now?"

Liuxian turned a page.

"Liu Liuxian I am asking you a question."

"I heard you."

"Then answer it."

Liuxian signed the bottom of the page with that infuriatingly beautiful signature and moved to the next document without looking up.

Guiying watched him for a moment.

Then he tried a different approach.

"Was it something bad?"

"No."

"Was it something embarrassing?"

"Not for me."

Guiying’s eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"

Liuxian said nothing, which was somehow worse than any answer he could have given.

"Just tell me what you said," Guiying said.

"It is a simple request. You said something directly to my face in a language I do not speak and now you are refusing to translate it. That is extremely rude."

"Mm."

"Liuxian."

"Mm."

Guiying opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. "I will not stop asking."

"I know," Liuxian said pleasantly.

He turned another page. Guiying watched him sign it. Then the next one. Then the one after that.

"What did you say," Guiying said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Liuxian finally looked up from the documents. He turned to look at Guiying with that warm, unhurried expression that gave absolutely nothing away, and tilted his head slightly.

"Kiss me," he said, "and I will tell you."

Guiying looked at him.

"You are unbelievable," he said.

"The offer stands," Liuxian said, and went back to his documents.

Guiying looked at him for a long moment.

Then he looked at the window.

Then at the documents on the desk.

Then back at Liuxian, who was signing things with complete serenity and the patience of a man who had made an offer and was entirely prepared to wait for however long it took.

Guiying exhaled through his nose.

He leaned forward and kissed him.

It was supposed to be quick.

A transaction.

Kiss delivered, information received, matter closed.

Liuxian had other ideas.

His free hand came up and his fingers curled lightly at the back of Guiying’s neck, and what had been meant as a brief and businesslike exchange became something considerably less brief and considerably less businesslike.

By the time Guiying registered what had happened the kiss had gone several steps further than he had authorized and his face was warm in a way that had nothing to do with the office temperature.