A Feast Among Falling Blossoms

The first time Ruan Qingci hooked an arm around Fu Jinye’s waist, her fingertips still fizzed with champagne bubbles. She traced his Adam’s apple with three nails painted a dusty rose red. “No staying the night, no getting attached, no interfering.” Back then, the man wore oil-stained coveralls, and his stubble scorched her palm. He gave a low laugh and ground her rules into the carpet.

After three months of a fleeting affair, she found a lipstick with an unfamiliar cherry scent in his car and immediately blocked every way he could contact her. She was a refined young lady from an old family, cradling a celadon vase in an art gallery; he was a notorious hell-raiser whispered about on every street corner. They should have been parallel lines that never crossed.

Until the Fu Group’s donation ceremony, when the impeccably dressed man held out his hand to her. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze seemed tempered in fire. “Ms. Ruan, it’s been a long time.”

Her fingers tightened around her lesson plan until her knuckles turned white. All she wanted was to run.

Instead, he cornered her in the shadows of the supply room, his expensive tailored suit pressing against her gauzy skirt. “What are you hiding from?” Fu Jinye gripped the back of her neck, his voice wrapped in scorching breath. “My Qingci, didn’t you say we were only here for desire?”

Outside the door, students excitedly discussed Mr. Fu’s abs. Inside, he caught her hand and pressed it to his waist, the heat seeping through his shirt.

“Now,” he murmured with a laugh, biting her earlobe, “talking about falling for each other doesn’t count as breaking the rules, does it?”