[Clear-Headed, Bright Plant Researcher vs. Gentle, Steady Powerhouse of Beijing's Elite]
[Marriage First, Love Later / Marriage Between Wealthy Families / Slow-Burning Romance / Both Untouched]
Tan Mingyue and Shen Cong's marriage began as a business deal. Their families arranged the union to suit their own needs.
After the wedding, Tan Mingyue kept to the agreement she'd made with Shen Cong before they married: each would do their part, stay out of the other's affairs, and respect their boundaries. She only wanted to see this mutually beneficial marriage through in peace.
Until one night, the man who had always been so reserved and self-possessed was the first to cross the line. Eyes red, he held her around the waist, restrained yet obsessive, and begged in a low, husky voice, each word revealing how deeply he had fallen:
“Yueyue, don't be afraid of me.”
“Yueyue, I want you to love me.”
Shen Cong had spent half his life clear-eyed and hard-hearted, believing in weighing costs and benefits and wanting nothing to do with love.
But Tan Mingyue was like a flower blooming from a cliffside, bringing a vivid, radiant life all her own. She quietly seeped into his dreary, rigid world, making him crave her, grow addicted to her, and fall helplessly even as he watched himself fall. He couldn't give her up.
Perhaps love could overcome fear. In the end, he let himself go and fell for her first, in a relationship founded on mutual gain.
Bonus Scene:
At a society gathering one day, the assembled elite witnessed an astonishing scene. The usually cold and distant Mr. Shen took the hair tie from his wrist and, with practiced tenderness, carefully tied up the unruly hair of his wife, the woman he'd married for business and whose relationship with him was rumored to be unhappy. His eyes were full of a doting love he couldn't hide.
Only then did everyone realize that this top mogul, who had sworn never to fall in love, had already been completely smitten and willingly become a man who put his wife above all else!
Does the male protagonist have Bai Yueguang?