Willingly

[Signed for publication in simplified Chinese. Follow updates on Weibo: @Jiu Yi]

[Next up: Fireworks]

Blurb:

When Lu Ru was sixteen, both her parents died. From then on, she couldn't speak, and her world fell apart.

At the funeral, she met her fiance, Yan Shijiu, for the first time.

The man wore a black suit and had an air of noble authority. His captivating peach-blossom eyes were deliberately restrained, their gaze fixed on the girl kneeling before him.

"Will you come with me?" His voice was deeply seductive. "If you don't say anything, I'll take that as a yes."

-

Lu Ru never told anyone about her relationship with Yan Shijiu.

Before her mother died, she entrusted Lu Ru to the Yan family, along with the token of an old family marriage pact. Lu Ru had no choice, but Yan Shijiu did.

The only son of the Yan family of Jiangcheng, a man who had stood at the top of the pyramid since birth and could have anything he wanted, how could he willingly submit to such a constraint?

Lu Ru knew that even if she could speak, he still might not have cared for her.

During the three years she lived with the Yan family, Yan Shijiu showed her through his actions that he had no desire to marry her.

There were more women around him than Lu Ru could count on both hands, whether she'd seen them openly or in secret.

Lu Ru planned to end this marriage pact, which neither of them had wanted, after graduating from college. She would leave the Yan family and set him free.

But she never expected that on her twentieth birthday, Yan Shijiu would take her to get their marriage certificate.

-

"Little mute, you came with me of your own free will. Are you trying to take it back now?"

The man's cool, thin lips brushed the girl's trembling earlobe as he whispered tenderly.

-

#Yan Shijiu: Do you think I'd let a duck that's already in my mouth fly away?#

A thornless rose of a mute girl X a refined scoundrel of a big bad wolf

*The heroine is gentle + the hero is a little wicked

*Nine-year age gap / raising her / secret love comes true / sweet romance

*The heroine regains her voice later on

*Both are sexually inexperienced

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Next up: Fireworks

A story of friends with benefits turning into a real relationship

Blurb

1. Wen Qian had been sweet and obedient for twenty-four years, never doing anything out of line, until she met Tan Xiping.

The man had a pair of soulful eyes. When he looked down at her, he seemed irresistibly rakish.

That night, the rain poured down. With a cigarette between his teeth, Tan Xiping joked on the phone with a friend that even five hundred yuan wasn't enough to get a designated driver.

Wen Qian waited for him to hang up, then walked over. "I have a driver's license. I'll only charge half. How about it?"

Tan Xiping looked at her soft, harmless face and smiled. "Get in."

2. Wen Qian knew perfectly well that things between her and Tan Xiping could never work out.

The second young master of the Tan family in the capital, born to wealth and a true child of fortune, was beyond her reach.

Wen Qian knew her place and understood the rules. No matter how wild things got with Tan Xiping the night before, whenever they met at the office the next day, she would respectfully greet him with, "Good morning, Mr. Tan."

3. But Wen Qian didn't know what the impeccably dressed man inside Tan Xiping's office was thinking whenever she walked past in a pencil skirt, looking straight ahead.

Tan Xiping: Keep pretending. One of these days, I'm going to have my way with her right here!

Clear-headed and sensible, pretending to be a tease X proud, roguish, wicked, and a genuine bastard

Theme: Love doesn't have to be between equals