Bite the Neck (Stepmother Romance)

Wen Yue grew up in the countryside with her grandmother and was very much a left-behind child.

In her memories, she rarely saw her birth mother. The occasional news she heard about her was always about her love life: she was dating someone, then they broke up, then she started dating someone else, then they broke up again...

Until one time, her mother brought home a beautiful woman.

Wen Yue timidly peered out from behind her grandmother. The woman's name was Xie Muyan. She was tall and strikingly beautiful, with an imposing air.

Her mother took Wen Yue's hand and told her to call the woman Mother.

Wen Yue was too shy to say it, and in the end, the word never left her lips.

A few months later, her grandmother suddenly fell gravely ill. Wen Yue called her mother in tears, but couldn't get through to her. With no other choice, she dialed Xie Muyan's number.

"Who's this?" Xie Muyan's voice came through the phone, cool and pleasant.

Wen Yue summoned her courage and called her Mother, only to receive Xie Muyan's cold reply: "She and I have cut off contact. Don't call me that."

Wen Yue froze for a moment, but with her grandmother's life at stake, she swallowed her pride and begged Xie Muyan to help.

She thought she would be turned down, but to her surprise, Xie Muyan really came. Not only did she save her grandmother, she also gave Wen Yue a generous sum of money.

At the time, Xie Muyan asked her, "What are your plans for the future?"

Wen Yue didn't know what it meant to make plans. She just lowered her eyes and fiddled with the hem of her clothes, softly saying, "I want to keep studying. I want to study for as long as I can and get out of here."

"..."

Xie Muyan replied, "All right."

And so, throughout the long years of her education, Wen Yue continued to receive Xie Muyan's support. They rarely saw each other, but whenever Wen Yue needed her, Xie Muyan was always there.

Later, Wen Yue graduated and joined Xie Muyan's company. She shed her old quiet, distant manner and became the little ray of sunshine everyone knew, a kind and capable monster of a new employee.

This facade held for two years, until one day Xie Muyan found Wen Yue's diary. Every line was filled with the love and hate she couldn't tell anyone about, and with feelings that had been hidden in the dark, yet continued to grow without end.

It turned out that Wen Yue was still the gloomy, obsessive girl from her memories. She had never changed.

Xie Muyan decided to start looking after her, as her superior and as her senior.

But Wen Yue wanted far more than that. She wanted desire, she wanted love. She wanted to be Xie Muyan's lover, to cling to her and stay close to her, like a predator closing in on its prey's throat, inch by inch, until they were inseparable.

1. One-on-one romance, happy ending.

2. Wen Yue is 13 and Xie Muyan is 26 when they first meet, a 13-year age gap. Wen Yue's birth mother is 32 at the time and had Wen Yue when she was 19.

3. Xie Muyan and her ex, Wen Yue's birth mother, were never intimate and were never officially in a relationship. They had only been seeing each other for a month when the other woman ran off with her money.

4. Both protagonists are adults when they fall in love, and they have long since had no mother-daughter relationship. Wen Yue only began to love Xie Muyan after reaching adulthood.

5. Both have some degree of psychological illness. This is a story about learning to understand each other and saving one another.

Theme: Love mends broken souls and helps people find a place to belong and a chance at redemption.