Let Tonight Fall

[Complete]

Fostered child * second-chance romance * forbidden, immoral relationship

Cultured scoundrel with a fatherly air vs. dazzling, direct flirt

Male lead: Polite and abstinent on the surface, dark and obsessive underneath. He's coveted the female lead for years.

Female lead: Sweet and sensible on the surface, but secretly wants to devour the male lead whole.

When Lin Zhirui was twelve, her mother remarried, and her stepfather brought along a son four years older than her.

The first time Lin Zhirui saw Yu Mingyuan, he was a youth in a white shirt and black trousers, with refined features, like a lonely snow-covered mountain beneath a cold mist.

He was polite and well-mannered, talented and accomplished, perfect without a single flaw.

Only Lin Zhirui knew how dark and despicable Yu Mingyuan was beneath his glittering exterior.

Their parents returned from a trip to find shoes scattered all over the entryway, but no one in sight.

Upstairs, in the storage room, Lin Zhirui was pinned into a corner.

She struggled to turn her head and ask him, "Yu Mingyuan, is this how you treat your little sister?"

His face was indistinct in the dim light. She could only feel his bony fingers gripping her with enough force to nearly break her waist.

He bent down and kissed her slender neck again and again.

His voice was so low it made her ears burn. "But you clearly love it."

No one knew that, for ten years, the man as pure as a snow-capped mountain had secretly watched and coveted her, using every means at his disposal to keep her firmly by his side.

Later, she asked him, "Why don't you ever say you love me?"

The man who was always in control, always at ease, replied, "Because I don't dare."

I don't dare say I love you, much less let you see the torrent of my feelings.

You're the person I met only after crossing the wreckage of the first half of my life.

I have to be careful, so careful, and restrain myself, again and again, before I dare make you mine.

Bonus alternate timeline:

When Lin Zhirui set out to seduce her stepbrother, she thought about how to drag him down from his pedestal.

She never expected to be the one dragged into hell.

The demon opened its jaws and devoured her whole.

On the day she fled from Yu Mingyuan, Lin Zhirui took a plane, then a train, and finally a boat.

She escaped to a deserted island, thinking she had finally regained her freedom,

until a helicopter appeared over the peaceful island.

Lin Zhirui watched the tall man walk toward her step by step.

He spoke to her tenderly and affectionately: "Had enough of playing? Big brother's taking you home."

(The leads are not siblings by blood or law.)

Next book: No Good Intentions

Ten years ago, Zhou Huaichuan was entrusted with taking over the Ling family in its time of crisis.

Besides fighting bloody battles against their enemies, he also had to look after the Ling family's only heir.

After raising her for ten years, playing both father and mother, he treasured her like his own eyes. He never imagined she'd run away with her "boyfriend" behind his back.

The day Zhou Huaichuan and his people blocked Ling Yao at the airport was the first time she'd seen him lose control. His usual refined gentlemanly manner was gone. He tied her wrists with a luxury designer tie and called her an "ungrateful ingrate who can't be raised."

Everyone said that if not for Old Master Ling, Zhou Huaichuan would have been dead long ago. So he never asked anything in return from the Ling family, was absolutely loyal, and spoiled Ling Yao like a little sister.

It wasn't until news of the marriage alliance between the Zhou and Ling families rocked the capital that everyone learned Zhou Huaichuan's greatest ambition, and his greatest disloyalty, had always been Ling Yao.

Zhou Huaichuan was never the Ling family's savior.

He was a schemer.

Calculating, fatherly man x spoiled, arrogant troublemaker

Eight-year age gap

Theme: Falling in love is easy. What matters is continuing to love