"Black Swan" was the most discreet and expensive top-tier bar in the city. The air hung heavy with rich aged whiskey, expensive cigar smoke, and the subtle, reserved perfumes of high society.

Julian sat in the most secluded corner booth, slender fingers idly turning an old-fashioned glass, the amber liquid casting a mesmerizing glow under the lights. He'd just finished a video conference for a multinational acquisition and had come here to clear his mind.


Yet his gaze remained firmly locked on the lonely figure at the bar.

It was Chloe.

She wore a dress he'd never seen before—excessively sexy, champagne-colored silk clinging to her body, outlining breathtaking curves. Her raven-black hair was disheveled, and her eyes, usually clear as spring water, were now clouded with alcohol.


She downed tequila shots one after another, not savoring them but swallowing them like medicine.

Chloe.


What was she doing here? In such a… broken state?

Julian's temples throbbed. Unbidden, his mind flashed to her eighteenth birthday. She'd worn a white gauze dress, and for the first time, he'd seen her transform from his friend's daughter into a woman he desperately wanted.

That was the beginning of his sin.

And now, the budding white rose he'd once longed for was being crushed by alcohol and some unknown agony.

His brows tightened, his heart gripped by an invisible hand. He didn't know what had happened. He only knew that two years ago, he'd rejected her innocent, passionate confession in the cruelest way. He still remembered how she looked that day—a radiant twenty-year-old woman boldly asking for his love. But all he could see was the eight-year-old girl with crooked braids hiding behind Alan Carter, her father. The overlap of these images had nearly torn his sanity apart. How could he admit to his best friend that he harbored such desires for the girl he'd watched grow up? After her depression lifted, she'd begun dating.

He forced himself to look away, draining his whiskey in one gulp. The burning liquid scorched his throat but couldn't suppress the familiar restlessness rising from the depths of his heart.

He shouldn't interfere. He'd sworn never to actively intervene in her life again.

End of perspective

However, just as Julian was about to pay and leave, two men with visibly ill intentions approached Chloe, drinks in hand. Their greasy gazes stuck to her exposed back like flies, and one had already placed his hand on her shoulder.

At that moment, the string called "rationality" in Julian's mind snapped with an almost audible twang.

He rose from the booth instantly, his tall figure carrying an undeniable air of intimidation, and within a few strides, he was at the bar.

"Get lost."

He didn't even look at the two men, just coldly uttered two words. It was the pure aura of an apex predator, enough to make any small-time thug tremble. The two men fled, nearly wetting themselves in terror.

Chloe's reactions were dulled by drunkenness. She raised misty eyes to look at the tall, straight-backed man who had suddenly appeared. Against the light, she couldn't see his face clearly, but found his outline incredibly familiar—familiar enough to make her feel safe.

Then, she caught his scent.

Not cigarettes or alcohol, but a clean yet intensely masculine fragrance—fir, sandalwood, with a hint of cold leather. It was the scent she'd been madly infatuated with in her teenage years, a scent that belonged only to him.

"…Julian?" she called out uncertainly, tentatively.

The next moment, all the grief and pain she'd accumulated throughout the night burst forth like a breaking dam. Without hesitation, she threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his expensive suit jacket like a lost kitten finding shelter, closing her eyes with a sense of security.

Julian's body completely froze.

He felt her soft, warm body in his arms and smelled the sweet fragrance of her hair, mixed with alcohol. This sudden embrace was a scene he'd fantasized about countless nights but had never dared hope for.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. Using all his self-control, he half-carried, half-supported her out of the bar and booked a room at the hotel next door.

He gently placed her on the soft bed and removed the high heels that had made her steps unsteady. He took out his phone, intending to call his female secretary to come take care of her. This was the most rational and correct way to handle the situation.

He walked past the bed with restraint, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

Just as they brushed past each other, a soft, cool hand suddenly grabbed his wrist.

He stopped and turned to look at her.

Chloe had opened her eyes, tears falling silently like broken strings of pearls. She just lay there, looking up at him, her gaze as fragile as an abandoned fawn.

"Am I…" she choked, her voice as light as a feather, "am I really so unattractive?"



Answer her. Say something, anything.

Julian's mind went blank. All his composure and self-restraint crumbled in the face of her question.

How should he answer?

Say "yes"? This lie—he couldn't utter even a single syllable of it.

To say "no"? That would be admitting that in his eyes, she was the most attractive woman he had ever seen. This truth would be like ignited dynamite, blasting his seven years of suppression and pretense to pieces.

He stood rooted to the spot, like a man on a tightrope with an abyss beneath his feet.

End of perspective

His silence, in Chloe's view, became the cruelest form of confirmation.

Her tears flowed more fiercely, and she began to mutter incoherently: "…so it's true after all…I'm so inadequate…that's why he would…he would rather sleep with men…"

"What?" Julian's pupils contracted sharply.

Men?

Julian felt an icy chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. He recalled two years ago, when he learned that Chloe had begun going on frequent blind dates, that feeling of panic as if someone had carved out his heart. He couldn't stop her, so he used every resource at his disposal to thoroughly investigate each of her dates.

Finally, he selected Daniel. His background was impeccable, his career steadily rising, his record clean as a blank sheet of paper. Most importantly, he looked… safe. A gentle and elegant man who would never hurt her.

Julian thought he had chosen the most perfect and secure place for her to spend her life. At her wedding, he even experienced an illusion of relief, thinking this was for the best.

But he was wrong. He had investigated everything about the man, yet missed the most fundamental point.

He had built the most magnificent cage for her, without realizing that the keeper had absolutely no interest in the canary inside.

It was he who had personally delivered her into this hell.

That overwhelming guilt, sharper than any knife, nearly tore him to pieces.

He crouched down, the immense shock and heartache making it almost impossible to breathe. He reached out, using his fingertips to gently wipe away the tears on her cheeks, his movements as tender as if touching a priceless treasure that had shattered due to his own mistake.

"Stop crying." His voice was terribly hoarse.

He brushed the tear-dampened strands of hair behind her ear, his fingertips inadvertently touching her small, soft earlobe, which still wore the pearl earrings her mother had left her.

Boom—

Like a lightning bolt surging from his fingertips, instantly igniting the blood throughout his entire body. That soft, delicate sensation caused the desire and emotions he had suppressed for years to erupt from his heart like a volcano.

He knew he couldn't stay any longer. One more second, and he would lose control.

Abruptly withdrawing his hand, he stood up, preparing to flee from this room that was driving him to the brink of madness.

"Don't go…"

From behind came her sweet, soft, pleading voice tinged with tears.

He turned to see she had somehow sat up in bed and was reaching out her hand, looking at him with pleading eyes. Seeing him pause, she moved her cheek closer, gently nuzzling against his large hand that still retained her warmth.

That small gesture completely destroyed Julian's last line of defense.

Her cheek, soft and warm like the finest velvet, pressed against his knuckles.

This was the gentlest touch in the world, yet to him, it was nothing short of a nuclear explosion. The steel walls of "restraint" he'd built over ten years; the vows he'd made during countless cold, sleepless nights to never cross boundaries—all of it, in her single, trusting and unconscious nuzzle, came crashing down, reduced to dust.

The beast he had chained in the deepest part of his soul, that he had starved for a full ten years, finally broke free from its restraints.

And it was ravenous.

He had tried to escape. He had struggled to play the role of the noble "Uncle Julian" her father trusted. But her words "don't go" were not a request, but a pardon. They were the permission that released him from ten years of self-imposed exile.

At this point, turning away again would be another, more cruel form of abandonment and betrayal.

Fine. He had given her every opportunity to stay away from his dark side.

It was she herself who refused.

He turned around, walked back to her, and looked down at her from above. His gaze became dark and profound, like a bottomless abyss filled with dangerous whirlpools.

"Do you really want me to stay?" he asked, emphasizing each word, his voice deep and dangerous. "Chloe, don't blame me… for not warning you."

With bleary, drunken eyes, Chloe seemed not to understand the warning in his words, only feeling relieved that he wasn't leaving. She nodded vigorously in her dazed confusion.

Looking at her innocent and bewildered expression, Julian felt the beast within him roaring frantically. He reached out, again caressing her cheek, his thumb intimately and slowly tracing her red lips.

He lowered his head, his lips almost touching her ear, and in a devilish voice that only the two of them could hear, he asked hoarsely:

"That man made you feel like you have no charm."

"Would you like to know…" he paused, each word carrying ten years of desire from his burning throat, branding itself onto the shell of her ear, "…how hot a man can make you when he really wants you?"

Chloe suddenly lifted her head, staring at his unfathomable eyes with confusion and bewilderment, as if struggling to comprehend this statement packed with so much information.

A few seconds later, she seemed to give up thinking, or perhaps it was an instinctive surrender of someone who had nothing left to lose. In a very soft, almost inaudible voice, she uttered:

"Teach me."