Chapter 7

The velvet curtains were drawn tight, sealing out the silent night.

Ming Yufu pressed the remote, and half the bedroom plunged into darkness. Only the moon lamp on the nightstand remained, diffusing a hazy, dim, and warm glow.

“Can you sleep with it off?” she asked.

Meng Li lay on her side, one cheek pressed into the pillow. She nodded. “My sleep quality is exceptional. I could sleep even if someone was singing folk songs with a megaphone upstairs. So don’t worry; even if you talk in your sleep, I won’t hear a thing.”

“…”

Ming Yufu replied, “I don’t talk in my sleep.”

Meng Li thought about it and couldn’t offer the same guarantee. “I don’t know if I do or not.” Because she slept so deeply, she would have no idea even if she did.

The agreement didn’t mandate any “duties” in bed; they were in a relationship where they simply slept in the same bed. Aside from sharing the mattress, they each had their own blankets and pillows.

“Goodnight.” Meng Li curled her lips into a smile. She pulled the thin quilt up to her waist, leaving her snowy-white arms exposed.

Ming Yufu’s gaze swept over her like a wild goose leaving no trace on the water. “Goodnight.”

Under the faint moon and light clouds, the rustling sounds in the room gradually faded. Gentle breaths became even and long, occasionally intertwining.

Ming Yufu began to feel hotter and hotter. She dreamed she was warming herself by a furnace in the middle of summer. She tried to push the furnace away, but the furnace grew legs and clung to her instead, radiating a melting heat.

It was becoming unbearably stuffy.

A trace of pale rouge tinted her thin white eyelids, which fluttered restlessly. Ming Yufu startled awake and suddenly lifted her lashes.

Her vision met the ivory-white skin of a collarbone. Every breath was filled with the girl’s fresh, dry scent of soap.

Publicly releasing pheromones was illegal, but pheromone-mimicking perfumes were bestsellers among Alphas. Many Alphas chose scents similar to their own pheromones, while others rotated through different fragrances.

Yet since their first meeting, there hadn’t been a trace of artificial fragrance on the girl. It was always that light soap—like the scent of sunlight on a spring pasture: vigorous, warm, and unrestrained. It wasn’t exactly “alluring,” but it was pure and distinct, as if it could take root in one’s very marrow.

She was being held tightly by Meng Li.

Meng Li’s arms were circled around her waist, her legs were entangled with hers, and her entire body was practically glued to her. Her sleeping face looked tranquil—those beautifully curved peach-blossom eyes were tightly shut, and beneath her straight nose, her ruby lips were slightly parted.

In reality, she was a restless sleeper. She had [stolen content]completely relocated herself, stealing half the pillow and half the quilt—acting as bossy as could be.

The “original resident” of the bed, whose territory had been invaded, reached out and pushed her. Her delicate fingers gripped a smooth shoulder. Meng Li’s shoulder blade moved back slightly, but her sleeping face showed no ripple of emotion.

On the contrary, the hand clamped around Ming Yufu’s soft waist shifted slightly, adjusting to a more comfortable position. She had clearly mistaken her for a large, snuggly body pillow.

“Meng Li.”

Ming Yufu called her name.

Silence hung in the air for three seconds.

How could someone who wouldn’t wake up to a megaphone hear this call?

Ming Yufu stared at the Alpha helplessly for a few minutes. Seeing no other way, she reached out and pinched the girl’s shapely nose, releasing it just a moment before her brows began to knit.

Meng Li rubbed her nose and opened her eyes blearily. She saw the cold beauty—face like a hibiscus of jade—staring at her with a gaze as sharp as frost.

The bed was very soft. Meng Li felt like she was sleeping on cotton, sinking into the softness. Her perception of the boundary between dreams and reality weakened; she thought she was dreaming again and had dreamed of Ming Yufu.

Ming Yufu spoke, cold and monotonous syllables spilling from her thin lips. “Hot.”

Following her gaze, Meng Li noticed her arms and legs were draped over the other woman.

As they say, one dreams at night what one thinks of by day. She must have been so focused on gaining life points during the day that she had turned into a clingy little sprite in her dreams to stick to her “catnip.”

Since it was a dream, Meng Li’s courage grew. “I can’t hug you?”

Ming Yufu replied indifferently, “No.”

Meng Li’s face fell. She tried a strategic retreat: “Then is holding hands okay? Holding hands isn’t hot.”

Ming Yufu frowned slightly. “Why?”

The President in my dreams is so rigorous.

Meng Li had no way to explain the complex matter of needing to “stick” for life points. She sighed dejectedly. Whatever, it’s just a dream anyway. If I can’t absorb life points, then I won’t.

She thought of it casually and didn’t take it to heart. She rolled over back to her own pillow, closed her eyes hazily, and drifted off again.

Ming Yufu watched her slender, graceful silhouette. The warmth on her body dissipated quickly with the girl’s departure, replaced by a ​Read on BaiLianTales​chill that seemed to pierce her skin and bone.

She looked down. The girl had rolled herself up like a sushi roll, her graceful body wrapped in the thin quilt.

But it was her quilt she had rolled up in.

As for the girl’s own quilt, Ming Yufu’s gaze swept over the end of the bed. With a kick of the girl’s foot, the edge of the blanket that had been stubbornly clinging to the mattress slid down the side and fell completely onto the thick carpet.

Ming Yufu: “…”

Allowing another person into one’s private space meant a change in lifestyle—a merging of different habits. Ming Yufu thought she was prepared, but only now did she realize she had oversimplified it.

Meng Li was an uncertainty she had personally pulled into her life. Like the unknown variable x in a math problem, the uncertainty couldn’t be predicted in advance. Getting along was the process of solving for the answer.

Ming Yufu lowered her lashes, gave up on the idea of waking her again, and reached out to pull the quilt. She tugged with some effort, and it was “buy one, get one free”—the sushi filling rolled right along with it.

Meng Li rubbed her eyes, her lashes lifting slowly. Her gaze was slightly unfocused before it gradually sharpened.

The light was dim. The woman’s features held a blurred, mysterious, and cold beauty. She was wearing an elegant celadon-colored nightgown, her waist as slender as a willow leaf, exuding grace.

Meng Li murmured, “President Ming, you’re still in my ​Read on BaiLianTales​dream.” It was a fragmented, continuous dream.

Ming Yufu pulled the quilt over herself and said nonchalantly, “Mm.”

Meng Li was a bit confused. “Why did you run into my dream today too, and stay for so long?”

Ming Yufu caught the word “too.” “You’ve dreamed of me before?”

Meng Li: “You don’t remember?”

Ming Yufu: “I don’t remember.”

Meng Li used to have continuous dreams where the story would pick up from the night before, and the people in the dream would remember previous events. The Ming Yufu in this dream didn’t have those memories. It was an independent dream—the more common kind. Not unusual.

“Fine,” Meng Li said. “But I remember.”

Her tea-colored curls curved against her neck. As she locked eyes with those deep, dark, pool-like eyes, a sensation like an electric current surged through the back of her neck, spreading a tingling numbness.

Meng Li’s nose flared slightly as she caught the sandalwood fragrance from the woman. This time she smelled it clearly—the faint, mixed scent wasn’t fresh sea salt or cool mint, but the reserved, gentle herbal tone of orris root. It was a mature fragrance that soaked into her lungs, making her crave more.

She quietly moved a bit closer to Ming Yufu, like a little bird lost in the night, fluttering its wings and stopping in front of a traveler, eyeing them with curiosity. Little did she know that at such a close distance, her secretive movements and gaze were magnified and fully seen by the woman.

Meng Li asked, “Are you still here to ask me for a kiss?”

Only the two of them were in this dream; there were no irrelevant people. Meng Li didn’t know the reason why Ming Yufu was lingering in her dream.

“I have never kissed you.” Ming Yufu’s profile looked cold and refined, possessing an indescribable aloofness.

Meng Li’s gaze was burning. “You have. And you were the one who initiated it.”

Ming Yufu said in a low voice, “I would not do that.” She would never take the initiative to ask someone for a kiss.

“You don’t remember.” Meng Li looked at this “Dream Version 2.0” of Ming Yufu and nodded understandingly. “But you did.”

Ming Yufu fell silent, then asked, “Did you drink tonight?”

Meng Li was confused. “No.”

She touched her own lips, her gaze landing on the woman’s thin pink lips. A ripple seemed to rise in her spring-like eyes as her tone became inexplicably sultry. She reminisced, “Actually, the feeling of kissing was quite nice.”

It was comfortable. The dopamine released when lips and teeth touched provided a pleasure and warmth that couldn’t be attained [unauthorized copy]alone. It was more addictive and exhilarating than any award, leaving one craving more.

Ming Yufu: “Is that so?”

“Yes. It’s a pleasure that nothing else can provide.”

The misty memory of their lips touching was polished bright by that magnetic question, rippling with vivid, colorful traces that tugged at her stray thoughts. The details were blurred, but the impression left in her mind was like a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors, spinning and colliding, giving her a magnificent, hallucinatory experience.

Meng Li’s cheeks began to burn, and her heart suddenly grew restless. She wanted to experience it one more time—to fill in the blanks of the kissing details from the last dream.

Meng Li’s voice was light, tinted with nervousness and anticipation. “Since it’s a dream anyway, do you want to practice together?”

She considered it seriously on the woman’s behalf, her expression pure and considerate. “Since we won’t remember after waking up, no matter how bad we are at practicing, no one will know.”

Ming Yufu had never been described as “bad” at anything. The Omega’s expression turned mysterious, and her long eyes narrowed slightly. “My kissing technique was bad last time?”

“Of course not,” Meng Li denied. “It’s just that there was no technique.”

“…”

Meng Li sensed a hint of disbelief in her gaze. “Really. If you don’t believe me, we can each practice once. Fair and square.”

Ming Yufu’s expression became somewhat ambiguous. “How do we practice?”

Even if Meng Li viewed her as a phantom in a dream, she would not allow her image to appear mediocre or incompetent. Ming Yufu had an obsessive pursuit of being “at the top” and “the best.”

Meng Li rubbed her cheek against the pillow and licked the corner of her lip. “You kiss me first.”

The sentence was a statement, but under the woman’s heavy gaze, it turned into a sultry and lingering invitation for flirtation.

“I won’t say the rest; I won’t help you cheat on your practice.” Meng Li made a zipping motion over her mouth, keeping it tightly shut.

The crescent moon outside was hooked, but it wasn’t as soul-stirring as her eyes, which hooked people into sinking into amber lakes.

“Come closer to me,” Ming Yufu said.

Meng Li shifted forward, sharing her pillow. They were now at a distance where they could kiss just by leaning in. The moon lamp seemed to be running out of power; its glow was as weak as a firefly, slowly receding into the territory of darkness.

Their breaths merged. The woman’s fragrance covered the pillow, the hollow of her shoulder, and her long, silk-like dark hair, invading Meng Li’s every breath.

Ming Yufu’s straight lashes fluttered. Her dark, distinct eyes were cold and peerless, deep as if no light could penetrate.

“I’m starting.”

“Mm!”

Ming Yufu leaned down and kissed Meng Li’s lips.

In an instant, the last sliver of light from the moon lamp went out, and darkness shrouded the room like a curtain.

Meng Li heard her own breathing grow ragged.

Soft lips and tongue swept across hers. Her shoulder was pressed down by a delicate hand. All the blood in her body seemed to rush to her lips and the places where their skin touched, creating a dizzying, intoxicating heat through the friction.

Meng Li forgot about the “one practice each” rule. Having tasted a flavor she loved, she refused to let go. A moment before Ming Yufu could pull away, she captured her lips, her tongue prying open the gate of her teeth to taste the sweet nectar within.