Taming the Beast

Chapter 4: Never Smokes

Lin Shenting parked the motorcycle on the seawall.

He and Song Xiaoyuan started walking, one in front, one behind, along the edge of the sea.

Song looked out at the bright moon and the restless, rolling water.

“It’s so quiet,” he sighed. “All you can hear is the ocean.”

“Yeah.”

Lin walked on the side closest to the water and turned his head a little.

“Where do you live? I’ll take you back after we’re done here.”

Song told him the address.

Lin thought for a moment, then nodded. “That’s pretty far.”

“Then you’re stuck with me,” he added with an easy smile. “Good luck catching a cab out here.”

Something moved in Song’s chest. Half joking, half not, he said,

“Fine. Wherever you go tonight, I’ll go.”

Lin just laughed, letting the words hang between them.

After three or four minutes, he stopped and sat down facing the sea.

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from God knows where, slid one between his lips, cupped his hand to the lighter and lit up.

Only after he snapped the lighter shut and shoved it back into his pocket did he seem to remember the person behind him.

“You’re so well-behaved,” he said, cigarette dangling from his mouth, leaning back on one hand with a lazy, rakish grin. “You don’t smoke, right?”

Song was briefly speechless.

He hadn’t even had time to play along and say he didn’t smoke before Lin suddenly called his name.

“Song Xiaoyuan.”

Song lowered his head toward him.

Lin reached out and tugged. Song let himself be pulled down, sitting beside him. Even when they were eye to eye, he still had no idea why Lin had called him over.

Lin studied his face—made impossibly finer by the moonlight—and let out a quiet chuckle.

He pinched the end of the cigarette, narrowed his eyes, and drew in a lungful of smoke.

Then he set the half-finished cigarette aside, leaned in, and exhaled the entire breath into Song’s face.

“Really don’t smoke, Song Xiaoyuan?”

He watched as Song shut his eyes in the haze and asked it softly.

The ember flared and dimmed in the sea breeze.

So did Song’s eyelashes, trembling under the sting of wind and smoke like rose petals bowing under the weight of the night.

“I don’t have the habit,” he said.

When the smoke thinned, he opened those beautiful eyes again, affection drifting in the depths like something floating on water.

“I never smoke.”

Love is a long, unbroken stare.

So, pretending to love Lin Shenting, Song held his gaze and didn’t look away.

Lin suddenly smiled. His dark pupils were full of Song.

He reached out to smooth back the strands of hair the wind had lifted, but his hand didn’t stop there—it followed the line of black hair down, brushing lightly over that pale cheek.

“I treat you like this and you don’t even get mad,” he murmured. “Do you like me that much?”

Song’s smile turned shy, color slowly blooming under his skin.

He leaned in closer, eyes on Lin, and asked softly,

“Then do you like me?”

He kissed the bridge of Lin’s nose, then pressed his lips to his brow.

“Do you like me?” he asked again.

Lin didn’t move. He let Song touch him however he wanted.

Waves crashed against the shore.

Just as Song was about to finally kiss his mouth, he felt something else rising through him—a tide moving in slow, heavy surges, washing away all the irritation and unease until only cold detachment and a thin, cruel satisfaction remained.

Another brief affair was about to begin.

So he might as well enjoy tonight.

Song closed his eyes and leaned in.

But a second later, his mouth slid past Lin’s and landed at the angle of his jaw instead.

He froze.

Before he could process it, Lin pulled back a little and gave him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he said lightly. “I only like people who share my habits.”

The waves were small tonight.

Far off, the surf sounded like rain beating against a pane of glass—dense, dull, indistinct. The bluntness of it scraped at Song’s nerves, but none of that showed on his face.

He simply smiled back, just as lightly.

“What’s that supposed to be?” he asked. “Some new way of flirting?”

“Flirting?” Lin repeated.

He laughed, taking the time to be very kind and very patient.

“It’s not flirting. I’m saying you’re not my type. Stop wasting your effort.”

A tiny line creased between Song’s brows, gone almost as soon as it appeared.

He chose to ignore it with infuriating good temper.

“What are you talking about?”

Lin didn’t answer. He just smiled.

If Song had been fully clear-headed, he would have seen it for what it was—that smile full of lazy contempt, edged with mockery.

But he didn’t. Or maybe he simply refused to.

He kept his voice soft.

“If I’m not your type, then I can learn to smoke for you. I can…”

He hooked onto Lin’s arm again and leaned in to kiss his face.

A finger pressed to his forehead, stopping him cold.

“That’s enough,” Lin said, expression flat. “Drop the act.”

He caught Song’s bruised wrist and pried his hand slowly off his arm.

“I’ve been playing along with your performance all night. Even if you’re not sick of it, I am.”

The wind ruffled the hair at his brow.

The eyes that usually crinkled in lazy amusement were now sharp as blades. Under the dim yellow lights of the seawall, Lin looked calm, composed, every trace of his usual careless charm shuttered behind clean, handsome lines.

“I’ve got nothing against soft, helpless little flowers,” he said. “But that’s not who you are. So when you pretend to be one, it just comes out warped and off.”

He watched the expression on Song’s face c***k, piece by piece.

The warmth from their earlier closeness leeched out of his cheeks, leaving him bloodless.

Without the deliberate softness clouding his features, his face was still fine and delicate—he just looked like an entirely different person.

“You played me?”

He asked it quietly, one word at a time.

Lin looked at that chilled face.

“I never said I liked you. What exactly are you angry about?”

“I helped you shake off your ex and brought you out here to see the sea,” he went on, meeting the frost-laced gaze head-on. His own eyes were just as cold, stabbing straight into Song’s.

“Tell me—how did I play you?”

“You clearly—”

“Song Xiaoyuan,” he cut in, “I don’t like meddling in other people’s business.”

“But today you set your sights on my friend.”

Lin’s sense of boundaries was carved deep.

He treated “mind your own damn business” like scripture. What kind of person Song was, who he fancied, who he planned to trick or sleep with, why he did it, whose bed he’d end up in afterwards—those could all be trending headlines by tomorrow and Lin still wouldn’t bother to tap them. None of it had anything to do with him.

But Song had picked the wrong target.

Li Zhili was far too soft. He would never stand a chance against someone like this. Lin could block him once tonight, but who knew if Song would come back for him again.

So a lesson was required.

“Stay away from Li Zhili,” Lin said. “You can’t afford to mess with him, and you don’t touch him.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind Song’s ear, then leaned in, close enough that his breath brushed the shell of it—his voice low and intimate like a lover’s murmur.

“Otherwise, next time, bringing you out here will be the least of what I do.”

Song’s black-and-white eyes flicked toward him, his face unreadable.

Lin nodded, satisfied.

“Good. Your punishment for tonight is sitting here by yourself. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

He picked up his helmet and turned away, heading for the motorcycle.

He had just reached for the keys when Song’s voice cut through the wind behind him.

“Lin Shenting.”

Lin turned his head.

Song pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, slid one out and lit it.

Facing the spring sea breeze, he narrowed his eyes around the filter and drew in deep.

When he exhaled, smoke washed over his delicate features and then vanished, torn apart by the wind—carrying with it all the leftover innocence, fragility, and tender devotion from just moments before, scattering into the salt-heavy air.

“I had my eye on your friend?”

Song tilted his head, the long line of his neck running down into his collar, his collarbones holding a dark, hollow shadow. The slim cigarette glowed and dimmed between his fingers as he watched Lin, a smile tugging at the corner of his eyes.

He flicked the ash away with practiced ease, his voice roughened, the smile in his gaze thinning to something razor-fine.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said.

“From the very beginning—the only one I wanted was you.”