YOU LOVE ME LIKE A SECRET

THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH

By now, the pattern was brutally clear.

As a solicitor who had spent years dismantling complex offshore structures and negotiating high-stakes international deals in London boardrooms, I knew how to read closed doors. I knew how to find the cracks in carefully constructed walls of silence. But Xu Shein’s world wasn’t merely private — it was fortified. Every layer protected with surgical precision, designed to keep outsiders exactly where they belonged: outside.

And yet I kept pushing. Because knowing the truth had become more important than protecting what was left of my heart.

I returned to the discreet café where he conducted quiet business, the rooftop bar where he once pulled me into shadows and made me come on his fingers while the city glittered below, and the boutique hotel where we had spent nights tangled in sheets that still carried the scent of his skin and s*x. Everywhere, the response was the same polished detachment.

“Mr. Shein? Yes, of course. But I’m afraid I don’t have any information I can share.”

Each refusal landed like a slow, deliberate thrust — deep, inescapable, and laced with the cruel reminder that I had only ever been granted access to the hidden compartments of his life.

Eden had warned me during our last tense meeting. “Some truths are protected for a reason. Some doors should remain closed, Lin Yue. You’re a solicitor — you understand compartmentalization better than most.”

I had smiled bitterly. “I dismantle compartments for a living.”

She hadn’t smiled back.

That night, I returned to the private art gallery where so many of our stolen moments had unfolded. The curator recognized me immediately, her expression shifting from professional politeness to something closer to reluctant respect.

“You again,” she said, a faint, knowing smile playing at her lips. “You’re determined. I’ll give you that.”

“I need to understand him,” I said, my voice low and steady — the same tone I used when cross-examining witnesses in London. “Not the public persona. Not the fragments I’ve been given. The real Xu Shein. Everything.”

She studied me for a long moment, then glanced around the empty gallery before speaking.

“You’re asking for more than most people can handle. And some of what you’ll learn… should have been enough to let him go.”

I frowned, heart tightening. “Should have been enough?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “To know that you were never meant to be part of his world. That sometimes loving someone isn’t the same as being allowed inside their life. You’re chasing a man who lives in shadows — shadows that are carefully guarded for a reason.”

Her words cut like a scalpel. Clean. Precise. Merciless.

“I don’t care,” I replied, lifting my chin the way I did in boardrooms when opponents tried to intimidate me. “I need the truth.”

The curator exhaled slowly. “There’s a private exhibition tomorrow night. Not open to the public. Invitation only. If you’re truly determined, you might catch a glimpse of him. But be warned — seeing him in his element won’t give you the access you want. It will only make the absence sharper.”

I nodded, a dangerous mix of resolve and longing coiling tight in my chest.

The next evening, I prepared like I was walking into a high-stakes negotiation. Tailored black dress that skimmed my curves — professional yet feminine. Hair swept into a sleek chignon. Minimal makeup. The same armor I wore when facing down CEOs across mahogany tables in London. But underneath it all, my body still remembered him too well. Every brush of fabric against my skin sent unwelcome sparks of memory: his hands gripping my hips, his thick c**k stretching me open, the way he had growled my name like a man losing control while buried deep inside me.

The gallery was alive with quiet power when I arrived. Soft lighting. Expensive champagne. Conversations murmured in multiple languages. And then — there he was.

Xu Shein.

Not the man who had once f****d me against rain-streaked glass while whispering broken Mandarin against my throat. Not the one who had held me afterward like I was the only real thing left in his universe. This was the public Xu Shein — polished, commanding, untouchable. He moved through the room with effortless authority, tailored suit perfectly cut across those broad shoulders, dark eyes sharp and focused as he spoke with influential figures who hung on his every word.

My heart clenched so violently I had to steady myself against a marble pillar. He looked devastating. In control. Exactly the man the world respected and feared. And I — the solicitor who had let him ruin her so beautifully in secret — remained invisible in the periphery, just another face in the crowd.

I watched him from the shadows as memories crashed over me in vivid, merciless waves.

The penthouse. His powerful body covering mine from behind, thick c**k sliding into me in one long, devastating thrust. One hand fisted gently in my hair, the other gripping my hip as he drove deep and slow, dragging against every sensitive spot until I was shaking and dripping down his shaft. “So f*****g perfect,” he had groaned against my ear. “This tight little p***y takes me so well… only me.” I had come hard, clenching around him, sobbing his name while the city lights blurred below us.

Seeing him now — calm, composed, completely in his element — should have been enough.

It should have shattered the last of my illusions. It should have reminded me that I had only ever been the secret relief, the hidden indulgence, the warm, wet escape he reached for when duty and grief became too heavy.

It wasn’t enough.

The hunger inside me — unrelenting, desperate, dangerous — only burned hotter. My n*****s tightened beneath the fabric of my dress. My core clenched with a hollow, aching need that refused to die. Even here, surrounded by his real world, my body still craved the version of him that had only ever belonged to me in darkness.

Xu Shein turned slightly, as if sensing something. His dark eyes swept the room — and for one suspended second, they found mine.

Recognition. Heat. Something raw and tormented flashed across his face before he masked it perfectly. He didn’t approach. He didn’t acknowledge me publicly.

He simply held my gaze for a heartbeat longer than he should have.

Then he looked away.

And in that moment, the truth settled over me like a shroud.

I wasn’t part of this world.

I had only ever been allowed to borrow pieces of him in secret.

But that stolen intimacy — every slow thrust, every broken groan, every time he had filled me so completely I forgot how to breathe — had ruined me for anything else.

And no matter how many doors he kept locked, I wasn’t sure I could walk away from the only man who had ever made me feel truly alive.