I shrugged, my gaze sweeping over the many skincare products lined up on the dressing table. “I’m getting old. If it weren’t for these, I’d have turned into a hag a long time ago. You wouldn’t want to bang a wrinkly lady, right?”
He squinted at the products, raising a curious eyebrow. A charming smirk grew on his face as he slowly approached me.
Sensing his strange actions, I stared at him suspiciously out of the corner of my eye. “What are you doing?”
He picked up one of the bottles of lotion, skimmed over the instructions, and then glanced at me. “I’ll help you put this on.”
I…
That was the lotion that Nora had gifted me. Her old folks claimed that our relationship would improve with this. Despite the expensive price tag, she thought we had to catch up with the trend and try it.
He squeezed some lotion out onto his palm, pulling me into his arms once more. “You can leave these sorts of things up to me in the future, Mrs. Fuller.”
Panicking, I grabbed onto his wrist. “What are you doing, Ashton?”
“I’m helping you put lotion on.” His smile was disarmingly handsome, and one of his hands was already starting to slip under my negligee.
“Don’t rush your decision to withdraw from the Lavelian Village project, alright?” I frantically changed the topic. “Hopefully, this will all pass and everything will get better soon. Besides, hasn’t Fuller Corporation lost some of its AI technology recently? Even if you try to withdraw now and find another company to collaborate with, you’ll still face the same problems. The employees from both corporations are finally starting to get along and cooperate with each other well, too.”
My little rant didn’t distract him at all. I bit on my lower lip, suppressing the heat building within me as I asked, “Did something happen today?”
Ashton seemed stubborn in not talking about the subject anymore, but he finally replied, “Just the project.”
I knew it. The project’s condition was still unstable, after all. Pushing him away, I crawled back into bed and hid under the covers. “I’m sleeping!”
“You little vixen,” he laughed wryly. “It’s as if Mr. Murphy is your husband instead of me. You’re just trying to twist my arm at this point.”
“I get a large portion of the profits if I stay with Murphy Corporation,” I argued from under the covers. “I wouldn’t get anything if I worked at Fuller Corporation.”
He sighed, getting under the covers and wrapping me in his arms. “Can’t I just give you however much money you want?”
“It’s different! I want to earn my own income.” I squirmed in his embrace.
“I see that someone needs to be taught a lesson tonight,” he joked. After saying that, his hands started wandering all over my body.
More than an hour later, my body had reached its limit after several rounds of lovemaking, and I begged him, “Ashton, I can’t… Ah! If you keep this up… I won’t go back to K City with you…”
Ashton’s hips finally halted their movements as he buried his face into the crook of my neck, chuckling in satisfaction. The grass is always greener on the other side. People often fail to realize the bliss and happiness they own when faced with challenges.
Just like how someone might be admiring the scenery, but someone else might be admiring the sight of them from afar.
I grew sleepy as the night dragged on, my eyes closing on their own will. I distantly registered the sensation of something being put onto my finger, whimpering quietly as I pulled my hand back. “What…”
“It’s your wedding ring,” I heard Ashton say before he placed a gentle kiss on my lips.
A little astonished, the fog cleared from my brain as my eyes flew open. Burrowing into his arms, I reached up and kissed him again, saying drowsily, “We’re already an old, married couple, though.”
When I ran away from K City, I’d left my wedding ring and all my credit cards at the villa. I’d never thought that he would be wearing it all this time.
The dim lighting of the bedside lamp cast a warm glow onto Ashton’s gentle smile. His voice was husky as he replied, “Thirty isn’t old at all. In fact, I think it’s the best time of our lives.”
He pushed himself up to hover over me, swiftly stealing my breath away with countless deep kisses.
The following days were inevitably boring due to the project Lavelian Village being put on hold.
As a result, I grew antsier and antsier with each passing day.
Nora eventually recovered and was discharged from the hospital. She wasted no time in going to the Murphy Corporation and inviting Linda and me for lunch.
“There’s no use in drowning in work to distract yourself. Even if the project gets back on track, we still need to take the higher-ups’ opinions into account. You might as well enjoy some delicious food and take your minds off of the whole situation for a while,” she chided us while in the car.
Linda’s fatigue and worry were clearly written all over her face. Even her makeup looked cakey in contrast to the perfect image that she usually upheld.
I was faring slightly better than her. Although Ashton was still busy at the office, he made sure to come home every night and keep me company, preventing me from burning the midnight oil and ensuring that I would actually get a good night’s sleep.
“It’s not like I want to be this stressed either,” Linda groaned. “But the longer this project stays on hold, the more our company will suffer losses that just keep piling on top of each other!”
She had a point. There were more than a hundred employees currently on-site at Lavelian Village whose salaries were at least five thousand per month. If the project was delayed for one month longer, we would be wasting a month’s worth of salaries. Murphy Corporation was a large company, but that didn’t mean that we could afford to burn through our financial assets recklessly.
