She continued with her conditions and he continued with his for the next half an hour.

To be honest, he really liked her way of laying everything on the table beforehand. They were hashing our shit out before they committed to each other. Marriage was just a business dealing to them. She simplified it by clearing: ‘I expect this of you. You expect this of me. You do for me. I do for you. And neither of us will cross certain lines.

“You can’t expect me to love you like a conventional loving wife. I can give you anything but love.” She continued.

“I don’t mind actually. This arrangement is not about love, in the first place. Not all marriages are built on love. I agree because love is a fragile house that crumbles. What we are building at this table will be untouchable.” He replied to her seriously. When he said love was a fragile house that crumbled, he was damm serious because he had seen marriages breaking and shattering just because of love. He never wanted their marriage to suffer the very same fate because of love. A word that was nearly insignificant in my life. Men like him never love. It was a costly affair because they couldn’t afford weaknesses. And love always meant weakness. They said if love was your weakness then you were the strongest person in the world. But he said to cut this bullshit and be realistic. Love was nothing but a big fat deadliest blunder.

She nodded. For the first time since he met her, she finally agreed to something he said. The woman was intelligent and pragmatic. He gave her the credit that she would survive as long Jie’s wife, no one but she.

The lawyer wrote something else down.

This was how the conversation further continued. She or he would bring up a term, they would discuss it, and then they would either agree or not. If they didn’t, they went back and forth or yell or argue until they were both contented.

” Moving Forward,” He said.

” What about heirs?” He asked her.

“What about them” She replied. Was she serious? Was not the whole essence of the contract to get heirs who would continue his legacy – correction their legacies?

He gave her a look as if she was serious.

” What about our future kids, my dear to-be wife? Why do people marry? Oh, let me answer it myself, we are getting married so that we can breed more and more children to continue our respective legacies. ”

She smiled at him. She really smiled at him. Those cherry lips-. No, stop it long Jie. The woman was a tempting devil.

“Come on. I didn’t say you won’t get children. I’m just saying that I don’t want kids for the next three years. I’m barely in my mid-twenties Long Jie. I can’t just bring a kid to this world if I don’t even know how to look after him/her. I don’t want our children to suffer because of this arrange marriage charade.” She said.

” Okay” He replied with a single word.

“Okay?” She asked.

He nodded my head. “I said I’m okay with your condition”

“You are not going to argue or persuade me to change my mind,” she asked. Was she serious? Why would he? It was her habit to oppose everything suggested.

” Zhenyi, I might be an arrogant and shitty man but I never force a woman. This is your body I just can’t ask you to produce spawns. It is your prerogative as a woman to decide when you want kids”

She blinked at him. She had the most beautiful and longest eyelashes he had ever seen on a woman.

“Okay”

He nodded.

Moreover, Long Jie knew how important it was fir a kid to get a mother’s love and affection. He didn’t want to force her for kids because he didn’t want a loveless childhood for his kids.

The lawyer wrote something on the paper again.

“Your turn, Mr. long, ” the lawyer said.

“I want exclusive rights to you,” he said.

She raised her brow and said ” What am I? An item You can patent?”

He shook his head before saying” I never said you are an item, sweetheart. You are very much a woman. I’m just saying exclusive as in terms of relation”

She nodded and gestures to her lawyer to take note of the point.

“Since you have asserted your feelings on the matter of the two of you being exclusive, you know where you both stand, but I feel it best to discuss the matter in detail. If you would rather not be intimate with each other, you cannot expect each other to be celibate. You would take lovers, but would be discreet, of course.” The lawyer clarified and Long Jie had an impulse to bang his ugly face on the table.

Did he need lovers when he had her? And would he allow her to have lovers? The answer was simple — never. The woman belonged to him. And only him.

“Discreet,” she whispered and stared at him for a second before turning her eyes on the paper in front of her. He couldn’t resist anymore and howled, “No one touches my wife but me.”

Someone rightly said that “Knowing was a temptation. What you don’t know won’t tempt you.”

Similar was Long Jie’s case. Xin zhenyi was his temptation that he didn’t knew exist before and once he’d known her there was no going back. The idea of sharing her was like someone was burning him with acid.

He turned to look at his beautiful-tempting soon to be wife. She was staring right at him with those cat eyes that were full of different shades, and honestly, he could find more magnificence in them than the magnificence on the whole earth combined. She was like a dormant volcano that erupts rarely but when it did, it resulted in utter devastation.

She blinked and then realized that she was staring. She cleared her throat and concluded “No one touches me. No touches you”

He nodded. He was pleased. In fact, He was more than pleased. The negotiation was finally over. Truthfully, speaking he liked the way she was staring at him unblinking. He also liked it when he finally got to see those eyes from this close. Those cat eyes were etched in his mind forever and he finally had a reason to let her stay there forever.