"Get out."

"No."

The reply came low and steady, cold enough to freeze the air. Aurora Whitfield tightened her arms around the man's waist and pressed herself closer, as if letting go for even a second would kill her.

Heat was raging through her body, wave after wave. The moment it touched his cool skin, it felt like a dying camel in the desert finally finding water. Her whole body shivered from that tiny bit of relief.

She let out a weak, shaky sigh. "I feel awful..."

Tilting her head up, she looked at him through misty, watery eyes. His face was sharp, handsome, almost unfairly so. "Help me. Just once..."

As if she had to prove she meant it, she even lifted one finger and waved it in front of him.

The man's dark gaze flicked toward the open door. When his assistant had left, he hadn't locked it, figuring Dominic Ashford would be going out soon.

And this woman had used that chance to slip right in.

His lips pressed into a colder line. "You've got the wrong room."

"No." Aurora shook her head, stubborn and dazed all at once. "You're exactly who I came for."

Her eyes dropped, landing on his prominent throat, on that sharp Adam's apple that screamed male in the most dangerous way. She had no clue where the nerve came from, but she suddenly rose on tiptoe and bit down on it.

Her teeth grazed lightly over his skin, soft and warm, and that touch seemed to send a current racing through his entire body.

Dominic's body went rigid on the spot.

The next second, he leaned back to avoid her, his chiseled face darkening fast.

He reached for the arms wrapped around him, trying to pry her off and shove some distance between them.

But Aurora clung to him like her life depended on it. "You won't lose out, okay? Just one night."

Dominic Ashford: "..."

Dominic grabbed her by the collar, looking like he wanted nothing more than to throw her straight out the door.

But before he could move, she somehow found another burst of strength. Her hands shot up, locking around his neck, and then a warm softness landed right on his lips.

Dominic Ashford froze.

For a split second, pure shock flashed through those deep, unreadable eyes.

In the next second, she seized the tiny moment he froze and lunged at him with a downright bossy kind of force, like she was fully set on taking him down no matter what.

The two of them shoved and tangled together, and somehow, neither of them knew who tripped first. In the end, they both crashed into the soft couch.

The bath towel around Dominic Ashford’s waist had long since been rubbed loose and fallen to the floor. The woman pinned beneath him kept squirming against him, mumbling over and over, "It hurts... I feel awful... so awful..."

"..."

No matter how insane Dominic Ashford’s self-control usually was, being rubbed up against like that still lit a fire under his skin.

If tonight had really been arranged by someone behind the scenes, then fine. He had to admit it—they’d nailed it.

Because right now, all he wanted was to pin this woman down hard and teach her a proper lesson, make her understand one thing clearly: in all of Jiangcheng, there were very, very few women who dared act this wildly in front of him, Dominic Ashford.

The night was still long.

And everything seemed to be only just beginning...

The next day.

Around noon, sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows and spilled across the room.

The man sleeping facedown on the large soft bed had his brows faintly knit, his thick dark lashes trembling, half-open and half-shut, like he was waking but not fully there yet.

He lazily stretched out an arm to pull someone into his embrace, but grabbed nothing.

His eyes snapped open.

The woman beside him was already gone.

Dominic Ashford sat up in bed, still a little hazy, his mind not fully online yet. His gaze swept across the room. When he reached for his phone, he accidentally noticed a note left on the nightstand.

Written on it were a few short lines:

"Don’t tell anyone about last night. You didn’t lose out either."

Dominic Ashford’s face darkened at once.

Then, in the very next second, it turned utterly grim, black as iron.

What the hell did she mean, he "didn’t lose out either"?

And "don’t tell anyone"...

That damned woman—what exactly did she take him for?

Some random guy she picked up for fun?

Just thinking about it made Dominic Ashford’s face darken.

He was the president of Ashford Group, for God’s sake, and he’d actually been played by a woman.

It was humiliating. Straight-up humiliation. A total slap in the face.

When he threw back the blanket and got out of bed, his eyes accidentally caught that faint red stain on the messy sheets.

He froze for a second.

Then his expression turned colder by the inch, and he made a call.

"Go investigate. Lock down the whole city if you have to. Find the woman who broke into my room last night."

—

Nine months later.

Inside a private hospital.

A loud, sharp baby’s cry cut through the air, and the medical staff moved around in a rush, one after another.

Through the haze, Aurora Whitfield heard the doctor calling out, "There’s another one, there’s still another one..."

The next day, broad daylight filled the room.

"You’ve thought it through?"

"I have!"

In the hospital room, Aurora Whitfield looked at the two babies lying beside her. Her face was pale, but there was a stubborn firmness in her expression.

She turned her head and looked at the woman in a white coat standing by the bed, her voice carrying a plea she could no longer hide. "Auntie, you have to help me. They can’t find me."

Back when she was pregnant, she had nearly failed to keep herself and the babies alive. Now that they were finally born, she couldn’t let them suffer along with her again.

"Sigh..."

Even though she had already cut off contact with Raymond Whitfield’s side of the family, Aurora still called her Auntie.

How could the middle-aged woman bear to watch her struggle on alone, helpless, with no one to rely on, barely hanging on through such a hard life?

Aurora held both babies in her arms, lowered her head, and pressed her cheek gently against their foreheads, quietly feeling the warmth of those tiny new lives.

Back then, her stepmother and stepsister had drugged her, planning to use the chance to hand her over to one of her father’s business partners. She’d only gotten away because she’d kept a clear head and reacted fast.

At the time, she had meant to grab just anyone.

Who would’ve guessed the room she barged into was actually the private suite of Dominic Ashford, the head of Ashford Group—

The very next day, a citywide notice about tracking her down spread across Jiangcheng.

It even came with her photo, height, weight, all of it... The whole thing came at her like a tidal wave. At that level, let alone a person, even an ant probably wouldn’t have escaped their search.

Aurora Whitfield didn’t dare gamble on what would happen if she was found.

So that same day, she packed up everything and left the place she’d been renting without looking back.

Good thing she moved fast. Right after that, her biological father publicly announced in the papers that he was cutting ties with her as father and daughter. From then on, she had nothing to do with the Whitfield family.

Her grandmother, along with all their relatives and family friends, were being watched.

With no other choice, Aurora went to find her fiancé, only to see him tangled up in bed with her stepsister, completely lost in each other.

She threw up on the spot.

So hard her stomach burned with acid, like every organ inside her had twisted into knots.

And then, in the middle of that mess, she found out she was pregnant.

Aurora had no idea what to do.

She wrestled with it for a long, long time, turning over every possibility in her head again and again. In the end, she gritted her teeth and chose to keep the baby.

She had arranged everything she could, thought through every possible detail, but there was one thing she hadn’t expected—

Dominic Ashford would chase this hard.

It had been almost ten months since that night, and he still hadn’t given up on hunting her down.

Aurora looked at the baby’s peaceful sleeping face. There was a stubborn strength in her eyes, a grit that refused to bend.

This was her choice.

She didn’t regret it.

—

President’s office, Ashford Group.

Looking at the wrinkly newborn lying inside the box, Dominic Ashford’s brows drew together hard. “Where did this come from?”

“I-I don’t know, sir. A courier just delivered it. He said it had to be placed directly into your hands, and he also said...” the secretary, Patrick Calloway, stammered, his face tense.

Dominic Ashford lifted his dark eyes and shot him a cold glance.

Patrick Calloway blurted out at once, “He said this is your biological son!”