Raspberry cake
Mr. Shen Xuan told her to take her time but she was not a fan of taking advantage of things like this as she made up her mind to return ten minutes earlier.
When she got back to the office, there was a box on her work desk. She could guess what it was before she walked closer and opened it.
The aroma of sweetness that filled her nose had her drooling over the appetizing cake before her. She smiled subconsciously as she reached for a slice.
The red color of the cake seemed more appealing than ever before. She paused when the cake was only a few inches from her lips.
She shook her head and began putting it back into the cute small box but she was forced to bring it back to her lips and this time into her mouth as the red color seemed to be calling out to her temptingly.
She moaned with her eyes closed when she took the first bite felt tart and sweet. She used to like strawberries a lot until she ate raspberry for the first time which was when she turned twelve.
Her father had bought a raspberry cake for her and she was displeased by it since she wanted strawberry cake. After several minutes of begging her, she agreed to eat it and that was how she fell in love with raspberry cake.
Most people believe continuously eating something, even if it is your favorite, will cause you to get so used to it that you would get tired of it but that was not the same for her when it comes to raspberry.
It has been more than a decade since it became her favorite and it remains her favorite. It brought beautiful and painful memories.
She sighed as she swallowed. Both the painful and sweet memories of the past were what got her to this point she was in life and it is what determines her future.
Many people can break off their painful past and not get controlled by the mistakes and errors of the past but her life was dominated and controlled by her past and she might never break free from it.
She gasped and almost choked on the cake she was chewing when her phone rang. She looked down to see the name of the person who sent the cake to her. She did not know how he was able to send it right into her office by passing those outside.
Her mouth was filled as she tried to chew fast and swallow so she could talk to him without having anything in her mouth.
She began coughing and had to get a glass of cold water to drink to feel better. She sighed as she returned to her desk but it had become a missed call.
She groaned in frustration hoping he did not think she refused to pick up his call intentionally. It was best she avoids testing his patience.
He called her almost immediately. "You were eating the cake, right?" he asked as soon as she brought the phone to her ear.
". . ." She looked around hoping to see a camera that he might have set in her office to watch her. She was open to believing that he could do anything crazy after all, he was the most shameless man she has seen.
"I am right," he confirmed victoriously. "Wow – I guessed right," he laughed. "For a second, I felt like I might be overthinking," he told her sincerely.
She froze into a pillar of ice hearing him from the other end. Did he just laugh so heartily she could almost see the vibration of his chest as he laughed?
Does she make Lu Tian laugh? If she told anyone, they will call her a lying lunatic. She knew more than an average person that this man has never openly had since his mother died.
She was either a little child or yet to be born when that happened but she made him laugh without effort. Why did this feel so easy when she has heard from someone how hard it was for her to try when he was in high school?
She knew it was not all a façade because he was seeing a therapist for more than a decade to treat the trauma of all that happened to him as an innocent child.
She made him smile. She wanted to run to the rooftop to announce it to the whole world but they will call her a delusional lunatic if she does. Her heart raced and she could not say anything.
She could not believe she had to ability to change such a person whose heart seemed more hardened than stone.
Perhaps it was not because of the sexual feeling he held towards her but something that went deeper and stronger than she could have ever imagined. The speed of this all was throwing her off the boundary of a cliff.
He cleared his throat. "Don't eat dinner before returning home. I will wait for you at home," he announced jovially.
She swallowed. Was she hearing the voice of an alien who possessed his body through him? However, she knew no alien had his level of shamelessness. He even referred to her home as he bought it for her.
"See you in a few hours," he stamped the deal before she had the opportunity to refuse or argue and it was not like he would consider that.
She pulled the phone from her ear and glared at the screen before falling on the leather swivel chair. She turned to the window and looked outside at the beautiful sky that was blocked by a couple of taller buildings and exhaled.
**********
"What do you want by doing all these?" she asked when she saw the quality of the steak, he prepared personally for her dinner.
"I want to have my way with you and I read somewhere that women like to be taken care of by men who desire their body as that will make them more willing when he wants his reward," he told her excitedly like a little child narrating what he learned in school to his favorite parent.
She winced slightly. She concluded she was a fool for thinking it went beyond his sexual desire. "Why did you laugh at me this afternoon?" she asked him to confirm her new thoughts of disappointment.
"Oh, that." He sighed and remained silent for a moment before laughing again. This time, she got to see it and not simply hear it. She saw the way his eyes brightened and his lips curved, the subtle vibration of his chest too.