My Fiancé's Scandals Never End, So I Married His Uncle Instead-Chapter 43: Fleeing in Panic

Norwood Group.

It was late. The city lights were magnificent, spilling across the glass curtain wall of the office building and reflecting a dazzling glare. But most of the offices in the tower were already dark. Only a few scattered lights remained. The skyscraper, so busy during the day, now stood silent with the night.

Celia Sterling’s G-Wagon was parked in the plaza in front of the building.

Silas Norwood stood at the ground-floor entrance, his back to the light. His silhouette was elegant and striking.

Celia Sterling walked over to him. "Silas, what are you doing down here?"

Silas Norwood held out his hand to her. "I came to get you."

Celia hesitated for a moment before placing her hand in his palm. Silas slowly closed his fingers around it. Seeing she didn’t pull away, he slid his fingers between hers, lacing them together. This wasn’t the first time she had felt his touch—the faint shiver from when he covered her eyes during the movie was still fresh in her memory. But this, their fingers intertwined, felt completely different. It was as if a jolt of electricity shot from her fingertips to her heart, leaving a fleeting tingle.

"Still at the office so late, Silas?" Celia asked, trying to find a topic to dispel the intimate atmosphere.

Silas hummed in acknowledgment, not mentioning that he had canceled an important business dinner for the evening. "Cece was coming. I’d wait no matter how late."

"You don’t have to always work around my schedule." Celia felt a bit embarrassed. "Silas, if it’s ever inconvenient, you can just say no."

"How could I do that?" Silas looked down at their clasped hands, a hint of a smile in his eyes, but his tone was serious. "I have to listen to my future wife."

Celia lowered her head, not knowing how to respond. This afternoon, while reading smutty fanfiction about "Moonlight," she had considered herself quite thick-skinned, critiquing it as she went. But now, faced with the man himself, she was as timid as a quail.

When they reached his office and stepped inside, Celia finally let out a breath of relief and quickly pulled her hand from Silas’s. In just a few short minutes, her palm had grown damp with a thin layer of sweat.

Silas leaned elegantly against his desk, watching her without a word.

Celia cleared her throat. "I heard there’s some kind of business summit in a few days, organized by several of the great families. Are you going, Silas?"

Silas rarely attended such events. He gave a noncommittal "oh" before answering her, "If Cece is going, then I’ll go."

Seeing this aloof man compromise so easily for her sake made Celia’s heart flutter. Her almond-shaped eyes sparkled. "I heard it’s at the Sterling Family’s villa. They have a Moonview Terrace there with an amazing view. We can watch the moon together then, Silas."

’The moon in the sky can’t compare to the one right in front of me...’

Silas gave her a deep look and readily agreed, "Alright."

Only then did Celia take the perfume out of its gift box. It was in an amber-colored glass bottle, a shade very similar to his eyes. On its side, an engraved crescent moon refracted the light into tiny, splendid fragments.

"Is this the gift Cece said she prepared for me?" Silas was slightly taken aback.

"Yes. It should have taken until tomorrow to finish, but I was in the zone last night and finished it early." Celia’s expression was solemn. "The set of perfume ingredients you gave me last time was too precious. I kept trying to think of what to give you in return, but you don’t seem to lack anything. After much thought, I decided to ’present the Buddha with borrowed flowers’—I used the ingredients you gave me to create a perfume for you by hand. I hope you don’t mind, Silas."

Silas reached out and picked up the exquisite perfume bottle.

"That’s very thoughtful of you, Cece." There was a smile in Silas’s eyes. "This is the first time I’ve ever received a peculiar gift like perfume."

’First time?’

Celia didn’t believe him. "But you clearly use perfume from a family of master perfumers..."

"Cece." Silas looked at her and reached up, unfastening the top three buttons of his shirt, one by one.

Celia stared blankly at the tantalizing glimpse of toned muscle under his shirt. Bewildered, she asked, "Hm?"

"I have never used any perfume." Silas invited her coolly. "Would you like to... verify that?"

"But I’ve smelled it so many times..." Celia, refusing to believe it, moved closer. He was too tall, and she was still hesitating when, in the next moment, Silas’s strong hand settled gently but with clear restraint on her waist, effortlessly lifting her up.

Having lost her footing, she reflexively grabbed his lapels. The force of her grip caused the buttons on his already partially open shirt to burst completely. Her delicate nose and soft lips brushed against his exposed skin. At such an extremely close distance, the familiar cool scent wafted over her, faint and elusive...

But this time, the sensation was exceptionally clear. That extremely faint, cool fragrance seemed to be a natural part of his cold, charismatic aura, subtly different from the overt nature of perfume.

Celia’s face flushed slightly as a suspicion began to form. "Silas..."

Silas sighed softly. "It’s not perfume."

Celia nodded haphazardly against his chest. ’If it’s not perfume, then it can only be his natural scent. Does the ’flower on a high mountain’ even have a cool, ethereal aura emanating from his very body?’

Silas, with a perfectly straight face, set her down. He then proceeded to straighten his disheveled shirt in a slow, deliberate manner right in front of her, though the broken buttons could no longer be fastened.

He murmured an apology, elegantly raising a hand to partially cover himself as he casually turned, hiding his open shirt in the shadows. The brilliant nightscape beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows cast his flickering shadow on the glass. In that instant, Celia’s mind flashed back to the hundreds of thousands of erotic words she had read that afternoon—words that desecrated the "white moonlight"—and she became flustered and utterly lost.

"Cece..." Silas, seemingly oblivious to her racing thoughts, was still earnestly discussing the matter with her. "Do you need to... conduct a further verification?"

’Further verification?’

’How could I verify it?’

’I’ve practically stripped him bare from the waist up. Any further, and I’d really be a pervert.’

Celia thought about how she had repeatedly gotten close to him, freely exploring and analyzing his scent, taking advantage of him...

She abruptly took two steps back and stammered, "Silas, my brother is waiting for me to come home. I guess you won’t be using the perfume, so just keep it as a decoration."

With that, she fled in a panic.

Silas looked down at his disheveled clothes and gave up the idea of seeing her out. He rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. From the eighty-sixth floor, the cars on the ground below looked like a swarm of ants; he couldn’t tell which one was her G-Wagon.

"After all that, I thought I could keep you for another moment." He hooked a finger in his messy collar with a hint of regret. He hadn’t expected the girl who was bold enough to toy with male models would run faster than a rabbit in front of him.

For several days straight, Celia Sterling suffered from insomnia. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Even Kian Sterling could see she wasn’t doing well. He had the housekeeper brew her some cooling tea for a few days. "You seem really agitated lately. You can’t stay up late anymore. Put work on the back burner for a bit and go on vacation somewhere."

"Forget the vacation." Celia didn’t dare admit that all her pent-up frustration had been unintentionally stirred up by Silas. "Brother, just take me out to have some fun. I need to relax."

"Have some fun?" Kian Sterling paused. "Alright, but we’ll have to bring one more person."

Celia didn’t care. "Whatever you want, Brother. I just want to unwind. You can bring as many people as you like."

That night, at Metropia’s most notorious den of extravagance—ZONE Club.

A group of glamorous young scions from Metropia were scattered about—some sitting, some standing, some leaning. Every one of them was a noble celebrity who regularly graced the headlines of financial magazines or entertainment tabloids, all fabulously rich or exceptionally powerful.

In the very center sat Kian Sterling and Silas Norwood.

Silas Norwood’s voice was cool. "So, this is the kind of high-end scene you usually bring Cece to for ’fun,’ brother-in-law?"