Lu Mian couldn't move. Couldn't think straight, either.
Huo Shen surrounded her completely -his warmth, his scent, the solid reality of him pressing in from every side.
Something cedar-dark and clean, cut through with the faint metallic edge of blood. Blood, she was used to - she had smelled it way too often in her hospital and on the battlefield in her previous life.
However, combined with Huo Shen's natural scent, it became disorienting. Her senses, trained to stay clinical in far worse situations, went treacherously offline.
His legs bracketed hers. His arms held her with the unconscious certainty of someone who believed absolutely that she belonged there.
Lu Mian couldn't push back. The needles were still mapped across his meridians, each one placed with surgical precision, and a single wrong movement could undo everything. For a second, she almost didn't want to.
Focus, she ordered herself.
"Wife, are you hurt?" His voice came low and urgent, fingers hovering over her wrist like he was checking for a pulse he was afraid not to find.
Wife. Lu Mian blinked. He was delirious! The drug still had its claws in him, pulling him somewhere between sleep and fever-dream. He was probably calling for Duoduo's mother, she surmised. It had to be that.
"No," she said, keeping her voice steady and soft, like she was coaxing a little child. "Your friends were just checking on you. Everyone is fine." She kept talking, measuring each word, watching his pupils for signs of agitation. "I need to place one more needle. Can you hold still for me?"
Huo Shen looked up at her.
The haze in his eyes didn't diminish the weight of his gaze. If anything, it stripped away whatever careful walls he kept in waking life, leaving something raw and unguarded in its place- an expression so openly tender it made her chest feel strange.
"My wife," he said achingly, "can do whatever she wants."
He leaned in closer, his back straight, his eyes looking deep into hers, like he was offering himself to her after a solemn vow.
Lu Mian knew intellectually that they were not alone. Rhino, Viper, Lin Ke, Gu Qingze -every single one of them was watching.
And yet somehow, the way Huo Shen looked at her made the room fall away. His posture usually carried the coiled tension of a man accustomed to being the most dangerous thing in any given space.
But right then, it had softened into something she had no name for. Unyielding even now, but the strength had turned inward. It held her, didn't restrain her.
Like a wall built to shelter something impossibly precious.
She swallowed. The sensation rising in her chest was unfamiliar-so unfamiliar it almost frightened her.
In two lifetimes, no one had ever looked at her like that. She had never felt this way - this cherished.
Focus she ordered her mind again.
Collecting herself from the gentle spell he was weaving, Lu Mian located the Shenmen point along his wrist with her fingertips. And pressed the final needle home.
Huo Shen's eyes closed between one breath and the next.
For a brief second, Lu Mian felt relieved. The treatment was working as it was supposed to.
But she hadn't fully anticipated what would follow. Huo Shen was a large man, and unconscious men had no manners. Without warning, his full weight collapsed forward. His head dropped squarely against her chest, his face pressing into the soft curve between her breasts.
For a second, despite the needles that should've knocked him out, she felt him groan and lean in closer as if on instinct. The arm that had been holding her tightened, and his legs pulled her in closer, before his whole body went limp against her.
Lu Mian paused for a beat and looked up at her audience.
Four grown men stood with their mouths open. Lin Ke repeatedly rubbed his eyes, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Ahem… a little help?" she asked awkwardly.
That snapped them back to motion. They moved in fast - too fast - almost ready to drag him off her.
"Gently." Lu Mian said sharply. "If you jolt the needles, you'll hurt him. It will undo everything I just did. Slower." she ordered.
They tried being gentle. They really did.
But Huo Shen had Lu Mian in a death grip. He was holding on like a dying man clutching on to his last hope of survival. Even unconscious, his grip refused to loosen.
And when they finally forced him off, Huo Shen's brow furrowed. A low unhappy sound escaped him. He started getting agitated, his arms moved desperately as though he was searching for something he had just lost.
It took all four men to hold him down and keep him steady. "Wait. No. You will hurt him" called Lu Mian
Rhino pulled up short, swallowed a noise that might have been a curse, and adjusted his grip. But they didn't relent.
"Dr An'mian, trust us, if he was in his senses, he would want us to hold him down too" explained Gu Qingze seriously. "He would sooner take a second bullet than impose himself on a woman."
Lu Mian nodded, not questioning his statement. Everything she had seen of her Uncle Shen had shown how upright a man he was. Even in her past life, not only did Huo Shen not have scandals. If anything, he was known for helping war veterans and women affected by conflict.
"I could see he was delirious," Lu Mian said mildly. "The compound in his system would have significantly impaired his judgement. I'm not offended."
Seeing him in such obvious agony made her chest feel suffocated. She paused, adjusting the angle of one needle as they eased him back. "That said - if you could contact his wife, it would help. Familiar voices can accelerate recovery in cases like this." she advised.
That was a truth she had seen countless times. Emotional grounding helps regulate what the needles can't reach.
Her heart did something odd as she said it. A small, quiet clench. It was there and gone before she could fully examine it.
Lu Mian's first instinct was to make sure he was ok. So she was already moving on, checking his pulse at the radial artery, noting the steadier rhythm with satisfaction. She filed the strange feeling away without looking at it directly.
"About that," Lin Ke said, in the loud whisper of someone who had never once successfully whispered. "Does our boss actually have a wife? Because in all the years I've known him, there hasn't been so much as a girlfriend. Not even a rumour of one."
"Nonsense. Then where did his son come from?" muttered Viper. "I think someone would know". He turned, along with everyone else in the room, to look at Bai Renzhou.
Bai Renzhou had arrived quietly several minutes earlier, and had been hoping, apparently, that no one would think to ask him. As Huo Shen's personal secretary, he was the closest to him and had the most details about his life. If anyone would know, it was him.
He coughed. "I don't know either." he muttered - and, he genuinely meant it. Despite all the things he handled for his boss, his boss was a clean slate. There had never even been a female mosquito next to him.
The silence that followed felt weird - like they had stumbled on something they didn't know how to classify.
"I genuinely believe it was a mistake," continued Bai Renzhou carefully. As a dutiful secretary, he knew he should never speculate about his employer out loud. He pivoted cleanly. "Doctor - how soon can we expect him to wake?"
Falcon picked up on his changed tone and raised a questioning eyebrow at him. Without sufficient reason, Renzhou would never hurry his recovery.
Something else had happened.