The alluring scent of catnip pheromones kept drifting into his nose, and her breath against his neck, buried in the crook of it, stimulated his hearing with every exhale.
Jiang Ying curled up defenselessly in his arms. If he merely lowered his head a fraction, he could bite the nape of her neck.
He truly was hungry.
It would definitely frighten her, he thought.
What troubled him even more than that was the fact she wouldn’t see him as a man. Instead, she would think she had a dog that bites its owner.
And as long as she had an ounce of sense, she should not continue to keep such a vicious dog.
“Hungry?”
Jiang Ying assumed he meant for food.
After meetings all day, she was also very hungry. By the time they left the conference room, she was already numb from having passed the point of hunger.
Now that Su Heng mentioned it, her stomach conveniently rumbled in response.
She felt a little embarrassed, but then thought, what’s the big deal about a stomach growling in front of a little dog?
Bracing herself against his shoulders and rubbing against him, Jiang Ying sat up.
She sat on something hard, but didn’t think much of it. Probably just those metal rivets on pants, the style they bought together at the mall that day.
Something else quickly drew her attention. She heard Su Heng making a purring sound, the same as the day she thought he had a fever.
So, was it because he was hungry?
But it didn’t quite sound like a stomach growling from hunger either.
Jiang Ying leaned in closer again.
Her palm gently rested on his lower abdomen. The muscles there clenched sharply under her fingertips and then froze, motionless. There was no vibration in her palm; that wasn’t the source of the sound.
But the Adam’s apple her nose brushed against was trembling incessantly. The usually sharp lines of his throat were shaking violently, though she couldn’t see it before her.
Su Heng tilted his neck back, the back of his head pressed against the sofa, with no way to retreat.
The intense reactions throughout his body all warned him of one thing: the rut impulse he had barely managed to suppress last night was now completely beyond restraint.
Under the interference of pheromones, he couldn’t think clearly.
The result of holding his breath was an even more urgent need for air, so he could only pant in small gasps.
However, by the time he managed to find a shred of reason, his hands had long since risen, encircling her back and holding her firmly against him.
Jiang Ying didn’t mind the dog’s embrace, and she couldn’t see his gaze fixed rigidly on the ceiling. She only reached one conclusion, one that mattered only to her.
The sound was indeed coming from his throat, not his stomach.
A low, rumbling hum.
At times it sounded like sharp, panting breaths; at others, like suppressed, gentle gasps as if biting his lip to hold back.
It was that same thing again.
So strange.
She couldn’t tell if he was in pain or in pleasure.
She didn’t get it.
But no matter what, a little dog that eats something delicious would surely be happy, right?
A dog’s happiness should be that simple.
So, holding Su Heng’s face, which he was desperately trying to pull away, she planted a kiss on it with a muah.
“Good Dog, let’s go eat then.”
“…”
She really…
Su Heng lowered his eyes to the girl in his arms, feeling a wave of pleasurable yet unsatisfying dizziness.
What if… it wasn’t a bite?
What if he just licked her?
She wouldn’t refuse.
Just one lick. Just enough to soothe this excessively agitated state. He could control it.
In the darkness, Su Heng let out a puppy-like whimper, following his genetic instinct. He leaned in and licked her fluttering eyelids.
Blinking is a habit, also to moisten the eyeballs. Yet despite this, Jiang Ying’s eyes were often uncomfortably dry.
When the dog licked her, she froze for a second, then subconsciously closed her eyes.
Unlike those enthusiastic and impolite large dogs, his licking was restrained and gentlemanly.
The tip of his tongue swept gently over her closed eyes. Wet, hot. With fine barbs that didn’t hurt, it traced tenderly and meticulously over her eyelids.
It felt like wearing a steam-heated eye mask that gave a massage. Jiang Ying found the eye he had licked itchy, warm, and moist, exceptionally comfortable.
Su Heng pulled back a little to observe her reaction.
She showed no aversion.
She seemed to actually like it.
He leaned in again.
Although it wasn’t as direct or effective as biting her gland, the discomfort of his rut was also well soothed.
As long as he ignored his pounding heart and the reaction in a certain place beneath her where she sat.
It seemed that contact with her could slightly suppress his restlessness.
Su Heng knew deeply that this was only a temporary relief. If he indulged in it, he would likely be playing with fire. As he made his mating calls towards her, he suppressed his instinct to claim and carefully licked her other eye.
Anyway, once he achieved his goal for coming to the Federation this time and left this place, everything would return to normal.
There would be no problems.
And no one else would ever know that he had once sat on a sofa in the darkness, holding a human girl who was supposed to be an enemy, shamelessly in heat for her, licking her like a dog.
“Alright, it tickles, stop messing around.”
Jiang Ying rubbed his beast ears, smiling as she pushed him away.
She climbed off him, felt for the coffee table, grabbed the tissues on it, and teased him with mock complaint, “All sticky and slobbery.”
Licking her was undoubtedly soothing him, but at the same time, it was also marking her.
Su Heng stared intensely at her movements as she wiped her eyes, forcefully suppressing the urge to stop her, to leave his scent on her.
He stood up in silence.
Luckily, she couldn’t see his body’s reaction, allowing him to maintain his composure in this state.
“Let’s go.”
Su Heng spoke with restraint, his tone serious and cold, as if he hadn’t been the one making mating sounds towards her just moments ago.
A tall shadow loomed before her. He raised an arm, veins still visible on the skin, and firmly took her hand.
She heard his restrained voice, but couldn’t see the oppressively charged scene before her.
She was still standing at the edge of a calm cliff before a volcano erupts, smiling at him: “What should we eat? Let me think…”
Su Heng had no mind to listen to her subsequent muttering.
Just as they were leaving, he didn’t forget to gather the item that had fallen from her pocket onto the sofa into his palm and hid it in his own clothing pocket.
It was late again by the time they got home.
After weeks of working overtime like this, Jiang Ying didn’t want to do anything but quickly shower and go to bed.
She was tired herself, so she felt her dog, who had waited all day, must also be tired. She urged him to shower too and watched him return to his den… no, watched him enter his room, before contentedly going into her own room next door.
Very sleepy, but didn’t want to sleep.
Whether before or after transmigrating, she’d never been able to kick the habit of revenge bedtime procrastination.
Of course, the habit of clicking on work messages the moment she saw them hadn’t changed one bit either.
Jiang Ying lay on the soft bed, wrapped herself in the warm blanket, and as soon as she opened her phone, the voice assistant immediately reminded her that the small work group chat had been buzzing for a while.
Unable to control her work-loving hands, she still clicked in.
She couldn’t see that her colleagues always sent her voice messages.
And before she lost her sight, what she disliked most were voice chats. It took her a long time to break that habit.
“So, Jiang Ying, did you check out those condoms I sent you?” the Head Artist asked.
“…”
She had completely forgotten about that.
Not wanting to get out of bed, she reached for her jacket on the chair by the desk.
After the study was given to her dog, the desk was moved here. She wasn’t familiar with the layout yet and had bumped into things twice when entering earlier. Now, she was groping the air for a long time.
Finally pulling the small packets out of her pocket, she scattered them on the bed.
“I’ve got them out, wait, let me take a look.”
Saying “look” was just a figure of speech. She could only use her hands to feel.
Some plastic packets seemed much larger than others, some were particularly thin, some especially thick, and some had a strange texture.
Jiang Ying was baffled: “I don’t really get it, can’t figure anything out by touch.”
“You’ve never eaten pork, but haven’t you seen a pig run?”
Jin Chuyu immediately replied with a message.
She seemed to be playing a game, as faint gunshot sounds came from the background.
The group went silent for a moment, and after a long while, the Head Artist’s next voice message came through.
“Among those I bought, there are beastman-specific ones. Check them out, especially the Heavy Beast Special Edition and the Canine Special Edition. Decide which style Akkad should use? Then we can do some artistic processing.”
Heavy Beast Special Edition, Canine Special Edition…
Sounded familiar…
Jiang Ying picked up her phone and used the AI recognition function to help her see which ones were the styles Jin Chuyu mentioned.
“Ah, it’s this one.” She picked up a particularly large packet and used her phone camera to scan it.
The AI assistant’s voice immediately came from the phone.
“This is the Heavy Beast Special Edition condom. Most large, ferocious beastmen have sizes and strength too great for ordinary humans to handle. This style provides a degree of buffering and is less likely to tear during intense interaction. However, note that beastmen wearing this style will experience reduced sensitivity, resulting in a longer duration than normal, which a human will also find difficult to endure. Therefore, please exercise moderation…”
“Stop, stop, stop!”
Jiang Ying tossed the oversized plastic packet aside and patted her burning cheeks.
This style’s target audience was beastmen and humans?
How can different species possibly…!
Even though Akkad was the male lead she created, right now, suffering from Beastman Cognitive Disorder, she still found it hard to accept.
Her phone kept emitting “ding ding” notification sounds. Suppressing her clashing worldview, she continued clicking on the new string of voice messages.
Jin Chuyu: “So, Yingying, did you look? Akkad would definitely use the beastman style. Whether it’s specifically the Heavy Beast Special Edition or the Canine Special Edition hasn’t been decided internally by the copy team yet. …Your cognitive disorder hasn’t improved, so I won’t count on you for this part. I’ll just roughly explain my thoughts.”
“The Heavy Beast Special Edition is actually a bit too broad, it can’t reflect Akkad’s unique traits.”
“Many beastmen have special physiological structures—okay, let’s not say beastmen, let’s just talk about ordinary animals, can you accept that? —For example, ahem, male snakes have two, you know, so condoms for snake-type beastmen are definitely a special design.”
“Akkad is a canine beastman. What distinguishes canines from other animals is that they knot during mating. It’s the same for canine beastmen. Once this locking phenomenon occurs, it inevitably causes a certain degree of pain for the partner.”
“The Canine Special Edition condom is prepared for this special physiological structure. By weakening the other party’s perception, it makes the process less uncomfortable for the woman.”
“But the downside is also very obvious—”
“The difficulty for the woman to achieve pleasure is also correspondingly increased. Therefore, the male canine beastman needs to be more vigorous! Hehe, you get it, right?”
She didn’t get it.
She really didn’t understand why humans and beastmen would get together.
Jiang Ying chose silence, but clearly, Jin Chuyu was already immersed in her own art.
“I think this is super fitting for Akkad!”
“He doesn’t want the player to feel pain during knotting, so he has to use this style. And not wanting to see the player unresponsive, he has to please the player like a big dog, maybe even secretly buy some strange props, and use every trick in the book to make the player say ‘I like it.'”
“Then quiet down while knotting, just hold the player like that, go to the living room to get a glass of water, carry them to the table to rest for a bit, kiss and soothe them.”
“Ah, by the window would be nice too, or carry them to the bathroom to wash up. Also…”
The hand Jiang Ying held her phone with trembled.
She had to think of something else to distract herself, like counting the number of small plastic packets thrown on the bed.
As she counted, she suddenly realized belatedly that when using AI to identify them earlier, she hadn’t heard the “Canine Beastman Contraceptive” style at all.
“It didn’t fall somewhere, did it…?”
Jiang Ying used her phone to scan once more.
But no matter how she searched among the ones she took from her pocket, it was nowhere to be found.
And in the room separated by just one wall.
The beastman with exceptionally acute hearing had taken in every word of the conversation.
Every time he closed his eyes, scenes described in those voice messages filled his mind.
On the large bed with the rut suppression function activated once more, Su Heng clutched the packet that had fallen from Jiang Ying in his palm.
He hid himself under the blanket, curling up.
Imagining her appearance, he let out soft, whimpering sounds.