The crushing pressure of Dorrent’s mouth against Joanne’s lips did nothing to quiet the raging storm inside the room. They kissed for a while longer, the frantic, desperate energy of Joanne’s frustration burning hot against his face. But deep inside Dorrent’s chest, everything felt entirely dead.

He didn’t feel a single thing.

The physical collision of their lips was blunt, jarringly hollow, and profoundly discouraging to his primal instincts. He couldn’t keep on going like this. Desperation clawed at his throat, and in a frantic bid to survive the moment and keep the kiss going, Dorrent tightly closed his eyes and tried to envision the woman in his arms as Jannah. He tried to force his mind to conjure the scent of damp earth and crushed herbs, to map the smaller, fragile frame onto Joanne’s statuesque height. But his brain completely revolted against the deception. He couldn’t do it. He missed that herbalist’s mouth so bad—the venomous, sweet mouth that always made him instantly hard just by him diving ruthlessly into it. With Joanne, the simple act of a kiss was turning into a suffocating torture.

He tried to force it, his jaw clenching as he pressed her harder against the frame of his body, but the illusion was shattered. And then, Joanne’s manicured hands slowly trailed down the front of his shirt, moving past his waistline until her fingers reached his fly, gently squeezing him through the fabric in a desperate search for a spark of arousal.

An immediate wave of revulsion crashed straight through Dorrent’s system. The physical touch felt like an electric shock of rejection to his S-tier Alpha biology.

With a breathless gasp, Dorrent abruptly broke the kiss, tearing his face away from hers and taking a massive step backward into the shadows of the room. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his chest plate heaving as he cursed himself inwardly with a terrifying, silent rage. Fuck. Fuck! I am cursed by that omega herbalist. It was becoming a total reality—he couldn’t even manage a fraction of intimacy with his own girlfriend without his body turning into ice. The entire layout of his life was getting catastrophic.

Joanne stood frozen where he had left her, her lips swollen and her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and humiliated confusion. She looked down at her hands, then back up at his face.

"What on earth is wrong with you, Dorrent?" Joanne asked, her voice trembling slightly as she tried to piece together the sudden, violent rejection. "You kiss me like you want to devour me, and then you recoil the second I try to touch your body. What is happening inside your head?"

Dorrent forced his breathing to slow down into a flat rhythm, using his hand to rub at his temples to simulate physical exhaustion.

"I am having a severe, blinding headache due to too much administrative pressure at the office today, Joanne," Dorrent delivered smoothly, his deep voice dropping into a low, apologetic murmur. "The Gammer Technology board has been breathing down my neck for seventy-two hours, and my system is completely drained. I am truly sorry about everything tonight. I am sorry for snapping at you."

He took a slow step forward, his silver eyes locking onto hers with a perfectly manufactured look of sincerity, desperate to dismantle her suspicions before she looked any deeper into the matter. "And about Jannah... you need to completely erase those thoughts from your mind. There is absolutely nothing going on between us. I swear it to you. She might be pale and slim, but let’s be real—she is not even close to my personal type. I can never think of getting biologically, physically or emotionally close to a common slum rat from the bogs. She is absolutely nothing compared to you, Joanne. She is a tool, a passing domestic nuisance under my roof, nothing more."

Joanne crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes remaining sharp and analytical. "And what about the other issue, Dorrent? What about the fact that we have spent three whole years together and have never actually fucked? You always pull away with excuses."

"It is because I want our very first time to be special on our marriage night," Dorrent explained rapidly, repeating the same narrative he had used to shield his impotence for years. "Haven’t I already told you that data a thousand times over the last three years? I am preserving the integrity of our contract."

Joanne let out a sharp, mocking scoff, her face hardening into a line of deep disagreement. "But I don’t want that, Dorrent! I am not some traditional, fragile doll who needs to wait for a legal piece of paper to validate her desires! I am not traditional at all, and I want you right now. I want to feel you inside me, to know that you actually possess me as a man, not just a business partner."

Dorrent shook his head, his expression turning into a cold mask of faux discipline. "I am sorry, Joanne, but I am the traditional type when it comes to the marital bed. I respect the rule of sex after marriage that bad. It is a boundary I am not willing to cross until the Moscow alliance is legally sealed."

Joanne stared at him for a long, suffocating moment, her eyes searching every line of his face. A sudden, bizarre realization seemed to flash through her mind, her brow furrowing in disbelief.

"Dorrent..." Joanne whispered, her voice dropping into a stunned, questioning register. "Do you mean to tell me... that you are still an virgin? Is that what this ridiculous delay is about?"

Dorrent went completely silent. He didn’t say a single word, allowing the assumption to hang in the quiet air of the suite because a false virginity narrative was infinitely better than the catastrophic alternative.

Joanne shook her head, a wave of cynicism washing over her features. "Honestly, I doubt it. A powerful, dominant man like you living thirty four years without breaking his seal? It sounds like a total myth. But even if it is true, Dorrent, you don’t need to hide behind a traditional wall because of nerves. I can easily guide your body through the process. The truth is, I am completely tired of you only using your fingers and mouth on my body every time. That also technically counts as a form of sex, so you can completely forget about your traditional sex-after-marriage belief right now. It doesn’t hold any structural water."

She took a step closer to him, her eyes dropping down toward his trousers before snapping back up to lock onto his silver gaze with a sudden, devastating directness.

"Let’s talk about the real anatomy here, Dorrent. What is the actual deal with your dick?" Joanne demanded, her voice rising into an intense, demanding hiss that made Dorrent’s stomach twist with discomfort. "Why does it not erect when I am naked in front of you? Why is there never any biological movement down there when we are kissing and touching? If you are suffering from a chronic erectile dysfunction, you need to just tell me the truth right now. We are an elite couple; we can easily seek the highest private medical advice to fix your system! How many times have I raised this concern to you over the last two years? And every single time, you always tell me you are okay, or you brush it off behind excuses."

Joanne’s voice dropped into a wounded whisper. "Is it true, Dorrent? Or are you just not attracted to my body at all?"

Dorrent felt an overwhelming sensation of intense discomfort and trapped rage clawing at his chest. The pride that defined his entire public existence was being ground into the dirt under her precise questioning. He could never, ever tell her the truth. He could never admit that his manhood was completely dead, suffering from an incurable impotence that had lasted for five humiliating years. If that data ever leaked to the Moscow family or the Gammer board, his empire would crumble within a day.

Forcing his facial muscles into a defensive line, Dorrent backed away toward the balcony doors, his voice dropping into a harsh, tight growl. "I do not have a physical problem, Joanne. I am always tired from running a billion-dollar tech monopoly, that is all. Stop analyzing my biology like a specimen."

Joanne stared at him, the last lingering trace of hope completely dying in her eyes. She let out a long breath of anger, shaking her head in total defeat.

"I am so done with you, Dorrent," Joanne whispered, her voice deadly quiet as she walked over to the armchair and aggressively grabbed her nightgown. She threw it over her arm, her dress rustling as she marched straight toward the exit. "I am sleeping in the guest room tonight. I am completely sick of begging for a shred of intimacy in my own fiancé’s quarters."

With a sharp, echoing slam, the heavy bedroom doors flew open and shut, leaving Dorrent alone in the room, cursing his miserable life.