Shen Lanyin pressed her red lips tightly together, her heart beating like a drum.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Her heart slammed violently against her chest, as if telling her how intense and real this moment was.
Although she acted like a player in her words and actions, she had actually only ever experienced one terrible intimacy in her entire life.
The man who had shared skin-to-skin contact with her frequently appeared in her nightmares, yet he was always shrouded in mist, his features unclear.
At this moment, the clouds parted and the mist dissipated. That sweaty face from her midnight dreams grew increasingly clear, slowly merging with Lu Xiao’s face.
The dust of memory quietly settled.
Past events reappeared before her eyes like a dream, those chaotic scenes flowing intermittently like a murmuring stream.
Under the dim lighting, ambiguity bred and fermented recklessly, causing oxygen deprivation.
Shen Lanyin temporarily could not tell whether this was reality or a dream.
Her long eyelashes trembled slightly, her amber eyes carrying a somewhat hazy bewilderment, the upturned corners of her eyes flushed with a pale red.
The fierce beast imprisoned deep within her heart grew restless and unsettled, while Lu Xiao’s burning gaze blazed over Shen Lanyin’s body.
He saw her shoulders half-bare, her dress bunched up at her slender waist, exposing a pair of long, smooth, jade-like beautiful legs.
Her snow-white, flawless skin, like refined lard, revealed a faint blush, alluring one to toy with her.
His gaze dipped slightly, inadvertently catching sight of her full, rounded swell.
The man’s breathing tightened abruptly, and tender, lingering kisses fell like fine drizzle, gently caressing her skin.
His hands cupped her slender waist, gently laying her down onto the soft bed, his gaze filled with doting and deep cherishing.
Gradually leaning downward, he pressed his forehead lightly against hers, their breaths inseparable, tightly and intricately entwined.
It was as if only the two of them remained in the entire world.
Shen Lanyin took the initiative to reach out and wrap her arms around the man’s neck, her beautiful eyes lifting slightly at the corners. “Did we do this before?”
The man let out a low, husky chuckle, the sound carrying a bewitching charm born of the underworld.
His gaze grew increasingly profound and dark. Tilting his head slightly, he scattered meticulous kisses along her earlobe, nipping and licking softly.
Lingering for a moment, he murmured her name, gently stroking the corners of her reddened eyes, his gaze brimming with morbid obsession.
“Shen Lanyin, you were the one who provoked me first. Since you slept with me, you have to take responsibility. The expiration date is this lifetime, the next lifetime, and the lifetime after that.”
Shen Lanyin’s hands shifted slightly, the iron chain wrapped around Lu Xiao’s neck tightening steadily as a bone-chilling frost crept into her tone.
“Turns out the person who raped me eight years ago was you?”
The enchanting and lingering atmosphere vanished cleanly in an instant.
The man’s dark hair stuck damply to his forehead. Lifting his eyelids slightly while forcibly maintaining his fading energy, he actually let out a slow laugh.
“Clearly, you were the one who forced me.”
Hearing this, Shen Lanyin paused in her tightening grip. Could she have recognized the wrong person?
Her mother, Xu Qingru, had betrayed her twice in total. Aside from this current time, there was another instance back during her senior year of high school.
That incident had left her with severe psychological trauma.
After escaping from the man who had raped her, she suffered from insomnia night after night.
She dared not sleep because the moment she closed her eyes, those blood-stained scenes straight out of purgatory would shove her head open and force their way in.
Shen Huaixu had taken her to see many renowned domestic and international psychological doctors for counseling and therapy, but none of it worked.
In the end, she had no choice but to use hypnosis to seal away those related memories.
Yet as time passed, those locked-away memories still escaped from the recesses of her mind.
Day after day, she relived the exact same nightmare: she was being chased by a faceless man, running for her life, only to be caught by him anyway.
He pinned her beneath him, tore apart her clothes, and trampled on her at will.
She hurt so badly; she wanted to cry for help, but her mouth was gagged. She wanted to struggle, but her hands and feet were bound.
Shen Lanyin’s face turned ashen, cold sweat trickling down as her body trembled uncontrollably, the iron chain wrapped around Lu Xiao’s neck loosening as well.
“Yinyin, don’t be afraid. It’s already in the past. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
Lu Xiao pulled Shen Lanyin into his embrace, patting her back gently with soothing tenderness.
Gradually calming down, Shen Lanyin’s eyes misted over. “Lu Xiao, please let me go, okay?”
Since tough tactics wouldn’t work, she had no choice but to resort to softness.
Lu Xiao raised a hand to cover her shimmering, sparkling eyes, feeling the woman’s silent tears dampen his palm as the corners of his lips curled upward slightly.
“Be a good girl, Yinyin, don’t cry. I am the only one who will never leave you, so why can’t you come to love me?”
With finger pads carrying light calluses, Lu Xiao gently wiped away the tears at the corners of Shen Lanyin’s eyes. Staring into her reddened eye rims, he softened his voice.
“I already let you escape from my side once. This time, I will never let go.”
“From now on, you can only love me, and you can only have me entirely in your heart and eyes.”
A smile played at the corners of his lips, yet his entire being radiated a chilling, gloomy, and ruthless aura that made one’s hair stand on end.
Shen Lanyin thoroughly searched through her vast fish pond, yet she simply could not recall when exactly she had reeled in a crazy fish like Lu Xiao.
Whatever. People and things she couldn’t remember must not be important.
“Fine, I agree to marry you. But first, help me unlock these iron chains,” Shen Lanyin emphasized. “I am a human being, not a mad dog. I don’t need to be tied up.”
“Yinyin, you broke the rules. This is your punishment.”
A dark, churning undertone flashed through Lu Xiao’s eyes as his large palm clamped around her jaw.
“If you ever think about running away again in the future, then I won’t mind locking you up for the rest of our lives.”
“You really are a mad dog!”
Shen Lanyin frowned deeply, her icy gaze landing on the hand cupping her jaw as she said in a low voice:
“Do you really have to have me and no one else? Tell me exactly what points of mine you’ve taken a liking to, and I will change them right this second!”
Lu Xiao stood up and answered her question with another: “Yinyin, you must be hungry, right?”
“I personally boiled your favorite yam and lotus seed porridge. Have a taste.”
He clapped his hands, and a maid carrying a tray walked in with her head bowed.
Glaring at Lu Xiao, the residual redness had not yet faded from Shen Lanyin’s eyes after crying, her pupils shining bright like washed jadeite.
It gave birth to an unprovoked, alluring charm of a beauty angered.
“I’ll feed you.”
The man took the porcelain bowl handed over by the maid and sat down unhurriedly at the bedside.
Scooping up a spoonful, he blew on it lightly, took a tiny sip to test that the temperature was just right, and then brought it to Shen Lanyin’s lips.
“Disgusting! Get lost! I don’t want to see you, and I definitely won’t marry you!”
“Clatter!”
Shen Lanyin suddenly raised her hand and struck the spoon fiercely from the man’s grasp.
Lu Xiao placed the porcelain bowl neither too lightly nor too heavily on the bedside table.
His expression grew gloomy by degrees. Abruptly grabbing the woman’s wrist, he yanked her stumbling right up in front of him.
A surging, violent hostility erupted from the man, and the hand gripping her wrist looked as though it wanted to crush her bones, before he restrained himself and forced his grip to loosen slightly.
The abruptly shortened distance made Shen Lanyin feel both endangered and fatal, it was far too close.
Close enough for her to clearly see the bottomless, boundless abyss within his pitch-black eyes, like an invisible net trapping her with nowhere to escape.
Shen Lanyin’s other hand hanging at her side tightened as she met the man’s gaze without yielding an inch.
The silent, confrontational atmosphere caused the temperature inside the room to plummet drastically.
“Since you won’t be good, we’ll do it my way.”
Before the last word faded, Lu Xiao picked up the porcelain bowl and took a large mouthful of the porridge.
The man possessed an immense height, completely enveloping Shen Lanyin within his shadow.
“Mmm…”
The milky-white porridge trickled out haphazardly from the corner of her mouth, dripping onto the bedsheets and blooming outward in wet stains.