Chapter Ninety: Bedside Relations

"If I show you even a little kindness, do you think you can take it for granted?" he said.

Just moments ago, he had been thinking of treating her gently. But the instant she stubbornly turned her face away and would not look at him, that fierce rejection struck straight into the most vulnerable part of his heart, like a blade. The pain pierced him to the marrow.

He half-crouched, pressing hard upon her legs, pinning her in place so that she had no room left to move. His thumb, roughened with a slight callus, tightened beneath her chin and pinched so fiercely that she winced, drawing in a sharp breath, her brows knitting together.

"Why is it only acceptable for you to meet an old lover, while I am forbidden to see someone new?" What kind of logic was that? What was he to her? He could not even handle his own emotional debts properly, and yet he insisted on dragging her into the mess. Why? Why indeed?

She lifted her brows, a faint smile lingering in her eyes. It looked almost mocking, denying the depth of his devotion and sneering at his self-righteous pride.

The muscles in Shen Yanlie's face twitched visibly. For a moment, his silence seemed to be brewing something dark. The hand that held her chin unconsciously tightened again, cruelly, as though once he resolved himself, she might be crushed to ash in an instant. Yet with a temperament like hers, she would never yield to him so easily...

He had considered his heart sincere beyond question, had spoken to her so many tender things that even he found them unbelievable, had made so many promises and declarations to her. And what had she made of it all? Had she taken his sincerity for a joke?

He gave a bitter laugh. He had never felt so ridiculous. Just hearing her say such a thing made his heart seem as though it were being ground beneath something merciless, pain lancing through it in violent spasms.

Hadn't she said she would love him? Then why, when she saw him appear together with another woman, had she not gone forward to take his arm and tell him not to leave? Was that what she meant by loving him?

She held back the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Shen Yanlie was furious now; the pressure of his thumb was no less than when he had once clamped a hand around her throat. One careless twist, and she felt as if she might hear a crack. Her nerves tensed to the limit.

His laughter still echoed in her ears, making her skin crawl for no reason at all. She was afraid of him. She had never feared him as she did now.

There had once been a time when their hearts moved toward one another, when hers had followed him without complaint. But she had lost the courage to love someone properly. When hardship and danger stood before her, her first impulse was not to overcome them, but to turn and walk away, searching for another road.

Yet Shen Yanlie seemed not to understand why she retreated. He only knew that when he needed her, when he asked her to stay, she turned and left, and even went to meet another man.

Back then, he had appeared when she was at her most miserable, lifted her chin, straightened her spine. Had she forgotten so quickly? For her, he could make a heart of steel become tender as silk. So why could she not be a little braver for his sake?

But Shen Yanlie could no longer see what was most real about her. Though strong enough to battle life with unyielding spirit, she was even better at settling for the present. In other words, if she did not love him so deeply, if her love were not to the point that he was indispensable, she would have long since grown too tired to concern herself with anything about him. She simply lacked the inclination.

And yet in love, every man and woman possesses a furious instinct to possess. Even the most rational soul can be led astray by his own thoughts, easily blinded by them.

"Everybody says I'm cruel, says I'm venomous. But, Mai Xijun, do you know that you are far more cruel than I am, by thousands upon thousands of times?"

Shen Yanlie abruptly fixed his scorching gaze on her face again. The smile on his lips had vanished completely, as though that reckless laughter had never existed. Darkness seemed to define him; savagery, his truest outline.

"Do you know that your kind of nature, combined with such a stubborn temper, is enough to stir the most primitive and violent desire in any man to conquer? Even another sage would no longer be able to sit there in perfect self-restraint." Shen Yanlie continued, tightening his grip beneath her chin, then shifting to hold the bones of her face, forcing her to look at him. He left her no chance to avoid him, no chance to be halfhearted.

"What is it? Nothing to say?" After a long moment, she finally stopped struggling and turned her face away, staring at him with her beautiful eyes.

It was always those eyes, so brazenly meeting his own, challenging him, reading him with no attempt at concealment.

The curve at Shen Yanlie's mouth grew even more feral. This woman was far too arrogant, rampaging through his world at will. And whenever he tried to trace her footsteps, she was always so graceful, at times deliberately restrained, at times impulsive and stirring, until he could no longer tell which version of her was the truest.

No matter how ruthless he was in the business world, no matter how brilliantly and flawlessly he handled his methods, he still felt that her own tactic of disregarding everything was played too beautifully.

He had always thought that after all those promises he had given her, at the very least, at the very least when other women appeared at his side, she would open her arms, hold him tightly in her embrace, and declare to everyone, to the entire world, that he belonged to her.

But she had not.

She had only watched him, watched him walk past her. Calm. Composed. Elegant, as though nothing in the world concerned her. She watched him leave without moving. Everything unfolded in complete contradiction to what he had imagined. That feeling, that scene, was deeply unpleasant to him.

"I told you before. I will love you. But not while I am forced to watch you showing tenderness to another woman in front of me, with all that deep affection. I am not generous. Before you finish sorting out your emotional mess, I want to keep my distance from you."

She understood what he meant. She knew exactly what he was saying. Since he wanted an explanation from her, she might as well make her position clear. That was the most basic demand she had of love. Call it greed if one must, or a claim upon him if one preferred; in any case, she would not permit her man to be two-hearted.

"So if I told you I had already sorted it out, what would you want to do? What would you want? Stay with me every day, never leaving my side. Whether to heaven or to hell, you would have to follow me."

Shen Yanlie seemed no longer in a hurry to demand another answer from Mai Xijun. He wore a teasing smile, his brows lifted, his contemptuous gaze roaming over her without restraint, as though he had never needed to be polite to her. He had always been so arrogant and unrestrained, while she, for all her efforts, seemed never to have a single way to deal with him.

Mai Xijun let out a soft, laughing breath. "Yes. I am not afraid of hell. What I am afraid of is that hell will not have you."

At this moment, Mai Xijun no longer seemed as fearful of him as she had just been. He had always been like this, and she no longer needed to hide anything from him. She need not be afraid, because Shen Yanlie, at his most ruthless, was always the kind who said nothing at all, not a word, as though a silent eruption were more terrible than any outburst.

So even if he spoke the cruelest words, she should believe that he would never truly harden his heart against her that far. If he really meant to do it, she would have no room at all to resist or fight back.

"Heh. Is that so? But don't you think that whether in paradise or in the underworld, I would surely drag you down to keep me company?"

Would he let go so easily? What an international joke. The primitive male urge to conquer within him had already been fully awakened by her. How could he possibly let go now? How could he still be able to?

Besides, his nature would not allow it. Even if she truly ascended to heaven while he descended into hell, he would still drag her into the abyss to stay with him. It was like thunder striking fire, violent and irresistible. By the laws of reaction itself, he had no intention of stopping.

"Heh-heh. Is that so?" Mai Xijun gave two dry laughs, then lowered her eyelids and reached out, trying to pry away the hand that clamped her chin. "It hurts."

"Hurts? I don't feel it." If she could say such vicious things, how could this little pain in the flesh count as pain?

Still, pain to the body was the most immediate of all. Even when he had raged at her just now, cursing her in fury, she had felt as though a dull blade were carving out her flesh.

"I said it hurts. Didn't you hear me?" When Shen Yanlie showed no sign of letting go, her anger surged to the brink again.

How could he be so vile? If he had not once sworn to her, "Xiaomai, once you become my woman, you do not need to please me, nor deliberately try to delight me. You only need to stay by my side and love me with all your heart. Leave everything else to me," then she thought she might not have said anything about new loves and old ones. He had forced her into it. He could not blame her.

"Hear you?" Shen Yanlie said impatiently, finally letting go, though his expression remained indescribably wanton, wildly arrogant yet grim. "Don't think a little coaxing will make this go away. I'm telling you, this matter with you and me is far from over. That man's name is Nian Yuchen, isn't it? I’ve remembered this debt."

"What?" The bastard. "Shen Yanlie, dare to lay a hand on him and see what happens."

Shen Yanlie gave a dismissive snort, treating Mai Xijun's threat as nothing at all. "You got me exactly right. Any trace of intimacy you show with any man other than me will never end well for him."

He said it lightly, then turned away and loosened his shoulders with ease, stifling a yawn. Much less when that man named Nian Yuchen had personally driven her home. At that point, the relationship, if one stretched it, might be called friendship; more precisely, it was beginning to look like the sort of bond that could develop into a confidante.

But what comes after a female confidante? Plainly speaking, a bed. Men are all the same.