When Zhou Ruo An was thrown onto the bed, he was still trying to explain.
“Lin Yi, I did lie to you about Bai Jiu. That was my fault. But you didn’t lose anything because of it. You only helped me once.”
At three in the morning, even the dogs in the urban village had fallen silent. Inside the room, Zhou Ruo An alone kept talking without pause.
“That woman… she isn’t my girlfriend. We have an agreement. She wants to use my identity to get into higher social circles, and I use her… right, the Zhou family wants to marry me off in an alliance, so I’m using her to block it.”
The bedroom door slowly closed. The latch turned.
Locked.
Zhou Ruo An pressed himself against the headboard in alarm and hurriedly explained, “The reason I called her my girlfriend at the club was because there were too many eyes on us. If I refused to acknowledge her identity there, my whole plan would fall apart. Lin Yi, you have to believe me. I just don’t want to be forced into a marriage alliance.”
After locking the door, Lin Yi walked toward the window. His voice was low, confined within the narrow room, and even though his tone remained calm, it carried unmistakable pressure. “I had Bai Ban question that woman. Want to guess what she said?”
Reaching the window, Lin Yi pulled out his phone and tossed it onto the bed. “A message from Bai Ban ten minutes ago. Young Master Zhou, want to take a look?”
With a sharp swish, he drew the curtains shut, blocking the dim moonlight outside. All that remained inside was Zhou Ruo An’s suddenly pale face.
Zhou Ruo An had beautiful fingers, long without being overly slender. Against the black screen of the phone, they carried the elegance of an ink-wash painting.
He hesitated before picking up the phone and entering the unlock code with practiced ease. The instant he pressed the final number, Bai Ban’s chat window appeared.
Several voice messages, each filled to the full sixty-second limit, had been sent. Zhou Ruo An tapped one.
Perhaps Bai Ban was still going through his voice change; his voice sounded hoarse. Mixed with the noisy background, it resembled stray dogs barking madly as they fought in the urban village. “That woman’s pretty sharp. I couldn’t get anything out of her, so San’er went in later. He’s good-looking, and after a few drinks he got her talking. She said she and Zhou Ruo An aren’t a couple. Said Zhou Ruo An’s about to be married off in an alliance and desperately needs some ‘true love’ to raise his value so he can bargain with the Zhou family and sell himself for a better price. Shit, Zhou Ruo An got every damn scheming brain cell there is. Hell, I want to find myself a rich woman and marry into her family too…”
Click.
Zhou Ruo An shut off the phone, and Bai Ban’s voice vanished abruptly.
The bedroom was bare, containing only a bed, a table, and a small wardrobe. The wardrobe stood beside the window. Lin Yi crossed the short distance in two steps, opened it, and pulled out a bundle of rope.
He loosened the knot, shook out the long rope, and asked as casually as though they were chatting, “Was what she said true?”
When Zhou Ruo An didn’t answer, Lin Yi didn’t press him. He simply walked to the bedside and looked up at the fastenings in the wall.
Zhou Ruo An followed his gaze. Two thick steel nails, each about a finger wide, had been driven into the wall above the headboard, probably left behind by the former owner as supports for a wedding photograph. They had been driven in deeply, with about half an inch still protruding.
“What are you trying to do?” Zhou Ruo An’s throat tightened, his voice trembling slightly.
Lin Yi stretched the rope between his hands. “Do you think those two nails can hold your weight?”
Zhou Ruo An’s expression changed. He immediately tore his gaze away and tried to roll off the bed, but at the corner he was effortlessly caught by the unhurried hunter. A powerful arm hooked around the front of his neck and dragged him backward until only the distance of a breath remained between them. “Zhou Ruo An, you know you can’t get away.”
The nylon rope was already looped around his wrists. Zhou Ruo An fought with both hands and feet. “Lin Yi, let me go!”
For the first time, Lin Yi used brute force against him. He pinned him down, pressed a knee against the side of Zhou Ruo An’s face, and reached out to switch off the bedside lamp.
In the darkness, the bedframe gave off harsh, chaotic creaks. Zhou Ruo An’s curses never stopped, while Lin Yi remained completely silent. His name appeared only in Zhou Ruo An’s voice.
“Lin Yi, if you dare touch me, you’re dead!”
When the filament glowed again and light returned to the room, Zhou Ruo An’s arms had already been pulled high above him and suspended from the two steel nails.
Lin Yi stepped back and slowly looked over the bound Zhou Ruo An as though admiring a work of art he had made with his own hands.
The man before him trembled faintly. His increasingly pale complexion only made his lips look more vivid. Though entirely at a disadvantage, he still held on to the hope of escaping what was coming. “Lin Yi, I’m destined to be used for a marriage alliance. That’s why the Zhou family accepted me. I’m only a pawn in their hands, and I can’t decide my own fate. If that’s the case, why shouldn’t I fight to get more for myself? That woman has nothing to do with me. We’re only using each other. She won’t affect the three-month agreement between us.”
Lin Yi looked toward the room’s only source of light, dull brightness spreading across his eyes. “There is no three-month agreement anymore. You never treated it sincerely from the start. It was only a delaying tactic. Maybe you thought you could still make use of me for another three months. In your heart, nothing matters more than your ambition to climb higher.”
Lin Yi stepped forward and rested his fingers on the buttons of Zhou Ruo An’s shirt. “Since that’s the case, we might as well play dirty.”
Zhou Ruo An shrank backward with all his strength, as though trying to force himself into the wall. “Our accounts are already settled. I paid back the money. I locked you up for three days, and you locked me up for three days. Lin Yi, I don’t owe you anymore.”
“Young Master Zhou, do you really think your words carry any weight now? If I say you owe me, then there are ten thousand reasons why you owe me.”
His fingertip rubbed slowly over the shell-polished button as Lin Yi said, “I’m collecting the debt tonight. Young Master Zhou can take his time paying it back.”
A tearing sound split the silence, chilling enough to make the skin crawl, and Zhou Ruo An’s chest was suddenly exposed.
That instant of stunned disbelief cost Zhou Ruo An his only chance to speak. Lin Yi glanced only once at his bare chest before picking up the tape he had taken out along with the rope.
The tearing sound of adhesive tape was unnaturally sharp in the quiet room. One end was pressed to Zhou Ruo An’s right cheek. Staring into those frightened eyes, Lin Yi slowly sealed every curse and protest behind the tape.
The room fell silent, the air filled with a sense of destruction.
Lin Yi tossed aside what he was holding and began undoing his logo-branded belt. With his head lowered, he said casually, “When Young Master Zhou can sound the way they do in those videos, remind me to take off the tape.”
Anger, fear, and humiliation piled together beneath the rope and tape. His struggling failed to slow the descent of his trousers, and the belt struck the bed with a dull thud.
The old house was poorly heated. The large areas of exposed skin quickly lost their warmth, and Zhou Ruo An trembled faintly, impossible to tell whether from fear or cold.
Lin Yi seemed not to care at all. He gripped Zhou Ruo An’s jaw and leaned in, kissing the small mole at the tail of his brow.
His kisses were careful but rough, almost like someone afflicted with a strange hunger as he lightly bit at the raised brow bone.
Only after dampening the hairs of Zhou Ruo An’s eyebrow did he move downward: eyelashes, cheek, the lips sealed beneath tape, then the throat that kept shifting beneath his touch.
He lingered over the sharp cartilage there, pressing his tongue against the raised line and restricting Zhou Ruo An’s breathing enough to leave him faintly suffocated.
Zhou Ruo An’s breaths through his nose became heavy and chaotic, repeatedly adjusting as the pressure against his throat changed.
Lin Yi seemed to enjoy this game in which Zhou Ruo An could do nothing but endure. He played with it for a long time before suddenly biting down hard, like a beast trying to kill its prey in a single strike.
Zhou Ruo An gave a heavy, muffled groan, but received no mercy. Instead, pain flared across his chest as soft flesh was sharply pulled.
Lin Yi moved lower. When warmth pressed against him, Zhou Ruo An suddenly remembered the images on Lin Yi’s computer. Those two men had been like this too—frenzied and fierce, mouths working without restraint.
Only when the backs of his knees were lifted did Zhou Ruo An truly understand what he was about to face. Unable to cry out, he could only struggle with everything he had.
The rope swung violently, tugging at the steel nails embedded in the wall.
Lin Yi drew back slightly, something flickering in his gaze. Just when Zhou Ruo An thought he had finally come to his senses, the sound of a zipper followed.
“Zhou Ruo An.” Lin Yi’s voice was as cold as the dim light inside the room. As though stating a simple fact, he said, “This is all you deserve.”
The next moment, amid a hoarse, broken sound trapped behind the tape, the rope was suddenly dragged downward against the steel nails.
There was no pause. The rope binding Zhou Ruo An’s wrists began jerking up and down, without rhythm, its growing range of movement the only sign of the beast’s increasing violence.
The sounds trapped beneath the tape became even more broken. Sweat brought on by pain soaked the roots of Zhou Ruo An’s hair. Lin Yi’s lips landed against his temple, without much gentleness, drawing the salty moisture away.
The steel nails kept shaking. The holes in the wall gradually loosened, and fine plaster fell like sand onto the pale fingers bound together above him, lending the sight a strangely broken, filthy beauty.
Lin Yi was like someone finally eating a pastry he had coveted for a long time, savoring its resilient softness, the taste lingering between his teeth.
Greedy for another bite, he exerted force upward once more.
The rope jerked violently.
Unable to bear the load, the steel nails suddenly tore free from the wall.
Zhou Ruo An dropped sharply, but Lin Yi reacted at once and caught him. Their positions remained unchanged, the force continuing through him until Zhou Ruo An nearly lost consciousness.
His already unfocused eyes finally filled with tears. Beneath the dim light, Lin Yi looked intently at the man in his arms.
His fingers slipped through the damp strands of Zhou Ruo An’s hair. For one fleeting instant, something softer seemed to appear in his eyes, but it vanished just as quickly beneath renewed coldness. He turned Zhou Ruo An over and pressed him into the piled bedding, bent close to his ear, and poured the filthiest words into it.
“Young Master Zhou tastes pretty good. Now I want to hear you.”
He ripped away the tape in one motion.
“The night is still long. Time to find your grammar mistakes.”