Chapter 73 [VIP]

The boy in her arms stiffened for a moment. Chenmian couldn't help but look up at her boyfriend, whom she had just reconciled with, and their eyes met.

Chenmian casually withdrew her gaze, still obediently nestled in her boyfriend's arms, without uttering a word.

He knew nothing about this. Zong Bingwen hadn't discussed it with him. At most, he had mentioned the engagement to him, but Shen Mian brushed it off by saying that he hadn't proposed yet.

Chenmian felt Zong Bingwen tighten his embrace after saying those words, and he felt uncomfortable, with a tightness in his chest and a sense of reluctance.

He doesn't want to get married so early.

He was in a daze for a moment, vaguely recalling that a year ago, someone had planned the future with him.

They were also planning to adopt a child, and at that time, they even had a plan for the adoption process—twenty-six years old, the perfect age when they had just finished playing around and had just enough energy to raise a new baby.

But he's still young, only just over twenty, and has just reached the legal marriage age.

Chenmian could not understand Zong Bingwen's intense and urgent possessiveness towards him.

The boy was thinking wildly in his mind. After a while, he finally heard his older brother's hoarse reply: "Chenmian is still young. Why are you making plans so early?"

"If we're not even engaged yet, isn't it a bit too hasty to set the wedding date for the first half of the year?" Shen Jinshan chuckled lightly, quickly regaining his composure, and said calmly, "This still needs to be discussed between the two families."

She turned her head slightly, looked at Chenmian, and said in an almost indifferent voice, "Chenmian, do you also want to get married so soon?"

Shenmian subconsciously looked up to see Zong Bingwen's expression, but only saw the man's tense lower face and straight nose. However, through the increasingly tight grip he was on her, Shenmian understood her boyfriend's meaning and turned to the man opposite her with a smile: "I will listen to Brother Bingwen."

She seemed to be a submissive wife who revered her husband above all else.

If Shen Jinshan were unaware of Shen Mian's true nature and had stumbled upon the boy's secret tryst, he would indeed have thought that way.

The three looked at each other, speechless for a moment.

Shen Jinshan clenched his wrists tightly, his knuckles turning bluish-white.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp pang of heartache, as if he had returned to that wrong rainy night, where he had abandoned and refused to sleep, and from then on, the situation spiraled out of control.

He regretted it, but it was too late.

Before Chenmian, Lin Langli was eager to return to China, then Shen Ci was deeply in love with him, and now there is the troublesome Zong Bingwen, who is even willing to pretend that nothing happened for Chenmian's sake.

Shen Jinshan truly did not expect his junior to be so "magnanimous".

No matter how refined, gentle, and mild-mannered Zong Bingwen was, he was still a young master. Yet now he was humble and subservient in front of Shen Mian, even enduring that kind of thing.

It truly made him look at him in a new light.

Shen Jinshan gazed intently at the intimate couple before him, trying to appear indifferent, and casually asked Zong Bingwen when he planned to leave.

He paused for a moment, then asked casually, "Will you come to the Shen family home for the festival this year?"

One couldn't help but wonder if his parents would allow Lin Langli to come home for the New Year.

—

They said they would open another house, but the two of them had no intention of having fun here. Shen Mian didn't even dare to take a look at Shen Ci's injury. Zong Bingwen forcefully took her phone and deleted and blocked Shen Ci in front of her. Then they boarded the earliest flight.

Chenmian couldn't help but doze off on the plane, completely unaware that Zong Bingwen was holding his phone and meticulously checking Chenmian's chat history with the people next to him.

Zong Bingwen found the contact information for her dormant ex-boyfriend.

The man was surprised that the two hadn't broken up yet, but scrolling through the entire chat history, the replies were all brief and indifferent, with no offensive words.

The conversation between Chenmian and Lin Langli ended before the fifteenth of the lunar year, with the last sentence being just a very ordinary "Go downstairs for dinner," and then there was no follow-up.

Zong Bingwen began to ponder the reasons for their breakup. He roughly knew that it was because the Shen family disapproved of the two of them and interfered, but he still couldn't figure out why the Shen family was so opposed.

As a result, Lin Langli was ostensibly sent abroad to study, but in reality, he was exiled and placed overseas.

He was clearly the biological child that the Shen family had only recently recognized.

Zong Bingwen thought about it a lot, and his headache became increasingly severe.

At this point, he would rather be a vicious, manipulative little bastard who dated Lin Langli, whose ultimate goal was nothing more than to drive him away.

Instead of genuinely getting along with the other person.

He couldn't help but resent Lin Langli's good fortune; his first love, his first kiss, and even his first time were all taken by the same person.

If he had even obtained the dormant true heart...

Zong Bingwen dared not think any further. Jealousy could kill, and he didn't want to make himself look bad.

After the plane landed, Zong Bingwen's personal assistant came to pick him up. Chenmian was still half asleep. After getting into the car, she crawled back and fell asleep on her boyfriend's lap.

The assistant glanced at his employer and his boyfriend in the rearview mirror, a slight smile playing on his lips, and asked in a low voice, "Is that where we're going?" He gave the name of the apartment building near the Sleeping School.

Zong Bingwen's expression hardened, and then he almost lost his composure as he retorted, "No, come to my place."

The sound startled the sleeping figure on her lap, and Zong Bingwen covered her ears to soothe her.

The assistant was startled by the employer's reaction, fell silent, turned up the car's interior temperature a little, and headed towards a different road than usual.

Zong Bingwen's residence is located three kilometers away from the Zong family's old house, sharing the same green hills and clear waters with his parents and grandparents, with exceptionally beautiful scenery.

It was already midnight when they arrived at their destination. The snow that had fallen during the day had not yet melted. As Zong Bingwen carried Chenmian out of the car, he heard the rustling sound of his feet stepping on the thick layer of snow.

The night was quiet. Zong Bingwen gave his assistant the day off and told him to come back in three days.

When he woke up from his deep sleep, it was already the early hours of the next day. The curtains were shrouded in a hazy gray-blue light. The boy let out a soft moan and stretched.

He felt refreshed, and even the illness he had felt yesterday seemed to have disappeared. He was pleasantly surprised and jumped up, only to find that his left ankle was itchy. A chain lined with soft velvet was binding his ankle, trapping him in the room.

Chenmian paused for a moment, first looking down at her clothes to confirm that they weren't erotic attire, then biting her lower lip and examining the chain on her ankle with a puzzled look.

The chain was a bit long. Chenmian got out of bed and took a few steps, realizing it was just long enough for him to enter the bathroom, but there was still a short distance between him and the door.

He could reach the window, but the outside was sealed off, apparently to keep him out.

Was Zong Bingwen still angry? Was he locking him up here as punishment?

Feeling uneasy, Chenmian sat on the carpet and tried to pry and bend the iron ring, even biting it twice, almost breaking her teeth in the process.

He tried to dismantle the iron ring himself for a long time but it was completely undamaged. When Zong Bingwen came in, he found that Chenmian had already taken a nap against the foot of the bed.

The man stared at Shen Mian's thin clothes for a while, then gently picked him up and carefully placed him on the down bed. After checking the boy's ankles for any red marks or injuries from being tied up, he lay down fully clothed himself.

The man beside her gradually calmed down. Chenmian opened her eyes, crawled out of her boyfriend's arms and sat up, taking a closer look at Zong Bingwen's appearance for the first time.

Zong Bingwen was undeniably handsome and dignified; otherwise, he wouldn't have caught his eye.

But now there is a large bruise on his face, a horrifying patch around his eye, adding a touch of horror to the man's appearance.

Sleepyhead touched the man's wound with his fingertips, sighed, and then gently blew on it a few times.

Zong Bingwen's eyelids twitched slightly, as if he were having a nightmare, and his expression didn't look good.

Chenmian then fiddled with his features, rubbing his eyebrows and eyes, catching his trembling eyelashes, and finally touching the corner of his lips.

After doing all this, Chenmian lay back in the other person's arms, staring at the ceiling and picking at her fingers.

He kept fiddling with the skin, and then, unable to resist his playful nature, he lifted the hem of the man's pajamas next to him and touched his abs.

Such chaos would wake even a pig, let alone Zong Bingwen.

As Chenmian played, she suddenly felt the muscles under her hands tense. She looked up and met Zong Bingwen's calm gaze.

"Honey, you're awake." Chenmian immediately offered a sweet smile.

Zong Bingwen remained unmoved, his expression strangely calm.

Chenmian blinked a few times and said in a coquettish tone, "Honey, I'm a little thirsty, I want to drink some water."

Zong Bingwen didn't speak, but got up and went to pour water. When he came back, he handed the water to the cup in his hand. The water temperature was just right, the same temperature that Chenmian usually drank.

Chenmian smiled and thanked him, then took a few big gulps from the cup, never mentioning the chain on his foot.

After drinking the water, Chenmian needed to use the restroom again, and Zong Bingwen carried her into the bathroom, even unzipping her pants, and was just about to support her there.

With someone watching him, Chenmian didn't feel the urge to urinate at all, and Zong Bingwen wouldn't bother him like Lin Langli did by whistling or "peeing" at him.

The atmosphere was silent for a few seconds. Chenmian casually pulled up his pants, turned around, and went to wash his hands.

Someone wrapped their arms around him from behind, holding the boy's two delicate hands, and washed them together under the clear white water.

Looking in the mirror, the other person, a size larger than him, almost embedded himself in Chenmian's body. Chenmian stared at the person behind him in the mirror, their eyes never leaving each other for a long time.

Zong Bingwen's gaze was calm, but as time passed, the man's pupils constricted slightly. Then he turned his face away, licked and kissed Shen Mian's neck, and then, as if giving an injection after disinfection, he bit down.

Chenmian cried out in pain, his eyes quickly welling up with tears, but he did not call a halt, still watching the two of them in the mirror.

Zong Bingwen's jet-black hair was buried in the crook of his neck, making him look like a big, furry dog ​​angrily lashing out at its owner.

Chenmian lovingly stroked his palm, pinched the man's earlobe, and sighed softly, "Why are you crying? Do Bread and Little Bread know that their father cries at home?" Bread is Zong Bingwen's dog.

The grip on his neck gradually loosened, and Shenmian felt that Zong Bingwen must have bitten him there, because he could smell a very faint scent of blood.

A few seconds later, Chenmian heard Zong Bingwen's voice.

"Sleep, you've really gone too far." That's no different from admitting weakness.

Zong Bingwen said, "You're already my lover, yet you're still ambiguously involved with Shen Ci. Would you act like that when you're with Lin Langli?"

A jolt ran through Chenmian's heart.

A note from the author:

I think the dark version of Zong is quite appealing; I could try writing a side story about it, where the husband, now a ghost, stops his young widow from rekindling his past relationship with his former lover, dragging his wife down to hell (just kidding).