She reached out, her trembling fingers hovering just inches from his boots, too terrified of his aura to actually make contact.

"When my clan fell, we were your bitter enemies. Yet, you gave me and my surviving clansmen refuge. You spared us from execution."

"And after that... you placed me in this position. You made me your personal secretary, to handle your affairs, to stand by and watch you conquer every other woman of status in this city!"

She choked back a sob, her chest heaving violently beneath her dark robes.

"Was it to let me redeem myself? To let me prove my worth to your faction? Or... or was it to slowly make me yours? I don't know what you were thinking, Young Master... my mind is completely broken!"

"But after last night... I can't take it anymore! I don't care about the past! I want to be yours, Young Master... please... I beg of you, fuck me! Ruin me just like you ruined them!"

The carriage rolled silently over the cobblestones. For several agonizing seconds, the only sound was her ragged, hysterical breathing.

Slowly, deliberately, Shen Yu turned his head away from the window. His piercing golden pupils locked onto her weeping face, his eyes entirely devoid of warmth, looking down at her with a terrifyingly sharp, calculating coldness that made the temperature inside the carriage drop instantly.

"You want me to cross that line with you, Li Qiu?" Shen Yu asked, his deep, resonant baritone echoing with a cruel, mocking weight.

He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, pinning her down with his predatory glare.

"Tell me... do you even know why the tension between our clans escalated to the point of blood in the first place?"

Li Qiu froze as his words sliced through her desperate frenzy, the icy edge of his voice dragging her back to reality.

She stared into his piercing golden eyes, the raw terror of his presence mixing with the burning arousal coiled tightly in her lower abdomen.

Her mind raced backward, unearthing the bitter roots of her family's destruction.

"It was... it was because of my son, Peng Bo," she whispered, her voice trembling violently as fresh tears spilled onto her lips.

"He... he tried to force a marriage with your sister, Lixue. He thought he could use the power of the Peng clan to claim what he wanted. And after that... everything changed. The meteoric rise of the Tang and the absolute fall of the Peng."

She swallowed hard, her chest heaving as the brutal history laid itself bare between them.

"You secured the strategic alliance with the Jin clan, launched those revolutionary spiritual pills to monopolize the market, and completely pushed the Peng clan into the dark abyss."

Li Qiu looked up at him with tear-filled, wide eyes, the crushing realization washing over her that the terrifying genius sitting before her had forgotten absolutely nothing.

He wasn't just her savior, he was the precise architect of her ruin.

Suddenly, Shen Yu's large, hand shot forward.

His fingers wrapped completely around her slender throat in an unyielding, iron grip, pinning her head back against the edge of the velvet bench.

"Exactly," Shen Yu hissed, his voice dropping to a low, lethal venom that vibrated directly against her skin.

"That worthless bastard of yours wanted to force himself on what was mine. How the fuck could he ever think he had the right? The moment he looked at my Lixue with those eyes, the fate of your clan was sealed to the root."

He squeezed her throat slightly, cutting off her breath for a brief, agonizing second as his golden pupils flared with a dark, predatory light. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"So tell me, Li Qiu... why the fuck should I give you my body? Taking you in as a secretary was already the absolute limit of my righteousness."

He lied through his teeth without a single shred of hesitation.

There was no righteousness, no mercy, and no sentimentality within him. From the very moment he had spared her life, he had designed this exact sequence.

He didn't want to save her, he wanted to break her spirit, dismantle her dignity, and force her to beg for the very shaft of the man that had crushed her family.

Li Qiu's lungs burned from the lack of air, her body trembling violently under his absolute physical dominance.

Yet, looking up at his cruel, evilly smiling face, the deep-seated guilt and the suffocating carnal lust fused into a single, volatile obsession.

The raw degradation of punishing her body for her son's sins became the ultimate aphrodisiac, completely frying her remaining sanity.

She wrapped her small hands around his iron wrist, not to pull his hand away, but to press his grip tighter against her throat.

"Fuck me... break me, Master!" she choked out hoarsely, her eyes completely dilated and glassy with fanatical, submissive lust.

"Punish me for the wrongdoings of my son! Let me bleed for his sins! Do whatever you want with my body... make me pay for what the Peng clan did to you!"

Shen Yu's lips curved into a wide, purely evil smile. The trap had snapped shut flawlessly.

"Anything?" he asked.

Li Qiu looked up at him, panting heavily as his grip slightly loosened around her neck, her gaze burning with an unhinged, desperate compliance.

"Yes... anything, Master... absolutely anything."

Shen Yu's wide, evil smile deepened as the raw submission of his former enemy's mother laid itself completely bare.

Without a word of warning, his large hand snapped across her flushed cheek in a punishing, heavy slap.

CRACK!

The resounding blow forced her head to the side, leaving a dark crimson mark on her pale skin.

Li Qiu's breath hitched, a wild, hysterical smile stretching across her lips as she looked back up at him.

The sharp physical pain of the punishment translated instantly into a massive spike of carnal arousal between her soaking-wet thighs.

Right at that moment, the carriage smoothly slowed to a halt, and the driver's voice echoed through the obsidian-wood panels.

"Young Master, we have arrived at the Tang Estate."