Crimson Fetters

You Are My Wife

Behind a column at the edge of the hall...

Yang Bei seized her jaw and turned her face toward him with enough force that her expression twisted with pain.

"Look at me." His voice was barely above a murmur.

"I am your husband. You will not look at him like that in front of me again. If you do I will pin you down here, in front of him, and I will not stop until he loses the will to breathe." He released her with a sharp motion.

The force of it sent her stumbling back into the pillar. She caught it with both hands, barely staying upright and before she had steadied herself, Yang Bei's hand was already at her waist again, pulling her back into the hall with the smooth, solicitous appearance of a man guiding his wife gently through a crowd.

The grip at her waist felt like it was going through to the bone.

He steered her to a sofa set apart from the family, and sat down beside her.

Across the room, Yang Chan had not taken his eyes off her. The grief in the young man's expression finally pushed him across the room.

He stopped in front of Yang Bei.

"Take care of her," he said quietly. "Or I'll take her back."

"You have no standing to take anything," Yang Bei replied, his voice perfectly level, the room around them going cold. "Men like me don't make mistakes. And I don't release what I've marked as mine, not to anyone."

Yang Chan looked at Qingli one last time a gaze full of apology and loss and then Yang Bei's eyes found his, and held, and Yang Chan looked away first. He walked back to Yang Dong and Li Jiang with the bearing of someone who has just been shown the precise boundaries of a territory they cannot enter.

Qingli felt something in her stomach turn over. The pressure was enormous nausea, a desperate urge to get up and walk out of this hall and keep walking until the Yang estate was behind her. But the hand at her waist precluded all of that without effort.

"You want to go back to him." Yang Bei bent close to her ear, his voice a soft blade. "If you go within one step of him I will take him apart in front of you. Slowly. Piece by piece. Remember that, brazen whore."

Qingli looked at him. Her eyes were unsteady but her voice, when it came, was careful and deliberate. "I'm married to you. I am your wife. I won't involve myself with anyone else I'm faithful enough for that."

She blinked rapidly, steadying herself, trying to bring him back from the edge of something she didn't want to be responsible for.

"Good." His gaze had already returned to Yang Chan across the room. "Then don't make promises with your mouth that your face contradicts."

*** ***

The Limousine, En Route Back to the private Estate | 18:07 PM.

The last of the evening light bled orange through the armoured glass. The interior of the car was saturated with the glacial menace radiating off the man taking up the seat beside her.

"Who is that expression for?" Yang Bei's voice came down like a blade. The driver's shoulders went rigid. "Brazen w***e. Don't let me find out you've been in contact with him or I'll bring him to you in pieces. Starting with his legs. Then his eyes, one at a time. And you will watch every second of it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Qingli's smile was thin, perfectly placed, a mask over wreckage. "I've never had a husband before you. You're imagining things."

"Then you won't mind if I have Yang Chan disposed of tonight." He seized her chin and drew her face close until his breath was warm against her skin.

"Remember this. You married me. You belong to me. You go nowhere, do nothing, see no one without my permission. That is the only rule you need."

The heat of him cigarettes and cologne and something underneath that was simply him pressed against her face and made the air difficult to think through.

Qingli closed her eyes. And then she did something Yang Bei had not anticipated from any direction.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his brief, light, barely there, the touch of a dragonfly on water before pulling back.

Yang Bei went absolutely still. The hand at her jaw fell away. "Qingli. What do you think you're doing?"

His jaw clenched until the vein at his temple jumped. His heart had done something irregular and unprecedented, and he was not pleased about it. The faint warmth at his mouth was lighting something it had no business lighting.

"You said we're married, didn't you?" She smiled at him teasing, unafraid, using the form of address he'd insisted on. "Darling."

He moved.

He had her wrists pinned above her head in an instant, his body angled over hers, one hand trailing with deliberate and unhurried threat from her throat downward. "You really are what I've always called you,"

He said, low and close. "But remember you answer to me alone, until I decide otherwise."

He bent his head to her neck and bit down marking her with the slow, deliberate pressure of a man making a point his mouth tracing the line where throat met shoulder.

"Stop not in the car" Qingli's voice was uneven now, the performance giving way to something genuine as the reality of his intent landed in full. She pressed her hands against him, feeling the shift from dangerous game to something she was no longer directing.

"You don't get to choose." His knee pressed between hers with blunt, implacable force and then stopped.

Her voice came out barely above a breath, shaking, but perfectly aimed. "Your mother's dress. It'll tear."

Yang Bei went still. The silence that followed was absolute. He straightened slowly, a sound of raw frustration coming from low in his throat the sound of a man reining in something that did not want to be reined. He released her wrists. Moved back. Sat upright.

He dragged a breath in and let it out. "Sit up properly."

His voice was controlled again, but only barely. "Unless you want me to continue."

Qingli pulled herself upright, straightening the qipao with hands that shook, and sat very still in the charged quiet of the car the air between them still hot with everything that had not happened, and everything that eventually would.