Volume Two, Chapter 20

"No!" Almost instinctively, she rejected him outright. Clutching her collar, she tried to flee beneath the bed. She was no inexperienced young maiden; his gaze was far too scorching, his movements far too suggestive. She understood all too well what his words implied. "I'm already married. I will never destroy my chastity!"

He grabbed her just as she was about to escape and forced her back onto the bed. Seizing both her wrists, he knelt beside the bed and leaned over her. "If you intend to preserve your chastity for your husband, you shouldn't be lying on my bed. If that bastard of a husband of yours wanted you to remain chaste, he wouldn't have sent you alone into the Capital!"

"..." She widened her eyes and stared at him in disbelief. He was no longer gentle and charming. Instead, he was humiliating her like a vicious man.

"A woman's greatest bargaining chip is her body. Does your husband really not want you to use every means at your disposal to save his entire clan?" he said through clenched teeth, viciously tearing open her unbearable wound. "If Your Majesty is willing to have you, then you belong to Your Majesty. If some influential official who has a voice in court is willing to have you, then you become his plaything. In short, to save the Wu Household, what does your chastity matter? The chastity of the daughter of an enemy who nearly destroyed his entire clan? What does it matter? Does he even care?"

His damp hair dripped water onto her face. The droplets mingled with the tears sliding from her eyes before falling onto the bedding and leaving marks.

She stopped moving. She merely turned her head away and refused to look at him. Tears streamed uncontrollably from her