Boss Ningning: Safe and Sound, Year After Year - Chapter 3

The emperor was furious, just as I had feared.

He flung me onto the bed and seized the front of my robe.

He thrust his menacing face close to mine and glared at me.

His eyes looked ready to kill.

I squeezed my eyes shut by reflex.

Through gritted teeth, he said in my ear, “Can you make it stop? If it growls again, I’ll have you killed!”

Going without breakfast was bad enough.

And now I had to listen to demands this unreasonable.

That only made me feel worse.

And whose fault was it, anyway? If you had not gone mad so early in the morning, I would have finished a lovely breakfast by now and gone back to sleep!

I was starving, and my nerves were stretched to the breaking point.

The tears came up all at once and I could not hold them back.

He barked:

“What are you crying for!”

When his eyes were not smiling, they showed a great deal of white, and looked cold and savage.

All I wanted was a few decent meals in the harem.

Now I had not even managed that, and my head was in danger of parting company with my shoulders.

I pressed my lips together and burst into loud, wailing sobs:

“I’m hungry!” I wailed. “I’m hungry!”

That one cry seemed to use up every last bit of strength I had.

It was so loud that even the emperor was visibly startled.

Now that I had started, I let myself have a good, long cry.

When he came back to himself, the tips of his ears were red enough to bleed, and he clapped a hand roughly over my mouth.

I looked at him through my tears.

He covered my eyes too.

“Stop crying! I—I’ll get you something to eat!”

To my surprise, the emperor had a whole table of dishes brought in.

Longjing shrimp, crystal fish slices, eight-treasure duck, and a few cold seasonal dishes.

All things I had never eaten in my life.

I sat ramrod straight. The tears from my eyes seemed to have found their way into my mouth—I was practically drooling.

But the emperor did not so much as glance at the food. He sat on a stool with his arms crossed, thoroughly impatient, staring at me the way a guard stares at a prisoner.

I was squirming with discomfort when he said suddenly:

“Eat. Why are you staring at me? Have I got food on my face?”

That left me speechless.

Hang on—if you were not staring at me, how would you know I was looking at you?

But he was the emperor, so I answered honestly:

“At home, the good food always went to my brother first. If I ate first, I would get beaten. So—please, Your Majesty, you eat first…”

As the emperor frowned harder and harder, my voice dwindled to a whisper.

He laughed, a dark, cold sound, and pushed a dish of bamboo shoots with rabbit meat in front of me.

“Eat. I’ll kill anyone who dares stop you.”

The emperor had spoken. I grabbed my chopsticks and took a bite at once.

The rabbit was tender and silky, the bamboo shoots crisp and fresh, with a faint peppery burn from the mountain pepper. It was so good my eyes swam with tears, and I decided that even if the emperor chose to behead me right then, it would have been worth it.

I was eating happily when the emperor spoke up.

“Have you always been this meek?”

Me: ?

I suppose my expression was too baffled.

He propped his chin on his hand and idly tapped the table.

“Come here.”

“Slap me.”

One moment he had been telling me to eat; the next he was telling me to slap him.

The more I saw of him, the more unpredictable he seemed.

Now I sat on the emperor’s lap, quaking with fear.

His hand, curled around my waist, wandered here and there like a venomous snake, until my whole body went numb.

“Come on. Let me see how brave my beloved consort is.”

He brought his face close to mine and said, flatly:

“Slap.”

Slap him and I would die; refuse and I would die.

I was stiff as a plank of wood, and I could see his patience wearing thin.

In that moment of crisis, a light went on in my head.

Both leave a mark on the face. A kiss would do just as well, would it not?

I steeled myself and shut my eyes.

“Mwah!”

The instant the kiss landed I panicked, and threw caution to the wind—I grabbed his head and kissed him several more times, hard.

I kissed him until he went utterly still, frozen where he sat.

Those marks would last all day, I was sure of it. No—they would still be there tomorrow!

I was just congratulating myself on having escaped when the emperor’s long arm swept the dishes off the table.

I was flung down onto the tabletop.

The sudden change made me scream, and his eyes darkened.

“Noisy.”

He bent his head and stopped my scream with his mouth.

My lips were bitten over and over, sore and tingling, and I could not help the tears that came up.

The table was cold and hard beneath me, and I was terrified the splashing soup would stain my dress, so I had no choice but to cling to him tightly.

Fortunately his arms were thick and strong and he was much bigger than me; one hand pressed me firmly against his chest and kept a single speck of filth off me.

Perhaps his conscience had stirred, because he undid his cloak and wrapped me up in it entirely.

He was close enough that I felt certain changes immediately.

He kissed me hard and deep, his eyes as predatory as a wolf’s.

I had never seen anything like it. I shook with fear.

Even Lu Ming, whom I had cursed inside my head as a lecher a thousand times over, had only ever wanted to seduce me night after night.

Even the few kisses yesterday—I had written those off as a dog bite.

When I finally got a breath, I begged for mercy over and over:

“No, no, no—I was wrong, Your Majesty! I was wrong!”

Perhaps he pitied me for shaking like a leaf in autumn.

He stopped, his head resting against my temple, panting hard.

Hope flared in me at once, and I put on the most pitiful expression of my life.

And then, the very next second—

He caught my hand, unerringly, from inside the cloak.

“I won’t touch you. Help me.”

The world went black before my eyes.

You damned emperor. This means war!