Chapter 139: This Is the Power Behind Him? You Believe That?

Chapter 139: This Is the Power Behind Him? You Believe That?

Li Ruotai sounded anxious, and as though he did not want to be overheard—his voice was kept very low.

“Almost there. Don’t worry.” Li Ruobing said it into the phone with her eyes still on Wu Chen’s, then swiped to end the call.

Her fingers closed around the phone. Her gaze never left him.

Several more seconds of silence.

Then she pulled hard on his tie again, leaned in, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Never mind anything else. Kiss first, think afterward.

She had kissed him a few times before, and he had kissed her as well. But those had been for show, or else provocation traded back and forth.

This was neither.

As she kissed him she let go of the tie and put both arms around his neck, taking the lead entirely. Wu Chen slid an arm around her waist and drew her against him.

A long, long time.

At last she drew back a little and said quietly, “We should go.”

She smiled at him. Then she glanced at the corner of his mouth, touched it with a fingertip, and held the finger up for him to see.

Her lipstick.

She let go of him, crossed to a table, pulled several tissues, and came back. Wu Chen reached to take them; she did not hand them over.

“I’ll do it,” she said softly.

And she wiped the corner of his mouth herself, carefully and in earnest, her gaze moving between his eyes and his lips. The smile on her face was faint, and carried a trace of something alluring.

It was perhaps the first time in her life she had turned that look, that feeling, on a man.

Wu Chen knew perfectly well that she was not trying to please him.

Of course she wasn’t.

She had simply made up her mind. Everything of these past days—and above all yesterday’s Su family board meeting—had brought her to a complete, unclouded understanding of how formidable Wu Chen was. How terrifying. She even had to concede that in certain respects he was far beyond her.

But she was not Su Qingying.

Once she accepted that he was stronger than she was, her most immediate thought ran: Wu Chen is worthy of me. He can be my partner.

It was the mindset of the strong.

And just now, the two of them had finally broken through the last thin barrier between them.

She meant to make things real with him. And she absolutely refused to be the weaker party in it, the one who was controlled.

In a partnership, one side would inevitably be the stronger.

She intended to be the one holding the initiative.

So wiping the lipstick from his mouth with her own hands was, in fact—

Her flirting with him.

Wu Chen understood exactly what was in her mind.

He was hardly worried about “falling” and yielding to her.

If anything, he thought it was going to be very interesting.

“Your makeup’s smudged,” he said with a smile. His hand came up and slid the tissues neatly out of her fingers; he wiped his own mouth and walked toward the sofa.

Li Ruobing’s hand stayed raised a moment where it was. Then she looked at his back and said quietly, “I’ll touch it up. Sit down for a minute, darling.”

She took up her bag and crossed the office, heels clicking, toward the private bathroom attached to the president’s office. The office had not only its own bathroom but a private rest room as well. Sometimes, when she worked too late, she did not go home at all and simply stayed there.

Her makeup was not badly smudged. The trouble was mainly the lipstick that had gone onto Wu Chen’s mouth, and the two of them rubbing at each other back and forth…

A few minutes later she came out of the bathroom and went straight for the rest room.

“I’m changing,” she said as she passed.

“All right!” Wu Chen answered from the sofa, smiling.

A few minutes more.

“Wu Chen, come and do this up for me…” she called from inside.

“Hm? Coming.” He rose and went over.

The door stood ajar. He pushed it open. The room was not large—somewhere to rest temporarily—but it held everything a bedroom would, along with a wardrobe of moderate size.

Li Ruobing stood before a full-length mirror with her back to him.

She had changed out of her business suit into a long black dress, formal enough for the occasion and still elegant, still feminine. The zipper ran up the back, and she evidently could not get it all the way up alone. Hence the summons.

Wu Chen came up behind her.

The dress was cut close at the waist. Her slender waist and back lay open to his view; he could even see the strap of her bra across it, enough to know the style she wore.

She tilted her head slightly at the mirror, and, seeing him come, swept her long straight black hair over to one side and held it there.

“Do it up for me.”

Her intention was simple.

Let him look. Half revealed, half hidden, and out of reach. Let it itch at him.

If Wu Chen made the first move, she could play coy and half-resist; if Wu Chen ended up begging her—

Then Wu Chen would have lost.

Wu Chen kept his faint smile.

He saw all of it.

The truth was he understood that, now that things had reached this stage, if she played this game she was bound to overplay it. Her experience in this area was effectively zero.

However intelligent she was, using unpracticed tricks on someone like Wu Chen—who had, in this respect, long since maxed out the level—meant something would happen sooner or later.

He reached out and drew the zipper slowly up her back.

“Done,” he said.

She reached to the table beside her, took up a box, and passed it back to him.

“Put this on me.”

He took it and opened it.

A diamond necklace.

Reaching both arms around her, he fastened it at her throat.

Li Ruobing considered herself in the mirror, then turned to face him. “Well?”

“Very nice,” Wu Chen said.

“Only nice?” she asked.

“What else? Does Li Ruobing need compliments from anyone? Do you even care?” he asked, smiling.

Her eyes narrowed slightly—and then a smile broke across her face. She stepped in, tugged lightly at his collar, straightened his tie, and leaned closer.

“You’re so good at getting under a person’s skin. I’m genuinely curious. Are you like this with every woman? Or…” Her voice dropped. “Only with me? Stirring me up on purpose. Does that mean I’m special? I am, aren’t I?”

And she smiled again, with a touch of triumph in it.

If he admitted she was special, she would have won this round.

“We should go,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

He neither admitted it nor denied it.

Her smile grew brighter still. Her mood lifted all at once.

At last she had gotten the better of Wu Chen once, making him dodge the question.

She did not realize he had given her that taste on purpose.

It would only make her bolder.

Now that the relationship had formally changed, he could not go on needling her without cease. She had to be allowed to feel pleased now and then.

Because what Wu Chen wanted was her love.

Having set his collar right, she slipped her arm through his.

“Let’s go!”

More than half an hour later.

Crown Entertainment, in the elegant, artfully appointed suite with the piano. Li Ruotai sat on a sofa, looking anxiously across the room.

On the sofa opposite sat a middle-aged man of around fifty, carrying the bearing of a man long accustomed to authority. There was a noticeable resemblance between them.

He was the father of Li Ruotai and Li Ruobing, the eldest son of the Li family’s Old Master, and the future head of the Li family—

Li Maoren.

“That’s all of it? This is everything you found?” He had finished the thick stack of documents. He looked up at his son, his expression severe.

“Dad! I feel the same as you. I know something’s wrong. I’ve been investigating behind Sis’s back for days—I even had people looking nationwide.” Li Ruotai’s explanation came with emphasis. “But this is what there is! There’s genuinely nothing more to find!”

“So you’re telling me the man Bingbing has taken a liking to comes from a family that runs a noodle shop?” Li Maoren tossed the file onto the table. “This is the power behind him? You believe that?”