My Queen, My Rules - 3
Kneel
The next morning dawned bright and clear. Sunlight streamed through the lush greenery of the villa district, washed clean by the night's rain.
Ji Mingshu opened her eyes, lifted her head just a fraction, then flopped right back onto the pillow.
A strong arm was wrapped tightly around her waist, pinning her in place. Not that she particularly wanted to move. Every muscle in her body ached, and everything below her waist still felt swollen, numb, and sore.
It was strange. Cen Sen had never been a man with an especially strong appetite. Before he left, it had been once, maybe twice a month. Just a straightforward meeting of needs, never even bothering to switch positions. But last night he'd behaved like someone who'd been saving up for two years and was determined to spend it all in one night, taking her again and again, not stopping until well past three in the morning.
Did that count as being good in bed? Ji Mingshu honestly wasn't sure. She had nothing to compare it to.
After letting her thoughts wander for a while, she reached toward the nightstand by feel. Her fingers found the remote, and she pressed the button to open the curtains.
The curtains had barely parted when Cen Sen frowned through half-lidded eyes, took the remote from her hand, closed them again, then casually draped his arm back around her waist.
"Take your hand..."
She hadn't even managed to finish the sentence before he withdrew his arm on his own, tugged the blanket higher, and muttered in a low, impatient voice, "Stop making noise. Go back to sleep."
The crease between his brows made one thing painfully obvious. He genuinely found her chattering annoying.
Sated and scornful. That was him, all right.
Fortunately, Ji Mingshu wasn't in any hurry to get up either. She gave him a light, but not too light, kick, rolled onto her other side, and picked up her phone.
The previous night's gala still dominated online conversation that morning, though nearly every discussion centered around the celebrities.
As the undeniable center of the group photo, Su Cheng naturally appeared in post after post. Fashion bloggers had already crowned her best dressed of the evening, and the comments were full of praise, most of them echoing the same sentiment: Once the queen shows up, everyone else fades into the background.
Ji Mingshu scrolled for a while. Every photo featuring Su Cheng either had half the frame cropped or the background artfully blurred. Even the official promotional video released by Zero Degrees was no exception.
This wasn't surprising. Cen Sen had always remained invisible to the public eye.
Still, after last night's appearance, everyone who mattered already knew that the long-absent heir to Jingjian had returned.
Jingjian was the Cen family's business empire. Its internal factions were notoriously complex, with years of infighting.
In this generation, Cen Yuanchao's branch stood firmly at the top. They controlled the government's flagship infrastructure projects along with Junyi Hotel Group, the company's most profitable division, giving them unquestioned authority within Jingjian.
Unfortunately, Cen Yuanchao's health had deteriorated in recent years. He had quietly been rushed into the emergency room several times.
His illness emboldened the opposing factions. While they weren't strong enough to overthrow his side, their constant maneuvering and power plays had stirred up plenty of turmoil inside Jingjian.
As Cen Yuanchao's only son, Cen Sen carried enormous responsibility. Fortunately, he possessed the ability to match it. He looked refined, even gentle, but his methods were famously swift and ruthless. Among his generation, very few dared challenge him directly.
He was also harder on himself than on anyone else. To secure the Ji family's support against the southern Cen branch, he had married Ji Mingshu without the slightest hesitation, despite her reputation as one of the capital's most notoriously spoiled heiresses.
When news of the Cen-Ji marriage first broke, everyone was stunned. Many even assumed the engagement was merely political theater and that the wedding would never actually take place.
But once the engagement banquet proceeded as scheduled, and Cen Sen was transferred from Huazhang Holdings under Junyi back to the group's headquarters as Director of Development, it became increasingly obvious that the crown prince intended to use this marriage to strengthen his claim to the family's throne.
From the engagement announcement until Ji Mingshu's first visit back to her family after the wedding, gossip surrounding the two of them never stopped.
It was only after six months of marriage that the couple finally began to fade from after-dinner conversation.
Then, without warning, Cen Sen requested a transfer to Junyi's overseas division, volunteering for a long-term assignment in Australia to expand the company's international market.
This, of course, caused another uproar.
Back when he'd first returned to Junyi headquarters, Cen Sen had pushed through a new luxury hot spring resort brand called Shuiyunjian despite overwhelming opposition.
Few had faith in the project at the time. It required enormous investment with little immediate return, leaving him under relentless pressure from senior executives.
He never backed down. Instead, he methodically cleared away every obstacle standing in his path. Under his iron-handed leadership, he effectively controlled the situation.
He endured the pressure until the hotels were finally completed. Just when everyone expected him to use that success to climb even higher, to everyone's bewilderment, he'd asked for the overseas transfer instead.
Two years had passed. Mention a luxury hot spring resort, and whether people could afford one or not, Junyi Shuiyunjian was the first name that came to mind.
There was no louder endorsement than becoming synonymous with the product itself.
Now Cen Sen had quietly returned just as unexpectedly as he'd left. Curiosity that had lain dormant for two years reignited overnight. Private discussions had been raging ever since the gala.
Ji Mingshu's WeChat was practically bombarded. Her unread messages filled the screen in a sea of red notifications. She didn't even need to open them to know they were all different variations of the same question, trying to pry details about Cen Sen out of her.
Gu Kaiyang, however, had no interest in digging for inside information. Early that morning she simply sent over a teasing voice message.
"Still not awake?"
"Looks like President Cen is pretty incredible in bed."
Ji Mingshu only tapped the first message, but before she could raise the phone to her ear, autoplay immediately continued into the second.
She fumbled to stop it, but her fingers weren't fast enough. By the time she touched the screen, the message had already finished, and her tap replayed it instead.
"Looks like President Cen is pretty incredible in bed."
The room was utterly silent.
The teasing remark, accompanied by the faint hiss of speaker static, echoed twice, as though the listener were confirming it with relish.
Ji Mingshu's ears immediately perked up.
The steady breathing behind her...
...had stopped.
Her whole body stiffened. Moving as slowly as possible, she slid the phone beneath her pillow. Every muscle tensed, and even her toes curled involuntarily.
Cen Sen was awake.
He lay on the left side of the bed, glanced at Ji Mingshu's perfectly rigid, slender back, and silently smirked.
A moment later, he threw back the covers and got out of bed.
Ji Mingshu heard his footsteps circle around from the other side of the bed, drawing closer with every step. She hurriedly squeezed her eyes shut, though her trembling eyelashes completely gave her away.
Within moments he had reached her side. She instinctively held her breath. In that brief instant, her mind rehearsed several sharp comebacks that wouldn't lose her any ground.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Thirty seconds.
The footsteps came close, then gradually moved away again. Only when the sound of running water drifted out from the bathroom did Ji Mingshu realize something.
Cen Sen simply couldn't be bothered exposing her pretense.
For some reason, that irritated her even more. She glared toward the bathroom for several seconds before suddenly throwing back the blanket and dropping heavily against the headboard in frustration.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a stack of documents on Cen Sen's bedside cabinet. Leaning forward, she stretched as far as she could, barely managing to hook them with her fingertips.
Junyi Hotel Group Designer Hotel Development Proposal.
She had only meant to grab something to vent her frustration on, but the moment she read the title, her expression subtly changed.
When Cen Sen walked out of the bathroom, he found Ji Mingshu sitting against the headboard, reading through the proposal with complete concentration.
Her nightgown had been thoroughly rumpled during the night, the hem riding high to reveal long, elegantly crossed legs that were dazzlingly pale.
She noticed him, but her eyes remained glued to the documents as she casually asked, "Junyi is building a designer hotel?"
"Mm."
He tipped his chin slightly as he fastened the top button of his dress shirt.
Ji Mingshu said nothing more and continued flipping through the pages.
She was the only girl of her generation in the Ji family. Although her parents had passed away early, her uncles and aunts had spoiled her beyond measure, famously so. Marrying into the Jingjian Cen family after graduation had only cemented her position at the very top of the capital's socialite scene.
Her days were filled with exclusive parties, spontaneous vacations around the world on a whim, and a life so effortless that everyone envied it.
Few people remembered that she had, in fact, graduated near the top of her class in interior design at SCAD. She wasn't some brainless rich girl who only knew how to shop.
"I remember you studied interior design at SCAD." Cen Sen suddenly looked over at her. "Interested?"
Ji Mingshu raised her head and stared at him for several seconds. She honestly hadn't expected her bargain-bin husband to remember something like that.
It took her a long while to recover. Quietly suppressing the delight bubbling inside her, she began composing a suitably dignified response, one worthy of a princess graciously bestowing her attention upon a lowly subject.
Before Her Highness could deign to speak, however, Cen Sen continued, "Once the hotel's finished, I'll have someone take you on an early tour."
"...?"
"A tour?"
"You weren't actually thinking of joining the design team, were you?" He dismissed the idea without hesitation. "No. The hotel's not a practice project for you."
Unable to hold back, Ji Mingshu blurted out, "Last night's gala was my design."
Cen Sen paused, turning to look back at her. "Ah. So that was you."
The realization dawned on him, followed immediately by a meaningful look.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"It means I definitely can't let you get involved."
He calmly fastened his watch, lowered his eyes, and delivered the verdict with quiet certainty.
Ji Mingshu had already felt a little guilty. Hearing that, her ears immediately turned red, and she instinctively straightened her back. "Last night wasn't representative of my actual skills!"
Her voice shot up an entire octave, perfectly proving the saying that those without a leg to stand on tend to shout the loudest.
Cen Sen looked as though he was holding back a smile. One eyebrow lifted ever so slightly as he patiently waited for her explanation.
It was a long story. The gala had originally been planned around the theme of "The Round Table," echoing the very first issue of Zero Degrees published ten years earlier.
But just after Ji Mingshu finished the design drafts, the magazine's parent company and its sponsors suddenly fell into conflict, leaving the budget dramatically reduced.
Fashion ran on money. Zero Degrees refused to scale back, while headquarters refused to allocate additional funding. After a week of deadlock, both sides finally compromised by merging the tenth-anniversary fashion gala with the charity gala originally scheduled for the following quarter.
Once the event became a charity gala, flashy fashion concepts and themed party designs were no longer appropriate. That meant Ji Mingshu's original design had to be completely scrapped.
She hated last-minute changes more than anything, and she had a notoriously high opinion of herself. The last time she had personally taken on a project was two years earlier, designing the venue for Chrischou's Milan Fashion Week spring collection. If not for doing Gu Kaiyang a favor, she wouldn't have accepted Zero Degrees' troublesome project in the first place. Then, after all that, they actually had the nerve to demand a complete redesign. The moment she heard the news, she unceremoniously hung up on the editor-in-chief.
Her original intention had been to walk out and let someone else deal with the mess. But after Gu Kaiyang relentlessly pleaded with her, she eventually gave in and started over.
But with the time crunch and the complete do-over, the new design was, she had to admit, a bit phoned in. The final result was adequate and suitably luxurious, but it lacked any real identity.
Ji Mingshu herself hadn't been satisfied with last night's work. But when the words of explanation reached her lips, she realized she wasn't entirely blameless either. Her mouth opened and closed several times, yet nothing came out. Finally, she just slumped onto her knees on the bed in defeat.
Cen Sen had already finished dressing and was ready to leave. Seeing that she still hadn't managed to produce any convincing excuse, he wasn't the least bit surprised. His gaze merely cooled slightly as he said, "Kneeling to me won't help. You'd be better off bowing and kneeling your way to the Potala Palace. Maybe heaven would be moved by you.”
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