When the apartment door swung open, I was completely wasted, leaning heavily against Xu Jiangshu. Before I could process what was happening, a powerful yank ripped me straight into someone else’s chest. The door slammed shut behind us like a razor-sharp cut, severing every link to the outside world.

This time, Xie Lin was no longer the obedient, submissive dog who swallowed every humiliation. He scooped me up into his arms and carried me into the bedroom, tossing me onto the mattress with a raw, possessive roughness. Sharp and immaculate in his black suit, he deliberately unbuckled his leather belt and bound my wrists tightly to the headboard.

“My princess… since when does a stray dog stay obedient forever?”

His kiss crashed down on me, reeking of alcohol and pure, unadulterated dominance. There was no gentleness here—only the explosion of a long-suppressed, dangerous desire. He kissed me until my mind went completely blank, every ounce of resistance crumbling beneath the absolute authority of the man above me.

…

I woke up the next morning feeling like I’d been run over by a truck, finding Xie Lin’s arm wrapped tightly around my waist. I slapped him hard across the face, but he didn’t even get mad. He simply pressed a soft kiss to the back of my hand, his eyes absurdly tender. “Are you tired, princess?”

I screamed at him, threatening to call the police for assault, but Xie Lin calmly produced his phone. The audio recording played back my own slurred, intoxicated voice rambling: “Stray dog… you’re mine… I like you…”

My face burned bright red, completely struck mute by the ironclad proof. It turned out that in my drunken stupor, I was the one who had forced myself on him. Left with no choice, I scrambled to patch over my embarrassment with one final burst of arrogance: “I was just training you! You’re my property!”

“Yeah,” he replied—a single word dripping with indulgence, yet soaked in cold calculation.

Our dynamic morphed into something utterly bizarre. I still bossed him around, but the underlying illusion of power had completely shifted.

One day, I accidentally opened Xie Lin’s laptop. My heart practically stopped. Folder after folder filled with photos of me: sleeping, eating, even stepping out of the shower. Tucked neatly into the back corner of his closet were the missing undergarments I thought I’d lost ages ago. The anonymous, terrifying texts from before… every single piece of the puzzle finally clicked into place.

I was ready to confront him, ready to blow a fuse, but then I froze. Looking at myself in the mirror, I wasn’t exactly pure and innocent either, considering I’d forced him through every insane, sadistic bullying prank I found online, even using a whip to “train” him.

When I tried to kick him, Xie Lin caught my leg mid-air, pulling me flush against his broad chest.

“Princess, you’ve already ‘eaten’ me. Trying to back out of the debt now… won’t be that easy.”

It turned out that in this game, I had never been the one holding the reins. I thought I was taming a stray dog, when in reality, I was walking step by step into the lair of a predator disguised as a harmless pet.

After a long internal struggle, I took my mother’s handwritten letter to see Auntie Meng Yu. The moment her eyes landed on the familiar script, they welled with red, tears spilling over in a choked sob. “I’m sorry… I came too late. I’m so sorry…”

Years ago at Z University, Li Shu and Meng Yu had been a legendary duo of star students. Their bond ran so deep that even after receiving official warnings from the administration, they continued to love each other in secret under the guise of “best friends.” But tragedy struck when the powerful Li family forced my mother into an arranged marriage to strengthen their clan.

They had tried running away together multiple times, only to be caught every single time. In the end, with her ailing father near death, my mother was forced to submit, marrying my father and giving birth to me. Meng Yu vanished without a trace after that.

Decades later, Meng Yu had built herself into a wildly successful corporate executive. The moment she heard news of my mother, she instantly resigned from her position to find her—only for fate to play its cruelest joke, leaving her to arrive at a solitary, overgrown grave.

She confessed everything to my father. He quietly agreed to let her stay in my mother’s old room. She lived among her relics, touching every old object as if my mother were still standing right beside her. Sometimes, she would stare at me until she drifted off, softly whispering, “Shuyu… maybe we’re still together, just in a different way.”

The most shocking truth I uncovered was this: Xie Lin wasn’t Meng Yu’s biological son. Decades ago, the two women had promised each other that if they ever built a life together, they would adopt a child. Years later, Auntie Meng Yu found Xie Lin in an orphanage—a silent, sullen boy constantly bullied because his biological parents were convicted criminals.

What almost no one knew was that their first meeting hadn’t been at the Jiang residence. It was a sun-drenched day at the orphanage, when a fierce little rich girl had stepped in to chase away the mean kids picking on him. “Are you stupid? They’re picking on you and you don’t even talk back?” The little girl had handed him her snacks, telling him he needed to grow up strong, right before her father called out to her: “Shuyu, time to go home!”

From that day on, that poor, forgotten boy spent his entire life following the shadow of his little guardian angel.

Taking notes from my previous drunken disaster, I only took tiny sips at our wedding reception. Xie Lin, on the other hand, enthusiastically downed every celebratory toast on my behalf.

On the drive home, he wrapped his arms tightly around me in the back seat, burying his face in the crook of my neck and murmuring, “Wife… you smell so good…” His deep, raspy voice sounded completely wasted, softening my heart as I practically dragged his heavy frame all the way into our bedroom.

Yet the instant I tried to lay him down on the mattress to let him sleep, a sudden, powerful flip reversed our positions. His suit jacket and tie were still pristine, his dark eyes shockingly clear, showing not a single trace of intoxication.

I gasped in disbelief. “You bastard… you were faking it?”

Xie Lin let out a low chuckle, leaning down to lightly nip my earlobe, his hot breath brushing my skin. “I never said I was drunk. I was just waiting… for you to take me home yourself.”

I stood speechlessly, realizing that even after marrying him, I was still no match for this “stray dog’s” endless schemes. Moonlight filtered through the window, bathing the bedroom in a soft, ethereal glow. And in that quiet space, the spoiled princess had absolutely no way of escaping his possessive embrace.