The Sickly Beauty Gives Up Struggling [Rebirth] Chapter 190

Li Rong was highly attuned to emotions. The moment Cen Xiao leaned in to kiss him, his hands wandering across his body, Li Rong knew that Cen Xiao was neither angry nor jealous anymore.

Quickly abandoning his feigned innocent and aggrieved expression, Li Rong raised his eyelids slightly, licking the spot where Cen Xiao had kissed him with the tip of his tongue. Then he tugged on the collar of his lab coat, teasingly saying, “Who said I wasn’t wearing anything underneath?”

Cen Xiao raised a brow and let his fingers play with the buttons. “Really? Let me check.”

He made a show of unbuttoning the lab coat, but Li Rong blinked and pushed against his chest. “Go take a shower. You smell like District Nine.”

Cen Xiao found it amusing and lifted his arm to sniff his sleeve. “What does District Nine smell like?”

Li Rong responded, “Coffee, wardrobes, leather chairs, and spider plants all mixed together.”

After Han Jiang moved out, all the items in the office were replaced, so it wasn’t surprising that it carried a mix of new scents for a while.

Cen Xiao pulled Li Rong closer into his embrace. “Join me for a shower, won’t you?”

Though he asked, “Won’t you?” Cen Xiao clearly had no intention of giving Li Rong a chance to refuse. He started leading Li Rong toward the bathroom.

The newly purchased villa had a spacious bathroom with a large bathtub big enough for two people. Opposite the tub was a special floor-to-ceiling window that offered a view of the surrounding greenery. From outside, however, it was impossible to see inside.

“I already showered!” Li Rong protested, caught off guard. His slippers slipped off halfway down the stairs, tumbling to the bottom.

He reflexively lifted his foot and stopped on the step. 

At times, Li Rong’s slight cleanliness quirks surfaced—like now, when he didn’t want to step on the unswept floor with his freshly cleaned feet.

Without hesitation, Cen Xiao scooped him up in a princess carry, casually knocking off the other slipper. Effortlessly, he carried Li Rong down the stairs.

Although Li Rong was tall, being carried this way made him feel awkward. With both slippers abandoned on the stairs, he couldn’t exactly jump down from Cen Xiao’s arms.

He patted Cen Xiao’s shoulder and gazed longingly at the slippers left behind. “You’re really not going to pick them up for me?”

“Nope. If I pick them up, you’ll just run off,” Cen Xiao replied matter-of-factly as he carried Li Rong into the bathroom. He set him down on the edge of the tub, then bent over, boxing Li Rong in with his arms. His voice dropped low. “I haven’t checked yet. How do I know if Team Leader Li is lying?”

Li Rong, unwilling to put his feet on the wet floor, propped himself up with his hands on the tub’s edge, curling his legs against his chest. Even his toes reflexively curled as he tried to stay as dry as possible. He shrank into a small bundle by the tub’s edge. “The High Tower Group isn’t like Ghost Eye; we don’t spin plots and tell blatant lies.”

“Team Leader Li is too modest.” Cen Xiao turned on the faucet, filling the tub with water. His hand reached down to pinch Li Rong’s freshly scrubbed, soft toes.

“Ah!” Li Rong wasn’t immune to ticklish touches. Startled by Cen Xiao’s sudden squeeze, he jerked back, which threw him off balance. He slipped straight into the tub, splashing water everywhere.

Though Cen Xiao caught him before any harm could come, Li Rong ended up thoroughly soaked, his lab coat clinging to him like a second skin.

Dripping wet, Li Rong tried to pull himself up using Cen Xiao’s arm, but the drenched lab coat highlighted his figure in vivid detail. Beneath the wet fabric, even the outline of his undergarments became faintly visible.

Cen Xiao raised an eyebrow in surprise. “So you weren’t lying after all.”

Indeed, Li Rong was wearing something underneath—black underwear that had been invisible earlier but now stood out strikingly.

“Of course. I was saving it for you to take off,” Li Rong said, exasperated. Completely drenched, the carefully chosen outfit designed to tease was now uncomfortably wet. He only wanted to get out of it and dry off. The romantic mood he had envisioned was thoroughly disrupted.

Cen Xiao’s eyes burned as they followed Li Rong’s every move, his gaze locked on the enticing silhouette outlined by the wet fabric.

He knew Li Rong preferred something more refined—after all, he was the carefully cultivated “little prince” raised by Gu Nong and Li Qingli. Deep down, he had a certain aesthetic ideal. But Cen Xiao had to admit, the current scene was a visual that packed quite a punch.

Cen Xiao’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Without hesitation, he stepped into the bathtub himself, wrapped an arm around Li Rong’s waist, and rested his chin against his ear. In a low voice, he murmured, “Now I really want to help you take it off.”

Li Rong paused for a moment, then turned his head, a sly glint in his eyes as he sized up Cen Xiao. “I didn’t expect Group Leader Cen to have this kind of… preference.”

The sight of someone wet was proving far more provocative than he’d anticipated.

The water in the tub barely reached their ankles, still far from suitable for a soak. But Cen Xiao crouched down slowly, starting to roll up the damp fabric of Li Rong’s lab coat, inch by inch, where it clung to his legs.

The soaked fabric folded back at an agonizingly slow pace, droplets of water dripping from its edges into the tub with a soft plip-plip. As the material was pushed higher, Li Rong’s calves were revealed, then his knees, and soon his thighs.

The water level continued to rise, inching up with the steady flow from the faucet. Li Rong’s ankles disappeared beneath the rippling surface, and the damp fabric brushing against his skin made him unconsciously stir the water with his toes.

When the lab coat was raised high enough, Li Rong’s breathing grew heavier. His flushed skin was tinged red from the heat. Biting his lip, he impatiently began undoing Cen Xiao’s buttons. “When did you become so good at holding back? Hurry up—I want you!”

Cen Xiao was also reaching his limit. Hearing Li Rong’s demand, the hapless lab coat was discarded into the water in the next moment. He reached over to the nearby storage shelf, retrieving a bottle of clear liquid.

Water rippled, splashes shimmered, and light danced on the waves.

Throughout the encounter, the bathtub was never fully filled.

***

Two hours later, Li Rong tossed his thoroughly soaked lab coat into the laundry hamper. Sliding back into the water, he allowed the ripples to brush over the lingering marks on his skin.

He lazily nudged Cen Xiao’s knee with his foot, resembling a well-fed cat now flaunting its dominance. “So, tell me, what do you plan to do about all those admirers of yours, Group Leader Cen?”

Cen Xiao, still not fully recovered from the earlier intensity, pressed his palm against the top of Li Rong’s foot. “What?”

Li Rong narrowed his eyes, flexing his calf muscles. “Don’t think I don’t know—your grandparents’ doorstep is probably getting worn down with visitors, isn’t it?”

Cen Xiao chuckled softly, brushing his thumb across the arch of Li Rong’s foot in a soothing motion. “My dad came to see me today. He told me not to let lust cloud my judgment and warned me to be careful in case you ‘use me and toss me aside.’”

“Wow, President Cen would actually say something like that?” Li Rong sounded genuinely surprised.

Cen Xiao nodded. “It just goes to show how inherently self-serving people are. If I were to tell him outright that we’re together, he’d probably have a thousand reasons to object. But the moment he heard about you having milk tea with some girl, his first reaction wasn’t to worry about my orientation but to insist that the Cen family can’t suffer any losses.”

Li Rong mulled over his words thoughtfully. “In that case, it seems like Teacher Xiao might actually be harder to deal with.”

After all, in their previous life, Xiao Muran had clashed with Cen Xiao so fiercely that it nearly led to a complete breakdown of their mother-son relationship.

Cen Xiao shook his head. “No, you don’t understand her. My mother has spent her entire life enduring and compromising. When something happens, her first instinct is always to change herself to adapt, not to fight back.”

Li Rong: “What about the last lifetime?”

Xiao Muran didn’t seem like the kind of person who would meekly endure things. She acted like she wouldn’t stop until she tore them apart.

Cen Xiao glanced at Li Rong and sighed. “There was a bit of a misunderstanding in our last lifetime. I was impulsive and said something cruel and insincere to her. I told her I forced you to be with me just to get back at her for being hung up on Li Qingli. I was only twenty-two or twenty-three at the time, and controlling my emotions in front of my parents was still a challenge.”

In hindsight, it was hard to believe anyone would take such a foolish revenge seriously.

Who would plot revenge in a way that tied themselves into it?

Truthfully, he’d just been giving himself an excuse to help Li Rong.

But in the heat of the moment, he’d spoken with unwavering conviction. Xiao Muran believed him completely, and their argument escalated into a fierce and bitter fight, ending in a complete fallout.

Xiao Muran had always had a profound influence on him. That day, when he returned to the place he shared with Li Rong, he almost lost his temper and lashed out at him.

It was at that moment he realized he had to confront the psychological shadows of his childhood—the resentment and hidden pain Xiao Muran had left behind. Otherwise, one day, he might truly lose control and hurt Li Rong.

Letting go of that pain and diminishing its impact wasn’t easy. Even as an adult, he understood that his parents’ immaturity had led to immature parenting. Though he had long since outgrown their influence, the memories of neglect still left him feeling despondent.

But deep down, a voice told him he could never let go of Li Rong. So, he had to shatter the dark side of himself and love Li Rong openly, purely, and without retreat.

Li Rong lowered his lashes, swirling his hand in the warm water. “Our psychological age is actually around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, yet those elders and teachers keep introducing us to girls barely twenty. It feels really awkward.”

“Yeah, we do need to figure out a solution for that,” Cen Xiao agreed.

“What solution? Hongsuo and Blue Pivot have just settled down. The more low-key we are, the better. Plus, you need your performance metrics, and I need my achievements.” Li Rong had been dragging it out because he couldn’t think of a good solution.

Cen Xiao just smiled, pulling Li Rong over from the other side of the bathtub and warming his slightly chilled shoulders. “You’re still worried about achievements at a time like this? Seems I haven’t worked hard enough.”

Li Rong’s hand mischievously slipped behind his back, teasing under the water. “True. I thought all your overtime work had left you worn out.”

Cen Xiao’s smile deepened, his voice lowering. “It’s hard to exert much force in the water. How about you lean against the edge of the tub, and we test that theory?”

Like a slippery eel, Li Rong wriggled out of Cen Xiao’s grip. He straightened up, looking serious. “The water’s gone cold. For the second round, I’m heading back to bed.”

Stumbling slightly as he climbed out of the tub, he stepped into Cen Xiao’s slippers, wrapped a towel around himself, and hid his slightly trembling legs beneath it.

In truth, he wasn’t as tough as his tone suggested. But when it came to this, a man simply couldn’t admit defeat.

Cen Xiao was just about to step out of the tub when his eyes caught sight of water droplets clinging to Li Rong’s fingers.

Under the bathroom lights, the droplets glimmered faintly, like delicate diamonds trembling with radiance.

Cen Xiao froze for a few seconds, captivated.

Li Rong furrowed his brows in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

Cen Xiao shook his head, murmuring, “Nothing.”