Inside the nightclub, Cui Jing followed Li Hongbin and his southern clients into a private VIP room and sat down on one of the plush couches.  

The citywide crackdown on prost.i.tution continued unabated, which meant s.e.x workers were a lot harder to come by outside of the alley.  Back in the day, throngs of scantily-clad women would have darted in between the dance floor, hallways, and VIP rooms; now, they were nowhere to be seen.  However, this didn’t necessarily mean the nightclub had suddenly become some sacred ground of purity and chast.i.ty.  In every VIP room, the exchange of money and flesh went on.  True, there were no longer any women waiting for customers at the nightclub itself, but that didn’t prevent clubgoers from bringing along escorts they had already paid for.  Nightclubs weren’t like restaurants; they didn’t turn down customers who brought in “outside food and beverages,” to put it euphemistically.  As long as the nightclub wasn’t the one hiring the women, then it was all good.  If a customer was willing to pay for himself and his guests, then he could bring a whole army of prost.i.tutes if he so wished.

Inside the VIP room, Li Hongbin ordered an a.s.sortment of snacks and alcoholic beverages from a nightclub server before finding an excuse and left the room.  As a result, Cui Jing was left all alone to chit-chat with his clients.  Of course, Li Hongbin hadn’t brought Cui Jing and his southern clients to the nightclub just to talk.  All of them tacitly understood that merely chatting with a woman wasn’t going to seal the deal. Although Cui Jing naively trusted Li Hongbin, she wasn’t stupid.  She knew that these southerners wanted something from her, so she played a delicate game of verbal cat and mouse with them.  However, what she truly hoped for deep down inside was for Li Hongbin’s quick return.

After leaving the VIP room, Li Hongbin stood outside the door for a while and listened in.  He heard the southerners starting to flirt with Cui Jing.  He rubbed his nose and then walked over to the nightclub’s bar.  To say that he had no feelings for Cui Jing whatsoever would be incorrect.  No one is devoid of feelings.  Besides, Li Hongbin found Cui Jng to be a clever, obedient woman who was also quite beautiful.  Therefore, having to give Cui Jing away tonight for the enjoyment of other men was not a thought that he particularly relished.  But he’d already taken things this far, and there was no going back now.  He could only blame himself for being so dumb and stupid.  

As these thoughts swirled inside his head, Li Hongbin leaned over onto the bar.  He gestured towards a tall, thin, and smart-looking bartender, who obediently walked over to where he stood.  The two didn’t speak; there was no need for words when their expressions already said everything.  The bartender very vigilantly looked left and right, before quickly sliding a small paper packet across the bar to Li Hongbin, who responded with a smile and promptly forked over the money.  He then casually indicated for the bartender to prepare some more drinks, which he took with him back to the VIP room.

“Hey!  It looks like everyone is having a good time here!” announced Li Hongbin as he opened the door to the room and brought in the newly-ordered drinks.  Inside, the hasty southerners had already sandwiched Cui Jing in between them and were beginning to place their hands all over her body.  For her part, Cui Jing was trying her best to fend off their physical a.s.saults.

“Haha, of course!”  When the southerners saw that Li Hongbin had returned, they naturally ceased what they were doing.  They were all well-aware of Li Hongbin’s background.  Even though he was the one asking them for a favor, it didn’t mean they could treat him like s.h.i.+t.  p.i.s.sing off the great Prince Li was not a good idea, no matter who you were.  After all, even these southerners knew that his father was the legendary Li Gang.

“Here, try some of this!”  Li Hongbin didn’t react to what the southerners were doing to Cui Jing.  He placed the tray down on the coffee table and sat next to her, as if he were protecting her.  “This is genuine French cognac!” he said as he lifted the bottle of liquor off of the tray and poured everyone a shot.  However, when he reached towards one of the southerners, his hand shook a little, and the shot gla.s.s fell onto the floor.  “Aiya!  This…”  Li Hongbin looked at the shot gla.s.s on the floor and immediately put down the bottle before apologizing profusely to the southerner in front of him.  “I’m so sorry!  I must’ve had more to drink than I had realized!”

“Don’t worry about it!”  Even though the southerner was a bit displeased, he nevertheless kept his cool and didn’t lose his temper.  He picked up the shot gla.s.s off of the ground and said, “It’s fine!  It didn’t break.”

“No, that won’t do!” Li Hongbin promptly responded.  “I can’t let you use that gla.s.s anymore!”  He glanced at Cui Jing and said, “Jing, go to the bar and grab another shot gla.s.s for Mr. Qian.”

“Ah, got it!”  Hearing Li Hongbin’s order, Cui Jing very gratefully stood up, grabbed the dirty gla.s.s, and flew out of the VIP room.

After Cui Jing left, Li Hongbin smiled at all of the southerners in the room, before pulling out the small paper packet from his pocket.  He opened the packet so the southerners could clearly see its contents, before mixing it into Cui Jing’s gla.s.s.  Finally, he filled up her gla.s.s with more cognac before leaning back onto the couch.  “Don’t worry!  I’ll make sure to take care of all of you gentlemen tonight, but…”

“Haha!  You’re a straight-shooter, Mr. Li!”  The southerners saw what Li Hongbin did and laughed amongst themselves.  Then they s.h.i.+fted their gaze back to Li Hongbin and said, “The purchase order isn’t a big deal.  We already felt that you, Mr. Li, would be the best choice to do business with.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Li Hongbin as he looked left and right, before settling on the one they called “Mr. Qian”.   “If that’s the case, then the contract…”

“Right away!”  Mr. Qian nodded, since he had become the focus of Li Hongbin’s attention.  “We shouldn’t have a problem reaching the deal if the price…”

“Ha!”  Seeing Mr. Qian wanted to haggle some more, Li Hongbin waved his hand.  “There’s no need to haggle on the price anymore!  I’ll give each of you gentlemen another 10% discount, how about that?  Besides, this company belongs to the state, not to me personally, so why do I care how profitable it is?”

“Haha, alright then!”  Mr. Qian relaxed and fell back onto the couch.  “If that’s the case, then we’ve got ourselves a deal!  We can sign the contract right here, right now!”

“Then let us toast to our new partners.h.i.+p!” announced Li Hongbin as he raised his gla.s.s.  All of the southern businessmen in the room followed suit and raised their own gla.s.ses as well.  The great Comrade Deng Xiaoping once said that the country should let some people get rich first, but he probably didn’t mean letting people get rich by breaking the law.

Cui Jing waited at the bar for about ten minutes.  The tall and skinny bartender came over and told her that the shot gla.s.s she was holding was reserved for VIP room use only, so they didn’t have any on-hand at the bar.  They needed to run back into the kitchen to grab a clean one.  That suited Cui Jing just fine, because she didn’t particularly want to return to the VIP room.  So she quietly sat on her barstool and waited patiently for the bartender to return.  After she got the new shot gla.s.s, she didn’t immediately return to the VIP room.  Instead, she wasted some more time walking around the nightclub.  But, eventually, she reluctantly returned to the VIP room with shot gla.s.s in hand.

“How long does it take to get a new shot gla.s.s?”  Li Hongbin purposely put on an anxious expression when he saw Cui Jing had returned.  “Mr. Qian has been waiting all day!”

“Haha!  No worries!  No worries!” Mr. Qian rea.s.sured them.  He smiled at Cui Jing, as if to say he didn’t mind.  “We found that the cognac tastes just as good being drunk from a tea cup, haha!”  He raised a teacup full of cognac and said, “Come, Miss Cui!  Why don’t you join us for this round?”

“Oh!  I’m so sorry!”  Cui Jing glanced at Li Hongbin and saw that he was silently nodding at her.  She knew that the southerners weren’t too happy with her being gone for so long, and now Li Hongbin was signalling for her to drink with Mr. Qian, so she had no choice but to pick up her old shot gla.s.s.  “I’m really sorry.  The shot gla.s.ses in our VIP room are…”

“Don’t worry about it!  Really!”  Mr. Qian still acted as if he didn’t care that she had been gone so long.  “Mr. Li and I are old friends.  So seriously, no need to worry!”  He raised his teacup and extended his arm towards Cui Jing.

When the men in the room saw that Cui Jing had downed her entire gla.s.s, they all stepped aside to let her sit down.  Li Hongbin, Mr. Qian, and the rest of the southerners gave Cui Jing a vast amount of s.p.a.ce to herself as they continued chatting beside her.  It was as if all of the men in the room had forgotten about her existence.  Just when Cui Jing thought she had finished her duties this evening unscathed, she suddenly felt a fire burning inside of her.  Soon thereafter, her thoughts became clouded, and she felt a strong burning desire deep inside her body: the desire to make love with every man in this room.

What Cui Jing didn’t know was that her desires went very well-satisfied that night.  She wantonly ran and jumped all around the room, while the men complied with her every demand.  They enjoyed themselves with her body well into the morning hours, before the men took her back to their hotel, where the unrestrained display of s.e.xual pa.s.sion continued.

When Cui Jing’s body could no longer support itself amidst the orgy, Li Hongbin bid the southerners farewell and left the nightclub.  Seeing a woman that he had once possessed being used by other men wasn’t something he was happy about.  However, on this night, Li Hongbin might have given Cui Jing away to those southerners, but what he got in return was a ma.s.sive amount of money.  Perhaps by tomorrow, he would be on the lookout for the next Cui Jing.