“What about you?” Kianna asked Paul.
The pilot simply smirked beautifully at her before standing. “I am way ahead of you.” He waved some form of a card. “I get to stay for free when I travel. I’ll see to the bags just let me know where you’ll be.”
Dao smiled as Paul wished them a good evening and left. He turned to her and took her hand. He kissed her wrist gently, then released her hand. He did not know what to say to her. He had promised they would be in Xingping soon, but once again something happened to keep them from their destination. Reaching in, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and fell into the seat across from her.
Picking up the phone, he dialled and listened. He spent a few minutes booking them a place to stay for the night. At one point, he pressed a hand over the receiver and spoke, “Would you rather have your own room or room with me?” He smiled. Seeing she was embarrassed, he nodded. “I guess two,” he said to her before lifting his hand. “Hi,” he began again to the person on the phone when a hand touched his shoulder. He looked up to see her there.
“Make that one room with two beds?” she arched a brow at him.
Dao smiled. After the room was booked, he collected her bag along with his instead of having Paul deal with them, and was happy to find a car
waiting for them. He knew there was a reason he had hired Paul.
Kianna took a while, just standing outside the hotel and looking up at the building. The hotel was built a little ways in from the street, but there was a beautiful courtyard in the front. A gorgeous waterfall stood in the middle with clear water flowing. The ground was gold in colour and as Dao took her hand in one of his and their bags in another and led her toward the front door, she couldn’t help the way her jaw dropped.
The building itself was high, so high that as she counted the floors going up and lost count at twenty seven, then tried again. Soon she couldn’t look up anymore because the sun was glaring down into her eyes. She winced and clung closer to his side.
Stepping through the front doors ahead of him was something else. It was as though she had stepped into a whole new world. It was a world filled with glamour and cool, serene colours. Everything was more beautiful than she thought, than the pictures that had gone tattered in her diary as she had stared at them too much. Leather chairs, plants, pictures of dragons, waterfalls, people, the dragon boats! Everything was too
much for her and she began panting for air to refrain from crying.
“Are you alright?” Dao whispered close to her ear.
She nodded, but that simply pulled the tears and they toppled down her cheeks. A large fingertip caught one of her tears.
Dao kissed her eyelids. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Kianna felt like a blubbering mess, but couldn’t help it. “I can’t believe I’m actually here.” She looked up into his smiling eyes and the look he gave her caused her to nod. She wanted to tell him, prove to him that she was indeed going to be fine.
He read her eyes for a bit before inhaling and leading her to the front desk
In the gorgeous room, Kianna sat on her bed, fingering the camera that Dao had gotten her. She ached to use it to take her first picture, but nothing seemed worthy of it. She had aimed it a few times out the car window on their way from the Liangjiang International Airport, but nothing. She knew she was being picky, but it was the first picture her brand new camera would ever take. It was the first present that a man had ever gotten her. Other women would want jewellery, cars, expensive things, but Kianna was perfectly happy
with the camera. It meant more to her than any amount of money in the world.
The sun was setting and everything was silent in the room. She hadn’t expected that. She thought Dao would like to talk business with her, but figured he was too worried about his father for conversation. Getting up, she walked out of the bedroom to find him and what she found, took her breath away.
There, standing on the balcony overlooking the rough waters of the Li was Dao. He was shirtless and Kianna swallowed nervously. His back was muscular, strong. His skin looked smooth with nothing but one scar to tarnish the perfect view. But she liked that. A man that was smoother than she was didn’t sit right with her. The sunset flowed against his skin, causing it to turn into a light, caramel colour. Licking her lips, she lifted her camera to her eyes. “Dao?”
“Mhmm.” He inhaled and turned to look over his shoulder.
Kianna snapped her first picture then, lowered the camera to grin.
“I know there had to be something better you could have taken your first picture of.” He turned to face her fully.
“Have you seen yourself against a sunset?” Dao smiled. “Can’t say I have.”
Kianna placed her camera against the table beside her and walked out to the balcony. She said nothing to him. All she did was press her palms to his hard chest and caress downward slowly. She enjoyed the way her skin looked against him. She was going giddy from the way the heat of his flesh singed her hands. Her mouth watered at the steady beat of his heart when her hand moved over it.
“I was just going—”
She tweaked his nipple and he sucked some air through gritted teeth.
“To see if you were hungry.”
“Uh-huh,” she whispered absentmindedly before leaning forward to kiss his neck, then down under against his pulse. “Very hungry.” Kianna felt it the moment his heart quickened. His arms still didn’t move around her so she continued her nervous exploration of his body. She sucked against one of his nipple, swirled her tongue around it and grazed it with her teeth. She felt his body jerk and assumed she was doing something wrong. Moving her hands to Dao’s hips, Kianna took a deep breath and moved in closer. Sticking her tongue out, she trailed it down his chest and over his hard stomach before straightening and looking up into Dao’s face. Dao was gritting his teeth and he was holding so hard against the rail that his knuckles turned white. Instantly, Kianna
felt as though she had done something wrong. “I—”
“Please, don’t say you’re sorry.”
“Why won’t you touch me? Why are you just standing there?”
Dao chuckled softly. “Trust me, Kianna. If I touched you right now, I would have you facing downtown Guilin while I enter you from behind. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know. I just want to explore you,” Kianna admitted. “I want to feel your heartbeat against my lips, to taste the heated mass that’s your skin.”
Dao smiled down into her eyes and reached to tangle his fingers into her hair.
He brought her lips up to his and drank from them. Kianna released a sigh she had been holding and allowed her arms to circle his waist. But the kiss didn’t last. His mouth was then against her neck, sucking, licking, biting. She whispered his name as his mouth trailed over her pulse and up to kiss and suck at her chin.
“Dao,” she managed while licking her lips. The wet heat of his mouth was driving her absolutely insane. She was whimpering, shaking in his arms as though he had suddenly dipped her in hot water, then in cold. She fought against him, to be closer to him. She pulled at his jeans, clawed at his back and groaned when his teeth nipped against
the tender spot below her ear. Her knees buckled, but his strong arms held her up. Spinning, he pressed her against the rail while he continued his meal of her skin
Dao loved the feel of her skin against his tongue and he made a note to make it a habit to taste, lick at her often. He sucked at her neck, earlobe and chin. He nipped at her shoulder blade, pushing her robe out of the way. He took great pleasure in it when it pooled at their feet to reveal a beautiful red tank top with a pair of jeans shorts.
He fought to move slowly and soon he was kissing at the swells of her breasts that had drawn his attention. Holding against the small of her back, he used his teeth to pull one tank top strap from her shoulder. She was whispering something to him in English, then Cantonese, but he was too far gone to know what it was. But even then, those words built his desire, haunted his senses and tore at his soul.
With the strap off, one of her beautiful breasts sprang into view and Dao growled in utter satisfaction when his mouth engulfed the ebony orb. There was nothing more beautiful than a woman’s breast, but with Kianna, he had never had the pleasure of tasting any like hers. He took
his time, savoured every feel of her body as it writhed beneath him. Dao had patience, licking her, making her whimper and scream his name to the Chinese evening. Moving his mouth across, stopping to drop a kiss between her breasts, he bared the next one to his eyes and took the nipple between his lips. Squeezing down just barely enough to cause a bit of pain, he then sucked it away.
“Yes,” she groaned out. Her fingers found his long hair and they tightened.
When Dao released the breast, he slumped downward, pulling down the tank top as he went, kissing her stomach, tasting her belly button and having her cry out. When the shirt pooled to the ground, Dao set to work against her shorts. He undid the button and kissed at her stomach again. Unzipping, he pulled the shorts down, then reached for her thong. When she was fully naked before his eyes, Dao did not feel worthy. “I have to ask you something.” Dao looked up into her pleasure dazed eyes.
“Anything…”
“Are you a virgin, Kiki?” She went silent.
Dao thought she wouldn’t answer. Her eyes were hollow, dark and unreadable. That scared him. He moved to stand up again, but she moved.
She pulled away, stepped away from her clothes. “Yes.” She darted into the hotel room.
H
er body had opened up to him and Kianna loved every moment of it. His mouth roaming over her skin, his fingers grazing her skin was enough to make her cry to the night around them. But knowing that he knew that she had never been touched by a man before, he would want out and she couldn’t say she blamed him. What kind of man wants to have sex with someone who had no idea what she was doing in bed? Frustrated, she slipped into another robe that came with the room and tied the beautiful material carefully around her body. Scooting into her bed, she brought her
knees up to her chin and pressed her eyes shut. “Kianna.”
Dao’s voice grated against her pride and her bed sank down slightly to show he was sitting against the edge. He touched her arm slightly and she jerked away.
“Kiki, being a virgin is nothing to be ashamed of,” Dao explained.
“Why’d you have to ask that, huh?” Kianna demanded.
“Because I needed to know.”
“Other guys would have just been happy they were getting some!” Silence tore through the room at her comment and she felt the bed give. Looking up, she knew she had stuck her foot in her mouth again, but didn’t know how. Sitting up, she watched as he walked to the window and stared out it for a while. There was nothing out there, no lights—nothing. But still he stared. She remained silent, trying to think of what could be going through his mind. Still he didn’t speak and she thought her mind would explode with the silence. With her lips pressed into a thin line, she pushed from the bed.
“Do you really think all I want from you is sex?” Dao questioned.
“I-I…”
“Kianna, listen to me.” He still faced out the dark window. “I don’t want just sex from you. Never from you…”
She watched as he turned and walked toward the door, “Where are you going? Your bed is here?”
“To get some food,” was the simple answer.
There was a strange silence that followed his exit. It was the kind of silence that left a person holding their breath, waiting for something to
happen—anything to happen. The silence was interrupted by a slam of the room’s door and she knew he had left. The sound of the door caused her to gasp in fright.
Slowly, she got up and walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Stripping the robe off, she allowed it to fall to the ground and stepped into the shower. With the water flowing over her, she finally cried. She cried not because of the fact that she had hurt Dao again without meaning to, but because she felt so useless. She felt as though her life was passing her by and she had no idea how to grab a hold of it. Dao could be the one. Then again he may not be, but he the way he touched her couldn’t be a lie.
Kianna knew she should learn to take chances and Dao would be the ultimate test. He had so many opportunities to have taken advantage of her, but didn’t. If he had been any other man, he would have taken her in the plane when she had kissed him, or after the other kisses they had shared. He could have forced himself onto her on the plane, in the cars, that night in Hong Kong.
But the big one came when she thought about how close they had come to making love on the balcony. He could have not asked her at all. He could have just taken her, but he was worried about her. Dao had asked the ultimate question
disregarding the fact that a man never asked such a question.
Once again, she had pushed him away. Her body reacted to him strongly. When he touched her, all she could think about was doing anything he said—gave him anything he wanted. But once again, her brain had stepped in and ruined everything.
Dao did not know why she kept on pushing him away. He had tried everything to stay away from her, but she kept right on coming. Each time he gave in to her, she simply freaked out and ran. Sighing, he thanked the man at the restaurant for the wrapped food and took the bag. He then dumped his change into his pocket, glanced both ways and rushed across the street ahead of a bicycle. With one hand holding the bag and the other in his pocket, Dao made his way up the street back to the hotel.
At the door, Dao stopped, took a deep breath before swiping his card and pushing the door open. He heard the water running and figured she might be taking a shower. He unpacked the food onto the table and sat down, waiting. He ripped open a fortune cookie. He didn’t want the cookie,
he just wanted some good news—any good news. He unfolded the piece of paper inside.