She was going home. Just like that. He had given her such a wonderful opportunity and hadn’t asked for anything in return. She had cut into his time to get to his family and he never complained. He never once talked back to her. Rubbing a hand over her face, she became unglued and rushed to put her clothes back on. Kianna then breezed to the elevator and stood there, jabbing her fingers against the down button over and over. When it didn’t come as fast as she wished, she stomped her foot in frustration like an insolent child and began pressing the button over and over.
The ping sound finally came and she rushed into the elevator, shoving past those who exited. They spoke in utter disbelief at her rudeness, but she simply frowned and smacked the lobby button. Once more the damn metal abomination that was the elevator stood there with the door open. She wanted to go down—now! She jabbed her finger into the
close door
button over and over until the door slid shut.
All the way down to the lobby, she paced the small space of the elevator. What was she going to say to him? Would she be on time? So many thoughts rushed through her mind that she wanted to wince and cringe into a corner. But she had to be strong. If not, she would then spend the rest of her life wondering what the possibilities would have been. Bursting out the elevator once the door opened, she caught Dao leaving the hotel via the front door. “Dao!”
He stopped and turned.
She instantly saw the confused look in his eyes. “What now?”
“I don’t want to go back.” “What?”
“I do not want to go back,” she spoke in shaky Cantonese. “I want to go with you.” She saw the arch to one of his brows and knew he was shocked that she had just spoken in his native tongue. She lowered her eyes shyly. Instead of leaving though,
she felt his finger against her flesh, pushing her chin up softly.
“You speak Cantonese?” he questioned in his native tongue.
“A little,” she whispered in English now. “I learnt from the internet mostly, on chat groups and forums. I am never sure if what they taught me was right.”
“That was perfect,” he whispered. “What do you mean
you don’t want to go back
?”
Kianna thought about it, translated her answer from English into Cantonese, and replied, “I want to go with you, to see your mother. I even got her a present—eight of them actually.”
He smiled, a soft lift to the corner of his lips, showing perfect, white teeth. “Very well,” he replied and took her hand.
“Wait, I have to get my bags,” she stopped. “Don’t worry about it—I’ll have Paul take care
of it.”
True to his word, he grabbed his cell phone and after explaining to Paul what he wanted, he took Kianna’s hand again. Walking back to the counter, he had her ticket cancelled and they exited the hotel to a waiting limo.
As the car moved from the hotel, via the shuttle route back to the airport, Kianna kept her eyes focused on him. He was reading from a paper that was in Cantonese from his lap. She couldn’t read
the official language when it was written, but she could read the words when they were spelled out with English letters—somewhat.
She trailed her gaze from his forehead, down over his eyes to his nose. Then ever so slowly, she stared at his lips, down to his chin, then back to his lips. There was an infatuation she had developed for them. She allowed her eyes to caress from one side of his sensuous mouth to the next—then back again. Oh how she would love to just move across the small space and have him kiss her. She dragged her eyes back and shivered visibly.
“Are you cold?”
She jerked to face him. Had he seen her staring at him? “No,” she lied. “I was just thinking. That happens when I think.”
He smiled at her before leaning forward and draping his jacket over her shoulders nonetheless. He then took his seat and glanced back down to his paper.
She pushed back into the plush seat and tried to shut her brain off until they reached the airport. His jacket smelt of him—hot, musky absolutely him. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to say something, even if it caused another argument. “I don’t want to forget.”
Dao didn’t look up right away. He looked up in a fashion as though he wanted to finish reading
the sentence he was on, then arched a brow He folded his paper and put it away, then faced her again. Still he didn’t speak.
“I’ve never been kissed before,” she confessed. The shock in his eyes mocked her and she looked away. “Well not like that. The men—er, man—I’ve been with never really had the time to kiss me like that. Also I never had much time—for dating, for boys, anything. I mean, I barely had time to go to school. I was always working to pay for my travelling…” She trailed off and looked up at him again. “I had this urge to press my lips against yours and when I did and you spread your lips to me, I couldn’t pull away. I needed you…”
“Why did you want to forget your first real kiss? Was I not satisfactory, Kianna?”
She blushed. “I don’t know. You could say that I have nothing to compare it to. But it made me go hot and cold all over. My knees shook from the delicious shock of it and it confused me. It scared me.” Silence from him again made her want to scream. He was looking at her with that look in his eyes again. It was the same look he had after pulling away from the kiss on the plane—a dark look that sent steam surging through her body. “Say something. Please. Anything at all.”
“Would you like to have something to compare your first real kiss to, Kianna?”
She nodded without thinking.
“Then I’m going to kiss you,” Dao explained, while undoing his seatbelt. “You will definitely have something to compare it to.”
He moved toward her like a predator—silent, lethal, graceful. She moaned just because of the way his eyes glued to her. They were heated, strong, dark and she began leaning forward in anticipation. When his arm went behind her neck, he gently pulled her close. Weakly, she shivered and watched his lips lower to hers.
This time, the kiss was even better than the first. This time, his lips formed against hers. Their tongues danced and tangled with each other. He tasted absolutely divine to her and when his tongue withdrew and plunged into her heat again, she whimpered and wrapped her arms around his neck. His arms went around her back and pulled her tightly against him as much as their cramped quarters allowed. Then he did something that made her sigh contently, Dao pulled back and sucked against her lower lip before dropping a kiss on her upper lip. When she moaned, he pulled back.
“I would never force you into anything you’re not ready for,” his voice was soft, husky, sexy. “But I will take what you give to me—on the condition that I feel that it is what you truly want.”
“
Doh je
,” Kianna whispered before bravely taking his lips in a small kiss.
“You’re very welcome,” Dao replied.
“Mister Zhi,” the driver’s voice came from the small speakers. “We are here.”
Nodding, Dao looked up. He hadn’t realized they had even stopped. He was caught up in the kiss that had curled his toes and caused his eyes to roll back into his head. He gave her a small kiss against her forehead before pushing out the car before the driver could walk around. He took her hand and led her from the limo, paid the driver and entered the Hong Kong International Airport once more for their flight from Hong Kong to Guilin.
“Stay here for a sec, would you?” Dao got the perfect idea. When she nodded, he took off down the wide hall, dodging through the crowd to the gift shop. It took him a couple of minutes to find what he wanted, but eventually he returned with a bag and they silently checked in.
Situated on the plane, Dao sat with his long legs crossed, watching Kianna silently. She was once again buried nose deep in a romance novel. He wondered if the men inside those novels were the kind of men she liked. They were the strong men
that loved so fiercely that it hurt. He remembered his mother explaining that to him. There was always a part of him that wished he could be that kind of man for a woman some day. But he was not perfect.
Tearing his eyes away, he glanced out the window. It wouldn’t be far to Guilin and soon they would be on a boat heading into Yangshuo— Xingping via the Li River. He could feel his body begin to change as he got ever so close to home. He could feel the stress of the big city melting away and the feeling of living the way his culture dictated once more. The sense of eating fried crap to real food swam through him and his mouth watered at the thought.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Her voice came to him as a shock for he didn’t expect her to speak. She had looked so enthralled by her book that he had expected her to keep reading until the private plane landed again. “Sure.” He looked at her.
“And you will be honest with me?”
A smirk graced his lips. “Always.” He kept eye contact with her, but she didn’t speak for a while, just continued looking at him. “Did I say the wrong thing?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m just rethinking my question.”
“It cannot be that bad. Let’s hear it.”
She cleared her throat and closed her book completely. She placed it beside her in the seat. She uncrossed her legs, rubbed her palms against her thighs and levelled her gaze on his, “This is hard for me so just listen until my question is complete, then answer. Okay. You’re a guy right?” Dao smirked. “The last time I checked.” He was going to ask her to come and check just to make sure, but he figured that would be pushing a joke too far. Instead, he waited to hear what she said to
that.
“If I were to come to you, as a guy that is— hypothetically—if I were to come to you and strip naked and ask you to make love to me, would you?”
That stunned him. Her question caused him to bite back a growl and crossing his legs became harder than he ever thought it could be. He was aroused, immensely so, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. “If you were ready and I was sure you meant it.”
“How would you know if I was ready?
Hypothetically, speaking.”
“Yes, of course. I would know from your eyes, the way your body moved, your lips-”
“And what if I had you blindfolded?” she wanted to know.
Dao swallowed hard and this time a small noise rumbled from his chest. Her questions were
starting to carry him into a more than aroused territory “This is one more of those hypothetical things?” He smiled.
She looked away while nodding.
“Well, then, I’d let you do anything you wanted to do to my body—hypothetically…that is.”
She licked her lips then and Dao noticed that he loved the way her pink tongue flowed over her dark lips. He remembered that only minutes ago that same tongue was plunged deep within his mouth. Only mere minutes before he had sucked on that tongue, allowed it to tangle with his and had gotten a wonderful pleasure from it. A shock went up and down his spine, causing him to press back into his seat. He said a silent prayer, seeking patience and strength to resist what he was thinking of doing to the woman sitting across from him.
W
hen the plane landed in Guilin, Dao stopped Kianna when she moved to stand. He picked
up the item that he bought in the airport in Hong Kong and knelt before her. Pulling a wrapped box from the bag, he held it out. “I know that you didn’t have time to do much of anything before I all but kidnapped you to come with me,” he began softly. “And I know you probably don’t have one. The sunsets in Xingping are absolutely to die for and I don’t want you to miss a second of it. Go ahead, open it.”
She took it with shaking hands.
He could see the way her hands trembled as she took the wrapped box from him. Her eyes shone surprise, confusion, but still he smiled. He watched as she daintily ripped through the packaging. It did his heart well to see her ripping through those papers and he ached to see her on Christmas morning, dressed in his oversized robe and ripping through her Christmas presents. His
heart soared. The silence caught his attention and he looked to see that she had opened the box. She was staring at him.
“This is for me?”
“Yes. It’s not much but…”
She flew at his chest with her present behind him in one hand as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
She squeezed him and Dao knew then he could never let her go. He had to find a way to have her feel as much for him as he was beginning to feel for her. He hugged her back and accepted the kiss that she pressed against his lips before sitting back to pull the camera from the box. “I take it you like it?”
“Like it?” she retorted. “I love it! I’ve never had a real camera before! No one has ever bought me anything this lovely before.”
“This one takes both film and digital. There’s film in the bag along with extra batteries. I made sure you had enough because my family does not have electricity where we’re going.”
“Thank you…this means so much…” “Kianna?”
“Yes?”
“When you smile, you are absolutely beautiful.”
She giggled softly and pressed her forehead against his shoulder just as the pilot walked into the plane.
“I have some bad news,” Paul spoke as he allowed his body to fall into one of the seats. “Oh, hello.”
“Paul, this is Kianna, Kiki this is my pilot. What do you mean you have bad news? Did something happen to the plane? Clearance?”
“Nice to meet you,” Kianna replied.
Paul smiled at her before turning serious eyes of Dao. Dao didn’t like the look. He sat on the edge of his seat and gave his full attention to Paul. “Nothing like that, really. The Li is a bit rough today,” Paul announced. “We couldn’t find one boat who wanted to risk it. They said it’s been like that since yesterday. So until it goes back to
normal, you’re stuck in Yangshuo.”
Dao frowned and stood. He paced the space from one end of the plane to the next while he thought of what to do. He wanted to get to his parents post-haste, but he wasn’t willing to put his life, a boatman’s and especially Kianna’s life at risk because he was in a hurry. Resigning, he turned to face them again. “Alright. Keep an ear out for me and let me know when we can travel. Kianna, you and I will find a hotel.”