He touched her, opening her soft flesh intimately as he positioned himself at her sex. Her own fingers grazed against his as she moved to help him. They said nothing in that
sacred moment. The only sound was a deepening of his breath and the catch of hers as he slid inside.
She closed her eyes as her body accepted him. How quickly a new lover became welcome and accepted, in this one most invasive act. He thrust slowly while she ground her hips downwards, seeking the small, subtle pleasures of soft flesh against hard contours.
In the absence of sight, there was only the sensation of their joining and the heat of the day around her. She felt the roughened tip of his finger caress against her just above the juncture of their bodies, focusing her pleasure. She became his creature, straining towards his touch, her head thrown back and helpless as he stroked her.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said huskily.
Her eyelids fluttered open and her chest squeezed tight when she saw that he had been watching her the entire time. His mouth was tight, his face nearly expressionless except for the fire in his eyes.
‘Stay,’ he said. His gaze bore into her. ‘With me.’
Her breathing was ragged.
‘Here?’
Passion blurred her vision as she looked around the room.
With a grunt, Han wrestled her beneath him, keeping his hard length inside her.
‘She-demon,’ he growled. ‘Not
here
.’
Laughter bubbled up inside her, but at that moment he pushed deeper, fitting himself completely within her until she could no longer move, or speak or even breathe. All her thoughts were of him and how he felt. How all of him felt.
‘I want you to stay with me. Like this.’
All the while he moved in her, touched her, made her feel so good that she wanted to weep and scream. She did both.
He couldn’t know what he was saying. It was only lovers’ talk, vulgar and profound all at once. Her heart fluttered regardless.
Han bit her neck and the sharp nip of his teeth sent a shiver down her entire body that curled her toes. She pressed her face against his shoulder, tasting the saltiness of his skin as she wrapped her legs tight around him. He groaned as the angle of his body inside her shifted.
She had no doubt Han would marry a proper girl one day, but right now he belonged to her and she wanted him to remember. The next moments stretched out exquisite and unbearable until finally they reached the peak of their desire—her first, then Han shortly after. Even here in the torrent of pleasure he was chasing after her.
* * *
Evening came and one of the kitchen boys arrived with bowls of rice and soup along with other odds and ends from the cooking pots.
‘This must be how kings live,’ Li Feng said, stretching out her arms on the pallet.
Han lit an oil lamp and the meagre flame danced shadows around the empty room. He wore only his trousers. The night was only slightly less warm than the day. They would need another bout of rain to beat back the oncoming heat of the summer. He stared at the curve of Li Feng’s back as she slipped her tunic back on, tying the sash in a loose knot around her waist.
All he had to do was glance in her direction to appreciate the perfection of gently rounded thighs and well-shaped calves. Her figure was a combination of grace and strength and he could watch her for ever. At that moment, he certainly felt like a king.
Li Feng regarded him as she spooned some soup. ‘Tell me about your family,’ she said. ‘You said your father was a magistrate.’
‘In a county of Nanping prefecture.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She was very kind and soft-spoken. Loathed to harm even the tiniest of ants, Father would say. She used to raise songbirds.’
Her eyes brightened. ‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘She taught me how to whistle like a lark.’
‘Show me.’ Li Feng waited eagerly with her arms folded over her knees.
‘It’s been a while,’ he warned her, cupping his hands together and blowing into them to create a high-pitched trill.
She laughed with delight. Han didn’t think his chest could puff out any further.
‘What does she do outside of tending birds?’
‘The usual things that women do, I suppose. Embroidery?’
‘I don’t know what those usual womanly things are.’ She wrinkled her nose at him and he had the urge to kiss it.
‘Nothing involving a sword,’ he teased, receiving a punch to his shoulder in return.
A sobering thought crept in. He had left within a year of his father’s dismissal from office. Visits home after that had been infrequent. Considering that it had been nearly five years since Han had returned to the farm, everything would be different from what he remembered.
‘My family and I have spent too many years apart,’ he admitted. ‘I should go back to see them.’
‘Why did you stay away so long?’ She set aside the empty bowl and curled on to her side on the pallet, propped up on one elbow. ‘You must have missed your brother.’
‘I returned often at first, but one starts losing track of time. Years blend into one another.’ Han stopped himself. He sounded like he was giving excuses.
With a sigh, Han moved to sit cross-legged at the corner of the pallet. Li Feng waited for him to continue while he was tempted by a glimpse of ivory skin where her tunic parted. Her knees were bent and her toes pointed even though she was only before an audience of one.
He could have guessed she would be so comfortable in her skin, even in the bedchamber. She wasn’t one for blushing and fluttering eyelashes. Where other women were soft and delicate, Li Feng was toned and supple, with a force and presence that never completely yielded to his touch. Even in surrender, in the depths of pleasure, he could feel the strength in her.
‘What happened between you and your family? Did you quarrel?’ she asked when he was silent for too long.
‘We did not quarrel. At least not openly.’
Li Feng would have never asked such a question were she raised in polite society. Such matters were private, barely spoken of between family members, let alone an outsider.
It was easy to confess secrets after joining one’s body intimately to a woman’s, but there was more than that between them. Only Li Feng knew who he truly was, with no illusions of what he should have been. Han had never felt so close to anyone.
‘When Father had been removed from office, it was a devastating blow,’ he explained. ‘This was during the famine years, which my family was shielded from due to our wealth. There were grain shortages throughout the prefecture which culminated in a violent outbreak in the city. A group of rebels raided several storehouses and set them on fire along with several government buildings. After the provincial army marched in to quell the uprising, Father, who was head magistrate, was dismissed as incompetent. He had failed to instil a sense of discipline and authority over the populace.’
‘It hardly seems like that could be his fault, or at least his fault alone,’ Li Feng remarked.
‘Someone had to take the blame. Father had no control over the management of grain stores, which seemed to be the root of the unrest. Yet he never protested his dismissal. He accepted judgement without complaint.’
‘Like a warrior suffering a wound in silence,’ she suggested.
As a performer, Li Feng certainly demonstrated a liking for the dramatic. Han had never stopped to think about how stoically his father had behaved throughout the scandal. He had taken his father’s response as a matter of course. Father always conducted himself with the same stiff-jawed forbearance.
‘Father decided we would stay in a farm just outside of the city borders rather than return to his native town in shame. He wanted me to continue my studies and pass the imperial exams. It was the only way to restore our family name,’ Han recounted.
‘But instead you became a thief-catcher.’
‘Instead I became a thief-catcher,’ he echoed. ‘When I left, I defied my father’s wishes. In my heart, I always thought he understood that I only did what had to be done, but that wasn’t enough to earn his forgiveness. Not that I earned his condemnation either. All of Father’s hopes of scholarship transferred to Chen-Yi and we don’t speak of things that would upset the peace.’
Han wasn’t ashamed of being a thief-catcher. He seemed to have a talent for hunting down criminals and he was able to occasionally send money home, but there was always that unspoken rift between him and his father.
‘How old is your brother?’ Li Feng eased the question into the tense silence.
Han looked upwards as he added on the years. ‘He must be sixteen or seventeen this year. Heaven and Earth, last time I saw him he was just a boy.’
‘I apologise, Zheng Hao Han.’
His eyebrows rose at the sudden formality. ‘For what reason?’
She sat up, straightening her shoulders to mark the seriousness of her words. ‘I accused you of not valuing your family earlier. I apologise.’
‘Perhaps when I go home, you could accompany me.’
Li Feng’s eyes widened and her lips parted with surprise. He had no idea where that thought had come from, but it would be the coward’s way to back down now.
‘You never did answer my question,’ he reminded gently.
She avoided his gaze, hiding her face behind the dark curtain of hair. ‘Don’t talk about things that cannot be, Han.’
A fist closed around his heart. At that moment, he realised that all of this, all that they had shared, changed nothing for her. All the lightness and warmth between them fled with those few words between them: his entreaty, her denial.
Li Feng was still trying to escape.
She trusted him enough to set aside her sword. She even trusted him enough to wrap herself around him as they lay naked, but that was only her body. He knew she still didn’t trust him. Han didn’t know if Li Feng could ever completely trust anyone.
‘Han.’ She spoke his name in a single exhale. ‘Even if you could overlook what I’ve done, I know you would never forgive my brother. Liu Yuan killed Cai Yun for his part in luring my mother into Prefect Guan’s mansion.’
He reached out to draw her against him, but she was stiff in his arms, refusing to look at him.
‘Why did you even come with me, then?’ he asked quietly.
Anger wouldn’t solve anything. He needed to focus and understand her before he lost her.
‘I couldn’t let Liu Yuan kill you.’ Her voice sounded small and distant. ‘You have nothing to do with his vengeance. And you were right. Things were unfinished between us. I knew—I knew I would miss you in the days to come.’
A knot formed in his throat. ‘So this was only one night for you?’ he demanded.
There was a pause before she nodded. Once, brokenly. He wished she would turn around so he could see her face. Han leaned forwards, his body curving around her.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said against her ear.
She took in a breath and he could feel the shudder of tension along her spine.
He pressed the momentary advantage. ‘Your brother is dangerous, Li Feng. You can’t go to him.’
‘We’ll disappear, he and I. We’ll go far away,’ she insisted.
‘He won’t stop so easily. He wants blood.’
Li Feng swung around to face him, the movement dislodging her from his hold. Her expression was sharp enough to cut through bone. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
He listened as Li Feng recounted the same story, but from a different perspective. The prefect had tried to force himself on her mother and her father had intervened. It was possible. He knew nothing of Prefect Guan’s character other than that he was in hiding. He could have easily coerced his servants to testify to his version. But where was the truth? Somewhere in between. But there was one thing Han did know.
‘Your brother is a killer. He’s dangerous to everyone around him, including you.’
She wouldn’t answer.
He pressed on. ‘Vengeance won’t resolve anything.’
‘This isn’t about resolution,’ she replied coldly. ‘It’s about a debt that needs to be paid. You have to understand. We were left with nothing, nothing but fear and anger. He turned to thieving and violence, but I’m not so different.’
‘He’s lost to you,’ Han said.
Li Feng fell silent. Han knew he was fighting a battle he could not win. Han tried to put himself in her brother’s place, into the mind of a son who could do nothing but stand by while his father was put to death.
‘We only have until morning before I have to go,’ Li Feng said finally. ‘Let’s not waste our time arguing.’
The earth would have to open up before he accepted that.
Han pulled her closer and pressed his mouth to hers desperately. She returned the kiss with equal desperation. He could already feel her slipping from his grasp.
He broke this kiss abruptly. ‘That only means I have until morning to convince you,’ he said, his voice rough.
‘Hao Han.’ She touched a hand to his cheek. There was sadness in her eyes.
‘I won’t let you go.’
He didn’t take her then, though he wanted to. He would lose himself inside of her and she would sigh and shudder against him. Then she would forget. And he would forget. But by morning, she would still be gone. He had made the mistake before of assuming that her acceptance of his body inside her was an acceptance of him.
Instead he took her face in his hands. He wanted all of her, not just her cries of pleasure in the dark.
‘I know what sort of men your brother has surrounded himself with. You don’t belong with them.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been among outlaws.’
She had previously mentioned Wang Shizhen and the rebels she had been involved with. With every word he was losing ground.
* * *
By the end of the double-hour, the oil lamp had burned out, leaving them in darkness. The restaurant above them was finally silent. Han was on his back with Li Feng beside him, her head on his shoulder. He was out of arguments, but at least she was still there with him. That had to mean something.
The night was ending so differently from how it had begun. Though her warm weight moulded to him, though he could feel the soft fan of her breath against his neck, the passion between them had receded into a quiet resignation. He was even afraid to hold her, as if she were a fragile shell ready to break. So they lay together at an impasse, unable to see one another, but feeling every shift and sigh with a heightened awareness.