The Lotus Palace (16 page)

The horror of the thought struck her, leaving her hollow inside. She wanted to be done with this act as soon as possible.

Bai Huang guided himself to her gently. Or as gentle as one could be when one’s body intruded upon another’s. He was patient. The care he took threatened to bring tears to her eyes, so she kept them squeezed shut.

“Yue-ying?” His voice was low, urgent, barely restrained as he held himself still within her. “Is this...? Am I...?”

“Don’t say anything,” she hushed.

Keeping her eyes shut, she held on to him. He began to move slowly in and out of her. Her muscles remained lax, her flesh yielding to him. His slow thrusts gave way to harder, longer movements. The rhythm was disturbingly familiar, no matter how much she tried to forget it.

At the critical moment, he pulled himself out of her and turned away, preventing his seed from spilling into her. The act also shielded her from seeing him in this most vulnerable state, with his face twisted in passion. This union was not for the purpose of procreation or the joining of essences, the meeting of the clouds and the rain. It was sex. A vulgar pleasure.

When Bai Huang turned back to her, his eyes were heavy and lidded. Languidly he planted a kiss against her shoulder. Another one at the base of her throat. Then he fell away to settle heavily beside her.

“Little Moon,” he murmured, his voice thick like honey.

She didn’t reply. Only then did she realize that she didn’t know what to say in these moments after.

Bai Huang’s breathing gradually deepened. The lamplight sputtered as the small flame ate up the last of its oil. Yue-ying turned her head so she could see him. His eyes were closed and his expression relaxed in sleep. Dark brows framed his features and his lashes were fine and long. His cheekbones cut high. He really was handsome. Beautiful even.

She reached out to him as the light faded, resting her arm lightly over his shoulder. He didn’t awaken. He didn’t move or appear to sense her presence in any way. She closed her eyes as sadness washed over her.

It was true, as those wise and weary sisters in the brothel had said. There was no difference between one man or another in the dark.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Y
UE
-
YING
MADE
A
POINT
of waking before Bai Huang did. Before the sun was up, she had already dressed and repinned her hair. Then she sat on a stool beneath the window and waited.

Eventually sunlight started to seep in through the window. Bai Huang had rolled onto his stomach at some point during the night. His face was hidden and one arm dangled over the side of the bed. She spent a long time inspecting the play of light and shadow along the muscles of his back.

Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer. “Lord Bai,” she whispered.

He stirred, his arm reaching across the empty spot beside him. Groggily, he lifted his chin from the pallet. It took a moment for his gaze to focus and fix onto her. “Yue-ying?” His voice sounded throaty and heavy with sleep.

“The ward gates will be open soon.”

He squinted toward the window, gauging the light. Then he lay back down, head propped up on the crook of his arm. He regarded her with one visible eye.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Considering how I might persuade you to come back to bed.”

His tone was unmistakably sensual. She felt a soft flutter in her belly. He was completely naked, a portrait of bare skin and muscle. His hair was untied and fell over his face. She had hardly touched him while he was bedding her. Everything that had happened between them in the night had rolled forward in an inevitable chain. She wanted to touch him now, when he wasn’t caught in the heat of passion. When it would be touching, just touching.

“But you won’t be persuaded, will you?”

She managed a smile and shook her head. With a sigh of surrender, he sat up, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

His movements were unhurried, marked with a laconic grace, and he seemed unperturbed that she was fully clothed while he was naked. She supposed last night should have taken down whatever barriers were left between them. Instead they were left in this odd state of intimacy and nonintimacy.

“You don’t need to rise.” She looked uncertainly toward the door. “I can go on my own.”

“No, you shouldn’t. It could be dangerous.”

His robe was just beyond his reach and she moved to help him. Their eyes met momentarily before she lowered her gaze. She caught a glimpse of the scar beneath his ribs. It was a faint line, the width of her second knuckle, where the skin was smooth and pale. She hadn’t noticed it at all when they had been skin to skin. She considered asking about it, but instead moved away, leaving him his privacy as he dressed.

The courtyard was quiet with only a few sounds coming in from the street. She wandered into the study, rinsed her mouth with a bit of cold tea left over from last night and then glanced over Bai Huang’s shelf. With a careful hand, she eased a slim volume out from the collection. It appeared less intimidating than the others.

The cover was bound with blue cloth. When she opened the book, the pleated pages unfolded in one long sheet filled with column after column of characters. Though they meant nothing to her, the order and flow of the brushstrokes held a power of their own.

Folding the pages back in, she closed the book and wandered back to the desk. Unlike the humble furnishings in the bedchamber, the writing desk was extravagant. It was crafted from a dark, perfumed wood, the scent of which reminded her of Bai Huang. The subtle fragrance was imbued in his clothing and on his skin. She inhaled and he flooded her awareness, bringing a flush to her cheeks. She wondered how the thought of him captured her so completely, yet their actual physical joining had paled in comparison.

Bai Huang would realize now that they were not meant to be lovers or—she felt a sharp pang in her chest—or perhaps he had fulfilled his urges and was satisfied. One night was all he needed from a woman like her.

Servants were not allowed such pride, so she swallowed it. If she simply did not acknowledge it, did not permit herself to feel these emotions, they would have to go away.

She turned her attention back to the desk. The chair had been fashioned from the same dark wood and the backing was decorated by an elaborate carving of a somewhat ugly image. The figure was hunchbacked and appeared to have horns on his head. He balanced on one foot over a great sea turtle. She ran a fingertip along the spiral grooves in the turtle’s shell, entranced by the detail.

“That’s Kui Xing, the god of examinations.”

Bai Huang was at the door, his hair neatly combed and tied back. His silk robe was dark blue with black accents; not extravagant, yet still recognizably expensive.

“He looks like some sort of demon,” she remarked.

She straightened as he came around the desk. His face had been scrubbed clean and there were no traces of the disheveled and shamelessly naked man she had woken up to, though she had knowledge now that he was there beneath the silk. Waiting.

“Demon might be appropriate,” he said with a laugh. Standing very close, he bent to brush his fingers over the same part of the carving she had been admiring. “Kui Xing is standing on top of Ao, the mythical turtle of the south sea. There’s a statue of Ao on the steps where they announce the scholars who have passed the examinations.”

A wistful look crossed his face, but then it was gone, to be replaced with one that was characteristically mischievous.

“Here, sit.” He guided her into a chair, with a hand gently at her arm, her elbow. Light touches that demonstrated a familiarity that wasn’t there the day before. “My father commissioned this for me when I began formally studying for the imperial exams at fifteen. I must have spent every waking moment for the next four years sitting here.”

Yue-ying closed her hands over the arms of the chair. The wood surrounded her with the musky fragrance of the natural oils within it. It was the most opulent piece of furniture she’d ever touched. She surveyed the desk as well. It was neatly organized. A paper had been laid out with more cryptic writing on it. The study contained a thousand mysteries that she could not penetrate.

“A shipping contract,” Bai Huang explained, leaning over the back of the chair. “I was a little disappointed to receive this.”

When she turned, she had a sharp view of his profile. “Why?”

“I was hoping Ouyang Yi was engaged in shady, criminal undertakings. A written agreement seems so legitimate.”

He went over his efforts from the past week, finding out information about Commissioner Ma Jun as well as the wealthy shipping merchant who worked out of the docks beside the East Market.

“You’ve been very busy,” she said, impressed.

He turned and they were face-to-face. “We shouldn’t spend so much time apart.”

His mouth was excruciatingly close and her pulse quickened. “It’s been little more than a week.”

“A lifetime, an era, an eternity,” he returned dramatically.

She laughed and he smiled along with her. Bai Huang was so good at mocking himself.

“I didn’t get your letters,” she confessed.

“I wondered about that.”

“But even if I had, I couldn’t read them. I have no learning to speak of.”

“I could teach you.”

Her heart stopped. “Wouldn’t that take years?”

“I don’t mind.”

His voice was thoughtful. Quiet. He straightened and turned around, setting his weight against the desk. She was captured between the arms of the chair and by the intensity of his gaze.

“When my letters went unanswered, I was certain Mingyu and Madame Sun were conspiring to keep you from me. I was determined to free you from their tyranny.”

“How honorable of you,” she teased.

“Not really. I wanted you and someone else had you. Or so I thought.” He smiled crookedly. It was a jagged little weapon and the point was aimed at himself. “I’m a self-important, entitled nobleman, after all.”

Bai Huang posed as a dissolute aristocrat, but it was apparent from this room and the grandeur of the desk that an imperial degree was not merely some distant goal. His study was a hall of worship, the chair a throne. Books and scrolls and poems were his religion, a legacy from his family.

They were already night and day from the moment he sauntered into the Lotus Palace, but now they were even further apart. The Earth and moon.

Her throat tightened. “I should go now.”

As soon as she stood his arm circled her waist. Though she put her hands up to brace against his chest, her body flushed warm as he pulled her up against him, so quick that she had no defense for it. The intimacy of his hands on her and the way she responded, body and mind, left no doubt. She had accepted another person into her for the first time. Everything was different between them. She just wasn’t certain how.

He touched his forehead to hers, exhaling slowly. “I expected a different sort of morning entirely. Last night—” He paused then, as if a stone were lodged in his throat. “Did I hurt you, Yue-ying?”

She shook her head. He drew her closer and held on to her, not knowing what questions to ask. It didn’t matter because she didn’t have the answers for him. Her heart ached when she thought of how careful he had tried to be with her.

“You said when you returned to the city, the Pingkang li seemed like a dream,” she began. “Last night was a part of that same dream. It was a pleasant dream, but I really must go now.”

“Will you come back to me?”

He dropped his voice so low that it was merely a vibration of sound against her skin. When she didn’t answer, his tone hardened only a touch, but it was enough to cause her to tense. “Is it Mingyu again?”

“She’s my sister. She needs me.”

They needed each other. Yue-ying had meant what she said about no longer being owned. A concubine could be bought and sold. She could be thrown out of the house based on her master’s whim or the will of his family if they disapproved of her.

Most of the women in the Pingkang li had been cast aside by their families. They had no freedom to choose for themselves, but Yue-ying was different. She was still a peasant and poor, but Mingyu had sacrificed so Yue-ying had some choice over her future. And right now, she chose to go home.

“I was angry with her when I left. She’ll be worried.”

Bai Huang regarded her for a long time, his thumb stroking a half circle into the small of her back. He was asking her when he could have just as easily made demands with his wealth and status.

“I’ll fetch a carriage for you, then,” he said with some regret as he released her.

“I would rather walk,” she insisted.

She left the study and hurried through the courtyard. For a moment, she thought she was free and started to breathe a sigh of relief, but she heard the gate close behind her followed by the sound of his voice trailing after her.

“I’ll accompany you.” In two strides, he was beside her. “A walk will allow us more time together, in any case.”

* * *

H
UANG
TOOK
SOME
comfort that Yue-ying was walking at a leisurely pace beside him. At least she wasn’t hurrying back to the Pingkang li to be rid of him sooner. The streets were still quiet as they wound through the smaller lanes and her gaze was directed downward.

What was she thinking? His own thoughts were rather predictable. He was thinking of how soft her skin was. The spot on her neck just above the shoulder. How good it felt the moment their bodies joined together. How absolutely right it felt.

He had tried to meet her eyes as he caressed her last night, and again when he’d entered into her before the grip of pleasure had taken hold of him. She had evaded his gaze both times. But he was too blinded by desire to do anything about it. Or to stop. Yue-ying had given only her body to him last night. Her mind was still locked away and he didn’t know how to reach her.

Perhaps if the lovemaking had been more—he searched for a good word, one that didn’t make him seem somewhat inadequate. If the lovemaking had been more of an enticement, this morning’s conversation would have been very different. For one, it would have started while she was still disrobed and in his bed rather than in a hurry to leave it. She might have also tried to call him by something more endearing than “Lord Bai”.

“We enjoy each other’s company,” he said finally, breaking the long silence.

He thought he saw Yue-ying nod once.

“I’m from a good family,” he continued. “And you are well mannered and of a pleasant disposition.”

“Are you discussing a match between us?” Her tone was incredulous.

“I am. Since you are not quite convinced.”

Her only reply was to shake her head in disbelief.

“You don’t mean to discard me ruthlessly after only one night, do you?” he asked, attempting a light tone.

The part that he could see of her mouth was smiling, but her gaze was still fixed ahead. In addition to that, it wasn’t the pleasant smile of someone who had been successfully charmed. It was that secret, knowing smile women used.