Butterfly Swords (18 page)

‘Li Tao was your father’s rival?’

‘They were both
jiedushi
until my father was made Emperor.’

A dull ache snaked through his chest. ‘Your father chose someone for you who was his equal.’

‘Li Tao is nothing like my father. He knows nothing about loyalty.’ Her hands clenched as she looked from one edge of the map to the other. ‘My father has always loved the empire. He would sacrifice anything for it.’

Ailey had grown up in this magnificent home surrounded by wealth and power and deserved someone who could provide the same. If he had any decency, he would leave her now.

But the look of trust in her eyes turned him into a needful creature. He’d suffer a lifetime in hell for whatever moments he could steal with her. He wasn’t a strong enough man to refuse what she offered. The only way he could go was if she turned him away. And she would, when she realised he could give her nothing but heartache in return for all that he took.

Ryam concentrated on balancing the pair of sticks between his thumb and third finger. He could get through a meal without starving, but he’d never feel comfortable using these things.

‘I swear you can only do this because of your years of sword training,’ he remarked.

Ailey’s eyes twinkled from across the dining table. ‘This is the first time we’ve sat down to eat together.’

‘There was that time at Lady Ling’s when you ran off and left me in the clutches of that woman.’

She ran her fingers along the edge of her collar. He wanted to be doing the same, following the silk edge down to the neckline that stopped just shy of her breasts.

‘I was so jealous of her,’ she laughed.

‘You’re ten times prettier than Lady Ling.’

She glanced at him in surprise and there was nothing for him to do but snatch up a morsel from the nearest dish and stuff it into his mouth. Ailey scooped up rice daintily from her bowl. An irresistible little smile tugged at her lips.

What would it be like to end each day this way, sitting beside someone and sharing food and idle talk? Not with just anyone, but with Ailey. He clamped down on the feeling that swelled in his chest at that thought.

‘Try this.’

Ailey darted through the dishes with her chopsticks and selected choice morsels into his bowl. ‘Whatever you think, just tell Amah everything was delicious,’ she instructed.

‘It’s good. Everything is very good.’

They ate in comfortable silence, enjoying the roof over their heads and a hot meal.

‘What does Yumen Guan look like?’ she asked when the dishes were nearly empty. ‘Does it gleam with jade?’

He laughed. ‘It’s a great hunk of rock on the edge of the desert. Occasionally, caravans will cross through that part of the corridor on the northern trade route.’

She looked disappointed that the description wasn’t as grand as the name. ‘Who lives in the fortress?’

‘Other than us, there’s a tribe of mountain people, desert nomads. All wanderers without a home.’

‘And the princess lives among them?’

Ailey’s continued interest in Miya brought his defences up. Her military family might have a great interest in the Jade Gate pass.

‘Miya and Adrian have been married for nearly a year,’ he answered cautiously.

‘I find it strange.’

‘That a princess would marry a barbarian?’

‘That she would willingly go into exile,’ she countered. The thought of exile obviously saddened her.

He’d been away from the fortress for months. It was the return that plagued him. He would have to stand before Adrian and account for his failure. He buried the sobering thought as deep as he could. Much harder to do now that Yumen Guan loomed just beyond the mountains. He folded his hands together and tried to absorb the peace of the surroundings. Harmony, the Chinese called it. It eluded him.

This dining room and the feast they’d shared was more civilisation than he’d ever known. He had vague memories of his parents living in a cottage held together with mud and straw on the other side of the world. The tiny hovel had been cold most nights. He remembered running outside in the dirt during the day. The memories were a lifetime away.

‘I want to show you one more thing,’ she said after the servants came to clear the dishes.

They went outside to the central courtyard, a square of earth surrounded by sleeping quarters. A knotted tree stood in the corner, gnarled branches fanning out haplessly. She pulled him into a nook between the branches. Her fingers curved around his and her hair gleamed like black water in the dim light.

‘Here.’ She pressed his fingertips to the characters carved into the wood. ‘This is how we keep score, one mark for every win.’ Her face relaxed into happiness as she traced the characters.

‘Which one is Ailey?’

She circled the trunk, knowing immediately where to go.

‘This is me.’ She tapped her spot triumphantly. ‘Ai Li.’

He traced the two characters that represented her name and the wins marked beneath it. ‘You have quite a few here.’

‘If you were bigger and stronger, you had to fight two against one or with one arm tied behind your back. And sometimes I would fight—how would you say?—dirty.’

‘That wasn’t considered dishonourable?’ he asked with a laugh.

‘I was a girl.’

She smiled sweetly and he remembered the pain of getting kicked where it mattered. A wave of emptiness hit him as he brushed the scarred wood. This was what was important to Ailey. Her family and its memories. He had no such memories, no traditions in his past. Ailey belonged here, in her home. He belonged nowhere.

‘Give me your dagger.’ She found a blank spot on the wood. She spoke his name in two distinct sounds to herself. ‘The first sound is difficult,’ she murmured, scratching the point of the blade back and forth in tiny strokes. She added one mark beneath the two new characters.

His fingers dug into the wood as he watched her. When she straightened, her head was right by his shoulder and he caught the scent of her hair. Soap and sandalwood. And that was all it took for his entire body to tense, growing hard with desire. He needed to touch her so much it burned away every other thought in his head.

Ailey looked up and the dagger nearly slipped from her fingers. Ryam had gone still, one hand braced against a branch, arm flexed. His pupils dilated as he took the weapon from her, returning it to his belt without breaking eye contact.

‘Which one of these is your room?’ His gaze circled the courtyard.

She drew in a shallow breath and pointed to her door.

‘Show it to me.’

He beckoned to it with an irresistible tilt of his head. His easy smile belied the glint in his eyes.

Her heartbeat skipped like the wings of a hummingbird as they crossed the courtyard. As they neared the threshold of her room, he reached over her shoulder to push the door open. The commanding gesture took hold of her senses and her body no longer felt like her own. She floated outside of it.

Inside, she lit the oil lamp and glanced about her room as if seeing it for the first time. Most of her possessions had been moved to the imperial palace, but the room had never been lavishly adorned. She had set her butterfly swords on the stand on the wardrobe. Ryam let the door fall shut behind him and stepped past her to inspect the only decoration, a paper scroll brushed with four characters that hung from the far wall. The black strokes stood out boldly in the bare surroundings.

‘Did you do this?’

She came to stand beside him, feeling lightheaded as if in a trance.

‘A long time ago. My calligraphy was never any good. I’m too impatient. It shows in the strokes.’

He lifted his eyebrow sceptically and then turned his attention back to the scroll with a half-smile. She waited, afraid to look at him as she measured out the time with each breath she took. The span of his shoulders seemed to take up all of the space in her tiny room and she couldn’t stop from babbling.

‘We believe that a person’s character shows in everything they do, every little action like the motion of your hand on a brush.’

‘I’ve always liked that about you. The way you move.’ His voice was deep, sliding along every meridian in her spine. ‘Every little movement is uniquely yours.’

When she dared to turn, his eyes were so blue they seemed to shine with their own inner light. A blush rose from her neck until her face burned. She lifted her hand to her throat absently.

His gaze shifted to the door before returning to her face. ‘Ask me to leave.’

Her throat went dry and the air grew heavy between them, vibrating with energy. She shook her head once. Still, he waited before reaching for her, cradling his palm against her cheek in a feverish caress.

She clutched at the front of his tunic and sank against him, closing her eyes when his mouth captured hers. It was always like this. Possessive, devastating. He knew how to make her melt into him, how to steal her breath and fold himself around her until she couldn’t think of anything but him.

He didn’t ask her. Not with words. He stroked her face with fingertips rough with callouses. With his other hand he pulled her hair free from its pins. As it fell, her entire being unravelled and opened to him.

He was backing her towards the bed, his tongue slipping in her mouth, his quick hands already freeing the silk from her shoulders as she held on to him.

His mouth released her only for a heartbeat before he was kissing the bare skin of her shoulder, her collarbone, her neck. His fingers worked the sash around her waist loose and eased off the last layers of her robe. Silk whispered on silk as it fell away. He lowered her to the mattress and she pulled him down with her. She fumbled at his vest, then the edge of his tunic.

‘Let me do it,’ he said.

Raising himself up on to his knees, Ryam reached around her hands. The span of his chest blocked the light from her, casting him in shadow as he pulled the tunic free. She lifted herself and wrapped her arms around him, digging her hands into the sculpted muscle of his back.

It was beyond wonderful to have him like this, with no more boundaries, no more false promises to keep them apart.

He sank his weight on top of her and took her mouth again while reaching for the ribbons of her bodice undergarment. It was a sensuous struggle, both of them striving for the same end, but too blinded to find the quickest way there.

Her heart was beating so dangerously fast. She kissed his throat and the saltiness of his skin lingered on her lips. Their chaotic dance halted when he finally removed the diamond-shaped swath of cloth that covered her breasts.

He lifted himself and let the lamplight fall onto her skin, breathing hard as he raked his gaze over her. His hand curved a reverent path from her throat down the valley of her breasts.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured.

She was completely bare to him, every inch of her offered to his eyes and his touch. It didn’t matter what she had been taught all her life. This moment could not be meant for a stranger. It was meant for Ryam.

He slid back onto one knee at the edge of the bed and stood to remove his belt and trousers until he was all bronzed skin and hard muscle before her. Holding her breath, she let her eyes trail down his chest to the shadowed area below his hips.

Ryam watched as she took him in with her eyes, giving her the moment to see him fully before coming back to the bed. They stretched alongside each other and she was stricken with a moment of shyness, only a moment before he surrounded her again, his hands pulling her close, his mouth tasting her neck, her breasts, filling her with sensation until her head swirled.

Her hands roamed over him, aimless and unknowing. He responded by tilting his hips against her, pushing his jutting arousal against the softness of her inner thigh. She exhaled sharply and bit down on her lip in shock.

His mouth descended to her ear and he took the lobe into his mouth. The wet suction lanced tendrils of heat down her spine. Moaning, she threaded her fingers into the coarse strands of his hair, clutching the back of his head to hold him to her as her hips lifted. The length of him brushed against her, a liquid caress that had her crying out his name.

She didn’t know what she wanted, but she wanted. So much that every part of her ached with it. Her hands clung on to his arms and her lips searched for him desperately even though he was right there, pressed tightly to her. He captured her mouth and lowered his hand between them.

The first stroke of his finger into her sent her arching from the bed, her breasts flush against the hard plane of his chest.

‘Yes.’

She squeezed her eyes shut as he circled and teased the sensation from her. She tried to reach for him, caress him in the same way. Her fingers brushed his heavy length.

He broke from her mouth with a gasp. ‘I need you now.’

Her voice was strange, hoarse. ‘Yes, anything.’

His arm stole beneath her, lifting her to him. He buried his face against her neck, his jaw hard against her cheek.

‘This is going to hurt,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘You couldn’t hurt me.’

She was floating, soaring, every inch of her alive with awareness and energy. All the while Ryam held on to her. She lifted her knees to cradle him and he groaned.

‘I’ll try—’ He swallowed forcibly, reaching between them. She felt the blunt tip of him press against her. ‘I’ll try to be careful.’

He gathered her into the shelter of his arms, one hand tangling gently into her hair. Even in the haze of desire, with her senses laid open and raw, she had the impression of being cared for and protected. She hooked her arms around his shoulders just as he started to push into her.

The sensation of being stretched and filled took over her entire body. With a startled cry, she dug her nails into the back of his neck. The dull throb inside her grew nearly unbearable as he sank deeper.

He grew still, every muscle constricted as he held himself over her. ‘Are you all right?’

She peered at him through her lashes, unable to focus. She was pinned, anchored by his weight as her flesh tightened around him. It was pain and not pain.