Page 58 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

Thirty-Nine

Meeting you was like glimpsing the sea for the first time. All rivers and streams faded; only you remained.

Within the imperial bunkers, I listened to the rhythmic plink of water echoing through the walls, counting the seconds until I could count no longer. I could hear Kuro in the adjoining room to my right, his snores deep and unbroken.

Only a few hours remained before daybreak, and I knew sleep was vital for restoring qi. And yet, no matter how much I tossed and turned, sleep would not come to me.

At last I rose and tiptoed out of my room, hesitating outside the door across from mine. “ Are you awake? ” I asked him silently.

I felt him before I heard him, a tentative question in my mind like the brush of a hand against your arm. There was a rustling of blankets, before a bare-chested Lei opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice raspy with sleep. My gaze skipped down to his shoulders, the broadness of them, the hue of his skin, like fresh honey.

Blushing, I returned my gaze to his face. Perhaps this was a bad idea. “I can’t sleep.”

“Come in,” he said, holding the door for me, then letting his hand drop to my lower back as he saw me inside. His touch, although light, sent invisible tremors down to my toes.

His room was smaller than mine, barely the size of a storage closet. There was space for one pallet and a weapons rack. I gathered that imperial soldiers had once bunkered here during the Wu Dynasty, before the empire had splintered.

I sat on his pallet, pulling my knees up to my chest. “I can’t sleep. Or,” I amended, “I don’t want to sleep.”

“Why not?” he asked, settling beside me.

“I’m…afraid,” I admitted, keeping my voice low so as to not wake Kuro next door. “I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow. About all the ways we could fail.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and his voice was as warm as a crackling fire. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had once spoken to me with such coldness I believed he would not care if I lived or died.

“Not really,” I said, and my eyes wandered again to his bare chest, the hollows and ridges of it, the heat that emanated from his skin, and with it, the scent of him, like jasmine and cedar and something else now, something distinctly male.

“Well…” he said, his voice teasing. “We don’t need to sleep.”

I cocked my head at him. “Do you think we should set out early?”

“Not really, no.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“There are a few other things I can think of doing,” he said, his smile amused and rakish. “Besides sleeping.”

And now I understood. “Kuro’s in the other room,” I hissed, smacking him lightly on the arm.

Quick as a snake, he grabbed my wrist, pulling me to him.

I lost my balance and he caught me, scooping me into his lap.

My heart jumped into my throat as I was overwhelmed by the sheer presence of him: the texture of his exposed skin, the prominence of his veins, the strength of his arms, the intimacy of it all.

Capturing me by my waist, he grinned at me lazily, a predator surveying a well-laid trap.

“I can be quiet if you can,” he said, and it sounded like a dare.

I rolled my eyes, feigning nonchalance even as my stomach turned somersaults. “It’s not me I’m concerned about.”

Lei’s smile grew wolfish. “Is that a challenge, my love?”

I blushed down to my neck. When he called me that, it dragged my mind back to the Reed Flute Caves: the metallic stench of blood in the air, the caress of death down my spine, the coldness in his eyes as he’d butchered and slaughtered.

That animal sound of pure, unadulterated rage.

Beneath his pretty smiles and arch flirtations lurked a monster in the dark.

“How can you be like this?” I whispered.

He had not released my sword hand. Now he toyed with it, tracing each of my calluses. “Like what?”

“You’re so…flippant.” At the quirk in his lips, I added, “And you keep smiling.”

His answering smile was even more crooked. “Am I not allowed to smile?”

I took a breath, not sure who I was trying to remind here.

“Earlier today I saw you murder a dozen men in the time it takes most soldiers to draw their swords. I saw you kill a princess faster than she could scream. And I saw you so thoroughly butcher a man he surely cannot enter the afterlife whole.”

“He betrayed you,” said Lei lowly, the gleam of violence back in his eyes. “I remembered him.”

My voice hitched. “And now here you are, flirting with me as if you haven’t a care in the world.” And here I am , I added silently, flirting back as if I’m not to blame for all of this .

And now I wondered who I was truly upset with.

“ You’re entitled to your happiness. ” He spoke into my mind, and I flinched, forgetting he could do that.

At my change in mood, he released me, and I edged away from him, hating this tendency of mine and yet unable to take a different path.

When someone offered their love, I returned it with distance.

When someone showed me their vulnerabilities, I repaid them with spikes and sharp edges.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I said, but I could not meet his gaze. “I just…I’ve never seen anyone kill like that.”

The silence was back, and along with it, the uneven plink of water droplets.

I started counting them, hating that sound, hating my inability to communicate.

I was a mess of contradictions. I craved intimacy, and yet, when offered it, I found myself unworthy.

I wanted affection, and yet, when someone showed me how much they cared, I shrank from that trust, as if it were a collar around my throat.

I did not know what I desired anymore. I had been the one to come here late at night, to wake him from his rest, to demand his attention, and now I was the one pulling away, trying to hurt him, trying to hide from him.

And still there was a part of me that longed to be known, that begged him to forgive me, to understand me, to not let me push him away.

Unable to look at him, I rose to my feet. “I should go,” I said. “It’s late, and you should rest.”

I reached for the doorknob, but before I could open it, he was behind me, caging me in, his arms planted firmly against the door.

“I told you what I am,” he said, his voice a low rasp.

“But what I didn’t tell you is this—if they had taken your life today, I would have hunted down every last one of them.

I would have scoured the Three Kingdoms for every soul responsible—and I would have given each of them a slow, slow death.

And then, once I was finished, I would have followed you to the afterlife.

I would have found you, and dragged you back from the hands of Death itself. ”

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze. “Have you been drinking again?”

“No,” he answered, sounding, for once, affronted. He sighed, reaching for me. “I meant what I said. I told you, I protect what’s mine.”

Backed against the door, I had no choice but to look up at him.

His eyes smoldered, no longer softened by amusement.

I recognized that he feigned frivolity to hide the immensity of his feeling.

“ Don’t wear your insecurities on your sleeve ,” he’d once warned me.

“ Then scoundrels like me can use them all too easily against you. ”

His vulnerabilities were not on his sleeve. They were not even in his heart. They were buried so deep within him that they were hibernating seeds planted in the depths of winter. And yet in his eyes now were signs of early life, green seedlings that had emerged from the coldest of seasons.

I rose on the balls of my feet and kissed him on the cheek. I frowned at the bruise beneath his ear, where the hilt of a sword had caught him earlier today. I kissed this too, the soft underside of his jaw, and then the hollow of his throat, which rose and fell beneath my touch.

“You are nothing like the stories say,” I whispered. “You are nothing like I thought you were.”

“And what did you think I was?” The mischievous crook of his smile had returned.

“A handsome yet vain fool.”

“And now?”

“Now I know you’re even more vain than I supposed.”

He laughed as he kissed me, the sound catching low in his throat. “As long as you still find me handsome.”

I deepened the kiss in answer, and he drew us closer together, until I could feel evidence of his want against me. Guiding my arms around his neck, he began to lift me.

“Your injuries—” I protested, but he picked me up anyway.

“Don’t you worry about me,” he said wickedly. “It’s you who will suffer tonight.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, as he deposited me on his pallet.

“Lie back,” he ordered. “I’m going to make you stop thinking.”

Tentatively, I lay down. Leisurely, he unbuttoned my robes, then studied me in my nakedness. Beneath his possessive gaze, gooseflesh pricked my skin.

He cupped my breasts, which ached with his touch, then traced his way down my stomach. One hand went around my hip, as the other stroked the inside of my thigh, slowly parting my legs.

At last, he dragged my undergarments away, and I closed my eyes, bracing myself, guessing what was to come. Instead of the painful intrusion I had been warned of, I felt a single finger slip inside me. I jumped at the unexpected nature of it, my eyes flying open.

“Aren’t you supposed to use…” I flushed crimson. “Something else?”

He laughed under his breath, his face intent with focus. “That’ll come later, sweetheart.”

His finger slowly circled me, moving in foreign motions that made strange things happen to my body.

To my mortification I felt a new wetness welling from between my thighs, and I moved to close my legs, to hide myself, but he would not let me.

He did not appear embarrassed, only pleased.

With wicked patience he slid a second finger inside, stretching me.

I gasped from the shock of it— and the resulting pain and pleasure.

They were so intertwined my senses grew completely overwhelmed, and as his fingers plunged deeper inside, I cried out reflexively.

“Quiet, my love,” he said, his tone arch. “What did we say about not waking our neighbor?”

I reached for him, needing to cling to something for balance as wave after wave of sensation rolled through me. “Lei,” I gasped, taken captive by the feeling he’d wrought over me. “What—what are you doing to me?” I asked, panting with exertion.

“I’m pleasuring you, sweetheart,” he said, steadying me against him as my hips bucked. “No one’s done this for you before?”

At the shake of my head, he was quiet for a moment, thinking, before saying, “Then let me show you.”

I was already soaking wet, but still Lei parted my thighs farther, guiding me into sensations I had never dreamed of experiencing.

I was biting my tongue so as not to scream, my hands twisting the bedding into knots.

Just when I thought I could take no more, I felt his tongue where it had never been before.

I thought surely I must be dreaming, surely this could not be real.

But then he found my apex, tasting me, and I knew I was awake.

I had never been more awake. A crest of feeling flooded through me and I cried out, so loudly Lei covered my mouth with his hand.

I shuddered beneath him, feeling like the tide caught beneath two moons, roiling with a perfect gratification I had never known before.

“How sweet you are,” he murmured. His eyes were glazed with desire.

“Come here,” I said, and he obeyed, bringing his face close to mine. He held himself up by his forearms so as to not crush me, but I could still feel the strength of his lust against me.

“Do you have protection?” he asked.

It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. After my betrothal, Xiuying had mentioned methods to prevent pregnancy, but I hadn’t pressed her for details at the time—I hadn’t thought it would matter for me.

I shook my head.

He sighed, shifting away from me. With a soft groan he fell onto the pallet beside me, then drew me into his arms so that I rested atop him.

“Is that okay?” I asked into his chest. I did not understand the nuances of physical gratification, but I’d heard the stories of men transformed into beasts in their passion. Every Anlai woman had heard them, as a warning and as a threat.

“I’ll wait,” he said, brushing my mussed hair from my eyes. “We have all the time in the world, my love.”

Ming Lei always did know how to lie. He knew how to make false words taste like candied hawthorn, so that they went down smooth and sweet. And I, the most hopeless of them all, believed him.