A man stepped into my room.
Not Hana.
He was perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four, with the kind of beauty that might still the breath of any woman—and many men—who watched him grace a room. His body was lean and muscular, visible through the sheer, nearly transparentkimonohe wore—the same revealing cut as mine, showing the hard planes of his chest and stomach. He moved with absolute confidence, like someone who had walked into a thousand rooms and knew exactly what would happen in each one.
My mouth went dry.
“Who—” I started.
He closed the door behind him with a soft click. The sound felt final. Absolute.
Then he walked toward me, with unhurried, purposeful steps that ate up the distance between us before I could swallow or blink. I wanted to move, to scoot back and press myself against the wall, to demand he leave, but my body wouldn’t move. I sat frozen, every muscle locked with fear.
The man stopped within a hair’s breadth of where I sat and kneeled before me, close enough that I could smell him—sandalwood and something else, something that made my pulse race for reasons I was too afraid to examine—close enough that I couldn’t look away.
His eyes held mine.
There was no cruelty in them. No anger. Only calm certainty.
Hana and I had spent so many days together that I had almost forgotten what lessons would come later, lessons in sensual pleasure, in the true nature of the house. With the arrival of this man, I knew the time for those teachings had arrived.
The man’s hand moved to the tie of hiskimono.
“Wait—” The word came out strangled.
He paused, one eyebrow raised. It wasn’t a question, merely an acknowledgment that I had spoken.
“I—I don’t—I’m not—I can’t—” I could not finish the sentence, any of them, could not put words to the terror, the revulsion, the horrible anticipation that warred in my chest.
Or the desire that flooded my body along with it.
The man pressed his index finger to my lips in a motion too intimate to be commanding.
“I am Sakurai,” he said. “It is time we learned what you are truly capable of, Kaneko-san. Give yourself to me, and this will be more pleasant that any lesson you could imagine . . . for us both.”
His eyes trailed down my bare chest as a fire danced in his dark eyes.
Sakurai’s index finger left my lips, slid down my chin to my neck, drifting lower until his palm pressed into my chest. His gaze stilled every thought I might have ever had. He leaned forward and supple lips pressed into mine. Paper walls spun, and time, once again, slipped away. The kiss lingered until the taste of him seeped into every part of me. I knew I shouldpull back or push away or do anything other than savor this stranger’s touch, but I couldn’t move. Thunder roiled in my ears. A tempest raged in my chest. My body yearned for more, for the feel of his muscles, for the wetness of his tongue teasing my own.
He pulled back. His breath lingered on my lips, yet the distance now between us felt like a chasm, a gulf between worlds I longed to fill.
What was I doing? Why did I feel this way?
I couldn’t . . . I wouldn’t—
His lips grazed mine again, not quite a kiss, more an exploration. Then his tongue, a feather’s tease. My whole body shuddered.
Icouldn’tdo this, not to myself nor to Yoshi. How could I give myself to another? How could I let him have me, have what only one in my life had ever known?
My heart shattered, glass fallen from a shelf to scatter across a floor, never to be whole again. This was my fate now.
To learn.
To serve.
To give myself freely.
I had no choice, no free will. It didn’t matter that my body and mind warred in a battle of loyalty against lust. No one cared that I longed for another, one not chained to the delicate vases and petals of this house. All that mattered was that I comply, that I become the product the mistress had purchased and shaped.
