Sakurai’s lessons were methodical, clinical, despite their nature. This was craft, not passion. Technique, not desire.
But therewaspassion.
I saw it when he entered my chamber, when his gaze lingered a moment longer than any lesson required, how his fingers refused to lift from my skin. I never knew if that—or if any of it—was real or feigned.
Perhaps he simply a highly skilled slave performing his duties.
Or was this Sakurai, the man, however deeply buried, reaching up from a dark abyss to grasp a moment’s joy in a world stripped bare.
I didn’t know. I might never know.
So I learned. I practiced. I improved.
And somewhere in the blur of instruction and repetition, I stopped feeling that searing edge of shame. It dulled into something more manageable, into acceptance, perhaps, or simply surrender born of exhaustion.
The days blurred, one bleeding into the next with no clear beginning or end. I lost sight of the shore, swallowed in a sea of sensuality and seduction, the waves pulling me farther and farther from home . . . from whoever I had been before.
At some point—I could not say exactly when—Mistress Momoko added a duty to my training.
Wedged between Hana’s mornings and Sakurai’s evenings, my afternoons now belonged to the common area. Customers came to drink and talk and enjoy the company of beautiful people. Some hired courtesans for the evening. Others simply wanted to be served by them, to bask in proximity to beauty while conducting business or entertaining friends.
As did each slave, I wore my sheerkimono, the one that hung open at the chest, whose fabric was so thin as to be nearly invisible. I moved through the room with the refined glide Hana had taught me, poured sake, tea, and plum wine withsteady hands, smiled and met eyes and deflected advances with graceful refusals.
“You are not yet ready to be offered,” the mistress had said when she’d given me this new role. “You must learn to work a room, to flirt without promising, to tease without delivering. You must learn to shape desires and drive your price higher. In this, you earn back a fraction of my investment.”
So I served drinks. I laughed at jokes that were not funny. I accepted compliments with demure gratitude. I let hands brush against mine when I poured and gazes linger on my exposed chest. I let suggestions hang in the air unanswered.
Momoko’s leash had lengthened beyond my chamber, but it was ever present.
I told myself that serving drinks was better than the alternative, that as long as I was pouring sake, I was not being purchased—or rented, or whatever it might be named.
Sakurai was the only man to have me thus far, and I’d grown accustomed to his presence. In ways I couldn’t explain, he had become my grounding, much as Hana had become a sister.
No other possessed me.
It was an afternoon like any other when the entire house tilted beneath my bare feet.
I moved through the common area with a tray of cups, refilling empty vessels, clearing away finished meals. The room was moderately busy—perhaps a dozen men and women at various tables, some alone, others in pairs or small groups.
Behind one of the tall screens, two men lounged with the ease and comfort of lovers. Their laughter drifted out—low and intimate. It was the kind of laughter that spoke of a shared history and complete comfort in each other’s presence.
I paid them little mind as I moved past.
Then one of them shifted, and through the gap in the screen I saw them clearly. They reclined against cushions, bodies relaxed, legs entwined. One had his fingers tangled in the other’s hair, twirling the strands idly, while the other trailed kisses down his lover’s arm—slow and reverent in the way of genuine affection rather than performance.
They were beautiful together.
Something in my chest ached as I watched.
This is what Sakurai had taught me to mimic, but these men were not mimicking anything. This was real. Even from a distance, from behind a partition, I could see that much.
The screen pulled back as one of the men gestured to a woman across the room. “More sake, please,” he called out, his voice cultured and warm.
The woman hurried over with a fresh carafe. As she poured and the screen remained open, I saw the man’s face for the first time.
Gods, no!
My tray nearly slipped from my hands. I caught it at the last moment, sake sloshing in the cups.
