When I don’t move, he finally brushes his lip against mine.
His touch is electric, a spark that roars into a fire surging through my veins. Before I know it, I’m kissing him back, my hand reaching for his cheek, twining into his hair. I hold him, the way I wished to and the way I should have back in the Hall of Radiant Sun. His mouth is hot, near feverish, and he tastes like salt and blood and a hint of midnight sweetness.
Yù’chén exhales, as though finally surrendering himself. His fingers tighten around my waist, and he pulls me closer. Asking for permission.
I give it.
He pulls me against him with a splash. I gasp—the water is hot, the rain cold against my skin, and with his fingers digging into my waist and his mouth against mine, my body is a tumult of sensations. That all settles into an intense focus as he leans against the jagged rock and draws me so I’m positioned over him.
I hook my legs around his waist and give a shaky exhale at the hard fit of his body against mine, his head lifted to gaze up at me as though in supplication. His eyes are dark, endless pools, and I feel as if I’m falling into an eternal night as I lower my face and kiss him again.
He’s slow, soft this time, his lips moving down my jawline and my neck as his fingers move up the bare skin of my leg. My dress drifts around my waist in the water, exposing the crescent blades strapped to my thighs and the thin sheet of undergarment between my legs. The rain and water have made my dress translucent, and I close my eyes as his mouthmoves down my collarbone, then lower. I clench my fingers against his chest and he makes a noise low in his throat.
“Never without your blades, little scorpion?” he murmurs, his hand playing on one of my straps.
I slide Poison into my palm and hold it to his throat. “Never,” I whisper.
He pushes against the blade, testing, as he takes my lips again, and I do nothing to stop him. His throat is at my knifepoint, my blade digging into the corded muscles of his neck, but he leans forward and I yield, yield, until I feel my dagger’s hilt against my own chest, my frantic, pounding heart. His hands trace up my bodice, caressing circles against my breasts and igniting a desire low in my belly. His breath hitches as he shifts his hips, the rough scratch of his pants pressing deeper between my legs. The ache inside me builds, and I inhale sharply, gripping the back of his neck and burying my fingers in his hair.
“Àn’ying,” he murmurs against my mouth, and I dig my nails into his skin. He makes another noise in his chest, then suddenly, he flips us so that I’m splayed against the edge of the spring and he is pinning me to the banks with his body. I gaze up, and between the sparks of pleasure misting my senses comes a bone-deep, instinctive stab of fear. I have been in this position before, trapped and helpless as prey.
Yù’chén blinks slowly, studying me. In the next breath, he pulls me up, straightening us so we are face to face, my crescent blade curving between our chests. He is gentle again, his hand around my wrist, placing my blade to the soft curve of his throat. Putting me back in control.
“Àn’ying,” he repeats, my name like a supplication onhis lips. Through the flutter of my lashes, I see that his eyes are on me, dark, heated, and hazy. There is a frantic edge to the way he kisses me now, cupping my face in his palms as though he’s afraid I’ll vanish. As his fingers brush my cheeks, my jaw, the nape of my neck, I can’t help but think of how he held me back on that island of nightmares.
Of that prone, lifeless body the huà’pí showed him as his worst fear.
“Yù’chén,” I whisper against his mouth. “What did you see in the forest?”
He draws a swift breath; his eyes fly open.
And then he pushes away.
I blink, frustrated, desire still pulsing through every nerve of my body. He’s breathing hard, his hair in tangles over his chest. The water between us is red with blood and dotted with petals.
“No,” Yù’chén says, his voice ragged. There is a wild, haunted look to the way he gazes at me, as if I am a ghost. The moment of terror passes, and his expression steels.
I stare at him, my heart pounding. “What did you see in the forest?” I repeat.
Yù’chén’s eyes darken. Then he’s gone, walled up and shuttered with that same stony expression he had back at the Hall of Radiant Sun tonight. “You should go,” he replies, turning his face away.
“What did you see, Yù’chén?”
He looks at me again. “Nothing that concerns you.”
I curl my hands into fists by my side, humiliation stinging my cheeks. “You saved me. You were there because of me. And then you told me to leave. You gifted me that sewingkit, and you bore the punishment for it without telling me.” We’ve been dancing the same dance all along: drawing closer to each other before pushing away. I’m tired of it. “Why?”
Yù’chén tilts his head away from me. His jaw is tight. “ ‘Why?’ ” he echoes, and when he looks at me again, I can’t make out the expression he wears. “Àn’ying, you told me I disgusted you. That you didn’t want to think of me as anything more than a monster. I would be remiss to force you to spend any more time with me than necessary.”
In the past, I might have convinced myself this was all a ruse: helping me, showing me qing’gong, even stealing the sewing kit…but tonight, back in the Forest of Nightmares, something between us changed irrevocably. The way he held me at my most vulnerable moment has broken through the last of my defenses.
“I’m sorry, Yù’chén.” My voice is soft, because I owe him those three words. And then, because tonight, in that forest, he protected the softest, deepest part of me, I give him a truth. “I want to know you. Who you are.”
His lips part; I cannot read the expression on his face, but it’s gone the next moment. He grips the ledge of the pool, locks of his hair hanging over his face. “No, you don’t,” he says at last. “Don’t forget, little scorpion, that this is all a game.”
The cold steals in between us with the rain. My dress clings to my bare skin, and I think of how his hands on me earlier did not feel like the touch of someone who didn’t desire me.
Worse, I think of how I crave it.
