He retracts his hand. The space it leaves behind is cold. “That was when I knew,” he finishes, “that if I continued down this path, there was only one way it would end.”
“So you pushed me away.” My voice is a whisper.
“I tried.”
“Yù’chén.” I move my fingers to his lips, soft and full and wide, remembering how easily he smiled in the days when we first came to know each other. And because I know I cannot, can never, and will never choose him, I say instead: “I see you. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
He draws a swift breath. “Àn’ying, you should leave,” he says, and his voice breaks. “Please. If you don’t leave now, I don’t know that I have it in me to let you go again.”
I can’t. I have known how our story would end since the very beginning. I have resisted, but I no longer wish to.
I press my other palm to his cheek. His hand comes up, his fingers lacing gently in mine, splaying my palm against his mouth. He presses a kiss there. I shiver. Slowly, he trails his mouth to my wrist, where he moves his lips into another kiss. He pulls up the silk of my sleeve, and the cold rushes in against my bare skin, but his mouth is hot as he traces up my arm. It is on his third kiss, at the crook of my elbow, that I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
He pauses at the straps that house my crescent blades on my upper arm, normally hidden beneath my sleeves. I feel his mouth curve into a smile against my skin. “Little scorpion.” He chuckles. “Never without your blades.”
I hold his gaze. Slowly, I draw out Poison. The talisman gleams, and the blade catches an arc of moonlight as I hold it out.
I drop it. The crescent blade falls to the floor in a clatter. Yù’chén’s eyes flick to it, then to me.
“Disarm me,” I whisper, and I pull him down to me in a kiss.
He inhales sharply, then his hands are on my cheeks and tangled in my hair, and he’s kissing me with barely restrained desire. We stagger back until I’m pressed against the wall and his body is hard against mine.
“Disarm me,” I repeat against his mouth.
He bends to press a kiss to my neck, and I shiver, feeling the heat of his hands as they trace up my other arm. Striker falls to the floor, and Yù’chén’s lips trace up my jaw to the outside of my ear. His hands pause on my left thigh, whereFleet rests. I feel the graze of his fingers against the silk of my dress, his desire clear in the darkness of his gaze, the way his body presses against mine.
I lace my fingers through his. Slowly, I guide his hands to the slit on the side of my dress. His eyes never leave mine as he pushes up my skirt, his palm sliding along the bare skin of my thigh. He unstraps Fleet, then his hand moves to my right thigh. Shadow is next.
He hesitates, breathing hard as he looks at my bodice, where my last two blades rest on either side of my ribs. “Àn’ying,” he says. Our heartbeats pulse in the air between us. “I can’t do this. I…” He swallows and draws back, his hands curling into fists at his side. “I will not live past tomorrow. I would ruin you.”
The earnestness, the honesty, in his voice and words crack me.
I catch his wrists, stopping his retreat. Then I push him backward. One, two, three steps…more, until he bumps against the end of the bed. I push him down, and he obeys, his eyes on me as though he is held by some unknown spell that I have cast over him. He could snap my neck in the blink of an eye, but instead, he yields to my touch as if I have all the power in the world.
I find that I love it.
He falls back on the silk sheets, his eyes widening as I slide onto his lap, parting my knees so I’m straddling him. My hair has come undone; still wound through with my white ribbon, locks of it curl against his throat, the collar of his black shift, as he looks up at me. His hands fall onto my hips, and I feel him strain against me as he sits, facing me, our faces inches apart, our breaths tangling.
I press my hand to his cheek. “Do you want me?” I ask.
Yù’chén tips his face up to me, baring the elegant curve of his throat. He swallows hard. “I’ve wanted you so much for so long, Àn’ying,” he says softly. “You have poisoned me, little scorpion, and I would gladly let you do it over and over and over again.”
I shift against him, and his grip tightens on me, his eyes darkening. “Then I want you to ruin me,” I say, and crush our lips together.
He pulls me onto the bed with him, and this time he kisses me with abandon, with a hunger and desperate desire that unravel something inside me.
“Disarm me,” I command again, and he complies, his hands traveling up my thighs and farther up, into the bodice of my dress. I feel his fingers against my ribs, feel cool metal as Healer falls onto the silks and, at last, Heart. My hands work at the buttons of his shirt, then the samite belt at his waist, just as he loosens my undergarments. His hands settle on my hips again, and I don’t break his gaze as I move over him.
He pauses, his kisses turning gentle and slow as he eases me onto him.
I squeeze my eyes shut as he holds me. His touch is agonizing, at once lighting a fire inside me and creating a thirst I can’t quench, too much and not enough. Yù’chén kisses me again with a tenderness that makes me shiver. When I open my eyes, he is looking at me, and I find my reflection in the dark of his eyes. My dress pools at my waist, silver in the moonlight as it connects us, as beautiful as a blossom in the night.
I remember what he told me in the passage of flowers, and my silence after, and I nod as I finally give him myresponse. “I want you,” I whisper—and that’s when I realize it’s not true. After all we have been through together, I am not certainwantis the word that describes how I feel toward him, and that frightens me most of all.
His hands cup my cheeks. “Àn’ying,” he whispers, his voice raw. “I want you, more than anything in my life. More than anything I have ever felt. I…want you.”
And I wonder, too, ifwantis the word he means to use.
