by Jeannie Lin
She remained undressed, pulling the blanket over her to keep the heat of their joining close for just a little longer. Outside, Kwan-Li was watching over her, protecting her against whatever danger lurked out there on the steppe, but soon he would be gone. And soon she would be married, exactly as she had planned.
Despite her best efforts, the air grew cold around her. She sat up and struggled back into her clothing, fumbling with the clasps in the darkness. Quickly she lay back down and cocooned herself in the blanket, trying hard to recapture the warmth. This was her stolen moment. She needed to hold on to every detail.
In the years to come, she would come back to this small tent in the middle of the wild grassland. She would remember the smell of Kwan-Li’s skin and his weight above her. Even if the memory had faded, it would still belong to her.
* * *
Dao was aware of a stream of sunlight and then a presence moving beside her.
“Princess.” Kwan-Li’s voice tingled against her spine.
She opened one eye to the sight of him leaning over her. “Don’t call me that,” she murmured.
“What should I call you then?” His gaze was warm as he tucked back a strand of her hair. “Beautiful? Beloved?”
His fingertips following the curve of her ear in a caress that made heat pool in her belly and her limbs go weak. She felt an alarming twinge deep in her chest. It was easy to see why people did tragic and foolish things for this. Nothing felt as warm and safe and perfect.
“Aren’t we still in danger?” she asked as he began undoing the clasps along her side.
He smiled at her. “Only you, Princess.”
His knuckles brushed the underside of breast as he opened the front of the deel. He parted the garment down the length of her, his eyes following the path of exposed skin. She swallowed as the cool morning air washed over her legs. She was already breathing hard, her pulse frantic, when he positioned himself between her knees. His mouth parted and his eyes met hers a moment before his warm breath bathed her sex. She had to close her eyes.
Her embarrassment lasted only half a heartbeat before ecstasy consumed her. His lips were on her. Then his tongue, licking a slow, intimate path. He parted her with long, deft fingers. His mouth was unerring, teasing lightly, finding secret places on her she never knew existed. He was making her sob, making her scream. Making her love him.
He entered her in the aftermath, with her body shaken and too sensitive to take all of him without a whimper. He was mindful of her as he took his own pleasure, moving with such tender care that it broke her heart.
She opened her eyes. He held her gaze the entire time as his movements became rough and his breath shallow. He climaxed like that, still watching her.
This time, she was the first to turn away. She had to. She was starting to wonder and she was starting to dream.
Kwan-Li slipped abruptly out of her as she sat up. Dao fumbled with the clasps on her garment, staring down at her hands rather than at him. Her heart was beating too fast and there was no way to escape. In his eyes, she had seen both a promise and a demand and she was frightened of how he made her hope for more. Maybe princesses could dream, but she couldn’t.
After a long pause, she could hear Kwan-Li getting up as well. The silence grew oppressive.
“Princess.”
She turned to see him raised onto his knees beside the rugs and blankets that served as her bed. His pupils were dark, his face a mask. He knew something was wrong.
She fought to keep her voice steady. A low throb of pleasure still vibrated through her. “You should know this changes nothing.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I would not presume it would.”
Dao could see the anger that vibrated through him.
“I am still marrying the khagan,” she said, gathering up her hair.
She suddenly wanted more than anything to set herself right: her hair, her clothing. If she could wash the scent of him from her skin, she would. He’d somehow gotten inside her, mind and body, and the memory was too hard to fight. She needed to get out of the confines of the tent and remove all other reminders of what they had done. She didn’t regret it, she just needed it finished. This was how affairs were conducted, weren’t they?
“Your clan negotiated this alliance. You have a duty,” she reminded him. She struggled with the hairpins. “I have a duty.”
“Everything that you are saying is true,” he said tonelessly.
Dao didn’t realize she had her hands clenched. She released them and let the blood flow back into her fingertips. “I told you. I didn’t want my first lover to be a stranger.”
Why was she explaining herself? Men were known to love and then turn away from one breath to the next.
He closed each clasp on his deel methodically, one after the other, all the while watching her with the eyes of a hawk. “The princess can rely on this humble servant to be discreet.” His mouth twisted over the words.
Did he think she considered him beneath her? The horror of it made her blood run cold. The Kwan-Li she had come to know took nothing lightly. Not a kiss, not a single word. Surely not a night like the one they’d spent.
“I’m not a princess,” she blurted out.
He blinked at her. His frown deepened as he rose to his full height and came to stand over her. “Not a princess?” he asked slowly.
Her heart raced. “I haven’t a drop of royal blood. I was given the title by imperial decree—or rather my master’s daughter was, but Pearl ran away so I came in her place. But I am still a princess by decree,” she amended. “Your treaty will still be honored.”
“Such lies! Send a false princess to the barbarians. How would they know the difference?”
His hair was untied and there was something powerful and frighteningly beautiful about him as he glared at her. She was no longer pretending and he was no longer restrained by civility.
“Did you really think every alliance bride was truly a princess?” she asked impatiently.
“The imperial court thinks it can play whatever trick it wants to on the ignorant Khitans.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “A trick? Like pledging loyalty to both the Uyghurs and the Tang Empire at the same time?” she snapped.
He fell silent.
“Why did you choose to speak now?” he asked finally.
Because she’d grown to respect him. Because what they had between them was changing too quickly for her to catch her breath. No man had ever taken such good care of her or shown her such loyalty.
“You risked your life to protect me. I thought you should know the truth.”
It was a poor explanation, but how could she explain how she truly felt?
“I chose to come here,” she told him fiercely. “No one forced me into this arranged marriage. The Emperor needed an alliance bride and this was the only way that I could help my family. Me. The lowly servant.”
A lowly servant instead of a daughter. In a family that never accepted her as one of their own until this sacrifice. Dao looked down at her hands.
“Men seem to think they’re the only ones who know about responsibility and honor,” she said, her ire spent.
The chill in the air seeped into her skin and the ache over her heart refused to go away. She had known everything would be different after their night together, but not like this. She’d become more attuned to his smell, his touch, his very presence. Even the sound of his voice made her stomach dance in ci
rcles.
For the first time since she’d begun this journey, she doubted her decision. She could lose everything. All because a man had taken her to bed and she had liked it. She had loved it—she might even love him, but it changed nothing. She was not a silly, romantic girl to be blinded so easily.
“I will marry the khagan,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “And you’ll go your own way, just as you said.”
“Princess.” Kwan-Li stopped on the title, no longer knowing what to call her. “You had decided this before you came to me last night.”
“Yes. I even considered that there could be a child.”
Out here in Khitan, Dao finally had control over her own life. At first it had felt like freedom. Now she was exhausted, drained of every emotion. He tried to reach for her, but she wouldn’t let him.
“What if there is a child?” he asked softly.
She met his gaze without flinching. “So close to the wedding, no one would ever know.”
“No man would ever allow that.”
She was reminded of her father, who wasn’t a bad man. Merely a typical one.
“You’re wrong,” she said, forcing her heart to harden. “Plenty of men do.”
Chapter Six
Kwan-Li had only traveled once to the encampment where the khagan held court. He was little more than a boy at the time, riding alongside his father as they went to pay their yearly tribute to the ruling clan. He used the distant mountains and the sun as a guide as he’d been taught. It wasn’t long before the land spoke to him once again.
As they reached the northern region, the land became green and lush. The journey brought them to a cliff overlooking a wide valley down below. Tall grass rippled in waves with a tipping of yellow that signaled the beginning of the autumn season. The glitter of water could be seen in the distance.
The first time he’d seen An-Ming, his princess who wasn’t a princess, was two months ago at the start of the journey. She had been wrapped in silk and jewels as she stepped down from her palanquin. An-Ming dismounted now and ventured to the edge to peer into the valley. Her chest rose and fell with the sway of the breeze.
“Your land is really quite beautiful,” she said with an air of wonder.
“It is.” He had forgotten it at times himself, but he was rediscovering his homeland now with An-Ming beside him.
“How much longer?” she asked.
He knew what she was asking. “Two days.”
“So soon…”
Her voice trailed off. They hadn’t so much as brushed by each other for the last few days. Not since that morning. He sensed that she didn’t want to be wooed or coaxed back into his arms, so he had waited for her to come to him. He stood behind her, just at her shoulder, with less than a hand’s span between them. Not touching, but close enough for the hint of it.
“The alliance with your Emperor is important to us, but it is not written in blood.” He wanted to try to explain to her. The different ruling tribes formed a complicated union.
She looked away from him, her chin titled upward in a sign of stubbornness and pride. “This is not only for me.”
Kwan-Li understood sacrifice. He also knew what it was to lose one’s sense of self to duty. The thought of An-Ming being placed in the khagan’s court suddenly pained him. He had desired her from the start—perhaps the way a man coveted beautiful things he had no chance of possessing—but he admired her now. He was in awe of her.
It wasn’t that he was afraid she would lose herself, he realized. It was that he didn’t want to give her up.
They returned to the horses and he untacked the animals to set them to graze. When he returned to An-Ming, he was surprised to see she had started the cooking fire without his assistance. She started to pour herself some tea, but he took over the task.
“You don’t have to serve me,” she protested as he handed her the cup.
Wordlessly he poured another cup for himself. For a moment, they sat facing the valley, shoulder to shoulder without touching. He drank. She drank.
“Do you think that everything—” He cast her a sidelong glance. “That our night together was me serving you?”
She almost spit out the tea.
He hid a smile as she sputtered. She deserved some punishment for tormenting him. For the long nights he slept on the cold ground while she lay hidden away, so temptingly close.
She looked around in desperation as she recovered. “So how good are you with that?”
He followed her gaze to the saddle packs and extracted his bow. “Better than any of your Han archers.”
She raised a questioning eyebrow. “Teach me then.”
He laughed.
“Don’t Khitan women know how to ride and shoot?” she asked.
“Some, but…”
An-Ming set her teacup aside and held out her hand for the bow. “Teach me.”
“You are not strong enough to bend this one.”
“Come now. I’m not as soft as you think.”
Indeed she wasn’t, but she was soft in all the right places. Gamely he handed the bow over. It was fashioned from wood and sheep’s horn and designed to be fired from horseback.
He stood when she stood, taking a moment to position her with his hands on her shoulders.
“You’re taking liberties now that I’m no longer royalty,” she accused, shrugging out of his grasp.
“You asked for the lesson, my false princess.”
She made a face at him that he doubted he’d ever see on a princess. As he predicted, An-Ming was unable to make any progress pulling at the drawstring. She returned the bow after a few attempts.
“Can you hit that tree over there?” she challenged.
There was a poplar tree a good distance away. This sort of game was commonplace to any boy growing up on the steppe. Suddenly he found himself in the mood for bravado. He stood laconically and aligned himself with the target.
“The first branch on the left,” she identified.
Kwan-Li nocked an arrow against the drawstring and took his time sighting the target. “If I hit it, you spend the night with me.”
An-Ming made a choking sound as he released. The arrow flew true, but continued past the tree to land in the grass beyond.
“You missed,” she said after exactly three heartbeats, her voice faint.
“I didn’t.”
She gave him a doubtful look. He returned it with some arrogance. Together, they walked toward the tree with purpose. The bark on the underside of the branch had been grazed away. An-Ming touched her fingertips lightly to the pale telltale mark before turning on him.
“I never agreed on the terms,” she protested.
“Another target then?” he suggested, enjoying himself more than he had in years. His gaze moved up to a dark shadow in the sky. “I can hit that eagle, if you wish.”
He started to take aim without any true intention behind it. An-Ming grabbed his arm with a look of exasperation. “Scoundrel.”
She turned on her heel and strode away, leaving him to admire the sway of her hips. The wager remained enticingly unresolved. He looked back up to the skies, tracking the flight of the golden eagle over the valley. He was glad to spare the creature. He felt a kinship to it at that moment as it soared high above its domain.
He felt boastful around An-Ming today. He wasn’t the barbarian struggling to be a gentleman in a foreign city any longer, but he wasn’t a youth learning the ways of the steppe, eith
er. He had come home and An-Ming was inextricably part of that journey.
There was little conversation for the rest of the day. When evening neared, they stopped and followed the usual routine: tying down the horses, the fire, the tent, a simple meal of ground tea brick and millet.
His princess who wasn’t a princess then retired into her tent without even the generosity of a single kind word for him. He grinned and let the first stars appear over the horizon before going to her.
She lay on the rug inside with a blanket draped over her. Her eyes were open. They glittered in the darkness.
Without a word, they were in each other’s arms. Clothing was only a momentary distraction. They unfastened just enough for skin to find skin. An-Ming wove her fingers into his hair to pull him to her. He liked it when she was demanding. He liked her any way at all.
He laid himself down and pulled her on top of him. She made a startled sound, but the confusion didn’t last. She braced her palm against his chest as she straddled his thighs. Her hair tickled against his throat. His hands circled her waist, angling her just so. With just a lowering of her hips and an upward thrust of his, he was inside her, sliding into sultry heat.
This was good. Very, very good. Soon they were both shuddering, lost in each other.
An-Ming melted onto him afterward, her curves molding perfectly to his body. She hid her face against his shoulder.
“I must still marry the khagan,” she said, tormented.
“You don’t have to.”
She shook her head, refusing to look at him. She was determined to bear this burden and nothing could convince her otherwise. Nothing that could be said with words. He rolled her beneath him and hushed her, kissing her forehead, the tip of her nose, then her lips. The sort of kisses a longtime lover would bestow. She responded to him so sweetly. She wanted to be hushed.
“What is your name?” he asked when they broke apart to catch a breath. “Your real name.”
