by Pamela Aares
She did as he asked.
“Now, very slowly, remembering the feel of the power, turn your palm to face away from you and push your arm out and away, in an arcing motion. Like this.”
He demonstrated the heart shield move, and she copied him. He didn’t have to ask if she felt the power of the move; he could see it in her face.
“It’s like starting a pledge and then using the power it calls in to push away,” she said.
“Not quite. You aren’t pushing away, you are still casting the power around you—it’s just a smaller, more discreet gesture. Try again.”
This time he saw the energy spin around her, its light curving, hugging and protecting.
“Good.”
He kept any hint of surprise out of his voice. She didn’t need to know right then that she had a special talent for focusing energy; the knowledge might scare or confuse her. She could summon protective forces, that was what mattered.
“Now I’m going to show you the moves my grandmother wanted you to learn.”
“Finally.” She beamed with anticipation.
Kaz had often wished that the training Nari had benefitted from could be shared with all women. Modern culture could use a tune-up when it came to helping young women ramp up their self-esteem. Learning how to protect themselves was just scratching the surface, but at least self-protection was something that could be taught.
“I hope you’ll never need what I’m about to teach you. But sometimes just the act of preparation keeps negative forces at bay.”
Her smile faded.
He showed her the aikido moves, basics that she could use to unseat an attacker. She quickly grasped the concept of balance and of using her opponent’s power to her advantage. He was careful of her shoulder, but she moved well and he was pleased with her progress.
But he wasn’t in any way pleased with his own. Every move she made sliced a spike of desire through him. He was honor bound to help her, he repeated to himself. Acting on the desire she fired was not the way of Bushido. It took all of his concentration to dampen the flame that wanted to ignite, wanted to leap to life, and confine it to the lowest possible simmer.
By the end of the session, he was sure he was more exhausted than she was.
After a light dinner, Kaz left Obaa-chan and Sabrina talking on the porch and went up to his bedroom. Sabrina wanted to know every detail of his grandmother’s life and Obaa-chan seemed delighted to tell her. He, on the other hand, had heard the stories. And he found that watching the two of them fired more than memories.
With each smile and laugh and question, Sabrina pierced another hole in the wall he’d erected years ago. After losing Stacy, he’d sworn to never be that vulnerable again. Swearing the vow to his grandfather to marry a Japanese woman had made it that much easier to keep his distance from women. But as he heard Sabrina’s bell-like laughter, he knew easy wasn’t in his future. Not at all. If things kept going at this rate, he’d be the next one needing harai.
He took a cold shower and then tried to channel his jagged energy by repeating a series of strenuous jujitsu exercises beside his bed. The exercises would increase his strength and balance for the upcoming spring training—would put more power into his fastball—but they did nothing to banish Sabrina from his body or his mind. After the hundredth round, he gave up.
He threw open the window to let in the night air. It rippled cool against the perspiration beaded on his chest.
A knock sounded lightly at his door.
The racket he’d been making for the past hour and a half had probably kept his grandmother from sleeping.
He opened the door, ready to apologize. And looked straight into Sabrina’s deep blue eyes.
“Sabrina.” He stepped back, almost involuntarily.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“Um…no. I…”
“May I come in?”
The smile playing across her face flustered him and scattered any words he might’ve had at his command. He stepped aside, and she entered his room and crossed to the window.
She looked out before turning back to him.
“There’s a lovely full moon tonight,” she said.
With the moonlight at her back, he couldn’t see her face.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to thank you.” She took a small step toward him. “For what you did today. What you’ve done all along.”
She simply stood there. The kimono they kept for guests was short on her, revealing the curves of her calves. She’d belted it loosely, and the vee in the front drew his eye. He wanted to know what was hidden there.
No, he wanted to see what was hidden beneath the crossed fabric. See and touch and taste.
“That’s not necessary.”
She blushed. “Yes, well, I wanted more than that.”
He should send her back to her room. He would send her back to her room. But the words wouldn’t come.
She slid her hand to the belt of the kimono and tugged. The fabric parted and the kimono fell away. Moonlight silhouetted her naked body. His breath caught in his throat, and his body paid no attention to his mind saying no.
“And I assure you,” she said as she stepped toward him, “I am very much awake.” She touched her palm to his chest, over his heart, and looked up at him from under her lashes. “This time.”
She raised her other hand to his neck and pressed up onto her toes to reach his lips. In the trembling heat of her kiss, something inside him snapped. The resolve he’d fought so long to hold dissolved. His hands moved with a mission that had burned in them since the first day he’d seen her. Her lips parted with the force of his thrusting tongue. If passion had a taste, it would be the honey sweetness of Sabrina’s kiss. She arched against him, pressing her breasts to his chest. Through the thin cotton of his pants, his erection throbbed hard against her belly. She moaned against his lips and he was undone.
He bent, reached under her naked bottom and lifted her up without breaking the contact of their kiss. Life pulsed there, in her lips, life and promise. A promise for a love he’d never known he wanted. A love that had sneaked up on him, stealthier than any opponent could have managed.
As he lowered her to the bed, she pulled her lips from his.
He felt like he’d been unplugged from the force of life itself. He knelt beside her, his knees touching the lush curve of her hip.
“Sabrina—”
She pressed onto her elbows and then raised herself to kneel. She touched her fingertip to his lips.
“No, Kaz. No words.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed closer. “Just show me.”
Vows be damned.
He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him, plundered her lips with a kiss that possessed a force he couldn’t control. He spread her legs with his knees, then lowered himself to rub his erection against her mound, to circle and stroke and caress her hot flesh. She moaned and lifted her hips, rocking with him, and thrust her tongue against his, meeting power with power. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back and he was lost.
The kiss lasted for a lifetime, for a moment. For forever.
He tasted her lips, dueled with her tongue, danced with her mouth. Kissing Sabrina was like the most enriching samurai practice—rewarding and alluring, satisfying him while making him crave even more.
He put his palms beside her head and moved down her body to take one budded nipple into his mouth. She tasted better than the sweetest, ripest summer-warmed peach. As he suckled at her breast, his hands roamed her body, discovering, savoring, her soft, smooth skin. He reached a hand to her sex and felt the honey-slick wetness of desire. She wanted him. The truth her body told shot fire and want deeper in him. He slipped a finger against her already hard nub and circled slowly, then firmly, then gently. Her hips bucked against his hand, and he pressed her down to the bed with his palm.
“Not so fast,” he said as he lifted his head from her breast. But if he didn’t get a grip, it wou
ld be fast. He took a long breath and willed his body to calm. But as her fingers worked at the knotted drawstring at the waist of his pants and brushed against his already engorged erection, he knew calm wasn’t in the cards.
“Take these off,” she said. Her breaths were short and ragged, matching his.
She sat up and stroked his erection through the thin cotton, then tugged at the drawstring again. He pulled her hand away.
“If you want slow, Sabrina, you’ll have to follow my lead.”
She lifted his fingertips to her lips and sucked.
His erection leapt, constrained only by the thin material covering him. Her eyes went wide, and she smiled against his fingers. He pulled his hand from her lips.
She shot him a defiant look and ran her other hand along his shaft. He drew a breath and moved her hand away.
The drawstring of his pants had knotted. He rose to his knees, fisted his hand in the waistband of his pants, and with a swift yank, he ripped the finely woven cotton. She eased the cloth down his hips and his erection sprang free. Sabrina bent her head to taste him, and he wound his fingers gently in her hair, pulling her head back and away.
“No, Sabrina. Later. I have something to show you.” Hands to her shoulders, he pressed her back against the bed. “Do. Not. Move.”
He pinned her arms above her head and crouched over her, his pulsing erection hovering just above her. “If you do what I ask, what you wish for will be yours.” He’d almost said that he’d be hers but had stopped himself. Barely. Passion spiraled hot and strong—he couldn’t trust any more words.
On a breath, he released her hands and rocked back on his heels, tracing his palms and fingers over the contours of her body. The sensation of their joined energy shocked hot awareness lashing through him. As he moved his hands along her skin, his fingers read her like a map of a foreign territory. Never had he touched anything so smooth, so warm, so alive with the pulse of life. He swallowed hard as sensation began to transform into near-uncontrollable want.
He lowered himself to his forearms and then slid his erection lower, touching the very tip to her wetness, circling the hard nub of her sex. He looked into her eyes and saw the fire there, but no surrender. If he hadn’t had years of practice, years of controlling the urges of his body, it would’ve already been over. He gave a silent prayer of thanks that his control had not abandoned him.
“Don’t fight it, Sabrina. Let go. Trust me.”
She bit at her bottom lip and nodded.
She grabbed the bedspread, balling it in her fists and bucking against him as he circled his erection against her clitoris. Power leapt in him and with it the screaming desire for release. He bit it back and lowered his mouth to her belly, tracing his lips along her soft flesh. He lifted a hand to cover her mouth. And then he closed his lips around her rock-hard nub and sucked. Her scream, muffled against his palm, told him pleasure ran its powered course.
“Shhh,” he whispered against her thigh. “My grandmother is sleeping. I’ll take my hand away if you promise not to scream.”
She nodded against his hand and he pulled it away, running his fingertips against the curve of her breasts, along the curve of her waist.
“Relax, Sabrina. Let your body find its way.”
He lowered his mouth to her sex and felt her shiver as she writhed under the licking of his tongue. He traced his fingers along her hips and then to the hot folds at her core. He toyed at her wet opening with his fingertips and then pressed two fingers into her, pleasuring her with his tongue and his hands.
Her muscles convulsed around his fingers. She pulled a pillow over her head and muffled her moan. He matched the motion of his hand to the grinding of her hips against it. Pleasure coursed through her, pleasure he’d brought her. He wanted to roar.
He sat up on his heels and pulled the pillow away from her without stopping the slow, even thrusting of his fingers.
“I want to see your face,” he whispered.
He found the rough texture of her G-spot, and he again closed one hand against her mouth as he slowly stroked her. She rose into his hand, her body arching, her fists clutching the bedspread and her screams muffled by his fingers. And then she went still with the force of surrender. She looked to him, her eyes barely focused, her skin glistening with the sweat of their lovemaking.
No other experience had ever brought him the same thrill as pleasuring Sabrina.
After allowing her a few moments of recovery, he began to move his fingers in her again.
Pain seared the hand covering her mouth. He swallowed his cry and snatched his hand away from her sharp teeth.
“You deserved that,” she said with a smile as she rose to her elbows. Still smiling, she closed her hand around his erection. “My turn.”
“No. I won’t be able to keep my promise,” he said, swallowing down a groan as she flicked her thumb and spread a bead of moisture across his already wet tip. “My word binds me, Sabrina.” He pulled her hand away. “It is the Bushido way.”
Why had he said that? It reminded him that he shouldn’t be here, not with her. He’d made a vow…
But as she lay back against the bed and spread her legs and crooked a finger at him, all thought vanished.
“Then keep your promise, Kaz. You told me that would be mine.” She pointed. “Mine.” She spread her hands in the air, making the gesture to call in power that he’d taught her. “All mine. All of it. All of you.”
He kicked off his pants and pulled a condom from the nightstand beside his bed. It’d been there for more years than he wanted to count, and he hoped it hadn’t crumbled to dust. With another quick move, he turned the photo of his grandfather, also on the nightstand, face down.
“Now would be good,” Sabrina said as he rolled the condom down his shaft. “Very, very good.”
He thrust into her, heat exploding in his veins. Thought vanished in the power of his body coupling with hers. He looked into her eyes and forced his body to stillness. Then she smiled, a smile he would never forget, a smile that both held him and lured him. Then she drew his head down. As their lips met, he thrust again. And was transported by the power, by the releasing, compounding, confounding, sheer ecstasy of his body and her body meeting in a timeless, wordless dance.
He held her as their breaths returned to normal, as their pulses slowed into the steady beat of recovery.
“If I wasn’t possessed before, I am now,” she said, running her hand along his chest.
More likely, he was the one who was now possessed, who might need to be exorcised. But he was pretty sure that no power, no ritual and no prayer could remove Sabrina from his heart.
She sighed and snuggled her head to his chest.
And thought rushed back in.
He had nothing to offer Sabrina. A life on an inevitably failing peach farm? A life as the wife of a minor league pitcher?
If spring training went as he planned, if the Giants offered him a spot on the roster, he could provide a good living and a house—maybe not in Bel Air and nothing like Trovare—but a decent house.
But it wasn’t just about houses and prospects and lifestyles. He wasn’t free to love her. He may have turned his grandfather’s photo face down, but he was still bound by his vow. If he didn’t have his word, an unshakable word, what did he have?
He closed his eyes when his heart whispered the answer. He didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to know the answer. But the whisper from his heart became an echoing shout throughout his soul.
Love.
In his fight to free Sabrina from the powers that bound her, he hadn’t counted on the power of love.
He had to tell her that he wasn’t free to love her, not the way she deserved. He couldn’t marry her. And if the passion they’d just shared was any indication, if he kept on this path, he’d obliterate his honor or he’d hurt her. Hurt them both. Already he’d crossed too far over what should’ve been a hard and fast boundary.
“I can’t give you what you want, Sab
rina.” He stroked a lock of hair from her face, trailing his fingers to her collarbone. “Not what you deserve.”
She stiffened in his arms and wriggled away from him.
“Everyone deserves to feel what we just felt, Kaz. Everyone. The world would be a better place if they did.”
He considered telling her of his vow. A vow that felt like a festering thorn, its pain blocking his path forward. But that wasn’t her problem. It was his.
“I mean in life. Day to day. I’m bound to a different path.”
“Bound? As in not available?”
“Something like that.”
She studied him for some moments. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.” He began to sort through the best way to tell her. Wished he’d spoken up before they’d crossed the line of melding their bodies. Hell, if her feelings were anywhere close to his, he wished he’d spoken before they’d melded their souls.
She stroked her hand along his forearm, stopping his thoughts, stopping the half-formed sentences that in no way expressed what he really felt for her.
“For now, Kaz, let’s just have now. I’ve never felt as good in my life as I feel right now.” She lifted a finger to his lips. “No more words. Let’s explore those powers you were showing me. I need to study up.”
And as she cast him a seductive smile and ran her hand back to his already hard erection, he knew he was a goner.
Afterward, Sabrina slipped into the gentle breathing of a peaceful sleep. In the silvered moonlight she looked like an angel, an angel sent to rock his world. She might sleep peacefully after the harai and their lovemaking—he hoped she did. But him? He had demons to wrestle, those of his own making. He’d be lucky if he slept at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Some experiences change everything.
Sabrina stretched against the cool fabric of the sheets. And knew before opening her eyes that Kaz was no longer in the bed beside her.
A wild force had possessed her in the night. She’d met Kaz with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed. But the mysterious allure was more than the physical, mind-blowing, sensual experience could add up to. More than the sensation of their bodies entwined. More than the raw male beauty of him and his mysterious, compelling ways. Mated. The word ran around her mind, teasing. Echoing. Striking deep chords and vibrating through her.
