She shook her head. "There are none."
He wanted to demand she get one, but he had no wish to be separated from her again. Not if this was the result. Instead, he tugged at her wrist and pulled her closer.
"Come to bed, wife." Then he stroked a single character on her wrist:
Talk.
He felt her hesitation, but he insisted. He wrote the character again. He had to hold her, had to feel in the most basic of ways that she was fine.
"How do you feel, Kui Yu?" she asked, her voice gaining strength. "There was a tray outside the door—"
"Dinner. I ate, and am doing much better." In truth it had been a hell of a struggle to maneuver the chopsticks with his hurt shoulder, but he had managed.
"I did not mean to be away so long," she confessed. "I met a woman—a servant here. She gave me this gown. I helped her with her daughter. She lives in the building behind us. She is a servant, you know. This gown is one she doesn't wear anymore. She is binding her daughter's feet. I helped her do it right. You know how little girls can struggle. A servant woman. With her own house. And a daughter."
She was babbling, her sentences disjointed and her movements anxious. Kui Yu mulled over her words and searched for their underlying message. A servant woman with a cast-off silk gown and a Chinese daughter in a Manchurian household? Kang's Chinese mistress! Shi Po had befriended her!
He softened his hold on her wrist and wrote on her arm: You learned much. Then he added, Be careful.
"Kang toys with us. He will kill us after he watches us suffer."
Kui Yu nodded. He had suspected so much. Hurt? he wrote on her arm.
Tired, she answered on the back of his hand. Then she tugged free of his grasp.
He waited. He watched her undress, loving her dark silhouette against the dim moonlight. Sweet heaven, she was a beautiful woman. Even more so now that he could see she moved without difficulty. The shift of shoulder, slender back, and graceful arm flowed without hitch or excessive protection, which left him room to admire the swell of her breasts, the willowy flow of her waist and hips, and the tapering length of her legs.
His dragon stirred with renewed vigor. But though his illness had passed, his thoughts were still clouded. Had Shi Po really been crying? He hadn't imagined that. Even in the darkness, he had seen it. And he had heard the catch in her voice.
Did she cry because of him? She knew he wasn't dying. Perhaps it was something else he had said or done?
One possibility was obvious. He remembered their earlier conversation with excruciating clarity, the one interrupted by the soldiers. The one where he'd confessed to seeing Lily. That he had discharged his yang with her on a regular basis. What devil had possessed him to make that particular confession? And how would he ever explain his actions?
He supposed as her husband and the master of his household, he didn't need to explain his actions. After all, many Chinese men visited prostitutes with no ill humors from their wives. Some even married their favorite whores and gave the poor women a small amount of status in their limited lives.
But Shi Po had never been like other wives. Nor had they ever had a typical marriage. He had always felt a gnawing guilt whenever he visited Lily, and a deep shame afterward. And yet, he had never stopped.
He sighed, echoing the creak of the mattress as Shi Po climbed in beside him. Only now, as she slipped naked beneath the blanket, did she seem awkward. And he understood why. She was angry with him. Angry and unsure about Lily, angry about how to act given their situation. And hurt. She was hurt that he had expended his yang elsewhere.
She shouldn't be, he thought irritably. He wouldn't have gone elsewhere if she had allowed him to release his yang at home. He sighed. It sounded perfectly reasonable to him, but he was a man. When had women ever thought like men?
She was lying down now. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and her body felt stiff as a board. Somehow he had to reestablish a partnership with her. Quiet anger like this was difficult enough under normal circumstances in a marriage, but it would be deadly now.
Making a swift decision, he rolled over. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he wrapped an arm around his wife and tugged her against his body. He moved more than her, but that didn't really matter. All he cared about was that she pressed her soft naked body against him and he hardened. If nothing else, their bodies knew one another. He planned to start there.
Incredibly, his ploy worked. Instead of turning, away, Shi Po twisted her face to his, her mouth to his, her tongue to his. His breath caught in his throat, and his mind was seized by shock at his wife's sudden attention. She was kissing him! And he... He was going to take advantage of this unexpected development without searching for explanation.
He deepened the kiss. Where her tongue dueled with his, he matched her thrusts, dominated her. Soon he was between her lips, stroking between her teeth, pushing his tongue deep into the recesses of her open mouth.
He heard her breath catch; then she released a soft moan. Never had he heard such sounds from his wife—even in the current of the strongest yin tide. They were of both surrender and pleasure, desperate hunger and sweet joy. And they fired his blood as nothing else.
She wanted him. She clung to him. She was shifting her hips in invitation. He adjusted his weight to climb on top even as he continued to explore whatever he could of her mouth. They needed to breathe, so she broke away. But he did not stop, trailing kisses down her neck and between her breasts.
He needed a better position. He rolled on top of her, bracing himself equally on both arms. Pain cut through his thoughts and made him gasp. He shifted immediately, but the damage was done. His eyes temporarily rolled back in his head as he fought radiating bolts of agony. And when they finally faded, when he gained control of his breath, he opened his eyes and saw Shi Po, her face blanched white.
"I'm fine," he said, but she shook her head and scrambled out from under him. He would have argued, but all his attention was taken with not jostling his arm again.
"Shi Po. Truly, I—," he began, but she cut him off.
"No. You have been ill. You must not expend more energy," she commanded.
"I will remain very still. You can do most of the work."
She cast him a look that said she was not amused. Indeed, she was profoundly angry. Moments before she had clung to him as if he were her very life; now, with a short huff, she spun on her side and showed him her back. "It is late. You should rest," she said.
"I've been resting all day," he muttered, his anger rising like his stiff and hungry dragon. What did a man do with such a woman? Hot one moment, icy the next? He would not force her. And yet...
He collapsed on his good shoulder and contemplated his bizarre wife. He often did not understand her, but never before had she been inconsistent. Always her decisions were well thought out. Even her moods—good or ill—lasted for days or weeks.
"What has happened, Shi Po?" he asked her.
"Nothing," she snapped. But he knew she lied. "I am tired. I have been caring for you all this time without rest."
He knew that was true. He trailed his fingertips across her shoulder, down her side, then slowly up the curve of her hip. How smooth her skin was. How soft her body. His dragon stretched toward her, leaking a yang pearl in its hunger.
He began to trail his hand in the other direction. It slid gently up her hip, then dipped toward her waist to linger on her ribs. If he pushed the tiniest bit forward, he would stroke the outside edge of her breast. But even as the thought occurred to him, she curled away and tucked the blanket tightly around her.
He sighed and let his hand drop. He knew what had to come. His wife had never done anything halfway, nor would she tolerate half a confession from him. He would have to tell her all. Not just that he had been with Lily, but the whens and the whys. Most especially the whys.
He closed his eyes. He did not want to look at the unyielding expanse of her back while he spoke.
"When I visited your aunt..
." he said out loud. She would know what he meant. She would know he was referring to their earlier conversation. "Ten years ago, I paid back the loan. The one that sustained us after the building collapsed. After everything went bad."
He felt Shi Po stiffen beneath his touch. Her shoulder jerked and her back tightened, and her entire body became like stone.
"Your aunt was very pleased. There was a woman there..." Lily, he wrote on her back. "A friend of your aunt's."
How to explain the rest? Especially with no response from his wife, no clue as how to continue. He stroked into her back:
White. Practiced English. For negotiations with Captain Jonas.
That had been his original intent when he'd met with the lost, white woman: to practice English, to find someone who was loyal to him and could help negotiate the difficult path of selling goods to white sea captains. It had not taken long for him to learn her story. Fate and debt had forced Lily and her husband to hop aboard the first ship available. Leaving behind thousands in unpaid bills, they headed for China and a hoped-for new life. But her husband had died on the passage, and with no money and no skills, she'd ended up in the nail-shack district. A year later Auntie Ting had received her as a apology gift from her usual supplier, who had sold her a virgin who wasn't remotely virginal. Auntie Ting knew the novelty value of a white woman; she invested money in cleaning Lily up only to discover afterward that the woman was pregnant with a half-breed bastard.
It was Kui Yu who that day convinced Auntie Ting not to dump her back onto the streets. And Kui Yu had also eventually saved enough money to buy her out of the life and apprentice her child as a cabin boy to Captain Jonas.
"I don't remember exactly when it first began..."
He stopped himself. He did remember. Perfectly. Ru Shan, he wrote on his wife's back. It started when he became your partner. Despite his intention, his calligraphy was harsh against her back, his movements quick and angry.
That was when I first saw Lily.
Her baby had been nearly four months old, and Auntie Ting uninterested in keeping the boy around. Babies interfered with business.
I helped her escape, he wrote. Catholic mission. "Now she cares for orphans with the priests," he whispered.
He got no response from his wife. He let his hand drop away. He didn't want to touch her while he said the rest.
"Do you know what it is to live without hope?" he asked. "She had nothing when I met her. Now she cares for children who would die without her." He stopped. This was not what he had meant to say, but he couldn't find the right words. Finally, they came.
"She talks so much. Words, feelings, hopes, fears—all flow like water. She says what she did one day, what she wants to do the next. What one child may do or not do, what the priests say. What the plants do! All moments are shared without restraint." How could he explain? It felt so wonderful to hear, to know the tiniest details of Lily's spirit, because Lily shared everything. Unlike his wife.
"She talked to me," he said. And when she'd talked, his dragon had become hard and eventually found its way between her thighs.
His wife's whisper drifted to him over the smooth wall of her back. "What did you say to her?"
He shook his head. "Nothing much. We talked of my sales. Bad shipments. Good days. Nothing important." And yet, it had seemed like so much.
"All men of wealth have concubines and lovers. As your fortune grew, I knew there would be other women."
He knew it was true. One wife for one man was a barbarian concept. And yet, he could not forgive himself. "I wanted only you. But when you refused me, I became lonely. I should have insisted. I should not have gone to someone else."
"I should not have refused you." She sighed, the sound echoing in the dark chamber. "I love you," said his wife.
Kui Yu was lost in regret. It took some time for his wife's words to slip into his thoughts, to sear like a brand into his consciousness.
She loved him?
Shi Po rolled toward him onto her back, her face hard and cold. She spoke to the ceiling. "That is the damage done today. I realized you are a good man, and that I love you." He detected anger, bitterness, even horror in her words. And her eyes were wet, leaking tears down her cheeks. So shocked was he by the sight, he had to reach out and touch her face, to feel the moisture to be sure it was real. And still her words burned through his mind. She loved him?
She looked at him, her eyes tragic. "I thought I could not leave because you were too attached to me. That you were not ready to release me. It turns out..." Her voice caught and she could not finish. She gave a self-deprecating laugh.
But he could finish, stunned by his new understanding of this woman who had been a stranger for the last ten years. "It turns out that you are attached to me and cannot attain Heaven because of it." He knew the truth even before she dipped her chin in acknowledgment.
"Do you love me?" she asked, her voice high and frightened.
He stared at her. The Chinese did not speak of these things. Certainly not mature adults. Love was the fantasy of children, of young boys and girls in the first flush of adolescence. Did he love her? He intended to say yes. His devotion to her had been a constant in his life. But the words would not form. So many cold years lay between them, so much emptiness stretched between his youthful adoration and now.
"No," he said, stunned by the revelation. "No," he said again, shocked by the cold hole within him where her image had once resided. "And yet..." He stroked her tears. He rubbed them between his fingers while his mind whirled.
"And yet?" she echoed.
"And yet I have no wish for you to die. Indeed, I would do—I have done—a great deal to keep you alive, my wife." He caught her gaze and held it. That firmness became his anchor. "You will not kill yourself because of this," he ordered. "I have need of you." He did not explain his need; he had little understanding of it.
"Now I understand why you reached Heaven ahead of me. Your tie to me is already broken."
He frowned, still struggling with his thoughts. A boy who lost his love usually became bitter and angry. But what did a man do when he realized his heart had deadened? Kui Yu did not know. And so he reached for the one thing he did.
He was atop her in the space of a heartbeat, inside her the next. His thrust was brutal, filled with all the conflicting, churning emotions that cluttered his thoughts. It was cruel and almost animalistic. And yet he could not stop himself. Neither, apparently, could she.
Her body had been ready for him, somehow, but it had not been ready for their combined animosity. How could it? As harsh as he was, she was harsher. His thrusts were like hammer blows, their force tripled by the clutching of her calves. She jerked him against her, writhing fast. He could not put pressure on his shoulder, and was quickly unbalanced. He collapsed atop her, and she grunted with his sudden weight. He might have thought to spare her, then: the force of his drop was enough to jar the breath from his lungs. But she was not so affected. Her hands wrapped around him, her nails cut his back. He could not have pulled away without long rivers of blood.
She arched into him. She growled words and sobbed into his ear, though what she said was unintelligible. And yet the sounds blazed in his mind and blood, driving him to a madness unlike anything he had ever experienced.
He knew the moment the yang circle became established, it burned like a white-hot river through his body. It began in his groin, disgorging yang energy in prelude to his seed. It flowed into Shi Po. It expanded and grew in her until he could taste it on her skin. He licked it off her neck, felt it pulse through her and into his mouth. He inhaled it with every breath until it flowed downward to his dragon and completed the circle like a chain forged of lava.
Shi Po's body began to contract around his dragon. It pumped him in a steady push-pull of yin that flowed in a smaller circle. At the point of joining, where her yin pearl pushed repeatedly against his dantien, the hard bone at the base of his dragon, he felt the boiling fires begin. Never before had
the flames blazed so quickly. The yin rose like steam through his body, only to be drawn back to her. It radiated from his chest into hers and the yin circle was forged.
Only one thing remained: one last burst of power.
His rational mind scrambled to gain control. Everything was happening too fast. He had to hold back. Don't—
Too late.
His dragon disgorged its white fire. The explosion blew through Kui Yu's body and mind. There was no controlling it, no hiding from the roar. All he knew was fire and power, yin and yang, and the climb to heaven.
He had traveled this path before. He knew the darkness that was not cold, the inferno that brought peace. But this time he fought. He had no wish to see the goddess Kwan Yin again. He still had no answer to her question.
But there was no fighting his ascent. Even before his vision dimmed, he knew he would open his spiritual eyes to see the Chamber of a Thousand Swinging Lanterns. Even as his dragon continued to erupt with yang fire, he knew his spirit would walk to Heaven's gate to meet...
No one?
He was alone. He watched the swinging lights and breathed in the joy that was Heaven. But where was the Goddess Kwan Yin?
The answer came like a thunderbolt. The velvety darkness parted and there, far ahead of him, stood the goddess. He smiled, and his spirit winged forward before he saw Kwan Yin was not alone.
It was Shi Po who stood with her! And what an odd sight that was. The Goddess shone pure and bright, the glory of Heaven surrounding her in what should have been trailers of blinding light, but was in fact pure beauty. Yes, it was so wondrous it could have been painful, but wasn't. Beside Kwan Yin stood his wife, the image of her there before him. But something else shone through: her true self, perhaps, beneath the body and so much larger, so much more.
Shadow and light played with Kui Yu's senses, making Shi Po both a brilliant woman of beauty and a darker, richer, more Earthly wonder than the ethereal Kwan Yin. Shi Po was like a brilliant jewel, drawn from the ground in its crystalline glory. Light shone from inside her, splintered through her, became a prism of wonder.
The Way of the Tigress 1-4 Page 81
