“The last time I lied to him for you, I had nightmares for weeks. I don’t want to do it again. Come on, Zanetos.” She walked up to him and kissed his jaw gently. “I’m already here. You might as well enjoy this.”
“No, wait!” Zane pushed her away, suddenly remembering Nirvana. “I have a girl. We can’t do this. She’ll be pissed!”
“A girl? You called for someone else?” Kseniya asked, looking confused.
“No! I didn’t… Kuso! Kseniya, get out!” Zane dashed around, looking for the boxers he threw away earlier.
“Please Zanetos, your father will kill me if he finds out. I’m terrible at lying,” she pleaded, her large doe eyes filling with tears.
“Tell him I have a girlfriend. He’ll understand. No wait! Don’t tell him I have a girlfriend. He’ll kill her—”
“Zane!” Nirvana suddenly appeared beside him.
“I can explain!” He grabbed her frantically.
“Wake up!”
What? Before he could ask her what she meant, she patted his face repeatedly and urged him to, “Wake up! It’s just a dream!”
Zane opened his eyes. Nirvana was straddling him. She stopped shaking his shoulders when she saw him looking at her.
“Great, you’re awake,” she said with relief and flopped onto the bed beside him.
He looked around the room to try to orientate himself before his head started spinning.
“Oh dear. Close your eyes, baby.”
Knowing that it would be affecting Nirvana, he quickly shut his eyes tightly.
“Relax.” He heard her say as she rolled over on top of him and started slowly peppering his face with light kisses.
“I didn’t cheat on you,” he tried to explain.
“Of course, you didn’t!” Nirvana laughed and pressed a kiss to his lips.
Zane wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, “I love you. It’s only you that I want. I swear I wasn’t─”
“I know! I know! You didn’t even cheat in your dream,” she chuckled. “You remembered me and stopped yourself in time.”
She wriggled herself a little higher up his body and brushed her nose with his. They kissed until his breathing calmed down significantly and his head stopped spinning. He was pretty sure it was because the blood from his head had mostly traveled south to his other head.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked, moving off him and settling into a snuggle position beside him.
Zane looked down at the tent in his boxers and back at Nirvana, “What do you think?”
She giggled and slid her hand downwards from his chest, into his boxers. A weird sound came from his throat, something between a sigh of contentment and a groan of ecstasy.
“Who was she?” Nirvana asked, still stroking him.
He grabbed onto her hand to stop her so that he could have a proper conversation. It was imperative that he cleared this up, even though she had assured him repeatedly that she trusted him.
“Kseniya is on retainer as my father’s courtesan,” he replied, letting the image of her fill his head. He didn’t even try to filter his memories of her, which mostly involved them having sex.
“How many wives did you say your father has?” Nirvana raised her head and looked at him, frowning.
“Three.” He laughed.
“And he still needs a courtesan!”
Zane shrugged. “I don’t understand him either, by the way, it’s courtesansssss. Kseniya’s not the only one, but she’s the youngest and most gorgeous, highly coveted. My father’s harem is shared amongst his high-ranking officers as a form of incentive but Kseniya is exclusively for the Hayashis.”
“Wow.” Nirvana did a mental calculation. “So you see her once a week?”
“I got to see her more than anyone,” Zane confessed, feeling guilty as hell. “There were days when I just couldn’t get out of my room. Long stretches of never-ending headaches, chest pain, feelings of desolation, loneliness, being trapped, I felt like I would burst out of my skin. Every time that happened, my father would send Kseniya.”
“Did sex help?”
He nodded, shamefaced.
“Hey!” She slid her hand around his waist and hugged him. “No shame in that. You were trying to cope the only way you know how.”
“Sex always helped me sleep better, the more vigorous the session, the longer the stretch of uninterrupted sleep. Sleeping pills made me groggy the next day, so I stopped resisting Kseniya,” he said, feeling disgusted at his own confession. “There were times I would see her every day for almost a week,” he said, getting the last bit of confession out.
“Your brothers didn’t mind?”
“Not at all. They have no problems getting girls on their own.”
“Why didn’t you get her out too when you defected?”
“I thought about it. I wasn’t sure if she would want to come with me. My father paid her very well, and we didn’t have that kind of relationship. We just fucked and after I was done, she’d leave. It’s not like we’d cuddle after and talk about our feelings.”
“We don’t exactly talk much after we fuck,” she said wryly.
“No, I didn’t mean that—”
“I was just kidding!” She laughed and smacked his chest. She pushed herself up and looked at him soberly. “On serious note, if sex helps, we’ll do it.”
“I don’t want to use you like this,” Zane protested.
“I want you to. It’s nothing to do with jealousy I promise you. If it gets too hard, then we’ll go back to the pill. Just don’t fight any form of help.”
He nodded. “I won’t fight it. I promise.”
Chapter 40
The plans were reviewed again after breakfast that morning. The discussions went smoothly until they had to decide the next course of action should Alden and Nirvana get caught.
“There’s no point rescuing me,” Nirvana said, much to the crew’s protest. “Dein gave me a small pill. I’m not sure what it contains but I’m pretty sure once I get caught, it’ll be activated. It’s a death sentence for me anyway. The only choice I have is whether I want to go quickly or do as much damage as I can before I get caught.”
“I didn’t get the pill,” Alden shrugged. “I can end it quickly for you and do as much damage as I can before they get to me. I agree with the Captain—it’s not worth the effort getting us out.”
“I can get the pill out,” Zane said quietly, causing a temporary pause in the heated discussion. He sighed and looked at Nirvana with remorse. “I told him to give it to you so I would have some leverage over you. I was supposed to be the one to activate it.”
Nirvana blinked a few times, trying to register what he had just said before the anger slowly rose within her.
“Take five,” Daxon announced, and the crew disappeared from the table almost immediately.
She took in a deep breath, stood up, and made her way to their room.
All this while you knew I had the pill inside me.
Silence.
Even after all these declarations of love you didn’t think to remove it.
Still silence.
She shoved the door open to their room and stormed inside. She crossed her arms and leaned against the dresser, glaring at the door.
Zane entered and closed the door slowly. He took one look at her and decided to sit on the bed instead. He rested his elbows on his knees and slumped forward, staring at the floor, saying nothing until it got on Nirvana’s nerve.
“I don’t have all day,” she snarled at him.
He looked up at her with those melancholic, large eyes, with the sorry upturned eyebrows that made her even angrier. She was about to snap at him again when he said, “It genuinely slipped my mind. I hold the control to this device. Dein was never going to be able to activate it. It was a non-issue. It was never a threat to your life as much as my father was.”
Nirvana gripped the edge of the dresser as she resisted the urge to beat the daylights out of him. This
man would literally be the death of her.
“As much as I was in love with the idea of you then, I was also painfully aware of who you really are and what you do for a living,” Zane said. Then he took a deep breath and looked at her defiantly, “I did what I needed to do at the time.”
She held his gaze and glared back at him. Feelings aside, she could objectively appreciate the ingenuity of his plans to capture and coerce her to do his bidding. However, it felt like crap to be on the receiving end of it.
He let out a huge sigh of defeat and walked towards her, head bowed. To her surprise, he went down on both his knees in front of her and wrapped his arms around her legs. He leaned his forehead onto her stomach and said, “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect us. All this time, I reminded myself that I am Zanetos Hayashi and you are Nirvana Faust. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that you would love me.
“If I had known you would insist on risking your life for me, I would not have gotten you involved in the first place.”
His arms tightened around her.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m even sorrier you got to meet someone like me.”
Nirvana looked down at the frustrating man kneeling in front of her. Given the kind of environment he grew up in and with a man like Chorax Hayashi for a father, she couldn’t fault Zane for who he was. Besides, he had legitimate excuses for all that he had done to manipulate her into this mission.
This is going to be a very difficult relationship, she thought. Perhaps it would be wise to cut her losses now.
“I agree. I’m not worth it, Nirvana. Just get me in and let me do the rest. You don’t have to risk your life for me.”
She realised that in her anger, she had forgotten to shield her thoughts from Zane. She quickly shut off their MLink channel to stop her warring emotions from affecting him. There was probably more going in his head than hers; he might even need to take a pill soon.
“You deserve so much better, Nirvana.” He looked up at her with a pained expression.
She raised her trembling hands and held his face. “Then be better,” she said in exasperation. “Zane, I’m drawing my line in the sand now. You can’t drop anymore of these bombs on me. It makes me feel stupid, manipulated, vulnerable─”
“I won’t.” He clutched her hands. “I won’t do this to you anymore. All these? Was before I met you. I will not do anything without your knowledge in the future.”
She sighed and slumped onto the stool by the dresser, giving her wobbly legs some relief. “How does the device work? The pill I swallowed?”
“It emits an electrical charge strong enough to kill you instantly. It can also act as an explosive. After I activate the charge to kill you, I can activate its other function to blow the place up.”
“Dein said I had to reset the timer.”
“There is no timer. He added that himself. In fact, he doesn’t hold the device to remove it. I do.”
“Will it accidentally go off?”
“No. I have one inside my stomach as well. I was planning to blow myself up after I was done.”
“So if this goes south, we’ll just activate the devices and create maximum damage.”
He nodded. “But I can’t activate it from outside the stronghold. I need to be near you to do it.”
Nirvana narrowed her eyes at him.
“I swear I’m not lying just so you’ll let me come along.” He raised his hands.
“Then find another way, because you’re not coming along no matter what. I have my own suicide device. I don’t need yours to end my suffering if I end up in the hands of your father.”
Zane thought about it for a moment, then he got up from the floor and walked to the bed. He removed his glasses and started dismantling them. Carefully, he placed the lenses on the nightstand and twisted the other parts of his glasses together until he ended up with a pen-like contraption. He pulled up the sleeve of his left arm and showed Nirvana his tattoos.
“My brothers and I all wear the Hayashi insignia. It’s my father’s way of letting the people in Asago know who we are. I was angry with my father so I tattooed a whole bunch of other stuff to hide it.”
She walked over to the bed and sat down beside him to take a closer look.
“Here.” He marked out the tattoo with his finger. It was a black-and-white picture of a dragon motif circling what seemed like a Japanese character.
“I can tattoo the insignia for you.” He showed her the contraption. “If you get caught, the insignia will keep you alive until I get to you.”
She frowned, “Won’t your soldiers suspect it’s a fake? I mean, for a start, does everyone know Hayashi doesn’t have daughters? Besides, they would recognise my face. Nobody is going to believe─”
“Wife.”
Nirvana stopped mid-sentence and asked, “What?”
Zane rubbed the back of his neck and lowered his gaze.
“What did you say?” she urged impatiently.
“My father gave all his sons a tattoo capsule each for their future wives.”
“What…” She stared at him, mouth agape, trying to process what he had just said.
“Look, you don’t have to marry me. It’s just for this mission and you can get rid of it later,” he said, wearing a tight expression. Then he huffed and got up to pace around the room.
“So I’m supposed to just flash them the insignia if I get captured?”
“You won’t have to flash it. You’ll be stripped. Captives are not allowed clothes.”
“So you think, as your wife, I’ll get better treatment.”
“At least the guards will treat you with a certain amount of restraint until a Hayashi comes to verify your identity.”
“And what am I supposed to say when I meet a Hayashi?”
He looked at her with those obsidian eyes that always seemed to stare straight into her soul. “That you are Zanetos’ wife, and he’s making his way to you.”
Nirvana broke the gaze and flopped backwards onto the bed. She didn’t know about Zane’s head but hers was going to explode very soon.
“This has got to be the worst proposal ever,” she muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“It’s not meant to be like this,” he said through gritted teeth. He sat down beside her and held her hand. “I love you and I want you to be my wife, but not like this. Not under these circumstances.”
“Do it.” She closed her eyes and flipped over to lie on her stomach. “On my right shoulder.” She pointed to the area she wanted the tattoo and pulled down the strap of her tank top.
Nirvana barely got the chance to prepare herself when she felt a sharp, painful needle pierce into her skin. She jerked in reaction, but she couldn’t move as Zane had already straddled on top of her. He had the knuckle of his finger pressed into a spot on the curve of her neck, rendering her upper body immobile.
The pain on her shoulder got unbearable very quickly. “Drakinashitzel! You could have prepped me first. It hurts like hell!” She screamed into the covers.
“Sorry, love. Just a second more.”
When she finally felt him loosen his hold and gained control of her arms, she grabbed his thighs and flipped over with him. Instinctively, she did a backward roll and landed with her knees on both sides of his head. She was about to snap his neck when she remembered who it was.
She broke herself out of her defence mode and sat back on her heels. “Why didn’t you give me some sort of heads up?” She thumped her fists on his shoulders. “I could have killed you out of reflex!”
“You’d have punched me the moment the needle pierced your skin. Trust me, it’s faster and less messy when you’re unprepared. My eldest brother suffered the most. This was how it was done when it came to my turn and we agreed we’ll all tattoo our wives this way in case they changed their minds halfway.”
Nirvana got out of bed and went to the mirror to check out the tattoo. “Why is it so much bigger than yours? It’s almost the siz
e of my hand!” she exclaimed. When she leaned in to take a closer look, she could see gold threads outlining the scales of the dragon.
“Hmm… It does look a little different.” Zane scrutinized the tattoo, then covered it with a cool, damp washcloth. “I don’t know why it’s different. I’m not lying! It’s my first time using it.”
“None of your brothers are married?” she asked crossly.
His brows knitted as he thought about it. “Dominion does have a partner, but I don’t know if they are married. It’s not as if I can go to my brother’s wife and ask her to show me her insignia. For all you know he might have placed it somewhere more private.”
Zane wrapped his arms around Nirvana’s waist and pulled her to his chest. He pressed his lips to her hair and rested his cheek on her head, eyes closed.
“I’ll give you a better proposal if we survive this. I promise.”
She turned around, gripped his jaw tightly and bore her glare into him. “I don’t care about the proposal. If you ever fuck me up again the way you did before, I’ll cut out the insignia myself. Then, I’ll cut you up piece by piece.”
Chapter 41
Ching was in the suite when Nirvana returned. His eyes widened when he saw the expression on her face.
“Don’t ask,” she warned and walked over to her crew, who were hovering over the contents of a crate that he had brought over earlier.
“I got these from Jiang and Luci,” he said as he held up a pair of hovershoes and a mask. “The water-breathing masks are on loan. They’re not for sale, so don’t ruin them. The sizes of the hovershoes should be right for you and Alden.”
Nirvana held the mask and marvelled at it. Ching must have called in a favor from his cousin, Jiang. The Sima Clan resided in the city of Long Jing in Paplash, where the people used hovershoes to commute. The Sima clan’s hovershoes were the only ones that worked on both land and water. They’d developed them to navigate their underwater plantation. The farmers used the hovershoes as propellers to move around underwater, and the masks allowed them to stay submerged for long periods without the need for oxygen tanks.
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