by India Millar
Almost laughing, I slid my lips from around his tree. I had intended to tease him for much longer, but Ken was having none of it. I had barely had time to take a breath when he crouched down, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me gently but firmly down on to the matting. I could, I suppose, have resisted. But his grip was very tight and I guessed it would have been like fighting a rock. Besides, I no longer had any desire at all to resist.
The matting was very rough beneath my naked flesh. The contrast between the tatami and Ken’s smooth skin made me gasp with pleasure. He hovered over me for a moment, his gaze reading my face with an intensity I could feel. I slid my arms around his neck and pulled his head down to me, biting and nibbling at his lips as if I would eat him, but only for the shortest of time. Ken pulled away and began to lick my face, his tongue rasping drily over my eyelids, my cheeks, and finally sliding between my lips to tease my own tongue. My eyelashes brushed his cheekbones. I could feel every tiniest scrap where his skin and hair slid against me. I nearly cried out loud with pleasure, and would have done so if his lips were not covering my mouth with kisses.
I could feel his tree riding against my black moss. My thighs were gripping tightly, forcing the lips of my sex to grind together. How often had I sneered at patrons who had demanded so much from me, taken such obvious pleasure in my body? Now I understood it. Understood the sheer need that made the body cry out for release. Ken released my lips for a second, and then I did cry out, an inarticulate demand for him to enter me.
And he did.
Slowly, keeping his head raised so he could see my face all the time, his tree penetrated me, forcing my sex apart. I thrust up at him in my longing, but Ken immediately stopped, drawing back slightly. Not so much teasing as warning that he would not be rushed. With an effort of will that made me moan with longing, I forced myself to lie still. To wait. And I was rewarded.
His tree slid into me. Engorged as it was, I was so wet that it went into me easily, with no resistance at all. But I wanted more. I slid my hands between our bodies, snagging each side of my sex with my fingertips and forcing myself wide open. I saw Ken’s expression flicker with surprise, and then he was yet further into me, and I forgot he was supposed to be in charge and thrust my hips up to him as hard as I could, arching my back until I could feel the empty air between my skin and the matting.
Ken’s rhythm was becoming increasingly frantic. I held him tight with muscles honed by years of pleasing men, and his eyes opened wide with surprise. I held him where I wanted him, until I was ready, and then let go with a moan of pleasure as I felt my orgasm begin to consume my whole body. I was greedy, I admit it—after years of thinking I would never really feel anything, neither good nor bad—I wanted this pleasure to last forever. I felt the waves of sheer ecstasy begin to subside and I relaxed with a sigh, and as if I had triggered something in Ken, I felt him begin to speed up. He pumped at me frantically, and then suddenly his whole body was rigid. For the first time, I felt a man burst his fruit inside my body, and the experience awakened echoes of sweetness until I was rocking with him, reveling in a second orgasm. Not as powerful as the first, but for me, truly a gift from the gods.
We subsided together. Ken pulled his robe across both our bodies and I was grateful for it. Autumn was with us, and the days were growing shorter and colder. I noticed a chill wind prying its way through the badly fitted window screen and snuggled against my lover’s body, stealing his warmth.
Ken shifted his body to get comfortable and misjudged how close to the wall he was lying. He struck the wooden support quite lightly with the back of his head, and I giggled as he pulled a face and rubbed ruefully at the spot where he had struck it.
“Big baby.” I grinned. The smile faded as I saw the expression on his face. He looked…not just serious but almost offended.
“You don’t understand. You cannot feel pain.” His voice was husky, and somehow hesitant. I shrugged, causing the robe to slip. The draft found my skin immediately, and I shuddered.
“You know I can’t be hurt. I told you that myself,” I said. “All of us geisha in the Hidden House have something different about us. That’s where our value is. Masaki is tiny. Naruko can barely hobble on her poor bound feet. The twins…” I shrugged. “Well, the twins are the twins. The patrons can’t tell one from the other, but they love the way both girls can act as if they were one. Sute looks like a gaijin. I look all right, but I can’t feel pain.”
He was frowning, staring at me as if he still couldn’t believe what I was saying. Suddenly impatient, I held my naked arm out to him.
“Here. Pinch the skin. Hard.”
He took a fold of skin between his thumb and first finger, just below the inside of my arm where the flesh is tender. He gave it a cautious nip, then looked at me.
“Harder,” I insisted. He squeezed, watching my face all the time, and when I nodded, he dug his nails into my skin, twisting the flesh between his fingers. When he let go, there was a dark, red mark.
“You felt nothing?”
“Nothing at all.”
I clutched the robe tightly around me as Ken began to laugh. He shook his head and tried to smother the sound while tears ran down his face. I watched him with growing anger. Being unable to feel pain was my curse. I had never laughed at it, and I saw no reason why this man who I had admitted to my body as my lover should do so. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and kissed the angry mark on my forearm.
“There’s nothing funny about it,” I snapped. “You try spending every day with patrons who have paid a lot of money to try and hurt you and see how you like it.”
His expression slid from laughter to sorrow in a second. If anything, it made me even angrier. How dare he laugh at me and then pretend that it was I who had upset him? My emotions were in turmoil. Suddenly, I wanted to cry myself. I had trusted this man. I thought he cared for me. And now he was laughing at the very thing that made me different. How stupid could I be? I was deeply hurt. Deeply humiliated.
I threw off his robe and jumped to my feet, scrabbling for my kimono, blinded by tears I was determined Ken was not going to see. I heard him say something, but my ears were deaf to anything he might want to say to me.
I had known he was strong, but until his arms slid around my waist, pinning my arms and stopping me moving so much as a muscle, I had had no idea how strong he really was. He shook me, but very gently.
“Mineko-chan. No. I’m sorry. You don’t understand.”
“You were laughing at me. You’re no different from any of the patrons.” I was shouting, no longer worrying who heard me. Auntie could have come hobbling in and I wouldn’t have cared at that moment. My heart was breaking and it was an emotion I truly wished I could not feel.
Ken put his hand over my mouth, and I bit his palm as hard as I could. I tasted blood, and was glad of it. He snatched his hand away, and I froze.
He was crying. This great, strong man was crying. He looked at his bleeding palm and then at me, and I held my breath, wondering if he was crying for the pain I had inflicted on him, or for regret at the pain he thought he had inflicted on me.
“Let me go,” I whispered.
He shook his head. He loosed his grip on me long enough to wrap his arms around me and sat down, forcing me with him.
“I can’t let you go,” he said softly. “I told you before, I knew you were my life the second I saw you. Nothing is going to make me change my mind about that. Unless you tell me you want me to go, that is.”
My mouth opened and closed. Finally, I blurted, “You laughed at me. You thought it was funny that I couldn’t feel pain. It isn’t, I promise you.” I held my arm out to him—the arm he had not pinched. “Look. Look at that scar. I broke my arm badly when I was a child. The bone poked right through my skin, and I never felt a thing. I just thought it was odd that my hand wouldn’t do what I told it to. It was nearly a week before I thought to mention it my father, and I only told him then because my arm was so swollen
it was shiny and it had started to turn black. The doctor he sent for was horrified. He said my arm had gone bad where it was broken, and that I was lucky I hadn’t developed a fever in my blood and died. The patrons nearly kill me at least a couple of times a week when I forget to pretend they’re hurting me and they go too far. I suppose one day one of them will manage it. And now you’re laughing at me.”
I bawled the last words as if they mattered more than anything else. At that moment, they did.
Ken smothered my head with his hand and pressed me against his shoulder, rocking me back and forth as if he was soothing a child. When my sobs had finally stopped, he spoke softly into my hair, his words buzzing against my scalp like bees around flowers.
“Mineko-chan, I am sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself.”
His voice was urgent, as if it was important that he convinced me. I thought for a moment, and then raised my head to look at him, hoping that I would be able to read the truth in his eyes. I saw sorrow, and something even deeper.
“Why? Why were you laughing at yourself?”
It was important that I knew. If I felt that he was lying to me, then I would walk away from him now. It would be very terrible, I knew, to leave this man that I already loved. But far better to accept the despair now than a week, or a month, or a year later when I knew I would prefer to lose my very life than his presence.
He hesitated, and then shrugged. He moved away from me and—very stiffly—turned his back to me. I was about to snap at him for being so rude when I looked at his back and my words died in my mouth. I put my fingers out to touch him, and then hesitated.
Ken’s back—from the nape of his neck to the swell of his buttocks—was terribly scarred. It looked like the floor of an ancient forest, where gnarled tree roots rise above the surface of the earth and crisscross each other for years upon years. Instead of touching him, I leaned forward and blew very gently on his skin. Ken drew a sharp breath at even that.
“You never showed me your back before.” I spoke more to myself than to him. “Even when we saw you in the bath that time, with Bigger, you kept yourself facing us, didn’t you?”
“I never show it, unless I must. Bigger saw it, of course, and it fascinated him. I wouldn’t tell him how it happened, and he got angry.” I blinked. An angry Bigger was not something I wanted to think about. “He kept on, and in the end I told him I had been burned in a bad fire when I was younger to satisfy him.”
I shook my head. “Those are not burn marks. What happened to you?” I was ashamed of my curiosity as soon as the words were out, but you can’t coax spilled water back into the tray, as the saying goes.
“My father did it.”
Ken spoke so softly, I thought I had misheard him at first. Then he turned toward me and I saw he was blinking back tears. My heart cried for him, and I put my arms around him, cuddling him against my breasts for comfort.
He was quiet for a long time, and then began to speak tonelessly, as though he was telling a tale that didn’t really concern him.
“My father was a samurai. He was intensely proud of his position in life, so much so that he was convinced that nothing was ever going to change. That the samurai would always rule. That the lower classes would always bow down to us. He was an expert in bujutsu skills. You have heard of them?”
I shook my head. What did I know about the ways of the samurai? Ken lifted his head and smiled at my puzzlement.
“Bujutsu is the martial arts way of the samurai. Other schools teach pupils to fight with the staff or the sword, or to use their hands and feet as weapons. Bujutsu combines all the styles. A samurai has to be the perfect fighting machine.” His voice was bitter.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“I was my father’s only son,” Ken said grimly. “Even his concubines produced only daughters. He was well into middle age when I was born. Even then, rumors of change were beginning to filter through Japan. Father shrugged them off. It would never happen, he insisted. Japan had been closed to the outside world for centuries. In his opinion, Japan was the world. Our family had been wealthy for as long as anybody could remember, so it would always be that way.”
“Where were you born?” I interrupted. Now that I was paying attention, I could detect something other than Edo in his accent.
“Oita on Kyushu.”
That explained it. Ken didn’t even come from the same island as Edo. We who had been fortunate enough to be born on the main island, and especially in Edo itself, were faintly contemptuous of those who had been born on the minor islands. They were rustics, we thought. Behind the times. But now I was alive with curiosity, wanting to ask how Ken had encountered Akira, how he had found his way across Japan to Edo, but even more did I want to know about the terrible scars on his back, so I stayed silent.
“My family had been part of the ruling classes in Oita for centuries. My father was determined that I—the only son in the family—was going to carry on his proud tradition. Almost as soon as I could walk, he started training me in the way of the samurai. Day after day, he made me practice with the sword, the staff. How to fight with my hands and feet. He dragged peasants in from the family lands, made them stand still while he hit them to show me how it should be done. A few times, he even slashed them with his sword when he wanted to demonstrate a particular technique to me.”
My mouth formed an O of horror, but in truth it was horror for the child who had been made to witness such things in the name of his own good. Up until a very few years ago, when the gaijin changed our lives, it had been perfectly acceptable for a samurai to strike down any peasant he fancied, just to test the blade of his sword. It shocked no one; it was just the way things were in Japan.
“Father couldn’t understand it at all when I cried when he hurt people. I tried to find the words to explain to him that I was sorry for them, that I felt guilty because they were being hurt for me. But he looked at me as if I was mad. That was when he decided that I needed to be toughened up.”
“How old were you?”
Ken shrugged, his eyes far away. “The first time it happened was just after my fourth birthday. I remember it because my father had given me a pony. I was a small child for my age, and to me the pony was a huge beast. It frightened me, but he made me get on its back. It threw me off, of course. I hurt my shoulder when I landed, and I cried. So father beat me, to teach me not to be such a baby. The more I cried, the harder he beat me. He shouted at me, ‘If you don’t stop crying this instant, then I will make sure you have something to cry about.’ I soon found out he meant it, as well. He was so angry with me he only stopped hitting me when his arm got tired.”
I whimpered. I, the geisha who could feel no pain for herself, felt my lover’s pain for him. Not physically, but as a gigantic ache in my heart. My poor, poor Ken!
“After that, I tried not to show it when I was hurt. But sometimes it didn’t work, and I showed tears. And the more I cried, the more Father beat me. At first, he used to slap my legs with a willow switch. It stung, but I learned to tolerate it. But it didn’t take him long to decide that was doing no good at all. I had excellent reactions and naturally good balance, but it seemed to me that whatever I achieved was never good enough for him. He would shout at me that I wasn’t fast enough, my blows were not hard enough, I wasn’t putting enough into my sword strokes. After a couple of years, he started to beat me when I made a mistake, or if he simply thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. He abandoned the willow switch and began to hit me with a bamboo cane. Then he decided that wasn’t doing any good either and used a knotted whip instead.”
“Didn’t your mother try and reason with him?”
Even as I said it, I knew I was being foolish. What woman would dare question what their husband considered to be right? Ken laughed, a sound without humor.
“My mother was one of father’s concubines. I never heard her say more than ‘yes, sir’ and ‘do I please you, sir?’ In any event, Fa
ther took me away from her altogether shortly after I commenced my training. I saw her occasionally for a couple of years, but then not at all. Father said he thought she was a bad influence on me and was encouraging me to be girlish. I heard later that he had put her aside. I never knew what happened to her.”
“That’s how your back came to be in such a state? Through your father beating you?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Every day for years. Every day until I was nearly a grown man.”
“What happened to your father?”
“I killed him.”
I heard the words, but my mind refused to believe them. My lips opened and closed, but made no sound at all. Ken took my head in his hands and turned me to face him.
“I killed him, Mineko. I didn’t mean it to happen. Or at least I didn’t think so at the time, but I’ve wondered since. Constantly. Father was in a particularly bad mood, I remember. He had been ranting at me for days. Nothing I could do was right. And he was beating me again, using the whip time after time until my back was stiff with new scars and scabs. That day, he threw me his sword.
“‘You are no son of mine,’ he shouted. ‘You dishonor our family. Here, I will show you what it is to know how to fight.’
“He grabbed another sword and lunged at me. You might think, being my father, that he didn’t intend me harm. But I knew he did. If I had let my guard down for a second, he would have slashed me with his blade. I did my best. I tried to parry him, to keep him at a distance, thinking he was an old man. He would soon tire, and I could walk away. If he was very tired, I might even get away without a beating. But it didn’t happen. The more he fought, the angrier he was. And his anger seemed to give him energy. After a few minutes, I was literally fighting for my own life.”