The Sword Dancer

by Jeanne Lin

  This was for her. For her and for Han and no one else. She was selfish to want it, but she wanted it all the same.

  Han peeled away her tunic and let it slip to the floor. Her bindings followed soon after and she was bared from the waist up. Han caressed the washcloth over her breasts, his hand separated from her by a thin layer of material. The cool water brought her nipples to a hard peak and she inhaled sharply, her throat tight with desire. Her heart pounding. Li Feng closed her eyes and longed for Han to kiss her. She longed for him to do so much more.

  He finally did kiss her. A passionate, insistent kiss that parted her lips. There was no more washcloth, only his strong, sure hands rounding her breasts and stroking her stomach. She moaned around his invading tongue, sucking gently. He responded with a low, almost feral sound as his arousal pressed hard against her.

  The rhythm had changed. Her heartbeat was like a drum beating faster to urge on the next act. His breath was hot and ragged in her mouth. He pushed her back on to the pallet and eased her trousers down past her hips. At the same time, she dragged his robe open and ran her hands over wide shoulders and the lean, sculpted muscle of his chest. He was hard all over, his skin smooth and warm.

  She was naked while he was partially undressed above her. Han pulled his trousers down just as much as he needed to free his erect organ. Li Feng stared up at him. His brow was damp and furrowed as if in deep concentration. He tugged her roughly downwards to position her beneath him. Her body quivered with anticipation. She had been waiting for this for a long time.

  His fingers moved over her sex lightly as he positioned himself. It was enough to make her back arch with pleasure. Then he pushed his hips forward, exhaling forcefully as he came into her. Li Feng clutched at his shoulders. The initial shock of penetration took her to a precarious edge. Nothing else was like this moment of first discovery of how their bodies fit together.

  He repositioned his hand at the back of her neck, the possessiveness of it unmistakable, and thrust deep. The completeness, the fullness of accepting him overwhelmed her and her flesh convulsed around him as she was consumed with heat and a rush of elation. She squeezed her eyes shut as the climax drained her of all thought and resistance.

  ‘So quickly,’ he murmured in astonishment.

  His breath was hot against her ear. He was gloating a little bit, but she didn’t mind. Not when her body shuddered with so much blinding pleasure. Not when he was holding her tight against him. He continued holding her as he brought himself to his own peak and continued holding her afterwards, never letting go.

  * * *

  ‘I did steal the jade,’ Li Feng confessed.

  Han’s hand played along her spine. ‘I know you did.’

  She lifted her head and propped her chin on to her hands so she could look at him. His eyes were half-lidded, drunk from an afternoon of lovemaking. He regarded her with an indulgent expression.

  Han proved to be an energetic lover. They had joined together once again and she was now stretched out languidly on top of him, skin to dampened skin. She enjoyed the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath her. He was a much more comfortable mattress than the threadbare pallet and the hard floor beneath it.

  ‘Well?’ She tapped a finger against his chin and he made a half-hearted attempt to capture it in his lips. ‘You don’t believe I should still be punished?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  She yelped as he dealt her a stinging slap on her rump.

  ‘There,’ he said, quite satisfied.

  ‘Scoundrel.’

  She reared up and pinned his shoulders to the mat. He met her glare with a lazy smile.

  But she knew him. Han wasn’t so stupidly male that he’d cast aside his beliefs after a few moments of passion.

  His smile faded into seriousness. ‘I know you’ve been involved in questionable activities in the past, Li Feng. But I’ve come to know you beyond that.’

  ‘That’s a very open-minded sentiment for a magistrate’s son,’ she murmured.

  He stiffened beneath her. ‘In many circles, thief-catchers aren’t thought of much higher than the thieves we bring in.’

  ‘But you’re no ordinary thief-catcher.’

  A slow, satisfied grin spread across his face. ‘No?’

  ‘I meant what I said beneath the bridge, Han. We are opposites, you and I.’

  ‘Yin and yang.’

  She shot him an irritated look. ‘Not yin and yang.’

  Han was being purposefully thick-headed—or maybe he wasn’t. Han was regarding her with that same earnest expression that always got the best of her. He wielded a sword and fought like a warrior, but his heart and mind was that of a scholar.

  ‘I don’t want you to have any illusions about me,’ she warned him. ‘Or about this.’

  She hadn’t always been forthcoming with him, but she wanted honesty between them for these last moments. And it had to be farewell afterwards.

  ‘I’m not as honourable or heroic as you believe,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘I joined up with the local militia at fifteen because I had no skills for any other profession. I didn’t become an officer either. I was a common soldier, working with my hands.’

  He propped himself up on one elbow and she slid alongside him, their legs still entwined.

  ‘A couple years after that, I started hunting down fugitives for no other reason than the money,’ he explained. ‘It wasn’t considered very reputable, but it was work that needed to be done.’

  ‘But you did this as a sacrifice for your family.’

  Even when Han lowered himself, it was for noble reasons. He might not see it that way, but she certainly did. She was willing to sacrifice everything for family as well, but there was nothing noble about Liu Yuan or about her. The events of fifteen years past had shaped her and Liu Yuan into what they were: angry and fighting against the world.

  She had made a choice in the forest, siding with Han against her brother, but it was a temporary one. Family was life’s blood.

  ‘You asked me what I would do once my search was over.’ She thought of her brother and of the tragedy that had taken their parents. Han listened patiently as she struggled with her next words. ‘I don’t know what happens now.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say the last part, that this was farewell.

  ‘I know what happens,’ Han assured her.

  The intensity of his gaze sent a flutter to her stomach. He rolled on to his back and is hands stole to her hips to lift her over him. His organ stirred and reawakened against her. Not stupidly male, but male enough. She shot him an admonishing look, even as her flesh warmed to him. She needed simple answers right then and this was the simplest, most basic truth there was.

  He touched her, opening her soft flesh intimately as he positioned himself at her sex. Her own fingers grazed against his as she moved to help him. They said nothing in that

  sacred moment. The only sound was a deepening of his breath and the catch of hers as he slid inside.

  She closed her eyes as her body accepted him. How quickly a new lover became welcome and accepted, in this one most invasive act. He thrust slowly while she ground her hips downwards, seeking the small, subtle pleasures of soft flesh against hard contours.

  In the absence of sight, there was only the sensation of their joining and the heat of the day around her. She felt the roughened tip of his finger caress against her just above the juncture of their bodies, focusing her pleasure. She became his creature, straining towards his touch, her head thrown back and helpless as he stroked her.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said huskily.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and her chest squeezed tight when she saw that he had been watching her the entire time. His mouth was tight, his face nearly expressionless except for the fire in his eyes.

  ‘Stay,’ he said. His gaze bore into her. ‘With me.’

  Her breathing was ragged. ‘Here?’ Passion blurred her vision as she looked around the room. />
  With a grunt, Han wrestled her beneath him, keeping his hard length inside her.

  ‘She-demon,’ he growled. ‘Not here.’

  Laughter bubbled up inside her, but at that moment he pushed deeper, fitting himself completely within her until she could no longer move, or speak or even breathe. All her thoughts were of him and how he felt. How all of him felt.

  ‘I want you to stay with me. Like this.’

  All the while he moved in her, touched her, made her feel so good that she wanted to weep and scream. She did both.

  He couldn’t know what he was saying. It was only lovers’ talk, vulgar and profound all at once. Her heart fluttered regardless.

  Han bit her neck and the sharp nip of his teeth sent a shiver down her entire body that curled her toes. She pressed her face against his shoulder, tasting the saltiness of his skin as she wrapped her legs tight around him. He groaned as the angle of his body inside her shifted.

  She had no doubt Han would marry a proper girl one day, but right now he belonged to her and she wanted him to remember. The next moments stretched out exquisite and unbearable until finally they reached the peak of their desire—her first, then Han shortly after. Even here in the torrent of pleasure he was chasing after her.

  * * *

  Evening came and one of the kitchen boys arrived with bowls of rice and soup along with other odds and ends from the cooking pots.

  ‘This must be how kings live,’ Li Feng said, stretching out her arms on the pallet.

  Han lit an oil lamp and the meagre flame danced shadows around the empty room. He wore only his trousers. The night was only slightly less warm than the day. They would need another bout of rain to beat back the oncoming heat of the summer. He stared at the curve of Li Feng’s back as she slipped her tunic back on, tying the sash in a loose knot around her waist.

  All he had to do was glance in her direction to appreciate the perfection of gently rounded thighs and well-shaped calves. Her figure was a combination of grace and strength and he could watch her for ever. At that moment, he certainly felt like a king.

  Li Feng regarded him as she spooned some soup. ‘Tell me about your family,’ she said. ‘You said your father was a magistrate.’

  ‘In a county of Nanping prefecture.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She was very kind and soft-spoken. Loathed to harm even the tiniest of ants, Father would say. She used to raise songbirds.’

  Her eyes brightened. ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘She taught me how to whistle like a lark.’

  ‘Show me.’ Li Feng waited eagerly with her arms folded over her knees.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ he warned her, cupping his hands together and blowing into them to create a high-pitched trill.

  She laughed with delight. Han didn’t think his chest could puff out any further.

  ‘What does she do outside of tending birds?’

  ‘The usual things that women do, I suppose. Embroidery?’

  ‘I don’t know what those usual womanly things are.’ She wrinkled her nose at him and he had the urge to kiss it.

  ‘Nothing involving a sword,’ he teased, receiving a punch to his shoulder in return.

  A sobering thought crept in. He had left within a year of his father’s dismissal from office. Visits home after that had been infrequent. Considering that it had been nearly five years since Han had returned to the farm, everything would be different from what he remembered.

  ‘My family and I have spent too many years apart,’ he admitted. ‘I should go back to see them.’

  ‘Why did you stay away so long?’ She set aside the empty bowl and curled on to her side on the pallet, propped up on one elbow. ‘You must have missed your brother.’

  ‘I returned often at first, but one starts losing track of time. Years blend into one another.’ Han stopped himself. He sounded like he was giving excuses.

  With a sigh, Han moved to sit cross-legged at the corner of the pallet. Li Feng waited for him to continue while he was tempted by a glimpse of ivory skin where her tunic parted. Her knees were bent and her toes pointed even though she was only before an audience of one.

  He could have guessed she would be so comfortable in her skin, even in the bedchamber. She wasn’t one for blushing and fluttering eyelashes. Where other women were soft and delicate, Li Feng was toned and supple, with a force and presence that never completely yielded to his touch. Even in surrender, in the depths of pleasure, he could feel the strength in her.

  ‘What happened between you and your family? Did you quarrel?’ she asked when he was silent for too long.

  ‘We did not quarrel. At least not openly.’

  Li Feng would have never asked such a question were she raised in polite society. Such matters were private, barely spoken of between family members, let alone an outsider.

  It was easy to confess secrets after joining one’s body intimately to a woman’s, but there was more than that between them. Only Li Feng knew who he truly was, with no illusions of what he should have been. Han had never felt so close to anyone.

  ‘When Father had been removed from office, it was a devastating blow,’ he explained. ‘This was during the famine years, which my family was shielded from due to our wealth. There were grain shortages throughout the prefecture which culminated in a violent outbreak in the city. A group of rebels raided several storehouses and set them on fire along with several government buildings. After the provincial army marched in to quell the uprising, Father, who was head magistrate, was dismissed as incompetent. He had failed to instil a sense of discipline and authority over the populace.’

  ‘It hardly seems like that could be his fault, or at least his fault alone,’ Li Feng remarked.

  ‘Someone had to take the blame. Father had no control over the management of grain stores, which seemed to be the root of the unrest. Yet he never protested his dismissal. He accepted judgement without complaint.’

  ‘Like a warrior suffering a wound in silence,’ she suggested.

  As a performer, Li Feng certainly demonstrated a liking for the dramatic. Han had never stopped to think about how stoically his father had behaved throughout the scandal. He had taken his father’s response as a matter of course. Father always conducted himself with the same stiff-jawed forbearance.

  ‘Father decided we would stay in a farm just outside of the city borders rather than return to his native town in shame. He wanted me to continue my studies and pass the imperial exams. It was the only way to restore our family name,’ Han recounted.

  ‘But instead you became a thief-catcher.’

  ‘Instead I became a thief-catcher,’ he echoed. ‘When I left, I defied my father’s wishes. In my heart, I always thought he understood that I only did what had to be done, but that wasn’t enough to earn his forgiveness. Not that I earned his condemnation either. All of Father’s hopes of scholarship transferred to Chen-Yi and we don’t speak of things that would upset the peace.’

  Han wasn’t ashamed of being a thief-catcher. He seemed to have a talent for hunting down criminals and he was able to occasionally send money home, but there was always that unspoken rift between him and his father.

  ‘How old is your brother?’ Li Feng eased the question into the tense silence.

  Han looked upwards as he added on the years. ‘He must be sixteen or seventeen this year. Heaven and Earth, last time I saw him he was just a boy.’

  ‘I apologise, Zheng Hao Han.’

  His eyebrows rose at the sudden formality. ‘For what reason?’

  She sat up, straightening her shoulders to mark the seriousness of her words. ‘I accused you of not valuing your family earlier. I apologise.’

  ‘Perhaps when I go home, you could accompany me.’

  Li Feng’s eyes widened and her lips parted with surprise. He had no idea where that thought had come from, but it would be the coward’s way to back down now.

  ‘You never did answer my question,’ he r
eminded gently.

  She avoided his gaze, hiding her face behind the dark curtain of hair. ‘Don’t talk about things that cannot be, Han.’

  A fist closed around his heart. At that moment, he realised that all of this, all that they had shared, changed nothing for her. All the lightness and warmth between them fled with those few words between them: his entreaty, her denial.

  Li Feng was still trying to escape.

  She trusted him enough to set aside her sword. She even trusted him enough to wrap herself around him as they lay naked, but that was only her body. He knew she still didn’t trust him. Han didn’t know if Li Feng could ever completely trust anyone.

  ‘Han.’ She spoke his name in a single exhale. ‘Even if you could overlook what I’ve done, I know you would never forgive my brother. Liu Yuan killed Cai Yun for his part in luring my mother into Prefect Guan’s mansion.’

  He reached out to draw her against him, but she was stiff in his arms, refusing to look at him.

  ‘Why did you even come with me, then?’ he asked quietly.

  Anger wouldn’t solve anything. He needed to focus and understand her before he lost her.

  ‘I couldn’t let Liu Yuan kill you.’ Her voice sounded small and distant. ‘You have nothing to do with his vengeance. And you were right. Things were unfinished between us. I knew—I knew I would miss you in the days to come.’

  A knot formed in his throat. ‘So this was only one night for you?’ he demanded.

  There was a pause before she nodded. Once, brokenly. He wished she would turn around so he could see her face. Han leaned forwards, his body curving around her.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he said against her ear.

  She took in a breath and he could feel the shudder of tension along her spine.

  He pressed the momentary advantage. ‘Your brother is dangerous, Li Feng. You can’t go to him.’

  ‘We’ll disappear, he and I. We’ll go far away,’ she insisted.

  ‘He won’t stop so easily. He wants blood.’

  Li Feng swung around to face him, the movement dislodging her from his hold. Her expression was sharp enough to cut through bone. ‘Wouldn’t you?’