The Dragons of Heaven (17 page)

Another failed attempt. Another crash and burn. I threw up my hands. “Then I give up. I quit. I'm not going to get it. I might as well pack my bags and leave tomorrow. I can't get it, ‘cause it's not something that can be got.”

He stilled. Turned toward me. The carp wobbled on its mount. He steadied it so the paste wouldn't be jarred before firing. “You… quit?”

“Yeah.” I folded my arms, chin jutting. I wasn't really serious, but it felt good, even as a small act of rebellion.

“What of the shadows?”

“How are they different? You said yourself, they can be legion as easily as they can be one.” I blinked, realizing this was just another impossible puzzle he'd set me to solve. Asshole. I glared at him, my face growing warm. “It can't be done, which you knew from the beginning. I'll never defeat them all.”

“Why?”

Sometimes it felt like he didn't even listen. “You said yourself: they're part of the buffer zone. I was doomed to lose the moment I summoned them. I can fight a thousand shadows, but there'll always be one more because they're shadows, they can't be enumerated like things of this world can. And I can repeat the words of the Tao ten thousand times, but I'm doomed to fail the moment I open my mouth to speak. I'm not going to get it because the thing to be gotten isn't something that can be expressed. So if I'm doomed to fail before I start, what's the point? I'm just wasting everyone's time. Right?”

“Wrong. But… it is a beginning. Now we may move on to the next line. ‘The name that can be named is not the eternal name'.”

My arms flopped to my sides. “You're shitting me.”

“After we have finished with the Tao, we'll move to the writings of Kong Zi. Unless you truly plan to, er… ‘pack your bags and leave tomorrow'?”

“No. I'll stay.” What had just happened there? Had I passed? Why? Because I quit? A double dozen questions jockeyed for asking, but Jian Huo had turned to leave.

“Then we will continue our discussion over dinner, after I have fired this. I am eager to hear your thoughts on Rossetti. Finish your calligraphy.”

I glared at him as he departed, but he failed to drop dead in his tracks. Stupid immortal creatures.

T
he table was set
with our usual, plain fare, but in the center sat a large bowl of fruit. Jian Huo's nod to Rossetti's
The Goblin Market
, no doubt, but screw him if he thought that would deter me. I snatched up a banana and cocked a brow, daring him to say something. He didn't rise to my challenge.

“Rossetti. I suspect you have much to say–”

“She's a sensual, religiously-repressed woman who might have had a thing for her sister,” I said, peeling my banana. It was a bold and spurious claim, the kind that Jian Huo usually enjoyed helping me dismantle in favor of a more nuanced reading. I looked up when he didn't respond.

He held a peach plucked from the bowl, checking it over, feeling its firmness, fingers rubbing the fuzz on its skin. He lowered his face to it, inhaling deeply, as if the sweet scent were the most intoxicating fragrance in the world.

My first bite of banana turned to sawdust in my mouth.

He never looked at me; all his attention focused on the peach. The tip of his tongue darted out to test the soft, fuzzy surface, slipping along the seam of the double-globed fruit; then his lips wrapped around the peach and he bit into it.

I dropped my banana.

Something niggled at the back of my mind, some distant memory, but watching him eat the peach distracted me from chasing that memory down. After the first deep bite, he took his time to savor the fruit, sometimes nibbling at the edges, sometimes taking more substantial bites – sucking and licking away the juices. He took an eternity to eat that damn peach, and I felt dirtier and dirtier as I watched him do it. I've never been a food-and-sex person, but, damn, that was one hell of a peach.

When he was done cleaning the juice from his fingers, he placed the pit on the tray and looked up at me. No way – no
way
– was he as innocent as he looked. Not after that performance. It just wasn't possible. Or if it was possible, it wasn't fair. “How did you like your banana?”

I spied it resting, forlorn and browning, next to my hip. I nudged it under the table.

“Fine. Fine,” I said. It wasn't a lie, because I had enjoyed the first few moments of my first bite. “But I'm not really that hungry. I might just stick to rice for tonight.” And let's hope you do too, I thought. Let's face it, there's nothing sexy about rice.

“You do not desire more fruit?” I didn't like the way he was eying the strawberries. That was just what my libido needed.

“No, I'm good,” I squeaked, looking for a distraction. Any distraction. “Where's the tea?” Because the bowl of fruity temptation sat where the teapot usually did.

There was no tea, it turned out, but there was wine. Plum wine, rice wine, grape wine, even some mead. Jian Huo took to filling my mug freely as he explained about vintages and barrel times and things I didn't really care about as long as I was warmed by the wine and his presence. I ended up drinking more than I ate.

It made for a more heated discussion than usual as we dissected the poem.

“…I'm just saying, ‘
Laura, come and kiss me… Lick me, squeeze me, suck my juices
'. Can you tell me she wasn't writing about… what it sounds like she was writing about?”

“You are misquoting.” He tapped my nose in reprimand. I scrunched it at him and bit down on a yawn. I didn't want dinner to end. “Do not do that. And of course she was writing about that. Does that mean she can't have been writing about other things as well? Or that the love she was exploring was sexual rather than sisterly?”

“She dedicated the poem to her sister. Just saying.”

“You are not ‘just saying'. You are trying to escape responsibility for supporting your claim.” He was right, and he'd make me pay for it tomorrow. Jian Huo had little patience for intellectual laziness.

I started to reply, but it got lost in another yawn – a full, jaw-popping one, though I remembered enough manners to cover my mouth.

“It is late.” He ducked his head, sheepish, like we were kids on a date who had broken curfew. “I should not have kept you awake for so long. Do you feel like sleeping now?”

“Are you offering to take me to bed?” I leaned into him with a playful leer, which faded as I realized what I'd just said, and how gauche I sounded.

“I am.”

I did a double-take, then a few more, certain that I'd heard him wrong – certain that his assent was an alcohol-induced hallucination. He cupped the back of my head, coaxing me closer. Too close to avoid meeting his gaze, and who can handle gazing into eternity for long? My eyes slid shut, and his lips pressed to mine. I tasted plum wine and white rice and maybe the echo of a peach in his kiss.

Jian Huo kissed like he did everything: studied and reserved, a thorough exploration of all that a kiss between us could be. I suppose he would say I kissed like
I
did everything. More enthusiasm than skill, and always impetuous. I was the one to push us to the next step. With a groan, I pressed closer, flinging one leg over his lap to straddle him. He leaned back as our center of gravity changed, which brought us into even more intimate contact. Heat flared from my groin to my breasts and, oh god, it had been too long since I'd felt anything but my own hand pressed between my legs. I needed more. Wrapping my hands around the lapels of his robe, I stood, pulling him up with me. He grasped at my waist to steady us both, and his mouth moved off mine to nuzzle the crook of my neck.

“Where are we going?” he whispered, sending shivers through me.

“My room,” I gasped, “unless you want to have a go right here in the pagoda.”

“Very well.” His hands had snaked inside my robe, which was making it much harder for me to think basic logistics.

“Uh… very well to which? My room or here?”

“Your room,” he chuckled. “I have no desire to bed you on bare wood.”

We fumbled our way along the walkways, only stopping once when he thrust me up against the railing. I responded by wrapping my legs around his waist, and we spent some time exploring the possibilities of verticality, but the promise of a bed beckoned us onward, and we reached my room.

I disengaged long enough to turn around and try to figure out how to work a door. As I did so, the worry that I'd been successfully ignoring blossomed. My hand froze on the door.

“Wait,” I said. He answered by wrapping his arms around me from behind, with his hands splayed across my bare midriff. He nuzzled the nape of my neck.

“Have you decided on the pagoda after all?” he asked.

“No.” I struggled to think as his hand wandered higher. “Wait, Jian Huo. Earlier today. The nameless line…”

“Yes.” His other hand wandered lower. For a moment, all I could think about was peaches.

“And…” I struggled to keep focused on my derailing train of thought. “After the Tao, we've got Confucius?”

“Master Kong, yes. Is this so vital that we need to discuss it right now?” His fingers were pinching and squeezing and OH. Good. Mother. Monkeys. Of…

My misfiring synapses insisted this was important for some reason. I struggled to figure it out, and then it hit me. I wrenched from his hands and fell forward against the door, gasping for breath and sanity.

“We can't do this,” I said, breathing hard into the screen. The silence that followed stretched on and on and on.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to make my thoughts make sense. “I know I'm the worst kind of a tease, and I never, never, ever meant things to go this far. I mean, not until I wasn't your student anymore, and we were allowed to go this far.” I pulled my robe closed around me and turned to face him, slumping against the door with my eyes still lowered. “I said we'd do it your way. I would never try to make you… I would never ask you to sacrifice your honor.” I looked up at him then. “I'm so sorry.”

He kept his hands to himself through my incoherent explanation, but there wasn't any anger or rage in him, just surprise and a kind of curious reserve.

“So you want me to leave?”

“Yes. I mean, no, of course not.” I shook my head. “But I think you should.”

“You're certain?”

God, no. “Yes.”

“Missy.” He took my hand. “Today you made yourself an empty vessel, where before you were full. But in learning you were empty, you also learned that you can never be full. You will always be a student of the Tao. I've reached the limits of my patience, and I think you have too. We can end this all tonight, right now. Are you sure you want me to leave?”

Always? I gulped but steeled myself for what must be done. Fucking Joan of Arc on her way to the stake did not have my conviction. The eyes of heaven were upon us. No way would I let him dishonor himself. No way would I make him give up what little he had left for me. I wasn't my grandfather.

“I'm sure.” I kissed him somewhere in the vicinity of his cheek. “Now go. Git. Skeedaddle.” I made a shooing motion with my hands, then shot him a pleading gaze. “Quick. Before I change my mind.”

With that, I escaped into my room and slid the door shut in his face.

I
had
the worst time ever getting to sleep. I threw off my robe and grabbed my night-shift, but the soft material caught on my sensitized skin, and I knew that the extra fabric would just be a distraction. I slid nude between the covers and considered taking care of myself, but that wasn't what I wanted. Instead I beat the pillow, tossed and turned, tried to hypnotize myself, and did everything but count sheep before exhaustion and the leftover effects of the wine claimed me, and I feel into slumber.

A soft noise roused me, but I still meandered in the realm between sleeping and waking until the noise repeated. I opened my eyes to see the room in shadow, the only light a bare gleam from a crescent moon, displaced by the latticework shutters. The sound came from beyond, from a shadow on the other side of the sliding door.

“Jian Huo?” I rose from the bed, dragging the coverlet with me rather than wasting time finding my robe.

The door slid open, wide enough to allow Jian Huo to slip through, but he remained waiting at the threshold, looking as rumpled as I felt. “May I come in?”

This was a bad idea. I nodded anyway. “What are you doing here?”

He entered, closed the door behind him. Smiled. “I'm not here. This is a dream.” He closed the distance between us, lifting both hands to my face. Confused, I let him pull me in for a kiss, yet again savoring the taste and feel of him, until rationality asserted itself. I pulled away, and his hands dropped to my shoulders.

“Wait, no. It isn't. Why are you doing this? Please don't make me send you away again.” I closed my eyes as we engaged in a tug of war for the covers. “I don't know if I can.”

“There is no need to,” he said. “This is not real. It is a dream.”

“No, it isn't,” I responded in frustration, pulling away from his grasp with the covers in tow. “It is real, and there is every need to, because I'm still your student.”

“I never agreed to take you back.” He stepped on the tail end of my covers, halting my retreat.

“Wha–?” My grip on the covers fell slack, and he gained a couple inches of ground before I managed to pull them back up.

“You quit today. I did not agree to take you back.”

“You said I was still your student. Tonight. You said it.” I had relived our stumble from the pagoda to my room several times. I recalled exactly what had been said and done. Hence the not being able to sleep.

“I said you were a student of the Tao.” Much too late to be of any use, the niggling thought I'd had earlier in the evening slapped me across the face with its relevance.