Yuushun's eyes drifted open, and he breathed in the scent of the woman sleeping on his chest. Her ebony hair, always elegantly bound while she worked, now spilled over him like strands of spun silk. She lifted her tapered chin and ivory shoulder against him, and her hair slid across his skin in a thousand shivering caresses.
He wasn't certain how things ended up like this. Ten times she had come to him, offering her beautiful self to change his life. Nine times he had sent her away. His life could not be corrected or altered, he believed. His mission was clear, and even she could not soften its rigid, austere lines. He knew this each time she stood before him with eyes full of love and hope, and each time he politely, coldly dismissed her, dimming that light inside her a little more each time.
His fingertips trailed down the velvet skin of her bare back. For a woman with a spine of steel, she molded to him so completely that he couldn't tell the difference between his own body heat and hers. He brushed his lips against her raven hair, and her sigh fanned the embers of desire that sparked wherever her body touched his. Her fingers played over the taut muscles above his navel, creeping beneath the cool sheets tangled around them, tracing her name across his skin—R-i-n. His eyes widened when his body quivered involuntarily under her feathery touch. Only she had ever taken his control, made him her domain, set fire to the numbing cold of his existence. She had found a way when no one else ever could, when he believed it impossible for him.
This revelation shook him to his core. He l-loved this heavenly temptress, as intoxicating to his mind as she was to his body. She swept away his stony shell as easily as she had slid his robes from his shoulders. She lavished his scars and infirmities, both visible and hidden, with tender affection for belonging uniquely to him. She unbound his hair, slipped loose his sash, unburdened his mind and freed his soul. She basked in his nakedness and rewarded him with her own—vulnerable, trusting, fearless—safe at last in each other's love.
What sort of morning would this have been? he wondered. What would every other morning be, had he sent her away a tenth time, when he found her standing alone in his private chamber this morning, the sunrise glowing on her elegant, intelligent face? The unclouded, gentle eyes and delicate smile she gave only to him told him then she had come to say goodbye.
At long last, somehow in the night, the forces of hope had triumphed over the evil that had cast its shadow over Sa Province for a decade. His mission neared its end. Nothing lay beyond this sunrise in his life but an indistinct mist.
Yet, the only certainty in the swirling fog glistened in her tear-stained eyes, turning from him. Soft words of praise for his courage, attentive queries after his gaunt and weary face, passionate encouragement for the future—these were the parting gifts she laid at his feet before she swept by him toward the emptiness beyond this moment. With a drop of honey from her lips placed upon his and the tangle of her desperate fingers around his trembling hand, she wished him to find peace and brushed by him like a sweet and fleeting summer wind.
In an instant, with his life suspended, teetering on the brink of a precipice, tipping, slipping, their hands parting, their lives diverging, the heat from her touch lingering like a promise unfulfilled, he snatched at her fingers and held her tight in his grip.
"Stay," his voice trembled in a husky, quivering plea. He didn't know what this word meant, only that he surely must say it, and that its magic would transform them.
She tumbled into his arms, into his eyes, into his mouth, into his life, consuming and renewing him, just as the sun burned off the regrets of the wasted night and gave birth to a new day of infinite possibility.
Now, that sun shone down on a bustling province, setting out on the first day of healing the last decade's deeply carved scars. He could hear the call of voices drifting up to his window, directing workmen, ordering supplies, laughing and relating the previous night's drama. The acrid scent of still-smoldering fires permeated the air. He should be at his desk, or in the square, or guiding the young governors, making order out of chaos. Instead, he closed his eyes and smiled. Tomorrow, then, he promised.
Today belonged to him and the woman stirring in his arms. He searched the hungry eyes gleaming up at him and found himself there, smiling. He tipped her chin up and claimed her mouth in a possessive kiss. She whimpered under the demands of his insistent lips, plundering her tongue's sweet treasure, lifting her against him, pressing her beneath him. Her grasping fingers rode low on his back and pulled him into her, their hearts thundering against each other.
Never, never, never, never, ten times never, would he send her away again.