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  “You are free, Yo. Just as I am now free. If we are to be together, it has to be from choice and for no other reason.”

  “I love you.” Yo’s words were the barely felt breath of the wind on a still night. I closed my eyes so I could taste his voice. It was sweet in my mouth, and I knew he meant it. Nobody in my entire life had ever told me that they loved me before. I swallowed his words and kept them safe in my belly. “I ached to see you when Riku-san told me about you. Even then, I hoped you would be the woman I had been looking for ever since I was old enough to understand what love really was. I have taken many women, Keiko. Some of them have tried to keep me by their side, but I knew they were not right for me. Always, I walked away sooner rather than later so their hurt would be less when I had gone. As soon as I saw you, I felt you in my gut. Neither my mind or my body would forget you.”

  “But you waited. Why didn’t you seek me out sooner?” I asked. I had to be sure. My life had seen so much pain, joy was foreign to me and I could barely bring myself to trust his words. I was not jealous that he had taken many women before, but I did need to be certain that I was not going to be only one more.

  “I had to be sure that it was right,” he said simply. I smiled, pleased that our thoughts were the same. “I knew that I wanted you. I knew that you called to me in a way that no other woman ever has. But when I found out you were samurai, I hesitated. I am shinobi. You told me yourself that I am less than nothing.” I winced at the memory. “So, I agonized, wondering if it would be better if I never revealed myself to you. I convinced myself that it was useless and that I would be less hurt if I never gave you the chance to reject me.”

  “Why did you change your mind?” I asked. My voice was steady and betrayed nothing of the emotions that were making my senses reel.

  “When I saw you in the Floating World, I knew that you felt my presence. I am shinobi. If I do not want to be known, I am invisible and silent. But you knew I was there. That convinced me to speak. We are kindred spirits in a world that will never understand us. We are apart from everybody else. That was why I came to you. I was sure, finally. I couldn’t wait any longer. Please, tell me you feel the same? That you can come to love me as much as I love you?”

  I felt Yo staring at me intently, waiting for my reply. The tender words seemed to have come easily to him, but I was bewildered; I had no response. The most affection I had ever received until that moment had come from our amah, who had assured me kindly that one day I would find somebody who would not compare me with my beautiful sister, but instead would value my loving heart. I longed to respond to him, to express my feelings, but I could not. I stared at his outline in the dark and wanted to cry with frustration. Finally, I reached out and touched his cheek, running my finger down to his mouth.

  I gave a wordless cry as he parted his lips and took the very tip of my finger between his teeth. I put my other hand in front of my own lips, as if I could pluck the right words from where they lurked in my mouth. But I could not. Even though my body screamed “I love you!” I could not bring myself to say the words out loud. How could I? I had no idea what love really was. Was the tumult of emotions that boiled inside me love or desire or—and I shuddered at the thought—simply gratitude that Yo had declared himself to me? I shook my head helplessly.

  I was astonished when Yo took my hand away from his lips and laced his fingers in mine. He spoke gently, as if he understood my hesitation. “Keiko, do you feel anything for me? I have known you far longer than you have known me. Do you want time to think? Shall I leave you alone to see how you truly feel?”

  “No!” I cried out the single word in anguish. “No. Don’t leave me. I don’t want that. I...” I shook my head in deep frustration. Why was it so very difficult to say three simple words?

  “I understand,” he said softly. “I saw you with Isamu. I have seen you with your sister as well. You walk with them, but you are not part of their world. You have a beauty and a spirit they can’t comprehend, and because of that, you worry them. That’s why they keep you apart from them. That will never happen with us, Keiko. You are more than just a woman of flesh and blood. You said I was a legend. Do you not understand that you are also part of that legend? The gods meant us for each other.” He let go of my palm and kissed it softly. “I love you. More than that, I need you.”

  He paused. I knew he was waiting for me, but still, the words would not come. I was going to try and explain, to tell him that my emotions had been buried for too long to allow me to open myself to him.

  “I love you,” I blurted. I was astonished at myself. My lips had said the words for me. “I love you,” I repeated with astonished passion.

  I thought the earth was shaking beneath me, then I realized it was I who was trembling. I stayed still and mute with amazement as Yo reached out and traced the line of my breast with his thumb. His touch was delicate, but it aroused me so that I drew in a shocked breath. I put my hand over his fingers, not to take it away, but to enclose his hand around my breast. He squeezed, quite gently. I tightened my hand around his grasp. My nipple popped between his fingers and caught on his nail. The sensation was delightful.

  Although I could not see his face, I sensed Yo was watching me intently. I had no need to tell him what I liked; he would know. The knowledge was deeply exciting. Reluctantly, I plucked his hand from my breast, but only so that I could lie down. The earth was very hard beneath my body, but I was as comfortable as if it was the softest futon.

  Yo lay beside me. He ran his hand down my ribs to my belly. He hesitated a moment, and then his fingers flirted with my black moss. I tensed; I might be able to control my body in combat, but this was unknown. And every living thing fears what it does not know. I thought quickly of Emiko, disappointed in Reo’s lovemaking. Would I be the same?

  “Don’t be afraid. Nothing we do together could be less than wonderful.” Yo was smiling. I heard it in his words. I melted, opening my hands in invitation.

  He leaned forward and kissed me. I almost gasped aloud with shock. Never—not even in Choki’s shunga pillow book—had I seen men and women kiss. Yo paused for a heartbeat and then slid his tongue between my lips. His breath was in my mouth, his tongue pushing gently and firmly until he made contact with my own tongue. He flirted delicately with it, flicking back and forth like a snake tasting the air. I relaxed and began to savor the sensation. Daringly, I responded, caressing his lips with my tongue. My mouth felt very cold when he took his head away. I would have pulled him back, but he was following the line of my neck with his lips, and the sensation was increasingly delicious. When his mouth finally found my nipple and took it between his lips, rolling it and nibbling at it, I opened my mouth and groaned with pleasure.

  I had been so engrossed with his actions until then that I had not realized that his tree of flesh was pushing into my thigh. I fumbled my hand to it, almost as curious as I was aroused. I had seen Isamu’s tree in the bath many times. But it had been flaccid, floating slightly in the hot water. It had had no allure for me. The only other erect tree I had seen had been Choki’s, and that had been repulsive. I fingered the head of Yo’s tree, stroking it gently. Odd, given that Choki’s attempts to burst his fruit in my mouth had disgusted me, that Yo’s tree should be so velvety and smooth I immediately longed to take it between my lips and lick it. The thought came to me, “Why not?” I exhaled deeply with excitement, and Yo took his lips away from my nipple to look at me questioningly. I wriggled away from him, pushing him on to his back. He reclined comfortably, as if he understood what I wanted from him.

  I rubbed his tree gently between my fingers, biting my lip with arousal. Were all men’s trees this size, I wondered? The ones Choki had forced me to look at in his pillow book had been almost laughingly huge. Even in my innocence, I knew that the artist had exaggerated them for impact. Yo’s tree was nowhere as big as those in the illustrations, but it was more than big enough to make me shudder with anticipation—and not a little fear. At some poin
t in the near future—and I hoped sooner rather than later—this was going to find a home inside me? I lowered my head and licked it gently, and it grew urgently between my lips.

  I paused, wondering. Had I always had this power over life itself and never known it? Did all women understand that they carried such a spell within them? Yo spoke as if he had heard my thoughts.

  “All women can enchant their men if they choose to. Very few women understand that. And fewer still choose to do it from love rather than the wish to have power over them.”

  I raised my eyes to his face. There had been neither moon nor stars when we had begun our combat. Why, then, was the dojo now illuminated in the softest of glows? I sat back, astonished, and realized that the glow was from a multitude of hotaru that had made their home in the trees that sheltered the dojo. Although each firefly was tiny, together their pulsing light was astonishing. I knew that many people kept these tiny creatures in special cages, treating them as pets for the short time they lived. I had always hated the idea. Now, I wondered if these fireflies had chosen to illuminate our lovemaking from gratitude that I had never imprisoned them.

  “So beautiful!” I whispered.

  “Not as beautiful as you, Keiko-chan.”

  I threw my head back and laughed with delight. “You are the only person who has ever called me beautiful, Yo. And the only person who has ever said they loved me.”

  “Then everybody else who has ever known you has been either blind or so jealous of you that they wanted to hurt you,” he said superbly.

  I threw my legs over him, far more gently than I had done earlier when I had captured him. I leaned back, my fingers still running gently around the hood of his tree. It twitched in my grip, and I thought it was rather like petting a sleeping cat that responded by moving with pleasure although it did not awake. The idea pleased me greatly.

  Yo propped himself on his elbows and ran his tongue down the side of my face, pressing kisses into the space above my shoulder bones. In response, I gripped his tree harder, and he moaned. He put his hand over my fingers and showed me that he wanted me to run my grip up and down the length of the tree. It felt very silky under my hand. I wanted to feel his body against mine and let go of his tree to lie full length against him. Ah, but that was delicious! Immediately, his arms went around my neck and his lips found my mouth.

  “What would please you?” he mumbled, his words muffled by my lips. “For tonight, I am yours to command. Tell me, what will give you very great pleasure?”

  “I don’t know,” I moaned. “Anything. Everything. Show me what I want.”

  My words made little sense to me, but Yo seemed to understand instinctively. He rolled me off of him so that I lay on my back on the earth. As soon as his body broke contact, my skin felt so very cold. I reached out to pull him back, but he captured my hands and shook his head.

  “If you don’t know, then I will show you.” He sounded so confident that my worries died a little. I watched his face in the unearthly glow from my friends the fireflies and held my breath. Last time we had met, I had thought him a spirit rather than a man. Bathed in the flickering, living light that was all around us, I wondered again. He touched my face with a single finger, his expression full of wonder, and I knew suddenly that he was looking at me in exactly the same way.

  I spread my arms wide, inviting him to me. There was a fire in my belly that made me wonder if I was truly going to melt. Deep in my black moss, I had an itch that demanded to be scratched. Hard. Now!

  But Yo was not going to be hurried.

  He leaned down and licked between my breasts, his tongue trailing silkily down my belly. It tickled a little, and I laughed with pleasure. He smiled with me. As his tongue passed my navel, all desire to laugh fled. I held my breath, praying that his wicked tongue would not hesitate, and exhaled in noisy delight as his mouth reached my black moss.

  He plucked at my hair with his teeth, teasing. I bucked toward him, rubbing my moss against his face in delight. He dipped his nose into my sex in response, sliding it up and down my lips, spreading me wide with his face. His tongue darted upward and I screamed with the pleasure he was arousing in me. I had no idea even what part of me he was touching, nor did I care. The sensation was beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

  My mind whirled. My entire body was alive and vibrating with desire. I screamed out loud in distress when he took his lips away from my sex. But my disappointment lasted for only a heartbeat as his probing fingers took the place of his tongue. I gasped, my mouth opening and closing without words.

  “That’s good for you.” It was a statement, not a question. I closed my eyes, too aroused to even answer him. He bit my lips, hard, and the pain was delicious. His mouth moved down to my nipple; he took one in his mouth and rolled it between his teeth.

  I arched against him, desperate to have him as close to me as I could force him. He lay against me, his lithe body quivering, taut as a strung bow on top of me. I put my arms around him and wriggled, trying to get his tree to part my black moss and enter me just as his tongue and fingers had done earlier. I almost sobbed with desire.

  “Keiko.” Just my name, but it was spoken with love. I opened my mouth wide and howled with pleasure.

  Yo slid down me. I felt him hesitate, and then his tree was at the entrance to my sex. He moved back and his tree nudged the lips of my sex apart. Gently at first, and then with increasing urgency. He slid inside me suddenly and I was still, transfixed between longing and wonder that I had been able to take him into my body with such ease.

  His black moss rubbed against my slippery flesh. I had touched my sex before. Of course I had; I was curious about my own body. That touch had been pleasant, especially when my prying fingers had found an oddly protruding button of flesh at the top of my entrance. I had returned to finger it time and again and had only stopped when I realized that I was arousing needs I had no idea how to satisfy. Now, the base of Yo’s tree rubbed persistently against that spot. I moaned with the pleasure of it.

  I heard him sigh before he pushed harder into me. I had a flash of intense pain, but oddly, the pain turned immediately into a pleasure I had never imagined existed. His tree filled my sex at the same time as the base of it rubbed firmly against my curious flesh button. I felt something mounting deep inside my body, and I pushed frantically against Yo as the need became irresistible, grinding against his body, forcing him a last fraction inside of me. There was a sudden sensation of heat and wetness in my sex and I knew with blind instinct that Yo had burst his fruit inside me. While his tree still pulsed with life, my body exploded in my own yonaki. My toes curled so fiercely that they gripped the earth beneath my feet. My hands were on Yo’s back, and I gouged my nails into his sweet flesh. My mouth fell open in a soundless scream. My pleasure peaked, the sensation ebbing slowly until I could contain it and savor the aftershocks that jerked my body. Yo stayed inside me all the time, his tree hard, until I fell back and let him go.

  We lay side by side on our bed of earth. I could hear the fireflies pulsing. Smell the scent of pines on the flicker of breeze that fanned our bodies tenderly. Lazily, I turned my head and licked the sweat from Yo’s shoulder. I thought it the finest taste I had ever known.

  In Japanese, the word for orgasm—yonaki—means cries in the night. I had always thought the word slightly absurd. Now, I no longer thought so. My body was relaxed, and yet at the same time alert. Yo moved slightly, and my body missed him at once.

  “Will it always be as wonderful as that?” I asked. I knew it was a naive question, and yesterday I would have hesitated to ask for fear of appearing foolish. Tonight, it was my right to know. The self-knowledge was joyous.

  “No.” Yo was smiling. I could feel it in the slight movement of his shoulder muscles. “It will get better. As we get to know each other physically, and we both learn exactly what is good for each other, enjoying each other’s bodies will become heavenly.”

  Better than this? I thought. Something t
o look forward to, for sure!

  We lay together until I noticed the light from the fireflies began to dim. I propped myself on one elbow and was astonished to find that dawn was lightening the sky.

  “I know, you must go,” Yo said. “I must be on my way as well. I have a certain business to see to in Sendai. I don’t want to go, but I gave my word, so I must honor it. Will you come with me?”

  “I can’t.” I closed my eyes and sighed. I sensed Yo staring at me. I wondered if he would speak, question my response, but he did not. He simply waited for me to explain to him. “Like you, I have some unfinished business. And like you, I can’t just let it go. How long will you be in Sendai?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It depends on how things go.” He paused, and I longed to demand to know what he was doing in Sendai. Who was he working for? Was it dangerous for him? But Yo had treated me as his equal; he had not questioned my “unfinished business.” I could do more than he had for me and I remained silent, waiting for him to finish. “It could be a few days. It might be a good deal longer. I’m sorry, I can’t be more specific.”

  “As long as you come back for me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be here for you,” I said.

  “I will come.” Yo hesitated, and I understood he was searching for the right words. “Your unfinished business, is there danger in it for you? Can it wait until I come back and we can face it together?”

  I was silent. During my training, Isamu had often spoken of the honor of the samurai. Of the importance of adhering to the code of bushido. But he had never explained to me why it was so important. He seemed to think I would understand that without being told. I did not, and eventually I had become bored with the repetitions and had closed my ears to it. Now, I understood. Bushido was the samurai tradition. It was more than just a code, it was a way of life. And Yo was bound to follow his own tradition, the way of the shinobi. He wanted to stay with me, but he could not. I looked at his face and saw the conflict in his eyes. He was being torn apart.