CHAPTER 8
Aiko watched the rain, fascinated by it as it began to ease again, growing lighter the longer Esher was silent beside her. She could feel his struggle, that he needed time. Time she would give to him.
As the garden began to appear through the haze of the rain again, she wished her nerves would ease like the weather, and fade away. She couldn’t believe she was sitting in the teahouse with Esher, that they had broken into this place. She knew she should feel bad, or it should feel wrong, but being around Esher only ever felt right.
Her lips still tingled from his kiss, her body alive with sensation as he sat beside her, his hands planted behind him to support him and his long legs stretched before him, the black denim wrinkled around his ankles where it had been jammed into his boots. His eyes remained locked on the world beyond the glass, and while he was close to her, she felt as if he was miles away.
She wanted him to come back to her, wanted to kiss him again, and feel his hands on her.
She glanced across at him.
He was on edge though. She could feel it in him. Something was troubling him. The same thing that had been troubling him when she had left the shrine and found he had moved away from it?
The moment she had stepped over the threshold of the shrine, she had sensed the gods’ unease, and something that had felt like anger to her, and part of her had felt certain that it had been directed at Esher.
Because he was a foreign spirit in their land?
An intruder?
She moved onto her backside and drew her knees up to her chest as she studied his noble profile, focusing on him and trying to understand the sensation that swirled in her chest as she watched him. He didn’t feel like a threat, but she could sense the darkness in him, just as she could feel the power of the tides surging through him.
He was one with nature, very in tune with it, and it awed her.
Her grandmother had been a shrine maiden in a small village high in the mountains, and she had always amused Aiko with stories of how she had danced with the gods and seen the spirits. Aiko had thought they were only tales, but after her grandmother had passed, and she had visited the shrine to pay her respects, she had felt the presence there and had been able to see a faint shimmering in the air that moved as if it was something crossing the space before her.
Over the years that had followed, her ability had developed, growing stronger, and now she could clearly sense spirits and had even seen one or two manifest themselves for her. It was the reason she visited the shrines as often as she could, so she could pay her respects to them.
Esher was different though.
He was flesh and blood. He lived and breathed, and even smiled at times. He was stronger too.
Was he more of a god than a spirit?
And if he was a god, was he benevolent or destructive?
His head tilted towards her, his gaze coming to meet hers, and in it, she saw a tempest building.
Or was he both?
She was tempted to peer deeper into his feelings, but she had learned not to abuse her powers. Her grandmother had always warned her that people were private creatures, and that she should treat them with respect. She hadn’t heeded that warning until she had pried into the private feelings of some girls who had befriended her in high school, and had discovered they were only pretending to be her friend. Now, she read people the old-fashioned way, and Esher’s body language told her enough about his feelings.
He was struggling with himself.
“I should go,” he muttered as the weather turned worse again, the rain so heavy it was almost deafening as it struck the teahouse roof.
She wanted to ask him to stay, but there was something about his eyes that made her hold her tongue. They were haunted, shadowed, and she could feel fear in him. Unease. She could feel something else in him too, that what he wanted and what he said were two conflicting things, the complete opposites to each other.
He didn’t want to go.
His pupils dilated, gobbling up the stormy blue, and his breath came faster as he stared at her, his chest heaving against his navy shirt and grey t-shirt.
The source of his unease hit her, and she knew how to soothe it.
She moved back onto her knees, coming to face him, and didn’t hesitate as she framed his face with her hands and kissed him.
He was quick to respond, his trembling hands instantly claiming her hips and tugging her against his hard chest. She shook too, nerves getting the better of her as she thought about what she was doing, combined with the desire that flared inside her, startling in its intensity.
She drowned in it as he fell backwards, taking her with him, and she landed on his chest, his hip pressing against hers. She moaned as he rolled with her so she was on her back beneath him, his right knee wedged between her thighs and his left arm locked beneath her head like a pillow, caging her against him.
His kiss softened, his breath shaking against her lips as he skimmed his right hand down her arm, his touch surprisingly light, sending shivers of fire chasing over her skin. When his hand closed over her left breast, she arched into his touch and couldn’t hold back.
“Don’t stop this time.” Those words leaving her lips in a breathless rush, both a plea and a demand in them, shocked her and her cheeks burned.
She could feel he was going to pull back and look at her, so she grabbed him around the back of his neck, his short black hair tickling her fingers, and pulled him down to her and kissed him.
His tongue plunged between her lips and she opened for him, couldn’t breathe as he palmed her breast and sent wave after wave of hot tingles rushing through her, lighting her up inside. She moaned and he joined her, his left hand clutching her shoulder as he kissed her, his heart pounding as quickly as hers. He squeezed her breast again, and then hastily released it, and she wanted to chastise him but he stole her voice as he tugged her tank down to reveal her pink bra and brushed his thumb over the curve of her breast.
He groaned as he pulled away and looked at what he was doing, and she shivered as his hips surged forwards and his hardness pressed against her right thigh. Her heart skipped a beat as she gazed up at him, a little dazed, finding it difficult to believe she was doing this, letting him touch her like this, and that she wanted more.
His hand shifted so his palm sat over her heart, and she squeezed her eyes shut, her brow furrowing as his fingers slipped beneath the satin of her bra and brushed her nipple, sending a thousand volts shooting down to the apex of her thighs.
His mouth seized hers again, swallowing her next moan, and she trembled and arched into his touch, lost in the sizzling sensations as they whipped through her, an assault she wasn’t sure she could withstand.
He angled his head and kissed her deeper still, his touch growing rougher as he shifted his hand over her stomach. When she realised where he was heading, when she felt his trembling worsen, his nerves rising, she couldn’t hold back the moan that bubbled up her throat.
Couldn’t stop herself from letting her left knee fall aside, revealing the apex of her thighs for him.
His low groan as his hand sank beneath the frills of her skirt to brush her satin panties had another shiver tripping through her, the burn of desire growing fiercer as she kissed him harder, unable to hold herself back anymore. He moaned as she surrendered to her need and plundered his mouth with her tongue.
He bucked against her thigh, rubbing himself along it, stirring her desire to dizzying new heights, filling her mind with a delectable vision of them entwined. She bit down on her lower lip as he slipped his fingers beneath the elastic of her underwear, her breath coming faster as he eased back and his gaze scalded her face. She struggled to open her eyes as his fingers drifted lower and his first caress sent her hips shooting upwards and a white-hot blast of heat through her. When she managed to get them open, they locked with his.
A storm raged in them, the blue of his irises swirling with the tempest, speaking to her of his need, of how this was affecting him as deeply as it was her. She let it sweep her along as she gave in to him, to the need that broke over her like a wave and carried her away. She rocked against his hand as he fondled her, finger teasing her pert bead, intense sparks of fire skittering through her in response to each one. With every stroke and press, the storm in his eyes built and the rain grew heavier, deafening now as she surged towards release.
She trembled as she gripped his shoulders, lost in his eyes as he sank his hand lower and eased a finger into her. Her need spiralled higher as she imagined him inside her like that, stretching and filling her, moving inside her. She needed that. Needed him.
She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking it of him though, aware that his fear hadn’t gone anywhere, lingered even now as he lowered his gaze from her face to his hand where it touched her. He looked as if he was having a difficult time believing they were doing this. She was. She had never been intimate with anyone, had never felt the desire to do it, but she couldn’t control herself around him.
He drove her wild, had her gripping his shoulders so tightly she feared she might hurt him as she reached a crescendo.
He stroked her deeper, rubbing the pads of his fingers over her flesh as he withdrew, and she shattered.
His gaze leaped to her face as she broke apart, a cry leaving her lips, so loud she feared someone might hear over the noise of the rain, and she was sure that he growled as he lowered his head and pressed his brow to her cheek, and his cock to her hip. It kicked and throbbed in time with each quiver of her body around his fingers, in time with each wave of bliss that rolled through her and crashed over her, stealing the breath she had managed to catch each time.
Awareness grew inside her as she lay with him, coming down from her high, and it birthed a need so powerful she couldn’t deny it.
He needed release too.
She wanted to be the one to give it to him.