She was going to die. She was going to die, and it was going to be Jinshi's fault but that would be acceptable because finally,

finally

she understood what Pairin had gone on about at great length and in great detail over the years.

And hadn't dying always been on her list of things to experience at least once?

Maomao's fingers skated over her own body, all of her desperate for touch. Jinshi's dark hair gleamed between the pale skin of her legs. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her open. And his tongue '

On occasion, borne of frustration or curiosity or simply to affect a biological result, Maomao had slid her fingers between her thighs and worked herself to an orgasm. Usually perfunctory and not particularly memorable, they had been simply yet another thing to do as a data point in her ongoing research about the human body. She had never really

understood

why her big sister Pairin was so hungry for sex, so willing to disport with clients or other courtesans or even the apprentices.

What Jinshi was doing now, the flat of his tongue licking over her labia and circling her clit, changed Maomao's perspective. She pushed her hips towards his face in a heated, hungry move. More touch, more contact, more to fill the craving. She wanted to cling to him like a parasitic creeper vine, twine and tangle her body with his until she couldn't tell where one of them stopped and the other began.

He braced her legs open, every lick slow and torturous. Heat and need washed through her body. She dug a hand into Jinshi's hair, fingers not quite clawing through the silken strands to reach his scalp. She

should

be doing her best to analyze, to remember, to study '

But not when he flicked her clit with his tongue, pleasure slamming through her like a wave. She braced her feet on the floor and groaned, greedy and hungry and dragging herself across his face to chase the sensation.

There was a muffled groan from between her legs, a shift of position, and then long and painfully deliberate licks that made her whole body quiver. She wriggled and twisted, both hands working into Jinshi's hair, vehemently trying to keep him in place, encourage him to work that spot over and over and over again. She tried to move her legs, but his strength was greater, pinning her in place.

More, more,

more.

She needed more of him, more touch more tongue more on her around her inside her '

Lips closed around her clitoris and hummed.

She whined and writhed as pleasure spread tendrils through her. Her toes curled, her fingers locking against Jinshi's head, her world down to the single-minded focus of his clever mouth busy at work between her thighs. Reason said she should be analyzing this for replication; desperate need thought otherwise. Everywhere he touched ached less, burned less, made her skin feel less tight and painful.

The rest of her felt like she was about to burst, a soap bubble on the surface of water ready to pop with the slightest pressure. Every lick, every nibble, every press of his nose drew her deeper and deeper into pleasure, all of it focusing on the seed of heat boiling inside her. No poison she'd tasted, no breath she'd inhaled, made her body tingle and twitch the way this did. Was it all in whose hands were manipulating her?

By all the deities, his

hands

'

Maomao shuddered as one hand slid down her thigh. Jinshi's mouth pulled away for a heartbreaking world-shattering moment before fingers pressed against her labia, spreading her wide for him, and his tongue resumed its celestial ministrations.

Whatever burned within her seemed to be burning hotter. Every stroke of his tongue 'and there, now his fingers, playing along her folds 'made the pressure inside her grow. Tighter and tighter, she coiled until she felt like she had been distilled down to her essence. There was nothing but the fever pitch of lust and Jinshi's fingers and mouth on her body.

He slid a finger inside her, a slow intrusion her body welcomed. Her pulse pounded in her ears, her own breathy sounds of pleasure almost inaudible. He was being so gentle and at the same time so cruel, making her want, want

him,

make him the focus of her world. And all the while his finger worked inside her, stretching her, stroking her walls in time with his tongue against her clit, the need in her building up. She felt dizzy, distracted,

For a moment she was a drop of oil in a solution, suspended and whole.

He curled his finger inside her, striking a place within that made her already-struggling brain stutter and freeze. She cried out, hips rocking and her hand in his hair crushing his head down, her thighs clamping around his head. He didn't stop his tongue or finger as she burst apart into tiny fragments of pleasure, all sense of self lost.

She opened her eyes an eternity later to see his face above her, gleaming and slick with her arousal. His eyes shone, glazed and dark, as he worked her through the aftershocks of her orgasm with an almost malicious attention to detail.

"More," Maomao rasped. "I can take more." Could.

Had to

. One finger wasn't enough, one climax wasn't enough for whatever it was coursing through her veins and working its way into the very fibers of her being.

"Of course you can." Jinshi blinked once, as though the idea that she

couldn't

hadn't even crossed his mind.

"I

need

more," she said with a tongue that didn't want to work properly. Her toes curled tightly as the aftershocks of pleasure juddered through her.

The finger inside her crooked again; another bolt of bliss arced through her, her body bowing off the blanket.

Jinshi looked smug, but there was something in the corners of his eyes and the heavy rise and fall of his chest that told her there was something else, something just as ravenous, waiting inside him. Muscles corded along his throat; something prodded, hot and hard and smooth as silk, against her thigh.

Low in her belly, the need woke again, still as heartless and hungry and shameless as minutes ago. It dug in deeper this time, a burr into her skin. Hooking her heels around the back of his legs, she tried to drag him closer to her.

The foolish celestial nymph was stronger than he looked 'a thing she should have remembered. She snarled at him, trying again to pull him closer. He resisted, again catching her wrists in one hand, pinning them 'and her 'to the ground.

It was the hand that had been inside her until moments earlier, and the absence suddenly screamed at her. Her body clenched around nothingness, the emptiness agonizing.

"Do you want this?" Jinshi's eyes caught and held hers, inhumanly beautiful and seeing straight into her. Something pulled at his words; was it desperation, the same one burning in her? Was it something else?

She didn't know, and frankly didn't care. Nothing mattered except the once-again rising need working through her 'through them, she suspected absently.

She tried to speak and failed, throat dry. Resorting to vigorous nodding, she jabbed her heels into him. It elicited a yelp but little more than that. A thin smile danced across his face, quick enough she thought she had missed it at first except for the way it lingered at the corners of his eyes, tugged so delicately at his parted lips.

"Yes," she said, meeting his gaze. "Not done with you yet, Jinshi-sama."

He rolled his eyes and there was for a moment a soft, exasperated look. "Demanding cat," he muttered so soft she wasn't sure he'd intended her to hear it. Still, he took his free hand and wrapped it around himself as he adjusted position between her thighs. "Tell me if it hurts," he said, the words uneven.

"How can I if you won't

start?

" she whined, or tried to. The last half of the last word was swallowed by a gasp as the head of his erection slid into her, just enough to stretch but not be overly painful.

And then he began to move, and any hope she had of keeping quiet, or keeping composure, was gone. She bit down hard on her lower lip as Jinshi worked his way inside her, slow tentative motions that seemed intended to accustom her as well as him to the entirety of the act. Furiously, she jabbed her heels into the small of his back one last time, and now he was at such an angle as it worked, sending him hard and deep into her in a way that was both utterly shocking and precisely what she wanted.

Jinshi dropped his head to her shoulder, muttered something, and then bit down, almost but not quite hard enough to hurt. He began to move again, teeth still lodged into the side of her shoulder, as her ankles latched around him.

Skin to skin, his muscles bunching and moving against her, the twitches of him

inside her

, dragging himself out only to thrust back in again and set every nerve aflame. She wrested one hand free, then the other, running them along his arms, his shoulders, his chest, every bit of him that she could touch. Her body clung to him like a creeper vine and still he held onto her, the bite relaxing as his hands found purchase elsewhere, supporting his weight.

Maomao angled her hips and tried to dig through the fog of arousal to remember something, anything, her sisters had suggested. Her brain refused to work; her body, now chasing instinct, prevailed.

Jinshi groaned against her throat, nipping gently at the skin. His pace quickened, his breathing louder and harsher in her ears. He made a sound of frustration, lifting his head. His hair fell in a sheet around them, leaving them in an imperfectly shadowed world. Impulsively she reached up to touch his face, run her fingertips across his lips.

The liquid heat inside her pooled, bubbled, slid under her skin and out to the very tips of her fingers. It was the sweet warmth of alcohol and the victory of a medicine and a sensation none of her poisons could compare to. She tingled, she ached, she craved, pleasure and desire twisting together and joining inside her.

Close, so close 'but not enough. Not

right

. It felt like the moment of a frustrated sneeze when she knew she had to sneeze, but her body refused. She whined, not quite a snarl, not quite a cry. Balancing on the knife-edge, that moment just before a fall, she tried everything. Still, no matter how she rocked and rolled, angled her tips, tried to draw on any of Pairin's advice, it brought her no closer to release.

And then as quickly as he'd begun, Jinshi stopped and withdrew.

Vaguely she realized he was pulling out of her, rolling her over onto her belly. She crushed her face into the silk cushion, lifting her hips up for him. One hand pressed down at the small of her back, and then there was the incredible stretch as he slid inside her again, every bit of his length pressing against her inner walls, dragging pleasure out of her stroke by stroke.

He covered her with his body, arms stretched out around hers as he set a new rhythm once more.

This '

this

was what she'd needed. Covered by him, his elbows tucked close to support his weight, but as much skin on skin as he could get. Clearly, he'd wanted it as badly as she did; his head fell beside hers, his mouth finding the base of her neck, teeth scraping delicately across the skin.

Yes

, she cried out, though it was muffled in the cushion, and she was not sure if the voice she heard was hers or Jinshi's. His chest rumbled behind hers, breath ragged. Her fingers scrabbled against the blanket and the wood of the floor beneath, unable to find purchase to push back. She whimpered with need, a sound she would deny came from her until her dying day. Not that he knew, not that he cared, but it was her dignity 'the fragile remnants of it 'at stake.

Maomao stretched out beneath him and felt him tangle his fingers with hers as she stretched out a forearm. The roar of her heartbeat 'was it his, too? It seemed as though she could feel it through her back, hammering like a galloping horse 'filled her ears, the smack of skin on skin as he fell into her time and time and time again '

Some other time, it might have been sweet, but yearning and desperation filled Maomao now. She turned her head and found Jinshi's mouth, kissing him hard and awkwardly.

It was an unexpected chemical reaction, as though she'd touched a spark to oil-drenched kindling. Her body convulsed around him, muscles tense and rippling as her climax erupted. Her skin burned, heart pounded, searing bright light behind her eyes.

Jinshi swallowed her cry as his hips stuttered, the last of his rhythm 'and composure 'shattering like porcelain. He bit again on the meat of her shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to send pain ricocheting through her alongside the pleasure.

Sweat-sticky, she rolled her hips against him one last time. He hissed and sucked in a breath, growling against her skin and sliding one arm beneath her to hold her tight against him. His head pressed against her, mouth lipping at her body, legs tangled with hers for every bit of touch that was possible to get.

She dragged in air, sweat and musk and jasmine and 'she sneezed once 'dust. Her skin no longer felt fit to burst, though it felt like it was covered in everything: Jinshi's hair, Jinshi's hands. All of him, really.

Jinshi

was the one still buried inside her, wrapped around her. Her heart trembled and the breath she sucked in had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with a slowly dawning degree of horror of the consequences of her actions. Of

their

actions.

Rutting on a floor like animals. At least it hadn't been in broad daylight; then she would never have had a hope of living this down. As it was, she was never going to be able to shake him now. She was never going to be able to free herself of him.

But did she really want to?

Yes

, she decided as he nosed along the nape of her neck in a way that had everything to do with softness and intimacy and nothing to do with the tingling curl of need trying to spread through her again, or so she told herself.

Maomao pinched her eyes shut. She would need to make their relationship 'or lack of it 'pointedly clear. This was merely 'a need, a service he'd done for her. That was it. That was all. Tomorrow she would confront the bruises on her shoulder, the pain that would no doubt spring from having done all of this on a floor, no matter how nice the blanket atop it. Tomorrow, she would make it clear to Jinshi that whatever this was could, would, go no further.

Behind her, Jinshi's breath caught in his throat. His fingers curled around her with hidden strength. He withdrew from her carefully. Her body clung to him as he pulled out; she couldn't keep from making a small sound of dismay.

"Maomao, how long ' No. How potent

is

this plant?" he asked, voice deceptively calm. She recognized it as the same one he used just before he threw her world and her careful plans into disarray.

She opened her eyes to meet his, glancing away almost immediately. There was a hint of innocence there, or perhaps curiosity. It was hard to read; she regretted not paying closer attention to faces and expressions previously. Regretfully, there was no way to avoid a direct answer now. "It is," she said in that same calm tone, "alleged to be quite potent and long-lasting."

The sound he made then wasn't anger or frustration, but a resigned sort of groan, followed by of those soft laughs that made her stomach do interesting things she preferred not to think about. "I am clear-headed for a moment. Perhaps it is wearing off? Or your plant is ' inferior?"

Indignation rose in her, fully as strong as her earlier lust, at Jinshi's disparaging of her carefully nurtured lily being

inferior

in any way. "Nothing I touch is inferior," she said primly. Realization of the words and how he would no doubt interpret them turned her face a painful red. She scowled at him, which was also, in hindsight, a terrible decision.

It was easier, she admitted, to not think at all right now. Reason and logic slid away into another wave of hunger and greed intense enough that even Maomao's denial and excuses of

research

were abandoned. The wave crested and broke, the intervals between the bouts growing longer as the pollen 'she hoped 'worked its way out of their bodies.

She had a sneaking suspicion it was going to take significantly longer to work Jinshi out of her system 'and it might perhaps be impossible to work her out of his.