Better than Lovelorn

“There’s no such thing as the perfect person,” Izanami said. “Perfection is just an idea that people chase when they’re hurting. You want me to be someone I’m not. Just another person who can set you free. I can try… but one day, you’ll have to find your own way out of the pain.”

Shindara was so taken aback that he stopped in his tracks. Of course he didn’t want her to fix him. If anything, he wanted to give her the kind of love and worship she never received. But with a few effortless words, she had turned it back on him. It only reinforced the sense that she was truly unreachable, always keeping him at a distance no matter how hard he tried.

“We’re all drawn to it,” she admitted with a lazy stroll in her step. Her gaze panned across the ocean beyond the city walls. “There’s beauty and mystery in the search. In my own way, I’m still looking for someone to take my loneliness away from me.”

“Do you feel lonely when you’re with me?” Shindara asked. Depending on her answer, he would know whether or not he failed this day.

“Yes.”

And that “yes” felt eerily like a blade slipping between his ribs. It was the answer he feared, but one he had come to expect. He tried to push past the sting. Yes, maybe there was someone else better suited for her. More deserving of her love and carefully devoted attention. To his surprise, Izanami’s fingers tenderly entwined with his.

“But when I’m with you,” she said, “I’m happy with my loneliness.” Her words wrapped around him like a balm. “The truth is everyone thinks they’re owed a great love. We’re told it’s only a matter of time before we meet our perfect match. I think those people are insane.”

“Is it insane to hope?”

“It’s not a matter of hope,” Izanami replied. “It’s a matter of standing in the right time and the right place, not faith, fate, or the gods. You play the odds, and the odds play you. You never realize how rare a true connection is until you lose it.” She fell silent, watching the sunset fade into magenta ribbons overhead.

“So when you find that connection…” Shindara squeezed her hand, as if that touch conveyed everything on his mind. “You hold onto it.”

“That is the only true magic that exists in this world. And when I think about whatever’s going on between us, I don’t know if I would feel this way with anyone else besides you.”

Shindara’s heart raced. He wanted so badly to ask her what was going on between them. Most of all, he wondered if the words he longed to hear were even possible. Would she ever love him? Or was that something he could only dream of?

“Do you lo…?”

A mix of disappointment and exhilaration whirled through him when he met her eyes, and he realized now was not the right time. She wasn’t going to answer him honestly anyway.

There were few things better than lovelorn, and Shindara was the self-anointed patron martyr of all things unrequited. Yet, there was something horribly intoxicating about reaching for the things he knew he couldn’t have. At least this time, he felt hot, silken flesh and ample hips when he reached out.

Izanami’s lips grazed his, and at one point, her teeth sank into the meat of his bottom lip, eliciting a playful laugh. And it was impossible to ignore in that instant that he did amuse and entertain her. Not so long ago, he was content with being used, but now he was exhausted by this perpetual tease.

He just wondered how much sweeter this kiss might taste if she felt even a fraction of what he did.

Was it any wonder, then, why he kept pining for Aya? She loved passionately and didn’t hide her heart. She was one of a kind, and no one else came close to sparkling the way she did. But Izanami burned red hot.

“No one’s around,” she growled into Shindara’s ear. Shindara wasn’t falling for the bait. If Izanami was disappointed, she wasn’t about to show it. The tension shifted anyway, escalating their touches to urgent, needy caresses. Shindara’s mind was starting to spin, and he knew he needed to get her off the streets before someone saw them.

With a tug, he steered her toward one of the ambiguous side streets lined with shops. Each of them was locked up for the night. Frustration simmered within him as he tested the next door, trying—and failing—to ignore the way Izanami’s hands washed over him. Now his desire for her wasn’t so much an itch that needed to be scratched as it needed to be sucked, choked, and devoured.

Fortunately, Izanami was done playing by society’s rules. She kicked in one of the doors surrounding them. They stumbled inside the building as they began the flimsy process of tearing off each other’s armor.

They didn’t bother to light the nearest candles, choosing instead to flounder in the dark until their eyes adjusted. Even in the shadows, Izanami looked radiant when she stripped off her armor. When their iron plates clattered to the floor, it felt like shackles coming undone. It was the most liberated Shindara felt in weeks, and judging from the way he tossed aside the Obsidian Blade, his discipline was equally shot to hell. That was how little he cared about anything that wasn’t Izanami.

“Where do you suppose we are?” she asked as his arms encircled her. Before he could linger too long on the cleft of her breasts, he took note of their unusual situation. They were surrounded by many colorful lengths of silk draping from the ceiling. It seemed they had barged into a textile shop.

Exquisitely patterned kimonos and embroidered sashes were assorted nearby. Dark-hued coats reserved for the finest lords swayed hypnotically above them. Some of the decorative belts, also known as obis, were so beautifully stitched and dyed that they could double as wall displays. Shindara wasn’t so easily impressed. He had no use for clothes of any kind because Izanami was busy grinding her pubic mound against his thigh.

He answered her with kisses that traced a flushed path from her lips to the meat of her breasts. He couldn’t get enough of her skin or the sweeping curve of her hips. Izanami couldn’t keep her hands to herself either because she was squeezing his arms.

What he wasn’t expecting was the way her fingertips brushed along the underside of his cock, a ghost of touch that sent heat rising up his spine.

Never mind those tired euphemisms about destruction. When it comes to love, objectification is the only thing that’s mutually assured. Right now, Shindara wanted nothing more than to dive into every sensation of her. He wanted to map her with his hands, his mouth, his body. He slid his fingers down her navel until he felt her come apart.

She urged him on, holding his gaze when he slipped inside.  

Izanami lifted her leg to better accommodate him, but there was no need to be eager. This was an occasion to be slowly indulged, allowing every excess to be savored to the fullest.

As she clawed her fingers through his hair, one of her nails touched the sigil scarred into the side of his neck. How strange, he’d almost forgotten about the mark she branded him with a few months ago. She did not want to belong to him, yet she felt an inescapable need to lay her claim. When he felt her tighten around him, he seized a fistful of her hair and kissed her deeply, drinking in every moan she made.

If only this was what forever tasted like. It was sweet and frenzied in all the ways it undulated toward a crescendo.

Lustful throes subsided from Izanami’s cunt, and she gasped her way out of his mouth. She looked overstimulated and incapable of the right words. Shindara couldn’t have been more delighted until he felt her rough touch tracing his jaw. When he faced her, he noticed there was something different about the way she was looking at him now. Yes, this was the most infatuated he’d ever seen her, and when she pursed her lips, he couldn’t wait to hear what she might say.

“You’ve done better.”

What the fuck.

She said it with such sweetness and cruelty that it shattered him. For a moment, he just stared at her in disbelief. Her damn smile—too innocent to be real, too smug to ignore—made his stomach twist somewhere between desire and anger.

At the last second, a dark amusement stirred inside him instead. It had to be more than coincidence that he noticed the silks hanging from the ceiling.

Oh.

Without a word, he reached for one of those textiles and yanked it taut. If she wanted to be so thoroughly dominated, if she continued to pretend that he was so utterly beneath her, then he would give her a damning new perspective. Izanami seemed intrigued when he tied one end around her wrist.

He pulled down a few more sections of silk from the latticework above, twisting them together to form sturdy cords. He stooped before her and wrapped one of those lengths around her ankle. She playfully resisted when he attempted the other leg, however.

“Stop it already or I’ll—”

“Make me.”

Those two words were more of an invitation than a challenge. From anyone other than Izanami, Shindara would have thrown up his hands in defeat. For her, he would step up to any level and gladly prove her wrong.

He pulled one end of the fabric tight, causing her to rise to her tiptoes. Gradually, he lifted her off the floor until she was completely suspended.

Wrapped up in that silken rigging, her body looked more like a work of art than anything that was ever assembled in this shop. 

As Shindara approached her floating form, Izanami bit her lip in suspense. Now, this look on her face was one he could live with. She may not have loved him, but at least she trusted him. She felt safe with him, and if he tried to convince himself, that was more precious than any amount of love.

Well, maybe.

Izanami shivered with anticipation as he tied an obi belt around her head like a blindfold. Through a series of badly improvised silken pulleys, each tug and release curved her body into a swan dive until her legs were nearly bent past her head. There was something impromptu about entering her when gravity wasn’t on their side.

She possessed a certain talent for pushing his boundaries until they seemed like a dot in the distance. Of course, in the heat of the moment, one of the riggings just had to come undone. Shindara lunged forward, a little too much to Izanami’s lewd surprise.

He grabbed one end of the taut cord while he seized her hair in the other hand. Accident or not, it still elicited a filthy, desperate noise from her. If only she knew he was straining every muscle in his arm to keep her suspended. Theirs was an affair bound up in chaos, and it had never been more illustrated than now. Sex had never felt so much like dancing on the edge of ecstasy and utter collapse.

He just wished he could memorize every way her body entwined with his. This moment would never happen the same way ever again, and that was the real crime taking place now. When she began moaning his name, he tried to hold back the onslaught of orgasm.

There was no way this should be allowed to end. The sound that barreled out of Shindara wasn’t so much a cry of pleasure as it was a bestial noise screaming at his body to obey.

And everything disintegrated.

His vision swam, the walls were awash in flecks of red, green, and gold—and then he realized those were the colors of the silks surrounding him. The aftershock of skin on skin crashed over him and made all his worries disappear, no matter how rational or well-founded they seemed.

It didn’t matter if they were being hunted by a would-be dictator. It didn’t matter if Mikoto’s father wanted them dead. And it certainly didn’t matter if Nura found them.