Better than Lovelorn

“There’s no such thing as the perfect person. He or she is only an idea,” Izanami said. “The fact that you think there’s a perfect person out there just tells me you’re in pain. You want me to be someone that I’m not. Just another person who can set you free. I can try… but one day, you’ll have to take away that pain by yourself.”

Shindara was so taken aback that his feet dragged to a stop. The fact that she possessed this insight only made him covet her more—and it furthered his impression of her as someone truly unreachable.

“We’re all drawn to it,” she admitted with a lazy stroll in her step. Her gaze panned across the forests beyond the city walls, where it evoked a wanderlust. “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.”

Shindara remembered the curious murals he found in her bathing chamber under Ihuya Hill. Those cave drawings hinted at a shameful need to belong and step into society for the first time. He couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d felt this emptiness.

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

“Yes.”

And that “yes” felt eerily like a knife in his ribs, mocking what he felt for her. Shindara tried to pretend it didn’t sting as much as it did. 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, I’m happy with my loneliness,” she confessed. “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 said. “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 don’t realize how rare a genuine connection is until it’s gone.” She paused as she watched the sunset fading into great magenta ribbons overhead.

“So when you find that connection, you hold on,” Shindara added. Izanami didn’t reply at first, so he gave her hand a playful squeeze.

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

He wanted so badly to ask her what was going on between them. Moreso, he wondered if she loved him yet or if that was a remote possibility one day.

“Do you lo…?”

A quaint mix of disappointment and exhilaration found 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 felt like the self-anointed patron martyr of all things unrequited. The notion of someone returning his affection felt intrinsically hopeless, and of course he knew how damaged that sounded. But such thoughts come with conditioning. Maybe life was telling him that he wasn’t worth loving.

Not by her, anyway.

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, and a giddy laugh quivered out of her. And it became starkly clear in that moment that he did amuse and entertain her. Not so long ago, he was fine with being used, but now he was exhausted by this perpetual tease. He just wondered how much sweeter this kiss would taste if she felt anything real for him.

Sex had become the compromise between her emotional defenses and his desire for any kind of intimacy. Was it any wonder, then, why he kept pining for Aya? She had genuinely loved him and opened up 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, but he wasn’t falling for the bait. If Izanami was disappointed, she wasn’t going to show it. As their innocent touches turned into needy tugs and caresses, Shindara realized he needed to get her out of public quickly. He began to usher her down one of the ambiguous side streets lined with shops and merchant quarters. The vacant ones were also locked up tight, causing no small amount of frustration for Shindara. He gritted his teeth as he tested another door, trying to ignore the way Izanami was fondling him. His desire for her wasn’t so much an itch that needed to be scratched as it needed to be sucked, choked, and devoured.

As their situation became increasingly desperate, Shindara felt like he would explode at any given moment if he couldn’t be with her.

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 to the blackness. Even in the shadows, Izanami looked radiant when she stripped down her armor and underlying clothes. When their respective iron plates clattered to the floor, it felt like shackles coming undone to Shindara. It was the most liberated he felt in weeks, and judging from the way he tossed aside the Obsidian Blade aside, 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 enjoyed the softness of her skin and the juxtaposing firmness of her buttocks. Izanami couldn’t keep her hands to herself either because she was squeezing his toned arms. What he wasn’t expecting was the way her fingertips flitted along the underside of his penis.

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. His hand slid down her hips until it felt like his fingers were drowning between her legs. She urged him on, matching his rapt gaze when he put himself inside her.

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.

Heaving from his thrusts, Izanami managed to grab a nearby silk dangling from the ceiling. She yanked it down as she tried to keep herself from falling. It took an extraordinary amount of dexterity to loop it around Shindara’s waist, but when she did so, she yanked him closer and took him in deeper.

As she clawed her fingers through his hair, one of her nails touched the sigil scarred into the side of his neck. It was funny, 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 the spasm between her dripping thighs, on impulse, he seized a handful of her hair and buried his lips against hers. If only this was what forever tasted like. It was sweet and frenzied in all the ways it undulated toward a sensual 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 the outline of 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 stunned Shindara. He glanced away for a haphazard second because the way she was smiling innocently at him was… yes, it was more infuriating than infatuating.

Was it better to explode with anger or sink inward from shame? As something inconsolable began rising in his throat, this conflict gave way to a mischievous thought.

It had to be more than coincidence that his attention turned to the silks hanging from the ceiling. He realized, for the most part, that much of it was unfinished merchandise. 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.

Without a word, he reached for one of those textiles and yanked it taut. 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.

Thus, looking her in the eyes, he pulled one end of the silken rigging and caused her to rise on her tiptoes. Gradually, he lifted her off the floor until she was dangerously suspended. Wrapped up in that silken rigging, her body looked more like a work of art than anything that was ever assimilated 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 quivered with anticipation as he tied an obi belt around her head like a blindfold. Through a series of badly improvised silken pulleys, a tug here and a release there arched her back in 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 had to come undone from the beam overhead, causing Shindara to lunge forward—a little too much to Izanami’s surprise and lewd pleasure. He grabbed one end of the taut cord while he seized her hair in the other hand. It still elicited a filthy, desperate noise from Izanami, accidental or not.

If only she knew he was straining every muscle in his arm to keep her suspended, and pulling her hair was the only thing keeping him from slipping out of her. 

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 utter collapse and elation.

He just wished he could memorize every thrust and every way that 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 as much as he could. There was no way this should be allowed to end, but it was only a matter of time. The sound that barreled out of Shindara wasn’t so much a bellow of ecstasy 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 at first. It didn’t matter if they were being hunted by a would-be dictator. It didn’t matter if Yasuhira wanted them dead. And it certainly didn’t matter if Nura found them.