Tethered Romance Part 9

"You said you would teach me to dance." He spoke hopefully, looking at me with a slight childish gleam his eyes. For the first time, I felt him a slave to me, but I wouldn't think of it.

Fluid motion, snaking river live molten chocolate, a height of ecstasy, molasses soaked feathers, and drowning in the musk of love. I twisted his hands over both of mine holding the fans, creating a downdraft, like the flapping of wings. Dripping with haste, eyes slowly closed, no need to watch the shadows on the floor, this lust staining the walls. I moved with only my legs, my knees bending, one foot stepping back to balance on only my toes, my back straight. And suddenly, only the beat of the drum existed between the beat of my heart.

"Your steps are awkward." I twisted a length of air around my fingers, watching where it squeezed them enough that the tips turned white with droplets of water running in trails over my skin. My head was heavy, drenched with rain and tormented with the sound of thunder, and my eyes flickered up acting uninterested. But he kept my attention, not a fleeting moment passed that I felt compelled to be distraught that the rain beat against my back. There was a rhythm to step to that didn't turn my cheeks hot. There was his sin to concentrate on, and the Gods that dispelled me were far from my mind, when all I felt through the pouring rain was desire.

He looked up with a smile from a few paces ahead of me and he kept up to the steps I had already demonstrated, his hair clinging to the subtle curve of the back of his neck. The rain traced him in a way that had been foreign to me, a closer way still clad in a drenched kimono than if he had been covered in nothing but that cold rain. "How long did it take you to learn, Seishin?" He smiled over his shoulder in a way that drew him childish, years beyond me, and presently all at once. He was constant.

I returned the smile shyly, waiting for permission to show a feeling other than what I held with my grace. Waiting for my resolve to break. When I was dancing, when I had an audience, something sparked inside me and I became a tall and proud being. I sauntered to close the distance, a few strides that were proud in the way the dance looked on my body, a way that mocked the body he stumbled in compared to mine. I reached to his waist, letting my hand feel the silk of his robes, coming to a stop at the curve of his back. I pressed him close to me, beginning a step in the dance, the rain fell around us softening, and with the little concentration on his body, I could pick out a strong pitter amongst the patter.

Slow stepping, drawing him closer to me pressing into his aura of heat. I could feel every degree of difference between curve of muscle, valley of bone. Our bare feet pressed side by side, my weight thrown into his guided stride, my fingertips pressing wrinkles into the fabric slicked from the rain. "I know your hips, Sugai." I looked up with my eyes deeply into his, watching him focus on my body. In another time, by another light, my blush would have spread and sunk to the pit of my stomach. But I could blame the patterns the rain water burned in my purity. This dance was a profession to me, my roll as a teacher was serious, and so nothing about indecency would shake me from my hold to be stoic.

He let a hand snake in a way I was convinced he didn't realize behind my head, pulling our foreheads to touch so he could whisper. "My hips only move like liquid when you're under them."

A close invitation to consider; don't make me love you. Don't make it hard to leave.

He suddenly ran. His body so quickly forced away from mine I experienced a flash of cold in his wake, stinging straight into my bones. I watched for a moment as his form grew ghostly in the curtain of rain pouring from the sky, pounding the ground in perfectly straight paths to the earth. I had no choice, as my bare feet carried me as fast as they could, squinting through the water while I ran after him. Calling to him was useless. The rain fell so hard around me it swallowed every other sound. I paused a moment to breathe, but I felt as if I was completely submerged in the water.

My eyes had fallen prey to the hunter of his touch, sedated with the scent of his attraction. I didn't notice until I heard that sound, that I stood drenched alone in the night. The sound creeping into my sense until they were entwined enough to startle; a scream the way it sounded wretched, blistering, piercing like the blade; a pain that lingered longer, and a softer sound in contrast. He moved from me like a flash of light in the storm, so briskly it left a cold breeze on my face. I turned to look behind me, following his motion as best I could. The rain fell upon my eyelashes, and I blinked them rapidly away, but I could see him like a strobe light was flashed upon him.

He dropped her from the grasp he had on her hair, a ruthless soldier proving his loyalty, a cat with strength and grace bringing prey home for the master. Through the rain, the glow of her youth had faded, her façade was barren and cold. My little sister, training under my watch. The earth cried with her in the battle of will, and I remembered a time where nature was gentle with her, she was innocent, and held the razor blade with a skilled hand. Those hands now lay soiled, supporting herself with them, remaining low, sunken and hidden. I could feel her eyes on me, yet as I stared she wouldn't look up to meet me, and I reasoned, she could feel me too. The streaks of mud on her face challenged a beauty only then did I realize; and a softer angel in heaven shone a light to illuminate her grace. I pulled to move me, a gentle sway as if compelled by a breeze, and the rain froze in the air, the leaves on the trees ceased to dance, and the tears that fell from her face burned their paths down the skin of my cheeks.

"She was watching." Sugai spoke harshly, to me, directed at the girl. "Do you know her?"

I stood silent. Identifying an intruder was nothing to my shame, nothing to my guilt as when prying eyes had always found me, I would spur on by the glare of hate, disgust. And they would watch, chase my gaze if they found it from under another body, when they were hungry and I was hardly enough to fill them alone. Eyes did me nothing, and recognizing how many times they saw me didn't save my embarrassment. I was no better than the starving, the light of God didn't shine on me, I was only forsaken and sparred from a harsher judgment. I was still just like them, those who killed, those who violated, those who stood back and watched.

Will you know the truth about me, if I tell you?

"Seimei." I said her name hesitantly, aching to reach for her, to pull her from the demonic grasp of my angered lover.

She reached a hand toward me, expecting to be set free as she tried to run toward me. She called to me, called my name, and her face was twisted with tears and fear. Her tears I could see through the rain, different in how they clung to the contours of her face, painting trails though she was soaked with the rain. "Seishin-sama, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spy, I was coming to help you in the bath house." Sugai's grip around the collar of her bath yukata was steadfast.

"Sugai, this is my little sister." I called over the pounding of the rain. The echo was relentless, my voice carried away. "I train her to be a Geisha, and in return she cares for me in my professions."

"Is that some kind of love I feel from you, Seishin? You care for her?" Sugai's voice clung to the inside of my head, menacing in a tone that I had never heard from him.

Her neck was exposed, a perfect curve over his knee where he held her hair, and as the drops of tears from the sky skipped and jumped upon her body, the tears from her eyes called to my heart. The weight of her drenched hair was enough to make her neck weak, and my passion ran weaker still to sacrifice my emotion. She choked a sob as Sugai trailed a finger down her skin, nail snagging in the childish folds and tearing into blood beneath. Her eyes found me and never left. Somewhere, only his touch left sparks through the bleak cloud of my mind. Relenting, the tender skin gave way to the spear of teeth, sinking slowly, like time had ceased to control just that action for a shorter second. The rules had been bent enough for him that he couldn't be accused of cheating. He couldn't be himself for any more time than it took to plunge himself buried inside; tooth into neck, blade into chest, heart into soul. And he was a beast of all his rights that time brought him.

"Seishin-sama…"

His lip quivered only slightly as if he was holding back for just a second longer, just until he couldn't control the strength of his will. The glint of light playing on a particularly dominating tooth circling as the shine of white faded as it touched soiled skin. I felt a shadow, inferior to the tent of coldness pitched over the display before me, radiance of warmth dimming from tender glowing eyes. I trembled. I trembled without the strength to realize my fear, my sorrows, as I became a slave to the drowning sound of a trembling whimper, the rain washed me clean of guilt.

"Seishin-sama!"

Cry becoming desperate, wrenched from the lithe body; young with her bravery, pale with her understanding. Both pairs of eyes were on me, my own following the blue trails streaking her features, as they became a pattern of relief. Each pass of his tongue over hollows of red created another protruding river of blue. Her eyes glazed with a mask of pain as the spiders of her mind escaped through the white weakness. His mouth worked gently, and through the rain the sound was swallowed when those lips determined the point to break away from the skin, leaving her fingers grasping the nothing before her, the last bit of air escaping in tendrils like the smoke of a dying candle. Her lips fell apart as the muscles of her legs took control and her body shook with tremors. The glow over his face coloured richly, a tempered pink running in waves.

Turn her eyes away from me; don't let me be the last sight before death.

Discarding the shell of his meal, he stood before me, letting the beat of the rain convey the calm of his every drawn breath. His lips were coated in a stain of crimson, a flicker of the drips as they mixed with the rain in a satin blush of colour. There I stood as if I had been witness to nothing before my eyes, witness in fact to the sin of death. I couldn't take my eyes from her body, laying lifeless, and the rain had stopped the energetic bounce from her skin, instead seemingly being absorbed. I felt soaked, drenched, and heavy with the rain. I was being saturated with everything that fell from the sky, with every emotion, every spirit that drifted between the raindrops. I didn't know what to feel. I didn't know if I hated the sin, that I had witnessed it, or that I had two hates to create a stronger love.

When I thought I was full, completely overflowing with the rain, I turned my gaze so fluidly to Sugai. "She called to you, and you just stood there with your eyes wide." He said, not making an effort to step closer. If there was ever a second I might deny his love, he knew it was then, and he denied me first with his distance. But he was no more an alien to me than any other rotten soul. I had watched him at his lowest, where his primal nature was the base of his structure. "I might not have done that if you admitted she was something to you, but you just stood there, Seishin. What were you thinking?"

I don't want you to test me.

"You'll make a good samurai. If you have cold blood already, Seishin, the rest won't be so bad." He pushed past me, steps heavy, as I gazed into the mist the rain created, as if to offer a shroud for her body laying lifeless. "Now I've shown you what happens when I enter your world, Seishin. Misfortune."

I couldn't remember the last time the sky was blue, the clouds were white, and the colours of a gentle spring shone brightly, wearing thinly over the taught skin of my soul. A soul still protected, caged; knowing no fears or pain, no dreams or wishes. Had I ever been completely innocent? I didn't think so. I didn't think there was ever a time in my life that was not clouded over with sin. There were no promises given to me to save my innocence, my body confined behind those rusted bars just as my freedom lay broken on the floor out of the reach of my desperate fingertips.

I lay on the floor of my room for days, time moving quickly around me as I drifted between sleep and wake. I didn't think of anything at all, my mind focused on the hardness of the floor, how my muscles ached, how my head pounded with dehydration. Reality felt far away, as if I had become frozen in time and the world moved around me. I retrieved her body from the forest after some searching. When the rain had lifted, the forest was a different place, and it had become unfamiliar and terrifying. I felt I was no longer a guest as I walked between the trees, but like the eyes of every living thing there was watching as I moved, calculating, and waiting. I found her laying, discarded, the blood on her dried in patches, but as I crouched to gather her into my arms I found her still holding onto the downpour in which she was taken. I had never embraced her during her life, in spite of what she meant to me, in spite of what she offered me. I took a moment with her, cradling her head against my chest, rocking gently, absorbing the coldness of her through my hands and into my heart.

I carried her through the streets to the Okiya she belonged to. As I walked I could hear voices on both sides of me, aware that the occupants of the houses I walked beside opened their doors in wonderment. My mind was alive with the loudness the moment presented me, hearing her scream over and over as it wore down my skull. Tears fell onto her body clutched tightly to mine, as I found strength I had never before possessed to fall to my knees at the door.

I was met by the mother of the Okiya on her knees as well, placing her fingertips together and bowing her head to touch the floor. If she was bowing before me, it was the first I had ever received, but I knew she bowed in sorrow for Seimei and with less respect for me. As she rose, she reached to me, placed a hand on my shoulder and curled her fingertips tightly. Her tears littered the entryway of the Okiya as they ran down her face.

"What happened to her, Seishin?"

"I went looking for her. I found her in the forest." With her body supported by the position I knelt in, I was able to use one hand to smooth her hair. "She must have been attacked by an animal." I lied. There was nothing left to say. They needed to hear something simply to put their souls at ease, and mine would forever bear the burden of the truth.

"Misfortune seems to befall anyone who touches you, Seishin."