Because You Love to Hate Me by Amerie

Author:Amerie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408882771
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Only three days passed before Hai Xin appeared again, this time in Mei Feng’s bedchamber.

She had lived those days in between in a daze, wondering if she had hallucinated the episode, wondering if she was somehow going mad. Her thoughts had dulled, heavy and sluggish, but her flesh had come alive, sensitive, tender. Mei Feng went about the rituals of each day, having her hair brushed and arranged by Ripple, drawing on her cool underclothing and silk skirt as if she were in a trance. Her body tingled, pinpricks of anticipation dancing across her skin, longing to be touched again.

Fear and caution lurked in some dark corner of her mind, caged and muted. She knew Hai Xin—this strange, seductive man—was dangerous. But it was a distant concern, a problem she knew she could not solve. Better not to dwell upon it.

She was lying in bed, her hair spread like a fan over her brocaded cushion, when Mei Feng felt his presence. Hai Xin’s silhouette appeared behind the finespun gauze of her bed curtains. He exuded power . . . and desire. His hunger for her was tangible. It gripped her heart like a vise, tightening her throat. She tried to lurch away from him but lay like stone upon the platform bed, unable to move. Hai Xin had used his sorcery, immobilizing her. There was no escape, nowhere to hide.

He slipped beneath the silk sheet like a whisper, hot hands twined in her loose hair within a breath. Only a husband was allowed to see a woman’s hair unbound; only a husband had the privilege to touch it. He pressed himself against her, whispering into her ear, promising wedded bliss and beautiful children, promising paradise. His lips and fingertips roamed across her throat, over her abdomen, brushed against her breasts. She gasped with pleasure, even as the fear in the deep recesses of her mind expanded, screamed in warning.

“You taste as sweet as you look, beautiful girl,” Hai Xin murmured against her hair.

“One of your greatest assets is your beauty, daughter,” her mother had told her, over and over again.

“Our brood will be stunning,” he said, then kissed her so deep and long she couldn’t breathe.

Mei Feng felt his excitement. She remembered all those line drawings she had pored over endlessly in The Book of Making, tutored by her mother. She willed her arms to move, to shove him off, but her body betrayed her.

A door panel slid aside, and Orchid’s voice broke the oppressive silence that had wrapped the bedchamber. There had been no other sounds except for Hai Xin’s beguiling words between his kisses and the roar of her heartbeat within her ears.

“Mistress?” Orchid called out in her lilting voice. “I’ve come to douse your lanterns.”

Light, slippered feet crossed the reception hall toward the bedchamber.

In an instant, Hai Xin vanished, as if he had never been there at all.

The only indications of his presence were the lingering heat of his touch against her feverish skin and the tang of salt in the air—a whiff of the sea.

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