“Ming Liang,” he said slowly.
She nodded, leaning forward, her air of calm seeming to dissipate somewhat.
“He was seen around here.” He gestured to try to make his meaning clear.
She asked something that he thought might be “Where?”
“He is gone,” he said. “I don’t know where.” It took some time to convey his meaning, but he thought she finally understood.
Her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she put her hands on the bars and said something else. She gestured to the lock. She wanted him to let her go.
He shook his head.
She hit the bars in frustration and let fly with a string of sounds that made no sense but conveyed her fury and disgust.
“I will find out more,” he said with gestures, but he wasn’t sure that she understood. She flung away from him and dropped onto the mattress in high dudgeon. She was clearly furious with him.
He sighed and left her. He wasn’t letting her out until he was sure she wouldn’t go after Merlow. If Ming had followed his brother south and not come back, something must have happened to him. He would write to Merlow and find out.
That night, Col’s sleep was disturbed by a dream from which he woke sweating and sporting a fierce cockstand. Lying on his back while his heart rate settled and the sweat cooled on his skin, he tried to recall the details of the dream, but they eluded him, blown away like a will-o’-the-wisp when he tried to grasp them. Vanishing like morning mist.
The cockstand persisted, though. Hot and insistent, his balls ached, and his cock twitched and leaked on his belly.Where has this sudden surge of lust come from?
The feel of Aihan straddling his lap came back in vivid, visceral detail, and he groaned aloud, his hips bucking involuntarily. Raw desire flooded his body, and he closed his eyes on a curse. His hand reached for and clasped his cock, as he moaned in real distress. His cock pulsed, and he spat on his hand to provide some lubrication, stroking and squeezing. His other hand fondled his tight balls, and he cursed again, almost crying with the intensity of need.
Rolling onto his knees, he grabbed the headboard with one hand to steady himself and stroked his cock with the other, his hips thrusting violently into his fist. The tight coil of desire wound up and up, teasing his senses with nerve-tingling pleasure. His breathing ragged, his heart rate thundering, the pleasure spiked, and he thrust hard into his fist. Flinging back his head, he roared at the ceiling, “Foooock!” as his seed boiled out of him, spurting all over the sheets and pillow in multiple exquisite shots.
He grunted and groaned with each wave of release and shuddered in the aftermath, his head hanging, as he gasped for breath. Tingles ran down the insides of his legs to the soles of his feet and up his spine to his scalp. His body quivered with the violence of his climax. And he puffed out a breath on another much quieter curse. “Fooking hell!”
He collapsed sideways onto the bed and just lay there in a kind of stupor for several minutes, drifting on a haze of post-orgasmic pleasure. Eventually cold air made him reach for the bedclothes and pull them up over him. He nestled into the mattress, which rustled beneath him, and he sighed, drifting off to sleep.
Chapter Five
The Sceacháin brought her breakfast the next morning, but that didn’t endear him to her. She was furious with him. She was also too smart to let it show. She had spent a considerable amount of the night trying to figure out how to escape. She had to, or theShaolinwould sail without her. She had established that she couldn’t break the bars of her prison. They were a little rusty, but not rusted through enough to be dislodged by one of her kicks. She had tried and bruised her foot and jarred her leg. She needed another way, and that had to involve her captor.
She waited calmly, sitting cross-legged on the mattress while he juggled the tray and the lock, making no effort to help him. She wished she could communicate with him better, but there was no time to learn his outlandish language properly. The few words she had didn’t seem to be helping much because, she suspected, of the local dialect and her own accent making it hard for each to understand the other, even when using words in the same language. She needed to escape today.
He shut and locked the door behind him and turned to her, holding out the tray as if in a peace offering, and said something that she assumed was a greeting of some kind. She listenedcarefully and repeated it back to him, trying to imitate his intonation.
“Good morning.”
He smiled, nodding enthusiastically, and offered the tray again. “For ye.”
“For ye,” she repeated.
He shook his head and, setting down the tray, tapped his chest and said, “For me.” Then he waved at her and said, “For ye.”
Comprehension dawned and she nodded her understanding. She tapped her breast and said, “Me,” then waved at him. “You. Ye,” she corrected herself.
“Aye.” He nodded, grinning. The smile made him look less tired, younger. It lifted the heavy pall of—what? Sorrow? Yes, sorrow, that clung to him.
He picked the tray up again and set it down before her. She looked at it. A bowl with something pale and gluggy in it, some more of the crumbly offal mixture she had received yesterday on a separate plate, a small loaf of bread, a dish of butter, and a jug of milk. And two small pots with white crystals in them that she suspected were salt and sugar. Also, another mug of ale.
She inclined her head and clasped her hands in a gesture of appreciation.
She had observed him putting the key in his jacket pocket. She waved to the mattress and patted.
He hesitated a moment and then sat awkwardly. It was obvious he was not accustomed to sitting on the floor as she was. She picked up the ale and drank. She was thirsty. Setting the tankard down half empty, she turned her attention to the gluggy mixture in the bowl. It still had steam rising off it, so it was warm. She picked up the bowl and sniffed. Some form of grain? She stirred it with the spoon and tasted a small quantity. Not alot of flavour, but it would be warming and filling, she supposed. Not unlike sticky rice in some respects.
