Wei Lai had always thought that the draping cloth — a simple square of fabric worn as a woman’s wrap — was as alluring as it was genuinely hazardous.

Cen Jin was evidently the person he’d encountered most fond of adopting it as her indoor attire, so his worry had taken root from the very beginning and never once let up —

Aren’t you the least bit afraid this cloth will fall?

What if the knot isn’t tight, or the movement is too sudden, or it catches on something jutting out, or gets pulled down — or gets pulled down by him?

Remarkably, she had a very reliable technique; that imagined scene had never come to pass.

And no matter how many times the thought had occurred to him, he had never once actually reached out to pull it: before their relationship had progressed to that point, acting on the impulse would have been plain sordid — even with his thick skin, he was after all the ace bodyguard, and still possessed a tiny remaining scrap of dignity.

Something he had fretted over and been curious about for so long was finally happening. In this moment, there was a relief that came with having an answer at last: not carelessness, not accident, not a snag or a pull — and not half-hearted reluctance.

Her slender index finger gave a light hook, flicking at the tucked edge.

The rust-red draping cloth threaded with dark gold patterns dropped in an instant in the shifting lamplight. For just that fraction of a second, it stopped his breath, and stilled the entire world.

Were they really still on a ship? Was there really a sandstorm outside?

If someone told him this ship would capsize tonight, he wouldn’t have cared — only please let it capsize slowly. If it all ended right at this moment, the regret would follow him into the next life, and he’d be ill-tempered for every year of it.

He let out a long breath, his gaze travelling the rising and falling curves of her body without the slightest attempt at concealment.

Cen Jin said: “That’s as far as I can take the initiative. If you still don’t make a move, I’ll lose all face.”

Wei Lai smiled: “What if I simply don’t make a move?”

“Actually, Miss Cen, I think you’ve misread me. When I asked if you wanted it, I was asking whether you wanted another two bottles of beer — isn’t it possible you’ve been reading too much into this?”

Cen Jin smiled sweetly: “Say that again if you dare.”

“I’ll put a Desert Eagle through your skull, and tomorrow I’ll tell Hu Sha the ship lurched and it went off by accident.”

Wei Lai let out a great laugh and, in the middle of it, suddenly sat up — a sideways sweep of his arm, and he rolled over and pressed her beneath him.

The soft fullness and yielding warmth that filled his arms sent his throat tight in an instant. Every trick and technique and well-worn routine between men and women — he suddenly didn’t want to use any of them.

For just a fraction of a second, he was like a raw beginner setting out, wanting nothing more than to overwhelm with brute force and forget all finesse — and like a man driven mad by wealth stumbling into a treasure mountain, faced with dazzling riches on all sides and unable to decide what to grab and stuff into his pockets first.

His hands kneaded and gathered, wanting more, reluctant to leave one place before his attention was already drawn away to another.

Outside the compartment, the pirates’ chaotic uproar suddenly transformed into a sweeping, unified chorus. In rhythm they beat, struck, crashed, and stomped, voices tearing through the air in unison: “Money! Money! Money…”

Some wanted money, some wanted power, some rushed through the night to take the imperial examinations, some renounced office and turned for home — and he simply wanted a person. For the rest of his life, for this single moment, he wanted a woman.

Everyone busy in their own way, each finding what they sought.

Outside: towering waves and raging seas. In here: a storm just beginning to stir.

The lamplight receded inch by inch. The small compartment was swallowed into an ambiguous half-darkness where light and shadow were indistinguishable. Wei Lai deliberately did not kiss her lips — he didn’t want to miss a single sound she might make from being unable to bear it. Besides, the ship was so noisy and chaotic that even if she cried out, others would only think it was the storm.

And yet Cen Jin proved more stoic than he’d imagined.

She bit her lip, her body taut, and save for the quickening of her breath and the occasional sharp inhale when his hands were too forceful, almost nothing escaped her throat.

Like someone who knows to endure pain when receiving an injection, she knew what was coming and had conserved her composure to meet it.

This wouldn’t do. The battlefield of intimacy permitted only one victor; you could not be left with any reserve to hold yourself together — that thought had to be uprooted before it could form, ground down to sand, and blown away with the storm.

His hand slid down across her lower abdomen.

The implication was far too clear. Her instinct was to press her legs closed. Wei Lai was prepared; he pressed both knees against the sides of hers, leaving her unable to move.

Cen Jin clenched her jaw. Both hands drove deep into the gaps of rope along the taut bed’s edge. Wei Lai’s hand pressed across the surface of her underwear — the texture of dense, delicate embroidery.

Could it be the lace embroidered pair he had come across by chance that time he’d helped her pare down her luggage?

It seemed it really was. Fated to be his, then — come out early to make his acquaintance, got familiar with him in advance.

He gave a soft laugh; his palm slid to the side of her thigh, stroking that sensitive stretch of skin.

A man’s hand, with roughened fingertips — she held out for less than two seconds. She tried to sit up; at the very instant she rose, Wei Lai’s fingers suddenly slipped past the last remaining barrier.

Cen Jin cried out involuntarily and went completely limp.

No words could describe this feeling — it was unbearable enough to make her want to grind her teeth to dust. His arm was locked around her waist; she couldn’t break free no matter how she struggled. Cen Jin cursed loudly: “I will kill you.”

Wei Lai said: “If you still have the strength to talk, then I haven’t done nearly enough.”

He increased the pressure.

Cen Jin’s body convulsed sharply. She fought with all her strength to push his arm away, and in her struggle she bit down on a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. Her whole body trembled; the next moment her voice broke in her throat, as though she were on the verge of tears.

She must have lost her mind to have agreed to this. When he asked if she “wanted it,” she should have told him to get lost — told him to get back in the sea, back to the desert, back to Helsinki.

And worse still, out of this torment a pleasure was slowly taking shape. Cen Jin was drenched in sweat, her hair plastered wet and sticky against her cheeks and neck. At some point she’d bitten through her lip, and a faint metallic taste of blood seeped across her tongue.

Wei Lai suddenly stopped.

He looked down into her eyes and said: “Beg me, and I’ll stop.”

Cen Jin was gasping violently, with no presence of mind to spare. Like someone drowning, she would have grasped at a razor blade if it were the only thing extended to her.

“I’m begging you — can we… next time?”

Wei Lai smiled and said: “Alright.”

He pulled his hand back and gathered her into his arms, then leaned down to kiss her lips. Her lips were noticeably dry, though at her neck was a dampness that heated the senses.

Alright? Cen Jin could barely trust her own ears.

Would a man say “alright” at a moment like this?

But he had promised, hadn’t he? A promise was all she needed.

She hadn’t yet fully relaxed before his hand suddenly slipped down her back, lingered for a few teasing seconds at the hollow of her waist, then pushed her underwear down; his arm rose, forcing her hips upward.

Something burning and unfamiliar pressed against her body.

Cen Jin’s eyes went wide.

He brought his lips close to her ear and laughed softly: “Little one, the interval was ten seconds. Next time has arrived.”

Before she could get a single word out, Wei Lai drove forward, one stroke to the deepest point.

The cry that rose in Cen Jin’s throat died there, falling soundlessly into the air. Her two hands released all at once; her fingertips trembled, unable to hold onto anything.

He wasn’t satisfied with that, and gripped her hips to pull her forward, helping her meet him.

This feeling — wet, soft, warm — layers upon layers of enveloping closeness, as though it even breathed around him. The long-accumulated pleasure detonated from within, blasting him apart in all directions.

He didn’t care anymore. Even if it meant his end, let him die here first, on her.

Wei Lai suddenly lost all control. He pressed her back down with force; all reason and restraint were abandoned entirely. His hands knew no limits — like a wolf with bloodshot eyes that would not relent until it had torn its quarry completely apart.

——

Cen Jin felt her body had shattered into ten thousand scraps of paper, drifting slowly upward. She reached out her hands in vain to catch them, but with each piece she grasped, still more slipped from her fingers…

Sensation grew distorted and acute; her consciousness floated in and out, as though her spirit had left her body.

She saw the pirates drinking greedily, laughing in a near-delirious frenzy, some pulling out a gambling game, others brawling in a formless tangle, still others chattering and laughing, letting loose long streams of obscure Somali…

She saw the dark waves outside the ship rise and crest, as if in slow motion — frame by frame — countless gleaming grains of sand drifting slowly past like comet-tails, drifting into the wave-crests, even stirring up countless tiny, trembling ripples across the surface.

At the instant the wave-crest subsided, she saw the moon — filtered through the sandstorm, blood-red in colour, at once savage and tender.

Her body was weightless, floating upward, as if she had only to reach out a hand to touch the moon…

Then pleasure suddenly extended into a thread — thin and long, growing from below, hooking around her ankles, wrapping tightly around her entire body, pulling her back, pulling her back into this small room.

She opened her eyes wide and saw herself.

Lying on the bed, eyes closed, a faint crease between her brows, soft as something on the verge of dissolving, without a trace of resistance. A man was moving above her with complete abandon — reckless and untamed — his arched back glistening wet with sweat…

This man had been chosen by her.

Invited by her, consented to by her, free to do with her as he wished.

——

The sky turned faintly light.

The ship lay in the gap between two successive waves of sandstorm, swaying from side to side; the surface of the water occasionally churned up swirling foam, the foam carrying fine grains of sand.

Inside, people were sprawled about in every direction, snoring filling the air — the space was littered with pirates dead drunk and fast asleep. Some clutched wine bottles, some clutched guns; the remains of food were scattered here and there across the floor, and every now and then the eye caught a small pool of blood — whoever had been hurt had probably never even noticed.

——

Cen Jin slipped into a deep, unconscious sleep.

Wei Lai, on the other hand, did not feel the least bit tired. He had been well-fed, so to speak, and was far too exhilarated to sleep.

Sleep — what was the point of sleep? Even the most beautiful dream could not surpass what lay before his eyes.

He brushed the hair from Cen Jin’s face and leaned down to kiss her eyelashes. At the moment of contact she seemed to sense it; her brow furrowed slightly, and she murmured without waking: “It hurts…”

Wei Lai realised something, and lifted the draping cloth he had covered her with.

Her body was covered in kiss marks and bruises. The bruising at her waist was especially severe — the shape of his handprints was almost distinctly legible.

Some of the marks were in places he couldn’t quite account for himself.

He couldn’t fully recall everything that had happened the previous night — only that it had happened more than once, free and wild and completely unbridled. Her stamina was far less than his; toward the end she had nearly lost consciousness, surrendering herself entirely to his hands, reduced to moans that stuttered out in broken fragments with every jolt and crash.

Wei Lai covered her again with the draping cloth, then brushed the back of his hand gently against the side of her face. She reflexively flinched again, and a flicker of pain that seemed not yet entirely resolved passed across her sleeping face.

He lowered his head and pressed his lips softly over hers.

No matter how much he demanded, she yielded. No matter how wildly he went, she endured it all. When he was lost in abandon and had hurt her, she had only furrowed her brow slightly, murmuring a half-conscious “it hurts” from within her sleep.

Perhaps he ought to say thank you.

Or perhaps nothing needed to be said at all. It was enough to love her — love could not be concealed, and she would understand.

——