“Outside of the friend that found me, you are the only person who knows I was reliant upon the drug.”

“This is a great gift you’ve given me, then.” She bowed her head, twirling the flower she’d taken from him. “What is it you wish to know of me?”

“Do you have no deep dark secrets? Something no one else knows?”

“It is not so easy for me to share my past. I will give you one secret. While life here in the palace has not been my greatest hardship, it was not the life I planned for myself. I cannot hate that fate’s hand turned me down this path when it has brought you to me. There is great danger for someone in my position to say such a thing.”

With a press of his lips to her fast-beating heart, he said, “It is enough to hear you whisper those words.” He stood from the bench, pulling her to her feet, as well. “Come inside before I ravish you out here under the sun and bright blue sky. I’m leaving early tomorrow and will need my fill of all your loveliness.”

“We have all night, do we not?”

“Yes.”

“Walk with me in the garden.” The look in her eyes said she wanted to remember today with more than coupling. He was willing to oblige her every desire. “You may have the first fill of pleasure there.”

“Whatever you wish.”

“Come, then,” she said, taking his hand and leading him deeper into the walled garden. “It’s like a maze, don’t you think?”

He stopped walking, remembering the night he’d proposed to her. He’d dragged her down the dark hedged path at the Duchess of Glenmoore’s maze to steal kisses and an embrace with her. How those days had been filled with innocence.

He took his steps slowly as they walked under the shade of flowering trees.

Seizing the moment, he pulled her to him, released her hand and lifted the bottom of her veil to take a real kiss from her lips. When her hands came between them it was to give a slight shove but she was soon pulling him closer, her fingers curling into his shirt and guaranteeing he wouldn’t escape. Not that he planned such a thing when she gave him this much.

They both broke away from the kiss, the veil slipping between them as if he’d never done something forbidden. Jinan put her forefinger over his mouth, closed her eyes, and tipped up on her toes to place a veiled kiss against her finger and his lips. Before he could snake his arm around her waist and hold her close, she took off at a run down the cobbled path, her red scarves fanning out like little lures pulling him along in her wake.

He caught her and turned into a private alcove. Snagging her hand, he pulled her into his hard body and lowered his mouth to hers. She didn’t fight him, didn’t turn away, but met him with equal fervor. Fingers fumbling at his trousers, she slid her hand beneath his clothes and stroked his hardened length. Taking some steps backward, he hoped the back of his legs met a bench of some sort. When they did, he sat. Jinan set her legs on either side of his, then impaled herself on his length. He groaned with his upward thrust.

“I’m going to miss you, Jinan.”

“I think I’m glad for it, for I will miss you, as well.”

He laughed and grasped her hips to control the slide of her body. It had taken him two weeks to get her to reveal even this much to him. Hopefully their time apart would not put the walls back up between them.

He’d been gone some six weeks. Hadn’t planned on being gone that long, but it couldn’t be helped. Less than a month left on his contract. He was soaking in the Roman baths that were built for the visiting gentlemen; he seemed to be the only one in here so damned early in the morning. As he leaned his head back on the tiled ledge, a slave woman pulled the blade of the razor over his whiskers. On concluding his tour through Foochow up the river to Nanking, he had but one goal in the end: to get back to Jinan.

He was slipping. His mind never went far from her. What a sad existence he lived; his contentment was based upon her whims, and she didn’t even know the power she held in her hands. He needed to be careful to never reveal this weakness. It would cause her to think less than she already did of him. It would shut her off more.

The slave patted his freshly shaved face dry with a soft linen cloth. He rubbed his hands through his hair and stood from the bath. Slaves came forward to wrap him in bath linens. Two Nubian women ushered him out of the bathing room and to his private sleeping quarters, fussing on him the whole of the way. He turned them around when he came to his room and shut the door before they could follow him in. Pulling on smalls, he sat on the edge of the bed.

Griffin looked over to the sideboard. The decanter was gone, in its place a pitcher of water. He’d had the brandy and the hookah removed while he’d gone down to freshen up. If it wasn’t one addiction, it was another. One obsession traded for another.

It made him a weak man. Or was he stronger for refusing it?

He pulled his shirt on and stepped into his trousers.

Might have been better had Asbury left him to rot in his own spoiled mind all those years ago. But he was no longer flawed in that sense. He’d stayed true to Jinan while surveying his routes, despite his need for something more. Hellfire, he’d been on a straight path for a good four years and some now. Though that old recklessness was peeping through his careful control. It was her;  she could so easily destroy him. Still might if she refused to acknowledge the truth of their past. If only she’d admit the truth of who she was. Give him something to go forward with—to do what with, he didn’t know.

He could be patient, he’d woo her, court her; he’d do whatever it took to win her over these next three weeks.

He left the room. A eunuch waited for him outside the door to lead him to the Pleasure Gardens. Griffin would forget himself in Jinan’s arms. Elena’s arms. He really didn’t know who she was anymore. Perhaps he’d dreamed her up; turned her into something she was not, twisted some incarnation of his youthful love into this woman.

Her back was to him when he entered the large, domed sitting room. She was talking animatedly with two other harem girls. His approach was slow. He wanted to take in her form; imprint it on his mind. Lord, had he ever missed her.

The gauze she wore was a creamy champagne color; gold braiding tied around her middle accentuated the curve of her hips and the dip in her waist. There were a few thin plaits in her hair, woven with strips of yellow silk. The veil was in place, of course. He saw where it clasped into a pair of jade hairpins.

He pushed her hair aside and placed his hand on the back of her neck. Whispering next to her ear, “How’ve you been, darling?” And because he hated to hold back certain things with her, certain actions when he’d been craving her for too long, he kissed her temple, let his hand drop away to grasp hers, and whisked her off to a secluded alcove without so much as a greeting to the other women.

He pulled her close, framed her face and kissed her brow. His body was strung tight. With desire, need, emotion. Threading his fingers through her hair, he inhaled her familiar scent of rose water.

“You were gone for so long, I began to wonder if I’d ever see you again.”

Was she breathless, or did his ears play tricks on him?

“I will always come back for you, Jinan.” His voice was muffled, his lips pressed to her forehead.

She pressed her hand against his erection—there was no hiding the evidence of his desire.

“So you have missed me, then?”

“A great deal.” She ducked her head as though embarrassed to admit even that much.

“I thought of you every day I was away from you, so do not be uncomfortable to admit the truth to me.”

She nodded. Perhaps his extended time away had made her want more between them. Maybe he wouldn’t wait to ask if she wanted to leave this place. He’d steal her away this very night if she so much as hinted her longing to escape.

“Let me ease this, my lord,” she suggested with a firm caress over his cock. His ears weren’t mistaken, her voice was thready, aroused.

“No. Not yet. I just need to soak you up. God, Jinan, how easily you get under my skin.”

He thrust her head back tight between his hands, and placed a hard kiss against her veiled mouth. He felt her lips part under his, her hands clasp the material of his shirt on either side to pull it free of his trousers. There was no sense in delaying the inevitable.

He let her remove his shirt, and loosen his trousers. She managed to push them and his smalls so far as his hips, before he hiked up her silk scarves and pressed her back to the carpeted floor.

He sank into her wet, tight warmth and held himself still, burying his face between her breasts as he pushed them together. Gently biting the side of one, then the next, before he thrust up deep inside her, eliciting sweet sounds of pleasure from her lips.

He moved one hand up to clasp her throat, not too tight, but enough to feel her swallow against his palm. She arched up into his body, taking him deeper. Then his control snapped, and he was pounding into her, the sound of wet flesh slapping together almost as loud as his groans and her mewls. He came to his crisis after a few quick strokes, his body jerking the last of his seed into her womb as he collapsed atop her. He stayed that way, long enough to catch his breath, long enough to be comforted by her soft, pliant body. She said nothing, only breathed in rapid unison with him, running her hands over the length of his back.

Pulling himself to his feet, he shucked his clothes off, helped her to stand and yanked on the material that held her scarves in place. With the sharp tug, the golden rope fell to her feet, then she helped him slide the material down her shoulders, over her hips until it, too, pooled on the rug.