Binding the Flower Needle (5)

The wet traces had faded, but the creases were still unmistakably there. Against those small petals, the embarrassing marks weren't hidden at all — if anything, they stood out all the more.

"You have quite the talent for mockery."

Seoin admitted it readily, making no effort to hide her embarrassment.

"That wasn't mockery. It was admiration."

She could hardly bear to stay perched on the bed a moment longer in this mortifying atmosphere. The instant Seoin rose to her feet, the flower branch slipped naturally from her lap.

Then it happened.

"Hup!"

He suddenly pushed her back down onto the bed, and in the same breath flipped her skirt up.

"What in the—!"

Startled, Seoin lashed out with a kick on pure instinct.

"!"

Wiyeon, who had entirely forgotten that she was a warrior trained in the martial arts, twisted his body away with a jolt. He had very nearly disgraced himself by taking a boot to the lower belly.

But that was not the end of it. After that single kick, Seoin snatched up the fallen branch and leveled it at the King.

Wiyeon wheeled around and picked up the other branch he'd laid on the table. The branches met like clashing blades, yellow petals shattering and scattering into the air.

Grinning broadly, branch at the ready, Wiyeon locked eyes with her. Seoin's face held no smile at all.

"Have you ever been struck with a switch?"

"I can't say I have."

"Then let today be your first."

As she knocked his branch aside, Seoin brought hers down hard across his shoulder. Startled yet again by the swift, fluid grace of her movements, Wiyeon stumbled backward — and the chair went over with a crash.

"Your Majesty! Is something the matter?"

The alarmed voice of the Geumwi captain drifted in from outside.

"We're playing. Don't interfere — all of you, fall back and keep your distance."

Even as he said it, Wiyeon had to hurry just to dodge the relentless flurry of her switch.

Seoin was fully rested, and with a flower branch in hand instead of a heavy sword, she moved faster than ever. She wasn't trying to kill the King — it was nothing more than a battle of pride — but she felt that only by landing at least one blow could she release the fury she'd been swallowing all this time.

It was unjust that she had lost her men and been defeated without ever fighting a true battle. It shamed her that she had begged for her life, vowing to go on living. Above all, it enraged her that after everything they had shared between their bodies, he alone seemed desperate and eager, as if it had meant nothing to her.

All those ugly feelings had piled up, thick and heavy, pressed down and held in — and then he had appeared, wearing the face of a man who understood them all. He'd flipped up her skirt as if to soothe her, with that insufferable air of composure, and everything she had bottled up simply burst out.

The cornus branch in her hand cut through the air once more, sharp as a whistle.

Swish—

It was a sound too cold and chilling to have come from a mere flower branch.

Wiyeon, who had just toppled the chair and was still recovering his balance, wrenched his head aside as the branch whipped toward his throat. A few petals brushed past his cheek. That tingling sting, a sensation he had never known before, sent a strange thrill through him.

So he countered in earnest.

His torso arched back as though he would topple over entirely — and then he spun his whole body in that direction, kicking the fallen chair as he went. Seoin stomped her foot down on the chair as it slid toward her, halting it, then kicked it straight back at him.

But this time Wiyeon's counter was faster.

Crash!

The chair missed him entirely and slammed into the table. Wiyeon vaulted clean over it, closed the distance to Seoin in a single stride, and swung his branch. The tip of the cornus branch curved like a striking snake, aiming for Jin Seoin's wrist. She wrenched her arm away, and his branch whistled past through empty air.

In the next instant, both of them were lashing out at each other. Locked at close quarters once more, their two branches collided.

Crack.

And both of them snapped at once.

Their eyes turned in the same instant to the bouquet resting on the table — and they both lunged for it almost simultaneously. Wiyeon, arriving a fraction sooner, kicked the table to keep Seoin from reaching the flowers.

Bang.

The table slid back with another thunderous clamor. Before chasing after it, Seoin kicked the one remaining chair at his shin to keep him from grabbing the flowers first.

Crash.

Wiyeon dodged the chair, and the chair struck the table instead. In that same moment Seoin closed in on the table, and the two of them each seized a flower branch at the same time. They drifted close enough for their shoulders to brush, then apart again. Not once did either of them stop moving.

Wiyeon turned his back, stepped up on the fallen chair's backrest, and put distance between them. Seoin swung her branch at his back with all her strength, but again it cut only air. Wiyeon pivoted to face her, once more aiming solely for her wrists, pressing her hard.

As she retreated from the branch, the hem of Seoin's skirt bloomed wide like a morning glory, then collapsed just as quickly. To an unknowing observer it would have looked like a beautiful dance, but Seoin was moving with fierce, total sincerity.

Wiyeon's cornus branch drove straight in toward her flank. Seoin twisted her body aside; the branch grazed past before her eyes, and the moment she coiled her waist upright and rose, she batted away the branch flying at her again with her own.

Crack.

Another branch broke and flew off. Both of them, having anticipated it, sprinted for the table at once. Wiyeon reached the branch first and swept the entire bouquet off the table. The scattered branches hung for a moment in the air before raining down to the floor.

"When you gave them to me, they were a gift — now you throw them all on the floor?"

Dodging his attack, Seoin dropped into a crouch and snatched up a fallen branch.

"I wasn't throwing them. I was laying a path of flowers through the room for you."

"How very kind of you."

Tap, tap!

Every time their branches brushed and clashed, yellow blossoms rained down and scattered across the floor — so his claim about laying a path of flowers wasn't entirely wrong, even if the chamber had been reduced to chaos by their volley of chairs and all the ornaments knocked from the table.

Clink.

This time, too, the table slid back, and the teapot atop it fell and shattered. Seoin retreated to avoid the porcelain shards scattered in every direction. Seizing the opening, Wiyeon thrust his branch fiercely at the nape of her neck, driving her further back.

"Hup!"

It was a mistake. Her heel caught the edge of the bed, and her body tipped backward. Seoin, her balance utterly gone, sat down hard on the bed — and at last, the flower branch touched her throat.

Wiyeon stood over her, triumphant, the cornus branch leveled at her neck.

"You of all people know the weight of the crime of pointing a blade at a king."

"I merely swung a switch at a man who toyed with a woman as he pleased. I suppose that little switch felt to you like the sharpest of blades."

"You've misunderstood. I wasn't toying with you. I was trying to comfort you."

The branch at her throat began to slide upward, brushing slowly along the back of her neck. Seoin kept her lips pressed shut, but her chest rose and fell so heavily that she couldn't hide her ragged breathing.

A yellow blossom lifted her chin. It was the lightest of flower clusters, and yet it felt to Seoin like the very point of a blade; unable to resist, she raised her head. Her gaze met his squarely. The blossom trembled with her breath — and so did her eyes.

A sense of déjà vu washed over her. A stinging battlefield where white snow flew instead of trembling yellow petals. Back then, too, the point of his blade had been aimed at her.

She had lost this time as well. But there was no bitterness, no resentment, no futility in it. Seoin conceded her defeat to him. Even had she clashed against him with everything she had on that battlefield, she would still have lost.

His gaze never wavered, yet she could see the desire in his black eyes churning and swelling. It was a mercy that the desire of the man looking down at her still burned hot — a boiling, smoldering lust that seemed ready to consume her too, and in it she found relief. At least it seemed he wouldn't simply use her and discard her. At least she hadn't been the only one aching with want.

"I'll pay for my crime."

Whether it was comfort or punishment — whatever it was.

Tap.

The flower branch fell. Between the folds of Seoin's skirt. They were back where they had begun — all her resolve to take a switch to him come to nothing.

Seoin's eyes followed the fallen branch downward, and then simply closed. Almost in the same breath, a rush of heat crashed over her. The instant she felt his breath touch the tip of her nose, her shoulders were pushed back. Her skirt flipped up, and a cold draft slipped between her legs.

But that lasted only a moment. His hands gripped both her thighs and spread them wide, and hot air curled in between them.

"!"

Seoin's eyes flew open where she lay on the bed. Startled by the recklessness of a man charging in with no foreplay whatsoever, she looked down. Beneath her hiked-up skirt, he was pulling off his robe.

"It's hot."

It had been a chilly afternoon. And yet his chest gleamed with aflush of red heat, and beneath the ridge of his hipbone where his sash hung, something even hotter strained against its confinement, throbbing. The bulging muscles of his arms looked undeniably feverish too, as he dragged her undergarment down her legs.

At his hands stripping away her smallclothes first, without even removing her outer robe, Seoin flinched and clenched at the mortifying exposure below. There was nothing left to hide — and the sudden emptiness between her legs went cold under his unrelenting gaze.

'So it's not comfort after all. It's punishment.'

The man, burning hot with desire, showed no intention of soothing the woman's body first. It looked for all the world as if he meant to slake nothing but his own need, without a shred of consideration. Bracing for the pain that would come without pleasure, Seoin squeezed her eyes shut once more.