Burning Tigress by Jade Lee Page B

remained clothed. Yet Charlotte obviously wanted the illusion of intimacy, and so he complied, stripping off his trousers with quick motions.
    When he was done, he looked up to find her calmly appraising him. Or perhaps not so calmly, for he saw a brightness in her eyes, a slight sheen of perspiration on her lip, and a kind of movement in her whole body but in such small ways that he could not isolate one from another. In short, she was excited and interested and so very alive the air seem to crackle with her energy.
    Even stranger, his dragon responded to the call of her yin. Indeed, her essence was so strong, he thought he could detect her scent in the air: musk and white-people flowers: the earthly and the heavenly combined. How strange, and yet how delightful to his dragon, which surged forward enough to poke its head out from its tunnel. Charlotte reached tentatively forward, her hand steady and her eyes focused.
    Ken Jin practically leapt onto his desk to get away. "What are you doing?"
    She looked into his face, her eyes wide. "Learning?"
    He straightened. "That is not how you learn." He dipped his head slightly in a mocking bow. "Please arrange yourself on the bed."
    She looked where he indicated and shrugged. Then she reached down and gathered her skirt, awkwardly climbing onto his small bed. She gasped slightly as she settled onto her knees, probably because her corset had just pushed her breasts up higher than usual. But then she adjusted, shaking her shoulders enough that a tendril of hair slipped down beside her cheek. She blew it away with an irritated huff.
    Looking back at him, she arched a single eyebrow and said tartly, "I cannot see how this will serve." Her gaze lowered to his thickening dragon. "You are tall for a Chinese, but really, Ken Jin, no man... Wouldn't it be better if I were on the floor?"
    She spoke as she often did to young William, her voice high, her tones smooth and coaxing, and Ken Jin's dragon shrank away in horror. "Remove your clothing," he repeated, louder this time, and in the exact manner he used when her brother disobeyed. "And lie on your back."
    She frowned and stared at the bed, then turned to face him. "On my back? But whatever for?"
    "Instruction!"
    "But that is not what was in the scroll!"
    He was already stepping forward, prepared to lift her skirts himself to get her to obey. After all, she was the one who had demanded that he do this. She should not make her own debauchery so difficult! But then her words finally penetrated, and he froze. Which scroll had she read? Which text was she studying? "What exactly did the scroll say?"
    Charlotte flushed a deeper scarlet, her color exceedingly beautiful. "Well, I couldn't actually read it."
    "The pictures, then. What—"
    "A woman on her knees before a man. She was..." She gestured weakly at Ken Jin's dragon.
    "Playing the jade flute?" At her look of confusion, he rephrased in English. "She had her mouth on his dragon? His long John."
    Miss Charlotte nodded vigorously.
    "That is what you wish to learn?" he pressed. "How to steal a man's yang? How to take his vital essence into yourself while he lies gasping and withered in your wake?"
    She shifted on his bed, and her breasts bobbled slightly. "I was under the impression that men eagerly sought out ways to..." She frowned as she struggled with the Chinese words. "To surrender their yang."
    "Of course some do. They are the unenlightened, the lewd, and the dissolute." He reached for his trousers. "But I am not such a man."
    "Then, what were you going to teach me? If not that, then..." Her eyes widened as understanding lit her features. "You were going to do the same to me, weren't you? You were going to take my yang—"
    "Yang is a man's power," he snapped, pulling on his clothing. It was difficult, because his dragon did not wish to be hidden. "A woman has yin."
    "Yin," she repeated, testing the word. "You were going to take my yin, weren't you?"
    "That is what a slut wants, isn't