Falling Through Glass (23 page)

Kojima leaned in close. “The prince. Is. A. Most. Fortunate. Young man.”

“We are both fortunate,” she managed to say just before an angry growling sound came from behind her.

She jumped back only to see Kae with his sword drawn and his expression furious.

“Emiko. Move.”

She approached Kae, despite the drawn sword. “There’s no reason to be upset. I wanted to take a walk, and Kojima-san came with me.”

She wasn’t even sure Kae was listening. He was so focused on Kojima that it looked like he was already mentally dissecting him into a million bloody pieces in advance of doing it for real. Finally Kae’s shoulders relaxed a tiny bit and he took a step back to resheathe his katana, though his murderous stare never left Kojima’s face. Emmi looked down at the ground, not wanting to see that look directed at her.

Kojima remained silent and left the instant Kae barked at him to do so.

The next thing Emmi knew, Kae gripped her chin and lifted her head up.

“You are mine.”

So much for being an independent twenty-first-century woman. She wasn’t about to protest the pronouncement, not when he pulled her forward and kissed her long and hard. Her knees grew weak and her hormones raced as Kae backed her up against a tree. He tugged open the top of her kimono and kissed and sucked on her neck where it connected to her shoulder. She was making those whimpering sounds again and feeling so hot for him that she couldn’t stand it.

She didn’t care if they were out in the woods. All she cared about was having more of this.

The sound of Prince Asahiko’s voice bellowing his son’s name in the distance was like a bucket of ice water on them both, and Kae backed away so fast that Emmi wondered if she’d imagined the whole ‘you are mine’ episode.

Asahiko appeared shortly thereafter, and he and Kae had some words. Emmi couldn’t make them all out because they spoke so quickly, but she gathered that Kae was on a mission or errand of some sort, and he had to get back to it ASAP. He took a scroll from his sleeve, handed it to his father, then grabbed Emmi by the arm and dragged her back to his suite of rooms. He dropped her off with a warning not to go wandering alone and to always stay far, far away from Kojima.

This time he posted two of those ladies-in-waiting in the main room to babysit her. They sat, doing some kind of embroidery, and looked at her as though she should be thrilled to join in such ‘proper pursuits’—pursuits that consisted of more gossiping and snacking than actual sewing.

Emmi passed up the sewing but took part in the snacking and did her best to decipher the court gossip. She heard about all the women who were doing this, that and the other with the emperor in his private room at night. Evidently there were a lot of women in the emperor’s bedtime social circle, enough to warrant an entire Bureau of Consorts to keep track of them all. Emmi felt relieved knowing Kae was not in line to become the emperor.

Unable to tolerate much more of the gossip, Emmi retired to the room with Kae’s books to have a solo game of Go, since that was about all she could do for now without rousing the wrath of her nannies. She briefly considered asking if one of them wanted to play but decided that she didn’t want to spend more time with either of them than necessary.

How dare Kae make her stay here, and how dare he post them to keep watch over her? They were going to discuss this, oh yes, they were. But then, a little part of her brain reminded her as it had before that, like Dorothy and Toto, she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and the rules of conduct in this time and place were very different. To get on Kae’s—or especially his father’s—bad side could prove downright deadly.

Of course, some things here were very much the same, like Kae’s total hotness and the way his touch or even the simplest, probing look from him made her feel. Sinking to the floor, Emmi found herself wishing she’d gotten drunk enough at the wedding to pass out and not have sex with Kae, not just because of the threat of any STD or pregnancy, but because it had only served to turn her attraction to him into something much deeper.

It felt like so much more than simply sex, and she was sure it had been special to him too. The way he’d looked at her, the gentle way he’d touched her and totally possessed her inside and out, hadn’t been just sex for the sake of sex. It couldn’t have been, which made her entire situation so much more painful and confusing.

She wanted to be with him, but she didn’t want to be here with him, not the here of 1864. She didn’t fit in, and she knew she never really would. Having the chance to see the real past was exciting, and she’d love to learn more of what life was like in this era, but she missed her own life. She wanted it back—the freedom, the normalcy, the modern conveniences of things as simple as toilet paper and decent shampoo.

As she set the black and white stones on the Go board, Emmi wondered how she could get her mirror back from that Aneko babe. Maybe she could talk Kae into getting it, but that would mean he’d have to go see the hooker. If he went to see her, she’d probably put her hands all over him.

Asking Kojima for any favors would definitely be a bad idea, especially after today, but he might be her only hope. He was the only one she had access to who wasn’t a servant. But how could she ask him, and what would she say when he wanted to know why she wanted a hooker’s mirror?

“Hello, wife of Kae-san.”

The bowl of Go stones slipped out of Emmi’s hand and skittered across the tatami floor.

“Where did you come from?”

“My room?” the mystery kid said as he sat across from her.

“I meant, how did you come in? The ladies in the other room didn’t tell me I had a guest.”

He shrugged and pointed to the game board. “Who will you play with?”

Emmi began picking up the white stones from the floor, dropped them back into their bowl and grinned at him. “Of course, if you’re in the mood to lose today…”

The kid went stiff and gave her a pissy look. “I cannot lose.”

Emmi smirked. “You have never played against me. I’m very good.”

He gave her another pissy look, and she smiled sweetly in return.

Emmi had thought her brother had been a sore loser when he was younger, but he’d had nothing on this kid. She took it easy on the kid at first, letting him get the advantage.

After he’d gained some territory with his white stones, he started making moves that told her he knew exactly how to play this game. She had no choice but to play full out to keep him from capturing all her black stones. The board was only half covered when he pitched a bitch and knocked all the stones off with a big sweep of his arm.

“I cannot lose!”

“It’s only a game. I don’t win all the time. I was lucky today.”

She turned away at the sound of the door to the next room sliding open with a bang. The sitter babes rushed in to ask what was happening. The mystery boy was gone.
How the hell…?

“Um, I was trying to teach myself to play and got frustrated. This game is harder than it looks.”

“That’s why it’s best left to the men,” one of the women said before walking back out.

“Oh yes, all the interesting things are best left to the men,” Emmi muttered before picking up the stones from the floor.

She still couldn’t believe how upset that kid had gotten. It was only a game. He’d looked like he was going to cry, and she wondered if there was some way she could make it up to him. Of course, it might help if she knew who he was.

She decided to ask Kae to help her solve the riddle as soon as he came back from his ‘secret mission’, but she didn’t have a chance, because when he came back, he was in a rather pissy mood himself.

The upside to this was that he told the babysitters to get lost and to let the servants know that they didn’t need dinner served. Instead he gave her a nicely wrapped bundle and said it was something for her to wear. They were going to be out and about at the Gion Festival as soon as he had a chance to get a bath and put on clean clothes.

So what if the date nights were supposed to have happened before the wedding, she wasn’t going to complain. A date with a hot guy was a date with a hot guy, and she wouldn’t mind doing a hell of a lot more than just kissing him on the first real date.

“Can I wash your back, or maybe take that bath with you?”

He gave her a look that made her wonder if she’d turned into a gray alien or something.

Her shoulders slumped.
I’ll take that scowl as a no, then
.

“Make certain you powder your face and color your lips,” he said. “I will send someone to help you with your hair. You’ll need to wear the hair ornaments as well.” He pointed to the bundle in her hands.

She untied it. There were quite a few fan-shaped silver hair picks with dangly things and tiny bells on them. Emmi stood and lifted the red, flowered kimono out. “This is pretty. Did you pick it out yourself?”

“It is Aneko’s,” he said before leaving.

Hooker cast-offs? He wanted her to wear hooker cast-offs?

Remember, Em, you’re not in Kansas anymore, and you don’t want Kae or his dad to call out the flying monkeys.

Flying monkeys be damned. She had pride.

The maid that Kae sent to help her spazzed at Kae the minute he set foot back in the apartment. He, in turn, jumped at Emmi.

“Why are you being difficult? You cannot wear the garments you have nor arrange your hair yourself, and I doubt you will apply the makeup properly.”

She stood and stared at him with her arms folded over her chest. “I am not going to go around wearing some whore’s hand-me-downs.”

Kae grabbed her sleeve, tugged her to the side, then leaned in. She tried not to think how hot he was when his eyes were this intense and his voice was low and forceful.

“I need to gather information for my father. Important information. It will be much easier if I am with a woman from the Pleasure Quarters. I can take you, or I can hire a professional.”

Emmi caved. He needed her, and she wasn’t about to let him hire some real hooker who might want to give him his money’s worth.

Still, she hated wearing that Aneko babe’s things, but she figured if she did this and he got whatever info his dad needed, then he’d owe her one. When he returned the dress and hairpins, he could get the mirror back so she could try to go home.

But going home means leaving him here
, her heart reminded her.

Stupid heart and its big mouth.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kae led Emmi out of the palace through a long underground passage that led to a small alley behind the fenced house of one of the court nobles.

“Stop walking strangely,” Kae said over his shoulder once they exited to the main street.

“I’m not walking strangely,” Emmi shot back. “It isn’t easy in these high shoes, you know.”

Kae grabbed her sleeve and tugged her into another alley.

“What did I do wrong now?”

He shut her up with a kiss, a nice, slow kiss. A kiss that made her hot and wet and caused her to forget all about retrieving the mirror. Slowly Kae pulled away, looked at her as though she were the only thing in the world that mattered, then glanced over his shoulder.

“I thought we were being followed,” he said quietly before tugging her back to the street.

Great. A fake kiss. The thing that really mattered to him was his undercover operation. Getting that mirror back was a good idea after all.

Even if she would miss him.

Once they began to make the rounds in the Gion section of the city Emmi knew she’d end up missing Kae a lot. Despite the fact that Kae was undercover, that they were following various shady-looking guys and stopping now and again to listen to bits of conversation, Emmi had a pleasant time at the festival.

It reminded her of New Orleans at Mardi Gras. A zillion people crowded the streets. A sea of brightly colored paper lanterns and streamers hung from the shopfronts. There were food stands, puppet shows and little booths with games. One of the games involved trying to catch a goldfish with a paper net. If you caught a fish, you got to take it home in a tiny wooden bucket.

They stopped and watched one young girl who tried and tried but kept losing because her net disintegrated before she could get a fish in it. Emmi felt bad for the child when her mother told her they ran out of money. She considered asking Kae if he would try, but the next thing she knew he’d tossed the man in charge a couple of coins. He shot his bare hand into the trough and captured a pretty silver and blue fish.

He handed Emmi the bucket with the fish and called to the girl and her mother. They came back. When Emmi handed the girl the pail with the fish, the child’s smile was brighter than all the hanging lanterns put together. She chattered about how that was the exact fish she wanted and how she knew the gods would reward such kind people.

The little girl’s happiness was infectious and swelled up inside Emmi. She turned to Kae, only to have her smile fall away when the look in his eyes went from pleasant to fierce.

She tried to follow his line of vision but couldn’t figure out who he was giving the evil eye. Before she could ask, he pulled her to the side in a space between the fish game and the ringtoss game and shoved a few coins into her palm.

“Stay here and amuse yourself until I return. Do not move from this spot. Do not.”

She opened her mouth to complain about his domineering attitude but thought better of it. Obviously something was going down that she wasn’t aware of. She could let his caveman attitude slide, this time.

Watching the little kids play games wore thin rather quickly. So she tried the ring toss game herself. The prizes were tied to tiny wooden stands all crammed together. The player won if they got their ring to fall over the prize they wanted. It seemed easy enough, with seemed being the operative word.

The item Emmi wanted was a decorative hair comb. A silly wooden hair comb with pink cherry blossoms painted on it. The problem was it was jammed in the center, and she couldn’t get the ring to fall on it without being caught on the prizes nearby and bouncing off.