House Kougarou (part 3) [Saiunkoku Monogatari, Ryuuki/Kouyuu, R]
Title: House Kougarou (part 3)
Author/Artist: grey_damaskena
Rating: R
Warnings: crack!
Prompt: Saiunkoku, Ryuuki/Kouyuu: harem - one of many.
Word count: 3,108
Summary: Another take on Saiunkoku, based on a single question: what if Saiunkoku were matrilenear?
A/N: I couldn't finish this on time because it ended up being a great deal longer than expected; my humblest apologies. Nor is it exactly in line with the prompt, or it only complies in a loose sense. As usual my brain is long-winded and full of crack. This is part 3; please note the change in rating from part 1. A link to the previous sections will precede the cut.
House Kougarou: part 1
House Kougarou, part 2
House Kougarou: part 3
He opened his eyes again, slowly, to the gentle gold of the lamplight. The courtesan lay beside him, stretched on his side and resembling nothing so much as a lion of the far west in his tawny somnolence. One arm was bent at the elbow to prop up his head, and his right hand held the end of his long blond braid, retracing the characters of the poem across Kouyuu's chest with the tasseled end.
His eyes flickered up to Kouyuu's face to meet the prince's gaze, and he smiled-- secret, content, and Kouyuu felt none of the easy connection from before, when poetry and art had dissolved the barriers between them. But that connection had existed, as had the intensity of Kouyuu's pleasure at the courtesan's hands and mouth, somehow both unexpected and deeply desired. Remembering it, Kouyuu felt none of the awkwardness that had plagued him when he had gathered his courage and come to House Kougarou, following a rumor and a ghost. Instead he felt comfortable, sure of himself and of belonging exactly where he was.
"Thank you," he said, running a hand lazily down his own side. "For the poem, and . . . I . . . well. I feel like you've given me a compliment, somehow."
"I'm also fond of Yellow Plain," the courtesan said with a slow smile, "the pleasure is mine, Your Highness. I've never had such a perfect opportunity to write it out before."
This time Kouyuu didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and traced the line of Ryuuki's lower lip, trailed his fingers to the shape of his jaw, the joining of his neck. "No one has ever taken all of me in before, not like that. Did I hurt you?"
The courtesan angled his face into the touch, so that Kouyuu's idly wandering fingers again found the corner of his mouth. "I'm used to it. It's just training and practice, like calligraphy."
When his lips moved the tips of Kouyuu's fingers entered, and came away wet with a hint of warmth. "Calligraphy is more than just rote learning, and so was that," he said. "Do you have a mirror? I want to see what you wrote."
He did have a mirror; a thin, flat oval of polished silver as tall as a man and set in a wooden frame, covered when not in use with an embroidered drape. It was probably worth more than anything in the courtesan's rooms aside from the scrolls in his library, and Kouyuu's reflection in it was undistorted and clear. Ryuuki lit the lamps that framed it, and then drew Kouyuu's open robe back on his shoulders so that the fall of the cloth on either side perfectly framed the writing on his naked body. The bold black strokes transformed the familiar landscape into something strange, not entirely him-- his skin was alabaster under it, as white as new paper, a perfect background for the characters. The ink hugged every plane and dip of his chest, the bold strokes and bridging laterals sliding seamlessly over muscle and bone.
The courtesan stood off to the side, out of the range of reflection but still able to see. "I'm sorry I didn't write it mirrored," he said regretfully, "so that you could seen it properly."
Kouyuu shook his head, mutely drinking in the site of his body commuted into something finer, given the aspect of immortality by the words of the great poet and the one who wrote them. He had never been vain, having acquired early an intellectual's disdain for the lesser distractions and demands of his body, and he was certainly not narcissistic. But with Du Sheng's words written across his chest he felt like he could stare at himself forever. He didn't need to read them to know what they said, and in a way seeing the characters inverted made them even more beautiful. Even meeting his own eyes in the mirror-- among the strands of his freed hair they seemed darker, deeper, full of the poem's haunting mystery.
The third line of the poem was perfectly centered on his chest, and he followed it down with his fingers, then continued over his navel to the calligrapher's name written below. "Is this how you write your name?" mentally he reversed the image of the characters from the mirror, somewhat surprised. They were not among those that were usually used for names among commoners, and they were rare even to the nobility. That they should be used for the name of a courtesan, however skilled and expensive--
Ryuuki gave a liquid shrug. "My mother was . . . an immoderate woman. Pretentious, perhaps. Never satisfied. But as my name was one of the few things she ever gave me, I decided to keep it."
He stepped close and his fingers followed the trail Kouyuu's had made, but more slowly. "This turned out well," he said, sounding intensely pleased. "My best so far, I think. Choosing the right verse for the occasion and materials, fitting and balancing it, measuring the strokes-- the writing itself is hard too, of course, but I think the constant cyclic response enhances it. Somehow with you it all came together. You're perfect . . ." His thumb traced a circle around the sensitive rim of Kouyuu's belly button, his fingers splayed over his name.
Kouyuu stopped him with a hand around his wrist before the courtesan could further rouse any conflicting desires; there was something else, first. Ryuuki's robe was still carelessly unstraightened from before, and he pushed it aside with the edge of his hand, stroking the swell of muscle beneath, testing the surface-- firm, and yet it gave; when he reached the outer edge of the pectoral it tensed under his palm.
"I want to try writing on you," he said, surprised at how easily the words came. Command was something he had grown accustomed to, something he had been brought up to assume, something he had earned through his own skill-- but it had always deserted him before when he stood naked and exposed in another man's bedroom.
His reward was a hard thump of the heart under his hand. "I would be honored, Your Highness."
Kouyuu's smile was quick and fleeting, but not nervous. A single tug freed the sash from the courtesan's robe, and Kouyuu let the heavy silk run through his fingers to the ground. Then he spread the soft material, up Ryuuki's chest and then across the line of his shoulders and down his arms, so that the robe unfurled like a scroll opening on his body. He was completely bare beneath it, his skin a toned expanse of honey. Yet he wasn't over-muscled like some of the gaurdsmen Kouyuu had known; this too, then, was art. And no guardsman kept his hair so long, either. Kouyuu freed it from the braid and combed his fingers through the light, fine strands until they lay flat over the courtesan's shoulder.
"Back or front?"
"Front," Kouyuu answered, and watched the courtesan cross to the bed again, entirely unselfconscious of the long muscles of his shoulders, the shift beneath the skin in his upper thighs-- Kouyuu swallowed. After, he told himself, and didn't follow that thought any further.
The ink had gone a little dry, and he added water-- "Not too much," Ryuuki cautioned him from the center of the bed, "skin doesn't have the absorbency of paper." Kouyuu selected a brush, thinner than the one the courtesan had used, trimmed a little closer for clean strokes. He knelt beside Ryuuki, but it felt awkward, even when he tried sitting, and his robe was tangling his arm. He muttered in irritation, got rid of the robe, and nudged the other man's legs open to kneel in between them. Looking down at that perfect expanse of skin, he felt his breathing deepen and even out. It would be difficult; he had to prepare his mind, to concentrate. There was more space across Ryuuki's chest than below his ribs, so the characters could not be too wide. They also had to be the proper length to fill the whole of his torso from the line of his collarbone to his navel-- no, below was all right, he thought, measuring with his hand, but it would complicate things; the skin shifted from the angle at which his legs spread. And besides, where would he sign his name? He understood why Ryuuki had chosen that place-- it was far too tempting, and the perfect size for two or even three characters. Although the thickening line of fine golden hair would make writing more difficult, he thought, tracing it upwards. Fortunately there was no such interference above, though the varying depths of muscle over bone created changes in pliancy, and that the surface was not regular-- that it lived . . .
"Hold still," he said, and began the first character. He needn't have said it, because it turned out that Ryuuki's control was a lot better than his own had been. Kouyuu concentrated on his strokes, on guiding the brush over the varied landscape of the courtesan's body, plains and ridges and valleys. Each stroke had to be precise, and the ink hovered above the skin rather than sinking in the way it did on paper. And each movement of the brush had to rise and fall with the unpredictable breath of the man he wrote on, to keep each line even and prevent unsightly irregularities. The courtesan held still, but he could not perfectly control his breathing; his inhalation shuddered on Kouyuu's long, heavy downward slanting strokes, grew short as the column crossed over his ribs and onto the double panel of muscle below.
Kouyuu had to stop after the second line, to sit back on his heels and wipe the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. "This is harder than it looks."
Ryuuki smiled again, but this time it was impish. "That's usually my line," he said, and Kouyuu surprised himself by chuckling.
He started the next column in the dip formed by the center of Ryuuki's collarbone, running it straight down the center of his chest. It was getting easier now that he had more practice, and he could pay more attention to Ryuuki as he breathed, flinched, reacted to every touch of Kouyuu's brush. Watching him was mesmerizingng, taking note of the smallest thing-- the way his downward strokes raised tiny goosebumps on the skin at their edges; the small jump when he wrote over a ticklish spot on Ryuuki's ribs, the way the courtesan bit the inside of his lip, just slightly, waiting for Kouyuu to start the next line.
He was perfect, too perfect; for the poem, for this room, this bed. Kouyuu let himself run a hand down the remaining clear panel of skin before he wrote on it, reveling in the softness, the feel of muscle under his hand. There was no expectation here, only pleasure. After all, he was paying, wasn't he? And-- he looked down at the man spread before him, clothed only in the ink Kouyuu had painted him with-- he was certainly getting his money's worth. Kouyuu took his time with the last line, partially to enjoy it, and partially because the courtesan was having a harder time keeping still than he had at first. It was more than gratifying seeing him respond to the movement of the brush across his skin, watching his face when Kouyuu wrote across a particularly sensitive area. Kouyuu sighed, long and low, as he wrote the last character.
"You're finished," he said. "I just have to sign you . . . " That low triangle of skin was too tempting, really. He brought the brush down on the first stroke and Ryuuki moaned, then slid the middle joint of his index finger between his teeth. Just that simple movement sent a jolt straight to Kouyuu's groin; tha last thing Ryuuki'd had in his mouth hadn't been nearly so innocent.
"What . . ." Apparently Ryuuki couldn't stay still any longer; he writhed, and his legs moved higher against Kouyuu's. Inviting. "What did you write?"
"The summer rains fall from heaven,
The flood-wave runs over the surface of the water
And turns to mist in the slanting morning sunlight--
Rising, wreathing the mountains, tumbling in the breeze:
A golden dragon rises to the sky!"
"Den Sou," Ryuuki breathed, and closed his eyes as Kouyuu leaned over him, blowing softly to dry the ink. "You memorized it-- ahh-- already? From before?"
"Mmm," Kouyuu nodded, and let himself move closer-- and then closer still, grinding his hips in, wanting to feel the courtesan moan under him-- and he did, pulling Kouyuu down, and offering his neck to Kouyuu's hungry mouth. The faintness of sweat on his skin was intoxicating, and the prince sucked hard, knowing that he would leave a bruise, wanting to leave a bruise, yet another way to mark him. Everywhere they touched felt like fire, and he was being consumed-- wanted to consume in his turn . . .
The courtesan's hands were busy between them, spreading warmth over Kouyuu's chest, along with a pleasant and faintly musky smell. He had to lift his mouth, had to breath, had to nuzzle the compelling line of Ryuuki's jaw and pant, "What-- is that?"
"Scented oil," the courtesan replied, and his teeth nicked the sensitive lobe of Kouyuu's ear. Kouyuu pushed himself up on his hands and watched Ryuuki's fingers move over his chest, delicately tracing the writing there with touches that sent lightning shooting up his spine.
"Let me," he said, and took the jar from Ryuuki, let the slick oil coat his fingers, used it to re-paint the lines of ink. In the golden light of the lamps they took fire, gleaming, coming alive at his touch. But Ryuuki wouldn't keep still, his legs splayed further apart as Kouyuu growled and tried to pin him, his hands on Kouyuu's belly-- then lower, and Kouyuu found himself thrusting into them helplessly, and again, but wanting more.
Without any conscious thought he raised the courtesan's knees to his shoulders and pushed into him, in one smooth, hard glide, forcing him to cry out, holding him with a strength Kouyuu hadn't known he possessed. Ryuuki's stomach muscles compressed the poem written there, his face contorted-- Kouyuu gathered himself, thrust again-- it was not possible that he should feel this good, this tight around him, again, again--
Ryuuki's head had tilted backward, his bangs swept up in the fall of his hair as he cried out wordlessly. And then he opened his eyes and looked up at Kouyuu, and they had gone a dark, caramelized amber with desire-- and it was a face that Kouyuu knew, had memorized long since, had seen in his dreams and had thought about waking with his hand between his legs-- the stern, arrogant face of the Warlord-Prince.
His body jackknifed into Ryuuki's, harder, thrown over the edge of passion by the suddenness of the revelation. "My name!" he commanded, frantic, "my name!"
"Kouyuu," the courtesan whimpered, drawing him in deep as the characters of Kouyuu's name on his stomach folded nearly double. "Ah-- ah-- Kouyuuuu!"
Kouyuu collapsed on top of him as the echoes of his shout died away along with his last few thrusts. The courtesan's legs had slipped down from his shoulders, though they still cradled his hips, twined around his legs. His arms were trapped under Ryuuki's body, and their hearts pounded against one another, slowly calming to the lassitude of spent passion. Oil and fluid pooled warmly between them, heated by their bodies.
"It's true," Kouyuu said when at last he could speak again, into the courtesan's neck. "The rumors are true. You're the sixth son of the Warlord-Prince-- the late Prince, Shi Senka."
"You came just to find that out?" Ryuuki was smoothing the hair over his back, fixing the long pale strands in place, and laughed lightly. "Not that I object, but it might have been simpler to ask me, Your Highness."
"I had to know," Kouyuu explained inadequately. "Anyone can claim to be a Prince's by-blow." He winced at the unintentionally blunt phrasing, but the hands on his back soothed him.
"And I don't," the courtesan said, "and have no intention of doing so, of that you can be assured. Perhaps it seems strange to you, but I'm satisfied with my life here."
"Really?" Idly Kouyuu retraced one of the characters where it ran across the border of the courtesan's nipple. "There are a great many things that could be yours, if you were to claim a place in the Imperial Court."
"Very little of that interests me. Perhaps access to the Imperial archives . . . but my patrons bring me books, and I imagine I have more leisure to pursue them than you yourself do, my lord. And here . . . here, lovers come to me."
Kouyuu made a noncommittal noise and closed his eyes, letting himself melt as the courtesan's long, skilled fingers found and released the knots in his back one by one.
**************************
The courtesan roused him before dawn the next morning, helping him to dress again with lingering, regretful touches that reminded Kouyuu all over again of how good it had felt to sink into him, to feel his mouth and skin. Ryuuki even accompanied him down to the front door and folded him into his cloak against the morning's chill, and he took the courtesan's hands in thanks.
"You'll come back and see me again?" Ryuuki asked. "It's an honor to have a chance to discuss poetry with such a noted scholar."
Kouyuu pushed aside the collar of Ryuuki's robe again to reveal the characters still written there. "I will," he said huskily, and was surprised to find that he meant it.
The courtesan stepped close and kissed him, a deep caress of lips and tongue-- and Kouyuu suddenly realized that it was the first time they had kissed . . . and more, that the courtesan was incredibly good at it, even as he changed the angle and brought their mouths apart. "An advance on next time," he said with a mischievous smile, and Kouyuu found himself laughing with frustrated pleasure out on the street.
He did make one stop on the way back to the palace, in the shop of a noted paper merchant who was still yawning as he removed the carved boards protecting the entrance to his shop. "I want to place an order," he said, "scented writing paper, with a golden tone to it."
"Ah," the merchant said, looking down the road in the direction of House Kougarou. "I have just the thing. Won't you come in?"
Author/Artist: grey_damaskena
Rating: R
Warnings: crack!
Prompt: Saiunkoku, Ryuuki/Kouyuu: harem - one of many.
Word count: 3,108
Summary: Another take on Saiunkoku, based on a single question: what if Saiunkoku were matrilenear?
A/N: I couldn't finish this on time because it ended up being a great deal longer than expected; my humblest apologies. Nor is it exactly in line with the prompt, or it only complies in a loose sense. As usual my brain is long-winded and full of crack. This is part 3; please note the change in rating from part 1. A link to the previous sections will precede the cut.
House Kougarou: part 1
House Kougarou, part 2
House Kougarou: part 3
He opened his eyes again, slowly, to the gentle gold of the lamplight. The courtesan lay beside him, stretched on his side and resembling nothing so much as a lion of the far west in his tawny somnolence. One arm was bent at the elbow to prop up his head, and his right hand held the end of his long blond braid, retracing the characters of the poem across Kouyuu's chest with the tasseled end.
His eyes flickered up to Kouyuu's face to meet the prince's gaze, and he smiled-- secret, content, and Kouyuu felt none of the easy connection from before, when poetry and art had dissolved the barriers between them. But that connection had existed, as had the intensity of Kouyuu's pleasure at the courtesan's hands and mouth, somehow both unexpected and deeply desired. Remembering it, Kouyuu felt none of the awkwardness that had plagued him when he had gathered his courage and come to House Kougarou, following a rumor and a ghost. Instead he felt comfortable, sure of himself and of belonging exactly where he was.
"Thank you," he said, running a hand lazily down his own side. "For the poem, and . . . I . . . well. I feel like you've given me a compliment, somehow."
"I'm also fond of Yellow Plain," the courtesan said with a slow smile, "the pleasure is mine, Your Highness. I've never had such a perfect opportunity to write it out before."
This time Kouyuu didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and traced the line of Ryuuki's lower lip, trailed his fingers to the shape of his jaw, the joining of his neck. "No one has ever taken all of me in before, not like that. Did I hurt you?"
The courtesan angled his face into the touch, so that Kouyuu's idly wandering fingers again found the corner of his mouth. "I'm used to it. It's just training and practice, like calligraphy."
When his lips moved the tips of Kouyuu's fingers entered, and came away wet with a hint of warmth. "Calligraphy is more than just rote learning, and so was that," he said. "Do you have a mirror? I want to see what you wrote."
He did have a mirror; a thin, flat oval of polished silver as tall as a man and set in a wooden frame, covered when not in use with an embroidered drape. It was probably worth more than anything in the courtesan's rooms aside from the scrolls in his library, and Kouyuu's reflection in it was undistorted and clear. Ryuuki lit the lamps that framed it, and then drew Kouyuu's open robe back on his shoulders so that the fall of the cloth on either side perfectly framed the writing on his naked body. The bold black strokes transformed the familiar landscape into something strange, not entirely him-- his skin was alabaster under it, as white as new paper, a perfect background for the characters. The ink hugged every plane and dip of his chest, the bold strokes and bridging laterals sliding seamlessly over muscle and bone.
The courtesan stood off to the side, out of the range of reflection but still able to see. "I'm sorry I didn't write it mirrored," he said regretfully, "so that you could seen it properly."
Kouyuu shook his head, mutely drinking in the site of his body commuted into something finer, given the aspect of immortality by the words of the great poet and the one who wrote them. He had never been vain, having acquired early an intellectual's disdain for the lesser distractions and demands of his body, and he was certainly not narcissistic. But with Du Sheng's words written across his chest he felt like he could stare at himself forever. He didn't need to read them to know what they said, and in a way seeing the characters inverted made them even more beautiful. Even meeting his own eyes in the mirror-- among the strands of his freed hair they seemed darker, deeper, full of the poem's haunting mystery.
The third line of the poem was perfectly centered on his chest, and he followed it down with his fingers, then continued over his navel to the calligrapher's name written below. "Is this how you write your name?" mentally he reversed the image of the characters from the mirror, somewhat surprised. They were not among those that were usually used for names among commoners, and they were rare even to the nobility. That they should be used for the name of a courtesan, however skilled and expensive--
Ryuuki gave a liquid shrug. "My mother was . . . an immoderate woman. Pretentious, perhaps. Never satisfied. But as my name was one of the few things she ever gave me, I decided to keep it."
He stepped close and his fingers followed the trail Kouyuu's had made, but more slowly. "This turned out well," he said, sounding intensely pleased. "My best so far, I think. Choosing the right verse for the occasion and materials, fitting and balancing it, measuring the strokes-- the writing itself is hard too, of course, but I think the constant cyclic response enhances it. Somehow with you it all came together. You're perfect . . ." His thumb traced a circle around the sensitive rim of Kouyuu's belly button, his fingers splayed over his name.
Kouyuu stopped him with a hand around his wrist before the courtesan could further rouse any conflicting desires; there was something else, first. Ryuuki's robe was still carelessly unstraightened from before, and he pushed it aside with the edge of his hand, stroking the swell of muscle beneath, testing the surface-- firm, and yet it gave; when he reached the outer edge of the pectoral it tensed under his palm.
"I want to try writing on you," he said, surprised at how easily the words came. Command was something he had grown accustomed to, something he had been brought up to assume, something he had earned through his own skill-- but it had always deserted him before when he stood naked and exposed in another man's bedroom.
His reward was a hard thump of the heart under his hand. "I would be honored, Your Highness."
Kouyuu's smile was quick and fleeting, but not nervous. A single tug freed the sash from the courtesan's robe, and Kouyuu let the heavy silk run through his fingers to the ground. Then he spread the soft material, up Ryuuki's chest and then across the line of his shoulders and down his arms, so that the robe unfurled like a scroll opening on his body. He was completely bare beneath it, his skin a toned expanse of honey. Yet he wasn't over-muscled like some of the gaurdsmen Kouyuu had known; this too, then, was art. And no guardsman kept his hair so long, either. Kouyuu freed it from the braid and combed his fingers through the light, fine strands until they lay flat over the courtesan's shoulder.
"Back or front?"
"Front," Kouyuu answered, and watched the courtesan cross to the bed again, entirely unselfconscious of the long muscles of his shoulders, the shift beneath the skin in his upper thighs-- Kouyuu swallowed. After, he told himself, and didn't follow that thought any further.
The ink had gone a little dry, and he added water-- "Not too much," Ryuuki cautioned him from the center of the bed, "skin doesn't have the absorbency of paper." Kouyuu selected a brush, thinner than the one the courtesan had used, trimmed a little closer for clean strokes. He knelt beside Ryuuki, but it felt awkward, even when he tried sitting, and his robe was tangling his arm. He muttered in irritation, got rid of the robe, and nudged the other man's legs open to kneel in between them. Looking down at that perfect expanse of skin, he felt his breathing deepen and even out. It would be difficult; he had to prepare his mind, to concentrate. There was more space across Ryuuki's chest than below his ribs, so the characters could not be too wide. They also had to be the proper length to fill the whole of his torso from the line of his collarbone to his navel-- no, below was all right, he thought, measuring with his hand, but it would complicate things; the skin shifted from the angle at which his legs spread. And besides, where would he sign his name? He understood why Ryuuki had chosen that place-- it was far too tempting, and the perfect size for two or even three characters. Although the thickening line of fine golden hair would make writing more difficult, he thought, tracing it upwards. Fortunately there was no such interference above, though the varying depths of muscle over bone created changes in pliancy, and that the surface was not regular-- that it lived . . .
"Hold still," he said, and began the first character. He needn't have said it, because it turned out that Ryuuki's control was a lot better than his own had been. Kouyuu concentrated on his strokes, on guiding the brush over the varied landscape of the courtesan's body, plains and ridges and valleys. Each stroke had to be precise, and the ink hovered above the skin rather than sinking in the way it did on paper. And each movement of the brush had to rise and fall with the unpredictable breath of the man he wrote on, to keep each line even and prevent unsightly irregularities. The courtesan held still, but he could not perfectly control his breathing; his inhalation shuddered on Kouyuu's long, heavy downward slanting strokes, grew short as the column crossed over his ribs and onto the double panel of muscle below.
Kouyuu had to stop after the second line, to sit back on his heels and wipe the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. "This is harder than it looks."
Ryuuki smiled again, but this time it was impish. "That's usually my line," he said, and Kouyuu surprised himself by chuckling.
He started the next column in the dip formed by the center of Ryuuki's collarbone, running it straight down the center of his chest. It was getting easier now that he had more practice, and he could pay more attention to Ryuuki as he breathed, flinched, reacted to every touch of Kouyuu's brush. Watching him was mesmerizingng, taking note of the smallest thing-- the way his downward strokes raised tiny goosebumps on the skin at their edges; the small jump when he wrote over a ticklish spot on Ryuuki's ribs, the way the courtesan bit the inside of his lip, just slightly, waiting for Kouyuu to start the next line.
He was perfect, too perfect; for the poem, for this room, this bed. Kouyuu let himself run a hand down the remaining clear panel of skin before he wrote on it, reveling in the softness, the feel of muscle under his hand. There was no expectation here, only pleasure. After all, he was paying, wasn't he? And-- he looked down at the man spread before him, clothed only in the ink Kouyuu had painted him with-- he was certainly getting his money's worth. Kouyuu took his time with the last line, partially to enjoy it, and partially because the courtesan was having a harder time keeping still than he had at first. It was more than gratifying seeing him respond to the movement of the brush across his skin, watching his face when Kouyuu wrote across a particularly sensitive area. Kouyuu sighed, long and low, as he wrote the last character.
"You're finished," he said. "I just have to sign you . . . " That low triangle of skin was too tempting, really. He brought the brush down on the first stroke and Ryuuki moaned, then slid the middle joint of his index finger between his teeth. Just that simple movement sent a jolt straight to Kouyuu's groin; tha last thing Ryuuki'd had in his mouth hadn't been nearly so innocent.
"What . . ." Apparently Ryuuki couldn't stay still any longer; he writhed, and his legs moved higher against Kouyuu's. Inviting. "What did you write?"
"The summer rains fall from heaven,
The flood-wave runs over the surface of the water
And turns to mist in the slanting morning sunlight--
Rising, wreathing the mountains, tumbling in the breeze:
A golden dragon rises to the sky!"
"Den Sou," Ryuuki breathed, and closed his eyes as Kouyuu leaned over him, blowing softly to dry the ink. "You memorized it-- ahh-- already? From before?"
"Mmm," Kouyuu nodded, and let himself move closer-- and then closer still, grinding his hips in, wanting to feel the courtesan moan under him-- and he did, pulling Kouyuu down, and offering his neck to Kouyuu's hungry mouth. The faintness of sweat on his skin was intoxicating, and the prince sucked hard, knowing that he would leave a bruise, wanting to leave a bruise, yet another way to mark him. Everywhere they touched felt like fire, and he was being consumed-- wanted to consume in his turn . . .
The courtesan's hands were busy between them, spreading warmth over Kouyuu's chest, along with a pleasant and faintly musky smell. He had to lift his mouth, had to breath, had to nuzzle the compelling line of Ryuuki's jaw and pant, "What-- is that?"
"Scented oil," the courtesan replied, and his teeth nicked the sensitive lobe of Kouyuu's ear. Kouyuu pushed himself up on his hands and watched Ryuuki's fingers move over his chest, delicately tracing the writing there with touches that sent lightning shooting up his spine.
"Let me," he said, and took the jar from Ryuuki, let the slick oil coat his fingers, used it to re-paint the lines of ink. In the golden light of the lamps they took fire, gleaming, coming alive at his touch. But Ryuuki wouldn't keep still, his legs splayed further apart as Kouyuu growled and tried to pin him, his hands on Kouyuu's belly-- then lower, and Kouyuu found himself thrusting into them helplessly, and again, but wanting more.
Without any conscious thought he raised the courtesan's knees to his shoulders and pushed into him, in one smooth, hard glide, forcing him to cry out, holding him with a strength Kouyuu hadn't known he possessed. Ryuuki's stomach muscles compressed the poem written there, his face contorted-- Kouyuu gathered himself, thrust again-- it was not possible that he should feel this good, this tight around him, again, again--
Ryuuki's head had tilted backward, his bangs swept up in the fall of his hair as he cried out wordlessly. And then he opened his eyes and looked up at Kouyuu, and they had gone a dark, caramelized amber with desire-- and it was a face that Kouyuu knew, had memorized long since, had seen in his dreams and had thought about waking with his hand between his legs-- the stern, arrogant face of the Warlord-Prince.
His body jackknifed into Ryuuki's, harder, thrown over the edge of passion by the suddenness of the revelation. "My name!" he commanded, frantic, "my name!"
"Kouyuu," the courtesan whimpered, drawing him in deep as the characters of Kouyuu's name on his stomach folded nearly double. "Ah-- ah-- Kouyuuuu!"
Kouyuu collapsed on top of him as the echoes of his shout died away along with his last few thrusts. The courtesan's legs had slipped down from his shoulders, though they still cradled his hips, twined around his legs. His arms were trapped under Ryuuki's body, and their hearts pounded against one another, slowly calming to the lassitude of spent passion. Oil and fluid pooled warmly between them, heated by their bodies.
"It's true," Kouyuu said when at last he could speak again, into the courtesan's neck. "The rumors are true. You're the sixth son of the Warlord-Prince-- the late Prince, Shi Senka."
"You came just to find that out?" Ryuuki was smoothing the hair over his back, fixing the long pale strands in place, and laughed lightly. "Not that I object, but it might have been simpler to ask me, Your Highness."
"I had to know," Kouyuu explained inadequately. "Anyone can claim to be a Prince's by-blow." He winced at the unintentionally blunt phrasing, but the hands on his back soothed him.
"And I don't," the courtesan said, "and have no intention of doing so, of that you can be assured. Perhaps it seems strange to you, but I'm satisfied with my life here."
"Really?" Idly Kouyuu retraced one of the characters where it ran across the border of the courtesan's nipple. "There are a great many things that could be yours, if you were to claim a place in the Imperial Court."
"Very little of that interests me. Perhaps access to the Imperial archives . . . but my patrons bring me books, and I imagine I have more leisure to pursue them than you yourself do, my lord. And here . . . here, lovers come to me."
Kouyuu made a noncommittal noise and closed his eyes, letting himself melt as the courtesan's long, skilled fingers found and released the knots in his back one by one.
**************************
The courtesan roused him before dawn the next morning, helping him to dress again with lingering, regretful touches that reminded Kouyuu all over again of how good it had felt to sink into him, to feel his mouth and skin. Ryuuki even accompanied him down to the front door and folded him into his cloak against the morning's chill, and he took the courtesan's hands in thanks.
"You'll come back and see me again?" Ryuuki asked. "It's an honor to have a chance to discuss poetry with such a noted scholar."
Kouyuu pushed aside the collar of Ryuuki's robe again to reveal the characters still written there. "I will," he said huskily, and was surprised to find that he meant it.
The courtesan stepped close and kissed him, a deep caress of lips and tongue-- and Kouyuu suddenly realized that it was the first time they had kissed . . . and more, that the courtesan was incredibly good at it, even as he changed the angle and brought their mouths apart. "An advance on next time," he said with a mischievous smile, and Kouyuu found himself laughing with frustrated pleasure out on the street.
He did make one stop on the way back to the palace, in the shop of a noted paper merchant who was still yawning as he removed the carved boards protecting the entrance to his shop. "I want to place an order," he said, "scented writing paper, with a golden tone to it."
"Ah," the merchant said, looking down the road in the direction of House Kougarou. "I have just the thing. Won't you come in?"