To ferry those stranded in the snow to their icy death until she found someone that could love her for who she truly was. Only then would she be free of her icy prison. How could anyone love their murderer?
She tossed back the rest of her sake and stared into the empty cup. Maybe Darien was her one and only chance at redemption.
But she was scared. Hope could be such a damaging thing.
Chapter 7
A fter getting out of the pool and meagerly drying off, Darien searched the castle for her. He had to know what was going on. She couldn’t leave him without answers. The earthquake was just the final straw in an already heavy load on his mind.
He assumed she probably had a private wing of her own. Or it could be that he’d read too many fairy tales as a child and thought that all princesses had rooms of their own in the castle. But he had nothing else to go on, so that was the best he could come up with.
After an hour of blindly walking down hallway after hallway, he finally came across a new area that looked different. Two huge guards made of ice were standing in front of a set of double doors.
When he approached, the guards came alive. Both had been sculpted wearing matching uniforms and with long pointy spears in their massive ham-sized hands. They both aimed the spears at him as he took another step forward.
“Koori!” he shouted.
No answer.
He tried again. “Koori! We need to talk. I have to know what’s going on.”
Several seconds ticked by before, finally, the guards stood down, lowered their spears and stepped off to the side of the doors. Cautiously, Darien moved forward and gripped the handle to one door. Eyeing both guards, looking for any sign that they would attack, he slowly opened the door and slid through.
Koori sat on a golden silk-covered chaise waiting for him, her back straight and her hands resting demurely in her lap.
“Okay, what the hell was that?”
“You mean my guards?”
“No—” he shook his head “—well, yes, they’re definitely strange, but I mean the earthquake in the hot springs.”
“I don’t know.”
“Does it happen often?”
“That was the first time.”
Darien ran a hand through his hair as he paced the room. “Why did it happen?”
She shook her head but didn’t meet his gaze.
He stopped in front of her. “You’re not telling me the truth.”
She looked at him then, and he saw a commanding spark in her eye. “I’m not a liar. I just don’t know what is going on.”
“Start from the beginning then.” He sat down beside her. “How did you get here?”
She smoothed a hand down her kimono as she spoke. Was it nerves or guilt he saw in her face?
“Many years ago, I committed a terrible act and betrayed my vow and this is my penance. I am forced to live in this place like a prisoner. The only time I am allowed to leave is to ferry those lost in the snow to their deaths.” She wouldn’t look at him as she told her story. He couldn’t blame her; it wasn’t pleasant to hear.
“But you saved me and brought me here.”
She nodded. “There was something different about you. Some quality that even now I can’t name. You were the first person who ever willingly came to me.” She licked her lips nervously. “And you looked at me. Really looked.” She raised her head and met his gaze.
Her eyes should’ve startled him. They were so pale, so luminous, and completely unnatural, but they drew him in like a moth to a flame. Her gaze enchanted him in a single moment and he was lost to her.
Had it been magic that compelled him to her in that snowstorm? Did she cast some spell over him? If she did, she seemed utterly ignorant of it. He couldn’t say why he had been drawn to her. There wasn’t just one certain thing, not one quality that mesmerized him. It was everything about her. Her cold beauty stunned him, but she had an inner warmth he sensed deep inside her that made him want to touch her, to be with her.
If it was magic then he was bewitched and there was nothing he could do about it. Or wanted to do about it.
Hesitantly, he caressed her cheek. Her skin was soft like creamed silk. He once touched a petal of a dewy flower during the early days of spring and thought it the softest thing he’d ever touched, but it didn’t compare to the reality of her.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She gave him a small smile and leaned into his touch. He stroked her cheek and ran the pad of his thumb over her plump, pink mouth. Her lips parted on a sigh. He took that as an invitation for more.
Leaning in, he tilted her head up and lightly brushed his lips against hers. He was hesitant at first, testing the waters. When she didn’t draw back, Darien deepened the kiss, the tip of his tongue dipping inside her mouth.
She tasted of icy cold mint. Happy memories of all the times he’d spent skiing in the mountains flooded back to him. He loved the winter and everything it brought. The first snowfall, icicles hanging from the eaves of his family home, brisk breezes, the sense of belonging especially during the holidays. It all came to him in that single moment of kissing her.
She tasted of his home back in Montana where the winters lasted for five months of the year. And the summers were unusually sultry and pleasant.
He kissed her until he thought the room was shaking beneath him again. But when he broke away and stared into her eyes, he realized it was just him. He was vibrating with desire like an overeager teenage boy on his first date with the girl of his dreams.
Except she was the girl of his dreams. At least from the dreams he’d been having for the past five or six nights since arriving in Japan. They were linked somehow. He knew it as fundamentally as he knew the Earth was round and spun on its axis.
Although he was a scientist and everything about this situation screamed that it was impossible, he believed in it. He believed in her.
“I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m glad that I am.” He brushed a stray dark hair from her brow and leaned in to kiss her again.
This time as he took her mouth, she wrapped her arms around him, burying her hands in his hair. Each small moan that escaped her lips he swallowed down, eager to hear more, willing to give her more to get that sound. He wanted to please her.
His hands at her back, he gathered her closer, while he nibbled on her bottom lip and moved on to her chin. At first she was stiff and her skin cool even through the silk of her kimono, but he could feel the rise in temperature with each gasp from her lips. It was as if she was heating up from his embrace.
While he continued to feast on her neck and the curve of her shoulder, she ran her hands down his back. He could feel the press of her nails, and that sent sparks of pleasure zinging over him. Instantly he was hard, his erection straining against the increasingly tight fit of his pants.
An image from one of his dreams flashed behind his eyes. Koori na**d, with her hand wrapped around the hard length of him. He groaned remembering the feel of her cool skin on his hot searing flesh. He bit down lightly on her shoulder urging a moan from her lips.
The sound of the doors slamming open brought both their heads up. Koori screamed when one of the guards marched into the room with his spear pointed at Darien.
Darien jumped to his feet. He really had no intention of getting shish-kebabbed by an eight-foot iceman with an anger problem. He put his hands up to ward off the attack.
“Whoa, man, point that thing somewhere else.” To his chagrin the guard kept coming.
Koori stood and marched toward the guard, her hands fisted at her sides. “Shuushi!”
The guard slowed but still advanced on them. By this time, Darien was behind the chaise hoping the thick ice would protect him. Except the point on the spear looked like it could pierce ten times the thickness of the sofa.
Koori stood right in front of the advancing iceman with no evidence that she was going to move. “Shuushi!” she shouted again.
This time it stopped. It lowered its sword and almost appeared to look sheepishly at her.
“Darien, go back to your room.”
“What?”
“Please, return to your room. It won’t hurt you if you just leave.”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to leave her, especially when he didn’t quite know what was going on. Was the ice guard going to hurt her when he was gone?
Koori turned and looked at him. “I will be fine,” she said, as if reading his mind again. “It won’t hurt me. But you must leave. It will most definitely hurt you.”
Seeing the serious look in her eyes, Darien nodded and then went to exit the room.
“I will come to you later. Please don’t come looking for me again.”
As he passed her and the guard he noticed a few pieces of ice lying on the ground, as if something had just melted. But he couldn’t tell if it had come from the guard or from Koori.
Chapter 8
B y the time Darien decided to take a break from pacing his room, he swore there was a groove in the floor. But he didn’t know what else he could do. It wasn’t as if there was a television to watch or a gym he could work out in to pass the time.
For the past day or more, he really couldn’t tell, he’d been alone. Koori hadn’t come to see him like she said she would. Worry for her made him a bundle of nerves and energy with no outlet.
Between doing sit-ups, push-ups and running the halls, he was going mad with just his paranoia and dread-filled thoughts to keep him company. He’d gone to the hot springs twice, but she hadn’t been there. He’d gotten into the water hoping she’d show up. She hadn’t.
Despite the guards at her door, he’d gone there twice as well, yelling for her to open the doors. But there was no response. The guards hadn’t even moved, except when he got too close to the doors, and then the spears came down. He got pricked in the arm at that point.
When he returned to his room, food and drink had been deposited onto the table. So, at least he wouldn’t starve to death. But he felt as if he was starving, and it didn’t have anything to do with food.
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He had to be losing his mind. There was no other explanation for everything that had happened, everything that he’d seen so far. It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone and he was the guest star. He really hoped he didn’t get killed off as so many guest stars had in the past.