“I would never presume to believe such a thing, Ming Dao,” the woman replied, bowing deeply. “Thank you for honoring my humble dwelling with your presence. It is my hope that we shall meet again, under more pleasant circumstances.”
Damn the woman! Ming Dao thought as he threw one last warning glare at her before finally turning and leaving the establishment. I know she knows more than she is telling me. I can smell her treachery. I just can’t prove it. And I can’t afford to be wrong. Not with her.
With a last, frustrated glare, Ming Dao turned and left the building. The war is not lost, he told himself as the door closed behind him. If revenge is indeed a dish best served cold, I will wait until the very sun freezes into a ball of ice. I will have that woman. If it takes my last breath to do so, I will have her.
*******
After seeing her guests safely from her home, the petite Asian woman returned to the sitting room after issuing orders to some of the women who rejoined her. Walking over to the area housing the underground crawlspace, she pulled at the nearly invisible joins at the flooring and, as if by magic, the opening beneath was revealed.
Kael, trapped within her enforced misery for several hours, threw her hands up and squinted into the sudden, blinding light, blinking rapidly. Her cramped body was coiled and tense, ready for action, if such would be required.
The woman simply smiled down at her, lowering an outstretched hand. “The danger has passed. It is safe now.”
Ignoring the offer of help, Kael carefully braced her hands on the floorboards and hauled her long body out of the tiny hole, determined not to show any weakness to this strange woman. Her injured leg threatened to give way beneath her, but she managed to maintain a steady pose, eyeing the other woman expectantly, eyebrow raised.
“Please, come with me, Kael Androstos,” the woman said. “It has been a long and no-doubt trying evening. A bath, clean clothes, and a bed have all been prepared for you. Allow me to take you to them.”
Kael, who could easily smell the waves of stink radiating up from her filthy body, swallowed any objections she might have voiced, and instead nodded to the woman, opting to follow her through the house once again.
The woman led Kael into an enormous bathing chamber. The huge tub was filled with steaming water upon which lotus blossoms floated. “I will take your clothes and you may bathe at your leisure.”
Looking down at the smaller woman, Kael was again struck by her delicate beauty. A cocky snicker curled her lips and she reached up slowly to begin unbuttoning her tattered, stained shirt. “I normally don’t get naked in front of a beautiful woman who’s name I don’t know,” she purred, slowly revealing and displaying her body to its greatest advantage in the dim, humid light.
“You seem to have a strange fascination with names. Are they truly that important to you?”
Kael shrugged. “Sometimes. And since you seem to know mine … .” Naked, she spread her long arms out, her grin a mixture of cocky surety and outright sultriness.
“You’re a very interesting woman.”
“So they say.”
The woman was silent a moment, thinking. Then she gave the slightest of sighs. “I am known as Lao Ma.”
Kael’s eyebrow ascended. “A very …historic …name. For a whorehouse madam, especially.”
“One of my ancestors was wife to Lao T’su.”
The American’s grin widened. “She must be spinning in her grave over what became of her line.”
Lao Ma’s eyes narrowed. “As must yours be.”
Kael dropped her arms, her aura fairly bristling with malicious intent. “What do you mean.”
Lao Ma sighed again. “It is nothing. Please forgive my rudeness. You are a guest in my home. You would honor me greatly by accepting my hospitality.”
Kael remained motionless, trying to read the woman before her. It was trying to look through a mirror. Her jaw tightened in frustration. Then her body signaled its fervent desire to give in to its insidious craving for relief. The bath called, its siren’s voice too seductive for even Kael to ignore. Shooting Lao Ma a glare that would have felled a lesser person in their tracks, she stepped over the lip and into the tub, pausing only as the hot water lapped stingingly at her open wound.
Fortunately, the wound, though painful, was less severe than she had first thought, being merely a crease to the muscled part of her shin and calf and managing to miss the bones entirely; a fact for which she was profoundly grateful.
The pause was but a brief one, and before a second had passed, Kael had immersed her long frame into water up to her chin. She bit back a groan of utter bliss as the water immediately started to work its magic on her abused body, loosening knots even she hadn’t known she had.
“I’m going soft,” she hissed into a now empty room, Lao Ma having left silently as soon as Kael was fully immersed herself. Grabbing some pleasantly scented soap, she slapped her hand down into the water. “I can’t believe I let those bastards get the drop on me. Trusting a bunch of drugged out half-wits. What was I thinking?!? Since when have I ever trusted anyone but myself?”
Washing her skin so harshly that her flesh turned red from the abuse, Kael tried to think of the answer to her own question. When had she ever trusted anyone but herself? Iraq? Perhaps, to some extent. She needed to trust in her team in order to complete her missions. But that trust always went so far and no further.
She winced internally, trying to push that train of thought off the tracks before she would be forced to re-examine the steaming trash heap her life had become.
Some things just didn’t bear too close an inspection.
Placing the soap back into its holder, she leaned back, stretched out, and allowed herself to fall into a light, healing doze, confident that her senses would warn her if danger came lurking about.
And so it was with a nasty surprise that she jerked awake from her peaceful sleep to a soft voice whispering in her ear. “Keep your eyes closed,” the voice advised.
Kael struggled to sit up, but the hand on her shoulder exerted more force than she was capable of resisting. Shock ran through her nerve endings as her languid muscles jumped to attention.
“Please, you are in no danger. I have merely come to ask if you should wish help in washing your hair.”
The identity of the voice filtered through her panicked senses and Kael relaxed minutely, grunting out her assent, not trusting herself to do anything more than that.
Soon, warm water cascaded down over her head. Then a sweet-scented shampoo was massaged into her hair by fingers that were far stronger than they appeared at first glance. Against her better judgement, the American felt herself relaxing once again, calmed by a force she didn’t understand. That alone set her internal alarm jangling discordantly, but she didn’t seem to have the will to fight against it.
All too soon, the wonderful massage was completed, and her hair rinsed of its burden. As if in a dream, Kael allowed Lao Ma to help her from the tub and found herself standing silently and complacently as the tiny Asian woman gently toweled her skin dry.
Almost as serene as her much-venerated ancestor, this Lao Ma was also just as human. Like the woman many years dead, she found herself powerfully drawn to the tall, powerful and supremely willful person she had saved from Ming Dao and his thugs. Her body responded just as powerfully to the beautiful woman’s nakedness and she allowed that attraction to flow through her naturally. For it was the natural order of things upon which her whole philosophy rested.
Still, she kept her response from being detected outwardly. Lao Ma was a woman of great vision, and she knew that if she was to complete the task which her worthy ancestor had failed, she must step as carefully as one would upon entering an adder’s den.