Free The Miko - 02 by Eric Van Lustbader Page B

kanji. Inside, glass shelves were lined with the slightly oily boxwood combs.
    Nicholas remembered Yukio slowly, rhythmically stroking her hair with such a comb. How soft and long and shining were those tresses, thick and lustrous. Once he had asked her if all Orientals had such beautiful hair and she had laughed, embarrassed, pushing him from her.
    “Only the ones who can afford these,” she said, still laughing. She showed him the exquisitely hand-carved implement. “Feel it,” she offered.
    “Sticky,” he said immediately.
    “But guaranteed never to tangle your hair, Nicholas,” she had said in her singsong voice. “This boxwood is brought all the way from Kyushu, the southern island. It is cut and steamed to remove any imperfections and then dried for more than a week above a boxwood-shaving fire. Then the lengths are tied together and bamboo hoops slipped over the bundles, and they are left to dry for thirty years to ensure that they are completely dry before being carved.
    “In the shop in Asakusa where I buy these, their craftsmen have studied for twenty years. They sit for ten or twelve hours at a time, immobile except for their working hands, to shape these combs.” Nicholas had been fascinated then just as he was fascinated now. Even with such an everyday implement as a comb, he thought, we take exceptional care and artistry in its manufacture. Could a Westerner— any Westerner—ever fully understand the reasons why. Or would they think us mad to devote such time and intense effort to such a small and seemingly insignificant matter.
    Again on impulse, he entered the shop and bought a comb for Justine. As he waited for the saleswoman to reoil the boxwood, carefully wrap it in three separate layers of high-grade rice paper, and then place it into its hand-sanded cedar box, his eyes traced the forms of the combs lying in artistic display. With each meticulously rounded corner, with each matched tooth end, he again saw Yukio in front of the mirror, her pale hand rising and falling like a tide through the river of her dark hair. He saw that ebon cascade highlighted against the snow-white kimono, its crimson edges moving like flowing blood.
    He leaned forward and, hands on her delicate shoulders, turned her around, lifting her so that she rose. Soft rustle of silk like the bittersweet drift of heavenly cherry petals in mid-April when, it seemed, the ancient gods of Japan returned, filling the scented air with their ethereal presence.
    The feel of her, the sight of her, the scent of her, all combined to transfix him, so that he experienced again his deep-seated fear of what she brought out in him: the intensity of sexual feeling. He was barely eighteen, it was 1963. He had had no experience with women, especially one as powerful as Yukio.
    It was as if she held him in a tender spell, and now her palm came up to stroke his cheek and he shuddered at the fiery lick the caress engendered in him.
    As was usual with them, she had to take the first few steps, sliding her fingertips back along her own body, pushing the rim of the kimono away from her shoulders. It parted with a rustle, revealing the inside slopes of her hard-nippled breasts. Nicholas’ breath caught in his throat and his belly contracted painfully.
    With a slither the soft white kimono slid down her arms, the line of crimson along its verge flickering like flame. And now she was bare, the light striping her, throwing into deep shadow the erotic dells of her torso, hiding as it revealed.
    Nicholas felt the terror filling him up as, like a sorceress, she moved, freeing his own sexuality, drawing out his own ribboning desire. He could deny her nothing at moments like this.
    And yet there was a deeply buried sadness in her as she reached between his thighs, caught gentle hold of him, stroking.
    “Is that all you can think of?” he said thickly.
    “It’s all I have,” she said in a moan, guiding him.
    Slowly refocusing, Nicholas’ gaze lit upon the