One Hell of a Game Afoot, CH 1

Chapter One: The Woman

He was in heaven.

"You really once made love to a female doctor?"  The voice was deep, smoky, honeyed. A throaty, syrupy contralto.

Bliss.

He was a seasoned lover. In his twenty-eight years, the roster had already grown so long he'd lost count. Even so, the vision sprawled beside him on his futon in the rich yet dank quarters inspired a sophomoric desire to brag.

"Why, yes," he drawled.  He rolled over and pressed his lean, muscle-bound form against hers. "The Phantomhive heir's aunt, no less."

"What a conquest." She was slender, her breasts small and firm, and her skin the complexion of peaches and cream.  Her hair was long, a chestnut with auburn highlights that smoldered in a sea of curls and waves over her milky shoulder. Her eyes were dark and brilliant and dancing with earnest intensity.

Nirvana.

"I don't think of women as conquests, that's too…misogynistic. They are more…pleasures. Fleeting dreams, lingering just long enough to relish, dissipating, sweeter for the brevity of the joy they bring."  He stretched in such a way that ornate blue dragon tattoo weaving up his left bicep was tantalizingly visible.  

"You do talk a lot," the girl, who was American, and had an endearing Mid-Atlantic twang in her cadence, chuckled.  She laced a long, athletic leg across his belly.  "Tell me about your tattoos while I feed you some of these absurdly fancy sweets you have ordered us."

"But of course, fair one." His right hand slid up her calf lightly, tickling her skin, seeking places on her body that he hoped might quicken her pulse and run her breathing ragged.  

He hadn't yet divined her prowess in bed, after all. They were only undressed…thus far.  But he was confident.

"The Mountain Master wears the Dragon to signify his rule over his Triad. Mine is centered in Shanghai, like my more...legitimate enterprise, Kunlun.  The Mountain Master, or Dragon Head, is initiated young. The needle…it is painful, and yet rewarding. There is rapture come the end, you know…after the piercing…"

Yes, rapture.

He moved to suckle on her ear, but was foiled by the stuffing of a fruit pip into his mouth, followed by, when he swallowed, a frothy custard.  

The woman grinned.

"Hang it all, Ms. Adler, I was moving in for the kill!" he stammered around the moussey paste.  He tittered incredulously. So close...he was giddy. This one would taste of ambrosia, he knew it...

"Interesting terminology." She licked her fingers free of custard before his eyes, slowly, sensuously. God, she had perfect lips. The rouge had worn off at some point, when she had been passionately demonstrating her skills to caress his neck.

Happiness.

"Oh, my dear," and his fingers found their way into her hair, "it's but an idiom—"

"Stated by an idiot."

Delight….

Wait, what?

"Did I mishear….? Oh…"

The room lurched.  He'd not chased the dragon in hours. His opium pipe lay forgotten near their pre-conjugal bed.  What was this high?

"Oh," he repeated, followed by a stream of passionate curses in Mandarin, turning a cross-eyed look on the custard wrapper. And then, once more, "Oh." And finally, "Oh, balls."

"Indeed. It pays to know the local apothecary," the woman, Irene Adler, continued to grin like a puckish, ethereal sprite, while she sat up and disentangled herself from her Chinese….

…conquest.

"That," she added, "and to be in a perennial relationship with an ingenious chemist. A chemist, among other things."

"Why?" the Chinese godfather slurred. He rolled away from her form to the best of his ability, but a pile of silk pillows, a hand-painted screen, and a potted orchid were upset in the process.  "Ah, rat shits..."

"It's like this, darling," Irene purred. She stood and calmly dressed, maddeningly, right  before his eyes, cutting off his erotic access one body part at a time. Permitting him to gaze, but not to touch.  "I was hoping you'd be patronized by a very particular gentleman, and I was hoping to gather information beneficial to his nemesis. Six hours of loitering and keeping your eager hands out of my intimate regions has worn my patience thin.  I wasn't sure how you'd take it, so I drugged you to make our…breakup, shall we call it?...a little less difficult." She tilted her head entreatingly. "Would you please pass out now, so I can finish dressing?"

"I can consume quantities of opiates fit to drop a horse, madam," the conquered mumbled, pointing a finger at one of the six or seven Irene Adlers that divided and floated drunkenly before his vision.  "My constitution….does nnnnnot permit….that you so easily…that I…so easily…succ….umb…."

Blackness.

It was dark when Lau Tao awoke in his private chamber, in his largest and most often patronized Whitechapel opium den.

"Well, bugger," he grunted, glowering at the ceiling and the tassels and frog knots on the walls, and thoroughly alone.

Almost, at least.

Still naked as a babe, he lunged upright, clicked his tongue, and casually turned to the diminutive Chinese girl who sat faithfully at his side, yoga-style, in a violet cheongsam.  

Her eyes, peering out under moth-brows and a severely straight-banged, updone, and elaborate coiffure, were an unsettling canary gold hue, intense and emotionless, as she stared at him. She was so beautiful and so impermeably calm that she resembled a sleek kitten crafted of porcelain and eternally hunched over its prey.

She had probably been there for hours, sitting and gazing at his form with wry and faithful amusement while it snored at the rafters, since shortly after Irene Adler left. And she probably would have continued to wait indefinitely for his daft self to come around.  

Oh bloody hell, how he loved her.

"I do say, Ranmao," he sighed, "I am a prat. A berk, even."

"Yup," she deadpanned, bobbing her head once.

Lau blinked. And then he erupted in giggles. "Thanks, luv."

"Yup."

He drew a blanket over his form and rolled over onto her, snuggling up, demonstrating some peculiar mixture of childlike innocence and tawdry foreplay. "Hul-lo. So! Did you catch the lady that left here, probably in a hurry, a few hours…or, er, so…back?"

She stretched under him, and reported in her quiet, taciturn manner, "No lady at all. Skinny man. Came in right after he ran out.  You had a pulse. Smiling too, in your sleep.  No foamy mouth or seizures or paleness. No weapons in sight.  So I let him go."

Ranmao was experienced in Lau's bacchanalian excesses. Over time, she had come to realize that as long as he was still breathing, periodic episodes of sated unconsciousness were to be expected.

Lau dropped his chin onto Ranmao's shoulder. "That's what I thought. Well, that's alright. He must have been an associate of Ms. Adler's, sent to distract you.  Turns out she was a thorough and clever type, she probably knew I had a bodyguard."

"Yup."

"Say, Ranmao. Would it be terribly crass of me to ask you to sit in and cover your eyes next time I seduce a woman, to avoid this unfortunate occurrence in the future?"

"Yup."

"Yes, I thought so. Ah, what we do for love. Oh. I don't know my head from my arse, and have lost my pocketwatch."

"Yup."

" Tell me, is it time for my Important Client?"

"In three minutes."

"Splendid! Ranmao, d'you think I can get dressed in two and a half minutes?"

She looked him in the eye then, and turned on him a possessive, Giaconda-like smile. "I know you can."