Heat crept into Cixi’s cheeks at once. She hated how the memory of their passionate kiss became visible on her face.

Cassian, of course, noticed. He leaned back on the couch, watching the flush in her cheeks and ears, a satisfied smile twitching at the corners of his lips. "And when I kissed you back," he recalled vividly how Cixi had looked flustered and red, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath. Her eyes had glistened with unshed tears from lack of oxygen, and she appeared disoriented, lost in his gaze after the kiss broke. The sight of her reactions intrigued him, and he found himself wanting to see those expressions again. With that thought, he decided to tease her a little more and continued speaking. "You did not retreat from me, Cixi. You kissed me! You tried to match what my lips and tongue were doing to yours. You wanted more than you had meant to want."

Her breath caught. "No," she said at once, though the denial emerged weaker than she would have liked.

Cassian did not raise his voice. He did not corner her. He merely sat there and looked at her with that easy steadiness which made falsehood feel flimsy before it had even been spoken."And yet here we are," he huskily said. "Speaking of boundaries."

For once, Cixi found herself without an answer. She had turned beet red, and she knew it, yet she couldn’t look away from him.

Whatever she says now must be measured. She did not wish to anger him, nor to harden him against her proposal altogether, and neither did she mean to appear weak.

She would not have him mistake her for the sort of woman who bent at once, or who might be handled as he pleased, simply because his voice ran smooth and his eyes knew too much.

She parted her lips to speak. Before she could say anything, Cassian did.

He had not taken his gaze from her. "I do not make a habit of explaining myself," he told her, and there was an intensity in his voice that felt more serious. "I owe no man an explanation, and still less do I owe one to a woman." A faint shadow crossed his face then, something near irritation, though whether it was at her or at himself she could not tell. His eyes shifted away from her for the briefest instant. Under his breath, he uttered something too low for her to catch, though the shape of it suggested a curse.

Then he resumed, and his tone altered, not softened, but deepened to tell her something of himself.

"When I was drowning in youth and blood and appetite. I was already indulging in women. While you were still learning modesty and caution, I had long since grown accustomed to bodies laid bare before me. Women came to me without shame. They definitely did not want to cover themselves; rather, they wished to be seen by me."

Cixi listened without interruption, though something in her shoulders had begun to draw tight.

Cassian leaned forward slightly, though his eyes remained watchful. "I love sex," he said with brutal plainness. "I enjoy it greatly. And as the years passed, they all became the same. At first, they wanted pleasure. Then they wanted expensive gifts. Then an expensive vacation. Then came the money. Dresses, houses, and many more. Anything that might be bought. I gave them what they asked for, and still their hunger did not end." A dry, bitter amusement touched his mouth. "In time, they wanted what I would never give them. They wanted sentiment! Attachment! And more than that... they wanted to be loved."

He gave a low chuckle at that, though no warmth lay in it. He shook his head once, as though the memory itself annoyed him, and for a few moments his gaze wandered at the bathroom door.

Cixi watched him in silence with those pale grey eyes of hers unblinking.

"By the time I turned eighteen," he went on, "I had learned enough to despise inconvenience. So I began imposing order where there had been only nuisance before. One week! No more! A week was sufficient for pleasure and brief enough to prevent illusion." His mouth flattened. "I do not like clingy women. I hate them most of all. I value my privacy. My space. And above all—" his gaze returned to her with full force—"I do not love. Love is an excellent way to ruin what should remain simple."

His words landed heavily between them. And Cixi understood he was telling her who he was. Not wholly, perhaps. But enough to let her know not to expect anything more from him.

"So yes, Lousy Kisser, the sight of a woman’s body does not strike me as remarkable. I had not thought, after so many years of one sort of life, that you might feel the matter differently. And it was my mistake. For that much, I grant you, I erred." A brief pause followed before he spoke again. "You are not like the women I bed for a week."

Somewhere deep within her, something tightened. It was not exactly pain nor offence. She couldn’t tell what she felt.

Before she could examine it, Cassian spoke once more, and this time his words struck with far greater force. "If you imagine that your kissing contract will end with me falling in love with you," he revealed his calculation, "then you place yourself on the losing side."

For one instant, Cixi sat very still.

She had not carried much hope into the room, not if she were honest. Yet something in his tone made the sentence feel harsher than it needed to be.

A dreadful thought flickered through her that perhaps she would have a cursed life for eternity... There is no escape for her.... Is this why the Grim Reaper gave her the most impossible task? Anger flared in her heart. Before her chain of thoughts could take her further, she heard Cassian’s voice.

"Although I must confess I am obsessed with you."

The breath left her once more.

Whether it had already gone before the words were finished, she could not tell. Her whole body seemed to freeze around that sentence. The room itself fell quiet, and yet those words rang more loudly in her than any bell.

’Did he say obsessed?’

She asked herself the question and answered it in the same instant.

’Yes. He had said it.’