Tempted Tigress by Jade Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

knife to his wife's throat.

 
     
     
    From Anna Marie Thompson's journal

     
    February 22, 1880
     
    Sister Mary wants me to write down my sins. She wants me to confess all to merciful Jesus on paper. Here are my sins:
    I hate Susanna. She acts superior because she has a mom who visits her. She's not an orphan. Well, I have a parent too. My mom may be buried by the chapel, but my father gave me a pearl ring when he was last in port. And a doll from India. The most beautiful doll in the world. I have a father, and he is not, not, not dead. So I hate Susanna.
    I hate Bible study. I don't care that Jesus healed the sick and made cripples walk some time long ago and far from China. He isn't helping anyone here, and I still have to clean up vomit and piss and worse whether I pray or not. So why should I study someone dead who isn't helping anyone?
    I hate being white. The Chinese girls come and sit with their mothers. They get to stir the laundry pots and play with their brothers and sisters. They are not dirty heathens like Sister Mole-face says. They're happy and healthy and in their own country. I wish I were Chinese.
    My dad has been gone four months, two weeks, and four days. That means one month, one week, and three days until I start watching the road for him. He said he'd bring me a new doll all the way from England. He's the best dad in the world. Much better than that stupid Susanna's mother who smells like flowers but looks like dung.

 
     
     

     
    But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
    A savage place! as holy and enchanted
    As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
    —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    from "Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment"
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    Anna looked at her hands, gently clasped on her lap, the rich feel of silk a sweetness on her freshly scrubbed body. She had never worn anything so fine as the yellow gown now wrapping her body. She certainly hadn't enjoyed the luxury of a long bath or a quiet afternoon in over a year. She should feel pampered and clean—most especially clean. Instead, she felt unsettled. Not exactly sullied, but not even remotely virtuous.
    Fortunately, she was no stranger to guilt and quite adept at ignoring it. She even had the added excuse that she had vowed to do everything possible to survive. What was a little show for the Chinese against her life? If pleasuring herself made her all the more interesting to the voyeuristic Enforcer, then so be it. No guilt. Simple survival.
    Except, she hadn't just done it to tantalize the mandarin, who had surely been watching. Why had she done it? Why had she slipped her fingers between her legs and done what every priest had preached against since the church began?
    Why had she done it? Because she was about to die. What a fool she was. She should be thinking of a way to survive, to live to tomorrow, no matter what the cost. But in her last hours of life, she had needed to give herself a little pleasure, a moment of ecstasy to savor before it all ended. It made no sense, and yet she hadn't been able to stop herself. She had needed release. She had wanted to feel—if only by her own hand—why life could be so very good. And if her erotic dream had replayed in her mind as she touched herself, then it was only to give form and detail to her last moments of delight.
    And now that it was done, she could face death. She didn't even flinch when a cold blade slid across her shoulder, aiming for her throat. She'd felt the breeze when her assailant lifted the tapestry flap to enter the room. She had absolutely heard his harsh breath as he hefted his blade. Someone had come to kill her. And perhaps this was God's punishment for her debauchery.
    Or perhaps not. Without conscious thought, she slammed her elbow hard into her attacker's ribs. The knife hadn't quite made it to her neck. And besides, the man—Jing-Li, she now