boomed in the room. Then she saw something that brought true fear to her heart. It was hard to see clearly through the smoke and the press of men. The eunuch dragged her forward, pulling her relentlessly, though she still tried to struggle. She was moving to a line of men. Were they pulling off their pants?
They were! All in a line, Chinese and white, their pants at their feet as they stood with organs proudly displayed. And like all boys, they laughed and mocked one another while each of the girls was dragged forward.
'What are you doing?' gasped one of the virgins. 'I should not see this!'
At least Ji Yue was not the only girl who tried to protest. But not one of them was able to fight. All too soon, she and Li Fei joined the others in a line facing the men and their naked organs. She was pushed to her knees. Right before her eyes was a man—a white man with hairy legs and a terrible smell. His organ stuck out in front of her like a skinny, red slug. Compared with Bo Tao's penis, the man's seemed like a thin writing brush.
She fought the urge to vomit, but she was held fast by her hair. Damn her hair! She should never have left it loose.
'This is wrong!' she said again, appealing to the eunuch Duan Xu. 'Why would you shame us so?'
If he heard her, he didn't acknowledge it. He was having too great a time laughing at the women. Ji Yue did not understand all the words, but she caught the meaning. They were judging the girls' bodies in the most crude manner.
'I will not—' she began, but was rapidly silenced by a hard jerk on her hair.
'She needs more opium!' her eunuch captor called in guttural Cantonese.
'No!' she snapped. 'No, I won't!'
'Much more!' laughed a man with a pipe. Except he did not release his grip on it.
The white man leaned forward. 'Do as you're told, virgin. Or we will choose another way to find our pleasure. And you won't be called a virgin any longer.'
Ji Yue trembled. She did not doubt him for a second. They would rape her if she did not comply. But she also feared they would rape her even if she did agree. Her only hope was to delay as long as possible until the men passed out from their drink and smoke.
'I am going to vomit!' she cried.
She was rewarded with a another yank on her hair. 'Do so and you will lie in it as I spread your legs. Do you understand?'
She nodded as she blinked back her tears. Meanwhile, the eunuch Duan Xu took his place at the end of the double line. 'Virgins!' he called. 'Listen, virgins! You are here because the emperor has assigned you a special test to verify your skill as a wife.'
Ji Yue did not want to look at the man. She already knew what was coming. She had no wish to see the bastard's gloating face as he spouted lies.
'Do you know what a wife does, virgins? I will tell you. A wife brings satisfaction to her husband.' One of the girls began to cry. Within seconds, the opium pipe was put to her lips. 'Before you is a man's organ,' continued Duan Xu. 'The emperor wishes to see who can bring that man satisfaction first. The winner will gain a special prize! Begin.'
No one moved. No one except the men who surrounded them. The eunuch used his grip on Ji Yue's hair to move her face forward. The man in front of her thrust his hips at her, pushing his wet tip into her nose. She reared back, but there was nowhere to go. She could tell from the sounds that the other virgins were being treated with equal brutality. So she did the only thing she could.
She reached up with both hands. She took hold of the horrible thing with all her strength, and she squeezed. She even used her nails.
The white man screamed and hit her about the head. She saw it coming and avoided the first of his wild blows, but the eunuch behind her still had a firm grip on her hair. The second blow caught her on the top of her head. That threw her far enough away that the white man was able to scramble backward, pulling his organ from her grip. But she had not released him and she felt her nails cut long scrapes off the narrow thing.
Meanwhile, she slammed her elbow backward into her captor. She connected with his upper thigh, and he grunted in pain but he did not release her. He threw her to the ground. Her shoulder and head landed painfully hard, but at least she was free. She tried to scramble away then, but she was too slow.
Someone grabbed her leg, twisting her painfully so that she landed on her back. She screamed and kicked, but someone else dropped hard onto her chest, pinning her to the ground. Rough hands grabbed her head and legs. And then another pipe was pressed to her lips.
Chapter 17
A ROAR CUT ACROSS THE ROOM. Ji Yue thought it was the blood rushing through her ears or the echo of her own screams. The opium smoke was filtering into her blood, dulling her thoughts and her feelings. Sounds came from a distance with delayed meaning.
The man holding the pipe disappeared, and the pipe lay on the ground forgotten. Then she saw him: Bo Tao. His face was contorted in fury. He moved so fast—faster than any of the men—that he peeled her captor off her and threw him aside. She could breathe again, but she didn't move. She was watching her love. She could see every flex of his muscles, every bead of sweat on his face. His movements were fluid, the exchange of blows like the flow of water in an elaborate fountain dance, and yet she knew he gritted his teeth and she heard his grunt with every blow given or received.
She heard the screams of virgins, the bellows of other men, but Bo Tao consumed her vision and her thoughts. A part of her feared for him. Whenever someone else blocked him from her sight, she ached with the fear that he would not resurface, he would not survive. But he always did. He always came back to fight for her again.
Her heart swelled with love.
And then, to her delight, the room cleared. Bo Tao was free to kneel down beside her, his eyes anxious with fear. Blood and sweat were smeared across his cheek, his chest heaved as he breathed in great gulps of air and his hand trembled as it extended to her face.
'Ji Yue! Ji Yue! Are you all right?'
'I love you,' she said. She felt it so strongly that the thought and the words formed without pause. 'I love you.'
His body stiffened in reaction. His eyes widened and she watched him swallow, the corded bands of his neck standing out in stark relief. Then he pressed his fingers to her lips. 'Shh, Ji Yue. You are not feeling well.'
She wanted to say she was feeling quite fine, but she wouldn't argue with him. And it didn't matter anyway, because he wasn't looking at her. Though he kept one hand on her mouth, the other began pointing as he issued orders.
Ji Yue hadn't realized there were others in the room, others that had fought by Bo Tao's side. She had seen only him. Now she heard Bo Tao order arrests. The whites were to be escorted out of China, never to return. The other virgins were sent to a palace she hadn't heard of before—yet another building in the vast Forbidden City. And the doctor was sent for.
It wasn't until someone accidentally stepped on her hair that she realized she shouldn't be lying here on the floor. It was time she got her excruciatingly heavy body back to the safety of her bed. Except, of course, she wasn't thinking about her bed in the virgins' palace. There was no safety there. She wasn't dreaming of her bed back with her family in Peking. She could only think of Bo Tao's arms wrapped around her. How she wanted to rest her head on his shoulder and watch dawn soften the heavy, black night.
But that wasn't going to happen, she realized. She was an imperial virgin and would soon become an emperor's wife, even if she was locked in the lowest harem and never heard from again. Bo Tao was not part of her future, and she needed to remember that. She did remember that, but when she told herself to get up and go back to the virgins' palace, she remained curled on her side again with silent tears streaming down her face.
She heard a strangled moan above her from Bo Tao. She felt for his pain and wished for his sake that she could stop her tears. But she couldn't, so she buried her face into the dirty floor.
