Left Behind by the Hero, I Opened an Inn and the Sword Saint Never Checked Out novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Room Three

She put out the lantern at eleven and climbed the stairs in the dark with a small jar of oil in her hand.

The hall was quiet.

Room Three was at the end, and a thin line of yellow light lay along the floor under the door.

She stopped with her hand on the paper screen.

For one second she thought of what happened to innkeepers who fell for guests.

Then she thought of the gate, and the bundle passed to a squire, and the words "a good neighbor".

She slid the door open.

He was sitting on the edge of the futon in his shirtsleeves, with the lamp turned low.

The wrapped sword leaned against the wall in the corner.

He stood up.

"I did not think you would come," Jiro said.

"I said I would."

"People say many things in storerooms."

"I'm not people." She slid the door shut behind her and set the jar on the floor. "I'm the woman who owns the lantern. Sit down."

He sat.

She knelt in front of him on the futon, close enough that her knees touched his.

She looked at him properly for the first time in the lamplight.

He was thirty-four, and he looked it, and he looked tired, and he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

"I have not done this in a long time," he said, very low.

"Before I was the Sword Saint I was a boy in a dojo. After that, everyone wanted a legend."

"I don't want a legend."

"What do you want?"

"I want your shirt off."

A breath of laughter shook his chest, and he pulled the shirt over his head with his good arm.

The lamp turned his skin to bronze.

She had seen his back, but not the whole of him.

There was the long hard chest, and the old pale scar low on his ribs.

A dark line of hair ran down his stomach.

She put her hand flat against his heart, and it was pounding.

"You're afraid," she said.

"Yes."

"Good," said Hanae. "So am I."

She lifted her hands to the ties of her own robe.

He caught her wrists, very gently.

"Let me look," he said.

She let him.

She undid the knot and let the cloth fall from her shoulders.

It pooled around her knees, and the lamp touched her everywhere.

She was soft and round and warm, with flour-freckled forearms and a belly that had never been flat.

He looked at her for a long, silent moment.

He did not say anything clever.

He said, in a voice that cracked in the middle, "Hanae," and put his forehead against her collarbone, and breathed.

She wrapped her arms around his head.

She felt his mouth move against her skin.

He kissed the hollow of her throat, and the top of her breast.

Then he took her in his hands as if she were a candle that might blow out in a draught.

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