my ears; my skin burned. I had that strange feeling again, that twisting mixture of curiosity, fear, and unbearable excitement. I didn’t know this Shin, this stranger with the lean, hard body of a man, not a boy. I didn’t know myself, either. That part of me that wanted to bite him, suck the tips of his fingers, consume him. He groaned softly as I dug my fingers into his back, feeling dizzy with triumph and pleasure. Then I felt his knees nudging my legs apart, that urgent heat pressed against my thigh, and I realized he was serious.
“I said, wait!” With an effort, I shoved him off.
“I told you,” his eyes were hot and soft, “I’d make you mine.”
“There isn’t any ‘mine’ about it!” I sat up and buttoned up the shirt, right up to the neck, although my heart was racing. My head felt foggy. Shin flopped over and put an arm over his face.
“Robert won’t want you if you’re not a virgin.” His voice was muffled.
“Is that what this is all about?” Enraged, I said, “He doesn’t want me anyway. I’m not that popular!”
“Are you blind? You’ve no idea how much trouble I’ve had, getting rid of your admirers over the years.”
“You did what?”
“Ah Hing from the dry-goods store. Seng Huat from my school. Oh, and the math tutor next door.” He counted them off on his fingers.
Furious, I hit him with a pillow. “You mean to say I had a chance with the math tutor?” I’d had a crush on him one summer because he wore glasses and parted his hair the same way that Ming did. “You beast, Shin! You selfish, selfish beast!”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me down on top of him.
“What was I supposed to do? You never looked at me. And anyway, if they didn’t have the guts to stick around they weren’t worth it.”
We were so close, our faces not six inches from each other. My heart was hammering, my breath coming in faint gasps. Despite my best efforts to glare at him, a dizzy happiness was seeping through me.
“Do you hate me?” That half-anxious look again. I’d never seen Shin like this—between the two of us, he was always the cool one—and I flushed. He must have noticed, because he said, “If you don’t hate me, then let me do it,” and started kissing me again.
It would be easy to give in, let this slow ache consume me. My arms slid around him, feeling the muscles of his back flex as he rolled over, so that he was on top of me now. An alarm went off in my head; every warning my mother had given me. What was I doing?
“No!” This time I shoved him so hard that he fell off the bed.
“Are you worried about getting pregnant?” Shin was kneeling, looking up at me. In the rainy half-light that poured in through the shutters, he was impossibly handsome. “Because you needn’t be. I bought something from the pharmacy.”
“So you were planning this right from the start?”
“Of course,” he said. “I told you I was doing some thinking.”
“Is that why you came along with me today?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to hit him. “And all of that helping out with burying the finger, that was a lie?”
“I don’t really care about the finger. I just wanted to be with you.”
“You could have been with me anytime,” I said. “You didn’t have to lie about it.”
“No, I promised my father.” He stopped, as though he’d said too much.
“What did you promise him?” A feeling of dread descended on me. I remembered crooked blue shadows, the darkness of a chicken coop, and the way Shin’s broken arm had dangled grotesquely. “Tell me or I’ll never forgive you! What happened that night?”
In a flat low voice that was suddenly tired, Shin said, “He said he’d seen the way I looked at you; it set him off so we got into a fight. That’s when he broke my arm. I promised I wouldn’t lay a hand on you. Not in that house. In return, he was to leave you alone.” He sighed. “And that’s all.”
I put my hand on his hair, the way I’d always wanted to. “What are we going to do now?” I said softly.
Shin buried his face in my lap, his arms wrapped around my waist. “You can let me sleep with you. Tonight.”
I thought about it. “All right. But just sleeping. Nothing else.”