Love and Death

Love is about taming each other, and falling for each other in the process.

1. Li Cheng disliked all things showy, yet he ordered a rose garden planted on his estate.

Every day, he looked out at it through the floor-to-ceiling windows, never understanding why he'd done it, until one morning he saw the woman standing before the roses.

She was alluring, yet sharp, just like the thorn that had pricked his fingertip moments before.

2. Later, everyone was amazed that Ninth Master Li kept a canary, but only he knew the truth: what he was taming was a blade destined to pierce him one day.

That night, rain poured down.

She turned in his arms, the warm barrel of a gun pressed against his heart.

“Do you understand now?” Her rose-colored lips brushed his Adam's apple. “You didn't plant flowers.”

Li Cheng only held the back of her neck and deepened their blood-stained kiss.

The alarm wailed outside. Inside, only their mingled breaths remained.

“Shoot,” he said, gripping the barrel and seeing the struggle in her eyes. His smile was tender and cruel. “Or stay.”

He hadn't planted flowers.

He'd planted a weakness.

A living, breathing weakness, and the most lethal one of all.

Reader's Guide:

A powerful man * A cold, beautiful assassin

Fictional Republican-era setting. Readers who prefer chaste romances, beware.

Theme: As long as you are alive, anything is possible.