A Bouquet of Orchids
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 17: The Beginning Of It
Romantic Sex Story: Chapter 17: The Beginning Of It - In 1685 Ayutthaya, Dutch merchant Pieter de la Cort stops walking in a courtyard because of a woman's eyes. Mali is everything — composed, brilliant, entirely herself. What grows between them is real and permanent. But Mali knows love means honesty, even when honesty costs everything. What she builds for her family — and who she chooses to build it with — will define them all. A story of love without conditions, in a world about to change forever.
Caution: This Romantic Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Polygamy/Polyamory White Male Oriental Female AI Generated
Batavia was loud.
That was Mali’s first impression stepping off the gangway onto the dock — the noise of it, enormous and layered, a dozen languages competing in the harbor air, the creak and groan of ships, the shouts of dock workers, the particular chaos of a port city going about its commercial business with no interest whatsoever in the small family that had just arrived from Siam with two bundles, a carved deity, a boy named Som, and a six-week-old daughter who was currently registering her opinion of the noise with considerable force.
“She agrees with me,” Mali said, over Tara’s complaints.
“Give her a week,” Pieter said. “She’ll stop noticing it.”
“I will not stop noticing it,” Mali said.
“You will,” Dewi Luna said from behind her, looking at the city with those forward-facing eyes. “Or you’ll learn to love it.” She paused. “I think I already love it.”
Mali looked at her. Then at the city. Then back at Tara, who had found Mali’s shoulder and was applying herself to the immediate problem of breakfast with the focused pragmatism that was already her defining characteristic.
“Find us a house,” she said to Pieter.
“Working on it,” he said.
The factor’s house was temporary — two weeks at most, Pieter’s Batavia contact had written, while the permanent arrangements were finalized. It was large enough, clean enough, staffed by people who had seen enough VOC families arrive from various postings to be professionally incurious about the composition of this particular household.
Mali assessed it in twenty minutes and reorganized the kitchen in forty. The factor’s housekeeper watched this with the expression of a woman deciding whether to be offended and concluding that the result was better than what had been there before.
Dewi Luna watched Mali work and felt something settle in her chest that she recognized as relief. Whatever else Batavia was or wasn’t — Mali was still Mali. The compound in Ayutthaya had been Mali’s domain. This temporary house was already becoming Mali’s domain. Wherever they went, Mali would make it run. That was simply a fact about the world.
Som found the kitchen and attached himself to it with his usual economy.
Lim disappeared into the city the first evening and returned the second morning with information about three neighborhoods and their relative merits for a family of their description, which he delivered over breakfast with his permanent mild amusement and no explanation of how he had obtained it.
Nobody asked.
Pieter found the compound on the fifth day.
He brought Mali to see it before he agreed to anything, which she had come to expect and which she appreciated without ever saying so. It was in the quieter district north of the commercial center — not grand, not modest, a solid Dutch-built house with a walled garden and good drainage and a kitchen that Mali walked through twice before nodding once, which Pieter had learned to interpret as approval.
“The garden,” Dewi Luna said, standing in it with Tara on her hip. She turned slowly, taking it in — smaller than the Ayutthaya compound, different trees, different light, the sound of the city different. Not the river. Something else. But a garden. Walls. Space that could become theirs.
She looked at Mali.
Mali was looking at the kitchen window. The light coming through it in the afternoon — different from the Ayutthaya light, harder, more direct. But light.
“Yes,” Mali said. To Pieter. To Dewi Luna. To the house itself.
They moved in on a Thursday.
It took less time than expected because they had arrived with less than they had left with, which was clarifying in ways Mali was still working through. Everything in the Ayutthaya compound had accumulated over years — objects acquiring meaning through proximity and repetition, the specific weight of familiar things in familiar places. Here there were no familiar places yet. Everything was where they had put it two days ago.
It would become familiar. She knew this. She was patient.
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