InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Fruition ❯ Desperation ( Chapter 47 )

Ben opened his eyes with a soft chuckle as tiny hands swatted at his face.  "Is that a good way to wake up your daddy?" he asked, leaning up to kiss Nadia's cheek.  The baby giggled happily, doing her best to speak to him as she slapped her hands down on his bare chest.  "Beating on me, too?  Taking lessons from your mama, huh?"

"I heard that," Charity remarked as she hurried into the room with Emmeline in her arms.  "I have never beaten on you, and you know it."

Smothering a yawn with the back of his hand, Ben sat up and tried to grin at her.  "You could if you wanted to," he teased.  "I don't think I would mind."

She blushed and nodded at his nightstand.  "Your phone was chiming when I got up to get the girls," she told him.

"Oh?  Who was it?"

She gave him a dark look.  "I don't check your messages, Benjamin."

He made a face.  "I don't care if you do," he said.  "No secrets, right?"

"Okay," she said, leaning across him to grab his phone.  He uttered a very long, very deep sigh when her breasts rubbed over his arm.  She either didn't notice or simply didn't realize what she'd done, and that just figured . . . "Oh, it's a message from Chelsea . . ."  She shot him a quizzical glance.  "You text Chelsea?"

"Oh, yes, that," he blurted, grabbing the phone out of her hand before she could open the message.

"What?"

He held the phone away from her when she tried to grab it back.  "I lied.  I do have secrets," he said.

She arched an eyebrow at him.  "With my sister?  My twin—" Eyes widening suddenly, she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.  "Oh, kami, you're secretly in love with Chelsea, aren't you?"

He snorted before managing to blank his expression.  "Yes," he stated stonily.  "You caught me."

"Uh huh . . ."

He squeezed his eyes closed and made a face.  "No, absolutely not," he said.  "I tolerate her for your sake, but your sister . . ." He grimaced.  "There's not a man on earth who could handle her."

Charity snorted.  "You make her sound like the devil."

He shrugged.  "If the shoe fits . . ."

She tried to look stern, but her giggle thwarted her as she smiled and crawled over to kiss him on the cheek.  He turned his head in time to intercept the quick peck, and what was meant to be a light show of affection deepened quickly into something completely different.  Unfortunately, a couple little girls had other things in mind, and when they started fussing a little, Charity sighed and pulled away.  "Breakfast," she said, laughing softly at Ben's disgruntled expression as she scooped them both up and headed for the door.

He heaved a sigh and slowly shook his head.  "My daughters," he mused out loud.  "Cockblocking their own daddy . . ."

It figured, didn't it?  Six months old, and they'd already mastered that particular skill . . .

'Hey, Ben . . .?'

'What?'

His youkai-voice sighed.  'We sincerely need to get laid, and soon . . .'

'Yeah, I know it . . .'

But that was the problem, wasn't it?  The timing just hadn't really been 'right', at least, not yet.  Between worrying about everything going on over in Japan and trying to keep up on the day-to-day responsibilities that made up the bulk of his life, getting settled into a new house, and, generally just trying to keep one step ahead of the game, it seemed like it was a matter of inability to get things settled so that he could concentrate on the longer-term picture.  After all, taking Charity as his mate for real . . . That deserved some special attention, didn't it?

Glancing at his phone, he made a face.

It also deserved a proposal, along with the fairy tale wedding of Charity's dreams, so the real question was, how he should go about doing the proposing, and even though Chelsea thought she was helping by sending him random and increasingly weird suggestions, Ben supposed that he was just a little too old-fashioned to do any of them . . .

Digging into the nightstand after glancing around to make sure that Charity was, indeed, downstairs, he pulled out the small leather covered ring box and flipped back the lid to stare at the single four carat diamond set in the most delicate filigree platinum band.  He'd seen it in a pawn shop, but at the time, it had a very gaudy-looking emerald in it, so he'd taken it to a local jeweler to have the stone replaced and the spots of broken filigree work, repaired.  Something about it, though, spoke to him, and he'd known that it was the perfect one for her—understated, breathtaking, and yet, completely unassuming . . .

'Well, if you're going to take the old-fashioned route on this, then maybe you should just go all the way with it.'

'All the way . . .?  Hmm . . .'

'Sure . . . I mean, if you stop and think about it, I think Charity would be entirely amused by it.'

He made a face.  'I'm not entirely sure I want her to be amused by my proposal.'

'As true as that may be, you know as well as I do that it'd be the right thing to do.  All you really have to do is to figure out how to do it without her realizing what you're doing.'

Staring at the ring for another long moment, Ben smiled to himself as a plan started to form . . .

Kyouhei knelt on the floor, hands resting on his thighs, head bent forward as Hidekea paced the room before him.  The silence of the chamber was deafening, the oily light from the braziers casting the room in harsh shadows.  It was late—late enough that he’d thought that nothing would have been noticed—which was entirely foolish, really.  Of course, Hidekea knew.  In those days, there wasn’t much that slipped past, unnoticed . . .

"I need not ask you just what you thought you were doing," Hidekea said, his voice strong, carefully controlled.  "You understand, however, that she is nothing to you—less than nothing—and she never will be."

"Hai," Kyohei said without moving, without batting an eye.

"She is nothing but a servant—entire expendable—as was her mother."

Gritting his teeth, careful to keep everything else about himself, entirely blanked, he forced himself to reply.  "Hai."

"If she becomes an issue, she will be dealt with accordingly," Hidekea warned.  "From this moment forward, you could say that you hold her life in your hands, Kyouhei.  Do what you will with her, but do not dishonor this house.  Remove your haori."

He did as he was instructed without hesitation and without standing, as he shoved the layers of clothing off of his shoulders, down his arms, before he resumed the same pose as before.

Hidekea strode behind him, the whistle of the katana’s descending blade, sounding in the quiet, seconds before the white-hot burn exploded across his bared shoulder blades.  He bit back the hiss of pain before it could escape, gritting his teeth as the next blow fell.

By the fortieth strike, Kyouhei's vision was ringed in a haze of black, but he still hadn't uttered a sound, despite the strength that Hidekea had increased with every single blow.  His back was captured in a medley of pain, and his jaw hurt from the force with which he'd kept them tightened.

Ten more strokes rained down on him before Hidekea dropped the katana back in the scabbard strapped to his waist, and he looked strangely pleased as he strode around Kyouhei, standing before him, feet spread, hands folded together under the copious sleeves of his haori.  "We shall never have need of this conversation again," he stated, the warning in the words clear.

"No, chichiue," Kyouhei managed, his voice wavering only slightly.

"Get out of my sight."

It took everything he had left to get to his feet, to straighten his back as he walked out of the room.  He didn't dare pull his shirts back up, didn't dare do anything but to look straight ahead as he tried to will away the pain that assailed him with every step he took.  By the time he'd reached his own room, he could feel the bile rising thick in his throat.  The servant stationed outside his room yanked his door open, but only after they closed it behind him had he crumpled to his knees and expelled the contents of his stomach all over the floor, moments before he passed out . . .

"Kyouhei-sama . . ."

Uttering a low groan, Kyouhei rolled over and buried his face a little deeper into the pillow.  Somewhere in the back of his mind, it registered that the voice calling out to him belonged to Hana, and for once, he didn't have to cajole her into his bed.  It felt more like a strange extension of the dream-memory, given that the incident he’d remembered had happened just after his father’s discovery that Kyouhei and Hana had been having oral sex . . .

Reaching out to grab her, he pulled her down on the futon beside him, his hands sinking deep into her hair, dislodging the four senbon she used to secure the bun at the nape of her neck, kissing her soundly before she had a chance to argue.  She shivered when he squeezed one of her breasts through the thin fabric of her kosode.  She wasn't wearing a bra, and that was just fine with him, too . . .

She whimpered softly, her body arching into his touch as he slipped his hand under her kimono, as he squeezed the softness of her skin, rioting into a surge of gooseflesh, as her nipples hardened under his perusal, as he flicked the tiny bud with his thumb.  She gasped, her hands slipping down between them, grasping him firmly, squeezing him tight, only to release him as she stroked him in long, deliberate motions.  She knew his body as well as he knew hers, and even if it was little more than a physical thing, it really didn’t matter, at all.

Uttering a terse growl, he dug under the edge of the shikibuton for the condom he'd stuck under there as almost an afterthought just before he'd gone to bed.  Grasping the foil packet in his teeth, he yanked it open, drew out the condom and rolled it on before roughly yanking Hana beneath him, shoving her kimono aside as she let her knees fall open, as he slammed into her hard.

She gasped, her strangled cry muffled by his mouth on hers, her body quaking, quivering, shivering as he plunged into her, time and again.  He held onto her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh with a barely contained brutality.  Her body stilled, tightening around him for a split second as her knuckles raked against his back, as her pleasure rocked through her, moments before he slammed into her hard, his body tensing as the surge of his own orgasm caught him, held him, and slowly, slowly let him go . . .

"Kyo . . . Kyouhei . . . sama," she murmured, her voice little more than a whisper, a murmur in the hazy dark.  "Kyouhei-sama, your . . . your father . . ."

That was like a dousing of ice-cold water, and Kyouhei dragged his hands away and sat up, yanking off the spent condom and tossing it into a nearby trashcan.  "Damn . . . I thought you came in here to—"

She sat up, too, but it took her a moment to get her faculties back under a semblance of control.  "Hidakea-sama asked me to fetch you," she said.  "He said it's urgent."

"Urgent?" he repeated, rubbing his eyes with an exasperated hand as he reached for a washcloth on the stand nearby. Sloshing water into the basin, he made quick work of washing the smell of sex off of himself, knowing that it would only serve to anger Hidekea if he presented himself without doing so.  "Just what time is it, anyway?"

"It's two in the morning," she said, yanking her kosode closed again, retying the obi that held it.

"All right," he sighed, tossing the kakebuton aside and stumbling to his feet.  Scowling at the clothing that took entirely too long to put on, he opted instead of the modern clothes that he'd worn when he arrived two days ago for this round of meetings.  "Where is he?"

Hana hurried over to help him dress.  He didn't actually need the assistance, but he allowed her to do it, anyway.  "He is in the eastern storehouse."

Kyouhei blinked and scowled.  "The eastern storehouse?  Why the hell is he there?"

Hana shook her head, her cheeks pinking in the wan light of the tin oil lamp she'd brought in with her.  The house had the full run of amenities including full functioning electricity, of course, but for some reason, Hidekea and Yukina tended to prefer the old things.  "I don't know, but I . . ."

Turning to stare at her for a moment, Kyouhei narrowed his gaze when she stared at the tatami-mat-covered floor, wringing her hands in her usual nervous fashion.  "But, what?" he prompted, struggling for a calm that he wasn't feeling.

She glanced at him and quickly shook her head as she hurriedly caught her hair up into her usual bun once more, jamming the senbon through to hold it.  "He had someone with him," she said.

"Who?"

Again, she shook her head.  "I don't know," she admitted, "but . . . but it seemed like a prisoner . . ."

Striding into the kitchen, humming a song under his breath, Ben stopped short and raised his eyebrows at Gunnar, who was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and Ben's newspaper while Charity carefully spooned rice cereal into each of the girls' mouths.

"A little early in the day for a social call, isn't it?" Ben deadpanned as he slipped into his chair and reached over to snag the part of the paper that Gunnar had already read.

Folding the paper neatly, Gunnar set it aside and leveled a look at Ben as he opened his mouth to speak, only to snap it closed again as he quickly shook his head.  "What the hell are you wearing?"

Ben rolled his eyes and sipped the coffee that Eddie had just filled for him.  "I just took a shower," he replied.  "I could've come down here naked."

"Deplorable," Gunnar muttered, the expression on his face stating quite plainly, just what he thought of that.  "Anyway, it's not a social call, exactly.  I just wondered . . . Well, we've wondered, if you've heard from Manami-san lately?"

"Lately?" Ben echoed, flipping his cup to the side for a refill.  "How, 'lately' do you mean?"

Gunnar glanced at Charity, as though he were trying to decide how much he dared to say with her right there, but Ben cleared his throat.  "She knows all of it," he told Gunnar.  "It's fine."

He didn't look like he agreed with Ben's assessment, but he nodded.  "No one has heard from her in over a week, closer to two," he admitted.  "Chances are that she's having more difficulty than normal in acquiring her target, but she was able to take down the others fairly quickly, so . . ."

Ben frowned.  After she'd managed to dispose of the original target, the faction had done what Ben suspected they'd do and had just set someone else onto the same path, and in the weeks since then, she'd eliminated five of them, and, while common sense should have warned Toga and Sesshoumaru that they needed to pull her back, maybe send someone else, they hadn't, and now . . . "Is she still in Fukuoka?"

Gunnar nodded.  "In and around, yes."

"What about her cell?  Can it be tracked?"

The look on Gunnar's face was about as foreboding as Ben could recall having ever seen before on anyone.  "It's pinging in the same place and has been for at least three days.  It hasn't moved, but calls are routing straight to voicemail, so it's a safe guess that it's off and only responding to the emergency signal."

Ben grimaced as the fears he'd harbored from the start kicked into overdrive.  "Where's Sesshoumaru's plane?"

"You want to go."

He nodded slowly.  "Of course, I do.  I need to find her," he said.  "One way or another . . ."