Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ In the Forests of the Night ❯ kisama you fool ( Chapter 4 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Enishi had never thought to hope for anything like this. At
most, he'd expected Kaoru to offer him a few kisses before
retreating, but she could be both as shy as Tomoe and as bold
as Yumi, changing from one to the other from second to
second. Even now, she seemed almost shocked by her own
passionate response, and it made him want to drive her
farther toward both extremes at once.

While the caramel glaze hindered the silken slippage of her
skin against his, the friction more than made up for it. The
lithe, twisting motion of her waist; the downy-soft
tenderness of her parts above and below; the frantic
wingbeats of her pulse-- all of those separately clung to him
in passing, as if her entire body had become her hands and
hair and mouth. But there was more of her, so much more, and
it was all his and his alone.

She was plaintively crying out, struggling to shape words
from the music he was playing on her. "You said," she
pleaded. "You said you'd wait-- wait for your turn, oh...."

"Can't do that," he murmured stickily. "I need to taste you,
right now. Just a taste of your lovely round muffins, and the
ripe berries up top. Mmm, there now, isn't that nice?" Oh,
she was wonderful, she was delicious, she was his own sweet
songbird pouring her heart out into the air. He knew she'd
never made these sounds or felt this way for anyone else
before, and she never would, for that matter. Not Battousai,
not Jineh, no one else, ever again.

The tense curve of her body against his mouth reminded him of
a swan taking flight, especially the arc of her throat. Her
hands were fluttering wildly against his shoulders, too,
touching and sliding away in an evanescent mist of sensation
like raindrops evaporating from hot pavement. If he didn't
know better, he might've thought she wasn't sure whether she
wanted to pull him closer or push him away. But if she was
still a bit shy of him, what else could he expect after what
she'd been through with Battousai?

Time to break her out of her shell again, that was all.
Bracing one foot against the wall, he sat up, pulling her
onto his knees. Her hair flew everywhere in a tsunami of
silk. It clung to both of them in a second veil of sweetness,
it tumbled down her back and over his arms, and it covered
her face like torn gauze, falling into his mouth too as he
kissed her. When he slid up one hand to clear the path
between their lips, she flailed backward from the lost
support on that side. "If you don't hang on, I'll let you
drop," he warned her, not meaning a word of it, but she
seemed to believe him anyway.

Spitting out that mouthful of her hair took longer than he'd
thought, but he didn't mind as long as she was still holding
tight, watching him with those wide blue eyes. Finally, he
wiped one last strand off his tongue by whispering it along
her bare shoulder. "My pretty owl-eyed girl. Still want us
both to wait 'til you come up with something else? Coz I
don't think I can unless you're quick."

Her throat trembled with her voice. "Your earring has caramel
dripping off it."

"And?"

One of her hands slid up the back of his neck into his hair,
tilting his head. Her eyelashes tickled his cheek as she
leaned closer.

Phwoar. Bloody freaking hell. Her lips were warm and moist,
but not nearly as much as her tongue. Any sudden major
movement might accidentally rip his earring straight out
between her teeth. And her breasts were achingly soft against
his chest, except for the firm rosy pearls sliding over his
ribs. He was going to pay her back for this until sudden
major movements wouldn't be an issue for either of them
anymore. Almost unconsciously, his hands went back to her
hips, pulling them astride his lap in tight loops until her
mouth gasped open again, releasing his earlobe with a soft
moan.

"Oh, don't. Please stop. Please...."

Her insistence sounded so poignant, considering how much he
could tell she wanted him to keep going. "Does it mean that
much to you, sweetheart? Finishing your turn while I stay in
queue? All right then," he soothed her. "I'll wait you out
until you're done with me."

"You will?" Her hopeful smile completely blasted his
determination. How could she be so eager to keep giving him
pleasure while waiting for her own? She deserved better than
that, surely.

"I will," he said. "Next time." He yanked her forward,
devouring her desperate protest and swallowing it whole.
She'd change her tune soon enough, he thought, and he was
right. Once his hands curled around and into her, cupping and
spreading her wide against him, there were no more silly
chirps from her about stopping. He hadn't had much use for
the Taoists when he left them, but he had to admit that their
lessons had paid off.

Mentally, he reviewed Master Wu Hsien's list for telling if
your woman was ready yet. Uncontrollable shuddering and quick
pants for breath, check. Closed eyes, flared nostrils, and
broken words, check. Warmly blushing face and ears, but
slightly cool tonguetip, check. Waist pressed tight against
him despite the rest of her body limply swaying like willow
branches, check. The Jade Spring Yin-essence ebbing into
dryness beneath her tongue, oh yes, check. The Moon Flower
Yin-essence seeping out below, welling out in precious
slippery droplets across his thighs from hers, absobloody
check and mate.

---

This had been a bad idea from the start, Kaoru thought,
writhing frantically. If she'd just let him keep taking the
lead, he probably would've gotten bored after a while.
Instead, her brief venture had just seemed to bump him up to
a new level of interest. Of course like all bad ideas, it had
seemed perfectly sensible at first, and at least it had won
her a little extra time. Hadn't it?

Her head slumped over Enishi's shoulder, muffling another
helpless sound. He wasn't moving very much, whether because
he couldn't get much leverage from this position while
keeping her from falling over, or because he just wanted to
make her do all the work this time. Well, maybe that wasn't a
completely fair evaluation, since actually he had a
continuous flow of subtle shifts throughout his body, as well
as the obvious stuff he was doing with his mouth and hands.
But he certainly wasn't burning as many calories as she was.
Yet.

Maybe he was still busy digesting dulce de leche, kind of
like not going swimming right after eating. He'd quickly
cleared away every single drop of caramel he'd put onto her,
whether by transferring it onto himself or just gulping it
straight down, though since then, a certain amount of it had
rubbed back onto her from his skin. Like just now when he'd
been pulling her close against his chest in a wiggly way,
though he'd started moving around for a funny lifting
maneuver with one hand under her butt and the other one
slipped between them in front, and oh jeez.

He settled her down in place and into that terrifyingly
overwhelming sort of pleasure again, almost like being locked
into a greenhouse full of roses to suffocate in the rich
sweetness of their perfume. But the fragile panels were her
own flesh and the roses were blooming inside her with petals
of gold and crimson flames, bursting into firestorms from the
stem he'd planted so firmly. She felt as if she were shaking
apart into fragments held together only by his arms wrapped
around her waist, as firmly constricting as Tomoe's obi had
been. Her own voice seemed distant and lost, reduced to short
high gasps that sounded like pieces of glass tumbling to the
ground.

When what was left of her fell forward against him, he was
still kneeling upright between her sprawled legs, and the
only deliberate movement she could sense from him at all was
that he was whispering into her hair. "Breathe easy-- slow,
deep breaths, that's it. Just breathe, steady now."

After a dazed moment or two of this, she wondered why he
wasn't sprinkling his usual endearments for her into the mix,
until it occurred to her that maybe he was talking to
himself. The dotted oval of a fresh bite mark was still
fading from his chest. Had she done that? She hazarded a
glance up to check for further damage.

She didn't see any more bites or scratches on him, but his
expression could only be described as an intense effort at
staying relaxed. However, the silver lashes flickered at the
shift in her motion, and he exhaled slowly. "My lovely
trembling hummingbird, honey-sweet. Do you still want me to
stop?"

"Why are you bothering to ask me, if you won't listen?"

Her involuntary sob made her tense up around him, and his
breath hissed in between his teeth. "But I am listening,
love. Aren't you?" He finally moved again, an indescribable
inner nudge that must've been his equivalent of the squeezy
exercises she'd tried on him that first time. Or at least it
produced the same sort of reaction from her that he'd had
then: a spasmodic shudder and a low, nearly feral moan.
"There now," he said. "All I want to do is make you happy,
even if you don't yet know how."

"Then stop," she repeated hopelessly. "Please stop it. Oh,
please...."

He took another deep breath and shifted his hands to her
waist, as if to grind her hard against him again. But then he
lifted her up and away, and laid her back down on the futon.

"Oh," she gasped, startled.

"Changed your mind already?"

"No, I just--" One last ripple ran through her body, like an
echo. "Thank you," she finally whispered. "I didn't think--
don't you need to...?"

He snorted at her before lying down himself, pressing his
fingertips against the faintly sticky lower curve of the
breast he wasn't pillowing his face onto. "What, you think us
blokes don't have our own set of hands and all? That was a
lame excuse even in the old days. Besides, if internal
pressure was such a problem, you'd never want to go near a
monastery for the noise of monks exploding." He paused,
probably to see if she'd giggle, but she didn't. "Don't you
worry about that," he resumed. "I can keep it warm for you if
you like, or just finish it off myself and make up a fresh
batch for you later. But why are you so set on stopping now?"

She couldn't read any particular expression from his voice at
all, and certainly not from the top of his head. "Do I have
to have a reason?" Her own question made her wince. Did it
sound like a challenge, or just completely pitiful?

"Have you got a reason?"

Eek. That cold edge was gleaming through his voice again.
Between panic and exhaustion, she blurted out the first
truths that came to mind. As soon as she heard her own words,
she felt horribly guilty, not because of what they were but
because of what they weren't, as if part of her had already
decided that she was never going to see Kenshin again.

---

She was so ripe and juicy and willing, his very own blueberry
begging to be plucked. Every inch of her skin told him that,
and every little sound she made. Except, of course, for this
bloody business of telling him to stop. What in hell was she
playing at?

But she was asking so nicely that it took the heart out of
his first impulse, which was to just throw her onto her face
and shag her until she was screaming herself hoarse into the
futon. So he disengaged and laid her down, waiting for her to
explain herself, if she could. "Have you got a reason?"

Her nipple was a tender rosebud beneath his cheek, quivering
from the underlying pulse and breath that both wanted him
more than she would admit right now. She tensed up again from
his question, which instantly reminded him what it felt like
inside her when she did that. He closed his eyes against the
rampaging return of the previous impulse, causing a brief
delay before he processed her frayed whisper. "You said you'd
wait, and then you hurt me."

"Bloody well did not," he retorted, but his sharp head-shake
of denial made her yelp with pain. Eh? He leaned back,
puzzled. Oh, gor freaking blimey.

This morning, he'd cleared out everything sharp except for
his watou, which certainly wasn't something to try shaving
with, and then he'd forgotten all about the matter. But his
whiskers had sandpapered her rosebuds raw-- not quite
bleeding, but scraped red as if he'd dragged them across
pavement. Nearly as cross at her as at himself, he demanded,
"Well, why didn't you say--?" The rest of his question died
as he got a good look at her face. He'd done the same thing
to her lips, hadn't he? And he'd barely let her get in a
clear word edgewise, except for when she'd tried to pull
herself together enough to ask him before. When he touched
her mouth, she winced. He winced too.

"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, little bluebird. I never--"

Her lovely eyes looked so sad. She didn't even try to say
anything else, but just curled up on her side and away from
him. But when he tucked his knees up behind hers and wrapped
his arms around her again, she let him hold her, not making a
sound as he kissed the back of her neck as carefully as he
could.

---

After a while, Enishi scooped her up and took her back to the
adjoining bathroom again. He set her down on the low wooden
stool near the drain before filling a bucket from the tub.
She didn't object when he used the warm water to sponge the
last traces of caramel from her, or when he washed her hair
as well. He must've had a lot of practice with Tomoe, Kaoru
supposed. He had a good, gentle touch at it, and knew how to
comb conditioner through her hair to make sure it coated all
the strands while getting the tangles out. When he was done,
he put her into the tub again, gave himself another wash with
cold water, and left.

She hadn't said anything during the process, because neither
had he. She was long past worrying whether this meant
trouble, though. Of course it meant trouble, but so did every
single minute since he'd brought her to this house. Or maybe
since he'd scooped her up at Jineh's place. Or maybe since
she'd decided to go after Jineh by herself.

She'd known when she left the gallery that there was a chance
she might never come back, but she'd expected that to've
meant a clean death, at least. But despite the risk, it had
seemed to be not just the least she could do under the
circumstances, but the only thing she could do. And maybe now
as far as anyone else would ever know, it was the last thing
she'd ever done.

---

Hiko would be upset when he came back and saw what Yumi was
doing to his pottery, Kenshin thought distractedly. He
stepped sideways from the entrance to the main gallery,
ducked again, and got a vase thrown straight at the head
anyway. Iridescent fragments spattered out, musically
tinkling to the floor in a concerto for broken raku and oro.

"I don't believe you did that to her," Yumi shouted. She
looked nearly in tears, but that didn't lessen the danger
from this sort of temper in her. "If I'd known what you were
up to with Kaoru all this time, I would've stopped you, and
you know it. But for you, of all people, to be giving her
that kind of excuse-- you... you... oh, kisama oro no baka
yo!"

"Yumi, I don't understand," he protested, fending off another
vase. "I broke off with Miss Kaoru for her own protection. I
thought that she and I had both agreed on that. Has she said
any differently to you? Where is she?"

"She's gone."

"What do you mean, gone? Did she try to follow the rest of us
to Okusofodo?"

"No." Tomoe had slipped out of the shared private quarters as
well, looking so tired that Kenshin suspected her of only
having just been woken by the crashes of pottery. Her next
words dispelled that impression, though. "If I'm not
mistaken, Miss Kamiya-Summers attempted to track Jineh to his
lair by herself, sometime yesterday afternoon. She never
returned."

"If Jineh's hurt her--"

Yumi cornered Kenshin and slapped him onto the scattered
shards. "You don't have any right at all to act that way
about her. Not after what she told me."

His own temper could only take so much, but he limited
himself to narrowing his eyes up at her. "Then she ought to
have told you that I never seriously endangered her virtue.
Did she say otherwise?"

"Before she talked to me, I just figured the two of you had
been boinking each other senseless until she got scared and
dumped you, and that would've actually made sense. But you!
Idiot! What the hell were you thinking?" Behind her, Tomoe
was quietly making tea in such a way that suggested she
wouldn't be offering Kenshin any support either. "Oh sure,
it's a waste that you've been wallowing in your unvented
hormones all this time, but I could've lived with that," Yumi
railed on. "It's your choice, okay? But what made you think
it was okay to screw with her mind instead?"

That did it. Kenshin kicked sideways and knocked her down,
then sat on her to prevent any more damage. Coolly, he said,
"If Miss Kaoru didn't make matters sufficiently clear to you,
I chose to abstain from intimacies with her because I love
her and didn't want to put her at further risk. If you are
jealous of her, then I am sorry, but you have no real stake
in this matter."

"The hell I don't." Her response was just as cool, as if her
emotional balance had been restored as soon as she'd lost the
physical one. "You're not listening to me, or even yourself,
are you? I'm pissed at you because of Kaoru. Not because of
you, and not because of me. So you told her you wouldn't have
sex with her because you love her, is that right? Do you have
any idea what kind of implications you've set up for her? So
from now on, she'll think that if anyone does have sex with
her, it must mean they don't love her. Not only that, but
that once she does have sex, it'll have to be with someone
she doesn't love. If Tomoe's right about what happened to
Kaoru last night, it's your own damn fault because of that
complex you've set up in her. What are you, a one-person
Catholic school?"

Shocked and bewildered, he stared down at her until Tomoe
knelt beside them with her tray to pour out chrysanthemum
tea. She uncovered a bowl of macadamia-sized sugar crystals
and asked, "One lump or two?"

Kenshin moved to the side, freeing Yumi. "Two, please," he
meekly said, still somewhat stunned.

Tomoe hit him on the head twice, knocking him to the floor
again. He simply lay there for a few minutes, watching the
girls sip tea side by side. "You said that Miss Kaoru went to
look for Jineh," he finally said. "Surely you don't think
he'd offer her any insult of that sort, or that she'd accept
his advances?"

"I'm afraid my readings aren't entirely clear." Tomoe swirled
the last dregs of her cup before inverting it onto a saucer,
then examined the clinging petals and shook her head. "But if
my suspicions are correct, then the immediate danger to her
isn't from Jineh. She met up with Enishi as well, and he's
taken her."

"Where are they now?"

"I don't know. But it's not just a matter of location." After
refilling her cup, Tomoe took a sip before repeating herself
with precise clarity. "Enishi has taken her. If you don't
remember what that means, I certainly do. If she can't escape
on her own, he'll fight with every resource he has to keep
her with him, forever."

Kenshin sat up, seeing the room go dim as his pupils
constricted. "He can't do that. She'll die. Even if he
doesn't mean to kill her, she'll just... wear out."

"We know that, but Nishi-chan never did. And Kaoru sure as
hell doesn't. But at least because of what you told her,
maybe she'll die willingly."

---

Warm water. Nice warm water. Warm and swirly, but not deep
enough to drown herself in. If she could only find something
sharp, she could cut her wrists and let all the pain wash
away. If she'd thought about it earlier, she could've tried
to scratch her way through to the vein with her fingernails,
but now they'd softened up from soaking in the bath for this
long. However long this had been.

A knock at the door. Enishi again? Why was he bothering to
knock, or was it just like asking her earlier if she still
wanted him to stop, so at least he could pretend she might
have any real choice about it? He didn't open the door
immediately, though. After a polite interval, he knocked
again, and kept repeating the pauses between knocks until
finally she gave up and called, "Come in."

He was fully dressed again, at least: glasses, shoes, long
coat, everything he'd been wearing outside last night except
for the sakabatou. He hadn't been wearing that long blue
scarf loosely wrapped around his neck and falling nearly to
the ground on both sides, though. "Kaoru, sweetheart. I need
to step out for a bit. You'll be all right here, won't you?
Need anything to help you sleep?"

"Can I come outside with you?"

"Nasty dangerous world out there. You don't want anything to
do with that n'more. Just stay here where it's snug and safe,
and I'll be back by morning." Having unfolded his bathrobe
from his arm, he draped it loosely over the edge of the tub
before balancing a small battery-powered lamp on the bamboo
pipes to soften the falling gloom of twilight. "You can sleep
wherever you'd like, upstairs or down. Plenty of clothes left
over from Yumi and Tomoe, you know where; 'fraid I don't have
anything fit special to you yet, but in a few days, we'll
see. Bit of a goodbye peck for luck, pretty bluebird?" He
tilted his head at her in a hopeful way, but didn't try to
force a kiss onto her. For some reason, that made her decide
to go ahead and offer him one.

His mouth was as warm as the bathwater and still faintly
fragrant with caramel, but she resisted the fleeting urge to
check if it still tasted that way, too. When she leaned back,
he was smiling again. "Right. Plenty of grub in the kitchen
if you get peckish, too, so I'll be off and away now." As he
turned away, a long black shape strapped across his back
briefly puzzled her until she realized it was his watou. Now
that her brain seemed to be working again, she recognized the
blue scarf-thing, too. It was Tomoe's obi from last night,
and he whisked the ends free of the door as he eased it shut
again when leaving.

-----

Enishi's cheat sheet can be found in _The Tao of Love and
Sex_ by Jolan Chang.