Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Twin Souls ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

The bath relaxed every muscle in his aching body. Travel wore more on him than any sword match. Jin allowed the hot waters and steam to envelop every inch of his tired frame before toweling down and redressing. He had perhaps taken twenty minutes, but it seemed an eternity.

 

Upon his return, he found Venom in a simple kimono, holding two small cups of sake, one of which she offered him with a smile. He had never seen her without the cloak disguising her features. Her build, while on a small frame, was sturdy, and her onyx hair met her waist with its length. She had freed it from its ties, and now each lock framed her face with its untamed curls.

 

“You know,” she said as he took the offered cup, “it really will be a shame to kill you tomorrow. You're the first decent man I've ever met. Pity we didn't meet under different circumstances.”

 

Jin sat quietly and took a sip, letting the liquid warm him slowly. “Have you considered,” he said quietly, “that it might be the other way, and I take your life? Is that not a shame?”

 

Venom thought about his question intently for a few moments, finally sitting calmly next to him.

 

“At least if I die, I will be free.”

 

Jin turned to look at her, but she was intently staring into her cup, rolling it back and forth in her hands as her mind rolled over the notion of her life being lost in a gambling fight that was mere hours away.

 

“Perhaps,” she continued, “I'll return to this world in another life and have a better start. Maybe I will have learned something from this time around and next time I might just meet someone like you sooner. I could marry and not have to worry about surviving on my own.”

 

Jin began to realize that the woman before him reminded him of another that had stirred something in his life. Shino. Another unfortunate soul, his feelings for her were somewhere between pity and love, yet a part of his mind constantly questioned still whether or not what made her attractive was her need to be rescued.

 

This situation was different. Shino was relatively helpless. Venom was anything but. All she needed was the confidence to leave this kind of life behind her and the courage to start on a fresh path. If Venom needed rescuing, it was not the same kind Shino needed.

 

His thoughts were returned to the situation before him at the faint sound of her tears. She wiped them away fiercely, realizing that she had let him see her cry. Jin caught her hand and held it gently in one of his own as he caressed the remainder of the wetness away with the other. Her eyes looked down at his lingering touch to her face then back to the concern his held behind simple glasses.

 

Venom leaned forward and gently kissed the ronin soft on his lower lip while he remained motionless. “Thank you,” she whispered.

 

Before she could pull away, he slid his hand from her face to the nape of her neck and brought her to his mouth again. She was what he imagined opium to be, her lips the texture of satin and her body as warm as the steam that relaxed him.

 

He was thankful that she did not refuse his advance. She would've been within her right to give him a quick punch to the face, but she did not fight him. Instead, she surrendered to his embrace, and he felt the tension of her body slowly fade as her tongue met with and began to massage his own.

 

They explored each other without words. Venom undressed him slowly, allowing her fingers and lips to trace each curve of his body and imprint in her memory each muscle and detail. His skin was softer than what she thought it would be, and he was very receptive to her touch.

 

And that touch was like heaven to him. She had started with his neck, gently kissing him along the beating pulse of his jugular and moving down to his shoulders and chest. After moments of this she had found his arousal and kissed that too, even taking it into her mouth briefly before he stopped her.

 

“No,” he said. “You are not my servant. I am yours.”

 

With that, he slid her kimono from her shoulders and gently cupped a breast while burying his own kiss into the nape of her neck. She moaned and arched her head backwards, allowing him more access. He brought his other hand up along the ridge of her spine, pulling her even closer. When his bare chest touched her own, it was like the feeling of pure electricity on his skin.

 

He eased her gently onto the mat beneath them and ran his hands along each curve her body presented. She arched her back and whimpered slightly at his touch, and when he parted her legs, he could see that he had elicited the response he desired. Her womanhood was pink and moist, ready for him to show her what it was to be truly respected as the rare creature he knew her to be.

 

She gasped with pleasure the instant he put his tongue on her. One strong yet soft hand came up to her chest to feel the beating of her heart as his entire mouth engulfed the mound that made her quiver. Never, not even when she had experimented with touching herself in this way, had she known a feeling like this. This man, a man with whom she would fight to the death in the morning, was giving her more ecstasy than she'd ever known.

 

Almost at her threshold, she gave him a look of disappointment when he ceased. He only smiled at her and brought himself above her, kissing her with the taste of her own excitement still on his lips. Jin pushed himself slowly inside her warm, wet folds, earning yet another moan and the feel of her legs as Venom wrapped her strong calves around his waist. Within moments, she had completely surrounded him, and Jin allowed himself to become lost in the newfound addiction that was her body.

 

Moving as one in battle had prepared their bodies for the melding they currently shared. Completely intertwined, they rocked each other in unison, each thrust not carnal in nature, but slow and methodic instead. He held her at the brink, allowing her the time to savor each moment until he could bare it no longer. When he felt himself near climax, he positioned himself just enough and increased his speed only slightly to bring her to an orgasm that made her shudder beneath him as his own came forth within her.

 

He wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders, waiting for the quivers of her body to slow. Her eyes, pools of watery jade, blinked and refocused onto his warm expression. Venom smiled and kissed him, but Jin felt the hot sting of her tears against his cheek as she did so.

 

“It was not my intention to make you cry,” he said, concerned.

 

“Why can't things be different? Why does morning have to come?” she mourned and threw her face into his shoulder.

 

“It doesn't have to be like this,” he said. Waiting for her sobs to subside somewhat, he added, “we can leave. By the time they realize we're not present for the match, we'll be too far gone for them to track us.”

 

Venom pulled away from him and rolled to the side, slipping back into her kimono.

 

“You don't understand,” she protested. “You said yourself that you're in need of money. I spent every last coin I had on you this morning, so I have nothing left. That kind of existence, living on love alone, is nothing more than a fairy tale. I applaud you for trying. You have truly awakened sensations in me that I did not think were possible. And I wish that fate would have dealt us a different hand, but it hasn't. It does have to be this way. I'm sorry.”

 

He laid helpless and vulnerable, a tear of his own forming, as she slid the door to the room open and walked outside where the sunrise was looming on the horizon. The look she parted with was one of intense and pure sorrow.