In the Forests of the Night

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.