Remember to Breathe
Remember to Breathe
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***
By
the Dragon’s Daughter
***
Summary:
A reluctant assassin and a former whore, Kenshin and Kaoru have finally stopped
having to run.
***
Disclaimer:
I do not claim any credit for the literary or cinematic works known as Rurouni
Kenshin. I don’t care about the 10% law; I’m telling you I didn’t do it. It’s
all Watsuki-sensei! I just admire his work so much that I use his characters!
***
Passing
into higher forms of desire,
-
(bk. II, ch. 3)
***
The door slammed behind Kaoru as she stumbled into her
apartment. She slumped against the wall adjacent to the front door and fumbled
with the buckles on her evil, malevolent, agony inducing pumps.
Silently, she damned the day she looked through the front
window of Julian Gold. The shoes were no longer beautiful. They were no longer
worth seventy dollars. They were the embodiment of all that was wrong in the
world.
Kaoru left the cursed things on the door mat and vowed to
throw them away or give them to the poor. She would never wear them again.
“I don’t care if wearing comfortable shoes makes people
think I’m a lesbian.” She growled as she unbuttoned her secretary jacket. The
black sheathe skirt she’d picked out that morning may have been office chic,
but now it was just restrictive so she left it draped over the back of the
sofa. The jacket was thrown at the coat rack by the door. It missed, and fell
to floor ignored. Even her brassier annoyed her and was kicked under a chair.
Kaoru stalked into her kitchen wearing only her silk
undershirt, a pair of black satin panties, and her panty hose. She paused to
pull the pins out of her hair and let it fall down her back, free at last.
She opened the refrigerator door and stood there for a long
moment, just absorbing the cold, crisp air the ice box emitted.
The floor creaked under human weight and a soft, sleepy
voice asked from behind her.
“Bad day, honey?”
Kaoru turned around to find her boyfriend leaning against
the doorframe that separated the kitchen from the living room. He had to have
been napping, since she knew he’d only gotten off work an hour before she had.
He wore only a pair of cotton plaid sleeping pants that cinched at the waist
with a drawstring. His hair was unbound and fell down to the small of hack
ack
in a thick curtain of flaming red. His violet eyes were hazed with the remnants
of sleep.
Despite his obvious state of exhaustion, he opened his arms
and beckoned to her.
“You have no idea.” She groaned and stepped into his
embrace.
He must have had a shower before he went to sleep, Kaoru
decided because he smelled strongly of soap and aftershave. She snuggled into
his chest and reveled in the smooth, hard muscles of his arms and shoulders.
“I got fired.” She admitted after allowing herself to be
held for a while. “I punched my boss.” Her voice was muffled by his shoulder,
but Kenshin heard and his eyes narrowed, taking on a golden tinge.
“Did he deserve it?” Kenshin rud.
Kaoru was silent for a moment and he squeezed her a little.
“Kaoru?” he prodded.
“He pinched my bottom on the elevator.” She finally
confessed. Her eyes darkened at the memory of feeling a sharp pain on her
derrière and turning around to find her boss of two years watching her with an
unmistakable leer. “So I punched him.” God it had felt good to see that unmitigated
pervert go down with blood pouring from his nose.
“Son of a bitch…” Kenshin snarled and tipped Kaoru’s head
back. “He knew about me, right?”
Kaoru noddeile ile looking into his eyes. “From the first
day I started there.”
“I can kill him?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
Kaoru wrapped her arms around Kenshin’s neck and looked
beseechingly inis gis golden gaze. “You can’t kill him. I don’t wanu
au
attracting attention again. We’ve finally settled down now. Don’t let one
perverted guy mess that up for us?”
Kenshin tried to avoid her gaze, but she held on and kept
staring at his until he slumped in defeat. “Oh, all right.” He agreed and
suddenly hauled her off her feet and into a hungry kiss. She whimpered against
his mouth but didn’t break away. Instead she opened for him and let him push
her back up against her kitchen wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist and
returned that kiss with a need that matched his own.
The need for air brought them up out of it, but Kenshin ran
his tongue along the instead of her lip before retreating.
“Always” Kaoru agreed breathlessly. That brought a satisfied
smile to her beloved’s angry mouth.
You might never believe that just a few months ago, they had
been on the run together. He had been an assassin for the Yakuza. She heen
een
an instructor for a local Kendo school and had the misfortune of attracting the
attention of one of the ranking men in the Family that employed Kenshin. He man
had kidnapped her and turned her into a prize member of his harem right around
the same time Kenshin decided that he’d had enough of killing for living.
He’d taken her hostage to keep the Family at bay until he
could leave thherehere of their influence. He had planned on abandoning her
before he left
with a ticket back to her hometown. He hadn’t counted on falling for her.
Kaoru could still remember when they’d stopped thinking of
one another as captor and captive. One of the Familmen men had caught up with
them, one who didn’t care about his boss’s fascion won with one little whore. Catching
Kenshin off guard, the man had gotten in a lucky shot and might have actually
killed him if not for Kaoru.
They’d forgotten that she was a trained martial artist.
She’d knocked the man out and tended to Kenshin’s wounds. To this day she
couldn’t say exactly why she hadn’t taken his cash and made a run for it. Maybe
it was because Kenshin had never been unnecessarily cruel to her, unlike the
Family he’d worked for. Perhaps she felt she owed it to him for getting her
out. Call it women’s intuition. Captor-Captive Association
Syndrome. Whatever.
They’d left
together and had gone through
before ending up in
Yakuza showed no further interest in their whereabouts and the New York
Family’s didn’t care about them one way or the other, save they kept their
noses clean.
They were home free, emphasis on ‘home’.
Kaoru had gotten a job as a calnternter telephone operator
while Kenshin did odd construction jobs around the city. They were building up
capital to start a Dojo in
for Kaoru. However, gs lgs looked bad now that Kaoru had lost her job.
For>Fortunately, Kenshin had something in mind to distract her
with.
He carried her out of the kitchen and into the darkened
bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind him and laid her onto the dark sheets
of their bed with exquisite care. He lowered himself down next to her and ran
his hand up along her body, starting at her knees and slowly coming up to the
flat muscles of her belly where his finger slid underneath her shirt.
Kaoru arched her back as he drew her shirt up the length of
her torso. As his fingertips traced a path through the hollow between her
breasts, her shirt bunched up beneath her arms, causing her to have to sit up
so that he could finish undressing her.
“Beautiful…” he murmured as he saw her chest uncovered. He
dropped his head down to kiss the perfumed flesh there. Kaoru leaned her head
back and moaned in the long and husky way that drove him mad.
Sure enough, Kenshin’s muscles trembled under her fingers.
She sensed him battle with his lust for control and eventually win. She allowed
herself a miniature pout that he couldn’t see, but shrugged it off. There’d be
time for that later.
cla class=MsoNormal>Instead she thrust her fingers into his hair and ran the
length of it through them. Kenshin laughed against her stomach, but continued
working his way down her body, showering her bared flesh with butterfly kisses.
When he reached the edge of her pantyhose, Kaoru lifted her
hips helpfully, so that he could pull them .
He was impatient that night, and pulled the thin garment
straight down her legs, taking theck lck lace panties along with them. He sat
back and devoured her long, slender form with hit hot amber gaze.
Kaoru blushed because she knew exactly what was running
through his head right now. He said it often enough. ‘This is my woman. This is
the only woman I want. She is mine.’
clasclass=MsoNormal>
She looked up at him and caught his gaze. “No fair.” She purred
and sat up against him. Her fingers slipped into the waist of his pants.
“You’re still wearing clothes.” She winked at him. “Careful or I might start
getting shy, being the only one naked.”
The heat in Kenshin’s eyes intensified and he flipped over onto
his back. “If you want them off, you’re going to have to take them off.” He
invited her and tilted his hips up. “Quick, before that shyness starts to set
in.”
Kaoru grinned wickedly and was pleased to see him swallow a
bit.
She both regretted and didn’t regret comicoming to Kenshin’s
bed as a virgin. On the one hand, she would have loved learning about the
pleasures of the flesh from him rather than the Yakuza who’d stolen her from
her home. On the other, she had also learned a great many ways to pleasure a
man from the other girls in the harem. She loved being able to reduce Kenshin
into a ravening beast, but she stilled wished he’d been her first instead of
just the last and best.
Carefully, she straddled his legs, setting her knees a
little bit below his so that her face with level with thestbastband of his
pants. Keeping her eyes trained on his she lowered her mouth down to the taught
skin of his stomach and laid a slow kiss there before darting her tongue along
the top edge of his pants.
“Ka-aorruuuu!” he drew out her
name on a warning growl. “No cock-teasing.”
Kaoru pouted at him. “You know I never tease, I always pay
up exactly what I promise.” She caught the ties of his pants between her teeth
and slowly pulled the knot free. The pants slipped down a half inch, and Kaoru
laid another kiss on the newly bared flesh. He was aroused underneath the
cotton and she could feel the tip of his flesh brush against her collarbone.
She tugged the pants down in tiny bursts that seemed to make
no difference, but soon revealed him to her in his full glory. Cock-tease or
not, she always liked to make sure he was completely interested before she got
down to business.
Kenshin groaned as Kaoru angled the trail of her kisses
around his member and down to that wonderfully sensitive place just below his
scrotum. He gasped as she flicked her tongue over it and gave him a playful
nibble. Satisfied that she had him where
she wanted him, she drew her tongue up between his balls in an excruciatingly
slow arc that had him trembling before she moved up to her true goal. She
didn’t get much further than an initial lick along the length of him before
side him so that he could pin her underneath him.
Kaoru opened her mouth to his demanding kiss and threw her
arms around his neck as he slid an arm under her thigh, cupping her buttock in
his hand, and spread her open.
“Are you ready?” he breathed against her neck and she could
only nod, breathless with anticipation. Making love with Kenshin when he was
this possessive was a bit like falling off a cliff; you didn’t stop, going
faster and faster, until the explosive end. And, like falling from great
distance, it was possible to suffocate before you hit bottom.
Then he was in her, piercing her with one massive thrust. She
gasped as he stilled for one eternal instant to allow her to adjust to him and
make sure she was ready. At her encgingging nod, he took her.
She barely had enough presence of mind to wrap her legs around
his hips in order to draw as much of that heavenly length inside her as
possible. He pounded into her as though they’d been apart for months rather
than a few hours. For her part, Kaoru felt as though it had been that long and
held him as close as she could.
Someone was crying out in gasping, interrupted bursts, which
annoyed Kaoru until she realized it was her own voice she was hearing,
interspersed by Kenshin’s grunts of desire.
Fire began to kindle somewhere deep in her stomach as, if it
were possible, Kenshin’s rhythm sped up and became more desperate. Electricity
shot through her nervous system, causing Kaoru’s screams to escalate up and out
of her range until she was sure she’d bring down the ceiling. That fire
intensified to such heat that it should have incinerated them both before
exploding into a supernova of rapture.
Ecstasy crashed over and through them, like a tsunami. Kaoru
was vaguely aware of hearing Kenshin cry out her name and whispering his in
return.
They collapsed back onto the mattress in a pile of spent
desire. Kenshin let his head drop down against her shoulder and stayed there,
only moving his arm to rest possessively around her waist.
Kaoru would have liked to turn into his embrace, but she
seriously doubted that she had a functioning muscle left in her body. It was so
tempting to just lay there and drift off into satiated…
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
They both sat up as the distinctive sound of a broom handle
hitting the ceiling below them startled them out of the afterglow.
“I think we woke up the neighbors.” Kenshin observed in
surprise, looking at Kaoru with his huge innocent violet eyes.
Kaoru blinked at him and then began to giggle. The giggle
became a laugh that infected Kenshin and soon they were curled up together in a
helpless knot of mirth. Kaoru wrapped her arms around the love of her life and
he did the same.
Who cared if she lost her job? Who cared if that Dojo never
got built?
She had everything she needed right in her arms.
*fin