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Mitsutomoe: Part 3 - Jewels Wept from a Flower

by wombat ::: 04.Apr.2002

To Kenshin, his body felt as if it were vibrating like a plucked samisen string. But if his fingers were trembling as they touched Tomoe's face, she didn't seem to care. Her kiss was even sweeter than before, now that he knew not to fear the small, soft sounds she made. He tasted them slowly, one at a time, pacing himself with deliberate flicks of his tongue across her lips as she pressed closer to him.

He still feared his own reactions, though, and tried to distance himself from them, his mind racing with his pulse. Part of him-- a very definite, demanding part of him-- wanted to skip the preliminaries and go straight to raw instinct, taking her ruthlessly on the bare floor. Some of Kenshin's former comrades in Kyoto had owned various woodcut prints which had held little interest to him before, but which seemed suddenly vivid in memory now. As he wrestled with these thoughts, strangely his apprenticeship with the sword came back to him. Master Hiko had never told him outright where to place his feet or how to strike; he had merely expected Kenshin to learn from example by observing fine nuances of posture, breath, and tension. Surely the same principles could still apply.

And yet deliberate action could only take him so far. He slammed up hard against those limits as Tomoe's hands came up against his chest again, and slid down to the knot in his sash. He froze in place. So did she.

Was she blushing? "I'm cold," she murmured. Keeping her gaze demurely averted, she tucked herself into his lap and folded his kimono closed again around her. His bare skin felt feverish against her, every fine thread in her own kimono seeming to impress its texture into him from the warm pressure of her body behind it. Feeling awkwardly pinioned by his sleeves, he shrugged his arms out so they, too, could hold her with only one layer of cloth between them.

Her neck was bent away from him now, heady with distilled drops of white plum's fragrance. It was the most natural thing in the world to brush the nape clear of the dark fall of her hair, and press his mouth to it. She gave a little shiver, but not from cold. Not unless cold would make her arch up against his hands, so that he had to hold her waist firmly back against him to keep from bursting the warm cocoon of his robe around them both.

Her waist? Surely he could do better than that, judging by what she'd already shown him. He found her robe's neckline by touch, and inside it, the warm curve of her breast, soft and yielding as a New Year's mochi cake in his hand-- except at the center, where a firm-tipped crest swelled and ripened between his fingertips. Her head tilted back against his shoulder, the long pale arc of her throat throbbing in muted gasps, and her whole body tensed and flowed against him. Blindly, she reached up to tangle one hand in his hair, locking them together in place until her grip tightened to the edge of pain, and then fell nervelessly away.

While he waited for her to regain her composure, he tentatively resumed his exploration, not wanting to stop learning her body. The fine bones of her shoulder felt fragile against his cheek, and his hands slid down the delicate latticework of her ribcage to the even more vulnerable softness just below it. He had effortlessly cut men in half at the waist, where there was nothing to stop the sweep of his sword but a few flimsy vertebrae. And now Tomoe lay draped back against him, her spine pressing lightly into his chest like a string of pearls, rounded and priceless. It was more than he deserved.

She was stirring languidly again, her lashes flickering in response to his questioning look, with a hint of one of her rare, beautiful smiles. It was time for him to continue. He untied her sash entirely, pulling her robe out from between them and spreading it across their legs to keep them warm, and she nestled back into his embrace, skin to skin.

So further down, then, to the heart of the mystery. The texture made him think of irises in summer bloom, soft petals curling up and around beneath the weight of warm raindrops, outlined with pollen-furred velvet. And yet there was something else there as well, almost like a plump bumblebee hiding inside, elusive and maddening. As he pursued it, mystified, her eyes flew wide open and she twisted wildly, biting her lip to suppress a scream.

Horrified, he withdrew his hands at once and hovered them awkwardly away from her, afraid even to kiss away the bite-mark from her lips for fear of hurting her more. But she caught hold of his shoulder and braced herself against it to complete her turn, pressing hard against him face to face, her hands, too, finding out the white-hot places that made him cry out helplessly, his back flat against the wall.

By sheer reflex, he fended her off, holding her away until he could catch his breath. "Not this way," he pleaded, hardly knowing himself what he meant. Not in the corner where he slept, but on her futon by the fireside. Not in his stark world of swords hidden in shadow, but hers of bright warmth and comfort, the world he wanted to build and protect for her, with her, forever.

She seemed to understand him well enough, her eyes oddly bright as if with tears. Gathering up her fallen robe, she wrapped it loosely around her and slipped under the futon's coverlet, holding it up for him to join her. After years spent sleeping in a swordsman's wary crouch, it felt inexpressibly strange to lie down, fully enveloped in soft padding, but not unpleasantly so. So too the strange luxury of Tomoe's softness stretched against him, less desperately urgent than before, but still insistent, wanting the same thing he wanted. But not yet, he told himself. He still wanted to see and taste everything his fingers had told him of her, and if she could bear the delay, then so could he.

As his mouth followed the path he'd chosen, her wordless response was like the first echoes of birdsong before dawn, muted individual notes like jade bangles ringing together beneath silk. He could see everything now: the tender rosebuds sharp-tipped against the night air but blooming against his tongue; the upturned angle of her arm and throat as she muffled her cries against her wrist to spare him the distress of hearing them; the tidal undulation of her hips against his chest.

A space to breathe, a brief eternity with his head pillowed against her, listening to the sound of waves in the seashell whorl of her navel. And then a return to his interrupted quest, the hunt for the strange treasure she'd hidden from him: the tongue of a bell, the fruit of a houzuki, the seed of a flower....

"Umeboshi," he murmured to himself, surprised. Although less intense, her taste reminded him of fresh umeboshi: an initial salt-tart tang that dissolved into lingering sweetness, and the round, slippery pit rising firm through the tender dusky-rose flesh, ready to be sucked clean.

He would never have believed he'd need all his strength to hold her down, though by this time his strength was already divided against itself, half-willing to let her overthrow him to be ravished without mercy. And yet somehow he persevered until she stopped struggling, collapsing back into the bedding, exhausted and silent. He crawled back up to her shoulder, bringing the coverlet with him, and lay on his elbow at her side as her flushed, dewy face faded pale again.

Her lids fluttered open again to watch him watching her. "What happens now?" she whispered. While he tried to think of an answer, she curled against him, the smooth, luscious skin of her inner thigh sliding up and over his legs. He groaned at the silken pressure. Had he waited long enough, or too long? Did she still have the strength to go on? Did he?

Invisible under the covers, her hands found the heart of the flame, guiding it to the silk lantern whose incense was still fresh in his mouth. Further thoughts were impossible, any misgivings or concerns lost entirely. Of this part, all he would remember later was rising and falling together with her, as closely joined as the beating wings of a crane, burning, burning into the night as if aloft in the last golden light of sunset.

In the morning, he woke with his head on her pillow. The fragrance of her hair still surrounded him, but the house was empty. When he hastily dressed to seek her out, only Iizuka stood outside the door, waiting with words cold as falling snow, stark as black ink on a white page, all of Kenshin's fleeting joy washing away from him like blood from his sword in the rain.