Three

THREE

Chapter 7

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Believe it or not, I\'ve finally found time to continue this fic. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin or any of the characters created by Nobuhiro Watsuki.

I also do not profit from this story in any way other than the joy of hearing from you, dear reader, so if you like this story, please review!

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Kaoru sighed contentedly and scooted closer to Kenshin, who was sprawled on the floor next to her, already half asleep. He murmured something soft and incoherent as she settled against him, a faint smile pushing at the corners of his lips. Not the sad rurouni smile, or the grim smile that sometimes twisted his face when he was Battousai. A real smile. Kaoru found herself smiling back, even though she knew he couldn\'t see it

I made the right decision.

Saitou laid down on her other side, pressing the slick, muscled length of his body against her back, his thighs cradling her bottom. Kaoru stiffened involuntarily, forced herself into stillness as soon as she realized what she\'d done. Saitou said nothing, although she was sure that he\'d noticed. Did I just offend him? I should say something. But... what? \'Thank you\' seemed a little too polite for the circumstances. And \'Sorry\' would mean admitting that she\'d practically flinched when he\'d touched her. None of Megumi\'s little educational talks had covered a situation quite like this...

Saitou chuckled softly, placing one hand on Kaoru\'s waist and stroking upward until the fingers of his hand curled around the underside of her breast. In spite of her exhaustion, Kaoru felt her nipples hardening.

\"Still want to kill me, Tanuki?\"

Did she? \"Maybe. A little.\"

Saitou\'s grin broadened, and he leaned forward to kiss the side of her neck, almost affectionately.

I must be dreaming, Kaoru told herself as she let her eyes slide shut again, and relaxed into sleep.

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In the dream, she was searching for Kenshin, who had dressed and left the room without a word. But the dojo had become a maze of dimly-lit corridors and unfamiliar rooms, and now she was lost. She couldn\'t find Kenshin. She couldn\'t find her way out of the maze. She couldn\'t even find her way back to the room where she\'d left Saitou, sleeping.

\"Kenshin!\" She called out to him until her throat was tight and raw. She walked, then ran, deeper into the tangled labyrinth that had swallowed him. The polished wooden floor became softer, more flexible with each footstep, and the harder she ran, the deeper her feet seemed to sink into the spongy surface.

Where had he gone? \"Kenshin!\"

She was barely moving. The floor sucked at her ankles like mud, as if it were trying to keep her from finding him. \"KENSHIN!\"

And then Kenshin was there, just out of reach. He was so beautiful, his hair still disheveled by Saitou\'s rough hands, his cheeks stained pink with the memory of passion...

\"I\'m caught,\" she began, but he interrupted her.

\"I\'m sorry, Kaoru-dono,\" he said. \"You\'re not the person I thought you were.\"

He began to fade, blurring into insubstantiality. Or were the tears smearing her vision? Her body was too heavy to be supported, and she was sinking. She wanted to call out to Kenshin -- but she knew he wouldn\'t be able to rescue her.

Kaoru exhaled forcefully. She wasn\'t the person that Kenshin had thought she was. I\'m not even the person that I thought I was. She was still sinking, but she wasn\'t as frightened as she\'d been a moment ago. It would be so easy to stop, to let go of the panic, to accept her fate as inevitable. Why do I have to keep chasing him?

She relaxed and allowed the darkness to devour her.

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Kaoru was floating, and she couldn\'t seem to open her eyes. A wave of pleasure washed over her, mixing with the residue of anxiety and frustration that her dream had left behind. She heard someone breathing -- panting -- and as she slowly came awake, she realized it was her. She was lying on her back, arms flung over her head, legs splayed, her toes clutching and releasing the empty air. Kaoru tried to sit up, but callused hands clasped her thighs, pinning her to the floor.

\"Kenshin?\"

\"Guess again, Tanuki.\" The gentle pressure of his hands on her thighs shifted, and a sudden flutter of movement between her legs made her gasp. His tongue.

Kaoru tried to open her eyes again, and this time she was aware enough to notice the light pressure of silk against her eyelids. A blindfold. She tried to bring her hands down to her face, to pull the blindfold down, but they were bound together -- more silk, wound around her wrists. She strained, attempting to jerk her hands loose, but they were tied securely. Where did Saitou get the strips of cloth he\'d used to restrain her? Does Kenshin secretly keep such things hidden here for his trysts with Saitou?

Even after all we\'ve been through, how much do I really know about Kenshin?

Saitou\'s tongue moved again, stroking her in a slow, stubborn rhythm. Kaoru swallowed hard, stifling the groan that was building in the back of her throat. Was Kenshin still in the room? Was he watching? She flushed, more self-conscious than ever. It was one thing for the three of them to... to...

But she didn\'t know how Kenshin would feel about her being alone with Saitou.

She thought she heard a noise to her left -- Kenshin, stirring in his sleep? -- but just at that moment, Saitou moaned, and she couldn\'t tell whether she\'d imagined the sound or not. Saitou wriggled his tongue, a flittering motion, and she squirmed wildly.

\"Kenshin?\" Half of her hoped that she\'d woken him, the other half hoped she hadn\'t.

Saitou pulled back, and the chill of the evening air on her slick flesh made her shiver. \"Asleep,\" he said curtly.

\"What if... Kenshin wakes up?\"

\"Worried that he won\'t approve?\" She could hear the smirk in Saitou\'s voice, and she found herself imagining the wicked curve of his lips as he ran his hands over the smoothness of her stomach. \"If you don\'t want him to wake up, you\'d better be quiet.\"

Not good. \"Untie me,\" Kaoru hissed.

\"Let\'s play a game.\" Saitou circled his arms under her knees, around her waist, and he lifted her, the muscles in his chest tensing with the effort. He took a few steps, then set her down on the floor, feet first, so that she was standing upright. Her legs were wobbly, and she had to take a step backwards to keep her balance. A wall, behind her.

\"You do your best to be quiet.\"

Saitou\'s hands closed over her wrists, lifting her bound hands over her head. The sound of fabric sliding over wood -- Kaoru realized that he was tying her wrists to one of the slats in the window. She tried to yank them away before he could finish, but he\'d already secured the knot. He\'s obviously had a lot of practice at this.

\"And I...\"

She felt the warmth of Saitou\'s breath gliding over the skin of her cheek, shivered at the softness of his lips as they grazed the rim of her ear.

\"...I\'m going to see if I can wake Kenshin up by making you scream my name.\"

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Kaoru was sobbing, tears of exquisite frustration plastering the silk blindfold to the tops of her cheeks. It seemed like she\'d been here for hours: back pressed flat against the cool planks of the wooden wall, legs wrapped around Saitou\'s waist, Saitou\'s hands locked on her hips, controlling every movement she tried to make.

She was drowning in sensation. The taste of Saitou\'s sweat on her lips, salty and earthy. The smell of her own excitement, spreading outward from her center, filling the room. The sound of Saitou\'s breath, catching every so often as if he was pushing something heavy away from him, something that got heavier each time it returned. The fullness of Saitou inside her, steady, controlled, keeping her on the edge of ecstasy without relief.

Her arms ached from being tied over her head, her thighs were trembling from the effort of trying to draw him into her more deeply, the muscles of her throat were sore from swallowing her screams as he pushed into her with excruciating deliberation. Kaoru writhed, arched her back, thrust her pelvis forward, upward. No matter what she tried, he controlled her movements so that she felt only what he wanted her to.

\"Saitou,\" she begged. She\'d managed to keep her voice low, although she could no longer drag it down into a whisper. She\'d been silent at first, but as she grew more excited, he\'d drawn sighs, then gasps, then soft whimpers from her with his hands, his mouth, his movements. He knew exactly how to touch her -- tickling her here, along the line of her collarbone; licking her there, at the pulse in the base of her throat; sucking gently at her upper lip in time with the steady rhythm of his movements.

When she said his name, Saitou stopped moving completely, and that was even worse. \"You know what I want, Tanuki.\" He nibbled around the rim of her ear, from the lobe up to the top. The tremor in her belly intensified: Kaoru moaned, much more loudly than she\'d meant to. Saitou rewarded her for her lapse of control with a deep kiss, nudging her lips apart with his own to allow the flicker of his tongue against hers. He tasted like her -- musky, salty, something else that she had no word for.

The rush of pleasure, after so much frustration, shattered Kaoru\'s determination to keep quiet. She couldn\'t stand it any longer. Her experiences with Kenshin had always been gentle: Kenshin would explore her body affectionately, lovingly, bringing her to one climax after another with soft caresses and deep, languid kisses. She\'d never been tortured like this, never been brought to a state of near-frenzy and made to wait, to beg for completion.

Kenshin. Was he still asleep? Or had they woken him? If he was awake, why hadn\'t he said something? Why hadn\'t he joined them? Could he be watching her right now in silent horror as Saitou made love to her? Or was he there at all? She had a fuzzy memory of him dressing, leaving. That was a dream. Wasn\'t it? Maybe he\'d left the room while she was sleeping, and Saitou hadn\'t told her, using the pretext of Kenshin\'s supposed presence to manipulate her into playing this twisted game.

If her hands had been free, she would have raked her nails across the slick plane of Saitou\'s chest, scored the flesh of his shoulders and back in revenge -- for prodding Kenshin into revealing the truth, for tempting her to put herself between the two men, for playing with her now as if she were a toy constructed expressly to satisfy his own desires. The pulsing of her anger fed the excitement that was already burning through her. She was angry with Kenshin too, angry that he\'d withheld so much of himself from her, that he\'d allowed to her to be put into this awkward situation.

And she was angry at herself. She\'d let Kenshin decide what their relationship should be, always waiting for him to say what he wanted. But she was tired of being careful, always worrying that if she asked too much, Kenshin would leave her. If he loved her, wouldn\'t he want to stay with her? And if he didn\'t love her, wouldn\'t it be better for him to go? Why had she let her uncertainty and inexperience keep her from asking for what she wanted?

Not that it would have occurred to me to ask for this...

A bolt of intense pleasure pulled her back into her body -- Saitou\'s lips encircling her nipple, his tongue swirling slickly around the engorged tip. When she gasped, he suckled harder, his teeth grazing the erect nub.

\"Please...\" Kaoru abandoned all efforts to be quiet. All she wanted was to feel him moving into her again, to feel the heat building in her center, to feel it flowing outward to fill the rest of her body. \"Let me move.\"

Surprisingly, Saitou loosened his grip on her hips, sliding his hands around to cup her bottom. Kaoru flexed her legs, arching the small of her back to pull him in as deep as she could, sighing happily as his hip bones nudged against the insides of her thighs. Saitou\'s breathing became rougher, and she realized he was at the edge of his control. His fingers dug into the flesh of her buttocks so sharply she was sure she\'d have bruises later.

Kaoru tipped her head forward, searching until her lips encountered the warmth of his shoulder. Saitou made no response.

He\'s waiting to see what I\'ll do, Kaoru realized

Kaoru grinned and sank her teeth into his shoulder, the way he\'d bitten Kenshin earlier. Saitou grunted, a sound somewhere between surprise and pain; he shuddered, his cock twitching inside her. Then he surged into her fiercely, holding nothing back.

Finally.

She was dizzy, she was falling, she was clinging to Saitou as if he were the only solid thing in the world. She bit him again, nipping at the flesh just beneath his collarbone, sucking at the tiny indentations her teeth left on his skin. Kaoru rubbed herself against the tautness of his body, rocked her hips to match his rhythm, demanded more.

She ached everywhere, her body racked by a roiling heat that refused to be contained. Kaoru screamed Saitou\'s name as the energy slammed through her, overflowing the boundaries of her body, leaving her trembling and exultant. Saitou stiffened beneath her, his movements becoming frantic, and he snarled, answering her climax with his own.

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The next thing she knew, the blindfold was gone. Kaoru was sandwiched between the wall and a smirking Saitou. She was surprised to realize that she no longer found the smirk infuriating. It was just...Saitou.

One of the floorboards behind Saitou squeaked. Peeking over Saitou\'s shoulder, Kaoru saw Kenshin sitting crosslegged, his pale, lean body striped by fat slabs of glowing moonlight. Kenshin was staring at her -- no, at them -- as if entranced.

How much did he see?

Why doesn\'t he say something?

What is he thinking?

Does he hate me? Does he think I\'m a... that I\'m...

\"Oro, Kaoru,\" Kenshin interrupted her panicked thoughts, his eyes shining with an emotion she didn\'t understand. His voice was low, husky, something between a whisper and the growl of a hungry beast. \"That was beautiful.\"

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Hi, everyone!

Sorry to have taken so long to update... Unfortunately, due to the crash at aff.net, all reviews of this story have disappeared, so I can\'t respond individually to those of you who reviewed chapter 6. My apologies, and many thanks to you all for your encouragement and helpful comments on this story!

This is the penultimate chapter; there\'s one more to go, hopefully to be completed in the next few weeks.

As always, reviews make my day -- both the positive comments and the suggestions for improvement (characterization problems, awkward wording, unwieldy scene structure, or anything else you notice).

Take care, and best wishes for 2005!

Kalli