DISCLAIMER: One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda.

~ Mihawk vs. the Romance Novel ~

Mihawk was starting to get irritated. Reading was supposed to be a calm, quiet activity. The little ghost girl apparently never got the memo about that, though. It seemed that Perona couldn't sit still for more than five minutes at a time. However, her frequent changing of position would not have bothered the sharp-eyed swordsman nearly so much if not for the fact that she also audibly reacted to whatever it is that she was reading with alarming regularity. He could have forgiven the occasional gasp or fit of laughter, but the running commentary was absolutely unnecessary and he was so distracted by her antics at this point that he had read the same page six times over without retaining a single word of it. He was seriously considering throwing her out of the room, despite his earlier decree that it was fine for her to stay in the castle's library with him while they both read.

A few moments passed in silence and Mihawk almost started to think that Perona would finally settle down and read quietly, when the brat had another outburst.

"Ugh," she groaned. "Why is her ear a shell? She's not a mermaid. That doesn't make any sense! Why would someone want to lick an ear anyway, whether it's a shell or not? And her reaction to that doesn't seem right, either."

Unlike her previous comments, this one actually caught the swordsman's attention.

"Perona," he called, and she looked up at him, startled.

"Did I say that out loud?" she asked, blood rising to her cheeks in response to this revelation.

At least she had the grace to be embarrassed about it, now that she realized she'd been voicing her thoughts this entire time.

"The 'shell' of one's ear is a way of referring to the outer part," he explained, vaguely gesturing toward his own ear with one hand. It was then that his mind finally caught up with the latter half of what she'd said, and he frowned. "What are you reading, anyway?"

Perona quickly closed the book and hugged it against her chest protectively.

"A romance novel," she muttered, her blush darkening.

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you old enough to be reading that?"

"I'm twenty-three!"

"Ah, pardon me. What I meant was: are you mature enough to be reading that?"

"I know about... sex... and stuff!" she protested, her hesitation to say the word making her inexperience in the matter so very obvious to him. "But I still don't think having your ear licked sounds like it would feel good!"

"Do you want to find out?" Mihawk asked.

Perona just stared at him for a long moment.

"What?" she asked, nonplussed.

"How it feels," he clarified.

He could practically see the gears turning in her head as she puzzled out his meaning. He knew the exact moment that she realized what he was offering by the way her blush - which had begun to recede somewhat - intensified twofold.

"Well?" he prompted.

She clutched the book more tightly against her chest and nodded slowly.

Mihawk stood up from his chair and closed the distance between them in a few swift strides. Once there, he perched on the arm of the chair that she was sitting in, steadying himself by wrapping one arm around her shoulders. With his free hand, he brushed her hair back away from her face. As he leaned down, she tensed.

"I'll stop," he said softly, "if you don't want to do this."

Perona shivered. Mihawk's deep, sexy voice so close to her ear and his warm breath fanning over her cheek sent a thrill through her in a way that nothing she'd read in a romance novel ever had.

"Yes, do it," she said.

And not a moment later, she felt something warm and damp drag across the top edge of her ear.

"You didn't like it?" Mihawk asked, with an amused chuckle. Even without verbal confirmation, her expression told him that she had not found any enjoyment in that particular action. He would have expected her to gloat about being right, but when she merely adopted a pensive frown, he added, "It's fine if you didn't."

"But she enjoyed it in the book, so doesn't that mean that I should...?"

Mihawk sighed. "And did your romance novel not tell you that it's normal for people to have different tastes when it comes to this sort of thing?"

At this pronouncement, she turned to look at him, narrowly avoiding knocking foreheads with him since they were still so close together. She had nearly forgotten that he still had his arm around her!

All thoughts of what she'd been about to say flew out of her head as she suddenly felt overwhelmed by his proximity. She could kiss him right now if she wanted to (if he would let her), and the action would take very little movement on her part. But... did she want to kiss him?

Her body figured out the answer to that question before her mind caught up with it, her hands reaching out to fist in the fabric of his shirt, her eyes drifting closed as she leaned forward. He allowed her to take the lead, reciprocating her actions with a steady gentle pressure until she finally pulled away.

When he moved to let go of her, however, she clung to him and cried out, "Wait!"

"What for?"

"T-there-" she stammered, and looked away, blushing. "There was another thing in the romance novel... that didn't sound like it would feel good, that... you could demonstrate for me..."

Zoro was lost, as usual, when he stumbled upon a scene he would never have imagined even in his most disturbing dreams. Judging by all the bookshelves, he'd say this room must be the library, not that he knew the castle even had one, much less had he ever been in it before. Such a room's existence was not what drew him up short, however. No, the shocking thing was what the castle's other two occupants were doing inside this room.

Perona was standing with her back against the wall, with Mihawk kneeling in front of her. She had one leg hooked over the warlord's shoulder, and one hand braced against the wall while the other gripped his hair as he-

The ghost princess's eyes fluttered open and she caught sight of the green-haired swordsman staring at her from the doorway.

"Zoro!" she gasped.

Mihawk tensed and started to pull away from her.

"Ah, no! Mihawk, don't stop, I'm almost-" She cut her sentence short as the warlord resumed his actions. Sparing one last bit of attention for the intruder, she snapped, "Zoro, get out!"

In the next instant, Perona's head fell back and her body tensed and spasmed as she reached the peak of her pleasure. After a few long moments, she went limp. She relinquished her grip on her lover's hair and the leg that was locked over his shoulder slid down until her foot was planted firmly on the floor. Her back still pressed against the wall, she slid down into a sitting position.

As Mihawk gathered her into his lap, Perona heard Zoro snarl, "I didn't know you were such a pervert."

"You're calling me a pervert when you're the one who stood there watching us?" Mihawk asked in disbelief.

"Says the dirty old man who was eating out a teenage girl just now!" Zoro snapped, one hand hovering over the hilts of his swords.

"You are the only teenager here," Mihawk replied flatly. "Although she neither looks nor acts like it most of the time, Perona is actually four years older than you." He didn't bother addressing the 'dirty old man' remark, which he dismissed as just Zoro's anger talking.

"Aww, how cute," Perona cooed. "Zoro is trying to protect me~!" Her little ghosts circled around the green-haired swordsman, sticking their tongues out at him. Somehow she found the self-restraint to not do the same.

"As you can see, your concern was misplaced," Mihawk informed his protege. "Now, if you'll excuse us..."

The warlord stood up in one fluid motion, with his lover cradled in his arms, and swept out of the room.

~end~