Author's Introduction:

Hullo one and all! This is an idea that's been in the making for a long time. Hope you all enjoy!

&& Palladium Devotion &&

&& Part One &&

If there was one thing Akashi Seijūrō had learned about being the head of a family and the president of a nationwide conglomerate, it was that time became a tool, a weapon and a chasm. Taking one last look at his desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose and stood with a flourish. A glance at the clock ripped a sigh from his chest before he could restrain it, and he pulled at the tie around his neck. Walking to the door of his home office, he turned off the light and stepped out into the dimly lit hallway.

Holding his suit jacket over one arm, he pulled the glasses from his face and folded them. He crept silently into his private quarters, where he found Yurie curled towards his side of the bed, and laid his things on a nearby chair. Then, the tired and aching man walked to the bedside cradling his wife, and he let his gaze trail over her slumbering features like a man straight out of the desert staring into his reflection in a river.

Moments like this were rare. She was often always up hours before him and, having prepared his clothes and meal for the day, would be well on her way to her part time job as dance instructor at the school of competitive dance she had once attended herself. He could remember every time he had been allowed to just slow down and watch her.

She was soft and warm in the best of ways, righteous and diligent with the best of them, deep and boundless like the ocean, and she was everything beautiful wrapped into one delicate frame. Oh, she could be a spitfire when she choose to be, had a mischief streak about a mile and a half wider than the Great Canyon was long, and she tended to forget the world when something snagged her interest. Yet her flaws only complemented his own, soothing out the sharpness of his corners, and she made the harshness of the sun he embodied bearable.

Now, her long hair spilled out atop the sheets around her in the mimicry of a dark halo, and he sat lightly on the edge of the mattress. His fingers found her face and he brushed aside some of her hair with the back of a knuckle, resting it afterward on her cheek. He tucked each and every sensation into the corners of his heart like a dragon hoarding rhinestones.

She was his synchronized reflection, his perfect offset, the final piece he never knew he needed. For as long as he could remember, he had always been able to silence a room with a single look, but she could throw his entire world off its axis with just a smile, and she was comically unaware of it. Like she did not even know what she could do to him—like she did not know she could literally make or break him.

Her long lashes chose then to flit against his fingertips. Seijūrō turned thoughtful, haunted eyes down to the sleepy pools of love reflecting off of hers, and he was once more reminded. Reminded of just how stunning and breathtaking her eyes were; cream and sugar spun with silk and gold, a bright amber honey coated in caramel and chocolate. They never failed to make him wish he could sink right into her soul, knowing without a doubt that he would be perfectly at home there.

Yurie lifted a hand to her face, laying it over his, and her lips curved into a tired smile. "Seijūrō?" she murmured into his hand even as she nestled closer to the warmth his body provided, "what time is it?"

He twisted his hand in her hold so his palm was pressed to her cheek, and he gently caressed her skin with his thumb. Her eyes drifted shut at the ministration and he smiled. His fingers dropped to a length of her loose hair and he fondly wove it around his index finger, "Sorry for waking you."

"No, no," she shook her head in quick acceptance of the apology, "it's fine. I had meant to wait for you anyway." The avoidance of her question did not escape her, however, and she lifted dark eyes filled with sudden alertness and concern. Swiveling to gather her legs under her, Yurie sat up on her knees beside him and stretched her small hands over his shoulders. "Seijūrō," she murmured softly at the impassive look on his face and rested her cheek against his shoulder, tucking her face against his throat, "Sei, love, what's wrong?"

He would rather rip his own heart from his chest than worry her, but he knew that if he dared withhold it all, she would only seek her answers elsewhere. He lifted the hand wound in her hair to his lips and let it fall loosely back to her side. "It is nothing I cannot handle," he finally settled upon, the words tasting bitter on his tongue.

Yurie smiled sorrowfully at the emotions racing behind his blank expression, and she lifted her hands to his face. Holding his jaw reverently in her palms, she searched his downward facing countenance for the signs of his pain and said in a soft, breathless sigh, "Oh, Seijūrō." She ran her long nails against his cheekbones and stretched her torso up to kiss his jaw, "Won't you tell me?"

He lifted her face and allowed himself but a moment to drown in her eyes. Looking away, he relented, "One of the interns is a little. . . delirious is all." He kept the rest of it tucked away into silence. The last straw had been the very strange poem that sounded oddly like a proposal on the latest bout of paperwork.

"Do I need to come to the office?" Yurie broke his reverie with her low question, her eyes dark with a protective quality. She always took his breath away when she got like this, when she gave him proof that she was not a faultless entity. That she, too, had a streak of stubborn pride bordering on possession just like his. It certainly would not be the first time she had been called in, if for the sole purprose of reaffirming that yes, he was married and quite happily so.

He lowered his hands to her lower back and stretched his hands against the curve of her hips. For a moment, he honestly considered it; the vindictive part of himself wanted nothing more than to show the world just how perfect she was for him. The larger, more sadistic half had other plans, however, so he shook his head. "No, I shall have it resolved by tomorrow afternoon," he promised solemnly into the night.

"Very well," she dipped her head at his decision but refused to submit to his decree, "I shall be called if the situation persists?" He looked deep into the steel resolve in her eyes and knew she would appear regardless of his permission if she so much as suspected its continuation. So he bowed out of that argument with a graceful, dismissive nod. She smiled at him and leaned further into his embrace, "Now, what else is bothering you?" Her slick fingers ran over his arms and keenly catalogued the cords of tension in his muscles, "You would be under the covers with me already if all else was well."

"Nothing," he announced with little room for argument, "It is but a matter of accumulated stress. I have not managed a day off for little over three months, I think it is about time."

Yurie pulled away from him, and he watched her fall back against her pillows. Her hair flowed up on either side of her and she opened her arms, eyes glittering gold in the backlight, "Come here, then, and let me hold you. Let me take care of you for once, Seijūrō."

He stared impassively for some time, body frozen and heart beating faster with every breath. His mind, though, was blissfully numb and he leaned forward. He pushed his weight into a knee he placed against the mattress' edge and loomed over her. "You are much too good to me," he whispered in the stagnant air. He slid an arm under her waist and pulled her towards him, laying her flat against the bed without the pillows to sit her up. Her hair fluttered up in the corner of his vision, glittering like strands of midnight tinsel, and he opened her thighs on either side of his own to pull her closer.

Pulling the tie still around his neck free, he laid it across her eyes and quickly tied it behind her head, dipping to demand in her ear, "Say it again."

He could see her restrain the shiver his infliction had evoked, and she uttered on a gasp, "Seijūrō?" Her eyes flickered against the brilliant red of his tie but their room was dark and the moonlight was streaming in from behind her. She could not see beyond its threads but could feel the chill of his hands reaching for her, playing with each nerve like the master of an instrument.

"Shh," his lips ghosted against her throat, soothing a spot in the dip of her collar. Then his tongue laved a faint bruise into her flesh and his elusive fingers slid under the hem of her dress. She wondered, briefly, of his intentions but he replied to the unasked thought with ease, "Not tonight." Having said so, he could still feel his tenacious grip on his self-control begin to wither at her every reaction to him.

She was most beautiful like this, with her hair splayed behind her, skin aglow with faint light, pink mouth parted with every breath, and her expression lost at her inability to see but so trusting in his hands. This, this, was why he only ever felt steady when he stood above, beside, beneath, behind or before her. This was one of the reasons why he loved her so intensely.

And loved her, he did. Though sometimes, he wondered if that was enough. He did not say it often, his upbringing having seen to that, but she never seemed to be bothered by it. He liked to think she could feel it every time he held her, liked to imagine she could read his heart as well as she could read his mind.

"Seijūrō," the ribbons of her voice interrupted his line of thought, again, and he realized she had felt his reaction to having her warm body flush against his own, "Are you sure you don't want me to . . . ?"

He smiled softly into her shoulder, kissed her there, and pulled her closer still. Rocking down against her, he purred against her warm throat, voice deeper by decibels, "No. No, I just need to hold you." With that, he banished all lust bound thoughts and laid his hands flat against her thighs. His fingers dipped beneath the hem of her sleeping dress and he hefted it higher with every inch of skin sliding against skin.

Her hands landed on his shoulders as his fingers reached the dip and swell of her hip, and he could feel the deceptive strength in them as she pulled him down. Their lips collided in a spark of teeth and tongue, and she held him there with her surprisingly strong arms wrapped about his neck. Her grip shifted to his biceps when he lifted partially away from her. "Seijūrō?" she asked airily, but did not resist when he pulled her arms above her head and held them there by the wrists.

"It's a matter of control," he commanded regally before she could demand an answer, tone low but stolid, "And tonight I need yours." He felt himself fall for her all over again when she went boneless in his grasp. Her body relaxed against his before he had even finished the sentence, and a demented smile slipped over his face. He was glad he had foreseen it and blinded her for the time being. Despite the crazed lust for her, his hands were gentle and smooth when he coaxed her into his orbit.

A flash of white on her hand caught his eye and he stared owlishly at the ring. Some days he pondered whether she knew what kind of man she had married, if she knew what kind of shattered he was. She was always so inexplicably there whenever he needed her and even when he only wanted her. He knew, in all senses of the matter, she deserved better than him, better than she currently had.

She had to have known, he decided, she had probably seen it the first day they had met. She had been so terrified back then, but now he wondered if it had been for him rather than of him. Besides, he considered while he pushed her further into the mattress and held her there with the weight of his own body, Akashi Seijūrō was far too selfish of a man to let her go now that he had gotten ahold of her once.

&& White for Integrity, Red for Intensity, Gold for Ingenuity; Hath the King finally found his Lady? &&

&& Palladium Devotion &&

Thank you all for reading. I really do appreciate you all. If you feel up to sharing what you think, it would be most welcome and kindly received.

~ Betwixted and Bewitched