Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Chapter 1: A request.
They were in the middle of the Fourth Ninja World War and everyone was too busy dealing with the enemy or recovering the wounded from the battlefields. Looking around the cave that was only lit by the dim light of a small fire, Sakura wondered again why they were lying there side by side in a sleeping bag instead of working on some battle strategy with Shikamaru and Kakashi or healing wounded shinobis next to Shizune.
"Sakura-chan." The whispered voice of Naruto made her dispel the thoughts that made her distant when all she wanted was to be closer to him.
She turned the face to stare the blue eyes that were lit by the faint light of the fire as he looked to her with a affection she knew that did not deserve.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you to run away with me tonight." Naruto said in an obviously nervous voice and gave a small laugh to disguise the obvious nervousness in his voice.
"Don't apologize, Naruto." She whispered back and turned her body so that she was facing him. "I want to be here tonight." She sighed before continuing. "You're right, we don't know what tomorrow will bring us on the battlefield and I'm really happy you chose to spend your time with me."
"I always want to be with you, Sakura-chan." He answered before he could stop himself and felt the eyes widen at the realization of what he had said. Over the years he stopped being so insistent in his onslaught on Sakura. He had long ago accepted that she would never match his feelings and having her alongside him like a friend or battle-mate was enough after that realization.
She stared to him for a few seconds and he was surprised to see a smile adorn her beautiful lips before she reached out and pulled a few strands of blond hair out of his forehead. "I always want to be with you, too." She said with a sincerity that made him feel the heart beat faster than it should.
She turned and looked at the ceiling of the little stone cave they chose to hide from the others that night. "Naruto... When I said that I loved you that day when we went out to hunt Sasuke, I was telling the truth." She swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat for a reason she did not know. "Nobody believed me, not even you and I know everyone thought I wanted to manipulate you to stop you from going to Sasuke, but I didn't lie."
Naruto looked at her fixedly and felt all the air leave his lungs to see how she was telling the truth but he feared that was not exactly what he wanted to hear. He also did not miss the way she dropped the honorific she always wore affectionately when she mentioned Sasuke.
She went on. "I don't know when I realized that my love for you was strong enough to make me choose to kill Sasuke if it meant protecting you." She gave a weak laugh. "I'll always love Sasuke-kun."
He felt the jaw clench when he saw that the honorific had returned and how she spoke so tenderly again.
"And I'll always love you." She turned to stare him and he felt an almost uncontrollable desire to touch her.
"Sakura-chan..." He murmured.
"No." She stopped him from speaking and put a finger over his lips for a few seconds and he felt the lips burn where she had touched. "I know I'll never deserve the love you feel for me and I've accepted it for some time, now." He saw a few tears accumulate in her green eyes and felt a tightness in his chest, but she did not stop talking. "You deserve someone who is completely devoted to you, someone who has loved you for all the life, someone better than me."
Naruto frowned with annoyance invading him when he heard her to depreciate herself. Before he could say anything, he felt Sakura's fingers caressing his cheek and she approached him. "I can never love you like you deserve, Naruto. And you deserve all the love in the world." She smiled genuinely. "You deserve the world, Naruto."
"What are you talking about." He asked really confused and angry but did not have the strength to move away from her affection, he admitted to himself that was too good to let go. "I don't care that it's little... This love you speak, I mean."
She laughed humorlessly and continued stroking his face, after a few seconds allowed her fingers to reach his hair and lay there, without guilt. "Hinata loves you." She whispered as if she were telling a secret. "I was stupid for never realizing it before, but she loves you so much." She sighed and took the hand away. "She deserves you and you deserve the love she can give you."
"Coward." Naruto's deep voice echoed through the cave.
Sakura turned her neck abruptly to face him and was surprised to see some anger on his face. "What?" She asked to make sure she had heard right.
"You're a coward, Sakura-chan." He sat up abruptly and looked to her without blinking. "You're afraid to take on the feelings that are sprouting up in you and you're using that ridiculous excuse that I deserve more, to get away."
She sat up to face him more closely and felt a blind rage invading her by the tone he used with her. "I didn't-" She paused to choose the next words she would say. "I'm not geting away from anything, I admit that I love you, you ungrateful idiot." She snorted irritably. "I know you'll be happier without me, that's being altruistic."
"That's being cowardly." He repeated in a calm tone this time.
"I'm not a coward, Naruto." She snapped angrily at inches from his face.
"Proof." He said defiantly in his voice, hoping she would say something that would convince him, but he did not expect what came next.
He felt her lips rest on his and gasped in surprise, falling over the sleeping bag where they were. Sakura fell on him but did not move. She was determined to prove to him that in making the decision to give him up that he had the love he really deserved in Hinata's arms was to be altruistic and not cowardly.
But when she heard him moan under her and open his mouth to deepen that kiss that should never have happened first, she realized that she was not being cowardly or altruistic, she was being completely selfish because all she could think was that she did not want to give up him for someone that really deserved.
She knew that even if by some miracle Sasuke returned to Konoha he would never love her back and Naruto loved her so long as she remembered, even if she denied it until Sai had the nerve to said in her face. Here she was, falling into Naruto's embrace after telling herself innumerable times that she did not deserve him.
Naruto's tongue explored inside her mouth and she felt good about it, even though deep in her mind everything screamed for her to move away and run. When the awkward kiss finally fit and they reached a synchronized rhythm, she relaxed on his arms.
A while later she drew back to breathe and touched her forehead over his, realizing for the first time that they were in too much comfort for two people who were just friends. Her legs were wrapped around his waist and one arm of him was firmly fastening her waist while his other hand was tangled in her pink hair.
They cowered for a few seconds before he had the courage to break the silence. "What was this?" He asked breathlessly.
"That was me proving I wasn't a coward." She said petulantly but he did not lose the blush that graced her cheeks.
"Point taken." He said with a smile before lowering her head toward his again.
"Wait." She screamed, putting the hands on his chest. "I need to get back to the camp."
"Coward." He murmured with an arrogant smile.
Sakura narrowed the eyes to him and knew he was playing with her, but she was too lost in the brightness of his blue eyes to care. Taking his face between her hands, she kissed him again, catching him by surprise.
After a few minutes Sakura felt Naruto's fingers tightening on her thighs, almost painfully, but she did not feel like complaining, then was surprised when he turned them over and pinned her down, staying over her. He parted his lips from hers and looked into her eyes with something she had never seen before.
He spread kisses over her cheeks before looking to her again. "I never wanted anyone but you." He whispered over her lips as he stared at her with that look she would kill to find out what it meant. "No matter what you say, I'll not want anyone but you."
"Naruto." She whispered back, feeling her heart heat up with a feeling she only felt once in her life, when Tsunade took her into her care, willing to teach her when all the members of her old team left her behind. It was acceptance.
"If you want to be mine, I'll make you mine." He said with closed eyes and a voice that begged.
"Naruto, I did not-" She said with obvious uncertainty.
"Don't be a coward." He said as he opened the eyes to face her again.
She felt breathless from the warmth in his eyes. "I want to be yours, Naruto." She gave up complacently, realizing that perhaps this was the only chance in her life to be able to love someone who would love her back with more intensity than she could ever want.
A possessive grunt escaped his lips before he plunged into her mouth again and Sakura found what she saw reflected in his eyes, was desire.
She allowed herself to be led by him in what appeared to be a descent into an abyss of lust. Every sigh that left his lips made her feel hot everywhere and all she could think was that she really wanted to be there, wrapped in his arms, being loved by him. All thoughts about Sasuke or about the war disappeared completely making her feel light.
Naruto was ecstatic, for a moment he thought it might be a genjutsu or a very realistic dream he used to have when he was thirteen. If he stopped lying to himself, he would admit that he had a dream of those last week and that Sakura had always been in his mind, things got worse when he came back from training with Jiraya and found that Sakura had become even more beautiful than he remembered.
Having her beneath him, one of her legs hooked on his hip and her hands clutching at his hair as if her life would be over if she let go, he felt in one of his master's novels and mourned for thinking about it when he felt the own body reacting vividly to that situation.
He slid his hand over the tight black blouse she wore and he thought it was amazing on her. When Sakura gave a grunt that was muffled by his mouth, he thought maybe she was going to punch him, sent him straight to Suna.
"Naruto, you're going too far." Sakura managed to say in between sighs as she escaped his lips.
"You said you would be mine." She heard Naruto respond in a husky voice that she had never heard from him before and she would never say it out loud, but that voice sent chills all over her body.
She thought of retorting and saying something clever that would make him leave her, but a darker part of her mind, which she thought had disappeared in her genin times, told her to get lost in him only that night, because there might not have been tomorrow for them. Hearing that irritatingly persistent voice, she stopped struggling and gave in.
When Sakura melted into his embrace he allowed himself to lose control he had been holding ever since she had kissed him for the first time. He spread kisses down her neck and stroked her willingly to show how much he thought she was beautiful in his eyes.
He kissed her forehead, then the green eyes that were closed and tightened by the sensations he was making her have. When she smiled to him, he knew it was that smile was the first thing he wanted to see the next morning.
Sakura got lost in his touches and allowed herself to be loved for the first time and she decided it was good and she would not regret it. When all the clothes disappeared and he looked at her as if she were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen she felt the face warm, but did not cover herself, she liked the way he looked to her and at that moment realized that it was that look that she wanted to receive every day for the rest of her life.
Stifled gasps and groans echoed through the walls of the cave, the fire was almost dead but they did not care because the warmth of each other's bodies was enough to warm them. He growled possessively each time he drew closer to her and she sighed in his ear sending shivers down where he never thought he could feel. That night he loved the only woman he had wanted all his life and she loved him back, proving to him that she really was not a coward as he'd said.
The next morning came too fast. Naruto covered the eyes with a arm to keep the sun's rays from burning his retinas. "Turn off that light." He grunted sleepily.
"Turn off you, you lazy bastard." Sakura's hoarse voice echoed in his ears making him smile. When the realization that voice was not the fruit of his very fertile imagination, he sat abruptly.
Sakura felt the comforting pillow beneath her stirring and wanted to punch it hard enough to keep it quiet, in her sleepy state she did not realize that pillows did not move until she was pushed to a hard floor because of an abrupt movement of the pillow naughty.
"What the hell-" She screamed angrily and opened the eyes to see Naruto sitting next to her with his hair going in every possible direction over that windblown head of him. "Oh." She mumbled when all the images of last night flooded her mind like a river, making her feel the cheeks warm with a little shame, reminding her that she still had some modesty left over from last night.
"Good Morning." Naruto's husky, sleepy voice took her out of the torpor state she was in and she realized that his eyes were focused somewhere on her body.
She looked down and realized she was naked. "Perverted." She screamed, tapping his head weakly and taking the discarded blouse on the floor of the cave.
"You didn't call me that yesterday." He said with obvious amusement swimming in his husky voice and Sakura tried and failed miserably to contain the smile that wanted to spice up her lips.
She threw his shirt over for him to dress, but he tossed it back to the floor and ripped off her blouse too, sending it in the same direction. He laid on the sleeping bag and pulled Sakura to lay on his chest again. "Just five more minutes." He murmured lazily.
"We don't have five minutes." She replied, reminding herself more than he, that they were still at war and outside that cave was a battlefield, but she did not make a move to escape his arms.
"When we win the war, marry me, Sakura?" He asked as he breathed into her soft hair, inhaling the delicious smell she emanated. He wondered how she could smell so good even in the midst of a war.
She looked up to face him. "No more, Sakura-chan?" She mocked and he smiled to her.
"Marry me, Sakura-chan." He repeated.
"We only have 17." She grunted but did not want to reject him completely. She was a little surprised at the sudden propose, but coming from Naruto she would have expected it after last night.
"Then, marry me when you make 18." He insisted and she laughed.
"Now there have been three marriage's propose in less than five minutes, that must be some record." She bit the lower lip and looked into the blue eyes that had not stopped admiring her since they woke up.
"I don't want to risk losing you." He ran the hands through his disheveled blond hair and Sakura realized he was a little more frustrated than he wanted to look. "When Sasuke comes back-"
"If Sasuke comes back." She interrupted him. "He's not going to stay in Konoha. You and I both know that." She went on. "And how can I let you become a Hokage without keeping my eyes in you all the time." She smiled slightly to him.
His eyes widened with that last part. "Is that a yes?" He sat up abruptly, bringing her into his lap, making them realize again them scarcity of clothing.
"Win this war." She kissed him on the cheek. "Take me Home." She kissed the other cheek. "So, when we're mature enough I'll be your wife." She kissed his lips.
He cupped her face in his hands and got lost in the green of those bright eyes. "I love you, Sakura." He whispered before kissing her completely.
When they parted, she caressed him with her fingertips. "I love you, Naruto." At that moment she decided she would not give him to anyone who loved him more, because she would do the best and the impossible to love him as he deserved.