Author's Introduction:

I got a few really, really nice responses to Pretty in White, which was so wonderful since I wasn't sure anyone was even going to read it! That just really made my day, so thanks to everyone who reviewed; I'm glad you had fun reading it. I had fun writing it!

So I went back to Mia's house to see if there was anything else to write about.

There was.

Seven Letters

A Ronin Warriors fanfic by Firestar9mm

It was a heated battle, and they were losing.

Granted, Mia Koji had been in more than her fair share of scrapes. She knew a life-threatening situation when she saw it (or it froze her in a waterfall), and this wasn't one.

But they were losing. The young man at her side was a warrior forged from the light and metal of stars, and she had expected better of him, much better. He just wasn't putting any effort into it at all. And she had had quite enough of it.

"Sage," she said dangerously, "if you spell one more two-letter word, I am going to knock your block off."

Her teammate only smiled, mischief dancing in his winter-cool eyes as he toyed with another letter tile, then tossed it to the side of the game board. "You know, you're beautiful when you're…losing." He couldn't hold back a chuckle, and the rest of the room's occupants joined him. Despite herself, Mia couldn't help laughing with them.

Seated around the table with her were the five young men she'd grown to love as brothers. Well, she loved four of them as brothers—the other one…well, when he looked at her, his eyes would often smoulder in a way that was most unbrotherly. They darkened so with pure desire, and she often wondered how she looked under the heat of that gaze.

Still, if he spelled another pronoun on that board, she was going to slug him.

It was supposed to have been a beach day. They'd planned to pack a cooler, pile into her Jeep, and head for the shore. But the morning had been dark and stormy, and so had the moods of the boys followed suit. It had started from an unexpected corner, but who could possibly blame Cye for being disappointed that he wouldn't get to visit the ocean he loved?

Ryo Sanada lived up to his name of Wildfire; he had a hard time being trapped in the house, especially when he'd originally planned to be out having fun. He paced the first floor restlessly, getting in everyone's way, not settling to anything. His tiger blue eyes narrowed jealously at White Blaze as the big cat bounded outside to play regardless of the rain that was coming down in sheets. (Mia had groaned inwardly when she'd seen that—he was going to need a bath when he got back, and she had a feeling she'd be the unlucky groomer this time around.)

Rowen Hashiba had been exponentially less bothered by the bad weather, but then again, he saw it as the perfect excuse to curl up with a good book. Unfortunately for him, Kento had seen it as the perfect excuse to play Frisbee in the house. Ryo had joined in, and judging from the angry glares Rowen was shooting at them from under his blue bangs, he wasn't too happy about having his novel knocked out of his hands for the fourth time.

Mia had gone upstairs to find a towel, planning to leave it by the back door to wipe White Blaze's paws when he returned. She had learned from experience that scrubbing paw prints the size of dinner plates off the hardwood floors was no fun at all, and the carpets—oh, forget the carpets.

She'd just opened the linen closet to find the biggest towel when she felt someone's eyes on her. Turning, she smiled slightly at the last of her boys, who looked like he was in the middle of a truly deep sulk.

"Don't pout," she teased. "Your face will freeze that way."

The warrior of Halo put his hands on her waist, pulling her gently closer so he could complain softly in her ear. "You said you had a new swimsuit. I wanted to see it."

She felt her lips curl into a silky smile. "Maybe soon."

"How about now?" His voice lowered even further. "You could model it for me for a little while." He nuzzled her hair.

"And after that?" She fought to keep her voice nonchalant, when really she wanted to grin.

She could hear the smile in his voice. "Rainy days are for staying in and making love."

The hands on her waist moved to her back to pull her against him, and then his mouth was on hers and she couldn't think of anything she wanted to do more than stay in with him.

A crash from the first floor caused them both to jump, and then pounding footsteps beat their way up to the second floor. Kento hurtled onto the landing with Ryo hot on his heels; another set of angry strides could only be Rowen in hot pursuit.

When he saw what he was interrupting, Kento slid to a halt, causing Ryo to knock against his shoulder.

"Whoops," the Warrior of Hardrock said, smirking. "Didn't mean to interrupt."

Mia would have been annoyed at Kento for teasing them—if she hadn't been more annoyed at Sage for taking his hands off her so quickly, as if he'd been burned. With an arrogant toss of his blond head, Sage asked, "What broke?"

"Floor lamp," Ryo said, looking guiltily at Mia. "We can pay for a new one."

Mia didn't care about the lamp. Damn Sage. It wasn't like the others didn't know about the two of them or anything. Rather, they seemed pleased and amused by the whole thing, as if they'd known all along it would happen. But Sage was moody, and he was sensitive—it had taken him nearly forever to relax enough to even acknowledge his affection for her, let alone display it where others might see. Most of the time she found it sweet that he was more open and content with her than with anyone else—but the flip side of the coin was that she so rarely got to see him that way in a house, in a world where they were so rarely alone. She knew he wasn't doing it on purpose to hurt her.

So why did it hurt so much?

Uh oh. He was noticing; his eyebrows working in a way that betrayed his confusion. Another thing she hated about his seeming coldness to her was that a lot of the time, he didn't even know he was doing it. The others picked up on it and started to back off quietly, the incident with the Frisbee and the floor lamp forgotten due to the sudden chill factor in the hallway.

Mia turned to follow them, but a grip on her wrist stopped her. As soon as his fingers curled around her skin, she felt herself weaken and hated it. His hands, his touch was just like everything else about him—there was an impossible tenderness beneath his strength that couldn't be ignored. Pinioned by that depth of feeling, she glanced back at his troubled eyes.

"Hey," he said, too softly for the others to hear. "What's wrong?"

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to stamp her foot and ask him why—why he held her so close and then pushed her away, teased her with innuendo and then dismissed her in the very next instant with something as simple as a turn of his body away from her.

Luckily, she was saved from having to talk about it with him by the return of the other boys, who couldn't figure out which way to retreat. A second look revealed the menace on the other side to be Cye, who appeared at the landing with a murderous look on his normally sweet face. "That does it. Everyone downstairs, now."

Since Cye so rarely growled, the others were inclined to listen to him.

That was how they'd ended up seated around the table playing, of all things, Scrabble.

"Why did we have to pick a word game?" Kento whined. "I am so bad at this."

"Because there are only four hippos in Hungry Hungry Hippos," Cye said patiently, his earlier bad mood soothed by the structure of the game.

Kento grinned. "Speaking of hungry, I am a hungry, hungry Kento. We should have ordered a pizza."

Cye rolled his eyes, and the others tried to hide their amusement. Kento and Cye took their Mutt and Jeff act to new levels when they had to act as a team on anything—including board games. Meanwhile, Ryo, who knew how to back a winning pony, had happily teamed up with Rowen. Mia was glad Scrabble's rules dictated that only seven letters could be in play at a time, or else Rowen would have found a way to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism" on a Triple Word Score box.

As for the third team in the game—well, Sage wasn't taking the game seriously with all his two- and three-letter words, and Mia was distracted, heart still bruised from his earlier dismissal of her, confused by the way his eyes teased her as he invited her ire. Did he enjoy annoying her?

Smiling beatifically, Sage placed an "N" tile on the board next to the "I" in "wild" (Ryo's contribution). "There," he said, still smiling that angelic, aggravating smile.

Cye chuckled. "Do you want her to hit you, Sage?"

"He likes it rough, all right," Mia growled, snatching the plastic stand with the letters on it. "Don't touch the tiles, Halo. I'm doing the next word."

He made a grab for the stand. "Wait, don't use the 'Y' or the 'E'."

Snorting her loss of patience, she tossed the bag of tiles at him. "Go ahead, pick a new one."

Sage's long fingers darted into the pouch and came up with a "V". He smiled and held onto it instead of giving it to her. "Oh, good, don't use this one either."

By now, the rest of the table was looking nervously at Mia, waiting for her to just grab the entire board and brain Sage with it—except for Rowen, who was sitting back in his chair with a smug expression on his face. "Nice try, Halo. Trying to come up with something specific, are you?"

Sage smiled assuredly. "You could say that, yes."

"Like a megaword?" Ryo asked, one eyebrow cocked.

Rowen laughed. "He thinks he's so smart. Who's the tactician on the team, Sage, me or you?" he teased, then turned to Ryo. "He's gathering up letters for something specific, and he's going to keep on playing like a two-year-old until he's got them all, and then smash us with his…megaword."

Sage seemed unruffled by this triumphant announcement of his plans. "It's your turn, Rowen," was all he said.

The game continued and Mia watched Sage select tiles, discarding ones he didn't want in small, useless words while Rowen tried to take up every Double or Triple Word Score box he could in an attempt to thwart this "megaword".

"All we've got is consonants," Cye lamented.

"Tooken is not a word," Ryo said to Kento.

"Dude, it's the past tense of taken," Kento assured him.

"Taken is the past tense, Kento!" Rowan groaned.

"Well, excuse me, I didn't know I was playing Scrabble with the grammar police!" Kento laughed, as Cye repeated, "What are we supposed to spell? All we've got is consonants!" Grumbling, the Warrior of Torrent pouted. "Should have stuck with Hungry Hungry Hippos."

Meanwhile, Sage quietly selected another tile, bringing their tray up to seven again.

Mia stared at the board, not really seeing any of the words. The longer they sat there, the more acutely painful the physical space between her and Sage was. She wanted his arm around her, wanted to curl against his side, feel how warm he was and just be comfortable in the knowledge that he wanted to hold her. Somehow, she didn't think it was so much to ask.

He sensed her discomfort; his eyes rested kindly on her for the sparest of seconds, and he went so far as to reach up and brush his knuckles against her neck, just beneath her chin, a swift and intimate touch that he rarely shared with her. When she looked at him, brows knotted in confusion, his smile had relaxed into one of complete satisfaction. "It's your turn," he said simply.

Sighing in resignation, Mia turned her gaze down to the plastic stand that held their tiles, and then the cobwebs cleared from her brain and she blinked, once, twice, three times to straighten the letters against the sudden haze of disbelief.

L-O-V-E-Y-O-U, the seven tiles read.

She turned to him, and his smile was perfect contentment. His hand found hers beneath the table, fingers curling around hers. An apology offered, accepted with a squeeze.

"Well?" Ryo asked. "Aren't you going to show us?"

Mia just shook her head and smiled, realizing suddenly how wonderful it felt to keep some things all to yourself.

Author's Notes:

I'm so bad at Scrabble. Which is not good, since I majored in English and Creative Writing. Guess I'm just really bad at picking good tiles.

Sage isn't, though.