Disclaimer: Naruto's not mine.

Summary: In which professional bodyguard Hyuuga Neji finds himself falling into a web of deceit, murder, and eventually, love.

"Let me touch you," she breathes seductively as her stygian, knifelike nails graze along my cheek. I note the unpleasantly thick layer of powder and glitter upon her face. As if they infiltrated my thoughts, her eyes flicker threateningly and meet my criticizing gaze. "I'm going to blush if you keep staring."

"Lead the way."

"I will," her forefinger traces my lips as she answers playfully, "but he said I should service you a bit beforehand—"

"No."

"You don't have to be so shy," the mature woman says, wearing a deceitful pout on her crimson mouth. I step past her evadingly and walk down the somberly obsidian hallway. I make a left.

"Wrong," she chimes from behind, and laughs.

Moments later, once she agrees to discontinue her unneeded affection, I let her lead me deeper into the monumental residence. "Here," my temporary accompaniment says as the hallway intersects a grandiose oak door, inserting a black key into the knob. She produces a click and makes her way back to the complex's entrance. "I'm looking forward to playing with you again."

I silently reject her offer and open the door.

"Hyuuga Neji!" A handsome man with messily groomed hair and hypnotic, charcoal eyes advances toward me with a polite salutation.

I return the greeting with a nod. "Uchiha Sasuke."

"Was she to your liking?" He watches me with a prurient gaze as his feet step toward mine.

I ask calmly, "Who is she?"

"Interested?"

"No."

"That's a shame." A sly smirk plays its way onto the man's lips. "No.7 is one of my most valuable prostitutes." He brings his body closer to mine and whispers into my ear, "I'll let you take her for a ride."

"I'll pass." My eyes bore into his as I mentally warn him to refrain from needlessly touching me.

"My, my, have your techniques gotten a bit rusty, Hyuuga?" he wonders with a whimsical tone. "Would you like me to polish them for you?"

"Did you call me here with only this in mind?" I brush him off with evident disdain.

"No." His lips form a disappointed line. "I bought a new toy," he begins. "But I can't help but feel that it needs a bit," Sasuke pauses to search for the appropriate term, "a bit improvement."

"Where is it?"

He doesn't answer and instead, weaves toward the windows located behind him and drags their velvet curtains shut. "Mind doing those as well?" I follow the direction in which his finger points and pull the curtains from each end slowly together, but let a little light escape from between.

"Completely," Sasuke orders.

Narrowing my eyes suspiciously at the man, I comply. At once, the room is painted melancholic black. He returns to his desk, which dons a small red button in the center, and presses it. Once a microphone appears from the desk's surface, he speaks into it, "Bring it in."

Momentarily, a servile fist knocks on the wooden door, letting itself in after three knocks. A blonde man clothed in a black silky suit, one of the Uchiha's guards I assume, escorts a young girl in. He flicks on the light switch attached on the wall beside him, and a white brightness envelopes each corner of the room.

My observation of the 'toy' takes a second or two. There isn't much to observe.

With dull brown hair and equally dull brown undergarments, the girl appears rather…

"As you can see, No.10 looks a bit dull." Sasuke clears his throat softly. "But as we all know, looks can be deceiving."

My eyes flicker casually over to meet Sasuke's face as I grow faintly intrigued.

"No.10 is gifted with severe promiscuity, vulgarity, and slight anorexia. Diagnosed with," he stops as his eyes dance toward the curtains, "heliophobia." (1)

"Heliophobia?" My curiosity minutely triggered, I eye the girl again, and notice that her skin is indeed unusually pale. "What is her name?"

Sasuke cocks his left eyebrow. "No.10, isn't it?"

I return the gesture with my right. "Her birth name, I meant."

"I don't know."

With her head slightly down, bundle of hair carelessly disheveled, eyes peacefully closed, and lanky arms lifeless at her sides, she looks perfectly dead. "What is your name?" I hesitate to reach my hand toward her, but decide to nevertheless. My thumb and forefinger search for her chin and raise it slightly, adjusting her eye level to satisfy mine.

"What is your—"

My words are mercilessly cut through as a violent interruption catches me off guard.

The woman opens her menacing pair of amber eyes, injecting an expression of heavy lust into me, and snakes a thin leg around mine, twisting it at an angle that allows her to rid me of my sense of balance and push me down to the marble floor. Sitting comfortably on top of me with her thighs provokingly straddled around my hips, the girl brings her trembling arms down my fully clothed torso and feverishly gropes my loosely fastened belt. She giggles in delight and as the belt slips off, makes an attempt to unzip my pants.

Fortunately, I manage to restrain her excited wrists in my hands, pressuring the fragile area of her carpal bones, with the solid intention of hurting her. No.10 screams in discontent and struggles violently atop my abdominal region, eventually resorting to foul decorum. "Fuck you," she shrieks and maliciously spits in my face.

In a brief moment, No.10's lustful body is pried off mine, despite her disappointed grunts, by the same black-adorned man who brought her in earlier. For a stagnant second, my mind struggles to pull itself out of the bewildered state that had overcome me. I retrieve my belt with heavy vexation and scowl treacherously in Sasuke's direction, demanding for an explanation.

"Just an animal in heat." He chuckles, kneeling beside me with a handkerchief in hand, and wipes the woman's saliva off my face.

"I assumed you were aware that this animal is of your responsibility." I push his hand away, and wipe the remaining dribble of No.10's bacteria from my cheek myself as I welcome a thin thread of anger rising within me. "It would be a good idea to have your women properly trained, wouldn't it?"

"I think it would be a splendid idea." His eyes lock with mine. "And that's specifically why I called you here."

I narrow my eyes in cynicism. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I have a job for you."

"I'm not interested."

Sasuke's eyes twinkle with transgression. "Oh, but I'm paying fifty."

"Fifty?" My suspicion rises to its maximum. "If I'm not mistaken, the only jobs you pay fifty grand for involve potentially precarious tasks."

"Correct," he replies with a devilish smirk. "But in this case, it's fifty million." My eyes widens infinitesimally in bewilderment. "Interested yet?" I'm not entirely sure and took several moments to contemplate.

"Background information?"

"Hm…" Sasuke clicks his tongue in thought. "I believe she's Chinese."

I expect a more extensive biography and allow the Uchiha many seconds to continue, but a disappointing silence follows. "Is that all?"

"I'm afraid so," Sasuke remarks objectively. "Her records are empty."

"And that doesn't that strike you as a bit odd?"

"It strikes me as a lot odd, Hyuuga," he returns readily, "but that won't help me get the job done." He brushes a strand of hair away from his eyes. "Trust me, No.10 isn't as…" Sasuke spends a second to think up the right adjective, "fucked up as she appears to be. Despite her remarkably high level of promiscuity, I believe that you are more than capable of handling a harmless job like this."

My eyebrows furrow in skepticism. "One wouldn't usually describe a job paying fifty million as harmless, Uchiha."

He shrugs. "Companionship can go for a pretty price these days."

"Companionship?" I echo.

"Yes. I want you to keep her company." Sasuke raises an upright forefinger to build up suspense. "But that's not all."

I exhale with thinning patience.

"I want you to discipline her."

"…Pardon?"

"I plan to sell a fraction of my dolls, including No.10, at an auction event in August." He strolls back to his desk to fetch a calendar book. "That leaves me approximately two and a half months to have this animal transformed into a refined, desirable, and well-behaved prostitute."

A contradictory statement indeed. "And how exactly do you expect me to help you with that?"

"Reject each and every one of her sexual advances."

My left eyebrow lifts with inquiry. "Will that alone accomplish perfect behavior in ten weeks?"

"It will help her build abstinence," Sasuke says with a smile.

I suppress any outward reaction as I inwardly battle my options with indecisiveness. For reference, I divert my attention back to No.10. Her senses seem to have returned to normal, but her sharp gaze remains fixated on me. Though we labeled her as dull in appearance earlier, something I'm only beginning to notice now threatens to counter our careless classification. Her eyes. The poisonous, chocolate drops look as if they were trying to tell me something she can't bring herself to say out loud.

"No.5," Sasuke says to the blonde man constricting No.10. "Clothe it. Bring the sunglasses and umbrella."

The man obeys. "Excuse us," he recited, and drags, with a bit of trouble, No.10 across the marble pavement and out the door.

Once again, I am caught off guard, invisibly of course, with surprise. "No. 5?"

"Yes." Sasuke's concern recoils to me. "He's my best gigolo," he boasts quite pompously.

I stare blankly at him, noting his high level of indecency.

"Anyway, where were we?"

An answer from me isn't needed.

"Oh, yes. The job." He scratches his neck lazily. "You don't have to take it." Conveniently descended onto his scarlet chaise longue, he rotates to face me. "I understand if you can't handle a task as frightening as this," he challenges with mischievous articulation.

Much to my chagrin, his remark successfully threatens to destroy a fragment of my ego. "That simply proves how significantly shallow your level of understanding is," I respond.

"Oh? Then, I hope you wouldn't mind making it clear enough for this incompetent man to understand."

A grimace plants itself on my face as I rub my temples in deep thought. Fifty million. Fifty million would bring quite a handful of benefits to the Hyuuga prestige.

I clear my throat lightly. "A ten percent down payment?"

Sasuke can no longer conceal his satisfactory grin. "I'm more than happy to give you fifteen, Hyuuga."

I inhale sharply. "When does the job start?"

"How about now?"

"Now?"

"I don't see why not," he remarks bluntly.

A soft exasperated sigh escapes my lips as I nodded in acquiescence. "I'm assuming you've already prepared an extra set of keys to your mansion."

"What do you mean?"

"A set of keys for me is what I mean."

"Why would you need them?" Sasuke asks, but a grin appears shortly. "In case you feel lonely and yearn for my—?"

"No." I swallow my impatience. "It would be more convenient if I were able to attend to my job by myself, don't you think?"

"What makes you so sure that the designated location of your job is in my mansion?"

I frown. "Is it not?"

"It appears we have a bit of a misunderstanding, Hyuuga," Sasuke says, with a flat laugh. "I don't plan on keeping her here."

"Then—"

"What better place to provide No.10 the warmest of hospitality and the best of accommodation than in your own home?" the Uchiha intersects rather curtly, with an equally curt smile.

I feel my face melt into a dumbfounded state, and forget to put effort into masking it. "...We'll be living together?"

"Just for ten weeks, Hyuuga. I think even you can survive," he reassures, his tone dripping of black humor.

A clever retort is ready to slide off my tongue, but a series of quiet door knocks make an intrusion. No.5, along with another gloomily dressed unit, whose pink hair mismatched the outfit quite well, yank No.10 in. Her skin now wears marks of light rose that I don't remember noticing the last time she was in the room. Another repulsively unnecessary body cosmetic, I assume.

"It's ready," says No.5, with an umbrella at his side.

Sasuke rises from his resting posture and dragged his feet up. "Looks like you two better get going, Hyuuga."

"Already?"

"Yes." He glances at his luxury watch. "I have important business to attend to."

"Shouldn't we discuss the job in greater detail?" I can't help but feel a substantial lack of explanation sitting in front of me.

Sasuke shoots me a flat look. "What else are you unclear about?" He then points at his personnel. "No.5 and No.6 will answer any further questions. Use them." The pair greets me with subservient nods. "Get going. No.5, control the monster. No.6 , you'll drive." The duo bob their heads obediently again.

I shift my view to No.10, feeling that monster is a bit of an exaggeration, despite falling victim to her hormonal excitement earlier. She has made not even the slightest tint of noise since her re-entrance to the room. I inwardly hope that she could remain that way for ten weeks straight.

"I wish you good luck," Sasuke mutters with a demonically altered grin.

I nod farewell, and step toward the door, with the three underlings following. "I won't need it."

(1) Heliophobia - Fear of the sun.