Hello everyone again! Thank you all for your reviews and especially to those who have been supporting me in my other stories as well, I really appreciate you all, you have no idea how much it means to me that you like my stories. Here is Chapter 2! I was aiming for this to be a trilogy, but we'll see :)

Assailant (Part 2)

Shiho let out a slow breath, her cheeks reddening again. This was.. too much. He was too much. There couldn't have been a more terrible idea than willingly bringing this man into her home. Her fingers loosened slightly on the blindfold wrapped around his neck and he greedily took the opportunity to swiftly yank it away and off his body. He let it fall to the floor. For a moment, Shiho thought - this is it. He's going to kill her now. He's had enough. But they both continued staring into each other's eyes, neither of them faltering. He looked at her like he knew something she didn't, like he was ready to devour her at any second. She didn't know whether it scared her or turned her on; the mere thought of the latter brought a wave of distress and shame to her heart. She convinced herself she didn't actually find him attractive, that it was just the adrenaline and absurdity of the situation that made her feel this way.

"I'll have you know," he began in a low, husky tone, "that it's been a while since I've had a woman come this close to me... so I suggest you step back before you get a taste of something you're not ready for."

Shiho's eyes widened, she instantly stepped back, eyeing him suspiciously, her heart beating a mile a minute. Then, to her own disbelief, she scoffed, "Something I'm not ready for? Right. Stop acting all high and mighty, you're in my home. You play by my rules."

Then, she stood with her hands over her hips, "You'll be here for a few days," she said when he didn't respond after a while, "so make yourself comfortable. In the morning, you'll be with me in my lab. In the evenings, you'll sleep here," she pointed to a room at the back, "that's my sister's bedroom, she's away for the week. You'll sleep in it for now. There's an en-suite. There's food in the fridge, help yourself. As for clothes, I can wash the ones you're wearing, leave them in the laundry basket, and for sleeping clothes," she picked up a bag she'd stowed next to the couch, "a t-shirt and joggers. Some boxers. Socks. I wasn't sure what size you'd be, I went shopping while you were passed out. I went bigger, just in case."

She shoved the bag in his arms before he had a chance to retort.

"There's a towel in there too if you want to shower, I didn't know what else you'd need..." she put her finger to her lips, "oh, there's a toothbrush as well. And toothpaste."

Shuichi stood there for a moment, baffled. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd felt this... baffled. She'd kidnapped him, yet here she was having brought him fucking boxers and socks. She went shopping for him. As Shuichi stood there, holding the bag of clothes, a sudden feelting thought crossed through his mind - this girl... was she being coerced into all this?

Fuck, I knew it, I went too far at the boxers, dammit, Shiho thought. He's onto me.

The boxers! Her inner self mocked, you went too far at buying him anything TO BEGIN WITH.

"I'm going to be using you and monitoring you for the next few days, I need you at your healthiest," she said, as though it justified everything. Then she hastily added, "again, there's food in the fridge. Help yourself. We have an early day tomorrow. I'll wake you up at 8am. You should probably get some sleep. I'm going to bed. I'm not going to lock my door, because you'd be foolish to even think of trying anything while I'm asleep. Oh and," she pulled something out of her pocket, it was his phone, "this stays with me for now. And really, you don't have a lock on your phone? Who in this day and age doesn't have a lock on their phone?"

Without waiting for an answer, she scurried past him down the corridor until she reached the door of her bedroom. Her fingers were on the doorknob when she turned to face him and said, "...what's your name?"

The man faced her, raised an eyebrow but didn't answer. He proceeded to walk down the corridor until he reached her position. He stood right behind her, his front almost touching her back; she could feel his warmth against her body. Shiho felt a shiver run up her spine as he leaned in, his lips ghosting above her ear as he whispered, "Believe me when I say, even with that door closed, you're not tempting me any less..." he retreated backwards and opened the door to the room she'd said was his for the night. "Lock your doors," he said before shutting his door with a thud.

It took Shiho a while to register she was still standing there. Eventually, she made it safely into her room. Her fingers hovered over the door lock... if she locked it, she'd be telling him "look, I'm afraid of you! You won!" If she didn't, well who knows what could happen then? She realised it was power play. She'd captured him yet her he was acting like he was the dangerous one. Maybe he was. She didn't have a clue who she just brought into her home, after all.

After some thought, she left it unlocked and got ready for bed. She had a gun, what could he possibly do?

She decided it was now that she needed to think strategically of how she was going to play this out. This was by far the worst thing she'd ever done, and she was more terrified than she let on.

She was in her lab when Akemi broke the news to her, "I heard..." she'd started to say, to which Shiho had swivelled around in her chair and questioned, "heard what?"

Akemi went on to explain she'd heard rumours about wanting further progress with the APTX specifically with regards with testing on humans, rather than on lab rats. Shiho was shocked, and above all, furious. "Human subjects?!" She'd bellowed, "... this can't be right! There's no way I'm testing this on a person!"

Akemi had proceeded to calm her down, "I know, I know," she'd said, "we don't know if it's true. But if it is... we need to thing of something..."

A few days had passed since that incident, and then Shiho got a visit from Gin. And she knew, she knew this was it. He'd told her exactly what she needed to do; start with healthy males, monitor their behaviour before administrating the sample, note down the result and, regardless of whether they live or die, kill them. Carry on until they're sure the poison kills without leaving any traces in the body. They couldn't risk trying this out on a real person out on the field only to discover it didn't work as expected. They couldn't make this mistake.

"I'll bring you someone in the next 48 hours," he'd said.

To which, to her utter disbelief, she'd shouted, "No, I'll do it."

Gin raised a questioning eyebrow, "I don't usually let a lady do my dirty work for me, but just for you," and he'd leaned by her ear and whispered, "I'll let this one pass. Go find yourself someone to have a little fun with, Sherry."

The next two days were the hardest days of her life, in between bouts of anxiety and phases where she was practically ripping her hair out in anger, frustration and distress, she'd come up with a plan with Akemi to get past all this. They had a plan, now if only it pulled them through this.

Shiho's mind wandered back to reality, and she tried once again to understand the man that was sleeping in the other room. He was the first person she'd captured, and she hadn't really given it much thought when she'd picked him. She didn't seem to be able to decipher his personality; he didn't look scared, he didn't even attempt to escape, which led her to believe he had some kind of ulterior motive. But could it really be possible that the one man she'd chosen randomly could end up in here with an ulterior motive? The odds of that happening were one in a million. Perhaps he was genuinely afraid, but thought it best to not act on it. Maybe he was calm because he had a plan up his sleeve. Part of her hoped he'd stab her or something in the middle of the night and escape so she wouldn't have to deal with this mess, but she knew that wouldn't sit too well with Gin.

As she lay in bed, she pulled out the mans phone. It was wrong to snoop, but it was worse to kidnap a person, and she'd already crossed that line. She swiped on the lock screen. No missed phone calls. No new messages. Nothing. No one has called or texted to check where he was in the past few hours that had passed. Perhaps it wasn't enough time for someone to notice he'd gone missing, maybe she was lucky and there wasn't anyone there to notice.

She checked his recent calls, there was a James and a Jodie there. Who were they? Was Jodie a girlfriend? Their call history was infrequent, but he didn't have many other callers in between. She scrolled further down and quickly spotted a Mama.

Their last call was 3 months ago, it lasted a few minutes. She stared at it for a bit too much longer than she'd wanted to, then she sighed and opened up his text messages instead. This was wrong on so many levels, but she didn't care at this point.

The texts didn't really stand out, a lot of them were from his telecom provider. He had a couple from someone called Andre. There was a text sent to Jodie a week ago:

Jodie, I'm sorry to have upset you yesterday, it wasn't my intention. To be in a relationship when everything is the way it is now... to put you in danger... I can't do that to you. Or to anyone. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm sorry.

She hadn't responded to that. Their previous texts weren't too interesting, just a few "are you there yet?"/ "I'm standing outside the cafe", and other non-interesting activities.

So he wasn't dating this Jodie woman, Shiho surmised. But what did he mean... put you in danger? What kind of danger? Who was this man?

Shiho locked his phone, slid it under pillow and stared up at the ceiling in thought.

Shuichi stood inside the room for a while. The girl had claimed this was her sister's room, but the room was almost barren. He didn't know where the sister was, but there were barely any traces of her. There was a photo of the two of them together on the bed side table, they were smiling. As Shuichi stared at the photo, a vague memory crossed through his mind. He recalled James Black telling him about Gin and the BO, about how they thought he could infiltrate the Organization. He'd mentioned a woman - Akemi - he'd said. She'd been there almost all her life, but she didn't yet have a codename. They believed her sister and parents were responsible for creating the mysterious drug they'd heard rumours about. James had shown him a photo of her, he'd explained that they wanted him to get to know her, romantically, and to find his way into the Organization through her.

This was the same girl in the photo, his mind lit up with realisation. Then her sister wasn't just any scientist... she was the scientist. The one they were after. What was her real name again? He couldn't remember, or perhaps the FBI didn't know it to begin with. But her code name -

Sherry.

It took a while for him to regain his composure after that; he still didn't really have a plan. He wasn't sure what exactly she was going to do with him; he didn't know how much information he'd be able to gather while being held captive under someone's constant watch.

If she brought him all the way here... perhaps he could infiltrate the Organization by using her, not by using her sister as he'd planned. But could he really make that woman fall for him in a couple days? He doubted he could do it in a year; she seemed to hate him already. And to be fair, he wasn't sure he liked her very much either. She did kidnap him after all. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to count on that as a means of escape...

Shuichi, for the first time in his life, felt he was at a loss on what to do.

Shiho heard the shower running, and she sighed in relief that at least her prisoner (no matter how much he was annoying her) was actually make himself comfortable. It probably wasn't a good idea to let him roam around the house, but she didn't care at this point. She was going to do things her way - humanely.

It was nearly midnight, and she couldn't bring herself to fall asleep. She was also feeling hungry, so she got up out of bed and headed for the kitchen. Not sure what to make for herself, she settled on an omelette. As she began preparing her meal, she decided she'd make more than usual, and leave the rest in the pan for her "prisoner" to eat when he got hungry.

After finishing her meal and washing her plate, she stood leaning on her dining table sipping on some green tea when she heard him approach the kitchen. She took a glance to her left and literally choked on her tea. After her coughing fit subsided, she snapped, "Put something on!"

The man stared at her with a curious expression; he stood there with his hair and skin damp and a towel wrapped loosely around his waist. It wasn't his fault - he thought she was asleep.

"I thought you were sleeping," he said simply, though he made no attempt to cover himself.

Shiho's glare could've killed, but the heat in her cheeks made her look almost... docile.

He slowly approached Shiho until he stood right in front of her. Her back was pinned to the dining table now, and he was blocking her exit, he leaned forward and placed his hands on either side of her on the table. Shiho would've fainted under normal circumstances, but now she was both flustered and angry. "It isn't the first time you've seen a man like this," he began, then in her ear he whispered, "right?"

With her breathing heavy, she reached her hand forward, wanting to push him off, but she didn't quite want to touch him. Instead, she curled her fingers into a fist and placed it on her chest instead. "No," she said sternly, "it isn't the first time I've seen a man like this."

It was silent for a moment, and then she heard him say, "Lucky guy."

He made no move to get out of her way.

"Get off me," she enunciated slowly, her voice all daggers.

"Push me off," he breathed.

"You sicko," she hissed at him, "you're that desperate for a woman's touch, even if it's a malicious one?"

"Yeah," he said simply, "you're right. That was wrong of me."

And he pushed off of her, without touching her or her touching him.

Someone could've sliced the tension in the room with a knife.

Shiho cleared her throat and said, "there's an omelette for you in the pan. Figured you'd be hungry. Help yourself. Good night."

He watched after her for a while after she'd left. What the fuck was wrong with him? This wasn't like him at all? To corner women like that... he wasn't that kind of guy, he'd never do that to a lady. But with her... he felt he could be like that, as crazy as it sounded, he felt that she matched him. That she could take it. And my, did he want to give it to her bad.

It was 3am and Shuichi hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. He'd eaten the omelette she'd left behind, and while he thoroughly enjoyed it, it made him wonder what kind of a kidnapper actually cooks for their captive. Then again, she'd given him quite some freedom, she'd even shopped for him. He let that sit in for a moment, and the thought of her being coerced into this suddenly fluttered through his mind again. She wasn't a pawn of the Organization - that was for sure - she was their most prized possession. But it was clear, some part of her didn't want to do this. For a brief moment, he considered letting her know that he was an FBI agent, that together, they could get her and her sister out of this mess. But the thought quickly disappeared as soon it had come when he remembered her dire words, "I could do a lot of things to you." These weren't the words of someone forced into this situation, they were the words of someone who meant it. But would she really threaten him and yet proceed to cook for him, shop for him and give him a room to stay in? She must feel bad about this, otherwis,e she wouldn't have done any of this at all... right?

The next morning came quickly for both of them, without any emotion in her voice, Shiho explained that they were to proceed to her lab after breakfast to begin the tests. She would blindfold him on the way there. As a shot in the dark, Shuichi asked her what company she worked for, to which she replied with a brief glance his away and back again; her way of silently telling him "I'm blatantly ignoring you."

They were at the lab in approximately 20 minutes in 8:30 am traffic - Shuichi made note of that. He didn't know where she lived, but it was an apartment complex. And he could probably narrow it down. After she'd parked the car, she yanked him out of the car with his sleeves. Had he been in any other situation, it would've been almost comical. She shut the car door and proceed to try and drag him by his sleeve, almost as though she didn't want to hold on to him too much. It was getting so frustrating that Shuichi eventually grabbed her dainty hand and plastered it to his arm, "Are you afraid to touch me or something? Here," he said monotonously, "do what you want with me. Just no more sleeve pulling."

Shiho huffed in annoyance, but she tried to hide the fact that the feel of all that muscle under his jacket made her stomach flutter, "I can pull whatever I damn want," she snapped and Shuichi cracked a small smile. Feisty, this one.

"With this and the fact you wouldn't dare touch me yesterday, I'd say you're afraid of men," Shuichi observed. At this point, he wasn't even trying anything anymore, it was just so natural to tease her like this. He didn't even know why. He didn't even know her name. She didn't know his. They were anonymous to each other.

Continuing to drag him with all her might, (admittedly, he was dragging his weight a little bit - he wanted to make her struggle), she yanked him forward so hard he actually thought she was going to throw him on the floor. "Better to be a woman afraid of men than a horny 40-year-old pervert," she snapped.

He actually raised an eyebrow at that, "That's not accurate at all. I'm not 40," he said, a hint of a smile on his face, "I'm 26. You?"

"Me what?"

"How old are you?"

What were they, kids?

"20," she said, then added, "and I'm not afraid of men. Some men, maybe, but... not all men," she quietly drifted off.

It was a while later when they were stood somewhere (presumably in front of her lab door) that Shuichi whispered, "and me? ... Are you afraid of me?"

There was a moment of silence before Shiho actually burst out laughing. She turned around to face him, her eyebrows raised in astonishment, "You?! Why would I be afraid of you? I kidnapped you, remember that?"

The man didn't laugh back; he slowly took of his blindfold, his alluring green eyes now on her face and a dangerous smirk played across his lips. He leaned forward and pinned her body to the door, his hand reached to grip her dainty hand in his, so she wouldn't be able to open the door with her keys. Shiho tried to wriggle out of him but he was too big, too strong.

"What," he teased, "too much for you?"

Shiho snapped at him, "What's wrong with you?! What are you trying to do? Is this some kind of dirty fantasy of yours, assert your dominance over a woman?"

He raised a questioning brow, and with a tone she'd never heard him speak in before he said, "No, this is me trying to bother you just as much as you've bothered me by taking me hostage in your fucking home. And with the way you've been treating me, I'd say it's your fucking dirty fantasy to dominate a man. And believe me when I say," his next words were a whisper, "you can try that all you want with me but you'd be messing with the wrong kind of guy."

At that, she pushed him off of her, hard. Shuichi hit the wall behind him with a thud. She grabbed him by his collar and shoved him up against it again, he winced in pain, "You know nothing about me," she hissed, fury in her eyes, "you have no idea what I've been through. So don't you dare say shit like that to me again."

She was angry, and he was angry too, though, for some strange reason, she actually looked angrier than he was.

"I'm sure I don't," he said, and it was honest, then his tone was playful again, "but you do have a thing for me and this wall. Don't do it much, you'll make me start liking it."

Her grip loosened on his collar, and she whispered, almost in exasperation, "Why... do you joke with me... despite everything?"

Shuichi thought about it for a moment, then said with finality, "What part of that was a joke? I don't joke."

It was silent for the next 20 minutes. Shiho was still angry - at what, she couldn't exactly tell. That guy just pissed her off. And he was hot. And it made her even angrier. Because he was a dick. And crazy. Did she say hot?

She'd gotten him to lie down on the table in her lab, and she'd done some basic checks on him. He'd cooperated with her surprisingly well, he hadn't even attempted to argue.

"Take your shirt off," she said sternly, "I need to check your internals."

He didn't even make a joke at that, and she thought that she'd finally broken him. He sat up on the hard table and pulled off his thin t-shirt over his head. Shiho tried not to let her breathing give away how attractive he looked in that moment. He threw it expertly on a chair nearby and lay back down. His eyes were on hers when he said, "Anything else?"

"I... no, " she said, her cheeks reddening at how obvious she was being. She stared at his torso abut too much longer than expected; his chest was hard, his muscles well defined. Her eyes trailed down to his hard abs, and then a little lower to -

She forced herself to look away, then. She knew he must've seen her stare; she only hoped he wouldn't comment. She placed her fingers on his abdomen and began the exam, all the while staring at the wall ahead. She noticed a few off scars on his side; they were almost faded, but their shapes were still distinct. Knife scars? But from what? Her soft fingers trailed across his scars, and she heard him suck in a breath. Her heart fluttered when she realised he did that because he was enjoying it, not because it hurt. She realised in that moment it was one thing for a man to hear a woman moan, but it was a whole other thing for a woman to make a man moan. Shiho continued trailing her fingers over his scars, and she almost felt like the man was holding his breath. Her fingers reached his lower abdomen, her thumb caressed the strong V line that disappeared under his belt. When she did that, she heard a low sigh from him.

Fuck, that was too much. She could've almost fainted at that.

Then she absentmindedly trailed her fingers across his the lining of his trousers. That was when he instantly sat up, his strong fingers reaching over and gripping her wrist tightly in his hand, "Beyond here," he said, his eyes dark and dangerous, "...is my territory."

Just then, there was a knock on the door and a deep, masculine voice said, "Sherry, open the door."

Gin.

THERE WE GO! Chapter 2! Please let me know what you guys think! I hope you guys liked this one. Do you think Shiho and Shuichi are OOC? I'm worried that they are, but it's so hard writing a romance when the characters themselves in the canon aren't shown to interact in this way! Anyway, let me know what you all think, I'd love to hear it!