You guys are pretty awesome, you know that right? I was going to wait until after the weekend to post the next chapter but it's been waving a little hand at me and saying 'Finish me, Finish me!'. I believe its common courtesy to reply to reviews received and thank everyone who has added it to their alerts and favourite stories so here goes:-
Fujisawa Loser- My first reviewer, thanks for telling me I haven't made any errors yet!
Yes-4-Yuffentine – Thank you for the compliment! I hope you enjoy the story.
Anon – I wanted to make him a little more 'human' and one of the things that makes us human is our thoughts and feelings. I still haven't decided about the 'T' or 'M' rating yet.
Nami7623 – Glad you liked it.
Dusty – This story drives me crazy writing it! (In a good way of course)
Singerprissy – Thank you, I've read some brilliantly written Yuffentine stories and to say this is on its way to becoming one is a very nice thing to say.
Rikkautro Efaltia – I am new here so it might take a bit of getting used to! I know how to post/edit my stories but I'm not sure how to do much else yet! I'm trying not to take Vincent out of his character too much, but I noticed him to be a tad less depressing in DoC. He will probably never be the life and soul of a party but I thought it would be good to show he is moving on with things. Yuffie, I find isn't hard to write for, we're pretty much the same in personality!
Fhclause – Thanks! Here's the next chapter.
Realestboo – Thank you, glad you like it.
So anyway, on with the show!
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Final Fantasy or it's franchise, no profit is being made from this story.
Baiting the Beast - Chapter Two
"How horrible for you."
Vincent had never been married and had no children of his own. He couldn't begin to imagine what the other man was going through. It appeared that being six months pregnant with their first child had transformed Shera into a complete monster.
"Some little runt snitched on me 'bout smokin' on me damn ship." Cid, much to Vincent's amusement was slouched back in his barstool with his arms folded and a pout that made him look like a scolded child. "So I told my crew tha' when I find the asshole who couldn't keep their fuckin trap shut, I'd be shovin' Venus Gospel up their -!"
"-I think I get the picture, Cid." Vincent interrupted quickly, shooting a look of revulsion to the pilot. The two of them were sat alone at one of the tables in the bar. "Not that I don't find it fascinating to know what you plan doing with your spear, thank you." He added sarcastically.
"She locked me out and changed the damn access codes for my ship; I had to spend last night in the fuckin hanger on a pile of boxes with rats crawlin over my damn legs." Cid ranted on, seemingly not hearing Vincent's reply. "She's a fuckin force to be reckoned with when she's pissed, that woman."
The gunman found it rather fitting that no matter how tough the pilot claimed to be, it was definitely his wife who wore the trousers in their relationship.
"Who's a force to be reckoned with?"
The moment Vincent heard the light airy teasing of her voice bouncing through the kitchen; he felt his entire body seize up. It took all of ten seconds for him to try and arrange his face into something that didn't resemble frustrated hunger; it didn't quite work however…so he decided to hold his breath instead. A little unorthodox, but it would stop him from saying something inappropriate.
"Well, if it isn't the brat." Cid piped up, still clearly in a sour mood. Yuffie glared at him before turning back to Vincent.
When he took one look at her damp hair in a rather sexy tousled mess – he assumed she had just been in the shower - and the beaming grin nestled between her enticingly plump lips, all of the air from his mouth seemed to disappear and he took a gasping breath; coughing painfully.
There was a soft fragrance of jasmine flittering its way into his nostrils and he was momentarily distracted by a soft press of hot skin against his and a hearty thump on his back. He jumped, startled.
"Whoa, careful there Vince!" Yuffie was rubbing her palm back and forth between his shoulder blades, making a point to trail the pads of her fingertips down his spine as she dropped her hand; grinning deliciously when she felt him shiver at the touch. "Something wrong?"
Wrong? Yes, Gaia, there was something wrong! She was the most oblivious woman he had ever met and what was worse, he found it completely adorable that she had no idea how she affected him; it was a word he would not normally use but he really couldn't find the switch that told his brain to begin working properly to arrive at a more fitting word, no matter how hard he damn well tried. He shouldn't be having these thoughts at all.
The little wiggle of her hips as she folded her arms and pursed her lips at him was making it very hard not to simply grab her and drag her into a secluded corner and have his ungodly way with her. Surely it wasn't natural for one woman to be so arousing.
He cleared his throat to try and avoid the train of thoughts his mind was taking him on and shot a brief glance at his friend, who was perusing the morning paper, oblivious for a different reason as to what was going on around him.
"N-No, nothing is wrong, Yuffie." Vincent sighed, looping two fingers around the handle of his morning coffee mug to take a sip, cursing himself as she sat down on the edge of the table, giving him a long line of deliciously smooth and tanned thigh to look at. Ignoring (or trying, at least) the little bounce of her breasts as she sat down, he concentrated a glare on the wall behind the bar.
"Oh, good." Her relieved little sigh was of course, fake - but Vincent never noticed, he was too busy pretending she hadn't ditched the long socks and boots which made her long legs appear even longer. "I thought maybe I was still dreaming." Yuffie added with relish.
Trying not to imagine her lying in bed, looking so blissfully at ease and beckoning him towards her with a sly grin and a – NO!He wasn't going to think about that…he gave her a quick glance instead.
"Dreaming?"
"Yeah, I thought maybe I was still dreaming about wandering around Seventh Heaven and wondering why everyone was staring at me." Yuffie would be wonderful reading bedtime stories to children. She had a knack for making even the dullest day sound like an adventure. "Then I found you and you went bright red and jumped on me like…I dunno…like you wanted to kill me or something…
Vincent narrowed his eyes. What kind of dream was that?
"So I looked down and there I realised I'd been wandering around the bar completely naked!"
She hopped down from the table, exposing several inches of long leg as she did so. As he completely froze from the shock of her words, she grinned and clasped her hands behind her back, raising her shoulders, rocking back and forth on her toes, looking up at him through those long eyelashes. "I dunno why you jumped on me though…"
She gave no indication of anything as she watched with delight as his mouth fell open and his gorgeous eyes became glazed with the look of a man whose mind was clearly elsewhere. With the reaction she wanted, she immediately bounced off with a laugh into the kitchen.
"See ya later, Vince!"
Oh, she was going to be the death of him…
Beside them, Cid grunted in horror. "What the hell, brat? I don't want a mental picture of you with no fuckin clothes on!" he yelled after her before looking across to Vincent for his agreement on the matter.
When he caught the way that Vincent was looking at the door now separating the bar and kitchen, he narrowed his eyes and grinned.
"Looks like someone's already got a mental picture." He chuckled. "Fuckin kids."
With a sigh, the older man folded up his paper and stashed it under his arm. He left his seat and patted Vincent on the back as he decided to go outside for a cigarette.
"Pardon?" Vincent shook his head and looked around the bar before settling his crimson gaze on Cid, completely baffled.
"I'll leave ya here with your thoughts, ya dirty fuckin bastard." Cid chuckled and left before the gunman could come to his senses and realise what he'd been spoken.
XxxxxxxX
"You what?" Tifa nearly dropped the chair she was placing on top of the table as she and Yuffie closed the bar for the night, later that day.
"You heard me." Yuffie grinned at the barmaid.
"You told a man, who has spent the last thirty years in a coffin with four demons for company who hasn't been engaged in any sort of sexual contact with a woman…to the best of our knowledge…for the same period of time, if not more – that you dreamed of being naked in front of him and that he jumped on you?"
Yuffie looked perplexed.
"When you sum it up like that…" Blushing, she scratched at the back of her head. "Yeah."
"…And he still didn't get the hint?"
Yuffie shook her head a breath of frustration escaping her lips, lifting a few strands of her bangs as it did so.
"No –" The sound of an external door banging closed caught their attention.
"I take it your little game isn't going so well, eh squirt?" Cloud peaked his head round the bar door, having been eavesdropping as he returned home from his deliveries.
"See…he can't be that oblivious if even Cloud knows what I'm up to!" Yuffie jabbed a finger towards him and plopped into a nearby chair.
The blonde swordsman walked over to his girlfriend and placed a sweet kiss against her waiting lips.
"Oh he's not oblivious." Cloud grinned, wrapping his arms round Tifa's waist from behind. "I think it's a lot more likely that with Chaos gone he's remembered what it feels like to be a man. All of his frustrations have been building up inside him for thirty or so years…"
Yuffie gaped at him and raised her fingers to her lips thoughtfully. "Ha, you're a genius! I really hadn't thought about that…" the ninja looked thoughtful. "I didn't know you had a working brain, Choco-boy! Where've you been all my life?" Yuffie grinned evilly at him.
Ignoring her quip, he placed a quick kiss against Tifa's cheek and let her go.
"Just go easy on him, squirt." Cloud gave her a mischievous look. "He's probably terrified that he can't hide his emotions anymore, he might lose control…"
"But you don't get that I want him to lose control!" she whined. "He can have his despicable way with me all freakin' night if he wants to…"
"Too much information, Yuffs." He patted the ninja on the head with a grimace. "Where is Vincent, anyway?" Cloud glanced at Tifa, who shrugged and turned to look at Yuffie.
"Dunno, I haven't seen him since I left him in the kitchen this morning." Yuffie grinned.
"This morning?" Cloud looked confused.
"Our sweet and innocent little Yuffie here told Vincent this morning that she'd dreamt of being naked in front of him and then –"
Cloud cringed and held up a hand. "Scratch that, I don't wanna know."
Huffing, she placed her hands on her hips and glared at her friend. "And what's that supposed to mean, huh?"
"As much as I love you, Yuffs – picturing you naked is not something I had in mind when I got home after a long day."
What the hell was wrong with picturing her naked? She happened to think she had a pretty nice little body going on underneath the little shorts and tops she wore. It's not like her entire body was covered in fucking scales was it?
"What were you planning on doing?" Yuffie enquired with a raised brow. When she saw the look that Cloud gave Tifa, she rolled her eyes. "I just had to ask, didn't I?"
She gave the two lovebirds a salute and stalked off to find something better to do than watch them making eyes at each other.
XxxxxxxX
The next few days were the worst Vincent had experienced since he had arrived back in Edge.
Reeve was working him harder than ever and seemed to favour the idea of Yuffie never leaving his side. While he wasn't one to openly complain about it, and the fact the two of them worked efficiently as a team; if they had to spend another long, hot day stuck in his office doing goddamn paperwork, he was going to explode.
The hours passed in a tedious procession of signing, stamping and completing mission report forms, which they were still filling in, almost a month after Deepground.
Apparently saving the world required a lot of paperwork.
He was close to despair and Yuffie wasn't helping much either. The blasted vixen had been shooting little winks and blowing him kisses from her perch on the chair at the corner of his desk whenever he got distracted. She was also yawning every hour or so and he didn't fail to notice the little shiver that ran down her spine when she did so. Sitting next to her at the wooden table, he found it hard to keep his eyes off her.
"Mm, I think I'll go grab something to eat." Another hour passed, another yawn later and Yuffie got to her feet. "You want anything?"
"Nothing to eat, but I'll have a ginger ale from the vending machine."
At this, Yuffie snorted. "A ginger ale? What are you, fifty?" She waltzed her way round to Vincent and she felt his posture stiffen at her proximity. "My old man drinks that stuff like water."
"Need I remind you that technically I am a fifty five year old man, Yuffie?" He wasn't looking directly at her but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye.
She scoffed. "The bazillion years you spent cooped up in a box don't count lazy bones." She giggled lightly and perched herself on his desk, much like she had sat when she interrupted Cid and himself a few days previous. Those long luxurious legs were thankfully covered by her black boots and matching thigh socks but with the tiny grey shorts she was wearing, baring the top of her legs, she may as well have not been wearing anything on her legs at all.
"But I was very much alive during my 'bazillion years in a box' so technically –"
Yuffie swatted a warm hand over his mouth to silence him. To his surprise, she hopped herself into his lap and straddled him in the chair.
"Holy Leviathan, I never thought I'd see the day I'd get tired of you talking, Vincent."
"What are you doing?" he growled through her hand, trying not to notice just how close her chest was to his face.
"I'm examining you." She stated after removing her hand from his mouth.
He was trying so hard not to allow his human hand and gauntlet to run themselves over her legs, he'd only dreamed of the two of them being in this position and it certainly wasn't helping to diminish the twitching in his groin.
"What on earth for?" his eyes were glazing over again and he spoke in a ghost of a voice. She shivered blissfully with the tone of voice he spoke to her.
"I want to see if you really are an old man." She supplied innocently.
He very much didn't trust the way she had said that. It was bad enough that she was sat comfortably in his lap.
"Well you certainly don't look like an old man." He made to protest when her hands rested on his heated cheeks, one slipping passed his crimson gaze to run through his mane of ebony hair. Their eyes met for the briefest moment and he swore he could see a desire for him blazing back at him through the pools of amber. "You certainly don't feel like an old man." Tiny hands slipped from his face and hair, resting them against his chest. A long, hot breath escaped his lips and he could feel his core aching to touch her.
It seemed his subconscious had gained control of his brain and once again rendered his thought process useless. Oh Gaia, he could feel the expanse of her muscles tighten under him as he worked his hands onto her thighs. Rubbing the skin he found there and letting his head loll back against the chair with his eyes closed blissfully, he missed the feral grin she gave him. "You definitely don't feel like an old man…" she groaned quietly.
It was such a ghost of a whisper that he wasn't completely sure if she had actually said it or if his mind had imagined it. Crimson eyes shot open and met her liquid amber ones.
"W-What?"
She chastised herself for saying it out loud and looked at him with a frown. She didn't want to give her little game away just yet.
"Huh? I didn't say anything."
Yuffie looked so innocent and genuinely confused that it helped him bring himself back to reality. He became very aware of their position and that the door to the office was still open and if someone were to find the two of them as they were, there would be rumours going round about them tomorrow morning over breakfast in the mess hall. He tried to calm his erratic breathing and removed his hands from her thigh as though he'd been burned. Breathing deeply, he felt his insides protest when she jumped up out of her lap. Damn it…
"Woops, sorry Vince! Didn't mean to go all insane on you." She scratched the back of her head in embarrassment.
"Ginger ale?" he asked suddenly.
Huh? What an odd question…
"Eh?" she asked, still a little pink in the face.
Vincent cleared his throat, the only sign that they had been virtually on the cusp of groping the hell out of each other was the very sexy dazed look within his eyes.
"You were on your way to get us something from the cafeteria, were you not?"
Her eyes widened to the size of saucers and a look of comprehension dawned. "Oh." Yuffie muttered. "Sure…I'll be right back."
She came to her senses and skipped towards the door, feeling his eyes on her the entire way.
As soon as her tempting body skipped off down the hallway and out of sight, he dropped the stoic persona and rubbed his face in his hands, groaning to himself.
"Damn woman…" he whispered to himself.
He briefly wondered how many people would miss him were he to take Cerberus out of its holster at his leg and shoot himself with it. Or shoot her…
"I'm back!" her sing song voice returned barely three minutes later and he watched her enter the office, her arms laden with snacks and drink. He was brought out of his musing when she let the snacks and two cans clatter across his desk and threw him something made of black leather and suspiciously familiar.
"Thanks for the snackage, Vincent." She grinned sweetly and opened one of the cans of soda that had rolled across the desk. He watched the muscle in her neck moving as she swallowed the drink and briefly wondered what it would feel like to run his tongue along that spot on her neck.
Cursing himself for his carnal thoughts, he gave her a withering look.
"Yuffie, may I ask where you got my wallet?"
XxxxxxxX
It didn't take Vincent long to find the entrance. There was a collection or bones just to the right side of the cave and a foul stench burned his sensitive nostrils as he treaded carefully underfoot. He made his way along the ledge of stone and once he had given the all clear, he turned to signal for his companion to make her way down from the rocky outcrop above and stand next to him. They would do well to remain silent to avoid attracting the attention of the monster that lay within the cave beyond them.
The moon was beyond the clouds and when he looked into the passageway, it was pitch black.
Yuffie cried out suddenly. There was a scurry of feet and Vincent turned in time to catch her in his arms as she barrelled into him. With a breath of relief, she lifted her head from his chest and smiled guiltily up at him.
"Sorry, I tripped." She whispered.
Vincent heard the creature before he saw it. There was the sound of claws scraping on stone and a murmur of a growl. It was very close. He raised a finger to his lips and pointed into the entrance, Yuffie nodded and reached behind her to unlatch her weapon.
Following suit, Cerberus was un-holstered and in his right hand within seconds, ready to shoot. He didn't have long to wait. With a growl that reminded him of a chainsaw coming from within, he led Yuffie out into the open and they crouched low in the grass. He hoped the long grass would provide some sort of cover while they waited for the Behemoth to show itself. It sounded much bigger than he had anticipated. He was vaguely glad of his idea to ask Yuffie to tag along with him on this mission.
To put it simply, the beast within the cave had been terrorising a local farmer and his family who had chosen to set up home within the animal's territory while the thing had been hibernating. Once it had awoken, it hadn't been long before it had butchered most of the farmer's cattle and injured their little daughter. He had called upon the W.R.O to help him eradicate the beast.
And while neither Yuffie nor Vincent would normally be asked to take such a simple mission when such a thing could be handled by the task squads - given their high ranks within the organisation they were usually given the most dangerous tasks – they were glad for the distraction.
With an unearthly wail, the beast finally showed itself. Bright red with a black underbelly and teeth the size of daggers, it moulded itself out of the shadows. It sprang, seemingly in slow motion, towards the pair of them, its mouth hanging open and snake like eyes sussing them out.
Yuffie had no choice, if the beast made its way towards them, it would tear them apart in seconds. No longer caring if she was spotted, she got to her feet and slipped her Scan materia into one of the slots on her Conformer, casting it quickly.
Using herself as a distraction so Vincent was able to get a clear shot at the creature, she began to run.
"Shit. It's weak against water." She murmured to herself as she eyed the animal's stats on her console. She'd lost her elemental materia after the fight with Nero and hadn't thought to buy anymore. Even Leviathan, her precious summon materia had been left at home.
"Vincent! It's weak against water!" she shouted, not wanting to look behind her. She couldn't stop herself, she had to know.
Boy did she regret doing that. The behemoth had more than halved the distance between them.
"Yuffie! Get down!" Vincent roared as she heard several rounds of bullets shooting into the side of the beast. It howled in pain.
Doing as she was told, she yelled and braced herself to impact the ground. Without hesitating she dived forwards. Thrashing out with her shuriken, she felt the putrid breath of the beast barely inches from her as it stumbled to the ground next to her, a shot in each of its back legs rendering it useless. It let out another pained howl as her weapon made contact, a sharp claw tore into her stomach and her leg was bleeding from a jagged rock that had caught the skin. She gasped in pain and looked across to the beast lying dead three feet to her right; Conformer rather gruesomely impaled in its eye. It was dead.
Panting from the adrenaline rush, she sighed with relief and lay back down on the ground, listening as the thuds of Vincent's feet rushed towards her.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his concerned eyes roving quickly over her dirt covered form and injuries.
Still panting, she took the hand he offered and she pulled herself to her feet, wincing at the four inch gash above her belly button. "R-Remind me to kick your ass for asking me to tag along." She grinned.
His lips quirked up at the corners and he led her to a nearby tree, allowing her to sit and rest her back against it, he took a quick look at her ripped top.
"Let me see." He said softly. Something was off with him.
Blushing a little as he boldly lifted the edge of her top to look at the gash, she started breathing heavily again for a different kind of adrenaline rush. She so wanted to reach out and run her hands through that long waterfall of black hair and she wanted to be straddling him again, feeling his strong thigh muscles flexing under her and just how turned on he was getting by her soothing ministrations.
Deciding to hell with it, she took the fabric from his hands and boldly pulled the ripped fabric over her head, tossing it to the side and leaving her in her sports bra.
"Does that help?" she winced up at him with a tone of something in her voice.
Vincent couldn't hide the way his eyes widened and travelled from her stomach to her breasts and then to her flushed face.
"We need to clean your wounds…" he murmured, mistaking the lust in her eyes for discomfort. She wondered why he was being so mellow.
Pulling a flat first aid kit from one of the pockets on his leather trousers, he got to his feet and hissed, quickly reaching for his back.
"Vincent?" Yuffie made to start forwards but she was held down by a strong hand on her bare shoulder.
"I'm alright. It appears I've pulled a muscle." He winced.
The situation shouldn't have been funny, but her concerned smile suddenly morphed into a wide grin as she started laughing.
"The Great Vincent Valentine, pulling a muscle? Ha!"
The man glared half-heartedly at her. "I'm glad you find this so amusing." He growled.
They eventually set to work on closing the wound that Yuffie had received after cleaning it with some water from Vincent's canteen. She watched him closely throughout the process and noticed that his back and shoulder were giving him a lot of pain.
"I guess it's a while since you trained, huh?" Yuffie supplied as he put the first aid kit away again.
"Nearly a month. I suppose my body has gotten used to not performing such strenuous activities."
He sat down beside her and sighed, his face twitched into a grimace. Yuffie tried not to smile at the thought of Vincent and 'strenuous activities' and looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.
"Vince?" she asked. As his attention turned towards her, she got to her feet and told him to move. "Budge up."
"What are you doing?" truthfully, he was terrified of another repeat of their little episode in his office. And not for the reason's one might think. He wasn't afraid of her being near him, it was the fact he knew he would have no self-control if she straddled him again.
He was rather relieved and slightly confused when she sat herself down behind him. Until she pressed her chest against his back and worked her hands around his chest from behind. He made a noise of discomfort at her invasion of his privacy and made to remove her hands.
"Relax, Vincent." Oh god, he could feel her hot breath drifting into his ear and down his neck gently. "I'm just gonna give you a massage, it'll help ease the tension." She grinned in a whisper.
"I'm fine." He growled lowly.
"Think of it as a thank you for patching me up." She grinned against his ear.
His throat ran dry as her right hand found its way across his back and disappeared into his cloak, he'd rather not tell her what he would rather her be doing to thank him but this wasn't a bad way of expressing her gratitude at all. A gasp that tore itself from his throat as she began to work a knot out of his muscles, concentrating on the shoulder blade. For the third time, his brain short circuited and he failed to protest when her left hand found the buttons of his shirt.
"I'm just undoing the top few buttons so your shirt isn't in the way okay?" she reassured him when she felt him shifting against her.
"Hn." It was all he said as Yuffie continued to work her magic, his head rolled to the side and his eyes drifted closed blissfully. Was Vincent falling asleep?
"Hey, I'm almost done." She whispered tenderly. She wanted to show him she wasn't just a teasing little siren, she could be gentle too.
"Don't." Vincent murmured.
"Sorry?" she asked, stopping her ministrations to look at him, she saw the carnal desire bursting back at her and she felt a vivid heat begin to pool in her belly.
"D-Don't stop."
Hehehe...aren't I evil. :D