when the morrow comes after the night
let the swallows flock over
and peck on the bone of each dream
In her dreams, Tsubomi is disgraced.
And so she wakes from her bed.
A nightmare, however, leers at her in a beastly mask and cloak, veiled beneath the depths of the darkness in her private chambers. The painted silk screen might have shrieked at the sight of him, but her lips are sealed and so is the hem of her pale shift, clasped by a hand.
Finding her actions distasteful, Naraku reveals himself to her side. "Why is the lady still awake in such hour?"
"How dare you," she warns him, an anger seething under poised composure, "trespass in my chambers in the dark of the night. I shall make certain my lord husband knows of this misbehavior."
She raises her hand; her sleeve follows in a shallow motion, swinging forth. "Don't come near me lest I—"
Before she could strike him across the cheek, his long spidery fingers wrap around her wrist, a thumb prodded at her pulse in a caress. She shudders at the touch. His skin is cold, too cold, against the warmth of her flesh.
Naraku angles his concealed face ever so slightly at hers so he can revel over her contorted features. Something peers beneath the mask; a man or a monster?
He breathes out warmly to her palm.
"Will you scream?"
His tone holds a knife-edge to it. It cuts; just at the base of her throat.
She draws in a quiet breath through her teeth.
Tsubomi abides. "Why are you here?"
The air turns stagnant between them. This heathen threatens another second more and she waits in latent tension. He does it on purpose.
There is a sliver of satisfaction in his words when his thumb slides on her skin. The act is self-evident, though what captures his eyes is the art of her wrist; pale and slender, and if bowed, adorned with intricate blue veins, like ink against oil-paper. "I have heard you were in need of my assistance."
His thumb then crosses over the ridges of her knuckles in the manner she almost recalls as affectionate. Indulgent. It bewilders her, how he can touch her so freely, as if she is not bound by commitment—or rather, as if he has claimed her for his own. Tsubomi loathes him, nonetheless. "I no longer have any use for you," she reasons, attempting to whisk her hand back. "Stop touching me."
He ignores her request. "Is that so?"
"Indeed," she rips her hand from his grasp; he releases her. "Now leave me."
However Naraku stays in his place, right beside her.
"You intrigue me," he admits, "however you despise me as well. Humor me, lady, where does this spite come from?"
And she does, with venom in her voice.
"You are naught more but a fiend hiding behind a carcass."
His pelts and furs bristle, his teeth glint beneath the jaws of a baboon mask, and in his muted madness, Naraku laughs and laughs.
When the humor dies from his mouth only then does he muse: "I suppose there is truth in your words," he ponders aloud, cocking his head to the side. "This time, tell me, do you love your lord husband?"
Her brows furrow, uncertain of his intentions. "Of course," she replies, unwavering. "My heart and soul are his and his alone."
"Such devotion," Naraku says this with all the cruel mockery in his tone. Hasn't he always been such a vindictive man, deep within his soul? "Though your Lord Hitomi is frail," he emphasizes, words with teeth, "failing in his youth," and then surfacing under his disdain is what she believes to be indignant bemusement: "how can you devote yourself over an ill-stricken man?"
She adores her husband, she would have claimed. However she riles at his accusations and decides to censure him, for the sake of her spouse. "You shall not speak profanities of his name."
In his voice, there is malicious glee. He shamelessly closes himself near her, enshrouding her frame in his colors. "Ho, but it is the truth, is it not?"
Tsubomi does not speak in black ire and he does not care, when words like poison taunts out from his silver tongue. "However, I suppose the matters of the heart," then he must have sneered, "is damnably complicated."
"Unlike that of flesh, defined by sensation, of that heat," his ice-pale lips are hot against her ear, breath moist and sweet—like wilted olive blossoms.
Then something stirs beneath her skin; a cold tremor to the spine and a warmth under her belly. He comes for her once more with sighs as soft as ghost kisses. "Lady Tsubomi," her name curls around his tongue, making it sound so corruptible, so desirable, "You are a woman in the end. Human," his condescension is then lost to the dark delight of a vicious creature than that of a licentious man.
"Do you desire him on your bed?"
Even if she cannot trace his true countenance, she can feel the smirk on his mouth, stretched taut and twisted at the edges. "Do you dream of him in these lonesome nights," it is not quite a question now when his tone spins and strips her from her modesty; her skin shamed, her soul shaken, "mounted above you, his hands on your breasts, he, between your legs," and he whispers sinfully to her ear, as if to share a secret: "to deflower you?"
Cold sweat prickles all over her body; her pearl-white kosode clings onto her like second skin and its luxurious silk almost feels repulsive, its purity soiled, when it molds promiscuously on the shape of her waist and the swells of her breasts—her nipples strain beneath, carving its desperation on thin, thin fabric. Too tight, she thinks, stifling from the heat that swelters on her limbs, on the crevice between her legs. The air becomes heavy and humid, making her lungs writhe within her ribs. She does not breathe. She does not move.
And he knows. He knows.
Will he touch her?
Her inherent shame compels her to fold her arms over her chest, as if attempting to conceal herself as she lays there naked in front of his eyes; his wretched eyes that trace the woman within, promising to grope and grasp and grab her over and over again. She gasps at the feeling, her pulse racing from her neck. Her thighs clamp together, shut close. He feels too close.
Will he touch her?
"Ah," Naraku murmurs finally, "have I shaken you, my lady?"
His hand crawls to her thigh; the movement is slow and measured, when his fingers splay over the cusp of her knee, edging at the line betwixt her legs. He touches her there, just at the hem of her robes. A wet trail pools within.
Will he take her, here?
And then his other hand reaches for her shoulder, trailing down to the length of her arm, the delicate jut of her elbow, and then her wrist—holding it firmly with his palm like a manacle, moving it aside to reveal the swollen ache in her chest. Her truth is a foul thing and it manifests as an unpleasant warmth soaking through silk. He smells too much like her lover.
He unravels her, bit by bit. Perhaps, he smiles. "So it is true."
She throbs, oh how she throbs.
Will he—
"No!"
As if it possesses a will of its own, her arm jerks back violently and the back of her hand hits his jaw.
"Don't you dare touch me again!" as Tsubomi pushes herself shakily away from him, she manages to snarl out her indignation in shallow pants, salvaging some shred of dignity: "I shan't tolerate your perversions, you loathsome. . .you. . ."
For an interval, there is a glimpse. Her blood turns to ice.
Crimson gleams beneath the baboon mask, a dark wisp of curled hair against skin as pale as the waning moon. A vile smirk under sullied white and gray and purple. The darkness of the night cast its illusions. Her lower lip trembles.
In her stunned silence, he dips his head low enough to consume his face back within the abyss of his cloak. "This Naraku deeply apologies, my lady," he speaks to her in a humbling tone, suited for a nameless servant, as he retreats back to the sliding door. His form bleeds in the shadows and only his voice remains, a seductive whisper: "I bid you pleasant dreams. . ."
Tsubomi almost mishears him mutter wife from the long drawl of the midnight breeze.
She denies everything. His words and his voice—almost like Kagewaki's.