It's been a long time, loves, and maybe my muse is rising from the dead? I'm rough from lack of practice, but I need to do something creative…

Setting: very shortly after marriage

Before her marriage, Kaoru though she had understood what sex was. She had been raised among men and boys, practicing kendo instead of mastering ikebana, and males talked. Not where they thought she could hear, not when they remembered that she was there, but still.

The problem was, men didn't discuss such things in mixed company, and boys…. Well, boys were boys, and their talk was mostly euphemisms, or stories so distorted with boasting as to be absurd. Still, she figured that she had a pretty firm understanding of the act itself. It wasn't until after her first night as a wife that she realized how little she had really known, how shallow and foolish the stories she'd heard. Kenshin touched her with vulnerability, a desire to please, and share - and a hot urgency that took her breath away.

She smiled at his reflection in her mirror, as he watched her brush her hair before bed. He always did so, and it made her feel feminine in a way that she never had before. She deftly finished her braid, tying it off with a small bit of string before rising to cross the room and join him on their bed.

Ready-for-bed Kenshin was one of her favorites, the casual sleeping robe, and loose, shining hair; the way that the lamp reflected in his odd, beloved, light eyes; and the way that he always turned down the bedding on her side, ready for her to join him there. She smiled more broadly, and slid into the futon next to him, fluffing the blankets and wiggling into a comfortable spot on his shoulder. Kenshin was a neat and careful person, but somehow, his collar always gaped more than was proper, and she loved it. Her fingers skimmed across the exposed skin of his chest and collarbones, feather light touches, simply because she could. She knew that he could feel her smile against his skin, and she didn't care, happy simply to lie quietly in his arms, in their bed.

When she discovered a mark on his skin, she frowned. A bruise, in an odd spot, the point where his neck met his shoulder. It was red and purple, and roughly the size of her thumb. She propped herself up on an elbow to get a better look.

"Kaoru?" Her name was a question, his brows raised.

"Kenshin," she ran careful fingers across the mark. "Did you burn yourself?"

"Oro?" He blinked, and raised his hand to investigate. "No, I haven't -" and then his lips curled into a smile, eyes crinkling at the corners, his real smile. He shook his head against the pillow. "Kaoru, beloved, that mark is yours."

She gasped. "I bruised you? When?" She was a sweaty, loud, and violent girl, she threw sandals at Yahiko when he was mouthy, she hit people, but she, of all people, knew her own strength, and her violence was a show, she would never hurt someone, she had never struck him to bruise, and certainly not in this odd spot, when had this happened?! She had hurt him, and he hadn't told her -

"Kaoru," his hand covered her own, and she glared at the laughter in his gentle voice, "it is only a love bruise, so it is." Her confusion, her hurt at the idea of causing him pain, was written large in her eyes, and his voice gentled further. "It is only a kiss mark. Last night, when you kissed me here," and her face flamed at the reminder, the memory of the previous night, and of how she had latched on to that firm muscle in his shoulder and sucked desperately as he had moved over her, within her… "you left this mark. It does not hurt." She searched his eyes, and saw only truth, and amusement, and love.

Her eyes fell back to the mark, fingers stroking it carefully. "It really doesn't hurt?'

"No." He smoothed his fingers across her cheek, callouses a pleasantly rough contrast to the gentle touch, and she leaned into his hand, nibbling her lip as she contemplated the bruise on his skin.

She had marked him with her mouth while he had loved her, leaving evidence on his very skin of what they had done. She looked up to his face, relaxed and amused and happy as he lay in their bed - in her bed - and felt a fierce smile curve her lips. Her lips were firm against his as she kissed him, pulling his robe from his shoulders, devouring his eager response.

Mine.