Rukia backed up a step from her brother who looks murderous beyond explanation. His steel-grey eyes were harder and colder than usual but there was something else in those eyes she didn't recognize behind the glint of anger which must be because she just unexpectedly burst into his room.

She wanted to apologize for her rudeness before and everything that she had said in the heat of the moment. She'd spent a few minutes outside his door if-ing and but-ing whether she should knock while getting soaked in the driving horizontal rain. When she heard the shattering of glass against the door, she didn't think. Now, she didn't know what to think.

The smell of alcohol was strong in the air and Byakuya was ...drunk?

Seriously? The Mr. Perfect of the Soul Society was a closet drunkard? Just when you think you've seen it all. Rukia thought a little shocked.

Clearing her throat to get the words, Rukia began stutteringly, looking anywhere but at his sculpted torso, flat nipples, and slung trousers. "I...um, please forgive me, I didn't mean to barge in on you like this Nii-Sama but I knocked and...then... then I heard a crash-"

"Why are you here before me like this, Rukia?" Byakuya interrupted her rambling. His tone sounding dangerous.

Normal Byakuya's voice was deep and commanding. This low, rumbling baritone suffused with spirits said, "I get what I want when I want,"

Rukia felt like a rabbit before a tiger and everything in her told her to run! But she is Rukia Kuchiki, stubborn and pig-headed. She didn't run. Not from hollows and not from drunkards. Shoulders back, her chin jutting proudly, she will say what she got drench in the rain to say,

"Well, I wanted to apolo-" Her sentence disintegrated into a startled gasp, as Byakuya became a blur and the door slammed deafeningly behind her. She blinked and he was grabbing her by the waist and pulled her into him. An intense glare lit his stormy eyes, daring her to look away. She didn't dare.

"Nii-" Rukia swallowed thickly over her instantly parched her throat. A hair's breadth separated them. She's never been this close to Byakuya before. The smoldering heat radiating from her brother banished the cold brought into her skin from her soaking. Not that she ever mind icy chill. But this warmth embracing her-Captivating me. This close she could make out things that she had never noticed before like the delicate curve of his lip and how the bottom one a touch poutier than the top, a slight dip in the center of that firm slash.

Kissing him. What would it be like to kiss him?

She wanted to know against all reasoning but understood that it would never happen. Her sister was a lucky one, wasn't she? To know the love of this sexy man put in this world to be the fantasy of every woman with a pulse. For a moment, Rukia allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to be loved passionately by a man like Byakuya Kuchiki even years after she died. Could she find a love like that in her lifetime?

It occurred to some part of her brain still on duty, to send a signal to her lungs that she wasn't breathing. Rukia inhaled deeply, easing the burning in her chest then released a sigh.

Was that his scent? Her cheeks were heating up and Rukia had no misconceptions about the color of them at this moment. Has any man ever smelled so criminally delicious? Not the ones she knew. Mostly they were sweaty, smelled like corned chips and dirty socks. But Byakuya's scent...She inhaled another dosage of peppery cinnamon and biting rice Sake. An intoxicating drug to an unsuspecting victim. What would his skin taste like chilled and goosebumped under her ice if he smelled so mouth-waterly incredible?

What the hell am I thinking? She snapped, chagrined at thinking about Byakuya so inappropriately. Like a sister should never think about her brother. What? Did the rain seep through her skull too? She had to get this under control, say what had to be said then get the hell out of here.

"Nii-"She began again only to be cut off once more.

"Do you understand?... Do you even know, Rukia?" he asked slowly

Do I know what are you're drunkenly trying to spit out? Not a clue, Byakuya Nii-sama. Not the faintest idea.

She was getting sick of this. All she wanted to do was apologize for speaking to him so disrespectfully because she'd lost her temper. And when she loses her temper, slum Rukia comes back with a vengeance, which had the noble Lady Kuckiki she'd gotten beaten into her head at every turn since she got into the aristocracy, fleeing with gloved hands to lips, scandalized.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry.

But as she took a breath to utter those words, Byakuya did something else she wasn't expecting when he flash-stepped again and Rukia's back came in contact with the wall opposite to his ginormous bed enough to make her gasp. He lifted her against the wall until they were at eye-level with one another, her legs were dangling off the ground. His mouth was close enough to hers for them to breathe each other's air. The slender crook of his fingers grabbed the wet cloth of her night yukata and she blushed another gallon when it caught up to her that the thing was sticking to her body because of the rain.

Awkward doesn't even begin to describe this situation.

The orchestra from the storm outside played uncontested; drumming fat raindrops on the roof, blasting thunderclaps here and there as the winds hollowed a ghostly dirge through the trees while inside a deafening silence stretched between Byakuya and Rukia. For what seemed unending seconds, neither of them spoke. The only sounds between them were their breaths. Unhurriedly, Byakuya touched his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. He sighed softly when their skins made contact like a man at peace while she blushed anew, confused to no end.

"What-what are you doing?" She breathed in a whisper but he remained silent.

He's my brother! Byakuya wouldn't hurt me. She reminded herself, ignoring all the times her mind pushed to the fore so easily when he had hurt her deeply; allowing her to go to her own execution was, for example, hurting her. Ignoring her for years like an unwanted pet was another grand exercise in crushing her confidence especially with the hatred and the scorn she had to face when he wasn't around from all the Elders of the clan and every noble blue blood Kuchiki that made no secret of how much she didn't belong among them.

Her anger was boiling, especially on the heels of their heated argument and how it had made no sense in the first place. Forbidding her to see Ichigo, her trusted friend, for no reason?

Just what the hell does he think he's doing?

Her answer came when his fingers fisted her clothing more causing the material to ride up to her calves.

"Niisama!" She screamed in his face.

He took in an unsteady breath and his entire body quaked with it. He almost sounded pain when he whispered, "Do not call me that." He said, bitterly biting at the last word as if she had offended him. Rukia's confusion doubled but he continued before she could express her misgivings.

"Not when we're right here, like this." His hushed breaths were warm against her nose and lips. The smell of sake had her feeling dizzy only to be simultaneously righted and lolling by subtle peppery cinnamon. "Byakuya, Rukia. I just want to be Byakuya to you right now." He requested almost vulnerable. A complete 360 from what she was used to.

What was wrong with him? Was she seeing under his mask right now? Was this the real him away from prying eyes?

When she didn't say anything for the space of a breath, he finally looked at her and she could see the pain in those eyes. While she understood what he wanted, she didn't understand why he wanted it. Still, she found her lips tentatively tasting his name like a secret on her tongue without the respectful titles she's come to associated with her brother whenever she addressed him.

"Byakuya."

He groaned a satisfied groan from her just speaking his name. "A-Again" he demanded, anguish in his tone. She repeated his name, a little stronger this time.

What the hell?

He nuzzled his nose against hers slowly, intimately like a lover in one of those World of the Living romance movies. Something else so uncharacteristic of the cold persona she was used to that Rukia just froze like an ice sculpture unsure of what to make of this side of Byakuya Kuchiki. If she ever gets out of his room without fainting due to blood loss, she was sure she was never going to forget tonight for the rest of her anticipated long life.

Would he remember tonight? Or these things?

Was he so drunk that he would allow this part of him to be seen by others? By her? Technically, she barged into his room but still...

She knew that when some men drunk too much they sometimes don't remember what happened to them when they were intoxicated.

"Why do I have to go through this?" Byakuya continued, the one-sided monologue starting up again as this was making no sense whatsoever to Rukia.

Come to think of it, he hadn't been making any sense ever since she busted through the door. Was he that wasted? Peaking over his at the three good-size empty bottles of Sake on his nightstand (expensive high quality from the labels, he is Byakuya Kuchiki, after all), answered her question.

"To the Gods, I wished that I had never adopted you, I-I wish you were nobody to me. Not a Kuchiki!" He said vehemently.

Whoever said words couldn't hurt had the personality and empathy of a stone and they never met Byakuya Kuchiki.

Apparently, being drunk didn't improve his attitude and he is still a son of a bitch! She thought, fuming.

Rukia turned her face away from him feeling foolish for leaving her room in the middle of a storm to apologize to a bastard like him. Making her voice firm she asked;

"May I take my leave now, Niisama? I apologize for my rude intrusion and I came here to apologize for what I said earlier in the heat of the moment when I allowed my temper to rule my words. " There she said it. Less sincerely than when she'd meant to when she first arrived.

Silence met her apology.

After a while Rukia looked back at him and found him with brows drawn, a deeper frown marred his handsome face.

"Leave?" Byakuya asked sounding like a lost little boy then it registered what she said and his features tuned stony once more. Rukia could tell she'd just pissed him off which pissed her off because she couldn't find anything in what she just said to be out of line much less offensive.

"You want to leave me? To go where?" The volume of his voice rose an octave higher. This was a strategic moment to Shakkaho his ass and get the hell out of there. She understood that intrinsically. The soldier in her said it was a good escape plan however, something else from somewhere else in her being, advise her strongly against that option.

Byakuya continued unjustifiably angry, "Back to the real world? To that Kurosaki brat?!" He spat the words like poison. In a low more threatening voice, he asked, "Are you fucking that bastard, Rukia!?"

"Niisama please!" She was scared now and so confused and seething at the same time. A strange mix of emotion and she didn't know what to do with them as her fist balled ready to strike at a moment's notice, and her mind worked to understand whatever the fuck this is. Rukia was used to logical, emotionally disconnected Byakuya Kuchiki, not drunk-pissed off-cursing Byakuya Kuchiki.

His grip on her clothing tightened and he pulled her even closer to him. With her back against the wall, he wedged his hips betwixt her thigh. In an instant, he was no longer holding her up by her clothing, his upper body had taken on that task, pressing himself in her, he pulled her legs around his waist, letting her straddle him as he pushed against her. Then she felt his...Oh my God!

Rukia swang her right hook out at his temple before she could think about it. Before she remembers who she was about to lay her fist into. Useless! Byakuya caught her fist in his palm before it could connect to its target, pushing her balled fist down to her side and just for good measure, pinned the other one on the opposite side, too. She tried to use her shoulder to push at him, she may as well have been pushing against a brick wall. Her mind was reeling with thoughts of why her brother's cock was pressing against her belly.

"Let go of me!" She demanded as she sorted her thoughts berating herself for not going along with plan "Shakkaho" when she could have.

What the hell was he doing before I came in here to be that hard up? What is he going to do to me? It took her aback as the consequences loomed in her face. A powerful man like the head of the Kuchiki clan was virtually untouchable. While Byakuya wasn't above the law per se, he damn well had some giant shares in the infrastructure that's for sure. If he did anything to her tonight unless she took justice for herself then ran away to the world of the living, she couldn't count on the law to have her back.

When had it ever?

"Answer me!" Byakuya shot back. She was getting ready to say the name of the spell to blast him when Byakuya flash stepped again, and instead of a Haddo, Rukia let out a startled scream when he pushed her to his bed. She tried to get up immediately but he flashed again coming down on her before she could move, quickly pinning her arms over her head with one of his hands and her legs under his powerful ones. His pressing length rested in the center of her thighs.

"Are you...?" He asked unflinchingly, trailing off as he dipped his head to the junction between her neck and shoulder blade. His expression was hidden from her eyes. She didn't stop struggling, futile as it was.

"Is this man you are?" Rukia spat through clench teeth, her tone disgusted, "Is this what's left to be seen after your house of cards falls? Is this the great Byakuya Kuchiki? Pathetic!" She steeled her voice even as her entire body started trembling uncontrollably. Would he force himself on her? Was this to be what her first time with a man is like? A drunken rape?

Over my cold corpse. She decided.

Byakuya breathed a deep cleansing sigh as if to inhale a part of her into himself. A thunderclap exploded muffledly outside. "Are you allowing him to...to touch you?" Hot air rushed down her neck as his nostrils flared, "it angers me to think about you and him like that,"

"Why should I tell you anything about me and Ichigo?"

"You and Ichigo?" He nearly roared. Byakuya's reiatsu began to rise angrily from his pores, shaking the very room like a low rumbling earthquake but she didn't care. Let him do his worst as she will do hers. She wasn't going to beg him or cry no matter what. And if he tried to force himself on her like it was looking like he was, he'd better be prepared to face her icy fury to get what he wants.

"A man who claimed to be my caretaker is about to take advantage of me by force?" Rukia said as if he hadn't spoken, her words barbed but coming out nearly breathless under the full force of his spiritual pressure. "A man who's supposed to be my brother?"

The shaking stop. The eruption of spiritual reiatsu static rain subsided.

"Why are you doing this to me, Niisama?" Against her best efforts, a sob broke from her lips.

"Don't call me that, Rukia," He said a little calmer, "not when the sight of you with that brat makes bile rise in my throat." His lips touch her skin, making her feel every vibrated word spoken against her neck. "Not when anything I do will either be a mistake or scandal if I act on what I'm not supposed to feel for you. And I've tried not to feel for you so much for so long. But then that encounter between us happened in the Ossen and I beheld in truth what I've denied myself to imagine for decades. Your body clothed in only vapors and water droplets mocked the stingy fantasies I've allowed myself briefly to enjoy about what you look in nothing but firelight. "

She remembered how Byakuya had looked at her that night. How he had stood there, eye wide as he walked in on her getting out of the Ossen.

"I," He had begun, his eyes glancing at her then looking away and before she jumped back into the water to cover herself. " I had no idea you were in here," he'd said apologetically as he walked out.

"Not when I can't sleep the night through no matter what I do, no matter much I deplete my energy. Your face is all I see when I close my eyes. Thoughts of touching your skin to mine bombard me constantly until I submit myself to fantasies and dreams of us doing things one another a brother should never do to his sister. Call me pathetic! Be disgusted with me for knowing all that you do now. But do not call me your brother when we're alone like this and the world is outside if only this one time, Rukia."

His voice was softer when he next spoke, like gently cracking the shell on the silence yet his words sounded as if they were torn from his throat; jagged edges in every breath. "Please, answer my question because I need to know. I need to know if I've wasted time enough already now that you've found someone to take you away from me. I need to know if I should let go of my thoughts of you. Stop futile pinning and wanting you like I shouldn't because I've been trying to be your brother and..I..I've been failing at every turn. And I'm sick of it."

Speechless didn't even begin to describe Rukia.

It dawned on her that their nonsensical argument that was him being...jealous. Of Ichigo?

No way!

Rukia swallowed hard then after what seemed like a minute asked, "You want me-" She asked slowly, whispering the words- "like a lover? But you said...you said..."

How many times had he told everyone that he was her brother? How many times had it been suggested that her adoption be dissolved and he marries her because of the need for the Kuchiki line preservation and Byakuya's refusal to marry after her sister died?

He raised his head then and stared into her eyes. His eyes looked a little tired, a little haunted. "I know what I said because I had to say that. And because I made an oath to your sister in the final minutes of her life to take care of you as your brother and I made a vow before my parents' grave to never break the law again," he confessed bluntly, the bluntest she's ever heard him, "yet my feelings for you contest those oaths so strongly, I feel hypocritical and selfish for having them about you even as I understand explicitly that I want no one else. I've never even looked at another woman twice since my wife died. Yet just the thought of you and my body, my spirit, and my mind are decidedly in agreement."

Shocked, she assumed her speechless behavior once more.

"Are you...," he asked tentatively almost as if he didn't want to know the answer to his own question. "and Kurosaki...?"

"No, we're just friends," Rukia answered without guile still taken aback as she was with all she's heard tonight, her breath stolen from the galeforce of his confessions.

Byakuya raised his head from her neck, eyes meeting hers when he asked, "Are you just saying that because of all I've divulged to you. Is this pity, Rukia?"

She couldn't blame him for asking. Once you're a noble it's like your a target for people with ill intent, people ready to say anything to curry your favor or use you in some way.

"You're too proud for pity, Byakuya Kuchiki,"

Byakuya's lips slowly curled up into the most breathtaking smile she had ever seen on a person. He had straight white teeth, perfect fitting into his mouth and small dimples formed at the base of his high cheeks. He looked younger, more innocently-boyish yet sexier at the same time.

"Oh, wow!" She breathes.

"What?" He asked his sunny smile regrettably growing cloudy with concern.

Rukia bit her bottom lip, "you look younger when you smile. This is the first time I've ever seen it on your face," her honesty arched his brows then they furrowed again and the usual frown was back in its place.

"Then I'll reserve it for you alone, in our quiet times if you're still agreeable and if you still don't hate me?" He asked testing her on the subject.

Rukia twisted up her lip, her eyes rolling in contemplation. She still couldn't believe that Byakuya had told her all these things.

Sake really loosens one's tongue, huh?

She has never thought about him as Byakuya the man with problems and feelings of his own. He always looked so together, so cold, calculated, and totally in control. Tonight's confessions humanized him to her. Making him more relatable.

"Well, you've been a bit of a jerk," she said off-handedly,

Byakuya gave her a confounding look, "Jerk?"

"Asshole, the biggest dick imaginable. Jerk," She defined.

"Rukia," He said warningly. "Forget not to whom address,"

"Byakuya Kuchiki," She said defiantly, "without the titles, with the intrigue and the pantomime of kissing your ass on the right side. Be assured, I forget not to whom I address." she finished saucily.

Again, that unexpected grin, "that attitude is grounds for a spanking, Rukia Kuchiki," Byakuya pronounced like he could take great pleasure in the task.

The image of her over Byakuya's lap with her bare ass over his knee as he spanked her creamy flesh pink.

"You're blushing, Rukia," Byakuya observed, "are imagining me doing that to you? " he guessed accurately, licking his bottom lip seductively. His hooded gaze on her lips. "Rukia, I want you for more than just a lover," he said suddenly before she could come up with a witty comeback for his comment. "I need you to know me than anyone has ever known me before."

Record scratch...!

What did he just say?

His grip on her hands loosen, she pulled one hand free, wiping his hair out of his eyes, cupping his left cheek. He sighed deeply and contentedly into the contact when their skin met, closing his eyes covering the back of her hand with his warm palm. He acted as if it had been decades since anyone had touched him like this. Then she realized that it had been.

He's been lonely all this time. She realized feeling a surge of guilt for not recognizing this about her brother before. Then again, he wears a thick fog of aloofness all the time.

"What do you mean when you said 'to know you than anyone ever had?" She asked. "Didn't my ..." she stopped herself when she felt him stiffen under her touch, all contentment evaporating just at the suggestion of Hisanna.

Too soon, still?

"You married her, you love her don't you," Rukia continued stubbornly, growing upset at the same time. Great! Was she now the jealous one? And to add insult to wounded pride, that would make her jealous of a memory.

When Byakuya spoke again, a pain for him lance through her when he softly uttered, "She couldn't know me as I wanted her to." He admitted reluctantly, his voice solemn, "Hisana was preoccupied with relentlessly searching for you. While I gave her all that I thought she wanted. I gave her all of myself but she didn't give herself back to me. She couldn't do that, I think."

Rukia opened her mouth and closed like a fish out of water but before she could say something more Byakuya closed his lips over hers. It took her aback, much like everything he's done tonight. His actions silencing her as his intense kiss that robbed her of breath. Sweet, drunken, impulsive, and demanding with hunger like no other. She felt the vibrations traveling down her skin as Byakuya groans with delight into her mouth before releasing her lips, leaving Rukia was breathless.

"I will not apologize." He breathes as breathless as she was. "I've ached to touch you, to kiss you!" he whispered centimeters from her mouth, "I've thought of your lips for so long." He inhaled pantingly like a man just beginning to quench insatiable thirst, "what they felt like, tasted like." The pad of his thumb caress her cheek, "am I to savory this brief sample, Rukia?"

It was a repercussive question she understood could potentially come back to bite both of them, not to mention, creating the biggest scandal in the Kuchiki Clan history. But before she could think more about the consequences, her lips were uttering miserably, "brevity sucks,"

He grins again (three times in one night), "how eloquent," Byakuya replied with peels of soft chuckles.

Damn. Rukia thought. She could see why he didn't smile. The Seireitei would be in an uproar each time the Captain of Squad Six smiles or laughs.

Rukia leaned up. Taking the initiative, she kisses him back earning a louder groan this time, enjoying the feel of her lips against his as his hands inspected her body through her wet clothes.

She knew that she's responsible if anything should happen between them. Byakuya was drunk- (if anyone could believe that)- and not in total control of his senses but damn it if it didn't feel so right at the same time now that she's agreeable. Inside here with him, his weight pleasingly on top of her, his sexy lips kissing hers back with passion, and intensity that she almost couldn't stand it. Her hips rocked against his intimidating cock, tentatively testing one out for the first time. She had no idea what she was doing, only that she needed to touch him more, her wet clothes felt cumbersome, in the way of her feeling his bare chest against her skin.

but as long as I had them on we'll only kiss. She was thinking when he released her lips with a cry.

"Rukia!" he hissed in a breath, his eyes closed. "More of that!"

"More of what?" She asked seconds before watching him bunched up the wet fold of her yukata until they were exposing her thighs then her lace panties. His hands parted her thighs wide under him then settled himself more snugly between them, in the space of a heartbeat.

In a hoarse voice, Byakuya asked her seemingly fascinated, "what is this?" while sliding his forefinger between the waistline of her tiny panties, "I've never seen undergarments fashioned thus. They please me fiercely, Rukia." As an afterthought, he asked, "Silk-lace? did you shop for them in the World of the Living?"

"Y-yes," She stuttered, caught up in a whirlwind of emotions. Embarrassment and lust strongest, locked in a battle of attrition. "Nii-"

"Do not call me that. Remember?" He reproves softly,"

"Too, too fast. We're moving too fast,"

He leaned in, nuzzling his way to her neck where he breathes in her scent for a few moments, his forefinger staying under her panty-line. When he spoke again, he sounded as wicked as sin with that deep husky voice, " Are we? Must I endeavor to stop this fantasy made flesh just as it began?" Another deep inhalation, "I've always believed you were forever out my reach because of the conditions I'd set in motion for us, yet here you are, laying in my bed, waiting for me to have my way with you over and over again." his fingers brushed over her clit, making her shudder.

"That's not why I came over here," she protested but Byakuya ignored this. He gave a marginal thug on her panties.

"If I remove these from your body with my teeth, will I find you wet from the storm or for me?"

Rukia was stunned into silence once again.