Chapter 2: Ask nicely if you want it
Monday morning finds Katara dawdling by the entrance to the lecture hall, looking very much like a doorman - doorwoman - as she greets everyone that bypasses her. The lecture hall has a set of doors at the top, where Katara stands, and a set of doors at the bottom, where the professor enters from.
"Aren't you going in?" her classmates ask her as they push the doors open.
"Yes, of course, I just forgot my..." Katara gestures vaguely to her bag, opening it up and pretending to look for something. This is how she spends the ten minutes before the lecture, with one hand shoved in her bag, trying to peek surreptitiously into the lecture hall. When the final student hurtles by her and she hears the noise in the lecture hall abort itself, she knows that Dr. Sozin is inside now.
She hears him talk, and though it is unintelligible, the rasping, husky timbre of his voice makes her shiver. She sighs to herself in irritation. If only she could have gotten over herself and gone into the lecture hall, there would have been a chance her professor wouldn't have seen her. If she enters now, everyone would pay attention. But she has to concede the fact that nobody has ever attained a medical degree with their ear pressed to the door, and so Katara pulls her hood over her head, counts to three, and sneaks inside.
To Dr. Sozin's credit, and surprisingly, to Katara's slight chagrin, he doesn't pause the lecture. He doesn't even look up at where she's sneaking over to a seat, but just ploughs ahead with his lecture plan. A few curious students look up at Katara as she closes the door quietly, but aside from that nobody seems to mind.
Figuring that this is the best case scenario, Katara pulls out her lecture materials and begins note taking. While the first few minutes of the lecture are punctured with Katara wondering, as she had been doing for the nine days, whether Dr. Sozin was angry at her, some of it is spent following along with Dr. Sozin's explanations. She takes fastidious notes, the curls in her hair fanning the page of her notebook as she does so. Multiple times, she brushes them aside, but as she gets more and more distracted by her lecture her curls seem to fly all over her notes.
Katara scowls to herself, annoyed. If it were another lecturer, she'd happily pull her hair up into a bun, but that is the exact same thing that got her into a sticky situation last time, in more ways than one. Unbidden, the image of her going home, peeling out her clothes, and feeling Dr. Sozin's cum staining her thighs and panties, rises to the forefront of her mind, and a hot blush invades her cheeks.
All too soon, the lecture wraps up, and Katara stares down at her notes. Despite having some neat and well-structured notes, a lot of the notes are untidy and downright idiotic. What the hell could "Use the... when if you see the signs of it... instead" mean? She makes a mental note to ask Haru for his notes, pushing her things into her bag and getting ready to go back home and lament the hell out of every decision she's ever made.
But as she turns towards the door, Dr. Sozin's voice rings out.
"Please hang back for a second, all. I've got your case study work graded; come to the front to pick it up."
Katara squeezes her eyes shut, cursing. She joins Haru and a few others in their chatter about the past weekend, and walks towards where Dr. Sozin is standing by the blackboard, thumbing through some textbook or another. She tries valiantly to not think about how good he looks, with his hair tied up, his tie loosened and the sleeves of his crisp, white tee rolled up. As his eyes flick up, Katara's jump back down, staring at the stacks of paper with students' names on it. One by one, the people around her find the work corresponding to their name, some groaning while others let out a sigh of relief.
Katara sifts through the stack of papers to find her name, once, twice... confused, she goes through it a third time. Nothing with her name on it.
"Found yours yet?" Haru asks, flipping through his own work with a grimace.
She shakes her head, and Haru pats her on the shoulder as he, along with most of the class, filters out. When there are just a few remaining - she hears Dr. Sozin tell a knot of enthusiastic girls to check his office hour schedule on the board outside his office - she takes the opportunity.
"Dr. Sozin? Sir?" she whispers, trying to quieten her drumming heart.
Dr. Sozin closes the textbook leisurely as the group of disappointed girls leaves the room. "Miss Kanna."
"Sir, I can't find my work in this pile."
He arches an eyebrow, surveying her from behind his glasses. "Can't you?"
She shakes her head, and when something shifts in Dr. Sozin's eyes, looking satisfied, she understands the game he's playing, but it's too late for her.
"My office," he tells her. "Six o'clock. Don't be late." He snaps his briefcase closed and walks out the room, leaving Katara feeling like a fish swimming very willingly towards a barrel.
At five minutes to six, Katara finds herself once again dawdling outside his office, irritated that a lot of her life since Dr. Sozin is being whiled away being scared of doors. She contents herself briefly by cursing the powers that be - if she had the choice, she would run very far away from here, pathology be dammed. Never mind that she's pulled on her prettiest, pale-blue cardigan and worn makeup. Never mind that she's got lingerie on underneath her clothes.
It's for confidence, she kept telling herself as she got ready. Now, she needs the confidence, because it's fifteen seconds to go until six o'clock... five... three.. two... one. Katara takes a steadying breath, waits for another minute so she doesn't look too eager, and knocks quietly on the door, hoping against hope that nobody answers.
"Come in," Dr. Sozin calls, the same as he had done nine days ago.
Katara pushes the door open to find the office the same as it was when she last left it: stuffed to the brim with books and diagrams. Dr. Sozin still has on his loose tie and rolled up sleeves, and the tips of his tattoos peek out from underneath them again. He's writing on a thick pad of paper, and Katara follows the movement of his pen briefly, notices how the grip on the pen makes the veins in his right hand bulge. She swallows.
"Sir, I've come to collect the case study work."
He doesn't reply, just taps the end of his pen against the other end of the desk without looking up. She complies, sitting down on the chair on the opposite end of him, feeling exactly as foolish as she had the last time she was sitting here. She places the textbook she's been cradling as support on to his desk.
The minutes pass by, with only the scratchy sounds of pen on paper punctuating the silence. She squirms uncomfortably where she sits, unsure of what to do next. Dr. Sozin seems content with leaving her as is, so she gathers up her gumption once more.
"Sir...?"
"Miss Kanna." Dr. Sozin stands up so abruptly that Katara gets a crick in her neck just following the movement. He walks towards the left side of his desk, where the window is thrown open to invite in the warm, evening breeze. He flicks through a pile of papers before pulling hers out.
"Not bad," he tells her. "You just need more practice." He stretches his arm out to hand her the work back, but as she reaches out to grab it, he suddenly snatches it back with a flick of his wrist, his eyebrow raised.
Katara desperately wishes she didn't know what he wanted. But her breath goes shallow with indignation and arousal, and she knows that Dr. Sozin knows what he's doing to her.
"Please," she grits out, refusing to meet his eyes.
"Of course," he replies smoothly, handing her work back to her. She snatches it from him, before sighing in relief. An A-. It's not enough to secure her 4.0 GPA, but it's a good enough indication of her trajectory. She thumbs through the pages, noting his comments, before pushing the work into her bag.
"Well..." Katara says, fiddling with her fingers, "thanks." She walks towards the door, pausing before she touches the door handle, surprised. "Are you not..." Katara flushes before ploughing forwards, "going to stop me?"
He looks at her for a second before smiling something dangerous, wicked. Her heart pounds out a nervous rhythm in response. "Little girl," he murmurs, "I don't need to stop you. You'll come back."
Later, she gets back home and shoves her hand straight down the lacy panties he never saw, an orgasm building up inside of her at the memory of his feral smile and his hungry voice.
When she lies panting in the wake of her orgasm, she realises that she's forgotten her textbook in his office.
"Back so soon?" he asks when she knocks and enters the next day. He's scribbling furiously on the same pad of paper as yesterday.
"I - my notebook," she says lamely, gesturing to where it lies on his armchair. "I forgot it here."
"Help yourself," he says, not looking up from his work.
She picks it up and opens the book, seeing her name scribbled at the top of it. She turns to say goodbye, but he's staring at her expectantly, mouth tipped into a frown.
Slightly chagrined, she tells him, "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he parries, face relaxing into his familiar smirk. "We'll have to train those manners yet."
Katara bites back a retort, crossing her arms over her textbook. He turns back to his work, and Katara watches him work for a minute, before blurting out, "What are you doing?"
He looks at her, surprised, as though he didn't expect her to still be here. "I'm working on one of the papers I'm publishing - checking through my statistical analysis. Are you any good at statistics? Do you want to help?"
Katara nods at the first question, embarrassed to answer the second one, and Dr. Sozin beckons her over. He scoots his chair back, and Katara does not sit on his lap, as nice as it may be to have his arms around her. She stands next to him, peering at his maths, and together they work through the analysis he has already postulated. Of course, he has not made a single mistake in all of his work.
"It's seems fine to me," Katara tells him, her finger tracing over one particularly difficult equation.
"I know," Dr. Sozin - Zuko - replies, self-satisfied.
Katara exhales slowly through her nose. What a jerk.
The third time Katara goes to his office, she really does need help. The pathology work may as well be written in another language, and she can't afford to neglect all of her other subjects to puzzle over this one.
But when she gets to his office, she finds it crammed with many of her other classmates, all of whom are equally desperate to get his help. She pushes her irritation down at the sight of Dr. Sozin helping another girl, and sits next to Haru, who's sprawled out on the floor on the opposite corner of the room to Dr. Sozin's desk. His books are lying all around him.
"Hi, Katara," he says as she pulls out her own work.
She greets him, and the two of them put their heads together to figure out what the pathology work could mean. After a few minutes, she hears familiar footsteps walking towards them. Heart racing, she refuses to look up, until he calls her name.
"Miss Kanna, welcome to office hours," he says, and when she looks up, he's got one corner of his mouth tipped up.
"Hi," she replies, voice suddenly breathy. She clears her throat, irritated, and barrages him with a steady deluge of questions that he somehow manages to stay afloat of. As night approaches, students flit out of his office. Haru jogs to keep up with a few of their friends, leaving Katara alone with him.
She notices absently that his boots are again in her field of vision, but she is too focussed on her work to address him.
"Why don't you come sit at my desk?" he asks. "Make yourself more comfortable?"
More comfortable is the one thing she should avoid being around him, so she shakes her head. "No, thanks. I'm fine here."
A pause, followed by a growl. "Stubborn girl." Then, he's leaning down and snatching her stuff.
"Hey," she protests as he grabs the paper she's been working on, "I was using that!"
"Use it at my desk," he demands, and she thinks somebody really should put him in place, with his princely attitude of his. But her shoulders are starting to hurt from how much she's hunched over, so she gets up reluctantly and follows him. They do their own work for another hour or so, before Katara shuts her textbook, happy with her progress. She yawns, stretching, and peers out at the feeble moon hanging outside Dr. Sozin's window. When she turns back to him, he's watching her with that peculiar, hungry expression that got her into trouble last time.
She turns red, looking around the room, casting for another conversation topic, when one comes to her with surprising ease. "Hey, that picture... Isn't that Fire Lord Iroh?"
Dr. Sozin follows her line of gaze to a portrait where a kind, plump man has his arm around Dr. Sozin, and his voice is careful when he tells her, "... Yeah. He's my uncle."
Katara's brow furrows for a second before she smacks her forehead in realisation. Fire Lord Iroh Sozin... "Are you the Fire Lord's nephew?"
He nods, tense; leans slightly forwards, resting his elbows on the desk. "Are you telling me you never guessed?"
She shakes her head, somewhat embarrassed. "I feel a bit like an idiot now," she admits.
But she seems to have said the right thing, because he relaxes, leaning back and raking his hand through his unbound hair. "Being the Fire Lord's nephew doesn't really grant you much apart from making family reunions more irritating with his guards."
Katara smiles at that; the idea of him, surrounded by his family, perhaps in traditional Fire Nation attire for the Festival of Lights... Her eye catches another portrait. Dr. Sozin is markedly younger, potentially around her age, and although there are fewer lines around his eyes and mouth, the eyes are the same, the smile is the same... the scar is the same.
In the portrait, he's still young, and standing next to a pretty woman who looks around Zuko's age, with his golden eyes and Zuko's smirk; his sister, she guesses, as well as a much older, beautiful woman with wide, kind eyes and a beatific smile.
"My sister, and my mother," Dr. Sozin fills in for her quietly, and Katara tears her eyes away from the happy family at the heaviness of his tone. Under her inquisitive gaze, he elaborates: "My mother passed away. Cancer."
Her heart hurts for him. "I'm sorry, Zuko. Mine too." She reaches across the desk to tentatively hold his hand, and he squeezes back, smiling slightly at her. Dr. Sozin and Zuko begin, once more, to bleed into the same person, and if Zuko is as confused about this mess as she is, he doesn't show it.
The fourth time Katara sees him, it's in the University bar. It's Toph's birthday, and Katara and Aang have thrown her a surprise party. Sokka and Suki, who are in the middle of their engineering exams, cannot make it. Katara has invited Haru and a few of her med school friends, as well as some of Toph's classmates. As university parties go, the thing has snowballed into a large affair as college parties are wont to do: friends of friends have invited their friends, and it's a huge rager.
Any party for Toph must include alcohol, and as predicted, it takes a grand total of fifteen minutes for Toph to drink them all under the table. All except for Aang, of course, who does not drink. Katara smiles as she watches Aang plead with Toph to not drink alcohol lying around, while Toph snatches drinks from people at random under the guise of "it's my birthday you dunderheads". Poor Aang, he always becomes the designated babysitter at events like this.
Katara stares down at her nearly empty glass of mezcal. She's pretty drunk herself, owing to the copious amounts that Toph has pressed into her hands, along with her willingness to forget every confusing thing that's been happening to her this past week.
True to his word, Dr. Sozin has always let her come to him, but the corollary is that he doesn't approach her, or push her, at all. But she misses being pushed; in the darkness of her room, she can admit to herself that there was something unbelievably erotic about him, holding her down, spreading her ass cheeks open, and -
Katara shakes her head sluggishly, trying to loosen the thoughts straight out of her brain. She drains the rest of her drink in one go and stumbles towards the bar, signalling to the bartender for another mezcal. Around her, the lights start to blur together as she thinks about the dragon tattoo spread out over the well-built torso.
Lost in her stupor, she doesn't notice someone sitting next to her until he leans forward, asking for his own drink. Her heart gallops in her chest as she turns towards him -
- She doesn't recognise him. Her face falls. He's got an admittedly pretty face, but she can tell by the way he leans in towards her that he thinks he's already got her hooked.
"I'm Ruon Jian," the guy says, running a hand through his hair. "A little lonely to be drinking by yourself, no?"
"Katara," she replies, shaking his proffered hand, "and no, I'm just taking a break from the madness of the party."
"Whose party is this, anyway?"
"Toph's." Katara nods towards the girl who's got a line of men queued up to arm wrestle her. "She's turning of age today. Not that it stopped her from drinking before."
"Nice," Ruon Jian smirks, before turning back to her. "What's your major?"
Katara replies, and the conversation between them flows easily enough. Ruon Jian keeps up his steady encouragement of her drinking, and soon after, Katara feels absolutely fall-on-your-face drunk.
She's giggling at some joke or other that he made, grabbing his arm for support so that she doesn't fall straight out of the barstool. Ruon Jian is laughing gleefully in response, leaning so close that she can smell the alcohol on his own breath. He leans forwards and splays his hand on the bare skin of her knee - he starts to lean close, and Katara, startled, jerks away. She loses her balance and tumbles off the barstool, only avoiding falling right on to her butt due to the sudden appearance of a hand at her elbow.
Dr. Sozin frowns down at her thoughtfully. He pulls her up so that she's standing - she teeters on her feet and he steadies her with a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asks.
She nods dumbly, more interested in the upturned collar of his dark fleece than his question. She notices, slowly, that he's dripping: droplets are clinging on to the fleece, and the few strands of hair that have escaped his topknot drip water steadily. She licks her lips.
Dr. Sozin follows the motion keenly, before shaking his head. "Do you want to get out of here?"
Again, she nods.
"Hey, actually she was doing okay with me - " Ruon Jian starts, but shuts up quickly under the weight of Dr. Sozin's contemptuous look. He leads her out of the bar, and the stand under the awning, watching the downpour for a second.
"Hey," Katara realises suddenly, "it's raining."
Dr. Sozin gives her an odd little smile. "Where do you live? I'll call you a cab."
Katara thinks very deeply, stumbling where she stands slightly. Dr. Sozin's hand is again at her elbow, and it makes forming the thoughts that much harder. "Do you know the place... next to the place with the really good cabbage noodle soup, and at the top there's that rooftop, and it's got the big plant..." She brings both her hands out to her sides as indication. "Really big," she says emphatically.
Dr. Sozin must hate big plants, because he pinches the bridge of his nose. "You're coming home with me," he tells her. "I've got a motorbike, but it means you'll get wet - are you okay with that?"
Katara stares at him for a second. Wet? She giggles. She steps closer to him, poking him in the chest. "You've made me wet before! It was so uncomfortable, the whole train ride back, and then when I got home and I pulled down my jeans it was everywhere, your c - "
"Time to go," Dr. Sozin says, and he loops an arm around her waist and walks her the short distance to his motorbike. Already, she is soaked, and she shivers, pushing herself close to him. His grip around her waist tightens in response. At the motorbike, he helps her on first, before mounting it in front of her.
"Hold on to me," he says, but her arms are already around him, sneaking past the hem of his fleece and under his soaked t-shirt, to where his muscles tense underneath her fingers.
"Warm," she slurs, burrowing her head between his shoulder blades. With a roar of the engine, they're off. Twice, Katara thinks she'll feel nauseous when he bends around the Caldera City streets, but soon the sound of the engine is dying, and Dr. Sozin is helping her dismount. They walk into a lobby, where she squints her eyes to focus at somebody calling him sir.
She turns to him, cups her hand around her mouth and whispers, "That's what I call you too! Sir."
She's suddenly yanked into an elevator, and it hurtles its way upwards. Dr. Sozin props her up against one side of the lift while he stays on the other, glaring at her and clenching the railing surrounding the perimeter roughly. She stands there, dripping on to the metal floor beneath them, pouting at the obscenely bright light. After a millennium, the elevator dings, and Dr. Sozin helps her out. She leans against the wall next to a door while Dr. Sozin searches for a key - when he pulls it out and slots it in the keyhole, she notices the veins on his hand bulge again. She reaches out, intrigued, and traces it, venturing into the sleeve of his fleece. He makes a tight, constrained sound, before neatly turning his wrist. The door clicks open, and Katara steps into the living room. She takes notice of the towering bookshelves here, complete with potted plants dotting the room, an old vinyl player off to the corner by the large windows, and most importantly, a futon nestled in between leather couches.
She lifts her hands to rub her eyes - she's very, very sleepy. But there's one problem: she can't sleep yet. She turns to Dr. Sozin, who's propped up against his kitchen counter, watching her with dark eyes.
"I'm so wet," she whispers, and his eyes flash. He takes a steadying breath, pushing himself off the counter and holding his hand out to her. She takes it, and he guides her past the corridor and into the room at the very end. His room. It's clean, minimalistic, utilitarian... just like him. He walks towards the built-in wardrobe of his room, pulling it open and fishing out a towel, a large t-shirt, and a pair of his briefs.
"I'll wait outside," he tells her. "You get changed."
She stares at the clothes while the door shuts behind her. She begins the difficult process of trying to remove her blue sundress, but she gets tangled up in the sleeves. After a lot of yanking, it hits the floor with a wet plop, and she tries to unclasp her bra. A few minutes later, she concedes that she needs help.
"Zuko?" she calls out tentatively, and the door swings open. His silhouette crowds the frame before she sees him in full - his hair is now untied, and he's divested himself of his fleece. She watches the rivulets of water drip down from his hair and on to the sharp angles of his jaw.
"Katara," he breathes, eyeing her.
"I need help," she whimpers, turning around and draping her hair on one shoulder. When she doesn't feel his warm hands helping her, she turns back to him. He's stood in the same place, hands fisted by his sides.
"You can't..." he makes a strangled noise, "take it off yourself?"
"Please help me." She shakes her head.
In an instant, he steps behind her, and she feels his hands working the clasp of her bra open. Soon after, it falls off her frame.
"My underwear, too," she whispers, wide-eyed and hopeful.
"Agni," he breathes. She hears him crouch behind her before he helps pull her underwear off. She steps out of it, and she feels his hands ghost up the sides of her thighs. She shudders, but the warmth suddenly disappears. He's standing far away from her, back by the doorframe again. She sees him breathing deeply, jaw clenched, where he stands, dripping onto his hardwood floors. Her eyes travel down, and she spies the unmistakable bulge in his pants. A whimper winds it way out of her throat, and before she knows it, she's standing in front of him, peering up at him.
He looks down at her through his glasses, distraught, hungry. "Katara," he says in a whisper that tapers off into a growl, "what - "
But she's already flung her arms around his neck, and pulls him down for a kiss. He groans into her mouth immediately and his arms encircle her waist. His teeth nip at her lips, sharp and slightly painful, the way they had the first time he kissed her, and she melts into the kiss, but he soon drags his mouth away. The process of doing so exposes the column of his throat, and she begins nipping there, while one hand snakes between them to cup and stroke his bulge. He grunts, one hand tangled in her hair, pushing his hips into her hands, before he pries her off him completely.
She whines, bereft, reaching for him again, but he holds a hand out.
"Katara," he pants, "you're drunk."
"Please," she whimpers, "please fuck me. I'm asking you nicely, please."
For a moment, he does nothing but stare at her. But then, he walks towards her, and she reaches for him, but he bypasses her and grabs the clothes he laid out for her on the bed. He says nothing as he pulls the clothes on her, ignoring her hurt look.
"Do you not want me?" she whispers, as he tugs the briefs on. His hands still on her, thumbs tucked into the waistband of her panties, and he tips his head upwards from where he crouches by her. His mouth goes slack.
"Katara... of course I do."
"Then why?" she sniffs. She sounds petulant; she doesn't care.
"I want you to want me, too," he whispers back, standing up and pulling her into his arms. "Really want me."
"Will you stay with me tonight?" she asks, encircling her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest.
"I - I don't think that's such a good idea..."
"Please," she says, tracing a pattern over where his heart lies, "just to sleep."
He sighs, before pulling her into the bed and curling around her protectively. He buries his face in her neck and she squirms under the slightly ticklish breath. Her fingers lace his where his hand lies over her stomach. She thinks she hears him whisper good night, and her breath evens out before she knows it.
When she wakes up the next morning, he is long gone, but there's a note on his pillow.
Ibuprofen x2, take with a meal.
- Dr. Sozin
She spies the two little pills on his nightstand along with a pastry, and she smiles.
The fifth time, she is desperate.
In the week following her departure from his flat, Dr. Sozin has tried absolutely nothing to get her attention. He barely looks at her during classes, doesn't try to get her to stay past his office hours, doesn't acknowledge that she had slept in his bed. Nothing.
Not to say that Katara hasn't given him openings. She'll come by his office with some inane excuse or another, but he never questions the excuse, never gives her that sharp look that he used to give her, the one that says, I know what you're doing. She's come with her hair tied up to expose her neck, because she knows that he likes it, but he doesn't comment. He doesn't do anything. Not when she wears her prettiest clothes, or her nicest makeup. Nothing.
And it's driving her insane.
Not a night goes by where she doesn't think about the heat of his hands on her, about how differently the night of Toph's party would have been if only she were less drunk. He probably would have kissed her back properly. He would have spread her out on his bed, eaten her out until she was screaming his name. He would have fucked her properly so that she couldn't think for days after, and then fucked her again just to show that he could...
Katara is moving before she realises it. She pulls out her skimpiest lingerie from her wardrobe and pulls it on quickly, before wearing her clothes on top of it. She's going to at least talk to Dr. Sozin.
When she reaches his door, she doesn't knock, but barges inside, instead. He is sat at his desk again, his hands gripping his hair in frustration as he pores over scientific journals. But despite the door banging open, he does not seem fazed.
"Miss Kanna," he says, "please take a seat."
"Katara," she snaps, slamming the door shut behind her, then pausing. "How did you - "
"The whole department could hear you storming over."
"Oh." She flushes, then straightens her back. "Well. I'm not sitting. I want to talk to you."
This pulls his eyes up, and something flashes in them. The expression is immediately smoothed over, and so she ignores it.
"So talk," he says, "but sit."
Irritably, she flings herself on to an armchair a distance away from his desk, facing him. But now he is staring at her expectantly.
"Why haven't you talked to me?" she says, rushed, as if it is one word.
His eyebrow flicks up above the frames of his glasses. "Do you not recall coming to my office hours?"
"Not about pathology, about..." she trails off, glaring at him meaningfully. But he doesn't let her off the hook, still looking at her levelly, waiting. "About what we did a few weeks ago," she elaborates.
Nothing from him. Silence.
"We had sex," she finally bites out, and at this, he smirks.
"Ah. Yes."
"And I stayed over at yours."
"Miss Kanna," he sighs dramatically, "have you come all the way here to give me a history recap?"
"Katara," she corrects through gritted teeth, again. "And no, I obviously haven't, and I think you know that - " his widening smirk indicates that he does, " - I just want to know why it hasn't happened again."
"My mistake, I wasn't aware that you wanted it again - "
"I flung myself at you! Naked! What more do you want me to do? Of course I want it!"
He crosses his arms where he sits. "How much?"
"How much what?"
"How much do you want it?"
"I - " She gapes at him.
"Have you thought about it since?"
Her voice has left her, so she nods.
"Have you thought about me?"
Another nod.
"Poor girl. Have you touched yourself to the thought of me?"
"Every night," she whispers, and his gaze becomes sharp, predatory.
"Show me."
When she doesn't respond, too shocked to move, his tone becomes sharp. "Katara. Strip. Now."
She scrambles up from the armchair, pulling off her boots, socks, jumper, camisole, and jeans quickly. She's left in her underwear, flushing.
He laughs low in his throat. "Did you wear that for me, sweet girl?"
Her lingerie is siren red, the colour of the Fire Nation itself, and it leaves nothing to the imagination. She begins to raise her arms up to cover herself, shy, but he interjects quickly.
"Sit back down, legs draped over the armrests."
She obeys, unable to stop herself from making an embarrassed noise as she hooks her legs over the armrests. From this angle, she is spread wide open for him to see. He's leaning back on his own chair, looking at her lazily.
"Show me how you touch yourself, Katara," he whispers, and she is unable to do anything but obey. Squeezing her eyes shut, she lifts up a hand to tease at her nipple through her lacy bra; her breath hitches. Her other hand follows suit, and soon, both her nipples are puckered to stiff peaks.
"Good girl," he breathes. "Tell me what you're thinking about."
"You," she whimpers on instinct.
"What about me?"
"Your hands," she gasps, as she pulls the cups of her bra down so that her nipples are exposed. "Touching me."
"Oh yeah?" he asks conversationally, as if this affects him no more than a passing comment on the weather might. "How would I touch you?"
"Like this," she says, a moan tumbling out of her, as her right hand abandons her nipple and travels down to the small triangle of fabric covering her pussy. "Soft at first." She finds her clit through the fabric and rubs it slowly, lewd noises falling out of her as she does. "But then all at once," she whimpers, pulling her panties to the side to find her clit, rubbing in quick circles that already has her seeing stars. She feels herself building, so she stops. "You don't let me cum straight away," she pants, pushing a finger inside her and bucking her hips as she does. She opens her eyes finally, and Zuko's posture is still relaxed, but his eyes are burning with weaning self-restraint. Spurred on, she adds a second finger, arching as much as she can from where she is sat.
"Zuko," she gasps, and she hears him growl in reply.
"Add another finger," he demands, but she's never done it before, so she hesitates, biting her lip and looking at him, two fingers buried inside her, the heel of her palm pressing against her clit. But he is without ruth. "Another."
She will not disappoint him, so she slowly pushes in her ring finger, moaning, writhing where she sits, grinding her clit against the heel of her palm. She's unable to stop watching him, the way his hands grip tightly at his own armrests. He looks coiled, ready to pounce, and it's the wild look of him that has her tumbling over the edge, shaking apart as she drips down her thighs.
She begins to sag, spent, but suddenly Zuko is there, kneeling between her thighs. He pushes her hand back down to her pussy, taking two of her fingers and rubbing them against her too-sensitive clit. She nearly screams, twitching in response, wanting to get away from the oversensitive pleasure of it all.
"Keep going," he says through gritted teeth, helping her move. She is powerless against him, sobbing his name as the pleasure becomes blinding. Dimly, she hears the sound of a bottle being popped open, but Zuko is still forcing her to touch herself. He helps her pull her panties down, past her ankles, and she forgets about it, thinks only of how she feels like she can see white, when she feels a sudden pressure again at the puckered rim between her ass cheeks.
She shrieks, but he holds her down with one hand across her stomach. The other hand circles the rim until she's relaxed again, caught up in the haze of an impending orgasm, but then he begins to push. Instinctively, she clenches, but Zuko knocks her hand aside to suck her clit into her mouth. She grinds in earnest against him, nearly crying with her need to cum, as he pushes a finger deeper and deeper inside her, and when he whispers, "cum for me", she is helpless in heeding his command. At the height of her orgasm, when she's screaming his name, he doesn't stop sucking, doesn't stop moving the finger deep inside her, and even when she's spent he makes her take more. She pushes his head away, crying out with overstimulation, and he finally sits back, pulling his finger out of her.
He pants up at her, smirking, and she whines helplessly at the sight of her cum on his chin. He strips down until he's naked as well, a reward for her own striptease, and she follows his progress keenly. He fists his hand over his thick cock, pumping a few times until precum leaks out. She moans, reaching for it, but he shakes his head.
"Stand up," he tells her, and she does so on shaky knees. He sits where she got up from, and opens his arms out to her. She gets the hint, and with some manoeuvring she's sitting on his cock, back pressed to his chest. He pulls her bra off and begins pushing into her, slowly, with thrusts that she can taste. One hand pinches her nipples ruthlessly, while the other hand goes, like magnet, back down to her clit. She shakes her head, trying to close her legs, but he hooks her legs over his splayed knees and she's held immobile while he begins to rub circles against her, slowly at first, and then all at once. It's like he's winding a too-tight clock, and the springs are about to burst. He abandons his hold on her nipple to pull her back by her hair, so that he can growl smutty things in her ear.
"I told you that you'd come back, didn't I?" he grunts, punctuating each word with a sharp thrust that has her keening. "I could see it in your face, how much you needed it, how much you liked being spread out for me, giving me what I wanted without question, like the good girl you are, so desperate..."
She tries to moan his name, but it gets smothered in a sob of overwhelmed pleasure. He laughs mirthlessly in response, his voice becoming more constrained. "I know how much you loved being filled up by my cum, didn't you? I would have given anything to see your pussy covered in it when you went home that night... God, I've thought about it every night since, too..." She bucks against him in response, climbing higher and higher towards her hurtling orgasm.
"Beg me for it, Katara, beg me for my cum," he groans, and he's so close, she can tell by how wrecked he sounds, how out-of-control he is, and she's exactly the same.
"Please, please," she sobs, "please cum inside me, please fill me up, please Zuko... please let me cum, please!"
He fulfils both requests with a particularly deep thrust that has them both bursting, and he pumps her full of his cum before he settles. She finally sags on top of him, jerking uncontrollably as he plays lazily with her clit.
"S-stop," she finally manages to breathe, and he does so with an amused huff. He stays buried deep in her, and his arms wrap around her so that there's no doubt that she's staying put on his cock.
For anyone else, this would not be an ideal time to have a serious discussion, but Dr. Sozin is not anyone.
"I've got to keep you on here, Katara," he emphasises his point by grinding into her slightly, "otherwise how can I make sure you won't run?"
"I won't," she whispers, her head pillowed on his muscular shoulder. His grip tightens on her.
"Why did you go last time?"
"I was scared," she admits. "What if we get caught?"
"So what?" he counters, his voice rumbling in her ear. "We're not doing anything wrong."
"Yeah, but still, people will talk."
He sighs. "Let them, Katara." She begins to protest, so he continues, "but if you really want, we can keep it a secret. I'm good for that."
"And, what about... where is this going?" she whispers, her hands tightening over his forearms.
He presses a kiss to the shell of her ear as she begins to feel his cum dripping out of her. "How about we take it slowly, hm? Just take it for what it is now? Just sex? Keep it casual."
She blinks, tired. "Casual... I can do that." She burrows against him, reassured, as he begins to harden inside her slowly.
But the next day, at the end of her pathology lecture, Haru asks her out. She instinctively looks towards Dr. Sozin, who's packing up his lecture materials, and he's watching her with the same dangerous expression she's seen the day before.
Careful, something inside her whispers.
As her heart begins to hammer, to valiantly flee, she realises that this agreement they have between them is anything but casual.
A/N: Mezcal is my favourite drink of all time, so now it is Katara's too :)
Thank you all SO MUCH for the reviews! I'll be honest, I wasn't planning on updating this until next week but your review really spurred me on. More would be very much appreciated!