Authors Note: Okay...so NOW there should only be about 2 chapters left. This one was supposed to be part of the next one, but when they were together it felt too long, and this section felt a little lacking.
Fake It Till You Make It
As the door to the hotel room closed behind them, Chitoge felt her feet touch the ground. She could hear her heartbeat roaring in her ears as she looked around the room and tried to mentally prepare herself for what would come next. Her body felt stiff as she took another shaky step into the hotel room that she had been calling home while she was back in Japan. She looked over her shoulder, trying to be seductive, but was fairly certain that the uncertainty that had begun to work in her mind had made its presence known on her face.
Raku rubbed the back of his head for a moment as he looked at her, "Um…so what now?"
Chitoge bit her bottom lip for a moment and then muttered, "Well…I mean…" She took another shaky step and then cursed, "Well, first I'm going to take off these fucking heels so that I can actually walk."
He chuckled as he watched her drop down and pull loose straps and undo clips to free her feet from the offending garments. She hadn't really answered the question that he had been trying to ask, but seeing her act like her normal self was at least a bit reassuring. He looked around the room, taking it in as much as he could while Chitoge busied herself with escaping the heels that were giving her so much trouble.
She threw the shoes across the room and then looked back up at him with a wide smile, "That already feels better."
Raku offered her his hand and pulled her back up to her feet when she took it, "So, like I was saying…what do we do now?"
Chitoge pouted as she looked into his eyes, "Why are you asking me? You seemed pretty on top of it back in that bathroom."
His hands found her hips and slowly guided her back against the wall. She blushed deeply and turned her face away quickly to hide her embarrassment at how quickly he had taken to touching her and moving her around. Her skin felt hot in the places that he touched it, and burned with a need in the places that he didn't. She swallowed hard, and her lips moved in wordless murmurs as she knew she should be saying something but didn't know what she should be saying.
Suddenly his hands left her hips, and when she looked back to his face to see what was wrong, she could see that he too was looking away to try and hide the embarrassment on his face, "Yeah…this was easier in the bathroom somehow."
She murmured softly, "My suite has a bathroom…"
Raku chuckled and shook his head, "Yeah, I don't think that's the problem."
That wasn't the problem, eh? She brought her thumb to her lip, biting the end of the nail nervously as she thought about it. What could the problem be then? Was it something wrong with the room? Maybe it was something wrong with her? Maybe something wrong with him?
She gasped sharply, "Are you not ready?" Her hand jumped forward before she thought to touch the front of his pants. Raku let out a low groan as her fingers found the hard bulge that had formed at the front of his pants. Her cheeks burned bright read and she brought both hands up quickly to clutch at her face, "Omigod! I'm sorry!"
He furrowed his brow and looked into her eyes, "Why are you apologizing?"
She squirmed back against the wall, "Because I have no idea what I'm doing!"
"You think I do!?" His eyes were a little bit wider than they needed to be.
She pouted, "Well you certainly seemed confident back in the bathroom!"
He blushed as he looked at her, "Well, I've seen porn before!"
"Well then do it like that I guess!" She wasn't sure why she was shouting again.
She felt like all of her breath left her at once when he closed the gap, his hard body pressing against her, pinning her back against the wall. Her body shuddered, as she felt his organ press against hers between the thin layers of fabric that kept them separated. She struggled a little bit as subconsciously reached out to find her freedom from this situation. Her fingers found his shoulders and she gripped tightly having at least found something that she could hold onto.
When he shifted his weight slightly it caused a delicious friction that made Chitoge let out a squeak, "Ohfuck! Ohfuck! Ohfuck!"
He stopped moving suddenly and watched her as she squirmed between him and the wall, "Are you okay?"
She nodded and let out a mumble between tightly clenched lips, "Mnnnh-hmmm."
"We don't have to do this, you know." He spoke up softly as he watched her.
She let out a long breath, "Oh thank god."
He took a step back and gave her a comforting smile. Everything about him seemed to be trying to project that comforting attitude. He was hiding the defeated and slightly deflated look very well behind that comforting attitude.
She gasped suddenly as she realized what had just happened, "No! That wasn't what I meant!" She pointed further into the room, "Bed!" He looked at her a little confused and she glared at him, "A ladies first time is supposed to be in a bed!"
He blushed a little bit and looked over to where she was pointing, "You know, I meant what I said." He looked back to her again, "We don't have to do any of this. If you aren't comfortable-"
"Do YOU not want to do this?" She cut him off, her eyes betraying the worry in her heard.
He smiled weakly as he looked at her, "Of course I do, I just don't want you to-"
She cut him off by leaning up and pressing her lips to his in a quick kiss. When she pulled away she made sure to speak softly and slowly so that there could be no misunderstanding, "Then get your butt out of that suit and onto that bed!"
She pushed her head into his chest to hide her embarrassment at what she was going to say next, "It's sweet that you're worried about pressuring me into this, it really is." She smiled against his chest for a moment and then pulled away and shot him the most sultry look she could, "I've seen a porn or two myself, you know…" She brought her hand forward, her fingers cupping around the hardness she had felt earlier, "…and I'm guessing you'll stop asking those questions if I'm the one on top."
He shuddered at her touch and looked at her, "Are you sure-"
Somewhere in her mind she knew that it was sweet of him to keep asking, making sure that she was comfortable with what was being suggested. It was exactly the kind of sweet thing that she had always known Raku would do. It was not something that she could appreciate at this very moment though. She was ready for what they were going to be doing. After her office she may have been confused and a little angry, but she had also been very much ready for what happened next. If she was being honest with herself, based on the dreams she had every once in a while she had been ready longer than that.
She glared at him and gave him a little squeeze through his pants, "I'm going to take five minutes in the bathroom to get ready." She continued to glare at him and his constant questions, "If you aren't naked and in that bed waiting for me when I come out, I'm gonna take that to mean you don't want to do this anymore, and I'm gonna have to find someone else to help me deal with all of this."
When she let go of him she saw him hurry off into the room. It was cute really. Sure he was motivated by sex, and was probably thinking much more with his lower head than his upper one, but still, the image of him scampering off to get ready for him, trying to shed clothes as he ran was a cute one. She smiled softly and slowly pushed herself off of the wall to head into the bathroom.
She walked into the room, moved in front of the sink and mirror and stared at herself for a moment. She was ready for this. She had put on that sexy dress with the thought that it would get his attention, and it had. She wasn't sure what the next step in her plan had been meant to be anymore, but surely there was no better way for it to end than right where she had ended up. Making him jealous for a while might have been a little bit fun, but surely the end-goal even in that plan was to end up with him in a bad, and her stripping herself out of the dress that she had always thought showed a little bit too much skin.
When the door finally clicked closed, she felt herself lose control of her breathing, her fingers gripping tight onto the edge of the sink to keep herself from falling over. Alright, maybe she wasn't as ready for this as she had thought. She had been able to hold it together in the hallway somehow, but wow, this was an intense situation. It was one thing to tell him to just do things when she was angry and wasn't thinking clearly, but now that he was getting ready in the other room, and she was here, it felt more real. She wasn't sure that there was a way that she could get mentally and physically prepared for what was going to happen.
Her mind was flooded with the darkest of thoughts. What if she wasn't good? What if she didn't look good naked? What if when she got out there, she found that he was gone and there was just a note that said that he really wasn't ready for this? What if she got out there and discovered that she wasn't ready for this anymore. What if all of this mental debating took too long and when she finally thought she was ready and went in there, he had fallen asleep?
She tried to calm her breathing, and looked up at herself in the mirror. Inside she felt like a mess, but when she looked at herself all dolled up in the bathroom mirror, she couldn't help but smile a little bit through her nervousness. Sure her chest was heaving with the ragged breaths of nervousness, but guys liked that sort of thing, didn't they? Sure she had a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, but given the physical activity she was signing up for, it was only a matter of time before that happened. Sure her dress didn't show off any cleavage…she made a mental note to see what she could do about altering that for the final design.
She wasn't vain or narcissistic, but she had to admit, she looked at least a little sexy. It was something that she should have realized a little bit sooner now that she thought about it. She hadn't ever heard of a guy almost tripping over his pants because he was in such a rush to get naked because a girl that they didn't want to have sex with had told them to get naked and wait in bed. It didn't even matter what she thought about how she looked, really all that mattered was how he thought she looked, and if the things he had said and done since she had come back were any indication, she had a good idea what he thought about that.
She could do this. She'd been waiting five years for this moment. She could do this. She'd already found most of her confidence again somehow. It looked like this whole thing was messing up Raku as much as it was messing up her, so she wasn't sure why she was so nervous anymore. She had watched him run down that hallway with glee to get to the prize that was waiting for him if he got onto that bed fast enough, so obviously he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Chitoge swallowed hard and slapped her hands against her cheeks to bring herself back to the now. She was going to do this. She was going to rock Raku's world. She'd wipe out any thoughts that he might ever have of other girls. When he moaned in the middle of the night it would be her that he was dreaming about, and it would be her name that slipped past his lips.
She smirked, "Yeah. I got this."
Getting mentally prepared had been a little bit taxing. She could still hear her fast heartbeat thumping against her eardrums, but she was sure it would pass now. When she thought about getting tangled in the sheets with Raku she wasn't thinking about the ways that it could go wrong, or the reasons that she should be nervous anymore, she was only thinking about the warm glow that she'd feel in her heart from finally being with the boy she loved.
At that point it occurred to her that while she had gotten mentally prepared, she had thus far done nothing that would have counted for physical preparation, and she had told Raku that she was only going to take five minutes. She bit her bottom lip and moved her hands hurriedly to the back of the strap that went around her neck to find the zipper at the back. Her nimble fingers worked the zipperhead down quickly, breaking the collar that kept the front of the dress held tight against her chest.
Slowly drawing the material forward and away from her skin, she began to wonder if maybe she should have kept the dress on for a little bit longer. Her eyes watched herself in the mirror, the thin red material of the dress gathering in her hands, no longer hiding her cleavage, but still leaving things to the imagination. She tried to imagine what Raku would have done if she had decided to put on a little show of undressing in front of him, teasingly hiding everything from him until his mind went wild.
That wasn't a thing that she could do tonight though. While she was confident that he wanted her as much as she wanted him, she wasn't quite confident enough that she was willing to put on a show like that. It would be a disaster if she found out that she wasn't quite as sexy as she thought she was, and he got bored waiting for her to free herself from the tantalizing red dress. Even though it was just a thought, and not something that had happened, she still felt a little mortified by it.
When she thought about it, she realized that she really couldn't afford to spend too much time on buildup when she got in there. She couldn't be sure that she wouldn't say 'no' the next time that he asked her if she really wanted to go through with this. She had waited too long, and there was too much buildup for her to be able to turn away from this now. She couldn't afford to give him a chance to ask again, so she'd just have to walk through that door and get right to it. As much as enticing him with a little bit of strip-tease would have been fun, it was definitely too risky.
She slipped the rest of the way out of the dress and found herself looking in the mirror again at her naked body. The voice in her mind that asked bad questions like 'what if he doesn't like what he sees' had started to make itself heard again. Her hand came up to her heart, her fingers curling around the key that hung from her throat. She couldn't think about negative things…or if she did she'd have to find a way to pretend not to.
Her hands moved slowly and carefully with the last thing that she'd need to remove before she headed back to Raku. She considered keeping the key on, reminding Raku of his promise-girl, and all of the stuff that they had gone through when they were still in school. She smiled faintly as she ran her thumb over the edge of the key, and then slowly brought her hands back to the back of her neck. She wasn't going to live in the past anymore, and tonight, she wasn't going to let Raku live their either. This promise-girl stuff didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was her and him. She nodded as she carefully placed her key on the counter. There would be time to deal with it later.
She turned her gaze back to the mirror, and looked over her naked body one last time. She didn't have the amazing model curves of Tsugumi, or the classic Japanese beauty of Onodera. She had her exotic blonde hair, but that wasn't that special when she compared herself to Tachibana, and that was a girl who never would have stopped to compare herself like this. She was a mean, teasing tomboy, and Raku had always managed to be surrounded by girls who were sweet and kind. The more she thought about it, the less confident she was in her belief that she should have been the one that he would be interested in.
She felt her lip quiver and closed her eyes tightly. No, she needed to put those thoughts out of her head. It didn't matter if she felt confident, she just needed to project it. If she looked confident, then actually believing in it would naturally follow. She stood up straight and took in a long breath to puff up her chest. She'd march in there like she owned the place- no like she owned the naked man who'd be waiting for her on her bed. She'd stride in there with nothing but achieving her goal on her mind. If confidence was the best perfume, then she'd pretend that she smelled as sweet as roses.
She gave her reflection a self-satisfied smirk, "Raku won't know what hit him." If you pretended hard enough you could even convince yourself that it was true. Chitoge knew one thing with an absolute certainty as she turned towards the bathroom door; she was going to fake it until she made it.
