AN
Don't get your hopes up, just because I finally changed the rating to M doesn't mean they're having sex in this Chapter. LISTEN UP PEOPLE. I'M STARTING A NEW HORROR ROMANCE ICHIRUKI STORY CALLED NO ESCAPE SO PLEASE PLEASE CHECK IT OUT! Moving on, this story will be officially over in about three to four chapters and don't worry you smut lovers there will be some type of Ichiruki sex. Though as tasteful as it can be.
Disclaimer-I own nothing.
Chapter Eleven
After Rukia grilled Seno about the suitcase, she slid into Ichigo's truck beside him, wishing she'd insisted on driving the cruiser. But Ichigo had told her that he wanted to arrive at the Kunas' looking like a friend. Besides, they were both off duty and in civvies. He'd repeated that last point twice. Now Rukia wondered why.
"They're hiding something, Ichigo," she declared, partly to cover the eerie silence as they drove through the deserted moonlit streets of Karakura. "I think the suitcase was legitimate, but... that's not just leftover grief we saw in the house tonight."
He didn't answer right away, and when he did, his voice sounded haunted. "I know, Ru. The oddest thing is, I don't think they're just afraid of you. I think they're afraid of each other."
It was a keen percetion, one Rukia herself had missed. "How can you tell? They didn't seem to support each other much, but I figured that just meant they weren't very close."
"But they are, Rukia. Mashiro adores her father, and ever since Meiko left, she's been his whole world."
That news took Rukia by surprise. The two people she'd just observed had behaved more like members of a dysfunctional family.
Now, very quietly, Ichigo said, "I think Mashiro would do anything to protect her father."
"You've changed your mind, Ichigo? You think he did it?"
He shook his head. "I don't want to believe that. I don't think Mashiro believes it either. But she... I don't think she's sure."
It was the closest he'd ever come to admitting the possibility of Seno's guilt, and Rukia knew it was hard for him. She wanted to slide over beside him, or at least touch his arm, but she knew she didn't dare.
"When you say she'd do anything to protect him... you mean conceal evidence? Lie under oath?"
"I'm not sure what I mean. I do know that when she was in high school, she gave up the boy she adored because her father didn't approve of him. He wanted to marry her. He worshipped the ground she walked on." When Rukia made no comment, he continued, "I bet you never dated a man your father didn't approve of."
"I never liked the wrong sort of man."
"Is that what I am, Rukia? Is that why you can't let yourself love me? Because Daddy wanted you to out-man the boys and be supercop? And you'd rather be lonely as hell than disappoint a man who's long since dead?"
A deep wash of fury filled Rukia's heart, followed by a piercing hurt. Worse yet was the suspicion that Ichigo was probably right. If she couldn't live up to the standards her father had set for her, she couldn't respect herself. That wasn't all bad, but maybe it wasn't all good, either. Maybe it was time to reexamine her dad's values and decide if they were best for her own life.
In that awesome silence, Ichigo said, "I didn't say that to hurt you, Rukia. I said it to wake you up." He turned to face her, his sorrowful chocolate brown eyes illuminated by the street lamps as he pulled up at the stop sign a block away from the Uraharas'. "There's got to be a better way to go."
Rukia could not answer. She knew it was a mistake to have gotten into his truck alone with him! Thank God they were almost home.
Ichigo drove right past the boardinghouse and headed out of town.
"Where are you going?" Rukia cried out. "It's late, Ichigo. We both-"
"We both have things to talk about." There was tension in his voice, but the heat she heard there was not the heat of anger that had driven their conversations for so many weeks. This banked fire was more unsettling.
"No, Ichigo." Her voice was low. "Please take me home."
"Home," he said softly. "An interesting word for a boardinghouse. Why is it 'home' to you, Rukia? Because of Yoruichi? Kisuke? Because I'm there?"
She swallowed hard. "It was just a figure of speech, Ichigo. It's where I've lived for a while, and I have no family."
There was a long silence. "I don't recall any clause in your job description saying 'singles only need apply.'"
She knew she'd hurt him badly, and maybe she deserved to suffer his revenge. But tonight, when it seemed as if they'd shared so much again, it was unbearable to have him bait her.
"Let's be realistic, Ichigo. When I decided to make law enforcement my career, I gave up any dreams of baby carriages and having dinner ready when hubby came home from the office." Rukia turned her face toward the window and stared into the frosty night, feeling jumpy and afraid. She'd always feared yielding her power to another person, and marriage implied the ultimate surrender. She'd come closer to surrendering her soul to Ichigo than to any other man, and the memory still frightened her. "I think I asked you to take me home," she reminded him with all the strength she could still muster.
"Did you? I thought that was just the Captain issuing idle commands. I got the impression that my woman wanted some time alone with me."
The sore spot in her heart that bore Ichigo's name began to throb. Rukia had to swallow back tears. She wanted to holler at him, to issue sharp orders that reeked of disdain, but she was too weary. And not just because it was late and she'd put in a full day. She was exhausted from the struggle of fighting her love for him.
"Please, Ichigo," she pleaded.
He kept driving. "Please, Ichigo, what? You don't really want me to take you home. Be honest with yourself, Ru. Be honest with me." Again he turned to face her. "What do you really want?"
She was silent for a long moment before she whispered, "I want you to stop hurting me."
Ichigo braked at once. The eerie moonlight played across his beautiful eyes, his dimples, the hard line of his jaw. The truck rolled to a stop near a snowbank at the edge of the plowed road as he reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. "Babe, that's the last thing I want to do. If you can't believe that, I will take you home right now."
The silence was overwhelming-the frigid stillness of a winter night. She knew there wasn't a soul for miles.
"I can't make love with you, Ichigo. Please don't ask me again."
He didn't release her hand. His fingers kneaded hers gently, urgently. "That wasn't what I was going to ask, Ru. I don't ever plan to."
Briskly Rukia turned away, stunned at how much those gentle words wounded her. No wonder Ichigo's mood was different tonight. He had given up. He had done what she'd told him to do. He wasn't going to fight her, wasn't going to beg her to find a way that they could be together. She tried to feel relieved-hadn't she ached for this?-but her whole being felt battered and bruised.
Especially the fingers embraced by his hand.
"What do you want, Ichigo? What are we doing out here?"
He released her hand to turn off the ignition. "There's a spot up a few miles from here-" he pointed ahead and slightly toward the right "-that's my favorite place in the whole world. I used to play there when I was a kid and we'd come to Karakura to visit Aunt Yoruichi and my grandmother. I bought it a few years ago so I could build a house. But I can't get started on the plans, can't even let myself dream, until I know there's somebody to share it with." Silence took over the truck once more before he said, "I've dated a fair number of women over the years, nice ladies, every one. But I never showed it to any of them, bunnyhead. Tonight seemed like the right time to show it to you."
She couldn't bear for him to call her bunnyhead. At first he'd done it to mock her, and it had made her angry. Then he'd called her bunnyhead in the middle of the night and the word had set her on fire. Now he used the endearment with the tenderest of inflections, and it made her ache for him anew.
"Rukia, I love you." The quiet words echoed in the silent cab, setting off a tiny rocket in Rukia's heart. "I love you in a way I don't think I've ever loved a woman before. I don't mean you're the first, but I do mean-" his eyes met hers and would not let her go "-I want you to be the last."
She struggled for breath. He couldn't mean-
"I know we've got some rough sledding ahead of us, on duty and off. But we're both strong people. We understand what it means to be independent, what it means to be loyal, what it means to be cops. I don't want to change you. I don't want your job or your freedom or your self-surrender. I just want your love."
Rukia didn't speak-what could she say?-but she was listening tensely now, her heart battling tidal waves of adrenaline that were hard to ignore.
"If you stay here in Karakura, you may always outrank me, even if someday one of us is assigned somewhere else. I don't like that. But I can live with the situation better than I can live without you."
Rukia closed her eyes, too moved to risk even a glance at him.
"There are one or two substations within commuting distance, and maybe I can earn my promotion at one of them someday, or even make Captain here if you get bumped up the line. After all, HQ in Seireitei isn't all that far away." The words seemed to come hard for him. His voice was thick with emotion now, husky and low. "Before the night we... got carried away, I saw you as my woman, not my Captain. I didn't try to put myself in the shoes of some other man under your command. Now that I've had plenty of time to think it over, I understand why you can't have an affair with any of us. As the man who's getting shut out, I hate it, but as a cop assigned to the Karakura substation, I wouldn't have it any other way."
Ichigo slid over until he pressed against her, thigh to thigh, and gently laid one hand on her face. "I'm not leaving Karakura, Ru, and neither are you. We can't go on like this. People are talking about us as it is-"
"What?" She pushed his hand away. "How could you-"
"Hey, I haven't said a word to anyone about the night of the Christmas party. But Uncle Kisuke and Toshiro have both guessed how I feel about you, anyway. I can see the questions in their eyes."
Rukia writhed with fresh humiliation. "Your aunt suspects something. She grills me about you ever day."
Infuriatingly, he smiled. "And yesterday Chad told me that I was looking at you as though I wanted to tear off your uniform. Now if that doesn't-"
"Chad!" she squealed. "He doesn't even know us!"
"He doesn't need to know us, Rukia. That's just my point! He's a man and he's got eyes. Do you think everyone else in Karakura is blind? I'm telling you, all this suffering isn't going to help your reputation. The whole town can feel the fire between us. The local gossips are probably already spreading word of things we haven't even done."
Rukia felt sick. Her career seemed to be slipping through her fingers. In her panic she lashed out at the bearer of bad news. "So what's your point? Everybody thinks I have no professional ethics so I might as well prove it? Honest to God, Ichigo, I thought you had more-"
"Dammit, Rukia!You're impossible." He slid away from her and slammed the steering wheel with an angry hand. "Don't you have any faith in my integrity?"
"Integrity? You're using every trumped-up reason in the world to convince me to cast aside my self-respect just so you can have a few minutes of carnal pleasure! Can you deny it?"
He grabbed her by the shoulders and made her face him. "Yes, I can deny it! I haven't the slightest interest in a few minutes of carnal pleasure with you, Rukia Kuchiki. I'm in the market for a lifetime of them."
Rukia froze, not at all certain she understood him. If she'd been watching a movie, she would have said that the hero had just proposed to the heroine. But this was Ichigo Kurosaki, her own real-life hero, and he'd never even hinted at marriage to her before.
And she herself had never dared to think of it.
Angrily he turned away again, pounding the dash with a killing blow. "I was trying to ask you to marry me, Captain, but I'll be damned if I'm going to drag you kicking and screaming to the altar!"
Ichigo turned on the ignition before Rukia could speak. He swung the truck in a wide arc and flew down the road back to town. Rukia knew she had to stop him. She couldn't possibly accept his offer-could she?-and she didn't dare throw herself in his arms. But she couldn't let him throw a left-handed offer of marriage in her face and just drive off! She couldn't just pretend he'd never brought the subject up!
She reached out and grabbed his arm. "Ichigo, stop the truck," she begged him. "Talk to me."
"I don't have anything else to say. It's obvious that I've said far too much already."
"You asked me to marry you," she reminded him, ashamed of the desperation in her voice. "If you were serious, you'd want to hear my answer."
"I heard your goddamn answer! I knew it before I even got the words out. God knows you tried to stop me. I should have listened."
Rukia's stomach lurched. She relived all the terrible days since she'd sent him from her room, remembered the anguish of each empty night. She couldn't let him bolt up the stairs in anger now; she couldn't go through it again. She couldn't marry him, of course, but she couldn't let him go until she knew they were friends.
"Ichigo, I want you to stop the truck. I want to talk this through."
"I'm freezing, and it looks like it's going to snow."
"Please, Ichigo."
"A few minutes ago you were begging me to take you home."
"Ichigo! Stop the damn truck!"
"Is that an order, Captain?" His voice was fierce and low.
She wanted to tell him it was an order that he'd damned well better obey, but she knew that if she did, she'd lose him forever. Besides, it wouldn't have made any difference. He hadn't asked his Captain to marry him; he'd asked the woman he said he loved. That was the woman who would make him stop the truck.
Rukia laid one hand on Ichigo's upper thigh and squeezed his tense flesh. She knew she was starting downhill in a toboggan, but she couldn't help herself. In her softest voice, she pleaded, "Ichi, stop the truck."
In an instant Ichigo braked, slowed and pulled over by the side of the road. Tiny snowflakes were drifting down against the windshield. Rukia shivered despite her winter coat.
Ichigo took a deep breath, but he did not look at her. He stared out the window, bent, defeated. She knew she'd scraped his pride to the bone.
For a long, quiet moment the truck was silent. Not a single sound drifted into the cab from outside. Ichigo didn't move, even when Rukia found her grip tightening on his quadriceps.
"I do love you," she finally admitted, her voice painfully low. "And I am deeply touched by the fact that you actually want to marry me."
He didn't answer. He didn't stir.
"I can imagine snuggling up each evening with you before the fire. I can imagine curling up beside you every night in bed. I can't imagine myself as a mother, but I feel warm inside when I think of your baby in my arms."
He slumped forward. He seemed to know what was yet to come.
"I want you so much, Ichigo. More than I have the courage to show you. And if things were different, I would rejoice in your love for me." She reached for his hand, still on the gearshift, but he didn't respond. "But I can't imagine going into the squad room and telling those men that I'm your lover. I don't have the courage to face that. I could never stand up to them again."
There was no answer, no motion from the other side of the cab.
"Can't you understand that?"
He did not face her, but at least he finally spoke. "I'm not asking you to tell them you're my lover. I'm asking you to tell them you're my wife."
He said the words so wistfully Rukia wanted to cry, but somehow she clung to her convictions. "Ichigo, it's the same thing to them. They'd chortle, they'd laugh-"
"No, they wouldn't. You can make fun of a man's bedmate. You can't laugh at his wife."
She took a deep breath. "Okay, maybe it's different for you. But for me... it means that I'm... surrendering to a man." She couldn't explain how dangerous that would be for her. To admit the risk to Ichigo would be tantamount to surrender. "A man under my command. How would it look-"
He pushed away her hand. "I don't give a damn how it would look. Matrimony is an honored tradition in this town. Every head cop we've ever had in Karakura has had a spouse. Why shouldn't you?"
"I'm a woman, Ichigo. You know that makes a difference."
"Yes, it makes a difference. Yes, it means that some of the men will wonder who holds the reins in our personal life. Some of them will laugh at me. You'll still be the boss. They won't dare to laugh at you."
"I don't want any man to hold my reins, Ichigo. I'm my own woman, offstage or on." It was hard enough to remain tough and hard when she was all alone and could devote herself to her work. When she was with Ichigo, she didn't feel cold; she felt sweet and helpless and demure. She couldn't be a ddemure Captain, and she didn't want to be a tough wife. If she couldn't even balance the two images of woman in her own mind, how would she ever juggle them in real life?
"I'm sorry, Ichigo," she whispered. "More sorry than you'll ever know."
He turned on the ignition again. Rukia turned it off. She just couldn't let him go.
"What's the point, Rukia?" he snapped. "You've carved out your own little niche, full of power, full of pride. It may be lonely as hell in there, but there's no room for anybody else. You aren't even willing to consider the possibility that you and I could work out some sort of domestic compromise. I know I'm not the world's most liberated guy, but if I can learn to work beneath you, I think I can learn to live by your side. You won't even give me a chance to prove it."
"I can't give you a chance," she told him desperately. "We can't date. We can't live together. We can't experiment and adjust. We'd just have to run off and get married overnight and then work out all our problems later. It could be a disaster."
For a long time, he didn't answer. Then his warm chocolate brown eyes bathed her face once more as he whispered, "Bunnyhead, it could be bliss."
An instant later Rukia was hugging Ichigo, glorying in the strength of his arms and the pillow of his massive chest. She didn't plan it, didn't choose it, knew it wasn't wise. But it felt so good to hold him, so good to toss the anger and fear and emptiness of the past few terrible weeks aside. "Oh, Ichigo, you don't really think-"
He swallowed her hopefulness in a kiss that rocked Rukia to the bone. She relished the feel of his fingers in her hair, felt the flame of his hands as he pulled her closer.
In a second she was burning. Ichigo's tongue was plunging deep within her soft, moist mouth, foreshadowing the merging yet to come. It was as though their urgency had been put on hold the night he'd left her room-an action picture left on freeze-frame. Now the barriers they'd erected then collapsed with a resounding bang. The unquenched coals of the fire that had once burned between them instantly exploded into flame.
Rukia stifled a cry of need as Ichigo pulled her onto his lap. Instinctively she straddled him. She was wearing stockings, but she might as well have been stark naked from the waist down. Ichigo opened her coat, dropped a flaming kiss on her throat, then buried his face between her breasts. She whimpered in joy at his urgency. She knew she had to stop him, but she didn't know how.
In a moment Rukia felt Ichigo fumble with the buttons of her blouse. His fingertips were erotically cold as they slipped inside her bra, rousing her nipples to pinpricks of wild craving. She could feel his stiff body surging upward, hotly pressing against the center of her woman's core. Everything was happening so fast she had no time to think, no time to make rational decisions. Desperately she wanted to tear off her clothes.
But she was hemmed in between a dashboard and a gearshift, crushed against the door. She knew it was unseemly, dangerous, insane. She almost didn't care. She felt like a sixteen-year-old parked in a car at night. As a teenager, she'd always been afraid a cop would catch her... a cop who knew her dad.
Suddenly, Rukia knew that Ichigo was thinking the same thing. And she knew that it was her well-being, not his own, that forced him to still his trembling hands and push her bodily off his lap. He took a great breath, then forced himself out the door.
Despite the freshly falling snow, Ichigo jerked away from the truck, banging on the hood with his fist, heaving and breathing hard. Rukia thought she would burst from desire; she knew he was ready to explode.
It was crazy! They couldn't stay away from each other. But they couldn't get married, either. What kind of a solution was that to a sexual problem? And it was a sexual problem, wasn't it? She couldn't get married just to avoid an affair! If she ever took such a permanent step, it would be because nothing in this world meant more to her than her husband.
A frightened voice inside Rukia warned her that she already felt that way about Ichigo.
AN
I know some of you are probably getting frustrated, but bare with me. Rukia will come to her senses eventually. Not to say everything will be all good and well when she does but what can you do. I will guarantee you that they will have a happy ending, so just hang in there. Okay, you know what to do. Review, review, review!