Six -
A/N: I'm sorry in advance if there are numerous or any misspellings. I don't know how many of you care, but I'm a grammar freak so I feel the need to point this out ^^; My keyboard has been sticking lately, thus the misspellings.
First update in a long time...rating hasn't changed to 'M'...yet. I'm wondering if it should though.
Spoilers of my own story xD Read on!
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The majority of their trek to the town not too far from Suna was hell - Naruto and Sai's arguing saw to that. Groaning in disgust here and there, Sakura kept her attention on the sky, the trees and like the paranoid girl she now was, behind her. Thank the world for creepy old men - as if Jiraiya and Orochimaru weren't enough.
Somehow, she doubted Orochimaru was even a man anymore. That...thing was incapable of having a penis. It just wasn't possible.
The town, a mess of rickety wooden shops and houses was adorable in the sense that it looked like a child's doll house; the population was set at about one-eighth of Konohagakure's.
Doll house...charming.
"Alright, you three - I'm off for a while to go talk to one of the Sunagakure officials who is in tonight as well. Keep out of trouble, maybe get some dinner," Yamato chised in a parental tone.
"We're not twelve anymore Captain," Naruto replied in an aggravated tone. "I think we're capable of handling ourselves."
"Not all of us," Sai interjected, recieving a deathly look from the blonde. "I believe one-third of our team attacked some squirrels earlier today."
"Screw you," Sakura shot back, fists clenched and most likely turning a pale white inside her black gloves. You don't know.
The three of them sauntered around town checking out the restaurants and making a pecking order of which was a possible stop for the night. Naruto was vouching for the ramen shop at the outskirts of the town, while Sai just advised the go for sushi.
"Just pick something," Sakura growled at her teammates who, contrary to Naruto's prior statement to their captain, were acting like petty children. Their maturity levels were far lower than twelve years of age.
Once the two imbeciles decided on dinner, which happened to be a hibachi grill rather than either of their choices, Sakura stood and stretched, flipping a tip but sauntering out before the boys could interject about her lack of pay. They had caused enough trouble today; they could make up for it.
"Sakura-chan! Where are you going?" Naruto called after her, eyebrows furrowed together in disdain.
"Bed," Sakura called back, not bothering to turn around to verify her claim.
Once at the inn Yamato had advised they were to stay at, Sakura sauntered to her room and collapsed on the bed. God, she was exhausted. Most times it wouldn't have taken this long to get to another village, but Captain Yamato was insistant that their team work slowly to get there. It made her wonder what there was to be hidden.
As she rolled onto her side, she could hear rustling in her pocket.
The note.
Pulling out the piece of paper, she unfolded its now-crumpled contents and stared down at the black words on the page.
This loathsome gargoyle, who burns in hell, secretly yearns for heaven. 1
This man got every bit more frightening each time they crossed paths, be it in words or person.
...who burns in hell, secretly yearns for heaven
What exactly was that supposed to mean?
Mulling it over a few times more, Sakura sighed in defeat and stuffed the note into the nightstand drawer. If she never saw it again, or any others, that would be completely to her liking.
Of course, nothing these days was to her liking.
Curling up in a ball on her side, Sakura studied the darkness with wonder and fear. This was the disadvantage to being the only female member of the team - she got her own room for the night.
Stupid gender limitations.
Either way, she found herself dozing off albiet with a lump in the back of her throat. If only she weren't alone...if only...
Blinking open and rubbing her eyes still sticky with sleep, Sakura rolled over and glanced at the clock finding it to be two-thirty-eight in the morning.
Why had she woken in the first place? Her sleep wasn't any restless like last night, but something was knotted in the pit of her stomach; something grotesque that told her, on instinct, to run while she still could.
Run. Run.
Getting out of bed and bolting to the door, she heard a creaking behind her and froze. Fear had her pinned to the spot, legs numb and heavy like bricks as she risked a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder. There was nothing - just the window open ajar the way she had left it for the inn's lack of a better ventilation system. Sighing, she turned back around - still determined to get out of the room - and came to face a pair of devilish eyes.
"Ahh..."
Stumbling backwards, she lost her footing and tumbled to the ground, pushing herself towards the window with her bare feet.
It was him.
Here.
Alone with her.
Lord so ever help her.
"Sakura-chan, there isn't need to run," Sasori chasted, unmoved from his spot, his head cocked lightly to one side. "It isn't as if I'll hurt you...not any more than I already have."
Her face warped in disgust, Sakura braced herself to sprint to her bedside and grab the kunai she had there. Pushing herself up the wall beside the window, she felt the frame and calculated reaction time, if she could make it without him grabbing her before her escape.
"I wouldn't do that," Sasori advised, taking a step toward her with a small, content smirk on his face.
Sakura glared at him in hatred and fright. "Give me one reason not to."
Outside the window hovered a figure, braced with blades and an empty look in its hollow eyes.
A puppet.
It was only then that she noticed the strings, obviously formed within the last few seconds, glowing blue with chakra and leading around her.
"If you want to try, I'm not stopping you, just be warned of the consequences," Sasori whispered in a taunting manner. "However, if you stay, I'll let down my guard."
"What do you have to be guarding yourself against?" Sakura was struggling not to scream in fury at the man, some twenty years older than her, standing with an arrogant look on his malevolent face.
He shrugged, dancing his fingers to open the window with his puppet's, at which Sakura dodged and ended up in the far corner of the room. She watched the wooden devil creep its way in by Sasori's accord and shut the window behind it before clattering to the floor as he cut his chakra strings.
"I am so flattered you decided to stay."
Swallowing the once-again growing lump in her throat, Sakura pressed herself into the corner of the room, fists clenched in preparation for a fight. Sasori took his time gliding across the floor to her, before he stood in front of her with a pair of his own hollow, but tangible, eyes.
"Hello Sakura."
Averting her eyes, Sakura looked to the wall and studied the woodwork - ordinary brown, warped in some places and becoming a little fragile with age.
Why wasn't the puppet master that way? It would be much an advantage.
"Sakura," he whispered, more to himself than to the girl he'd trapped against the wall. She flinched as fingers traced her jawline in a trance-like state, working down her neck to her shoulder. There they rest all but momentarily before slipping away completely. "Sakura."
Words refused to form on her tongue as she glared at the floor, now, in hopes some epiphany would strike her as a way to end this. She could scream to alarm Naruto, Sai and Yamato - one room over - but something in her gut brought her to stay silent. It was hellish and disgusting.
"Why are you so frightened, my dear?" Sasori played the question rhetorically, once again stroking her face with a numbing touch. "Sakura...look at me."
She refused, partially because it scared her but mostly to defy the orders of a man who had been slipping through the shadows to watch her every move; a predator on the hunt.
"Look at me," he repeated, edge coming into his voice. Once again, Sakura chose to ignore this, which turned out to be a foolish move.
"Look at me," Sasori growled once more, hand coming to grasp her jaw all-too-roughly and twist her face so she was looking into his dark eyes. "Better."
"What do you want?" Sakura hissed at him through clenched teeth. His eyes cast a smile she wouldn't have seen anywhere else in this world, nor had she. It was a look that could stop a heart and by no means in the way Uchiha Sasuke's looks could. There was a distinct difference.
Sasori laughed under his breath, dipping his head while he spoke. "You should know. Do you not understand the metaphor of hell and heaven?"
Sakura glared at him again, not that her eyes had ever opened once narrowed into slits in his general direction. His fingers still clenched her jaw in an iron grip, forcing her to be one of his puppets in that moment.
"You're a vile excuse for a shinobi," Sakura told him, attempting to pull her face from his grasp and failing miserably. "You should have stayed dead when I first killed you."
"You don't always get what you want in life," Sasori remarked, slamming her head back against the wall and taking the last possible step closer to her. "If you're that determined, you should see to it that you properly finish the job."
"I did!" she cried out, eyes ablaze. "I watched you fall apart, watched your own grandmother check the remnants of your inhuman body. How the hell you came back is-"
"Watch your mouth," he growled, leaning closer to her. "Apparently you don't appreciate the term 'respect your elders' much either."
Sakura took her turn to laugh. "Respect my elders? I have no respect for a man who is the aggresor to my defense and who makes a point to make my life his hell."
"And what a pleasure it is," he told her, releasing the grip on her face so she could feel the stinging in her jaw. "You're a disrespectful little girl, you know that?"
"You're a disgusting old man," she sneered back, lunging far enough before his grip caught her to grab the kunai and slash blindly behind her.
That was when it occured to her - he was wooden. A kunai would do nothing.
Yet the contradiction came. His eyes open in shock, she watched the blood trickle from his cheek to his chin. A puppet was bleeding...that wasn't possible...
"You're human," Sakura deadpanned, her own eyes wide with shock, his deathly grip on her wrist still unnoticed.
His eyes flickered to her face before he yanked her towards him and threw her into the wall. "You're a little wench," he growled, face mere inches from hers and breath ragged with frustration. Sakura trembled benath his arm, which was now pinning her to the wall by her shoulders. "You had better learn some respect quickly, dear, before I teach it to you."
Sakura smirked. "What are you going to do? I'm not afraid of you, no matter how monstrous you are."
Sasori eyed her with a cold look that wasn't discernable. "You want to test me, cherry blossom, or do you want to start listening?"
Sakura leaned her head back against the wall, not bothering with an answer - it was another rhetorical question. Why bother?
"Good," Sasori said for his own satisfaction and removed his arm from her body which was likely to be bruised by daylight. Focus momentarily off her, he touched his cheek to wipe the blood away, staining his fingers red. When he had become human was beyond her recognition, though she was extremely curious behind all her other overbearing emotions.
So much for 'shinobi don't show emotion'.
"What do you want?" Sakura hissed again, teeth and fists clenched ready to fight for her life if it came down to that. Nothing would stop her from attempting to kick the shit out of this man if she had to - the question was, truly, why hadn't she by now?
"The same thing you do," Sasori teased, leaning an arm above her head and leaning in close to her until the tips of their noses touched. "The same exact thing."
"For you to get the fuck away from me? To die again?" she breathed, close to choking on the sharp inhilation and pressure he'd been putting on her various times in the last ten minutes.
"Don't deny it. You're lying...you're lying to yourself," Sasori mimicked, leaning in close enough to brush his tongue across her neck. It was then that it occured to her what she hadn't noticed before; his touch was human. His hands were warm, his tongue, his breath, the way nothing about him had been in their battle. It was surprising now to see that his bleeding face was the first sign when so many others had been clear.
"There isn't a thing to lie about," Sakura spat, staring over his shoulder into oblivion as his lips made their way from her neck to her jaw.
"I'd beg to differ." His mouth continued a trail up her jaw until against her ear, hot and sticky. "You want me."
This triggered something fierce in Sakura, and without warning she slammed her hands full-force into his chest, propelling him backwards and giving her enough time to leap towards the door. Her valiant attempt at escape hadn't been good enough. Arms swung around her waist and whipped her around before slamming her onto the bed with a hand over her mouth. There Sasori stood, at her side, with a wild look in his eyes screaming violence and sadism. "You try a stunt like that again and see what happens," he warned her, eyes boring heavily into hers.
The adrenaline rush caused her heart to pound hard enough it was in her throat, audible in her ears. She shut her eyes to trap out the feelings of mixed emotion, pain and pleasure, anger and fear. She was drowning in a world more captivating and devouring than what she imagined were her two teammates' lives - Naruto's life without a family and fight with his literal inner-demon and Sasuke's overbearing desire to massacre the man who had deprived him of a life he would never know. It was ugly, bitter and set off flares in her head.
Sasori was now leaning on her, breath heated on her cheek. "I thought we had an understanding about respect, Sakura," he purred, moving his lips from her cheek to the corner of her mouth. "You're a smart girl. You should understand."
"I understand nothing when it is forced upon me." She was speaking from some unknown place within, lost from reality, staring at the ceiling to avoid thinking of all the possibilites of what could happen in the next few mintues; death, rape, kidnapping. It was all horrifying and completely thought-provoking. All she truly wanted in that moment was to drift off to a place where all thought could die.
If her semi-successful self-numbing, so to speak, hadn't worked, the puppet master's next gesture certainly did. Pulling away from her all but momentarily to hungrily take in the fear in her eyes, he leaned down and crashed his lips to hers, driven by what she came to fathom as unspeakable lust and a strong need to repay her for the hell she had further put him through.
Quite obviously, she had, if he was once again flesh and blood.
It was terrible; the feeling of anything forced. It was adamant harassment, not that the redhead gave a damn, she knew. Something, however, caused her to see it as something different, something not so sadistic and horrifying.
In that moment, the thing that scared her the most was her own body reacting against her logic, as she closed her eyes and kissed back.
There were more than a handful of reasons why this was utterly disturbing. For one, Sasori had tried to kill her. Two, he had a minimum of twenty years on her, old enough to be her father. The most disgusting one, she came to reason, was the fact that she was quite sure at one point he had been dead.
Did that make her a necrophiliac?
The man leaned ever-closer to her, biting at her bottom lip with ferocity and desire. Without a second thought, she parted her lips, meeting his tongue with her own.
How the hell did this feel so damn pleasureable? She wanted to kill him, wanted to watch him die all over again, but instead was being pinned to her current bed by his strong, muscular body and going through animalistic motions.
Dear God.
Her arms had managed to snake around his neck, a single leg held up by his steaty hand. The harder he pressed his body to hers, the more she wanted to moan in satisfaction and bliss.
At the same time, half of her wanted to fish for the kunai somewhere in the near vicinity and stab him shitless.
Her pride was too great to allow herself to completely give in to the pleasure he was showing her, at least until he rocked his hips into hers, eliciting a throaty moan from the teen.
This was wrong. Completely.
It was a pity she couldn't bring herself to care.
Her reaction caused a devilish one in response as Sasori continued the movement that had broken her resistance, causing her to groan again and push her hips back against his. It was wonderfully horrible, and nothing short of ecstasy; which was probably the reason she didn't bother to stop him as his human, flesh and blood hand made its way under her shirt and began squeezing her breast.
Oh Kami-sama...
This might as well have been fucking with their clothes on, grinding hard into each other and breathlessly kissing, biting, moaning.
If this was the so-called 'heaven' he spoke of in that letter, she wasn't complaining.
Sometime in their, ahem, ferocious battle, she had ended up on top of him, weaving her fingers into his red hair. That was when the thought struck her - now. It would be the perfect time to strike.
Blindly feeling for the kunai somewhere at her side, she felt metal and inwardly smirked, raising her hand to thrust it into his gut.
Too late.
His hand grasped her wrist tightly and he flipped her, pinning her to the bed with the kunai-gripping fist above her head.
"Sakura, Sakura." In one swift motion the kunai was wrenched from her hand and flung into the wall where it stuck. "You disappoint me."
She could still feel his hot breath on her lips and halfway desired to pull him to her, masochistic as she was. Instead, she lie there breathless, staring at him with brutal eyes.
He lowered his lips to hers again, giving her onemore kiss before pushing himself off and heading towards the window, collecting his puppet with a dance of blue strings. "I'll be around, cherry blossom."
With that, the s-class nin leapt from the window, vanishing into the night.
Sadly, there was only one true thought in her head -
Fucking tease.
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No one saw that one coming...
1 - That quote is from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera
Hopefully next update soon, no promises. I'm terrible about updates and consistancy.
(Obviously my consistancy sucks if I use a mix of Japanese terms in a story written otherwise lol. If I mess any of the terms up, understand it's because I'm a white American girl lol.)