He opened the door with its tinkling chime, and ushered her in, bundling her closer in the pretense of shaking of the last vestiges of cold. With his arm around her, and her face turned against his shoulder, she peeked through her hair and felt anxiously exposed. Strangely it made her turn and press closer to him. As if to hide.
He seemed content with her sudden cuddling. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the wait-staff glance at them, and then away with an indulgent smile. Only then did she fully realize the picture they made. But it was too late to do something about it.
He took her to the nearest booth, and then slowly untangled them. Reaching in and sliding her hand out of his jacket, but by way of dragging it teasingly across his chest, then lifting it for a quick kiss. She gave him an owlish look, aware that they were in public, and what the hell was he doing?
But no one started pointing at them wildly, no one cast them looks of disgust. He helped her into the booth, but still kept her hand in his, he squeezed it gently and brought her wide eyes back to him.
"Relax," he whispered, "No one knows who we are, Aya."
She didn't relax, her hand was limp and clammy in his. This wasn't a good idea. Somebody was going to know.
And her behaviour was hemmed in, as long as she didn't want to call attention to them. Was that his intention...? She lifted her eyes and stared at him as he settled into the booth, directly across from her. She was at a distinct disadvantage here, because she wasn't willing to cause a scene, but he was clearly unconcerned with an audience. She looked around, seeing animated faces and pleasant chatter, and feeling hunted.
He sighed again. "Please try to relax," he stressed, and her head swung in his direction. This wasn't a date-this had a definite 'date' feel. "Look," he said earnestly, placing his elbows and forearms on the small table and leaning forward on them. "I'll buy you a fruit parfait-it's your favourite, right? A nice, big one with a dessert spoon and everything. I hear their parfaits are pretty good..."
She was distracted at that, parfaits were her favourite. She loved the cream and the fresh fruit, and the long spoon with its dainty scoop always amused her. She knew her eyes lit up, because he smiled happily, and instantly turned to seek out a waiter to place their order.
She didn't protest as he ordered her treat, and a pot of hot tea. She didn't even flinch as the kindly lady who filed their order smiled nostalgically at them both before heading up to the counter.
She didn't relax, but she squirmed on her bench with barely suppressed anticipation. Date or not, she couldn't ever get herself to consider turning down a free parfait.
But something was bothering her. It took her a few minutes to figure out what. She went slowly still, then looked at him directly. "Aki, what are we doing here?"
"Hmm," he said with a clear note of soft indulgence. He wasn't good at feigning ignorance, so he clearly wasn't even going to try. He lifted his eyes to her, and took point in a game that she usually led.
It wasn't so amusing when the shoe was on the other foot. "Aki, what are we doing?" she stressed.
A head-tilt and deliberately innocent smile. "We are having a nice afternoon away from the apartment," he said pleasantly.
How difficult it was, feeling like you and your conversational part were stuck in two different gears. Especially when one was refusing to shift down only out of some sense of tease. Or wish to be difficult.
So he was only going to answer her questions in the strictest sense of the word. And completely ignore the true essence of their meaning. Fine. She could play from this side of the board.
She could beat him at this game by taking on his role.
All day he had been spitting out 'truth' and 'confrontation'. Her frustration and anxiety were brewing into a dangerous cocktail. She relaxed back against her seat, slid her hands along the smooth tabletop, and lowered one should in an elegant slump.
She knew she had his whole attention by the way he slowly looked away. She let the silence ride for one long moment.
"I want you."
His head swung in her direction, his eyes widening.
She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head in such a way that her bangs fell over the edge of her left-eye. Her voice was barely a whisper, but she spoke clearly. "The things you did to me the night before...mmm..." She lifted one hand from the table and placed it at the base of her throat. She slid it slowly down. "I've never felt like that before."
He was breathing slightly hard, but he was trying not to. She watched him straighten in his seat, watched him try to control it.
"Aya, what are you doing?" Such a weakened voice. almost a plea.
She looked at him through her lashes, through a sensuous smile. "Mmm?"
Her echo of his previous answer seemed to rouse him from his surprise. He caught his balance, and she saw him do it. Maybe he was ready to stop playing games...
"You want to talk about truth," he said slowly, then took a more serious pose on the other side of the table. "Now?" he added, injecting a note of challenge to it.
Something in her suddenly cautioned. Something about his tone said that maybe he was too ready to stop playing games...
"Fine," he said, and she realized she was sitting rigid in her relaxed pose. "If we break things down into their simplest forms, here it is. You want me. I want you. You love me. I love you. We have the means and the will to be together, and that's what I want." He leaned slightly across the table, lowering his voice, but not diminishing any of the force to it. "I want to be with you, Aya. Any way. Every way. I want to be your brother."
She started at that, wanting to look around, but not being able to look away from him.
"And I want to make love to you."
...
"You want that, too. Don't you, Aya? You want to know what it feels like to have me inside you..."
Her hands were numb, she could feel the beginnings of some strange separation in her head.
"Tell me about my taste. Tell me what you meant when you said that. What were you talking about?"
She shoved back against the seat, pushing away, but of course, not getting anywhere. It was a reactive move, nothing that had to do with thought or logic.
This whole situation seemed made of the same stuff.
"Wha...what?" she breathed. It wasn't a question. It was an exclamation.
"My taste," he pronounced clearly, and she wished he hadn't. She wished she had let him play his innocence-game, because this...was anything but. She still couldn't think properly.
"Friday night," he said, then cast her a somewhat sly look, "Or should I say, Saturday morning? You said a few things that I didn't quite understand. You said you could still taste me. What did you mean?"
She just stared at him in a dull sort of horror.
He lifted his right hand, slid his thumb across his bottom lip. "Did you kiss me?"
She blinked at him. She had kissed him, but that wasn't what she had been talking about. He had...she could feel her cheeks slowly beginning to sting with fresh blood and heat.
He observed her staring back at him, and nodded slowly, seemingly to himself. "When?" he asked, and she realized he had read her stunned silence as a positive answer.
She looked quickly away, because 'a kiss' was not what was in her eyes. She bit the inside of her lip hard to keep from licking it, to keep herself from remembering the taste of him on her tongue. But it was a memory she had yet to escape.
To have his secret exposed at such a depth, without his knowing...
She had exposed a secret of her own that night. It had just taken her so long to realize it...
"When," he prompted again. "Don't I have a right to know?" His voice turned calm, coaxing. Reasonable. Her fingers curled into the coarse material of her skirt beneathe the table. The trouble was, something in her agreed with him. He did have a right to know. But she didn't really think he had a right to ask. There were answers that people deserved, but they were in conjunction to questions they were not allowed to ask. Not in proper society.
But she knew she was going to answer him. Not because he deserved to know, or because he asked, but because this subject, despite its dangers, was still so much safer than that other. She would happily never speak of that. Wasn't it enough that it was hardened in her mind, like a scene trapped in resin?
Biting her lip, she slowly lifted her eyes to his. Like him, she decided to ignore the existence of an outside world. This part of the world wasn't going to matter to them in an hour's time. Still, she kept her voice soft, and tried to willfully push peoples' attention away.
"I did kiss you." He had already decided that, but she felt she should verbally confirm it before trying to explain.
Not that she could explain.
"When?" She shook her head slightly, "I can't remember exactly when. Some night, the middle of last week." Then she frowned again, as it truly puzzled her. That kiss shifted in and out of focus in her mind, as if she was trying to remember a distant dream.
The shock she had felt afterward, however, was very, very real.
"The time is a little weird in my mind," she said honestly, then realized she had dropped her eyes to stare blankly at the table between her hands. She forced them up again, wondering what it meant, that it wasn't so hard this time. That she even felt a measure of calm, and distance, now that she was speaking.
"I was having a dream, you see," she heard herself say, and he frowned. But it wasn't a negative expression, it was just a look of concentration and curious consideration. There was a slight look to his eyes that said he hadn't expected her to speak so candidly.
And, as always, his 'surprise' buoyed her.
"And i woke up in the night," there was a duality to her words, part of her was speaking of the kiss. Part of her was held in place next to the futon while his hand mimicked the rise and fall of 'her body'.
"You were still asleep, and...I think I was, too. I felt like I was asleep, you see. And you...you were in the futon, and I leaned over you. And...something." She closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. There was a strange drifting feeling inside her. Like she was a balloon on a string, and the breeze was gently swaying her from side to side.
A softer voice, he leaned over the table to hear. There was a strange look in his eyes...strange in that she almost recognized it. Her eyes were open again. "Something...I don't know. I covered your lips with mine, and it...wasn't quite a kiss. Not at first. Then you breathed, and I parted my lips...and..."
And there was the answer, the prefix to 'taste'. His hands were splayed on the table as he unconsciously leaned over it. His eyes swallowed by darkness until the blue was little more than a halo around the pupil. His lips were parted, and he was taking shallow, distracted breaths.
His look startled her, slightly, in that distant part of her that was still grounded. It wasn't quite a steady look. There was something...dazed in his eyes.
Lust, her inner-voice corrected her. That's what that look is. Sweet, fierce lust. Like a fur-edged knife, a sharp flash of light through the body, that leaves the mind spinning in a daze. You've been there before...haven't you?
If an inner-voice could have a mouth, she imagined it would be curled wickedly in a smirk. She sat still and didn't know how to react.
He pushed back from the table, shifted in his seat and did a slow look away. She watched him pull his bottom lip in his mouth and distractedly taste it. He released it by way of dragging it through his teeth.
His next breath was slower, deeper.
"And...I didn't wake up?" he spoke quietly, there was a soft sort of disbelief to his voice. His voice...it had the quality of ripped velvet. Rich and thick, and shredded by emotional claws.
"No," she mouthed, barely a sound at all. The sound of his voice was doing something strange to hers...
He swallowed, closed his eyes, then turned his head slowly back to her. His fingertips slid across the smooth tabletop, a strangely tender gesture, but they slowly closed together, and there was something almost possessive about it. He opened his eyes and the daze was gone. They still remained dark and swimming with desire, but now there was a dangerous focus to it.
"Why," he said, and there was no lilt of question to it. There was a push behind that one word that would accept no less than an answer.
"Why..." she blinked at him, the demand not processing in her mind at all.
His fingers tightened, "Don't, Aya. You know what I'm asking. Why."
She did know, and that's why her head had blanked so suddenly...
tbc...