xvi. Appetite

Follow-up to Family

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"Good evening, Miss."

His voice is smooth, seductive, exactly like I remembered it being. It carries me back to our last meeting two years prior. Theoretically, him showing up here surprises me; practically, I'm not fazed. It's like my sub-conscious has anticipated meeting him again, considering we run in the same circles. For the last two years, I've been prepared to meet him again.

"Good evening. Fancy meeting you here." I answer, and turn my body to face him completely. My voice is just as smooth and seductive as his. "So we meet again."

Extending my hand, I give him a gracious smile, hoping to conceal the sly spark I know can be spotted in the depths of my eyes.

He smirks, grabs my hand, lifting it up to his mouth and kissing my skin through the thin fabric of my silken gloves, his eyes never wavering from mine. I wet my lips.

"As usual, you look enchanting." he compliments me. I raise my eyebrows.

"Aren't you a charmer." I say, my voice dead-pan. And hooking my elbow with his, I start leading him to the dance floor. "So, what have you been up to? Besides attending edifying high-society events like this one?"

"Oh, you know." His voice is dry. The annoyance he must feel over his situation is not lost on me. How bizarre it is to be having small talke with the person I tried to kill at out last encounter.

"Since my cousin sicced a mob family's hitman on me (who just happens to be dancing with me right now) I have been on the run, not letting people get too close. Always sleeping with one eye open, trying to establish new identities; unfortunately, I'm too infamous for that to work, my face too well known, which led my cousin to sic even more hitmen on me. As you can tell, everything is coming up roses for me. How's your life going?"

"Oh, you know." I tell him conversationally, our bodies swaying to the music filling the room, moving softly to the rhythm. His boy is incredibly close, I can feel his gun hidden under his tux. Mine is safely located in my clutch. I must keep up my guard, in case he pulls his. But for the moment, we're both not trying anything.

"The usual. Killing people, destroying lives, rejecting suitors, fooling everyone. There's only one thing wrong with my life; I can't stop obsessing over that one target I let get away a few years ago. It's eating away at me, perfectionist that I am."

I can't see his face, since my head is resting on his shoulders, but I can feel his shoulders shake as he laughs. "I'm not much better of than you are, apparently. I can't get that fierce girl out of my head, the one that stole my heart in order to kill me by squeezing it to death. She broke it in the process, and it hasn't been the same since."

"That's too bad. Maybe I can be of assistance?" Standing straight, I turn my face up to his, making eye contact. My lids are half-closed, which I know can drive men insane, and I pant slightly, which I see affects him as well. He swallows. "Perhaps." he murmurs.

Raising a hand, I trace his features with one gloved finger. The outline of his mouth, his cheekbone, his nose, his eyebrows. "I really ought to do something about that obsession of mine. Mayhaps I should kill him. Or..." My voice is barely a whisper now. "Mayhaps devour him like a cat devours a mouse."

His pupils are dilated and black, and when I let my hand wander south, stop at his groins, and grab them, I can see him gasp for air. I feel triumphant for having made him lose his countenance. However, my triumph doesn't last. He takes a hold of my hand, and brings it up between us, taking off the glove in the process. Like before, he proceeds kissing it, every fingertip, every knuckle. It's the most erotic thing I've ever seen, him kissing my hands, his blazing red eyes locked with mine.

"What do you propose we do?" he asks huskily. It's my turn to swallow, my mouth feels dry.

"Go somewhere a little more quiet." I suggest, and he entwines our fingers, and leads me out of the brightly lit saloon, filled with impeccably dressed, rich people, scheming for someone's downfall, making contracts, or gambling away a life. I should know. I know everyone of them intimately, every sordid little detail of their lives, gathered by myselfso I can use it to blackmail and control them, threaten and intimidate them. And they know it. They know not to mess with the Sakura Family's fierce daughter, notorious for her precision with guns, her ruthless, merciless fulfilling of tasks, her impeccable manners, elegance and grace, and the way she tricks her targets, making them underestimate her. I'm an actress, I am a master at masquerading my true self.

But he gets under my skin like none other. The Hyuuga's runaway heir. He gets me, he gets my life, and I despise him for his knowledge of me and my weakness. We've maybe met a handful of times in my life, but during our last meeting, I fucked up, I let him see beneath my armor of pretension. He knows my weaknesses now, he's one of them.

And the touch of his bare skin on mine burns like fire, it drives me crazy. With desire and madness and anger. I covet him. This is where lust and violence collide, and as he throws the door shut behind me, he shoves me against it so forcefully - presses me against it with so much passion - that my bones rattle. As I bite down on his lip, hard, I bury my nails in the skin of his neck.

Just like that my legs are around his waist, and we consummate the fire whose spark was set two years ago. This is obsession, unhealthy and intoxicating and mind-numbing. Him pulling at my hair, I biting his shoulder. Him arching back my head, I scratching him with my sharp, manicured nails.

The lust-filled pants, the muffled gasps. We both keep quiet, not wanting to attract any attention from outside this room, luring in the sharks who are out for our respectiv blood, and similarly not wanting to give each other the satisfaction of knowing how we're both become undone just now, how we are unraveling because of this primal, natural act we are committing.

I'm lighting a cigarette for myself, offering him one. We're still in the room, and only now do I realize how tastefully it's furnished. I don't usually smoke, only after sex. I'm lounging on an armchair, my legs dangling in the air, propped over the armrest, my shoes long since kicked off.

"That was nice." I tell him, taking a drag of my cigarette and blowing the smoke out slowly, precisely.

"Nice?" he echoes with raised brows, trying to re-tie his neck tie. He sounds incredulous and slightly indignant. "Did I hurt your vanity?" I tease him, wiping a speck of ashes from my dress. Like me, it looks the worse for wear, ruffled and crumpled and wrinkled.

Okay, maybe it was the best sex I've ever had, but I'm not about to tell thim that.

He snorts. "Hardly." He walks over to me, and sits down below me, leaning his back against the armchair, taking one of the cigarettes proffered and lets me light it. He smokes it thoughtfully, like me. "So what now?"

"Now?" I repeat.

"Yeah, what do we do now?"

"Well, I don't know what you're going to do now, but I'm going to fly home tomorrow morning, and go about my business as usual. "

"That's the plan?" he asks, and even though he tries to hide it, I can tell he's crushed. I sigh. "You didn't really think we were going to be a thing, did you?"

"Not really, no. But I thought...maybe we could do this again?" He takes my hand, the one not holding a cigarette, the one that's playing with his hair, and kisses it again. His lips arm warm from the cigarette and its smoke. "Don't." I say.

"Maybe I love you." he replies, kind of unnerving me, and catching me off guard. I laugh. "Nice try." I say. "There's a difference between love and obsession."

Flicking my waning cigarette into a nearby ashtray, I bend forward to kiss the small patch of skin exposed above his collar. He shudders at the unexpected touch.

"You don't really love me." I whisper into his ear, and the "Do you?", although unspoken, lingers in the air between us. He turns his face just the slightest bit, so I can see his smirk. He doesn't answer.

I feel like a fool.

The lines between pretension and reality blur. Who's the one fooling the other now? Who is the one being sincere? Are we both just masquerading our longing, our consuming feeling sof want? Is he playing me? Am I playing him? Or are we both just too scared to admit to our true motivations?

"I should probably go." I say, but I don't move. I let my head rest on the other armrest of the chair, my hair, which has come undone and is spilling down, just shy of grazing the ground.

"Yes." he agrees. But we both stay were we are, in silence, smoking one cigarette after the other, until we've emptied the whole package and the room is filled with grey-white smoke, sticking to our clothes, our skin, and tainting us.

The skin on the hand he kissed is still burning, like his lips left an invisible mark.

My appetite is sated for now. As is his.

But how long can this satiety last?

A/N: Written some time in December 2013. Companion piece to Family. Thanks, as usualy, for the sweet reviews. Regarding bitterkidd's review; I am firmly against slut-shaming, which is basically shaming women for having sex and being promiscuous (as men also do, without being punished for it by society, but rather rewarded for), and so my stance probably influenced some of my one shots. I'm always glad when more people realize how very hypocritical and misogynistic our paternalistic society is.

Feedback is always appreciated.