xix. Covet

Hearing my cell phone ring, I sit up in the bathtub and lean over to grab it. Steam is rising up from the hot water and scorching my skin. Slightly exasperated, I take the call and say a curt hello.

"I've been thinking about you."

The voice that greets me almost makes me drop the phone into the water. It's his voice. I might not have heard it for several months now, but it still manages to elicit a response from my body and make me shiver, remembering the pleasures we shared. I glide deeper into the water, closing my eyes and breathing in and out.

That's only fair, I want to say. Because I've been thinking about you too. Instead I say, rather snidely. "Then don't." Even though that's not what I want. I want him to be thinking about me all the time. I want to be all he ever thinks about. When he's ordering something to drink at Starbucks, while he watches tv, when he's taking a shower, when he's touching himself. I want to fill every one of his thoughts, inhabit his mind and soul. The way he does for me.

"That would be an exercise in futility." he replies, and when I don't react, although I am pleased to hear his words, he continues. "When can we meet up? Or are you to busy offing enemies of your Family?"

"How did you even get this number?" I demand, a little worried that obtaining my number should be as easy as it evidently was to him. I don't give out my number to just anyone, and especially not to a mark I was supposed to take care of a while back but never did.

"I paid very well for it."

I snort. Doubtlessly he did. Hotaru's prices are not easily paid. I suspect that is where he must have obtained it."I will have to tell Hotaru not to sell my number to just anyone, no matter how rich or good-looking."

I can hear the smile coming through his voice. "I needed to hear your voice." All air flees my body, and the hot water around me suddenly makes me feel claustrophobic.

This isn't supposed to happen. He's crossing a boundary. He isn't supposed to be sounding like he means what he says. Like he missed me. He couldn't possibly have. We've only met a couple of times, and admitting feelings is not something we do easily in our world. Especially him and me.

Yet hearing him admit it makes my heart beat frantically.

However, I cannot let him know how much his honesty stuns and confounds and exhilarates me. "Great. So now that you have, can we end this conversations? I've had a tough day and want to relax taking a bath."

Silence on the other end. Did I hurt him? No, I don't believe so. Challenge him, maybe.

Why did I say what I did? I don't want this call to end. I want it to go on and on.

"You're taking a bath.", he echoes, his voice sounding strange. "Without clothes?"

"That's typically how it's done, yes." I confirm drily, yet the catch in his voice did not escape my notice. I smile languidly. He must be picturing myself right now, completely submerged by water, yet deliciously tempting.

I can hear him breath labouredly through the phone, and my smiled widens. "What have you done to me?" His voice sounds vulnerable. "Damn, Mikan, what have you done to me?"

The raw emotions I can catch even over the phone cause an aching in my chest, and my mouth fells dry.

"What? What have I done to you?" I whisper, not trusting my voice enough to speak up. I have never needed to know something more desperately than the meaning of his anguished exclamation.

"You have bewitched me. You have entangled me in your poisonous world, which is one I despise and want to escape. Rationally, I despise everything you stand for, the violence, the cunning, the greed and avarice. Yet it is you that I desire most. You, a killer, an assassin, who kills without scruples and regret. You who are so much a part of that world. What have you done to make me lose my head so completely, irrevocably?"

"I don't know." My words sound dumb, following his impassioned confession.

I want to touch him, pull him to me, kiss him. "I don't know." I repeat.

Then, "I want you more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. Isn't that ironic, and really, supremely clichéd? I, who can have nearly every man I want, and am equipped with money, riches, diamonds, beauty; I have the world at my disposal, it's mine for the taking, and yet...all I covet, desire, wish for, is you."

Silence.

"Where are you." he asks at last. I smile. "What, do you want to come over? I don't think so. I'm in Madrid. Where are you? Half the world away, I suppose. Water, people, everything is separating us, Natsume. It wouldn't work."

"Say that again." His voice sounds vulnerable again, like a little boy's. A sudden fondness spreads within me, a tenderness superseding the passion and longing. "Say what again?" I inquire and play with the froth covering the water before me.

"My name." he breaths. "Say it again."

His request gives me pause. This has taken a turn for intimacy now, for something delicate, something that might potentially turn very dangerous. Yet I know I shall humor him, I shall do that little thing for him, oblige him, and really, I try to tell myself, what harm can be done? He is half the world away, probably in Japan, in Mexico City, in Cape Town. So why not do that little thing for him? What have I got to lose?

So I comply.

"Natsume.", I whisper. And add, almost involuntarily. "I wish you were here."

And it is true. I truly wish he was, and that is when I realize that I love him and need him by my side, however irrational and foolish it may be, and that now that I have admitted it to myself, the ache in my chest is only going to get bigger. Consume me. I have allowed weakness into my life, into my heart, into my system, by coveting him, and yet it is such a pleasurable feeling.

"I need to see you. As soon as possible." He sounds peremptory, and how could I possibly refuse him that which I myself might desire even more than he does.

"Yes.", I say. "Yes."

And I end the call, just in time, because the words are already spilling forth.

"I love you."

I let my cell drop into the hot water surrounding me, close my eyes, and allow my body to be completely submerged by it. I can almost imagine the heat to be caused by his body, covering mine.

A/N: Written on July, 2nd, 2014. I completely stopped writing fanfiction some time ago, but since I still have some finished one shots sitting on my computer, I thought I might as well upload them.