"Your fingers on mine -
I gasp once, and in that breath,
I accept you in."
"I've never seen one as big as yours...I didn't expect this from an Aburame."
Her soft, adoring whisper was like honey in Shibi's ear.
So sweet, it stung.
Shibi blushed, his adrenalin ignited and throbbing.
Her nose brushing along the length of his. Their breath mingling and panting.
And Shibi still couldn't get pass the riddle behind it all. That it was scorching in the desert City of Cherry Blossom Orchids, but somehow, they were shivering.
"We have to be quiet," Shibi whispered to be cautious.
Even though his hardened body crushed dominantly into hers.
Taking her with a power she never expected out of a geeky intellectual who looked like he learned how to make love from a book.
But the idea that Shibi might be some quiet bookworm by day, and a powerful jōnin by night only gave her hot flashes.
Could this be his first time?
The first girl he'd ever been with like this?
And would being his first mean he'd always treat her so gently?
"Am I hurting you?" he whispered worriedly.
More of a gentleman than she ever expected from a cold Anbu-like jōnin.
"No," she whispered back.
"If it hurts, don't be afraid to tell me that I am."
His kindheartedness taking her so much by surprise, that it left her breathless again.
It did hurt.
But not in the way he thought it did.
Because somehow she knew, in that ruinous moment between them, that nothing would ever again hurt her like the way he was stealing her heart.
"No," she answered him softly. "I'm just impressed by how hard it is."
"This is nothing," he said to her. "Only the basics of my abilities."
Squeezing her tightly against his solid chest that smashed into her flattened breasts, he felt her body finally relax underneath him. And whatever fears she had about being caught this way together were easily forgotten.
But with the way his soft breath dragged across her neck...would there ever be an easy comeback from this?
Or any way to stop herself, as her chin fell back? Losing herself to a teasing fantasy about where this could all go, if his lips dangerously flirted any closer to the curve of her neck.
What if he made her admit how easy it all actually happened...how effortlessly her legs ended up entangled around his waist?
Tooeasy, in fact.
As if despite her best guesses about him, he hadn't actually learned it all from a book.
How else would he have known that her inner thigh might be the perfect hiding spot for the feathery tail of a paper bomb laced to a kunai?
A subtle smile of pleasant surprise broke across Shibi's lips.
So, it seems she has her secrets too .
And the guess that she might be more than just some innocent art tourist in the Land of Wind made his heart pound heavy harder.
He could feel it at the back of his neck...where her fingers were locked together to steady her balance underneath him.
Leaving her unrestrainedly vulnerable to him, without escape or resistance.
His Kikaichū stirring restlessly as his skin simmered at each point of her fingernails.
"How did this all happen so fast without me ever getting your name?" she asked. "I'm Etsuko."
"Shibi Aburame," he answered.
Shibi.
He liked the starstruck way she whispered it back to him.
Like for the first time in the Aburame's shadowy and unacknowledged existence, he was the moon in someone else's night.
"Do you think you can take this a little longer?" he asked. "I'll be gentler."
"You can't crush a flower if it was already crushed when you found it. But that does not make it delicate," Etsuko told him. "Even so, somehow you make me feel so weak holding me down like this."
"I guess I underestimated my own strength."
"It feels so amazing...you're making me come..." Etsuko moaned breathlessly into Shibi's ear, as her eyes rolled back to the walls around them. "...to the realization that this is pure entomological genius!"
"You really think so?" Shibi couldn't hide his pride.
"I can't get over it!" she said excitedly. "Honestly, this is by far the biggest, thickest, rock-solid insect cocoon I've ever been inside of!"
Shibi beamed with satisfaction upon making such an impression.
Pushing his slipping sunglasses back into the right place on his nose, his black undershirt and jacket still drenched with sweat from his savagely fierce battle.
He followed her wandering gaze above their heads, inspecting the hardened walls of his insect cocoon protectively surrounding them.
"I'm glad I exceeded your expectations," Shibi said.
After all, Shibi hadn't planned it this way.
It was quick-thinking when he narrowly snatched this random tourist woman out of the way of Puppet Master, Mukade, and his terrorizing hell of Rōran .
Wrapping his arms around her so his kikaichū sealed them both into his Human Cocoon technique, Shibi had shielded them in the nick of time from the detonating clash of Minato's Rasengan and Mukade's puppet bombs.
In the midst of the chaos, Shibi had been so distracted by making sure more innocent people didn't die while evacuating the city, that he hadn't had time to shift his body out the way before his insects pushed him right on top of this stranger.
In an insect cocoon that was usually spun for just him, it was inevitable that they would end up quite (if he dare say it) snug as bugs together.
This being a rather extraordinary circumstance, of course.
So, in the end, with proper social etiquette aside, it was hard for Shibi to avoid looking at the beautiful honey-eyed girl he had unwittingly caught in his arms.
She may not think she's a flower...but she sure smells like one.
And he couldn't help it when his gaze kept slipping back into hers.
Her golden eyes like the soft embers of a quietly cracking fire under sweeping dark lashes. Set ablaze by the striking contrast of her midnight-black feathery hair.
Even her jasmine pale skin seemed to glow like the moon next to Shibi's bronzed complexion.
And when she smiled like that at him, slightly biting her lower lip when she did, Shibi Aburame's fate was sealed.
"Maybe one of us should check to see if it's all clear now," Etsuko suggested. And then raising a brow in playful suspense, she added, "Unless, of course...you're giving me some other reason as to why you should stay between my thighs?"
"When you say it like that," Shibi mumbled quietly. "It seems as if you wish I had one."
"Keep dreaming, caterpillar boy."
But could anyone blame him for stealing a few more moments with her like this, before he told her the actual truth?
And could Etsuko blame herself for staying thus far, if only to realize all the irresistibly burning questions she still had about the mysterious shinobi with dark sunglasses on top of her?
"Well, not that it hasn't been a rush," she said to Shibi. "But do you think you can release me from your jutsu now?"
"I already have," he said.
Etsuko's brow arched questionably at him. "Have you?"
But when she glanced around awkwardly at the cocoon walls, she found that she was still very much trapped with this hot geeky Leaf ninja.
And Shibi didn't seem to be in a hurry to explain himself.
"Um, well," she continued awkwardly. "Is there a magic word or something I'm supposed to say to break it?"
"No," Shibi told her stoically. "You just have to let go of me."
And realizing her hands were still wrapped around his neck, Etsuko quickly freed herself from the Aburame.
"Oh. Right. Thanks."
Gingerly, she climbed out of his cocoon, and Shibi's kikaichū dissolved back into the insect gourd strapped to his back.
At last, the Aburame dropped to the ground beside her. His defiantly messy dark hair falling all over his grey Leaf headband, adding a few good spiky inches to his towering height.
"Don't worry. What happens in a cocoon stays in a cocoon," she winked at him. "I won't tell, if you won't."
But before the Aburame could make her keep that promise, the sound of more explosions drew his attention across the chaotic debris of mangled and collapsed towers around them.
The battle against the Puppet Master had moved on without him.
It was time to return to his teammates' side.
"I have to go," Shibi told her. "Just try to be more careful next time."
"Aburame," Etsuko stopped him. "Wait."
And the back of Shibi's throat went dry, his jaw dropping ever so slightly as he watched her reach for her hair comb and shake out her long raven black tresses, using her porcelain-like fingers to comb it all over one shoulder in front of her.
She snapped off a single beaded tassel from her black hair comb, as it dangled with glistening blood-honey garnets and onyx gems.
"These stones are infused with a special kind of chakra that protects the one who wears them. They are only mined in the mountains of the Hidden Stone Village," Etsuko told him. "I hope you will accept this gift as a token of my gratitude, as you fight the Puppet Master."
And as she placed her tassel in Shibi's black fingerless-gloved-palm, Shibi never underestimated anything in his life, except the power of an unexpected'thank you'.
"I will always keep it with me and think of honey," the Aburame promised her.
He looped the charmed tassel on the left frame of his dark sunglasses, before reaching into his ninja pack.
Selecting a bug jar with one of his female kika beetles humming inside.
"This is for you," Shibi said, pressing his jar into her palm next. "Keep it somewhere safe until I return."
She stood staggered.
A jar with a meaning that only two insect users could truly understand.
Was this overconfident beetle master really asking her out in the middle of a battlefield?
She had to put an end to this...before it was too late.
"Don't fall for me, Aburame. I'm no good for you...In fact, we're such bad news for each other, that in the end, one of us might end up killing the other," she warned him quietly. "Besides, beetles aren't my type."
"I see...it seems you have some unspoken animosity toward the Aburame Clan. That is unfortunate. I understand now how that would create some mistrust between us," Shibi told her. "However, even if seeing each other again will soon become impossible, I hope you'll at least allow me the chance to show you what you likely haven't heard about us. Give me until morning to change your mind about me. Then, no matter what you decide, at least you will know fully that your feelings about the Aburame Clan are justified."
"You still want me to give you a chance, huh?" she pondered his conclusion. "And if you don't change my mind? What if we end up regretting it by morning?"
"Then after I've found you again tonight, and you still feel the same way about us," he said. "You can return the bug jar to me, and we'll go our separate paths."
"Is that a promise that you'll find me again?" she dared him. "In this city, I doubt you'd be able to keep it."
"That won't be a problem for me," Shibi muttered.
And then the Aburame was gone.
Leaping over the ruins of Rōran, as he rolled back into action with his teammates against Mukade and his Puppet Ninja Force.
Etsuko smiled, shaking her head as she realized she was already in his trap, the moment she caught his bug jar.
And so, she knew Shibi's reason for being so confident about finding her.
Tilting her head and pressing her lips together thoughtfully, she gazed at the female Kika Beetle softly fluttering in Shibi's jar.
It was so obvious now, she couldn't believe she'd fallen for it.
He planted a bug on me...Using this bug jar?... Gnats! Why do I always seem to attract the crazy ones!' Not the cheesiest way I've ever been asked on a date, but this guy comes pretty close.
Etsuko rolled her eyes.
But she was smiling as she hooked the bug jar carefully onto her bag for safekeeping, and started back toward the evacuation point of the city.
Keeping hidden the most secret part of her that hoped the puppet army didn't hold the Aburame up long, making him too late to change her mind by sunrise.