Chapter Fifteen
Inside the Marriage
"So?"
Kakashi had opened their apartment door to find Sakura perched at the genkan, large green eyes looking up at him.
Between the Hokage Tower and home, he had stopped only by Sasuke's grave to share the news, leaving his question in the emptiness of the Uchiha graveyard, 'Does it bring you peace?'. He wondered still - he didn't think he would ever stop wondering - if, like his father, he was sitting by a bonfire, waiting before the undying flames for absolution. Kakashi hoped that this could let him free. Most of all he hoped it would bring Sakura peace.
He bent down to pluck the sandals out of his feet as he mimicked, "So?"
"Kakashi." Her fist bumped his shoulder. "Just end my misery and tell me what the Council said."
He continue to work through the every-day motions of storing his shoes in the cupboard and shrugging off his flak jacket to hook it on one of the hangers. "How can you know there was a Council meeting?"
When Kakashi turned at the end of his affectedly blasé and unchanged routine, he found Sakura with a cocked hip and crossed arms, her unconvinced green eyes on him. It tugged the corner of his lips into a smirk under the mask.
"Do you really think I couldn't tell this morning?"
He didn't think he had been particularly telling.
"They advised me not to share the news before the official answer."
"Kakashi!" His name came out as a whine and she rolled her eyes rolled at him. "Now you choose to care about formalities?"
He stepped out of the genkan to move past her, but, before he could, Sakura put herself in front of him, firm hands on his chest to stop his path. Kakashi's gaze took in her pleading eyes and the slight jut of her lower lip, leaving him too painfully aware that her mouth was there, so close, only a bend of his head away from him.
Sakura had stolen the puppy eyes from his ninken years ago and, after learning just how effective it truly was throughout their marriage, had began throwing it at him for every little thing.
"Just tell me, please."
"Orders are orders."
"Won't you disobey them once?" Her arms snaked around his middle, pressing their bodies together, chin coming to rest on his chest. "Not even for your wife, Kakashi?"
His wife.
The words trembled through him. Kakashi wouldn't have been able to say no to it and he never wanted to. The moment the Council decided on their approval his heart had fluttered with the anticipation of coming home to tell her. And, from the glint in Sakura's eyes, she was entirely aware of it too, but somehow was equally entertained with this little game of tug and pull as Kakashi was.
"Depends…" He started, the sound of the word drawled out in his lips.
Heat flashed behind the green of her eyes at the sliver of sensuality that had slipped through his voice, one small crack in his restraint.
"On?" Sakura whispered her invitation, only a breath. It shot down his spine in a shiver.
Kakashi was beginning to regret his own conviction, forbidding him from enjoying to the fullest the sudden turn in their interaction, an inevitable one perhaps.
His gaze flickered to her parted lips without permission and he realised then that his hands had rested on the curve of the small of her back, fingers twitching at the heat of her skin oozing through the layer of her shirt.
He could allow his want to drown the throbbing of guilt at the corner of his mind, he could allow it to open the iron-rods of his control with one simple click of a decision. It would be so easy, one simple word to give in.
Kakashi could see her plea for it in the burning green of her eyes, half-lidded, the press of her fingertips into the hard muscle of his back.
'Kiss me.'
It would be so easy. One breath only, the breath of a dying man. Kakashi had done it before, he could do it now, effortlessly, the release of a caged man.
'Love me.'
Could she forgive him?
It didn't matter. In that moment it didn't matter if it was the right or the wrong step, it didn't matter if he was walking through a cracking, sinking ground, ready to crumble under them at the weight of each new step of his.
Kakashi leaned in, head slating to the side to whisper his words against her lips before claiming them for his.
It didn't matter that it would all be stolen from Sakura.
'Be mine. Forever.'
"The Council accepted the proposal." Kakashi rushed out.
For a breathless moment, all Sakura did was stare up at him. Before he could realise the change, she let out a squeak of both excitement and surprise, body crashing into his as her arms wrapped around his neck.
Kakashi held her to him with the same heartfelt strength and whispered in her ear, "I'm proud of you."
It was an obvious statement, but Kakashi hadn't forgotten her words on a training ground before their wedding, under a starlit sky. It was a shared moment that seemed to stretch too far back, a moment before their lives had entangled together, before it was normal to hold Sakura in his arms, feet not reaching the ground.
She needed it voiced and so he would voice it.
His lips pressed to her cheek, hard enough to bunch up the soft skin and pull a gleeful giggle from her.
So he said it again, "So proud of you, Sakura."
Later, after the official approval, when they were gathered at their apartment to celebrate, the loud buzz of conversations smothering the air, food and drinks spread out on the coffee and dining tables, Kakashi remembered that night again.
He remembered the words that had rushed out of his mouth and now lingered in his tongue like poison.
'I don't mind if you take lovers outside our marriage.'
Now, sitting on his armchair, nursing whiskey and sulking in his loneliness, Kakashi was left to stare at Kiba as he leaned towards her, propped on the armrest of their sofa. His eyes had lowered suggestively while he whispered some comment to her, lips curled in a smirk that showed his fanged teeth.
When he had first noticed it, Kakashi held onto the illusion that Sakura would stop his advances. Unlike Hinata when it came to pushy men, Sakura made her disinterest known in the most painful and humiliating ways.
Well, perhaps Hinata was no longer the best comparison, being seven months pregnant had made her burn with a new confidence and shortened her endless patience. He had never thought her capable of a snappy tone until hearing her chastise Chouji for finishing Tenzou's gyoza when she had been dreaming of them for the better part of last month. It wasn't quite the explosive and deadly anger of Haruno Sakura, but there was a deceptive whispered violence latent in her narrowed eyes and hissed out words.
But Sakura had yet to use that violence against Kiba.
He didn't want to believe that that was what was happening now, but his own damning words kept surging up in his mind like the brand of a hot iron each time that dog-boy leaned a little too close.
Kakashi had never been particularly happy about the proposition, unlike what his own words had spelled out that night before their wedding, but he had been perfectly willing to bury his selfish wishes for Sakura's sake.
The sound of her small giggle made pain spread like cracks through him. It was the most painful realisation of how unwilling he was now at the idea of another man touching her.
"I believe it is inappropriate to court a married woman, even if you have had a relationship before."
There was only a small twitch in his eyebrow to show for Sai's words. Kakashi didn't know Sakura had dated Kiba, he remembered only – and too painfully well – her relationship with Raidou a couple of years back.
"After the war." Sai added, as if those dark attentive eyes had been able to read the blank in his own memories.
Kakashi offered him an indifferent glance, admonishing himself for not realising that his teammate had been sitting there, a plate filled with only firm tofu on his knees. Even his food choices were slightly psychotic.
His lips remained unmoving, expression moulded out of a porcelain mask. It was always best not to give Sai's pondering observations too much leverage.
He could be surprisingly perceptive, his curiosity over the dynamics between human beings not waning after years of being an ordinary member of society, or at least attempting to be one. His new unfamiliar eyes still had the habit to latch onto things most people didn't realise consciously and tried to piece together an explicit explanation for them.
Sai had been particularly interested in their arranged marriage, possibly because it was a novelty for his insatiable nosy hobby of people-watching, one only made worse by his girlfriend. Ino fed into it with her own ravenous need for gossip.
Sai was perfectly emotionless as he asked, "Do you believe the same?"
"I suppose." Kakashi had never allowed himself to fall into bed with a married woman.
One of the straps of Sakura's dress glided down her shoulder. It wasn't the first time it did that evening and Kakashi's eyes always longingly stared at it, wishing it were his fingers dragging it back up over the curve of her shoulder.
The dress was almost the same colour of the one she had worn to Naruto's wedding, a deep green, and it served to confirm that it was the colour Kakashi preferred on her, just like he had decided at the first glance of her that day, eclipsing everything with her beauty. The dark tone underlined the porcelain of her skin and the soft pink of her hair, made the clear and brighter shade of her eyes gleam.
Kakashi's brow furrowed when Kiba hurried after Sakura's own hand, already around the string of fabric, and adjusted the strap himself.
His hold tightened around the glass. Maybe he could dissolve those dog paws into ash with the strength of his glare, Kakashi had never missed the mangekyou more than he did now. Well, perhaps he was exaggerating, there were desperate times on the battlefield when he had wished for the sharingan to be back in his socket, but the sentiment was still very much there.
When Kakashi's eyes rose, he found Sakura looking at him, meeting his gaze for a second, before evading it to the snack table.
"Should you not do something as the husband?" Sai asked. "A book I've read said—"
"We're not married like that."
"How are you married then?" There was genuine confusion in his voice and a need to understand.
"I guess there aren't many books about it, hmm?" Kakashi mocked, a vicious edge in his tone.
"Perhaps I should write one myself and use you two as an example." Sai comment with actual consideration. "I will title it, 'Arranged marriage and the art of avoiding acceptance for the love for your spouse'."
The whiskey slipped into the wrong pipe, forging a burning path all the way down to his lungs. Kakashi struggled through it with a racking series of coughs, eyes watering at the merciless lump clasped around his throat.
"What are your thoughts on it?" Sai asked once he managed to settle down, as if he hadn't just watched Kakashi almost choke to death around his drink.
Sai was likely the most dangerous person in all of Konoha.
"Too long."
His attention drifted towards a glide of green and pink, as Sakura made her way for the kitchen, steps heavy and decided, Kiba following behind her.
Kakashi's heart hadn't been ready for the wrenching fingers that sank into it and wanted to tear it into shreds. It hurt so much more now than any other time, so much more than each time Raidou had leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek or her mouth and he had seen the happy turn of her smile that followed.
Living together for more than half a year, a signed paper and a few gulps of sake between them, had allowed his heart to believe Sakura belonged to him, as he belonged to her.
It was fair. Kakashi was unwilling to fall into bed with Sakura. It was fair.
Sai's words had become a muffled murmur under the frantic buzz in his ears, his mind torturing him with glimpses of what could be happening inside that kitchen. Their kitchen in their home, while he was just a few metres away on the other side of the door.
But it wasn't happening. Sakura wouldn't do that, despite everything, despite the tangled mess of threads and braids that made up their relationship, some frayed, others still to be jointed into one.
Still Kakashi needed to get out of that apartment or he would burst, maybe crumble into the pressure of his own hurt. But he found that he couldn't leave the party, the one celebrating one of the biggest accomplishments in her career and life goals, one that he had seen her fray, smile and rage through, one that was a patched up replacement for a birthday party where he hadn't been present.
Instead he drank, gulping down the remains of his whiskey and filling another glass.
It didn't take long for Kiba to come out, head cast down as a dog with a tail between his legs.
"Kakashi?"
He looked up to find Sakura's green eyes pinned on him.
"Yes?"
"Scoot."
There really wasn't much space that he could open up on the armchair, but Kakashi managed to press himself to the side of it. Sakura pushed her body into the sliver he had cleared, half her leg ending on top of his, a blessing and a curse.
His fingers itched to drape over the smooth skin of her thigh, the hem of the dress having ridden up to bare more of it.
They did, Kakashi played the gesture off as a tease as he made her own leg a coaster for his drink, something Sakura was always so adamant about him using. She let out a little yelp at the touch of the cold glass on her, but didn't tell him to take his hand off her, the side of it resting on her naked thigh.
Beside them Sai vacated his chair. Always a nice sensitive person that one.
"You should have saved me." The warmth of her breath in his ear sent a stab of heat through his belly, his eyes fixed on the line of her thigh muscle as it stretched over his leg.
"From?" Kakashi asked, as if he didn't already know, as if his breathing wasn't flowing easier in and out his lungs, the cold fingers vines around his ribs loosening. She hadn't been interested in Kiba after all.
"Kiba."
"I thought you'd save yourself, if you wanted to."
"I didn't really want his drunk head to make things weird between us. I had to tell him off and now look at him, all mopey."
Kakashi found that he didn't care much for Kiba's state of mind. Actually he quite enjoyed the sight of his sulking face.
Sakura stole his glass for a sip and that left his slack fingers empty and purposeless on her leg. All he needed to do was turn his wrist and his hand would be full of Sakura's thigh. The closeness, the easiness of it was enough to bend the tight bars of his self-control.
"Tell me next time." He said, voice with a glint of strain to it.
"I thought maybe you'd do it on your own."
Kakashi frowned, not really understanding the game she was playing. Sakura had never needed help and he had said it to Sai, their marriage wasn't the type where people had married freely, where there wasn't a foundational and unsurmountable unevenness, deceit, and where the thought of consummating it didn't burn him with guilt, sharing in the flame of his own want.
"Why?"
Her head turned, the ends of her hair brushing over his shoulder, and Sakura pierced his profile with a heavy stare.
"You're a very confusing man, Kakashi."
"People always say that but in my head I'm pretty straightforward." And his need to keep himself a few steps away from Sakura wasn't any different.
"Then please," Sakura whined, her fingers sank into his strands to squeeze his skull with her words. "for the love of all that is dear to you in the world, show me your head."
"Which one?"
Kakashi didn't want to have said the joke, not when he was being a very good man, letting the ex of the woman he was married to flirt with her and even preparing his heart for something more. Or maybe he did.
Nowadays the things he wanted and didn't want seemed to have melted into one and the same. And at the meeting of them was Sakura.
His boldness didn't daunt her, if anything it only pleased. It was expected, she tried to slither through the gaps in the stone wall he had raised between them, latching on to any trace of sensuality in their relationship.
Sakura leaned closer to him, voice low in his ear, "Both."
He swallowed. The enduring hold of his restraint also meant that every whisper of something sexual between them rushed through his body like a tidal wave.
A single purred word shouldn't be enough to make the blood in his veins fever or his lungs strain against the hammering thunder of his heartbeat, but it was.
His mind threw at him images of Sakura straddling him on the armchair, his hands slithering up her legs, lifting her dress along with them, grabbing her hips to guide her against him. Her long delicate fingers, now holding the glass, wrapped around something else instead, those pink soft lips tracing down his stomach, the warmth of her breath teasing where his body most needed her.
Kakashi flexed the muscle of his things as he felt himself throb, blood rushing down to where it shouldn't be rushing, especially when all their friends were gathered around the same coffee table.
They appeared unconcerned with their exchange, enthralled in Naruto's recounting of some episode, who had thought his duty as a husband and expecting father was to drink for three. But they were still very clearly there, next to him, and if he was not careful they would see too much of what he was unwilling to discloser to them.
Kakashi's legs shifted slightly, clearing his throat while he stealthily tried to change how the fabric of his pants and sweater draped over him. Sakura, seeing his clear discomfort, shifted as well to relief her weight over him, her leg nudging up with the movement and brushing the perfect path over his lap.
A small whine choked in his throat at the shock of pleasure. Kakashi's hand shot out to grasp her thigh before she could move again and worsen his predicament.
Sakura went very still above him, strong muscle tense under his touch.
Both their gazes settled on the dents his fingers made into her soft pliant skin.
His fingers inevitably twitched around her thigh and she let out a short shuddering sigh. His rebellious thumb lifted to trace the drops of condensation from his glass still on her skin and goose bumps speckled through her leg.
Kakashi's nostrils flared as he breathed in. His eyes curled into the back of his head, whatever attempt at damage-control having utterly failed. He could smell her.
"You're cold." He rasped, an attempt to break through what was happening and getting his bearings back. Or perhaps only of igniting it further. His thoughts had stopped making a coherent image of his wants long ago.
"Maybe if you didn't use me as a coaster." Sakura mumbled, her tone more sheepish.
"Is that why you stole my drink?"
Her hand lifted the glass to her lips for a sip and hummed before adding, "But I am sorry." She whispered against the rim of the glass.
"Why?"
Her gaze flickered down to his lap and lingered. "I think you know."
"And how is that your fault?" His mind was the one running away with scenarios, his skin the one fevering with the fan of her breath. "All you said was a word, it's kind of pathetic really."
"Pathetic?" Sakura repeated with a little breathless huff. "It's painfully hot."
Kakashi let his grunt free this time as he twitched in his pants. "A little mercy please, Sakura."
She giggled, the sound light in his heart. "You deserve it."
Did he? He liked it too much for it to be a punishment.
She shifted in her seat, the movement jolting through him, to drape her legs over his. "And this way only I will know."
Kakashi took his whiskey back in his other hand, not quite bringing himself to sacrifice the place he had won by chance on her thigh. He brought the glass up to his mouth right where he could see the faint mark of her lip balm. Sakura's breath caught in her throat and the gesture was worth it just for her little reaction.
It was stronger than him, stronger than any drop of restraint left in him.
What the fuck was he doing?
Playing with fire, taunting himself mad, using, hurting Sakura. For what? For the irresistible pull of lust unfulfilled? Or was he waiting, forcing the inevitable moment when his would control crumble into nothing?
He rested the drink on the armrest, gaze moving for Naruto while all of his attention was captive of the woman curled against his side, the feminine sweet scent of her, the heat of her body and softness of her skin.
No one seemed to care that they were curled into each other. And even if their gazes lingered on them, even if their mouths turned into sly smirks (or Guy's very poor attempt at a blinding grin and a thumbs-up pressed close to his chest), Kakashi didn't mind.
Somehow, the familiar discomfort at being caught in an affectionate moment didn't prickle through him this time. He wanted them to see the affection between him and Sakura, he wanted to share it with their friends, naturally and unreserved.
Slowly Kakashi felt her melt into him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder, the muscle of her thigh easing under his touch.
"I've been dreaming of this clinic since the war." She murmured, eyes turned down to where her fingertips traced the skin of his wrist, just under the edge of his sleeve. "It's hard to believe it finally happened. It can finally really begin."
"Is it?" He asked. "I knew you were meant for great things."
Sakura snorted at his words.
"I know it's cheesy, but I'm serious. Ever since you unburied me with a punch and concocted an antidote for Sasori's poison. And all it took you was the right guidance and two and a half years."
One of his many failures concerning Sakura was how he could only see it when it was staring at him in the face.
"Three…" Kakashi poked the purple seal on her forehead with his thumb, Sakura's eyes jerking up to his at the sudden touch. "if we count this one."
"You're meant for even greater things too, Kakashi. If you allow yourself to have them."
The last people had been dragged out of their apartment, mainly Lee and Hinata, who, even seven months pregnant, had been set on helping them tidy everything up. Sakura didn't need it, she loved the quiet and unwinding task of slotting everything back into its rightful place after the disarray of entertaining.
Her shoulder rose to her cheek, wet hands occupied with a bowl, to brush away the strands of hair tingling her face. The movement made the strap of her dress fall down her shoulder and she let out a grumble of frustration at it. It desperately needed to be shortened, Sakura had passed the better part of the evening pulling it back up.
Kakashi appeared from the living room to set the last mount of dirty dishes in the sink. Unlike the others, he never bothered her unwinding, fitting into the dynamic of their cleaning as all the other pieces that made up their home, including Sakura.
It was in these moments that she became piercingly aware that Kakashi belonged there, he belonged there as much as she did, and without him her own place would be lost.
It always terrified her as much as it thrilled her, soothed her.
She rose to the tip of her toes to reach the top shelf.
"Let me help you with that." Kakashi murmured behind her, the closeness of his voice shuddering down her spine.
Sakura stilled as his front pressed to her arched back, hips pushing hers against the sharp edge of the counter to reach the cabinet and place the bowl in its place.
Kakashi was warm, he was tall, strong, solid, and so very masculine. Irresistible. He had to be as aware of how she was warm, she was short, delicate, soft, and so very feminine.
Her body pushed back into him, head coming to rest on his shoulder. His fingers faltered as they let go of the bowl and a small exhale of surprise ruffled through her hair.
She waited, their bodies stilled against each other. This was Kakashi's time to move, to choose his play, and either sink into her or rip himself away.
With a feather light touch of his fingers on her waist, time restarted its flow, a river streaming down a red bridge.
His hand, warm and large, snaked across her stomach, spanning it with a single stretch of his fingers. Sakura intertwined hers in his, head slanting to the side to nuzzle his chin and trace the line of his jaw with her lips.
Kakashi's head dropped to place a soft kiss to her shoulder, branding the shape of his lips down the curve of her body. A thrill curled low in her belly at the rasp of his teeth against the skin of her arm. They latched to the fallen strap of her dress and his mouth brushed up her arm, and to her shoulder, as he set it back in its rightful place.
"I've wanted to do this all night." He murmured against her neck, voice low and delicious.
"With your teeth?" She asked with a breathless chuckle.
"My fingers were my first option but then I had to give it a better twist." His lips brushed against her pulse point with his words.
"It's definitely better."
It was left unsaid why. Kiba had always been flirty with her, which only worsened when he was drunk. Sakura had never taken it too seriously, until she caught Kakashi's sharp eyes following Kiba's hand, a hint of pain in them. It had been what made her go to the kitchen and tell him to back the fuck off, now that she was a married woman.
Kiba had thrown back that it was a mission with her sensei where they got to play houses, not a real marriage. She had shoved his head against the cabinet and threatened to castrate him if he ever shared another opinion about her own private matters.
Still, a sour taste had coated her mouth, knowing that Kiba wasn't the only one sharing that opinion. Sakura had heard the whispered murmurs in the hospital and caught the attentive and suspicious glances from even their close friends on the other side of the kitchen wall.
Maybe even Kakashi shared it…
Sakura craned her neck to open her waiting flesh for him, fingers squeezing his in a plea. He brushed the hair away to press his open mouth to her throat and her eyes closed to drown back into the scalding feel of his lips on her.
Her hips pushed back against him and he grunted against her ear.
Kakashi was already half hard.
It pulsed through her body and flared the growing ache between her legs. Sakura repeated the movement, chest pushing forward as her nipples strained against the fabric of the dress, begging to be touched.
"Sakura."
His fingers sank into her hipbone, the tightness of his hold painful, and it only coiled in her lower belly, ass rubbing back against his lap as her back arched impossibly more.
"Don't move, please." He hissed out, hand holding her hip in place against the counter, but his own body gave a languid wave to press back into the curve of ass. "Fuck."
His forehead rested on the back of her head, and her own hands held on tighter to him to ground herself against the headiness of her own want, trying to discern what moved in his voice.
It wasn't the domineering order of a man taking control, it was the desperate plea of a man whose control had snapped, seeping away from the gaps between his fingers.
"Don't move."
Maybe he was saying it to himself, seeing as Sakura was being a good girl and staying completely still against the impulse in every of her cells. He was the one grinding into her in long forceful thrusts.
Kakashi curled around her, forearms planted on the counter on each side of her and engulfing her against it, hot twitching erection nestled firmly into her ass as he finally stopped. His entire consuming frame trembled around her and the strain of his breaths rose and fell against her back. A pained sigh escaped from him to brush over her ear, a hint of whiskey lingering in his breath.
It broke her heart to see him tear himself apart because of this, trying to fight the natural flow of his need, only hurting himself with it, when there was no reason to.
"Kakashi…" Her hand wrapped around his fist. "It's okay, I also want this. I want this so much."
When nothing changed in him, Sakura twisted around in his hold to face him. Her palm settled on his chest to feel the panicking thump of his heart and her other hand cupped his jaw, guiding his head up to see the lines of his expression creased in a war.
"There's no need or space for guilt between us."
His eyes opened, resolved, their grey turned in the cruel unyielding shade that she had seen too many times before. His restraint had slithered through the small space Sakura had opened between their bodies. Before he could rip himself away from her, her fingers sank into his clothes.
"Why?" She asked.
Kakashi shook his head as he freed himself from her grasp and turned his back to her.
It took only an instant for the pent up anger to boil right up to the surface, after too many times of her advances being rejected by the man that was married to her. And not because he didn't want her, but because of some absurd monster of guilt he had made up in his head.
"Talk to me, Kakashi, stop being a coward and running away!"
"Sakura please."
"Please?" She spat out to his back. "You're doing it again when you know how much I hate it!"
There was a lower blow ready to slip from her tongue, a blow meant to unearth him from the barriers around himself and that she had kept safe in her mouth. This time she let it free.
"Do you remember what you told me before our wedding?"
Kakashi stopped in his step.
"Are you still okay with letting some other guy fuck me?"
He spun around to face her, glaring back at her. "Was this what that was with Kiba, you wanted to test me?"
"No, of course not, but I'm glad it worked out that way." She admitted and there was a hint of revulsion and incredibility in his expression. "Don't look at me like that, Kakashi! How else am I supposed to know what you're truly feeling or thinking? If I asked you, you'd have said that you didn't mind even if it would have killed you."
Her hand rushed for his chest, fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt. Sakura hauled him back closer to her.
"I'm so fucking tired of the self-sacrificing act! Just say what you want!"
Kakashi's head leaned towards her. His impenetrable eyes, like the metal and cold touch of a blade, roamed through her face. He simply watched her for a long time, thoughts hidden away, while her breaths rasped loudly between them.
"If we consummate it, we can't annul it." He stated, as if reading a brochure about the ins and outs of marriage to her.
Finally something, finally a sliver of what warred in his head, even if it seemed only to lead astray from the core of it.
"Is that what's pulling you back?" Sakura tried to dissect the emotionless façade set around him. "There are other things before sex."
He didn't answer, he was an unmoving statue of marble before her and that meant that inside he was chaos.
"Why, Kakashi?" Her fingers unwound around his sweater, coming to press softly over him. "Why are you holding back enough to hurt you? What are you trying to punish yourself for?"
Sakura took the final step to break the distance between them, the movement slow, so tired. Her forehead leaned to his chest, weightless, arm slumping down against her side. No matter how close her body was to him, she could never reach him, could never break that final layer, and he didn't want to come to her freely.
The corners of her lips sank down as pain wretched at her heart.
"I can't bear the thought of you punishing yourself through me."
"Sakura…"
He leaned down to nuzzle her hair, arms wrapping around her in a hug.
"And I don't want anyone else, Kakashi. I want only you."
Sakura looked up at him to find his dark eyes already on her. Even her voiced confession wasn't enough to shed away the veil of doubt over them, as Kakashi tried to overlap what he saw in her with her words and see that it was true.
"So let go." Sakura lifted her hand to his face, the back of her fingers tracing his cheek. "Let go, my dear. I want you to."
She rose into the tips of her toes to whisper her confession against his lips.
"I want you, Kakashi."
Sakura only needed to wait an instant until his mouth pressed to hers.
The tentative movement of their lips together lasted only a few seconds before Kakashi's hand tangled in her hair and slanted her head to kiss her deeper. His tongue pushed inside her mouth and Sakura groaned at the long-awaited taste of him, inebriating, consuming.
They stumbled back with the force the kiss, her fingers grasping his sweater and tugging him to her, his trailing up and down her back, pressing down into her nape. Her back hit the counter and his hands lifted the skirt of her dress up to touch the naked skin of her thighs, a low murmur of appreciation sounding in his chest. He grabbed her ass, squeezing and pushing her into him. Heat pooled where the irresistible shape of his hardness pressed to her belly.
Kakashi lifted her to sit her on the counter. Her fingers hooked on the loops of his pants to drag him to her, thighs spreading farther apart in a small signal for his body to snuggle between them where she craved him most.
The wool of his sweater brushed over her hardened nipples through the dress with each of his heaving breaths. Sakura parted her lips in a silent gasp, each brush throbbing down her body.
Kakashi never dipped back for another kiss and a crackle of panic rushed through her veins.
Then his lips were on her throat, smothering it under the pleasure he brought her, fingers sinking into her strands to tug her head back where he could lay open-mouthed kisses down the sensitive skin above her pulse point.
His hand slithered up from her thigh to cup her breast. At his first touch, Kakashi trembled against her, a small whine muffled against her throat. A rasp of his thumb over her nipple sent a jolt of pleasure through her body, the friction from the fabric of her dress like lightning.
"Fuck yes." She hissed out as her fingers sank down around his the strong muscle of his arm.
His other hand snaked inside her dress, and up, to touch her naked skin. Sakura's arm tightened around his neck, as his tongue swiped over her throat. Her fist closing around the unruly strands of his hair against the overwhelming feel of his calloused fingers burning a path up her side, denting down into the softness of her hip, squeezing and releasing, slithering around her body to trace up the valley of her spine.
Kakashi's hands would be the death of her.
His mouth moved lower, tongue licking the dip of her collarbone and teeth scraping against the raise of the bone. Sakura bit out a groan when Kakashi finally nipped at her hardened nipple through the dress, before engulfing it in the wet warmth of his mouth.
Her eyes opened to watch the ceiling, lidded in her drunkenness, as Kakashi continued to lavish her body, his naked palm now around on the soft and sensitive skin of her other breast.
Sakura couldn't believe it was happening, it was finally happening.
She could already feel herself soaking through, hips undulating against nothing but the rub of his pants on her inner thighs, the heat of his lap, only a ghost right at the edge of her aching centre.
Never in her life had she been this turned on with so little, where she could come at the whisper of a single touch.
The cool surface of the counter against her heated skin, the pressure of Kakashi's hand on her breast, the wet heat of his tongue on her body, they were all too much and not enough.
"I need your fingers in me." Sakura breathed out.
She was past coyness, her want burning her from inside out, her mind trembling with the fear that he would tear himself away from her at any moment and make of her an empty husk.
She couldn't afford to wait, she couldn't falter, so she demanded and Kakashi answered back.
Kakashi kissed up her body to clash their mouths together once again. His fingertips whispered paths down her stomach, muscles twitching under the ghost of their touch. He traced the skin right above the edge of her panties in a swipe, her entire belly heaving with it.
His thumb glided over her clothed slit. Her entire body twitched when Kakashi finally brushed her clit. It was only a teasing touch but enough to tear a whine from her, the friction from her cotton panties heightening the sensation.
His fingers slipped inside her panties. She broke their kiss, a sigh slipping through slack lips once he brushed her oversensitive folds. He cupped her, palm pressing up, and she pushed her mouth into his neck at the pleasure, eyes clenched closed.
"Fuck, Sakura." He grunted into her ear, almost in surprise, at the slick touch of her hot skin.
She ground her hips into his palm, in a desperate search for something to abate her ache but his stubborn hand didn't move.
"Do you see how you look in this sweater?" She justified it.
His fingers flexed against her and that small touch trembled through her. Kakashi liked that, the praise. Her lips shaped a smirk against his throat and Sakura pressed a sloppy kiss there, sucking lightly, before pulling back to look up at him.
His dark eyes, black under the glazed of lust, burned through hers, lips swollen and red from kissing her. Her fingers twisted around the deep blue fabric of his sweater. Sakura had asked him to wear it and he had, with a grumble of displeasure and of roll of his eyes, but he had indulged her.
She had spent the night stealing glances of him, relishing in how it fell down his broad shoulders, tightened against his arms if he flexed them, draped around his strong pale wrists, leading to those long fingers, raised knuckles and blue veins, now pressed up into her wet folds.
"Too handsome. Too irresistible."
Her hands brought the pullover and undershirt up, baring the flushed skin of his stomach, littered with scars, taunt against rippling muscles that reacted to her touch.
"I wouldn't take it off, I'd pull it up high enough to bare your abs and chest," Sakura leaned into his ear to murmur, "while I ride you."
"And this dress." Kakashi caught a fistful of the fabric bunched around her hips and tugged at it, bring her even farther into the edge of the counter. "The things it does to me. You do to me, Sakura. The entire evening all I could imagine was you like this."
His hand lifted to her face, fingers light as they held her jaw. "Look at me."
He sank a finger into her, eyes pinned to her face, enjoying how Sakura fought against the impulse to close her eyes.
Kakashi curled it, she forgot about everything else. Her head fell back against the cabinet, a silent moan on her opened mouth at the wave of pleasure that rippled through her entire body from the point where he touched her.
It wouldn't take long for her, not after months of dragged out foreplay in teasing comments, touches and sexual tension.
He pressed another finger in, palm pushing down into her clit, movements slow and probing. Sakura dragged his head down to clash their lips together in a sloppy kiss, tongues meeting in a desperate rhythm as the pleasure built up too fast, faster than she wanted it.
There was no build up, no gradual flourishing of pleasure. Two single touches from him and Sakura was already at the brink.
"Sakura." Kakashi called and she could barely distinguish the sound of his voice under the overwhelming rise of sensations, or how his fingertips pressed down into her jawbone. "Look at me."
Her eyes opened to his, something voracious burning in the darkened shade of them, overpowering and attentive, as if the only thing that existed in the world now was her. She forced them open as a moan ripped through her throat and back arched with the crushing wave of her orgasm, nails biting down into the wool of his sweater and around his arm, hips jerking up into the movement of his fingers to increase and prolong the peak shuddering through her entire body.
Sakura's body slacked and her forehead fell to his shoulder as she came down from the high, trembling body and an ache that asked for more still lingering. Kakashi's lips scattered kisses to her temple, down her cheek her jaw, his fingers still inside of her, still giving languid curls against her twitching flesh.
"Sakura…?" There was a tremble of uncertainty as he asked after her and she couldn't let it fester into something heavier.
She kissed him with all the need still burning through her and broke apart for one small sliver to whisper, "Bedroom."
His hands lifted her up and he carried her with ease, skirting away from walls and furniture while immersed in their kiss, for the bedroom. He lowered her down gently and, before her feet even touched the ground, Sakura was already trying to drag his sweater up his body, one of his many infuriating layers, keeping her from touching more of his skin.
When it came to his undershirt, the task proved impossible, the tight fabric sticking to him as she tried to tug it up.
"How do you even peel this thing off?" Sakura grunted as she plucked at its hem.
Kakashi chuckled, the cheerful purr of it soothing some of her urgency. "With patience and skilled fingers."
"My fingers are perfectly skilled, thank you."
"Oh, I don't doubt that, all I'm doubting is your patience." Kakashi cupped her cheek drawing her closer to him to murmur, "Slow down, Sakura."
His lips pressed to hers in a languid rhythm, almost teasing, as his hands rested over hers and dragged his inner shirt up his body. They pulled back to peel it away from his head, letting out a breathless laugh when it ended up stuck and needing a tougher tug from him to finally come free. His hair was released into a wild tousled mane.
Her hand smoothed down the silver strands, while his fingers worked on dragging the fabric of her dress up, slowly lifting it up her legs and brushing her shivering skin. At the same time, Kakashi bent down for another slow, sensuous kiss. Soon her dress followed his shirts to land on the floor of their bedroom.
Kakashi broke the kiss, forehead rested against hers as he caught his breath. His hands had turned timid where they settled on her waist, warm and light.
"Can I see you?" He whispered as he scattered kisses to the corner of her mouth and down along her jawline.
It seemed like a redundant question, but Sakura could hear a tremble of nervousness hidden under the smooth sound of his voice. Her hands glided around his shoulders to rest over his chest, his heartbeat flapping like a bird against his ribs.
"Of course you can, silly..." The words washed away from her lips, incomplete. 'Husband' didn't feel right in that moment to her and 'Sensei', while enticing to her, could shatter the newfound carelessness making Kakashi move now.
His lids fluttered open, silver lashes catching the low light washing in from outside. He smiled at her, a soft and shy turn of his reddened lips. His gaze travelled down the naked form of her body, fingers following its path, up her side and around the swell of her breast, to her shoulder and down her back, all while her breath was stuck inside her lungs, eyes shut.
A soft touch on her cheek made her eyes open to find his dark ones, something endless floating in the grey.
It cringed through her. His lips parted to speak and, before he could shape the words that would translate that wholehearted tenderness in his eyes, Sakura reached for his face and yanked him down to clash their mouths together, only sparing the time to demand, "Kiss me."
Their tongues tangled together once again, hands learning the shape of each of their bodies. She drew back to watch the paths her own hands left in his.
Kakashi had been made for the moonlight, it passed through the window of their bedroom and came to rest against his body, cutting the shapes of his muscles in shadows and light, carving his pale skin like marble and making his scars gleam, his silver hairs glitter.
He looked otherworldly in his beauty, out of reach.
Her palm pressed down into his pectoral, right over the beat of his heart, and her lips clamped to the tendon of his neck to taste the sweat bidding down his throat. He was there, she could feel him, taste him, touch him, so why did he still feel so out of reach?
Her tongue flicked his nipple and Kakashi let out a hissed whine with a shudder. Sakura's fingers brushed down the scar left from Obito, that cut his front into a cross, lips following down his body with wet and loud kisses.
A part of her wanted to drag this out, wanted to savour and relish in it until they could barely hold themselves together under the drunken taste of their lust, the ending all the more intense, more satisfying. But there was always the looming threat that Kakashi would draw back into his guilt, would turn his overthinking brain on and sink into its rabbit hole instead of the physical touchable pleasure shared between them.
Her fingers slithered down the dips of his muscles, playing with the line of sliver hairs under his navel, to the hot bulge pressed into her stomach. Kakashi's hips pushed into the teasing touch of her hand and she bent lower to mark a burning slick trail into his flushed skin.
Sakura dropped to her knees, eyes drinking in the sight of those silver hairs peppered under his navel, pointing down to the edge of his pants. Her breath shuddered in her throat at his erection straining against the dark fabric, a fresh stain in it. The impulse of burring her face into him tingled through her body as she saw him throb under her heavy gaze.
She didn't glance up, too scared that she would find hesitation surfacing over the glazed want of his grey. Her fingers curled over the fabric, Kakashi's abs rippling at the brush of them over his sensitive naked skin. Slowly, teasingly, both for him and for herself, she dragged his boxers down.
Her eyes were mesmerised by the movement of his hard cock as it sprung up free, a bid of precum slipping from the tip. Her tongue lapped at it, the salty taste of him making her legs tremble.
Kakashi hissed between clenched teeth at the first touch and she pulled back, lips brushing the whisper of a touch down over his heated skin, so she could lick up the vein that wrapped around him. As she reached the tip of his cock again, Sakura took him into the slick warmth of her mouth, tearing a groan from him.
He combed his fingers through her hair, holding the strands away from her face, as her head moved up and down his length in slow drags. Sakura released him with a pop, her eyes glancing up at him through her lashes to find him watching her through heated drunk eyes. The lines of his face twisted in pleasure as her tongue brushed a wet path from the bottom of him up to the sensitive tip, her lips wrapping around the head again.
Sakura relished in that expression of pure bliss and want, in the bit off grunts rumbling in his throat, the trembling of his thighs under the tight grasp of her hands, kneading the taunt muscles in time with the rhythm of her mouth.
She needed to make Kakashi forget everything but the feel of her mouth on him. She needed to mark into him the certainty that this it was good, it was great. They could be good together like this, if he let himself go, let himself fall into her.
Her eyes watered as she took him all the way down, until her nose was buried in his silver hairs. The back of her throat closed around his cock and his fingers pressing down into her scalp.
"Oh fuck, Sakura." Kakashi groaned, mouth falling open in a silent moan as his body curled around her. "Sakura…"
Kakashi watched her almost reverently when she was the one on her knees before him.
Her eyes closed, building up the intensity of her movements, fingers wrapping around the base of his cock, trying to draw from him the crumpled expression of a man drowned in lust, violent and desperate, not soft and not gentle.
His fingers tugged at her roots with a grumbled warning, but she had already known he was close from the frantic pulses of his pumps into her mouth. Sakura didn't pull back from him. Kakashi's hips twitched as he spilled into her mouth with a long moan, head thrown back, his entire body tensing with the force of his orgasm. Sakura moaned around him, drunk on the bitter taste of him in her tongue, on the sight of him coming apart because of her.
His eyes finally opened, a sated indolent dark shade in them as they lowered to her. Sakura's own eyes pierced through his as she let his cock slip from her mouth and watched him gasp through slack lips at the chaste kiss she laid to the tip.
Only then, when she was the only thing in his eyes, did Sakura swallow.
His hand loosened around her pink strands, falling messily to brush over her shoulders, and glided in a warm gentle brush around her neck to cup her jaw. His thumb traced the edge of her cheek and down, to her wet lower lip, dark eyes following the slick trail that his pad made down to her chin.
She never took her gaze from him as she waited, a blank expression settling on her face
There was an instant between the sudden flicker in his eyes and the curl of his fingers over her nape as Kakashi hauled her up his body and crashed his mouth to hers.
Yes, her heart screamed.
It was only when he pressed her to him that Sakura knew she would have shattered if he had pulled away from her.
The weight of him guided her back, the back of her legs hitting the edge of the bed. Kakashi pushed her down into the mattress, his touches with none of the patience of before, but Sakura liked that he was rough, that there was none of the gentleness she knew from him.
Her eyes clenched closed, fingers combing down his hair, as he lavished her breaths with bites, flicks of his tongue and thumb, sucks into his burning mouth. He continued to kiss a tantalising trail down her body towards the waiting ache between her legs.
Kakashi stopped, hands stilled around her hips, the tip of his chin grazing her lower belly only as she breathed in.
Her heart froze inside her chest, reading itself for the desolating sting of rejection.
He pulled back further, the cool touch of the air freezing through her skin, as she opened her disillusioned eyes towards the ceiling.
One fingertip brushed down the skin of her stomach feather-lightly and Sakura forced herself to peek down at him and see what she was so terrified of finding in his face.
How one single man could make her feel so wanted and unwanted was a mystery to her.
"What is it?" She asked, a tremble in her voice.
Kakashi didn't lift his eyes, bangs hiding his expression from her, as once again his finger moved over her body. Sakura understood then, as she watched the ragged scar cutting down her belly under the path he made, a mark from Sasori's blade.
"I left you behind."
Her fingers combed his hair back as she whispered softly, "You didn't leave me behind, we split up."
Kakashi shook his head, a haunted look in his eyes. "If something had happened, if you'd d—" He cut his words with a wince, as if they pained him to say them.
"But it didn't."
It had been a decade since that moment, Sakura had kept the scar as a remembrance, but these days she barely even noticed it was there, marked into her skin. Of course Kakashi would find in it a sign of his failure.
He leaned down into her stomach to touch his lips to the scar, only a soft brush first. It quickly changed into open-mouthed kisses as if he was trying to wipe it away with the searing touch of his lips, his tongue, and leave there only the imprint of the pleasure he left in her body and nothing else.
Her head pushed back against the bed, eyes clenched closed as something began to consume her from inside out. She felt like writhing away from him, everything too overwhelming, too burning, turning all of her pieces into ash.
"Down." Sakura pleaded, voice breaking into a rasped sob, as her fingers clasped into his hair and tugged him to the ache pulsing through her clit and away from the fragile line of that scar. "Down, please, Kakashi."
Kakashi curled his fingers around the sides of her panties, the slow drag down tingled her oversensitive skin. Her teeth sank into her lip and her body squirmed as Kakashi's mouth lowered to spread kisses along the soft skin of her mound, never closing the distance to her throbbing centre.
Sakura used his strands to guide him along, hips pushing up from the bed to grind against him. But Kakashi didn't let her, the hand grabbing her hip and pushing it down into the mattress. His teeth nipped at the raise of her hipbone and she arched with a groan, the back of her hand pressing to her mouth in search for something to ground her.
That was what Sakura wanted from him, what she needed, roughness, hunger, lust, nothing more. Nothing more.
A flickering nervousness twisted in her stomach as his fingers sank around her thighs and gently spread them open for him, baring her entirely and completely to him. The cool air against her heated folds was enough to make her tremble and, noticing it, Kakashi blew a soft breath against them, yanking a gasp from her chest as she jerked up.
"Don't tease." She whined between heavy breaths. Her entire marriage had already been a long torturous teasing session.
Kakashi was merciful. At her words, his tongue pressed to her clit and a wave of pleasure rippled through her body. Sakura had needed only this, his face buried between her legs, mouth on her, licking and sucking, his fingers pumping into her.
"Kakashi." Sakura moaned, fist tightening around his hair, and he hummed against her skin.
Her hips waved with him and legs trembled as her orgasm neared. She had needed only this, her back arching off the bed at the unrelenting orgasm that tore through her, his name on her lips. She had needed to drown in the lust of him, to feel him there with her, achingly and wonderfully, there beside her, to surrender under his touch and to him.
Sakura sank into the softness of their bed, her body satisfied in the mindless emotionless high of an ache fulfilled.
When her eyes opened again, heart still thundering against her ribs, breaths still rasping in her throat, Kakashi was laying at her side, chin and lips glistering with her slick, eyes staring up at the ceiling.
It was there, weighing down into his face, what Sakura had dreaded the entire time they had been tangling themselves together. The guilt, the regret.
"Don't." She whispered, her fingers tapped his jaw softly. "Later."
Now she was too raw for it, a sense of panic freezing through her at the possibility. Tomorrow Sakura would have fortified her pieces and stepped into the ice pedestal where it would touch her, it wouldn't graze her.
Her hand coaxed him to turn to her and pressed their mouths together, wanting to taste her on him, wanting to remind herself that it had happened, even if it had been only seconds before.
It had happened and it had been good, they had been good together like this.
Kakashi gave in to her without a fight or hesitation, arm wrapping around her waist to drag her closer to him, deepening their kiss, teasing her with bites to her lower lip.
For the first time since the beginning of their marriage, Sakura and Kakashi pulled the covers of their bed over their naked bodies.
It had been amazing, her orgasms tearing through her in a violent lasting wave, but as she curled into the warmth of him, his fingers tracing gentle patterns down her back, Sakura could feel a lingering ache.
No… something deeper, harsher – an emptiness – the sinking feeling that something was missing, one lost piece not in the place where it belonged, one that her fingers had grazed over but that had slipped away through the gaps between them.