Chapter 22

"It's me," the Ootori echoed with small smile to offer.

"Well?" She made no move to hide any of it. Why did it matter? Kiyoko raised an eyebrow at him, her defenses lined up and her walls fortified. "You asked for more. This is more."

"So you smoke," Kyouya observed, ignoring the fact that she had meant the disaster of a dinner that had just occurred. She was far more interesting than that. He never smelled a single wisp of smoke on her at any point in time. His eyes flickered towards the red lipstick stains on the pristine white filter of the cig. Fuck, that should not have looked as hot as it did to him. Those lips would have done better on his skin, he thought to himself. "Not often, then," he said when he finally found his voice again.

"It's the cherry on top of all the other baggage you can drop now that the façade has been broken," Kiyoko stated factually. But he was right, she was never a chain smoker – only when things got particularly stressful. She was a mostly a social smoker. Minus the time she went several weeks in university smoking when finals and gambling got particularly difficult to balance. But then she quit cold turkey when Haru mentioned that she smelled like their family chauffeur. She got an earful from her brother about it.

"Our family knew what we were getting into, Kiyoko."
"No, your family really did not," she retorted. "My father is in his sixties. A baby? At his age? For the flimsy future of this company? And on top of that, with a woman more than half his age. Please spare me."

"We could work around—" he tried again.
"You want to work around that idiot?" Kiyoko shook her head. "Can't we just let this whole business crumble? I wouldn't mind burning it to the ground." Then maybe they would finally all be free of the confines of the rich and famous. Or rather, infamous when it came to her family.

"Kiyoko," he reached out to her. She stepped back like she would catch fire at his touch. It hurt him to see her like this. It hurt to lose her without even able to have her. Any of her.
"Stop it. You know I'm no good for you," Kiyoko snapped. "Your parents would never approve. Not after that mess," she reminded. "They're probably thinking of other families for you to entertain with as we speak."

"I don't really care about their approv—"
"You fucking should!" Kiyoko raised her voice. The Ootori nearly flinched at the way she shrieked. She tossed the butt of the cigarette over the ledge after crushing it against the granite stone out of frustration. "This would never work. You can't ever get what you want through me, not with that… fucking bimbo twerp in the way of—"

"I just want—"
"This was going to be a marriage of convenience and this just turned awfully inconvenient—"

"Kiyoko, please, just listen—
"It was never meant to work, even if tonight had gone well," she concluded. "I was just waiting for the day for you to realize it." Today was the day. He had to be an idiot not to see it. Their affair lasted almost a year. Goodness, how time had flown – especially in these past few months of bliss.

"All I ever wanted was you," Kyouya pleaded. "I came into this thinking—"
"You wanted your company," Kiyoko corrected. "I was just an accessory." She was useful until she was not. Now, she was very much not.
"How could you ever think—"

Kiyoko shook her head and blinked away the tears. This was not the time to cry. This man was not allowed to see her at her worst. She was supposed to feel anger. Kiyoko was brimming with it to the point where she was seeing red when she walked out of their dining room but now all she felt was heartbroken. Like she had thrown her heart off a cliff in the same way she flicked that cigarette butt off the granite ledge into nothingness. She felt like she was freefalling into the depths of the unknown and she would fall into a rut of sorrow. Maybe she was already there, slowly letting it consume her until she drowned.

"What we have is real," he told her. Kyouya wanted to shake some sense into her. What could he say to her to make her understand?
"You didn't even know my favourite colour until a few weeks ago," Kiyoko sighed. "It was never real." Why did it hurt to say out loud? That he would never really, truly get to know her. That this was the end of their brief affair that was never made to last.

"Because you won't tell me! You don't tell me shit, Kiyoko." It was his turn to feel angry. "You leave me in the dark and I'm here trying to pick up the pieces and playing this guessing game with you!" He threw up his hands in frustration, running a hand through his hair. He paced around the area, huffing with disappointment.

"You won't let me in," he continued. "This wasn't more. Whatever it was tonight, we barely scratched the surface with you. I want this. I want you. But what do you want? You never say what you want. You fucking drive me mad wondering what's in your mind and for once, I just want to know what goes on in that brain of yours."

Kiyoko could feel it. This was the end, it had to be. And even then, she couldn't stop herself to tearing away. They were never meant to be.

"And then what?" she asked quietly, as if daring him to imagine what they could be. "You'd stay? And deal with the madness that comes with being with me? We would live a fairy tale life with two kids and a mansion as large as this with a small lake and a whole housekeeping staff at our beck and call?"

"Why two?" he wondered, fixated on the fact that Kiyoko had even considered that scenario at all. She definitely imagined a future with him. She thought of children. She thought of a family. There was no way that what they had was not real.

It was a slip of a tongue. Fuck, of course she would say two because she grew up with Haru. They were the two kids that wreaked havoc for the housekeepers, coming back inside with grass stains on their clothes, climbing trees and catching bugs just a few feet away from where she now stood as an adult. Two halves of a whole. She was half the liveliness that breathed into this mansion decades ago. Now it felt sterile and cold, empty and lifeless without Haru or the naïveté of childhood.

"Because it would be less lonely," Kiyoko's voice turned quiet. The fire in her breath had subsided in a small flame.
"See?" he growled. "That," Kyouya accused. He saw the way she mulled over that thought, grasping at the right words at the tip of her tongue. "You're hanging onto some kind of afterthought that you never end up saying—"

"Because it doesn't matter!" she argued back.
"It matters to me. You matter to me."
"No," Kiyoko denied. "Your company matters to you, as it always should. Don't lose sight of what you have always wanted. Don't allow yourself to be foolish," she reminded.

The door creaked open behind the alley of Kyouya with heavy steps that followed. Kiyoko instantly recognized the gait and crossed her arms with a huff. Toshio-san cleared his throat to interrupt the two, politely ignoring the blanket of tension that fell between the young couple. He was here to do his job, after all.

"Miss, your grandmother is asking for you," he informed.

The youngest Hibayashi toed around the Ootori with grace, holding up her chin and ignored the Ootori's scowl. The dark orbs of her eyes were lifeless without any trace of a soul, a natural façade that was well-practiced now over the years. He knew better than that – he had seen so much more than what she let on.

"Please escort Ootori-san off the premises," she coldly requested to their chauffeur. She palmed the packet of cigarettes and the lighter off to the rightful owner. "I'll be off."

Her heels echoed through the silence leaving the two men behind.

Kiyoko sighed to herself as she walked up the stairs to the study of where her grandmother usually summoned her. What was behind those closed doors besides a session of being berated for being too late?

That she only had one job and couldn't even see it through. Haru would never get the rightful inheritance he had deserved and neither would she. That was the sort of money they could have used to live a comfortable life. It was not the end of the world for her to support them but damn, it would have been much easier to not have to appease the rich and famous on a daily basis who pretended to have exquisite taste.

And what was there to do about her father? Kiyoko hadn't even begun thinking of that. Or rather, she did not want to even try to untangle that mess to begin with. She could have really used another cigarette to ease the anxiety that built up during her ascent to the second floor of their mansion.

But instead, she took a deep breath and opened the heavy wooden doors. It was now or never.

"How could you have just left, you useless bitch?!" The shriek was heard down the hall as soon as Kiyoko had opened the door. The au pairs of the home had not heard such a ruckus in years.

"Well, they most certainly got the message," Kiyoko rolled her eyes as she shut the door. She stood close to the exit for a proper escape. Dinner must have been cut short. The Ootoris certainly scrambled to get out of their home. Evident by the fact that the Ootori managed to somehow find her while she was barely halfway through one smoke. "Did we ever settle on a baby name?" She teetered on the edge of a joking tone. Enough to make her grandmother seethe, not caring for the rage that was soon to follow.

"You dumb child—"

"He really does fit that description," she shrugged off, nodding in agreement and bashfully ignoring the insults hurled at her. "Reversing his vasectomy was bold. You underestimated him, didn't you?" But also, he was in his sixties. The chances of him being able to reproduce seemed awfully low. A paternity test was not uncalled for.

"This is not my fault," her grandmother snarled. "If you had taken this more seriously—"
"—The Ootori was about to fucking propose within a year of us meeting, was that not enough? It adhered to your timeline. Fuck, I may as well should have gotten pregnant," Kiyoko threw her hands up.

"Are you not?" the grandmother was bewildered. "He must have wanted to after—"
"Absolutely fucking not – are you serious?" The granddaughter was appalled.

"I thought you had gotten—"
Kiyoko felt her blood boil. "You said heir by next year. And how could I bring a child into this world? Into this madness?" That would have been irresponsible on far too many levels. Marriage was one she could entangle herself out of. But a human? Not a chance. She could never be a mother.

"For the sake of the family – you knew your duty."
"How could you treat human life so frivolously? After all that you have lost?" Kiyoko raised her voice. "I suppose it makes sense given how you have thrown away your only grandson," she spat.

"I never threw him away, he was just not fit for this environment. Not useful to the greater purpose," the grandmother retaliated.
"And neither am I," Kiyoko growled. "Well done, Hibayashi-san, you were bested by the cock of an idiot who has haunted you for decades. First with me being born and now with this stranger of a woman who is more than half his age."

Kiyoko ducked at the paperweight thrown towards her. For someone nearing their eighties, the woman sure had quite the aim, perfected over the years. It narrowly missed Kiyoko's head. Damn, that woman came close. A little too close for comfort.

"Getting too old to play this game, aren't we?" Kiyoko egged on. She watched as the elder grabbed another object off the table before hurling it at her. It made a loud bang against the door behind her. A letter opener. It was sharp but too dull to make a dent on the wood. Well, that would be the second time a knife had been aimed at her in this family home.

"Throwing shit at me won't make the problem go away, you senile old bitch," Kiyoko screamed back. "This family has done nothing for me or for Haru. Why are you so obsessed with saving this family's reputation? Your daughter is dead. Your son-in-law is an idiot. Your other daughter is a known bipolar with manic episodes you can't even control!"

Next came a ceramic mug that shattered to pieces on the floor. Kiyoko stepped aside just in time before the shrapnel could cut her.

"Where the fuck is Asami, anyway?" Kiyoko yelled, refusing to back down. "She can't fucking uphold the family honour because she is literally too psychotic. And yet you enable her by financing her stupid ventures. Did you know she's running an illegal gambling ring?"

"That is your mother you're speaking about," her grandmother screeched. "You would put her in jail?"

Kiyoko paused, unable to hear anything but the ringing in her ears from the rage she experienced. "What?"

"She's your mother." The elderly woman walked closer to the child.
"Liar," Kiyoko accused, standing up straighter. "This whole family is built on lies. Why tell me now? Why was she not around when I grew up? She wanted nothing to do with me."

"Because she wanted nothing to do with your fucking idiot of a father who broke two of my daughters' hearts and still somehow seated himself in the confines of our company."

A fucking mess. Her family was a mess. And that was just the surface of it all. Suddenly all those dinners made more sense. The flying plates. The wine glasses. The yelling and arguing. Who rightfully owned what. There was never a time where it was not a debate.

"No," Kiyoko shook her head. "This can't be right. Why wouldn't anyone tell me? This is an awfully convenient fucking lie for you – for the pieces to line up like they do."

Kiyoko was kept in the house because she was, in fact, still part of the family. Asami was too unstable to be a reliable choice to the stakeholders of the company. Haru followed in the same realm, kept a secret for his atypical tendencies. The choice fell to her father – well-liked by the shareholders, well-received as a family man of sorts who dealt with far too much tragedy in his life. He played the pity card and damn, he played it well throughout the years.

"Fuck," she muttered. "Fuck this." Kiyoko was tired of this bullshit.

"You will not turn your back on this family," the elder threatened, moving closer to the young woman.

"You can't tell me what to do," Kiyoko snapped. "Good luck with the third grandchild," she added sweetly. "Congratulations to the happy family. How lovely would that look on the headlines of another gossip magazine. They haven't gotten fodder for years from us, have they?"
"You selfish fucking shit—"

"I prefer the term bitch. Call me every name in the book, Obaa-chan. You made me this way. You let this family crumble under your fingertips and now you are so desperately hoping to bring it back before you die."

Kiyoko stiffened as she readied herself for another object to be hurled at her at lightning speed. But not before she was able to get her last word in.

"You're pathetic."

Toshio-san eyed the man from head to toe. This kid looked like a lost puppy in a suit, his eyes longed after the woman whose steps echoed down the halls. She did grow up to be quite the woman. Something about art, nowadays. And before that, poker. All he knew was that she made her own fortune and that was impressive enough.

The old man looked down at carton that sat in his hand. He made the box look so small in comparison to the woman whose hand hardly fit over the it. "You ever smoked before, kid?"

"No," Kyouya responded, eyes narrowed and suddenly defensive.
"You look like you could use a smoke," Toshio-san offered, opening up the carton with a flick of his thumb and nudging it towards him. It was his peace offering. "Come on. We won't make it a habit," he winked.

"I actually taught her to smoke here," the old man reminisced. "She begged me nearly every day during her teenage years and followed me out here until I finally said yes. She was stubborn and damn well determined. She always somehow got her way."

Kyouya raised an eyebrow and reluctantly plucked one from the carton. A quick flick of the lighter by the old man's thumb instantly lit the end. Instinctively, he brought it up to his lips in the same fashion that he watched her do it. She made it look so easy, so awfully natural.

The chauffeur chuckled. "Whoa, easy there, you're going to—"

The Ootori fell into a coughing fit immediately. God, this was fucking embarrassing. What was he even thinking? How could he have done this to himself? He felt like he was dying.

"Inhale smoke," the elder finished. Toshio-san waited until the young man had calmed down, his eyes gorged out of his sockets as he slowly recovered. "It's alright kid. If it makes you feel any better, she coughed and cried and then dared to try again like an idiot without listening to me first."

"Did she?" he wheezed. His entire throat felt like it was on fire. The bitterness in his mouth stayed forever, no matter how long he waited for his saliva to dilute the disgusting taste of ash. This was not enjoyable by any means. Whatever high he was supposed to feel was replaced by a slight twinge of dizziness and nausea.

"You want to inhale and keep the smoke in your mouth. Then take a deep breath and inhale the smoke with the fresh air into your lungs, kid."

The Ootori stared at the burning ashes between his fingers and snuffed it out against the same spot Kiyoko had. He knew better than this. Damn that woman for being able to sell him the worst habits. She sold him a painting with tens of thousands of dollars. She could sell him hell and he would be there in a second. Fuck, why was he like this?

"I was hoping she would have done that too," Toshio watched as the younger man made the right decision. He sighed. "I thought, maybe if she just tried it and realized it was awful, she would have stopped."

"Why didn't you stop her?" Kyouya growled. "She was a kid."

The chauffeur slid one cigarette out of the carton and lit the end casually. "I tried and she wore me down. I regret teaching her how to smoke. But honestly," he exhaled a large puff of smoke out into the forest below. "Can you blame her? She needed an outlet. That household is as crazy as they say."

"How so?" the Ootori raised a brow.

"Can't tell ya," he winked with a click of his tongue. While the family had their quirks, they did keep him employed for the past three decades and treated him rather well. In return, the entire household staff kept their mouths shut as they always have and bound by their non-disclosure agreements. Their loyalty was the sole reason they had stayed for as long as they did. "Didn't you just eat dinner with 'em? You should know already."

"I don't know anything at all," Kyouya sighed. "I didn't even know Kiyoko smoked."

"She doesn't usually," Toshio reassured. "She and I both quit. But you know, once you start… the occasional craving comes back to get ya every once in a while." He paused to inhale another puff. "Can't blame the girl for needin' one, life's been rough on her."

"Has it?" The Ootori found that hard to believe.
"I mean, you rich folks are rich as fuck with no issues in affording a roof over your head or payin' for your kid's education. But you all have a whole new set of issues that I ain't envious of. That family is nowhere close to a real family is all I can say."

Kyouya mulled at the thought. Was that so different from him? The Ootoris were dysfunctional too. Family was a frivolous concept. He silently watched the sun set from their balcony with the stars already creeping out from the darkness, blurring into the dusk hues of the sky. Kiyoko preferred the sunrise over the sunset. Even now, she somehow crawled her way back into his brain.

"Was she always like that?" Kyouya asked.
"An annoying brat? Hell yeah, she was."
The Ootori chuckled. "I meant distant."

"Oh," Toshio-san rubbed the stubble on his chin. "Maybe, I guess, yeah." He took another drag from the cigarette. "She didn't have a choice as an outcast. No friends her age. No family to look over her. Just us," he continued. "I taught her how to drive too, you know. She's a bit of a speed demon. Takes after me, I suppose."

Kyouya took in this information and filed it away like he always did with her. Every little bit of her he could grasp, he held onto it like the most precious thing. She would never understand what it meant to him – to know her like this. "What was she like as a child?" he wondered.

"Annoying as shit," Toshio grumbled. "But she was a good kid. She was polite as hell until she began her rebellion as a teenager. And you know what the worst part was? She was only rude to me because she knew it would bug the hell out of me."

"She has a knack for that," Kyouya agreed quietly. "She annoys the fuck out of me too."

"And yet, you're still in love with her."
"That's ridiculous," Kyouya denied, looking out into the forest and refusing to make eye contact. It was a sea of black by now. The light had turned on automatically by nightfall on the balcony. Suddenly, the old man's face had more wrinkles that were more pronounced than ever before. He had a tiresome expression that only decades of work could bring.

"You tried smoking because of her, didn't you?" the man cackled, eyes crinkled with amusement. "C'mon kid, you're in love with that girl and the whole fucking house sees it. Only she can't."

"And why not?" the Ootori muttered as he rolled his eyes. The bitter taste in his mouth still hadn't gone away. Though it seemed to have grown even more bitter when speaking about his silly feelings about her.

"Well," the chauffeur shrugged. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I know for certain that she's a good one. Despite all of that madness in that house – she's a survivor. So be patient with her, won't you?"

"I've been patient enough," the Ootori sighed. The dizziness had subsided but the headache began to form at the back of his head. It had been months of trying to get her to trust him fully.

"Good things take time," Toshio-san reminded. "And she's a good one."
"How?" he narrowed his head. "It's hard to believe when she won't tell me anything."

The family chauffeur paused to look at the Ootori who seemed to have racked his brain for ages on trying to figure out Kiyoko. Man, that girl really had the boy wrapped around her finger, didn't she? The older man shook his head and then snubbed out the butt of the cigarette. "She doesn't owe you shit, you know. Not an explanation of why she is the way she is or how she came to be."

"It's not about being owed it's—"

The two men were interrupted by the creak of the door. A voice that came from the darkness, one that they both could recognize like the back of their hand.

"Hey you old man!" She greeted teasingly. Kyouya could have sworn that Kiyoko was a different person. Never had he heard her voice so high. It was absurd. "I ran into Kaeda-san on the way down. She said you hadn't gone home so I'm telling you to go home now, you geezer—" She poked her head through the backdoor and the clack of her stiletto heels carried her from the narrow alleyway.

He was standing behind the elder who had been leaning on the railing. She stopped in her tracks and backed up to keep a good distance when she recognized the Ootori. Kiyoko straightened her back and crossed her arms, readying her defenses.

"I thought I told you to escort Ootori-san off the premises," Kiyoko's tone changed immediately into a scold and narrowed her eyes at both men.

"The fuck happened to your face?" Toshio-san growled. A look of concern immediately flashed over both their faces with Kyouya narrowing his eyes immediately. Kiyoko stepped further back into the darkness so that they couldn't see any more.

"What happened to listening to my orders?" she barked back, trying to divert the attention. "I told you to—"
"To go home, yeah whatever," the chauffeur shot back. He wasn't afraid of the young woman, especially when he had known her since she was a little girl. To him, she was like a chihuahua barking.

"Oi, you alright?" he whispered as he got closer to her.
"Just a scratch," Kiyoko assured with a pat on his arm. "Go home. Say hello to your wife for me, okay?" Her tone was softer now.
He gave a reassuring pat on her shoulder. "You take care of yourself, young lady." And with that, he left hurriedly to leave the two kids alone.

All Kyouya could hear were hushed tones between them from afar. Like an outsider, he stood far away and could only watch the dark shadows come together and apart. When Toshio-san scurried along to leave, Kiyoko stayed in the dark, refusing to move any closer to him.

"You've overstayed your welcome, Ootori-san. I trust that you can find your way out," Kiyoko disappeared into the darkness with only her heels giving away her path of escape. Kyouya sprinted towards the sound, only find that she had disappeared quicker than he thought. The echoing of the taps of her feet had already gone down a floor, somewhere below the balcony. There must have been a staircase. The darkness did him no favours and he only knew one way out: the same way he came in.

The entire mansion was a maze. His feet took him through the same door that led him outside and through the garage. He found himself back at the front foyer of the home and spotted her clearly down the paved road. Her legs had carried her far enough halfway down the road to where her car was parked in the very corner. It was her usual spot, the one she was at during their last event. Luckily for him, Kyouya's feet were fashioned with more sensible soles that allowed him to run fast enough to catch up to her Mercedes at the last moment, right as she unlocked her car.

"What the fuck?" she yelled when he made it fast enough to open the door on the opposite side. "Get out of my car! This can't keep happening." He had done this once before, sliding into the passenger seat outside of her gallery after she was held at knifepoint. And every other time, she had somehow convinced him to stay outside in a stupor because of something ridiculously brash.

Not this time though, he was not falling for her tricks. Kyouya had run a marathon to catch up to her – still panting and waiting to catch his breath in the passenger seat. He won this race and he was fucking going to milk the prize fair and square.

"What do you want?" she asked angrily.

He wanted answers. He wanted to know all of her. He wanted her. But the first thing he wanted to do was to check if she was alright. His fingers reached for the light above the center console, right above the gear box but Kiyoko's reflexes were fast enough to swat his hand away.

"Fuck off," Kiyoko snarled. Kyouya had expected that from her without surprise.

He gripped her wrist in his palms as she swatted his hand away and tugged her closer to him so the moonlight could illuminate her face. One of her cheeks still had a rosy hue to it with a bloody scratch right by her jaw. Kiyoko's eyes widened when she realized he could see her whole face. Kiyoko blinked away the fear and pulled back with as much room as she could give.

"Who did this to you?" he demanded. "Who hurt you?"
"None of your business," she dodged. "Get out of my car."

He sat across from her, staring at the woman who glared at him icily. It didn't work on him, not anymore. "Let's just go home," he tried to convince her. "We can—"
"Get out of my car," she repeated, her voice cracking this time.

"I can drive," he offered. "I'll drive us back. We can talk about it." Kyouya didn't care if he sounded pathetic. Didn't care about how he must have sounded desperate. Fuck, what did it take for her to just trust him?

"No," she refused. "I don't want to talk. I don't… I don't want to think. I just want…" Kiyoko trailed off. She was growing less composed by the second. The stinging of her face stopped a while ago but her cheeks still flushed in embarrassment at her state.

"What do you want?" he tried again, softer.

She wanted to cry. To scream. To sleep it all off.

Why couldn't she just say it?

"I want you out of my car."

It took him 15 more minutes to wear her down. 40 minutes of silence as she drove with a scowl on her face. By the time she parked at her place, she was too tired to argue when he opened the car for her and punched in the key code to the home that he already memorized.

"Go home," she sighed, voice weaker as she stood at the entrance of the house, blocking him from entering further. She tried to stand her ground with a frown on her face.

"I am home," he insisted as he toed off his shoes quickly at the area designated for it. He put his hands firmly on her shoulders to force her to sit at the bench at her doorway and crouched down to take off her red soled heels.

"Stop," Kiyoko tiredly muttered. "I don't need you to—"

He looked up from her feet and met her sullen eyes. It hurt him too, to watch her quietly suffer the way that she did. His fingers gingerly ran over her jaw where the scratch had been made. Her hair had now come apart loosely, strands from her bun had framed her thin face.

"We don't have to talk," he assured. "And I will leave as soon as you go to bed."

In one swift motion, his arms scooped her up by her knees as he carried her up two flights of stairs to the master bathroom. He set her down on the marble counter between the two sinks. The lighting did her cheek no favours and looked worse than it had felt. He began drawing a bath for her before gathering a cotton pad and dousing it with the makeup remover he had watched her perform now countless of times.

"How did you know?" Kiyoko's lips curved so slightly he would have missed it had he not been looking at her face. She was impressed by the way he had picked up on her nightly routine so well. His fingers were gentle as she closed her eyes, letting the eye makeup melt off her face with his touch. He wiped off her makeup so delicately, as though she would break at the slightest touch.

"You've taken off my war paint," she sighed dramatically. "I'm nothing but an old hag now."
He smirked in amusement and tossed away the cotton pad. "I won't fall for your tricks, I know you're still a witch."

"I prefer the term bitch," Kiyoko chuckled to herself. It was the second time she said it tonight, now in a different context.
"I don't," he rolled his eyes. "No one should be calling you that."

"But I love being a badass bitch," she pouted. "Now with a battle scar to show for it." She framed her face with her palm right below the cheek she got slapped on. The sting was long gone and the redness had subsided immensely. But the scratch of the nails had stayed as a souvenir of the night. She contorted her face into a cheeky grin at him and winked.

The Ootori smiled faintly, knowing that the woman had an awful habit of joking around to divert the attention elsewhere. How could she still be joking at a time like this? It could not mask the look of concern on his face.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," she rolled her eyes, hating the look of pity. It was just as bad as those looks she received from others who thought she was deranged. "Can't we pretend it's… from a cat or something?"

"Kiyoko…" he shook his head at her. "This is…" Why were his words caught at his throat? This was not a laughing matter. She could have gotten seriously hurt. What was happening behind those closed doors of the household that she would not speak of?

"For what it's worth, I may have deserved it," Kiyoko brushed it off nonchalantly. "I was indeed, quite the brat running my mouth tonight."

She jumped off the counter and stopped mulling over what had happened. Her fingers fixed her hair into a messy French updo with a clip. Rinsing her face with some more water, she flicked some at the Ootori to awaken him from his trance of watching her.

"Well, hurry up," she shoved his shoulder with her arm. "Aren't you joining me in the tub?" The water was still running.

He blinked at her and wondered if he had heard right. Kiyoko smiled devilishly up at him and laughed into the crook of his neck. God, he loved that sound. He loved it even more when it resonated through his bones as she leaned against him. "I didn't think you would have to be convinced," Kiyoko whispered. She kissed him softly by his Adam's apple and planted more along his jaw. He could feel the way she breathed him in, the soft inhale and exhale of her mouth running along his neck did things to him he was ashamed to admit. "You smell good," she told him as she stayed on her tippy toes.

She was a witch and she knew exactly what she was doing. Shit, he would have gladly let her enchant him for the rest of his life like this.

Kiyoko took a hold of his hand and ran it along her hips, letting the fingers hook into the band of her skirt as she slowly unzipped the hem on the side. She let him do the honours by pushing down the fabric to let it pool at her feet. The Ootori finally came to his senses when he felt her bare skin beneath his fingertips, crawling up towards her ribs. He took hold of her blouse to pull it over her head, leaving her only in a rose set of lingerie.

He groaned as the sight of her nearly bare and all in lace. Kyouya drunk in the sight and seared it to the back of his eyelids. He inwardly cursed.

"Come on," she smirked. "Your turn," she tugged onto his belt. He could only stand there in awe in front of the woman who pressed kisses along his cheek and jaw, avoiding his lips by ducking her head to focus on undoing the buttons of his trousers. She was teasing him and Kyouya was defenseless.

"Fuck," he muttered. "This… this wasn't planned," he whispered as his pants began pooling at his ankles.

"I know," She took his hands and gave it a squeeze of reassurance. Kiyoko knew him better than that. She sunk down to her knees as she looked him in the eye and found him right where she wanted him. His mouth was agape as he watched her fingers trail down the side of his thighs. Her mouth planted kisses along the inner part of his leg while her hands worked their way up to tug down his underwear.

He could only part his lips in fascination, watching as she worked her way around him with delicate ease. He certainly did not plan for this but she damn well did. He wasn't sure whether to be impressed or angry at it all.

"Are you sure?" he gritted out.

"What do you mean?" Kiyoko smiled up at him. "I'm just kissing." She kissed him along the length of hardened cock, dragging her tongue along the side and stopped at the tip while she waited on him to respond. "Do you want to stop?"

He shook his head. There were no words. Nothing to express what he had felt beyond absolute pleasure from watching her fingers grip his base and her tongue masterfully painting strokes around the head of his cock. This wasn't the first time, but each time it felt like the first in the way that she took her time in exploring his body.

His grunts and groans were music to her ears as she listened to him fall apart. Was she a witch? She may as well been with the way she magically made him forget about the first half of the night. And quite frankly, a part of her blurred out the events of what had happened to herself too by drowning in the way she found pleasure in her power.

It was a fucking shitty night but if she had to choose one thing she allowed herself to indulge in, it damn well was going to be him.