Misao swallowed dryly.
This position meant that he would have to move. Misao had seen the women doing this. It was a popular request with those women, but of course Misao had never done it before.
Breathing deeply, Misao rested his hands on the stomach that he rode. He focused his eyes on his hands and, trying not to spoil Masaomi’s pleasure, he moved his hips as he’d seen the girls do. But he didn’t do it very well, and a pained cry escaped him. He was sure it didn’t feel good for Masaomi either, and he looked up at him as he panted raggedly. Just as he’d feared, a tense frown awaited him. Misao hung his head.
“You’re adorable.”
Masaomi smiled at him and put a hand to his waist. He stroked the line of Misao’s body, then traced upwards. Sex had made Misao’s body incredibly sensitive and his entire body shuddered as Masaomi caressed his skin.
“Just do whatever feels good for you.”
Masaomi rubbed one of his nipples with a thumb.
“Ah”
Misao ached inside and his hips began to move naturally. The place inside him that wanted to be struck harder throbbed, and Misao tensed his knees and dropped his hips further to drive Masaomi where he wanted him, rubbing inside him. The pleasure it unleashed arched Misao’s throat. When he began touching himself in front, he lost all control over himself and his hips wiggled in every direction.
“Ah! It’s so gooditah!”
His mouth hung open lewdly and Masaomi traced his lips with the pad of a finger. Misao gazed rapturously down at him. Masaomi’s gaze was indulgent, swollen with pleasure, and it locked into Misao’s gaping eyes.
“You’re good. It feels very nice.”
Masaomi’s middle finger slipped into his mouth through the slight opening in his lips and tickled the inside of Misao’s lower lip, and stroked around the base of his tongue. The sensation was overwhelming. Misao tangled his tongue with the man’s finger. He felt himself slipping into a dream as he sucked on it. His brain ached lusciously.
“I’m going to light the lanterns.”
Caught off-guard by Kazushi’s voice, Misao accidentally bit hard into Masaomi’s finger. Masaomi’s eyes narrowed with pain, but there was no time for anything like an apology. Masaomi grabbed Misao’s head, rigid and wide-eyed, and pulled it down to kiss him deeply. He rolled Misao onto his side, then pushed his back into the bed. He pushed shallowly against him and swallowed up the scream that Misao unleashed.
His fingers clawed at the air as the man squeezed deeper inside.
There may have been screens to obscure them, but Misao knew better than anyone that they would be completely visible to the outside world through the gaps.
Humiliation and pleasure whirlpooled together and threw Misao’s mind into chaos.
He thought the lewd noises made by their bodies joining together sounded extraordinarily loud.
“I’m sorry, I need to do my job.”
At the sound of Kazushi’s apology from only a few feet away, Misao felt dizzy with embarrassment.
“I don’t think anyone else will come bother you now. Enjoy your stay.”
Masaomi waited a few moments after Kazushi put the oil in the lantern and left the room, before he stopped moving and took his lips off of Misao’s.
“I can’t believe you,” Misao said in shock, between his panting breaths.
Masaomi chuckled at Misao and raised his eyebrows.
“I hid your pretty face and voice, didn’t I?”
He dropped a kiss on Misao’s silent lips, then began an irresistible wave of motion in his lower body. It conquered Misao. But before he surrendered himself to it, he realized for the first time that this man might be even more trouble than Katsuragi.
Before the girls went out to attract customers that afternoon, the back room was filled with rich white smoke. The tea house owner had been puffing without rest on the tobacco in his pipe, looking irritable. Misao sat across a heating box from him, glowering critically. “It certainly is smoky.” But the owner only glared viciously at Masaomi, who was sitting very formally beside Misao. He showed no sign of having heard Misao’s complaint.
“I was under the impression that you were here to see Ukigumo, Master Towa.”
Sitting beside the prickling owner, Gikuyo spoke to Masaomi with a serene look. Misao stole a glance at Masaomi. He nodded to Gikuyo placidly. “But Ukigumo has cast me aside.”
“And so you suggest taking a servant in her place? How very whimsical.”
Gikuyo replied without the slightest change in her calm expression. In contrast, the owner lashed out at Masaomi resentfully.
“Do you know how much work I’ve put into him over the years? I made him study all the arts and scholarship! Do you know how much that cost? Are you seriously”
“I will pay it all back, even if it takes some time.”
Masaomi cut the owner off in the middle of his tirade, forcefully declaring his own desire. That resistance seemed to have angered him.
“And just how much do you think you owe?” the owner shouted, pounding on the side of the heater.
“How much?” Masaomi countered coolly.
Apparently he’d called the bluff, because the owner whined, “It’s not a question of money!”
He was insufferable.
“Aaand what’s ththat on your neck?”
He pointed a finger, trembling with rage, at Misao. It was the mark that Katsuragi had made on his neck, that Masaomi had then darkened with the imprint of his own body.
He didn’t need to be ashamed of it here. Misao stretched his neck out and looked straight back at the owner, hiding nothing.
“I did it,” Masaomi confessed crisply.
Misao had vowed to stand firm no matter what was said to him, but that threatened to bring tears to his eyes. He felt a dull ache in his neck.
Enraged, the owner’s mouth hung half open, shaking with anger.
“How dare you... how dare you! I raised that child as my very own, and you’ve ruined him!”
“Well, sir,” Masaomi responded, drawing himself up beautifully in his flocked coat, “I want to take responsibility for my actions. Would you please listen to what we have to say calmly?”
“How can I be calm about a thing like this?” he shouted angrily, leaping up from his seat with the force of his anger.
“Disgraceful.”
Gikuyo had sat silently watching the proceedings until then, but now she snorted and berated the owner. She glared at him fiercely.
“Sit back down at once.”
Her voice was threatening, and he huddled back down in his seat fearfully.
Seeing their bizarre power relationship, Masaomi glanced meaningfully over at Misao. Misao turned to look back at him incredulously.
The owner had settled down physically, but he was still grumbling to himself. Gikuyo slipped the bowl of her pipe into a bag of tobacco and, without once looking at him, spit out a harsh insult. “Just shut up, you horrible little man!”
Despite the affront, the owner obediently shut his mouth on his abuse. As if she expected nothing different, Gikuyo knocked the ash out of her pipe and into the heater.
“You paid back enough to cover your room and board each month. Saying that that’s all just money lost is far too patronizing and greedy.”
Misao’s shoulders trembled. Also sensing what she meant, Masaomi stared at Gikuyo.
“Will you feed him enough to keep him off the streets?”
Masaomi nodded once, firmly. “Of course.”
Misao felt strange.
He didn’t know if it was because he had Masaomi there beside him or because he never thought Masaomi would be with him. No matter how he stared at the woman smoking a pipe across from him, his heart remained still and he could think of nothing to complain about.
“I mean for the rest of his life.”
Masaomi smiled faintly at Gikuyo’s qualification. “Of course.”
Seeing the discussion wrapping up between the two of them, the owner could no longer restrain himself and he cut in frantically.
“Absolutely not! I will never give up Misao!”
A heavyclangrang out through the room, and ashes tumbled to the floor.
“Would you shut up!”
Gikuyo had slammed her pipe down on the heater and snapped at the owner, staring piercingly at him with a dangerous glint in her eye.
“If you want me to continue working here, you will be silent!”
The owner choked.
“Tamaki” Misao whispered, and Gikuyo glared at him. Then she turned to Masaomi.
“Take him wherever you like. The owner himself has said this isn’t a question of money. We couldn’t accept anything from you. And we’ve done so much to offend you already.”
Gikuyo wrapped it all up indifferently, but Masaomi bowed deeply to her for what seemed at least a hundred times.
“Thank you for entrusting your boy to me.”
Gikuyo glanced down at Masaomi without the tiniest flicker of emotion as he thanked her, and arched an eyebrow disapprovingly at Misao.
“How strange. You haven’t said a word all this time.”
Misao stared straight at Gikuyo in silence, then bowed his head to the same angle as Masaomi’s. “Thank you.”
Misao spoke quietly, his face to the floor.
“For giving birth to me.”
Misao sat back up after this final goodbye. Gikuyo was gazing up at the purple smoke as it rose to the ceiling, as if she found it utterly fascinating.
“By the way, Master Towa.”
Masaomi finally raised his head as Gikuyo called his name dully.
She very slowly turned her eyes from the ceiling to Masaomi’s face, bringing her pipe to her lips.
“Ukigumo has no lingering emotions where you’re concerned, does she?”
Gikuyo narrowed her eyes and savorously exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“There may be some small concern,” Masaomi answered solemnly, then turned to look earnestly at Misao. “But he is the only one I want.”
Misao smiled, gazing back at Masaomi.
It’s true.
Misao knew that with those words alone, he could follow the man anywhere.