He was stretched out in their room at an inn-- each inn was exciting but they were starting to blend together-- on a lazy morning. Enju was sitting in front of him, still close from where he’d hugged her before dozing off. She was rolling up the extra pairs of clothes they’d washed while in the town. It had been such an easy stay, such a nice place. They’d visited shops and springs. They’d had some time to grow even closer.

There was a sensual energy between them now. Not something violent or crackling; it was golden and warm, like a sunrise on a safe morning. It made her feel like a cat, she wanted to stretch all her arms and her jaw and tongue in the soft shine of it and then curl up as it warmed her to some inhuman level of satisfaction. She did not yet know it, only that it hovered beyond her. Closer every day. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to run to it, but she loved it when he pulled her close, and sometimes when his hands cradled her face and his tongue coaxed hers, she wanted to grab at that energy. She grabbed at him instead, and when she did, he always groaned.

It always gave her goosebumps, made her fidgety in his arms. She was lost in thought, hands still over the clothes when his voice by her hip interrupted her thoughts.

“You know,” Goemon said, his voice even lower and lazier than usual, sleep-slurred, “I think our eyes match.”

Sometimes she still couldn’t make heads or tails of the things he said. But she could always tell when the joy in his laughter was because of her confusion, the way it was just then. His chuckle was low like his voice had been, and his tongue rubbed the edges of his teeth like he was savoring a hidden taste.

“When I look at you,” he explained, propping his head up on a hand (some days he never got off the floor if he could help it), “And when I get close, like this, and look at myself in your eyes...”

They had been kissing and embracing one another so often lately that she expected it, actually leaned down just a little to meet him and began to close her eyes. But he stayed where he was, and when she blinked her eyes open he was grinning at her.

“When I look at my reflection in your eyes, Enju, the color is the same,” he said. And then he did move toward her, and whispered, “It’s very pretty.”

She felt hot to the very backs of her ears, his presence enough to overwhelm her and his voice like that enough to outright stun her. His laugh brought her back. The tiny kisses and the way he nuzzled her cheek kept her pinned in place with gentle weight and no sharpness at all. He’d done some shinobi maneuver to sit with her when she was lost in his affection.

“I don’t know what my eyes look like,” she confessed, closing her eyes again and letting him press his lips to the start of her braid.

He pulled back. “Is that so? Can’t have a beautiful thing like you not knowing how lovely she is. I’ll get you a glass,” he promised. He promised her so many things, and though many of the promises were for things that would only be proven true over time, all the immediate ones he kept. He had her trust.

When Goemon pulled her gently into his lap, she moved with him. It reminded her of the day he’d first tied her hair. Now they did that for one another every day, an unspeakably sweet intimacy she cherished. A tiny, animalistic part of her wanted to pounce on it, same as the way she wanted to grab at the lust between them.

“You haven’t even looked at yourself in a pond?” he asked. His arms came around her and his knees went up on either side of her, more like pillows than a fence. He curled around her back and the width of his hands rested on her belly. The unspoken promise was warm as the morning-- this was more direct than most of his teasing.

“Oh,” she said, “I guess you’re right. I just don’t have a good sense of what my face looks like. I’m not sure I could tell you what color my eyes are.”

Right beside her ear, he murmured, “That’s definitely a shame. When we settle somewhere, I’ll get you a glass. And before that, the next time we buy you something nice, we’ll ask the shop to bring out something so you can see yourself.”

She smiled and he kissed her cheek and asked if she was happy.

“Very,” she whispered, nodding.

“A glass will be good to have,” he mused. “There are... other things we can do with one.”

She leaned back against him and enjoyed the way he made himself as soft as possible to allow her to be comfortable. “Like what?” she asked, honestly curious.

So completely was she relaxed against him, she felt the precise second he got less soft behind her. His chest held a breath, then expelled it on a laugh that seemed more likely to curl around their feet than float. Happy, with a note of stress. She didn’t like hurting him, but wasn’t it good that she wasn’t the only one with that heavy yearning when he held her like this? Enju didn’t know exactly what he was implying, but she knew what kind of thing he was talking about.

“I’ll show you when we have one,” he promised

She smiled wider and closed her eyes. “I’ll hold you to that,” she said. One of his hands left her belly and trailed up her throat and chin, his touch cherishing her like a painter’s brush.

“Not if I hold you to me first,” he said, all that golden energy brought suddenly to a boil. “What do you say to that, hmm?”

She opened her mouth to take a deep breath before answering, and his fingertips pulled very gently at her lower lip, stroked her chin, went back with just a little more strength to touch her tongue. So her answer was the throaty sigh she had come to know over the last weeks, and her hands going to his forearm to keep him in place.

“Yes,” she said, wetting the tip of his finger with the word. “I say yes.”

He groaned like she’d kissed him, even though she had not. Not yet. And then he did something very fast with his arms and she was rising up and in them, tucked tight to his body, moving through the air as he carried her over to the inn’s bedding. It was still a rumpled mound of cloth. And a very soft landing pad, it turned out.

As always, his hand behind her head kept her safe. As usual, his eyes on hers-- were hers really such a beautiful green-blue?-- made her glad for his protection. In his hands and his gaze, tucked beneath the hidden strength of his body, Enju felt as small and treasured as a miraculously discovered pearl.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What aren’t I doing,” Goemon said. “What haven’t we been doing, hmm?”

He went for the spot he liked to love at the side of her neck, the one that was tender if she touched it these days, thanks to all his attention. But he didn’t pull the skin with his mouth like she expected. Instead, his hand slipped from the back of her head to skim down the bedding beside her body, until it landed at the knot of her obi. “This alright?”

She nodded tightly and his lowest chuckle yet, hot against her throat, made her leg muscles tense and flex.

“Just be gentle,” she said to the ceiling tiles.

Goemon brushed his nose along the side of her throat, back and forth. Back and forth. He kept going as he undid the knot in his hand and dragged her clothes open. Enju’s leg muscles flexed again and then relaxed, and with them her back and shoulders. The soft layers of fabric below her cradled her body as he told her of course he would, wasn’t that the point? He stroked the edge of her open kimono, never quite touching skin.

“Has this been difficult for you?” he asked. “Waiting?” Fingers landed on her naked middle with the lightest brush of touch.

She gave him an mmmhmm, then a gasp as one of the fingers, wide enough that she thought it might have been the side of his thumb, stroked into the curve of her navel. She felt somehow tuned by it, primed. There was something in her soul that touch set into the same crouch her body would bend into before it would broke into a sprint.

“Tell me whenever you like something,” he said, finally kissing her neck with even more gentleness than she’d asked for. “I don’t want to keep it from you, so just tell me whatever I do that you like. And anything you don’t like.” He pushed himself up a little bit to look down at her, expression so heated and tender it made her ache for his kisses.

After she agreed, she told him as much, and he smiled as he came down to give her the kind of kiss she liked best: slow and dizzy making. She he was already laying down, so there was no risk of falling and it could be all bliss. She put her hands on his cheeks and let him love her mouth while she loved his. Then, when she was all relaxed again, he did something she really liked. That thick, warm thumb traced all the way down her belly, over a curve on her body that felt like a cliff face, a waterfall, some important precipice she was about to learn the meaning of.

“Do it,” she whispered. She could feel her own blush, could even feel the way the heat of it was trapped by his face and returned to her, but it was nothing next to her need. “Please.”

“Polite, polite,” Goemon drawled. And when his touch stroked gently against her, she throbbed so deep inside herself it nearly hurt, and she lurched up with a gasp. Thankfully he was a ninja and saw it coming. He moved back in time to save their heads from colliding.

His face was all concern. “Bad or good?” he asked.

She couldn’t quite say good. She kept her eyes on his as she laid back down, and watched the grin curl up one side of his face.

“That good?” he asked, following her for more kisses. Shyly, she lifted her hips, minutely seeking the return of his hand.

“Don’t forget to talk, pretty girl,” he said kindly. So she said “Please,” again, and got to watch his beautiful blue-green eyes narrow and go dark. And then she closed hers and gave herself over to his tongue in her mouth and his touch somewhere new and very, very lucky.

It was slippery, but not too slippery. Every time he rolled his finger in a circle it brought a new moan out of her, tiny but inescapable. Especially because he stayed so close to her, chest half against hers, mouth never leaving her. He seemed to drink in each noise, and gave her a few to drink down as well, breaths of praise and soft groans. She could feel his hips shifting beside her and it made her feel somehow powerful. 

“So perfect,” he whispered. “Still like it?”

“Yes!” she gasped out when he sped up. Still such a gentle touch, but faster now, less time for her to live between the short strokes of contact. Her thighs laid themselves open a little wider just so she didn’t overheat.

“That’s a good girl, so good. Want to try something you might like even more?”

With great struggle, she managed to open her eyes and look at him skeptically. It made him laugh, bright and loud, and rub the tip of his nose against hers. “Your choice,” he told her. “But I’d recommend it.”

“...Alright,” Enju said. She already liked what he was doing. If there was something more, she wanted to try it. She knew he would take care of her.

He pressed down, following along her skin, and slid his finger lower. She could feel herself parting for him like the flesh of a peach, unconscious but very willing. She had never seen a fruit give under pressure so very light as his was now. Still, there was the stickiness of a peach, or dango drizzled with syrup, like they’d had at one of the other inns.

He’d brought her out of misery and into a world of flavor and joy. She knew so much now.

“Breathe,” he reminded her, and gently pressed one finger inside her, so slow it was sweet as syrup, so slow she felt every new place he touched. She sucked in a breath only when his knuckles bumped against her and could go no further, and the air went into her on a sound of need. He pulled his hand back, steady as an archer, and then pressed into her again and she cried out his name-- she couldn’t help it.

“That’s something else you should say,” he told her in his lowest voice yet. “Say my name, just like that, whenever you want.” But there wasn’t much chance, because he kissed her again, and this time there was clear hunger in it. The way he was usually kissing her when they pulled themselves apart.

They didn’t have to do that now, she realized as she cried out into his mouth again. They could stay, and she could venture right into that golden cloud of mysterious, desirous warmth they’d made between them.

Goemon slipped another finger in beside the first, and the stretch of it made her body go stiff. He slowed and she said “More, it feels good,” because it did and he’d asked her to tell him. There was a sense of widening within herself that didn’t feel like anything she had ever experienced, and she liked it. She liked it even more when he kissed her, said “Alright,” and began to stroke her again with his thumb as his fingers moved. She wailed into his mouth, then hissed-- her muscles clenched tight around his fingers with every brief touch above them.

“That’s it, love,” he said quietly. If he hadn’t been so close, she might have missed it over her own sounds. His free hand brushed aside her open kimono and finally covered her breast, all the gentle warmth of his palm making her whimper at the feeling of security in the face of something so new. He had not touched her skin directly like this before, and there was some roughness on his palm that provided a friction she valued in the otherwise pliant cupping of his hand. It felt warm and safe, like the lining of a jewel case made just for her.

“So beautiful,” he whispered. “It’s certainly been difficult for me to want you for so long, you know.” He worked her body with his hands and kept talking to her, sharing his thoughts and the things he noticed about her body. She felt him moving in a new way and watched as Goemon raised one shoulder, then the other, and his own (always loose) kimono started to slip down his back every time he moved his arm. She wanted to watch his body reveal itself, but he began to put a little curve in his fingers inside her, catching the top wall and dragging tenderly against it, and she could do nothing but bend her body in a reflection of his curve to meet him, chest up, head back.

His mouth went down to her lonely breast and made her feel decidedly not lonely. How could a person use their teeth so gently? The warmth of his mouth was indescribably intimate but reminded her of being cuddled, surrounded by the love and softness and heat of a body not her own. As he sucked one nipple and rolled the other between his fingers, hot need spread through her body, an antidote (to what, she faintly wondered) reaching all her extremities. She swore she could feel the tickle of it in her muscles. One day she hoped she might make a medicine so pleasant.

“Enju,” he said, and hearing him say her name was always wonderful... but oh, to hear it muffled by her breast in his mouth was another thing entirely. He gave one hard sick, still gentle but more, and then pulled his body back from hers. She missed him immediately, so much that she felt her first discomfort in all this when his hand left her breast, trailing down. It was still warm, still contact, but not the kind she wanted. And there was nothing inside her now where before there had been him, and it made her miserable.

“Don’t pout,” he laughed. “I’ve waited longer than you. But now it’s time, hmm?”

It was late morning, and they were at one of several inns that were beginning to blur into one experience. This wasn’t their home, but it was where they were. Together.

“Yes,” she said slowly. Solemnly.

He sat on his knees between her legs and used both hands, one slick and one not, to stroke her until the fingers of both his hands slipped over all her wetness, landing on her as raindrops would an uncovered stone. She was certain she was just shy of not being able to stand the emptiness. His touch was good; her greed confused her and added to the need she felt, lust at a pitch she had never yet sung or even knowingly heard. She did not think he had ever been so turned on, either, no matter what he said.

Goemon caught her eye and winked. His charm knew no bounds. “Up,” he said gently, a sticky hand touching one of her knees. She began to bend and he caught the inside of the joint to bring it up so he could kiss the point. Just a kiss, but he looked right at her when he did it and it made her clench around nothing.

“I don’t want you to have to do any work, really,” he told her, bringing up her other knee and pulling her hands to the backs of her thighs. “But this is the easiest way. If you hold on here, it will give you something to squeeze if you need it, and you’ll be able to lift and lower your hips. That gives you some control.”

She nodded, and he smiled and shrugged off his own clothing at last. She had to look down her naked body to see his, and what a sight it was. His skin was as golden as that energy between them, his long frame marked by the sun and a few scars. She had some, too. When they were done, or some other day, she wanted to kiss each one. Brave, beautiful man. Her Goemon.

“My... Goemon,” she said softly. She smiled at him, feeling a little foolish, but his smile only looked pleased, and he said “Yours.” Then his mouth came back to hers, and one of his hands pushed the hair off her forehead and made her feel so very safe and loved, yet again.

His other hand was pulling at his length. She tried to catch a peek and he laughed. Warmly, he promised “I’ll show you another time. Unless you really want to see it now.”

She shook her head and opened her mouth to kiss him again.

“Good girl,” he growled, and she could feel his arm moving faster. Once his knuckles brushed one of her hands, still holding the back of her thigh, and she whimpered into their kisses. Her body wanted his touches again. Or this glorious more he was offering her. She wanted with a selfishness that startled her until she could feel him, thick and blunt, just where he needed to be.

“Remember, you move your hips to help if you need to,” he told her. And then he began to truly push into her and she never wanted to move again, she wanted to stay right there in that moment, in that place, and forever feel the delicious burn filling her, no faster than his fingers had. It went on in a slow, slick forever and she panted and sighed every soft sound of her comfort that floated out of her body on her breath.

“Almost,” he gritted through his teeth. “Tell me how you’re doing.”

“Fine,” she wailed. “Keep going.”

His laugh was almost raspy, but too thick and low to sound harsh. She loved his voice so much. She moaned out his name, trying to keep quiet and not at all sure of her success. Her heartbeat was pounding in her ears, keeping time with the pulse she could feel around him. That haze of attraction between them had hidden the most perfect heat and now she was there, in it, with him.

When his body was pressed against hers, she felt as though he was settled into every place where her form had any give at all. He did not rest heavily upon her, only completely, and it was wonderful.

“Goemon,” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

He made a sound of mild amusement with his tongue and his teeth, closer to a cluck than anything else she could name. “You’re awfully well-versed in what to say, for someone who hasn’t done this before,” he told her. His troubled look (it was so rare to see him anything but easy and calm!) made her giggle.

Enju wanted to hug him, but she kept her hands on her legs. He seemed to be waiting, but she really didn’t know what to say, so she did what he had recommended and shifted up just a little, tensing the muscles of her bottom to push her toward him.

He swore, more callously than she had ever heard him say anything before that moment.

“I take it... that means... you want more?” he asked. The tightness of his voice made her feel proud, somehow. Proud and foolish and in love with him. She thought if she spoke she would never stop talking, so she bit her bottom lip and nodded instead. And shifted again, just to see how good it would feel and what would happen.

What happened was he groaned and leaned forward, rested his elbows by her arms on the bedding, and whispered “Little minx,” before he kissed her soundly and ground himself against her, which forced her mouth to open on a gasp. She squeezed the backs of her legs and tried to grind herself right back, but she couldn’t figure out just how.

Now he laughed, and his kisses turned gentle again. “Just tell me what you like,” he reminded her. “You can have as much of it as you can take.”

“That,” she whispered. “More of that, with your hips.”

He did some other thing with his hips, which was also very nice but not what she had asked him for. The new side to side motion made her whine, but he kept doing it so well it was hard for her to find her voice.

Eventually she did, and she scolded him with it. “Goemon! You said!”

He laughed again. “I did, I did. Forgive me for teasing you,” he begged. “I promise, I’m teasing myself, too.” And then he did it again, properly, pushing them so close together it was like he was touching her in that magnificent way from before, all over again. Now while deep inside her body. It made the most pleasurable shudder rack her body, jittery in her limbs before it left them as relaxed as a steam bath.

His way seemed to be to move slowly and completely. He would pull back until she felt the faintest hint of cool air between them (well, cooler than their bodies), then push his hips down and forward into her and just keep going until they both grunted. The steady pace was enough to pull all her sinews taut as a net, and plenty to make her feel as though she would lose her mind. She did not need control, he was taking perfect care of her.

So she let go of her legs so she could hold him instead. She kept one foot tucked near her body and let the other slide down along the bedding, and put her hands back on his beautiful face.

“I love you,” she told him again. “This is incredible.”

“Don’t make me blush,” he said, but his cheeks were already so ruddy it would have been hard to tell if she did. She waited for his eyes, and when they came to her she looked right into them, marveled at their color against his face, and told him they were beautiful.

He grinned at her and reached back to fit the back of her raised knee into his elbow. The next time his body pressed against hers, her own eyes went so wide she thought she saw all the walls of their room. Possibly beyond them.

After she stopped moaning, he asked, “Do you think we match, then?”

“I hope so,” she whispered.

“Oh? How pretty I must be,” he murmured. She laughed and buried her fingers in the softness of his hair, and pulled him gently toward her kiss, deeply in love and floating in the feel of it.