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Lemonade for you, Tae...

(as in, "when you get handed a lemon"... ~__^)

"Really, love," Kenshin said ruefully, "it's not that hard--"

"Easy for you to say!"

"I mean it. Angle your wrist -- a little further -- right; now, push--"

Kaoru yelped as the fish's backbone peeled free under her blade. Then she sighed, and glowered in response to his sweet smile. "I don't care what you say, cooking is so a sword art. And I use bokken. They don't have cutting edges!"

"Cooking is not a sword art," Kenshin said, mildly, picking up the fish's spine and pitching it into the scrap bucket. "And even if it is, you have a talent for sword arts; why not simply learn it the way you learn your budo?"

Kaoru sighed, and blew her bangs out of her eyes, patting the sagging pout of her still-swollen belly. "Because it's more fun eating. --I'm still so fat..."

Kenshin turned a reproving look to her. "It's not fat. You haven't even healed yet; be easy with yourself..."

Kaoru looked up from her dismal contemplation of her bulging belly to stare at him in consternation. "Like you have got any room to talk to me about half-healed wounds and being easy on yourself and--"

Kenshin was spared a response -- rather unfairly, in Kaoru's mind -- when Kiriko's vague fussing settled into a wail.

"Oh, heavens, what a time for diapers..."

"No," he said, smiling, "I think she wants her dinner even more than we do." He picked her up carefully, offering a fingertip; the baby tried it, enthusiastically and (of course) unsuccessfully, then protested his deception with much voluble indignance.

"Give her here," Kaoru laughed, untying the belt of her yukata and loosening it. She settled Kiriko against herself, cradling her in the fall of the fabric, and smiling down at the child. "Greedy little miss, wants her dinner now." She glanced up at Kenshin merrily, wondering if she'd just left herself wide open for one of those sweet-voiced teases.

The tender, wondering awe that burned in him stopped her voice short. Kenshin stood motionless, not even daring to breathe, staring down at her and their child... Kaoru bent her head quickly, a little frightened by the intimacy of the raw emotion in his face. To see him so utterly unguarded -- and to see the depth of his soul reflected clear as sunlight in his eyes... the vulnerability of it frightened her.

He shouldn't look at me like that. He shouldn't look at anyone and admit so much... so much love... the world is too cruel for him to admit so much to anyone...

Kiriko, obliviously intent on dinner, flailed a little fist in the air and struck her mother in a sensitive spot; Kaoru laughed despite a wince. "Patience, kitten..." She left the child where she was for a few more minutes, until the painful pressure of milk had been eased, then shifted her to the other side.

Kiriko yawned, hiccuped, nuzzled her cheek against Kaoru, and fell soundly asleep.

Kaoru stared down at her. "...Mou." She put the baby back in her basket unhappily. The baby's cries and nursing made the milk flow, whether or not the baby was too young to be hungry enough, and her left breast was still quite uncomfortably full...

"What is it?"

She looked up at Kenshin, guiltily startled. "Nothing, just that she didn't..." She couldn't say it, somehow; she put a hand to her burning cheeks, and ducked her head. "It's all right, just... uncomfortable. Never mind."

"It hurts?" he asked softly.

Embarrassed to complain of such a small thing to someone who had known so much agony in his life, she nodded a little, eyes shut. She heard the soft rustle as he sat next to her; her eyes flew open when she felt his hand at the collar of her yukata.

He eased the fabric off her shoulder, watching her for any protest; she was too stunned to do more than stare at him, and he let his hand slip gently down the slope of her shoulder. Still he hesitated a moment, looking into her face; she couldn't even blink, and he closed his eyes, then leaned across her lap, bending his head close. His breath was soft and warm against her skin.

Faintly, low-voiced, he murmured, "Do you mind... if...?"

Voiceless, Kaoru slid an arm around his shoulders, stroking his hair with her free hand, arching her back a little despite herself.

He sighed softly, in relief or gratitude or his own yearning, and brushed his lips against her breast. Tentatively, he kissed her, then licked at the milk which flowed; mute and almost gasping, Kaoru cradled his head against herself, speechless with both gratitude and incoherent need: it hurt now. Carefully, clumsily at first, he learned the rhythm of pressure and relaxation, and lifted a hand to stroke her skin in a gentle coaxing. The faint harshness of the sword-calloused places on his fingers made her ache for a reason entirely unrelated to milk-fullness... she bit back a cry of pleasure as he licked at the milk again, not wanting to wake Kiriko. He'd felt her response, though, and gently explored to see what else could make her shiver like that. Helplessly, Kaoru tangled both hands in the soft fiery blaze of his hair, thinking, How like him. How very like him. Easing one ache and causing another despite himself...

The rational part of her mind vaguely protested, Still sore from the birth--

The rest of her didn't care in the slightest: want him.

Megumi said--

Want him...!

Still cradling his head in the crook of her arm, she untangled a hand from the glory of his hair and ran her fingers lightly down his shoulder and his chest. He shivered too, and made a faint sound like a hungry kitten, looking up at her with the violet of his eyes hazed by pleasure -- and need. The hand he held cupped to her breast coaxed as gently as before, but his arm tightened fiercely about her waist, to pull her closer. It was taking almost the ends of her patience to wait for him to finish before she tried anything else...

For a long moment, he said nothing at all, only kissed her gently and looked up at her with some wordless question in him. Kaoru smiled down at him, tremulous, not trusting her voice either; he relaxed, his answering smile warming her through. He tried to sit up... and discovered that she still had a handful of his hair.

"You're not getting away, you know," she said hoarsely, and bent to kiss him. She could still taste the sweetness of milk on his lips. He lifted an arm to her shoulders, holding her first softly, then fiercely... and then, after a moment's sharp struggle, he let her go and pulled back-- if only to the length of her handful of his hair.

"Iie," he said, quiet-voiced. "Megumi--"

"I don't care."

"Iie--"

"I want you."

"So do I," he said, more intensely than he'd meant; her lips twitched into a smile.

"Good. Come back here." She tugged carefully; he leaned closer than he had to, even as he caught her wrist, the struggle flaring in his eyes.

"Koishii, I won't hurt you."

"No you won't," she agreed contentedly, slipping her free arm about his waist. "Feels so much better now... thank you... and I love you... and don't even try to tell me you don't ache too..."

He opened his mouth to deny it; she just looked at him, then pointedly dropped her gaze for a moment, then met his eyes again-- and was delighted by the delicate blush staining his cheeks.

"...Hai de gozaru."

"So it's my turn to help!" she teased, brushing the backs of her fingers against his pink cheeks. He swayed for a moment, torn.

"...I'm not going to hurt you."

Well, Kaoru thought ruefully, there's always an ambush. "No you're not," she agreed, entirely too tranquilly for his peace of mind, and reached. He was fast -- he had his feet underneath himself and was starting to step back when the tug warned him.

She was fast too. She had his hakama ties in one hand; the other was holding a fish knife. As Kenshin stared down, stymied, she gave him the smile of a cat with a full bowl of cream and slid the back of the fish knife between the ties, then twisted slightly so the spine of the blade was chilly against his ribs and the edge of it held the ties taut. If he pulled any more, he'd play right into her hands...

"Well?" she asked, in utter bliss.

"...Ororooo..."

Kaoru giggled. "Hush, you. It's not like I'm throwing you on the floor and ravishing you. --At least, not yet."

"Oro?!"

She tugged on the knife a little; threads parted, and Kenshin sank to his knees to preserve his modesty, if not his dignity.

Deciding this was good enough, she tossed the knife back toward the table and started fumbling with the knots. He caught her hands gently. "Koishii..."

"Hush," she said merrily, wishing for the millionth time he tied his hakama like a normal person; those ties she knew how to unknot in her sleep. "Don't want to wake your little koneko-chan, do we?"

Kaoru leaned forward and caught his gi in her teeth while her fingers dealt with the hakama despite his slightly halfhearted attempts to still her hands. She tugged on his gi a little, then lifted her chin to kiss the pulse-point in the hollow of his throat, and chuckled when he froze at that; it gave her the last two seconds of uninterrupted untying-time that she needed.

"Now what's funny?" he asked almost plaintively.

"If she's koneko-chan, that makes me the mama cat. --Mrrrowr." She rubbed her head under his chin, so the tickle of her hair would make him laugh; he laughed quite nicely, and lifted a hand to scratch behind her ear.

"There's a good kitty..."

Kaoru purred deep in her throat and leaned into his hands, then bit her lip to keep from giggling. He looked down at her with a half-comical alarm in his eyes.

"...Not a good kitty?"

"Not at all," Kaoru purred, and licked him enthusiastically until his laughter began to catch as he lost control of the pace of his breathing. Then, delicately, she nipped at the soft skin at his throat, and startled a yelp from him. He made a half-incoherent noise when she traced the pulse-vein in his throat with the tip of her tongue.

"Koishii, you... --you're making this... self-control ...very difficult."

"Aren't I just." She nuzzled her cheek against his chest, then ran her nails down his back to feel him shiver in her arms.

"Please--"

"Please what?" She trailed a line of kisses down his ribcage, then nipped at his waist. "Please, that? Or please... this?" He made a wordless, confused sound, eyes closed tight, both hands tangled in her yukata, caught between pulling himself away and pulling her closer.

Kaoru wasn't above a little torture to help him make up his mind, remembering how exquisitely uncomfortable the soft heat of his breath had felt against her aching breasts. She rubbed her cheek against his chest, tilting her chin so her breath barely grazed his skin, and let her fingers wander down his hip, and asked in a dangerously sweet contralto mimicry, "Do you mind...?"

His fingers tightened convulsively on her shoulders. She chuckled to herself, and licked his stomach just to hear him choke off a sound of pained frustration.

"Bad... bad neko-chan...!"

"Very," she agreed, reaching up to stroke him and barely grazing his skin with her nails. "Very bad neko-chan."

He looked down at her with a wild flare of hilarity mingled with the desperation in his eyes. "Should get Sano... to make you a collar... 'aku' on the tag..."

She nipped him for that. "Mou!"

"Fair's fair," he managed, his breathing ragged half from need and half from stifled laughter.

"I," Kaoru told him, "plan to be entirely unfair."

"Please do...?"

She ran her fingers down the soft skin at the inside of his thigh, trying not to think about it when her fingers met a scar entirely too close to the vein. She didn't even know who had left that one... she let her hand trail back up again, her nails leaving faint pink marks, and his hand tightened around her shoulder in a mute plea.

It's not that I want to hear him scream, Kaoru thought ruefully. Kami-sama, I know what it sounds like when he screams; I never want to hear that again... I just want to crack that restraint of his, just once. I want him to be lost the way he makes me lose everything, when all the world goes blind-hot like starfire... I know why he never lets himself lose everything; damn it, I know why he won't lose control, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Just once, I want to break him...

...if he did know, I'm going to kill him.

Kaoru smiled up at him. "Close your eyes."

"Nani?"

"Closed?"

"Mm..."

Kaoru chuckled to herself, and bent her head.

He made a half-strangled, whimpering sound of shock when he felt her tongue and her lips... and pressure, and release, and pressure; she remembered his rhythm...

...and then, ever so carefully, her teeth.

Some time later, when he'd uncurled a little and had mostly stopped shaking, Kaoru fought back a smile as she snuggled her head under his chin. He made a plaintive little noise, then shifted a weary hand to scratch behind her ear.

"That... was not fair."

"I know," she said proudly, and scratched under his chin. He coughed hastily, so as not to be visibly laughing at her.

"If all's fair in love and war... remind me never to face you on a battlefield..."

"Mm." Kaoru snuggled against him and tugged his free hand around her waist... what there was left of it, she amended morosely. --Not that he seemed to mind at all. She should have guessed how he'd react to teeth, particularly since she'd already noticed he liked to nibble... well, any man would probably react to teeth just there... but it was gratifying to find out that she could do that to him; he'd melted every bone in her body often enough that revenge was nothing but payment overdue...

Something rumbled softly. She looked up at him, amused by the thought that he was purring at her, until she realized that he was looking at her with just as much amusement. And then she realized the sound had come from her stomach growling.

...That blasted fish...

"We were busy before, weren't we," he sighed.

Kaoru said against all hope, "You were making dinner...?"

"I," he corrected wearily, "was teaching you to bone a fish so you can l-"

"Mou." She tugged her yukata straight again, grumbling, "This is all your fault anyway--"

He stammered and spluttered and finally came up with, "My fault de gozaru ka?"

"Yes! If you weren't so annoyingly lovable, you wouldn't have made me fall in love with you, so we wouldn't have gotten married, so you wouldn't have, er... you wouldn't have gotten me so extremely pregnant recently, so we wouldn't have a baby who falls asleep in the middle of her dinner, so you wouldn't have... --you wouldn't have started me thinking about... things. --And if you weren't so stubborn about not hurting me, I wouldn't have had to... get creative, so you wouldn't be so flattened right now. So it's all your fault." She crossed her arms and glared at him hopefully. It became much easier to glare when she realized how desperately he was fighting not to laugh at her.

"So I suppose that means I should cook dinner."

"Yes."

With a heartfelt groan, he added, "So I suppose that means I have to move..."

Despite herself, Kaoru giggled. "Well... I suppose maybe that part is kind of my fault."

"Yes!" he agreed, sleepily emphatic.

"Mou! You didn't have to agree that much..."

"Mm." With another groan, he pushed himself to his feet, drifted over to collapse as much as kneel at the table, and picked up the fish knife, glowering balefully down at it. To avoid finding out whether he really could cook a fish with the heat of his glare, Kaoru crept over beside him and snuggled her head against his shoulder again.

"Got another idea..."

"Oh, no," he said feelingly.

She smacked his shoulder. "My last idea was good."

"Yes," he agreed, "but I don't know if I can survive another of your ideas without a while to recover--"

She smacked him again, despite giggles. "You'll like this one too."

"What is it de gozaru ka?" he asked in a very small voice, struggling with a smile despite his valiant attempt at wide terrified oro eyes.

"Don't want to take the time and the energy to set the fire and boil the water and season the fish and cook the fish and do the dishes and all that?"

He shook his head gloomily.

"One word, two syllables," she said, running a finger down the ridge of his nose and patting the tip. "Su-shi."

His eyes lit; the entire room warmed with the summer-bright delight in his smile. "You are a brilliant, brilliant woman, koishii..."

"I am a lazy, lazy woman," she retorted, trying to distract herself from the shining of his wonderful eyes. "And even I can't mess up cooking something I don't cook, ne?" She took the knife from him and looked at it with a jaundiced scowl.

"Still rather be cutting your hakama off you..." she added wistfully.

"Daijoubu de gozaru yo!" he said hastily, pink-cheeked. "I don't sew very straight seams--"

"Which would make it easier next time-- oh, never mind. Dinner first, right?"

"Hai, hai! Let me show you--" he bent over the fish, making a great show of industry. "The flesh has a grain, you see? So you should either cut along the grain or across it; against the grain cuts badly... here, like this..." Kenshin put his arm around her to guide her knife hand; she sighed contentedly, and snuggled her head against his cheek.

"...mrr?"

"No."

"...mrrrrrr?"

With a faint note of strain in his voice, he repeated, "No."

"But kitty likes fish."

Kenshin spent several bemused minutes trying to decide how he could possibly respond to that.

"Mrrrrowr?"

Kenshin gave a shuddering sigh, closed his eyes in a brief moment of prayer, and cut off a piece of fish and turned to her with sheer deviltry in his smile. He held the piece slightly higher than she could reach from where they knelt on the floor -- he wasn't that much the taller of the two of them, but an inch or two was all he needed -- and he said sweetly, "Here, kitty..."

She lunged.

"...oro?"

Sitting on his chest, chewing the piece of fish and licking his fingers, she mumbled, "Told you cats like fish." She leaned over and cut a piece off the fish and held it a bit past the end of his nose. "Here, kit-"

For a bare instant, his eyes flared gold.

Flat on the floor, with him now kneeling over her -- carefully, so as not to put any pressure on her belly or her breasts-- Kaoru watched him nibble the piece of fish out of her fingers, and thought dazedly, Where on earth did he get the energy for that? He licked her fingertips, then rubbed his head softly against the limp stunned arch of her hand, with a quiet rumble that reminded her more of a small lion than a large cat.

Oh, dear, she thought. I may have given him one idea too many... but she murmured, still a little breathless from landing so quickly on the tatami mat, "Nice lion. Lovely soft fluffy lion..." She stroked his hair wistfully, and breathed, "Kirei..."

"Rrrrrrr." He caught her finger in his teeth.

"Nice lion-sama-- you don't want to bite me," she yelped. "The fish tastes much better than I do."

"Really?" he murmured; she could feel her face burning.

And it's not like I have any room at all to beg him to play fair... oh dear, oh dear...

He paused from chewing on her fingertips just long enough to turn and cut her another piece of fish; then, with a particularly feral smile, took one end in his teeth and bent to offer her the other. The length of his hair spilled forward over his shoulder and settled against her throat and her breasts, shifting softly with every breath, and every frantic beat of her heart. With much trepidation, she accepted the fish... and tried not to squeak when he caught her lower lip in his teeth and nibbled gently. He let her go long enough that she could swallow her fish; breathless, she stared up at him.

"I think.... this has got to be the most interesting way of serving a meal you've ever shown me..."

Her lion choked, gasped, and burst out laughing; he sat back on his heels to scrub the laugh-tears out of his eyes, and managed to wheeze, "Don't... don't try this with guests around... --poor Dr. Gensai...!"

"No, I don't think that would be a good idea." She propped herself up on her elbows long enough to reach the knife and the fish and sawed off another piece at random, grain or no grain. This one she held out with a thoroughly satisfied smile: "Here, kitty."

This time when he lunged for the piece, he caught her fingers in his teeth too... and... chewed, and licked, and... --and he still had his hands free--

--Kami-sama...

When she could breathe again, she wailed, "And you said I wasn't playing fair!"

Kenshin finished chewing the fish, and swallowed, and said contentedly, "That's what you get for laying down a challenge, you know. All's fair in love... and..."

"Oh... --help...?"

"Rrrr."

"...oh... oh... --HELP--!"

"...think you won..."

"...doubt it... call it a draw...?"

"Mm... just a second..."

"...oh, nice kitty...!"