Ten Things I Hate About Mitsuhide

Chapter 32: Renegotiation

It was as if the hallway was neutral territory, a fragile tentative peace, and any words or action would shatter it.

I took Mitsuhide's hand, and he silently led me back to his room, where the windows were still open to the night. If I expected him to fall upon me in sudden passion, I would have been disappointed. Instead, he walked me to the center of the room, then took his time creating an atmosphere.

He lit that incense, shuttered lanterns, blew out candles until I was standing in a pool of moonlight.

When he moved to shade the window, I finally spoke. "Don't." I wanted to see him. More than that, I wanted him to see me. To know it was me, not Mai. It mattered. It was too late for me to turn back, and I wouldn't, not now, even if he was fantasizing me as someone else, but I wanted him to be reminded whenever he looked at me, just who it was with him.

He hesitated at the open window then gazed back to me while the moonlight softened the sharp angle of his cheekbones. For the first time, I could see that I was not the only one who had been caught up in indecision. Finally, he turned away from the moon, leaving the window uncovered as I had asked.

He strolled over to me slowly. I don't believe that he was giving me one last chance to change my mind again, no, this was him being theatrical. When he met me in the center of the room, he reached out, and freed my hair from the complicated knot that Mai had helped me achieve this morning. It curled around my face, wavy, because it had been damp from a bath I had taken on board Nobunaga's ship when we'd put it up.

He took his time pushing my hair this way and that, to the point that I couldn't stop myself from saying, "If you wanted a doll to play with, you should find a child's toy."

He left off his stylistic interpretations, then destroyed whatever he'd been trying to do with it by tangling his hands in it. "Impatient?"

I shrugged, not really having the courage to talk through my I-don't-know-if-it's-me-you-want-or-what-you-are-doing-with-me-to-begin-with crisis. I mean... he hadn't even tried to kiss me yet. I didn't know if the theatrics were to benefit him or me. Maybe this was just his style?

"Ah." As if my shrug had answered his question, he slithered behind me, standing so close that I felt the rhythm of his heartbeat through our clothes. He wrapped one arm around my waist, holding me close as he pushed my hair to the side and bared the back of my neck. As always his fingers felt cool against my skin.

After a couple of feather-like touches across my neck, almost as if he were drawing an invisible X, I felt his lips press against that spot, just as lightly and gently as his finger had traced it. Without moving, he undid my sash, easily, dexterously, and it slid to the floor. The cool night air tickled my skin, and I shivered when he tugged my sleeve down.

I was nearly dressed still, just one shoulder exposed to the room, to him.

After another whisper of a kiss on my skin, he stepped away. "Don't move."

Of course I moved.

I turned to watch him rummage through bottles he had on the shelf, lifting one, then another, as if he were a mad scientist. When he turned back to me, he was holding two small jars – some kind of perfume, maybe? The only acknowledgment that I had disobeyed and moved, was a tiny lifting at the corner of his mouth. He had known I would watch him.

"What are those?" The room already was smokey from the incense. I didn't see the point in adding another aroma. Were these the scents that Mai wore? What if, being unable to darken the room enough to fool his eyes, he was determined to confuse his olfactory sense instead?