Romancing the Kazekage- A Gaara Love Story

Lust

Home.

It was a word Ai had no use for, for she never knew "home". Orphaned at a young age and adopted by the Tea House; hundreds of women became her mother, for moments, for days, never forever. She was raised in these glass walls, on these marble floors she learnt how to walk, how to dance, how to seduce with her gait. Within these rooms, she had learnt how to talk, how to recite poetry, how to sing like the skylark. Everything she was, was because of this place, the Tea House; it defined her and it was, as much as she could not understand the term, home.

She even had her own room here, her own fountain room, her own balcony. Was any of it…hers? Did anything really belong to her? Clothes, jewelry, books that she had been given all disappeared when they had served their purpose; she never wore the same dress twice, nor the same gems and she never needed to read a book twice. As a commodity herself, as an object of value, to be exchanged and sold, how could she ever own anything?

The young courtesan sat now, on her swing that hung in her balcony. Knees drawn up to her chest, dressed in a simple white nightshirt that came to just above her knees with plain silver anklets tied to her feet for she could not be without them. She had not worn a veil on her head in days; what was the need? No makeup, which was unusual practice considering that at the palace she had had to wear it every day.

But she was not at the palace, she was back, alone and silent, on her swing, letting the breeze of Sunagakure gently rock her back and forth in the light of the sunrise.

The heat of the desert was filling the air around her but it felt so far away. Ever since leaving the palace, everything she experienced seemed distant; conversations sounded like the last echo in a valley, colour faded and surrendered to monochrome, emotions, once a deep ocean of swirling chaos, now felt like the irritating drip of a tap in a nearby room.

Miko, her friend, along with other girls of the Tea House, had come to her room yesterday evening and, in an attempt to alleviate her melancholy, they had steamed her hair with fragrance of the jasmine flower. She could smell it now, the blossom jasmine on the wind and she frowned with remembrance; the dancers had sat Ai at her ancient, glass dressing table and ran a brush through her long silken hair. They had talked and sang around her as she remained quiet, staring into nothingness. She had not even noticed Miko kiss her head and say goodnight, or the other girls giggle and ask her how Gaara was as a lover.

At the thought of him, Ai shut her eyes tightly; she wanted to be rid of him. That wretched, wretched, boy! He had a hold on her like none she had ever known; Ai could think of nothing but the beauty of his face, the caress of his voice, the lick of heat that flickered inside of her when they had kissed.

"No!" She shouted, held her legs tight to her chest and buried her face into her knees. "Leave me alone." She whispered as she rocked, "leave me alone."

Days without him were long, they had passed with moonless nights and she had survived through them on heavy sighs. What had happened that night, the night she kissed the Kazekage, had exhausted and terrified her. The girl was put through severe emotional and physical stress, more than her sensei had anticipated and so, in what Megumi thought was an act of kindness, she had forbidden Ai from entering the palace and from seeing the Kazekage again.

Megumi had no idea what was going on inside the girl's head for even Ai could not understand it. She tore at Gaara when he was around her, like a child pinching and pulling at the hair of another, she teased him and complained about him and challenged him. So why on Earth had Ai taken their separation with such vivacious heartbreak? One moment Ai was screaming not to be in the same room as the young Kazekage and the next moment she was screaming at those who pulled them apart.