Married to the Mafia

Chapter 8

Akashi was kissing me.

And I was kissing him back.

My body was on fire from just a simple kiss. This is what I had been missing in my life, this spark, this joy, this flame. No one had ever come close in the seven years we had been apart and my body just reacted. It remembered the taste of him and they way he moved. His hands gripped my waist, pulling me closer while my own arms were around his neck, burying into the all familiar feel of his hair. 

We had been apart for so long, had only one small and angry conversation in over seven years but here and now, with him holding me tightly and my body wanting more it was like no time had passed at all. This felt right. For the first time in a long time I felt movement in the broken thing inside of my chest. 

We broke apart for air but then he was back, his lips trailing from my jaw to the sensitive spot of my neck that he always knew would make my toes curl.

"You are everything I remember you to be. God I have missed you."

It was those words that woke me up enough that I braced my hands against his chest and pushed, just enough to make him back up one step.

"Tetsuya, what's wrong?

"Don't touch me anymore, please."

When I looked up, tears in my eyes he yielded another step. 

"Are you in pain? I should kill that bastard for laying a hand on you."

His once smouldering eyes turned cold but I held out a hand, stopping him from attacking the unconscious man beside us.

"No, it's not a physical pain. How can you say you missed me when you are the one who left?"

He looked over to me and there was that flicker of emotion. It looked almost like, guilt, shame and pain. There was a deep pain behind his eyes that he was trying so hard to mask. I couldn't figure out why, why he was the one who was hurting. 

"I was the one left behind. Left alone. How dare you look like you are the one who has suffered?"

The tears were coming in a silent stream now but I couldn't stop them if I wanted to. Everything that I had felt that morning I had woken to find him gone had come crashing back in a painful tide. 

He moved towards me and I swung at him but he easily parried the weak blow and then he was standing right in front of me. He reached up and cupped my check, his thumb wiping away the tears and running along the cut on my lip.

"I promised I would never hurt you, that if it happened I would walk away. Everything I do, everything I have done has always been and always will be for you. I don't care if my body has to bleed, if I have to die, as long as you are safe and happy, I will make any sacrifice." 

"I don't-I don't understand what you are saying! You left me when I needed you to the most! How is that protecting me? How is that love?!"

He lent down and placed a kiss on my head and there was something so gentle and kind in that motion that my cold chest shivered at the sensation. This was a side of Akashi that I had not come to know, it was the side to him he kept hidden but he stood before me, eyes and face more open then I had ever known. He was hiding nothing from me. He was like a beast exposing his neck, giving me everything.

"I have not loved or held another since the day you walked into my house."

His words echoed around inside of me. There was no trace of a lie, he was being completely open and honest.