I feel like I realized as far as I wanted to with this one. Truth be told, I had the ending in mind really early and I was glad the flow of it led there. Sometimes things go askew.

Oh man, live action Enishi. Soon.

Disclaimer: see part 1

The hospital room was painted an off white that was probably meant to be less severe and institutional than stark white, but somehow made Kaoru think of dirty sheets. After that random thought buzzed through her mind, she suddenly remembered that she had rejoined civilization because of the droning of a television in the room next door. Glancing to her left, she saw Enishi spinning a bottle of pills on its side lazily while staring out the window.

He had stayed with her…

"Hey," was all she could think to say, weirdly exhausted. As she raised her hand to gesture at him, she noticed the IV attached to her with displeasure when she felt the adhesive pull at her skin. "What the hell…?"

"Apparently, you were severely dehydrated. Which only makes sense if you were giving me the majority of the purified water instead of dividing it equally between us as I instructed you." The deadpan voice was somehow also full of recrimination.

"You're larger and you were doing more physical work, it made sense to me at the time."

"And here you are." He stopped spinning the pill bottle and pocketed it in some scrubs he was inexplicably wearing. "What would have happened if you had collapsed while we were out there?"

Kaoru smiled as he finally turned towards her, knowing his glower better than her own face after so many days without a mirror. "I assume you would have figured something out. You always do." He scowled at her but didn't disagree. "So… how did we end up here? Everything is so fuzzy… is it even the same day?"

"No." He paused and gave her a funny look Kaoru couldn't quite place before continuing. "We were transported here yesterday evening after waiting for additional instructions at the airfield for hours. You were given additional sedatives here when you became, ah, belligerent about the nurses changing your clothing and putting in an IV." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Before you went out the second time you told them to stop bothering you and pay attention to me as I was the one with a 'gaping hole in my back'. After forcing me to disrobe as well, they had me in surgery last night." He pulled up his shirt and Kaoru got an eyeful of abs before she saw the neatly wrapped bandages.

"Why in the world would you have hid something like that from them? I refuse to feel bad for ratting you out."

"I was healing acceptably."

A woman with a badge rushed in and gave a relieved gasp before calling out behind her in a language Kaoru didn't speak. She approached Enishi, saying something that sounded like scolding, and Kaoru wondered if maybe some inflections transcended speech. Enishi, for his part, didn't respond at first, then gestured towards the empty bed next to Kaoru's. More words came from the nurse before she turned to Kaoru and spoke in heavily accented English.

"Tell your friend he cannot leave his room." She paused. "Or steal clothes!" Well, that explained why he wasn't in a hospital gown like Kaoru's.

"One bed is exactly like another," Enishi said, also transitioning back to English. "Just take the piece of paper with my name scribbled on it and slide it into the placeholder outside. I have all the silly medications you gave to me, there isn't anything else to move. End of discussion."

The woman tried to appeal to him in Chinese once more, but Enishi truly was done talking about it so she threw up her hands and exited. Kaoru wondered if they would return with security to remove him to his room, or if they would let him have his way. Not so secretly, she hoped they would let him stay in her room. She wasn't ready to be parted from him yet and she was afraid if he left her sight now that he would disappear out into the world like a ghost.

"How are we even supposed to leave? I have no ID, no money, absolutely nothing. How are they even going to figure out who we are?"

Enishi wandered away from the window closer to her bedside. "There are flight manifests, records of tickets purchased, etc. and I imagine the embassy will find us at some point if we don't find them first. We're not the only survivors, we're merely the last they think they'll find. We apparently missed the first crush of press interested in the story, so we'll probably be left alone."

Kaoru was relieved there were other survivors, but she suspected Enishi was more concerned with remaining as anonymous as possible. After so long away from people, Kaoru had to admit this was already a bit overwhelming. Adding in the language barrier, it actually felt almost as isolating in this hospital full of people she couldn't talk to as the island itself.

"Do you think someone could get me a laptop? Or a phone or something?"

Looking at her like she was mad, Enishi put the pieces together fast enough. "You wish to contact your family."

"I mean, they probably think I'm dead. Knowing Misao, she's been saying she thinks I'm alive while secretly thinking I'm dead but I don't think I want to leave her in suspense." Kaoru looked at the beeping monitor hooked up to her and then back down at the IV. It had been a long time since she had been in a hospital, since her parents probably. "Maybe it would be nice to hear her voice even if it will be all screaming and blubbering. Don't you have someone you need to contact, too?"

Enishi quirked an eyebrow her way. "Everything I need to do should be done in person."

"Let me guess, it's all about those bad guys you work with doing that job you won't tell me about." She sounded petulant. "Are you telling me you seriously have no one…?"

"No. Drop it." His jaw clenched, as did his fists. She was pushing buttons she knew he had but Kaoru had never approached. Sometimes triggering conversations were healing and sometimes they were merely waving red flags in front of bulls, and Kaoru knew when to back away.

But at the same time unwilling to fully relinquish the topic, Kaoru added, "In the future, if you get into a terrible accident and you're not sure if anyone would like to be told that you're ok I know that I would appreciate a call."

Sighing, Enishi sank into the bed next to Kaoru's and pulled the dividing curtain with a sharp metallic shifting of ball bearings. "There's a button on the side of the bed, if you call someone in I'll translate for you. But you probably don't want to use a phone given there's a roughly thirteen hour time difference."

"Thank you, Enishi, truly."

"Don't mention it." On the other side of the curtain he must have drawn the shade because the room became perceptibly darker. "Really, don't mention it."

Kaoru felt like she had had all the energy she needed to perform all the daily tasks she had set herself on the island, but somehow simply laying around in a hospital bed was infinitely more exhausting. It was probably accumulated stress and she wondered if maybe she should invest in some therapy when she got back home.

Once a laptop was brought to her, which took hours to procure, she slowly tapped out a message to Misao. It took a lot longer than she expected because for one she was still pretty groggy and for another the laptop had a Chinese keyboard and it was severely disorienting to navigate. Then there was the fact that her email site was apparently blocked in China, but once she started griping about it Enishi worked some kind of magic and handed it back to her with a browser up, in English, with an email login page.

Kaoru painstakingly typed out one email roughly outlining things and then sent it en masse to her friends and family. There were also awkward moments where she had to decide if she included Aoshi or not on the email, and changed her mind at least twice. In the end she included his work email. She mentioned that she would not have reliable access to computers or phone but she would try to contact them as she could, suddenly also realizing that she didn't have any of their phone numbers memorized. Damn it all, she'd have to rebuild her contact list! Yet another indignity to stack on to the hours in the passport office and DMV, and who knew what other governmental office as she reestablished her identity on plastic cards.

In her rambling email not once did she mention Enishi by name. Somehow, she was sure he didn't want that, even though she wanted to sing his praises and complain about him in the same breath. That could be saved for when Kaoru saw Misao in person. She'd probably have a lot of time to speak with her cousin now that she was almost certainly fired from her job as well. It occurred to her that she should probably be responsible and send an email to her boss and coworkers, but for once Kaoru felt a rebelliousness of spirit and instead shut down the browser and handed the computer to Enishi.

"You can undo whatever you did to get me to my email, I think I'm all done."

He didn't say anything from his side of the curtain for long moments.

"Tomorrow we go to the embassy."

"Ok, boss." She injected exactly enough sarcasm into that word that she was rewarded with a snort. That was just as good as a laugh out of a normal person and she tried to settle into a comfortable position despite the IV preventing her from laying on her side. If she had a shoe she would have thrown it at the wall since her surely deaf neighbor was still blasting whatever TV program featured constant talking heads and audience laughter.

She had wanted to be rescued, she reminded herself, and once she got home and back to normal then all this would be a funny anecdote she would relay at parties or something. And Enishi…?

We.

Kaoru lay back with an unbidden smile.

For a twelve hour flight, Kaoru was given two pills, one to be taken directly before boarding and one to be taken eight hours later. The laundry list of side effects were upsetting—sedation, dizziness, weakness, confusion, difficulty speaking, hypersensitivity—but the thought of being fully conscious and fully screaming while she and Enishi flew over the Pacific Ocean was far worse. And the last time she had accepted a pill over conscious memory of a flight she was mentally unable to process it had turned out ok. Thanks to Enishi. So Kaoru didn't really have any reason to think this would be any different. She had even had a chance to send another email about her flight details, in hopes that Misao would be able to fly out and meet her.

And maybe they could take the train together back home.

Yet another airport worker was speaking to Enishi about her instead of asking her questions directly, but she barely snapped at them this time. He did, after all, essentially intercept anyone who was moving towards them too quickly and his very physicality wasn't to be denied. Kaoru was no shrinking violet, but Enishi radiated something that made people look at him then pretend like they hadn't been looking at all. In another life, with that hair and his build, he would have made a really convincing boy band member. So long as no one really asked him to sing. Or smile. Or dance.

Then again, as he maneuvered through the airport crowds with feline grace she could well believe he would be a good dancer if he thought the skill worth his time.

"You're falling behind." Enishi had come to a full stop rather than continue at his brisk pace to the gate, and Kaoru had nearly run into him after a step or three. Her outstretched hands braced against his back, and she saw him wince with a hissing outward breath.

"Oh my gosh, I didn't mean to, I know your stitches are still healing." He wasn't interested in discussing his pain. This close, Kaoru wished he would turn and embrace her like those nights they needed the warmth and cursed the timing of those inconvenient feelings. In the ill-fitting clothes given to them through the charity of the embassy she wondered what kind of picture they presented to outsiders. Travelers with no luggage, each of them clutching no more than boarding passes, pill bottles, and a small wad of per diem cash to buy some food or a magazine before the flight. Did they look like a couple? People were sort of treating them as one.

"You'll need to take your first pill soon. It will take time to work so you don't want to wait until we board." He turned towards her finally and Kaoru was pleased he didn't put any further distance between them.

"From hospital food to airport food. I almost miss the taro mash. Almost." They went to stand in line at a fast food place. "Do you… I don't know, miss anything about the island? I know it sounds stupid, I mean it's only been a couple days."

Enishi glanced down at Kaoru's earnest face and a strange emotion jetted across his face. "I miss the simplicity. It was easy to know what the next step was, what the day held." His moment of sincerity was over, however, and the mask fell into place once more.

"I felt like I had figured out something I was kind of good at, did you know I had a whole plan to grow a proper field of taro like a farm? It was nice to be useful, to be really doing something needed every single day. Answering phones and refilling coffee pots isn't nearly as fulfilling. And we were a good team, I thought."

"I agree," Enishi said, and their gazes held longer than Kaoru figured because the line had moved substantially by the time they faced forward once more.

As soon as Kaoru scarfed down her lukewarm sausage breakfast sandwich and lorazepam things got a little hazy. But at least she was sure she would be taken care of, because Enishi's large hands were guiding her shoulders through the airport and the heat of them radiated to her core. She hoped to everything holy she wasn't saying those thoughts out loud, but she supposed he would attribute anything weird she said to the drugs. Beautiful drugs. Beautiful Enishi.

Kaoru awoke with the crappy overlarge purple rayon dress she had boarded the plane in twisted around her waist, and she pushed off the crisp sheets to look around. The room was frigid for one. Blinds that would have rendered the room absolutely dark were only partially drawn and Kaoru stared out at what she assumed was a smoggy view of Los Angeles from some high-rise condo. It only took a moment to glance over at the walk in closet full of expensive suits and neatly folded exercise wear to figure out whose condo it was.

Taking a moment to put pieces together, Kaoru remembered the Chinese airport, fawning all over Enishi, taking their seats on the plane, falling asleep on Enishi, some sort of hazy argument about her pill (with Enishi), then much fuzzier memories of stumbling around and yelling… presumably at Enishi. Well, on the bright side, this was a pretty comfortable bed even if she felt like the mattress was on the hard side. No alarm clock, but then people used their phones for that for the most part. No art. No personal pictures. At least there was a rug on the hardwood, even if was a boring solid color. Everything looked modern and deeply lonely.

Venturing out of the bedroom, there was a living room that looked more like a dentist's waiting area with long narrow leather couches and a wide oblong coffee table. The kitchen had state of the art appliances that looked as if they had never been used besides the blender, dishes with honest to God dust on them, and a refrigerator full of bottled water and energy drinks. A quick look under the sink revealed a garbage full of molding take out containers, but then taking out the trash probably hadn't been his first order of business upon returning to his home.

Kaoru stared down at her feet, where the only polish left were flakes on her big toes, and thought about how she desperately needed some personal grooming time. Her hair was a bird's nest, she was a level of hairy that she never expected to reach except for that one time in college when she had tried to be more 'natural', and she smelled like weird soap from the Chinese hospital. It wasn't how she wanted to feel when she nervously approached the only closed door in the whole condo and gave a tentative knock before immediately rubbing the goosebumps on her bare arms.

Cracking the door when she got no answer, she finally found the only room Enishi actually lived in: his computer room. Huge monitors dominated the windowless wall. Empty energy drinks littered various surfaces along with wires and bits of technology that looked like projects. Neatly packed lines of wires were strapped in parallel to power sources, and hard drives hummed. Enishi swiveled around in his computer chair, lit only by the flashing monitors, and Kaoru tried not to startle as he swiftly stood and strode over to her while pulling off wireless headphones. He would have been intimidating if he had been the Enishi she had first seen on the island, suit clad and serious, but this Enishi was almost approachable in comparison. Barefoot, in a navy track suit, huge round glasses dominating his face. It felt like he was in a state not many people were privy to, and she felt herself blush even if the intimacy was imagined.

"Your glasses are enormous!" was all she could think to say before forcing her mouth shut quickly, and he rolled his eyes before turning back to his room and gesturing for Kaoru to follow. At least it was warm enough in here for her with all the humming tech.

"Obviously I haven't replaced my normal glasses, yet."

Kaoru tried not to giggle. "Yeah, but the fact that you have these means you bought and wore these at one time…" She picked up an empty can of energy drink and dropped it in a bin where more empties lay. "You really drink this much garbage? Do you even sleep?"

"Sometimes there are more important things to achieve than sleep. If illegal stimulants didn't have so many negative side effects I would still…" Kaoru's mouth was puckering and she knew it, but Enishi didn't stop his train of thought on account of her disapproval. "Here we are."

Looking at him curiously, she watched as he forced a smartphone into her hands. It was so new there was still a plastic screen protector on it that needed to be peeled away. It looked expensive. Enishi watched her, waiting for a reaction.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Kaoru finally said.

"It's yours. Connect to your email and contact your family. I suspect they came to the airport to find you, but as it so happened you were not in a mood to be steered and I wasn't about to leave you alone in the company of strangers until your relatives came to collect you." He talked about her like she was so much baggage, but the phone was a nice gesture so Kaoru figured maybe it canceled out the comment.

She turned the glossy phone about in her hands, feeling how thin it was, how sleek. "This looks brand new. It has to be expensive, I can't accept this."

"Don't insult me." Enishi watched her face carefully. "I know how much we both lost recently. This is something I can do, and I'm not often this altruistic." He went to sit down and continued to tap out information into an online form. It looked to Kaoru like he was filing an insurance claim, and it made sense that given how expensive all his stuff seemed that he would have some sort of travel insurance.

There was a low bench nearby at a worktable that had a soldering iron, some circuit boards, and not much else so she sat down there and pressed the power button. It had been a few years since she set up a phone, but there were sure a lot more welcome screens than the last phone she had bought. Eventually, she had to interrupt Enishi, which she did reluctantly.

"I need to connect to the wifi." She had called it over her shoulder, so when long fingered hands plucked the phone from her overhead she had to force herself not to lash out at him instinctively with an elbow. Smiling in a smug way that made Kaoru really wish she had hit him after all, he handed the phone back. Once she was connected to her mail she was awash in crazed and worried emails from Misao. Kaoru sent Misao her new phone number and waited, feeling guilty, for the inevitable call. "I don't even know your address. What do I tell Misao when she calls me?"

"I can send you anywhere she needs you to be." Enishi said, and in his computer chair with his wall of monitors he felt farther away than ever before even when moments ago Kaoru felt like he was too close for comfort. There was tension in the air that she hadn't noticed before, and she wondered if it was discomfort at Kaoru being in his inner sanctum or something else she wasn't fully grasping.

Instead of sitting there staring at him, she blurted out, "This may sound weird, but would it be ok if I used your shower? It's been a while since the hospital—"

"It's fine." He interrupted Kaoru before she could stumble through more excuses. He followed it up with his own stilted words. "I'm going to order some food. I assume you're also hungry."

"Starving."

It wasn't until she was getting into his enormous glass walled shower that she wondered why he had so willingly opened up his private spaces to her. For all his talk of not needing friends on the island, he'd certainly leaned in to welcoming her without much struggle. It was plenty to chew on in her mind as she rubbed expensive citrus scented body wash on tired limbs.

"I wish you could get clothes delivered, like food." Clad in his long black bathrobe, the charity underwear from the embassy, and nothing else, Kaoru munched on Chinese food in Enishi's weird living room and monitored her phone. It had been less than an hour, but Misao was too twitchy not to check her phone frequently.

"I can have clothes delivered." Enishi speared an eggroll with a chopstick and ate it in one bite.

"Undergarments and all, that fit me, in less than a day? Ha, right!"

He looked her up and down in a way that made her blood heat up, as Kaoru knew that after so long sleeping next to one another on the island he probably actually did know her body well enough to describe her size to a stranger. "Yes. But if I do you can't ask me where they come from. I won't know."

"Ok, I guess. I hope you don't mean they're stolen or something."

"No, but I also don't ask questions. Otowa has certain tastes and I can't guarantee you'll like it."

Kaoru's new phone rang, and she almost fell off her chair as she lunged forward and juggled it in greasy hands. Finally, almost shaking with excitement, she heard Misao's voice and hot tears pricked her eyes. She saw Enishi's form migrate towards the kitchen, his own phone to his ear as she heard him speak in staccato sentences to the person on the other end. Kaoru's focus was fully on Misao and the blubbering happiness and worry that she had been waiting to hear from someone, anyone, as the real proof that her life would have mattered to someone even if she hadn't been found. The emotions were life affirming, and Kaoru felt the love keenly.

She promised Misao that she would not fly again. She promised Misao that she would keep her phone by her side for the next year. She promised Misao that the next vacation of any sort she took would not be alone. She promised Misao that she hadn't skipped out of the airport as a cruel joke, that it had in fact been a mix of Enishi's overprotectiveness and lots of anxiety medication.

Then came the long pause from the other end that signaled all kinds of trouble. "Who's Enishi?" was the seriously loaded question.

"You know how I said there was another person on the island…?"

"Yes, and let me tell you, that was not enough information by half considering how long you were gone, and don't you even use that line that you used in the email about being tired or dehydrated or on drugs or whatever because you have a lot of explaining to do and don't you think for one second that I won't see if there are things you aren't telling me because I can sense it. I know you Kaoru Kamiya!"

Enishi had appeared back in the room, leaning against the entranceway to the kitchen with arms folded. "Your cousin is loud."

Misao heard that well enough, even in the background, and immediately began telling Kaoru that she had a duty to her family to inform them the about the kind of company she was keeping. Meanwhile, Kaoru wrangled Misao back into some semblance of a normal mood so that she could get details about which hotel she was staying at and how she needed a bit of time to acquire new clothes ("What do you mean you don't have clothes?!") before she got in a cab and met up with her. Soon, Kaoru swore, she would be with her and they would get a train home. Misao started to ask why they couldn't take a plane, but then seemed to think better of it when stony silence greeted that suggestion.

It shouldn't have been a relief to finish the conversation, but somehow it was. The comfortable silence with Enishi settled in, and that combined with a warm body and a full belly made Kaoru feel languid. So languid, in fact, that when Enishi pulled up the corner of his robe to again cover her bare shoulder where the overlarge article of clothing had slipped down, she practically leaned back against him. Ok, not just practically, she indeed leaned back against him and felt calloused fingers trace a light pattern against her clavicle.

"You don't need to leave so soon."

"I know I told you I needed help, but you've seen your promise through. I can't imagine someone taking better care of me." She covered one of his hands with hers to still it, and tried to strengthen her resolve. Now that she was home what she needed was family… right? "Besides, didn't you say that you were dangerous?"

"I said my lifestyle was dangerous, but you can infer the other." Kaoru felt his fingers leave her neck and comb gently through her long partially wet hair as it hung loose down her back. "There's nothing for you in your old home."

That wasn't for him to say. "I have friends and family! An apartment, a job—maybe—and lots of loose ends to tie up regarding a wedding I didn't have. I can't run away from that."

"You've spent the past two weeks telling me, without my asking, about how trapped you feel by all those things. Do you feel trapped with me?" Gently, he pulled her hair so that she had to look up at him. Even behind those ridiculous glasses she could see that there was something in his eyes that seemed familiar and at last she could put a name to it. It lit her nerve endings on fire in a way Aoshi's fond glances never had. This was desire, maybe even covetousness.

Kaoru realized he was still waiting for an answer. "No."

"Maybe I'd like to trap you with me." When he leaned down to kiss her, he must have felt her hesitation because he pulled back just enough before their lips touched to say, "You don't remember anything you said to me on the plane, do you?"

Oh lord, no. No, she didn't. Not specifically, anyway. She assumed she had blubbered on about how handsome he was and how gentlemanly he had been on island because that's all she allowed her conscious mind to stray towards so how could Non-Sober-Kaoru have communicated something salacious enough to bring on this transformation?

"I'm thinking maybe I propositioned you?" She hazarded a guess, as mortified as she was.

"You proposed. Multiple times. Loudly." He was enjoying her embarrassment, the bastard. "You said you wanted to make an honest man of me after all those nights we slept together. Loudly."

Kaoru was wishing the floor would swallow her up and she pulled his robe around her more closely, awash in what she assumed was his scent even if it wasn't precisely the one she knew from the island. "I can say absolutely truthfully the last thing I want to do right now is marry anyone. I thought you barely tolerated me, anyway." She mumbled the last bit, half to herself.

His response was susurrus but seemingly serious. "Let's just say that you reminded me there are some things I might want in my life that money can't buy."

What the heck did he mean by that?

"…And you also kept complaining to me that you didn't get a proper honeymoon." Back to mocking.

A memory from the flight hit her like a sledgehammer, rubbing a small circle against his tense inner thigh, whispering in his ear. He could help her, she had said, friends helped one another didn't they? She could just imagine how she had looked, lips parted and pupils blown while Enishi regarded her with that usual mix of disdain and disinterest. Feigned disinterest, it would seem. Maybe she had been too obsessed with how he kept her at arm's length to see every inch of ground she had actually gained.

"Kamiya, this is where you sputter excuses at me, reclaim your pretense at platonic friendship and walk out of my life." Enishi, now glacial and casually cruel, sat down across from her and picked up the last eggroll before tossing it aside with disgust and pulling out his phone.

"I'll stay, thanks."

"Don't worry your clothes will get here shortly and then you can—" Enishi looked at a loss for words, having already scripted his response to her retreat in his own mind. So much so that it took time to catch up to reality and set his phone back down. "What?"

Kaoru took a steadying breath. This was the man that saved her life, that guarded her like a bulldog across an ocean, and who seemed to have been rejecting her before she could reject him. Kaoru wondered who taught him that move. "You asked me to stay for a while longer, and I said yes. Even if you seem to want to torment me a bit, I think there's a piece of you that might be sincere about this. So I'll take the bait."

Enishi glanced out of the living room window at the vague outline of a city beyond for a time, thoughtful skepticism playing over his handsome face. "Did you call me bait? What's the prize?"

Kaoru bit nervously at an overlong thumbnail, not hard enough to break it, more scraping it across the tips of her bottom front teeth. "Friendship?" she hazarded, knowing that was the closest thing to a bald lie she had told him in the time of their acquaintance. That overlarge robe fell off the same shoulder as earlier, and Kaoru's breathing sped up so much that she had to hold her breath to calm it down.

He looked at Kaoru like she had sprouted wings or something, then ground out a gravelly laugh. In the entire time they had been together he hadn't laughed like this, like something about what she said honestly surprised him.

"You don't believe me!" Kaoru tried to be offended.

"You don't believe you." He pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes before replacing them and crossing his arms defensively. "Fine, I'll take the bait as well."

In the back of her mind, Kaoru wondered what Enishi thought he was agreeing to when she told him to 'see it through to the end'.

The other side of the robe fell off her shoulder, and Kaoru clutched the dark material to her chest tightly as their eyes locked. Muscles shifted as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. Kaoru audibly swallowed. She wasn't hungry at all after their meal but she felt ravenous.

Standing suddenly, Enishi ground out. "Go back to the bedroom. I don't want Otowa seeing you like this."

"Embarrassed about me already?" Kaoru threw out lightly, standing as proudly as she could manage, but there was a sting to his words she couldn't hide from her response. Maybe this bad idea was worse than she originally thought.

By her side before she could blink, she felt him grab the robe by its belt that rested at her hip level and pulled her flush against him. Hands sill clasped in front her, she marveled at how very different it was to be so close now that the energy between them crackled with unknown hours of pent up feelings.

"No. Not embarrassed."

He was still guarding her, Kaoru realized, trying to keep her separate from his other life. She would let him for now, but there would be a reckoning at some point. This close, it only took raising up on the balls of her feet to steal a kiss, and he leaned down to meet her halfway.

Otowa rang the doorbell in that way Yukishiro hated, pressing it over and over so that only first few chimes could fire. He was the one who had demanded these clothes immediately on pain of wiping out all her social media profiles, and he would really do it the utter prick. Open toed Louboutin tapping out her irritation, Hyoko dropped the Nordstrom's bag full of flouncy skirts and tops at the doorstep and stalked away. She was going to give Yukishiro a piece of her mind as soon as she found out what kind of slut this girl was that has somehow caught the eye of a man she had safely filed away as 'asexual' in her mental rolodex of hot men. Even thinking it was relaxing, even if she knew she'd never raise her voice in the boss' direction if she wanted to keep her fingers unbroken. The most recent acrylics she had applied were expensive and she wasn't about to wreck a good mani like that.

Gein, who had picked up the boss last night, had said this girl hadn't looked like anything special, spouting nonsense and flopping everywhere. Maybe it was a drug thing, but then the boss wasn't into that either. Traumatic life events changed people, though. Who knew what a couple weeks on a deserted island had done to his, admittedly volatile, mental state.

It wasn't for her to worry, though. The boss always had everything under control, ultimately. A little insanity was the price they paid for evil genius.