Stopwatch, Rurouni Kenshin (Shishio/Yumi)
Title: Stopwatch Author/Artist: shiegra Rating: R Wordcount: 273 A/N: Rurouni Kenshin - Shishio/Yumi - time limit - he'd make those fifteen minutes seem an hour
The scars were harshly stimulating against her skin.
Yumi had learned her control from the best. She had been trained to show the proper reactions and manipulate those reactions; it had been child's play for years, to make men dance to her tune.
Now--now, she usually came away from bed with imprints from the watch she kept clutched in her hand marking her fingers with red.
Shishio was not a man to be manipulated or controlled. Never unkind to her, but never merciful. When he cut through his enemies as an assassin he had learned expediency, and even now, in the bedroom, as he hissed into the pale arch of her neck and his fingers curled into the black silk of her hair, he had all the steel and purpose of a sword.
Yumi touched him without restraint or disgust, always had. The twisted, slick runnels of scars slid against her, sometimes creating red marks of their own, and though the burns were cruel he was far from impotent. And against her, it felt--indescribable.
Before he'd ever laid her down beneath him, stripping her to mortal skin and her dark, challenging eyes, she'd told him he was like no man she'd ever met.
And now--clutching at the tense, arched muscles of his shoulder, her voice rising in a taut cry as her sweat slick skin presses against the furnace of his body--she knows that though the meaning has changed in her mind, they are still probably the truest words she has ever spoken.