One Piece: Lust Haki

Her hand was on the back of my neck and it had been there for five seconds and neither of us was talking about it.

The stance drill had called for a correction. My chin was too far forward, weight shifted past my center line, and Gion had stepped behind me and put her hand on the back of my neck to adjust the angle. Two seconds for the correction. Her thumb found the groove along my hairline, the soft channel where hair met skin, and pressed. The angle corrected.

Her hand stayed.

Three seconds. Four. Her thumb moved along the hairline, a half-inch, tracing the groove. Too slow to be clinical. The training room was quiet and the late-afternoon light through the high windows was amber and the warm wood floor creaked under her heels and her hand was on the back of my neck and her thumb was moving and she hadn't said anything since the correction.

Five seconds.

She pulled away. Walked to the center of the room. Drew Konpira and settled into a guard stance with her back to me.

"Again," she said.

We trained. The session was real and it had been real for three and a half months. My Observation could track her reliably across the room now, the fuzz sharper than it had been in the first weeks, the reads coming in with enough lead time to dodge and sometimes counter. She moved and I followed and the tracking held even when she tried to mask her presence by going still and letting her Haki signature flatten. I found her. Every time.

The Armament was different. She told me to maintain hardening while moving through a combination. Right fist hardened, step, cross, maintain. I held it for the first exchange, my knuckles darkening with the Haki coating, dense and heavy. The second exchange it slipped. By the third my fist was just a fist again and the combination fell apart.

"Again."

I tried. Held it for two exchanges. Lost it on the third.

"Again."

Held it for one. Lost it on the step.

Gion sheathed Konpira. She stood in the center of the room and her mouth was a line and her arms were crossed inside her coat and she was looking at me with the look she used when the data wasn't matching her model.

"Your Armament should be further along by now." Her voice was measured and frustrated in equal parts. "Your Observation has progressed appropriately for the training hours invested. Your technique is sound. Your fundamentals are solid. But the Armament is inconsistent and the inconsistency has no obvious cause." She uncrossed her arms. "You have the potential. I can feel it in your Haki signature. The ceiling should be higher than this. Something is gating it."

Something is gating it. She was standing in the training room describing the Lust Haki mechanic without knowing it existed. My Armament grew through sex. Training gave me technique and efficiency, but the Haki itself barely moved without intimacy. She was right. The ceiling should be higher. And the gate was a crumpled piece of paper in my boot that said grow stronger through physical intimacy and a body that hadn't touched anyone the way the Note meant in three and a half months.

I couldn't tell her that.

"Maybe I need a breakthrough," I said.

The word landed in the room.

Gion looked at me. Her chin lifted a fraction. Her lips parted, closed, parted again.

"Maybe you do," she said.

She looked away. Toward the weapon rack. The calligraphy scroll on the far wall. Anywhere that wasn't my face.

"Session's over." She said it to the weapon rack. "Thursday."

I picked up my water bottle. My towel. The amber light in the windows was going orange and the water stain on the ceiling was in shadow. She was standing in the center of the room with her coat settling around her and her hands at her sides.

I left.

The corridor was dark and empty and my back was against the wall and my pulse was hammering.

I'd walked maybe twenty feet from the training room door. The corridor between the training wing and the officers' quarters was long and poorly lit, the overhead lanterns spaced too far apart, and the spaces between them were shadow. My shoulder blades were flat against the stone and my breathing was wrong. Too fast. Too shallow. Like I'd been sparring and not walking.

I pressed my head back against the wall. Closed my eyes. The ceiling was stone above me and the corridor was cold and I could still feel the groove along my hairline where her thumb had been and the word breakthrough was in my chest like a second heartbeat.

Footsteps.

My eyes opened. The sound was wrong. No heels clicking on the stone. The footsteps were soft, bare, skin on tile, and they were coming from the training room.

Gion was standing in the doorway.

She'd taken off her shoes. Her feet were bare on the corridor floor, pale against dark tile, and her coat was gone and the pink ruffled shirt was untucked from her trousers and her hair was still pulled back but a curl had come loose along her jaw.

"Vance."

"Vice Admiral."

"Don't call me that right now."

She crossed the corridor.

Her hand went to the back of my neck. The same spot. The groove along my hairline, her thumb pressing in. Her other hand went to my chest, flat, palm over my sternum, and she pushed me harder against the wall and came up on her bare toes and her mouth found mine.

She kissed me and the measured speech was gone. Her mouth was open and warm and her hand was pulling me down to her and the lipstick was waxy against my mouth and she tasted like wine and underneath that she tasted like herself.

My hands went to her waist. Gripped the fabric of the shirt. Pulled her into me. The space between us closed to nothing.

Without heels the top of her head was at my chin and she was stretching up into the kiss and her body was flush against mine and her breasts pressed against my chest through the shirt. My hands slid from her waist to her hips and pulled and her hips met mine and I was hard and she felt it.

She didn't pull back. She pressed into it. Her hips rocked forward, grinding against me through the uniform fabric, and my fingers dug into her hips and her mouth opened wider against mine and her tongue was warm and slow and the wall was cold through my shirt and her body was hot against the front of me.

My hands found the hem of her shirt. Under. My palms flat against the bare skin of her lower back. Her skin was hot and smooth and my hands slid up her spine, the vertebrae under my fingertips, and her back arched and her mouth broke from mine and she breathed against my jaw.

"Kael."

My name. She'd called me Vance for three and a half months and none of those had sounded like this. My name against my jaw with her bare feet on the corridor floor and her spine under my hands and my cock hard against her hip.

My Armament flickered.

My hands hardened. A flash, involuntary, the Haki coating my palms and fingers for a beat against the bare skin of her back. The density changed, my hands going heavier and harder against her, and she gasped. Her hands tightened in my hair and her spine went straight and the gasp was sharp and short and it went through my chest.

The hardening faded. My hands were just hands again. My Armament had been stuck for months and her body against mine had moved it in one heartbeat.

She didn't ask about the Haki. She kissed me again. Harder. Her hands in my hair pulling and her hips grinding and her tongue in my mouth and my hands on her bare back under the shirt and the corridor was dark and cold and our breathing was loud against the stone walls.

Her hands went to my belt. Her fingers on the buckle, the metal clicking, and my mouth went to her neck, the side of it where the curl fell, and I kissed the skin below her ear and she made a sound that was low and private and her fingers tightened on the belt buckle.

She stopped.

Her hands left my belt. She pulled back. Her forehead against mine, her breathing hard. Her heartbeat came through her chest where she was still pressed against me. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was swollen and her hair was half-down and the shirt was bunched up in the back where my hands had been.

"Not here." Her voice was rough. The measured cadence was gone. "Not yet. I need-"

She didn't finish. Her jaw worked. She opened her eyes and they were dark and close.

She straightened. Stepped back. Her feet were still bare on the cold tile and her shirt was untucked and her lipstick was on my mouth and her lipstick was ruined and she ran one hand through her hair, pushing it back, and the curl fell right back along her jaw.

Her thumb traced my jaw. Once. Along the bone, from my chin to below my ear.

"Thursday," she said.

She turned. Walked back to the training room. Bare feet on tile, quiet, the pink shirt still untucked, and the door closed behind her.

The corridor was dark and her lipstick was still on my mouth.

I touched my mouth. Red on my fingers. Waxy, smeared.

Thursday.

I pushed off the wall. My belt buckle was loose where her fingers had been and my shirt needed tucking and none of that was happening yet because my hands were shaking and my hands hadn't shaken since the first day on the transport ship and Thursday was two days away.