One Piece: Lust Haki

Ain sat in the back of the training room for the entire session.

She didn't announce herself. She was there when I arrived, on the stone bench against the rear wall, her legs crossed, her notebook open on her knee, and a pencil held between her index and middle finger in a grip that looked more like a dagger hold than a writing position. She watched the full two hours of Gion's mentorship drill without speaking, without moving, without writing more than a few lines in the notebook.

Gion didn't acknowledge her. Vice Admiral mode. Coat, Konpira, heels, the measured voice giving corrections that sounded like strategic directives. She ran me through sustained Armament drills, then Observation range exercises, then a combination sequence that required holding the coating while reading incoming strikes.

The combination was hard. Splitting focus between maintaining the black sheen on my fists and tracking Gion's Observation feints, both skills drawing from the same well, the split grinding against my concentration. The coating flickered when my Observation spiked and the Observation blurred when I concentrated on the coating. Gion hit me twice during the lapses, open-palm strikes to the ribs that were pulled enough not to bruise but hard enough to prove the point.

"If you can't hold both, the Armament is useless in a real fight. A Logia user won't wait while you reinforce your fists."

"I'm working on it."

"Work faster."

Ain's pencil moved. One line. She didn't look up.

The session ended at 1100. Gion called a halt and I stood in the center of the room with my fists aching and my Observation frayed and sweat running down the back of my neck. Ain closed her notebook. She stood, tucked the notebook into her belt, and walked toward the door.

She paused at the threshold. Looked back at Gion. "His combination work is improving. The Armament-Observation split is still below combat threshold."

"Noted," Gion said.

Ain looked at me. Her reddish-brown eyes held mine for a second, the same clinical assessment she gave every recruit, and then she left. Her footsteps faded down the corridor. The training room door was open. The corridor was empty.

Gion walked to the door. Her heels clicked on the stone. She reached the doorframe, looked both ways down the corridor, and pulled the door shut.

The lock clicked.

She turned around.

"She watches you."

"She's evaluating technique. That's what Zephyr assigned her to do."

"She's evaluating you." Gion walked toward me. Her stride was different from the training stride. The heels hit the stone with more weight. Her coat was still on her shoulders but her hands were at her sides and her jaw was set and the composure she'd worn for two hours had a crack in it that Ain's presence had put there. "Every session. She sits in the back and writes in that notebook and her eyes don't leave you."

"She does the same thing with the other advanced recruits."

"She writes more when she watches you."

I didn't have an answer for that because I hadn't been counting Ain's notebook lines and Gion had.

She stopped in front of me. Close. Her perfume was there, jasmine under the training room smell of sweat and floor polish. Her eyes were dark and the lipstick was worn and the mole below her mouth was the anchor point my gaze always landed on when she was this close.

She put her hands on my jaw. Both hands, palms flat against my cheeks, fingers curling behind my ears. Her grip was firm. She tilted my face down to hers.

"This bothers you," I said.

She kissed me.

Hard. Her mouth was open and her teeth were on my lower lip and her tongue was against mine before I'd finished the sentence. She pushed me backward. Three steps. My back hit the training room wall and her body pressed against mine and her hands went from my jaw into my hair and she gripped and pulled and my scalp remembered the last time she'd done this and the memory made me hard in the time it took her to shift her hips against mine.

She was wearing her uniform skirt. Her thigh pressed between my legs and the pressure was deliberate and her mouth was still on mine and her breathing was rough through her nose and she was kissing me with a focus that had nothing to do with technique and everything to do with the woman who'd been sitting in the back of the room writing in a notebook.

I put my hands on her waist. Pulled her closer. Her body was warm through the uniform fabric and her hips were grinding against my thigh and the motion was small and controlled and getting less controlled with each repetition. Her hands were in my hair. Both fists. The roots ached.

She broke the kiss. Pressed her mouth to my neck. Her breathing was against my skin, fast and hot and uneven, and her hips kept moving and the grinding was wet through her uniform and mine and she was using my thigh and my hands on her waist and the wall behind me as leverage.

I lifted her. My hands under her thighs, Armament hardening through my forearms, and her weight came off the ground and her legs wrapped around my waist. She was light. The Armament held. I counted without meaning to: one, two, three. Her body pressed against mine and her skirt was up around her hips and the heat between her legs was through the fabric and against my stomach and she was grinding and my arms held and the coating stayed dark and solid.

Four. Five.

Her hands tightened in my hair. Both fists locked. Her breath hitched against my neck and her grinding got faster and less controlled and the sounds she was making were small and pressed into my skin, muffled, like she was trying to keep them between us and the wall.

Six.

My Armament cracked. The coating flickered and I set her down and my arms burned from the sustained effort and she was on her feet but her body stayed pressed against mine and her hands were still in my hair and she was close.

Her hips moved against my thigh one more time. Her breathing broke. A sound came out of her, low and sharp, and she bit my ear. Her teeth closed on the lobe and the pain was bright and specific and her body shuddered against mine and her fingers in my hair went rigid and she came like that, standing, pressed against me, her mouth on my ear.

"Mine." Whispered. Her lips on the cartilage. Her breath hot.

I was hard enough that thinking was getting difficult and my hands were on her hips and her body was still shaking with the last of it and the training room smelled like jasmine and sweat and her.

She stepped back. Her heels hit the stone. She smoothed her skirt. Buttoned the button at her collar that I hadn't unbuttoned because she'd done it herself at some point during the last two minutes. She straightened her coat on her shoulders. The composure rebuilt, but slower than usual, the flush on her neck visible above the collar.

She touched the bite mark on my ear. Her fingertip traced the indent of her teeth.

"Not here. Tonight."

"Tonight."

She unlocked the door. Checked the corridor. Walked out. Heels clicking, coat straight, Konpira at her hip. The Vice Admiral.

The training room was empty. My ear stung where she'd bitten it. The wall behind me was warm from my back. The lamps buzzed. A practice pad was on the rack from yesterday's session, still cracked.

I stood there for a minute. My Armament had held for six seconds under load, which was progress and also the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. The bite mark on my ear was going to be visible. I touched it. Sore, slightly swollen, the ridge of her teeth pressed into the skin.

Mine.

I straightened my uniform. Unlocked the door from the inside. Walked to the mess hall. The corridor was empty. My ear was red. The mark would fade in an hour. The word wouldn't.

I ate my fish. My ear stopped stinging by the second bite.