Twice Upon a Time

by Olivia Cunning

  “Oh,” she gasped.

  He began to thrust his fingers in and out of her body, with each inward stroke, the finger in her ass slid a bit deeper. Was that supposed to be so sexy? To feel that good?

  When her body had accepted the ful length of his finger, he thrust them deep with each penetration. She was calling out in ecstasy, but couldn’t seem to quiet her vocalizations even though she knew her voice must easily carry through the rice-paper walls. When she didn’t think she could take any more pleasure, he lowered his head and suckled her clit. Her entire body arched of the table as she came. Hard this time. Her pussy and ass contracted around his fingers in delightful spasms as she obtained true satisfaction. He worked both passages and her clit to prolong that orgasm until she was sobbing from its intensity.

  When she stil ed at last—well, other than those involuntary spasms that caused her to twitch every few seconds—Reece lifted his head.

  “Someone likes anal play,” he said.

  “I did not like that,” she said breathlessly. “I loved it.”

  “Are your arms tired?” he asked.

  She shifted her concentration from the pleasure between her thighs to other, seemingly unnecessary, body parts. Her shoulders were a bit uncomfortable. “Yeah.

  You can untie me now. I’m satisfied.”

  Reece chuckled. “I’m not. Watching you get off has me aching for you.” Chapter Eighteen

  Reece untied the bindings holding Lara’s legs to the table first. He rubbed her hips, to ease her muscles and then moved to the other side of the table to release her arms.

  She’d been so open during that entire session not just physically, but emotionally.

  Reece felt the need to reward her. He was just glad that idiot, Kojiro, had remained under his control the entire time. The guy ruined everything.

  Once Lara was free, Reece unrolled a mattress across the floor. She winced as she rotated her shoulders to regain her motility. Reece owed her a massage, which he was already thinking would be more his pleasure than hers.

  He took her hand and led her to the mattress. “Lie here on your bel y,” he said. “I’ll help you get the kinks out.”

  “I’d rather get my kinks on.”

  Reece laughed. “More of that later.”

  He washed his hands in a bucket of water before kneeling beside her on the mattress. He leaned across her body and massaged her back, starting between her shoulders and working his way down to her buttocks. She sighed in content bliss.

  “I’m going to insist you tie me up more often if this is outcome,” she murmured.

  He moved to straddle her thighs, acutely aware of how hard his cock was as he leaned over her and it slid up the cleft between the plump cheeks of her ass. She rocked back against him, nudging his bal s and changing his focus from wanting to relax her to wanting to excite her.

  He leaned over her and massaged her shoulders, rubbing his cock up and down the crack of her ass with the same rhythm. As he worked his way down to the middle of her back—working her muscles with the heels of his hands and his fingertips—he shifted his body farther down her thighs until the head of his cock was bumping against her anus with each rocking motion.

  She murmured something incoherent and lifted her hips. Reece repositioned one knee between her legs. When she relaxed and spread her legs wider, he moved his other knee and laid down across her back. He kissed her shoulders as he moved his pelvis against her ass in a sensual dance, seeking entrance to her body without the guidance of his hands. When his cock found her tight opening at last, he eased into her slowly, rotating his hips as he burrowed deeper. Hana hadn’t been lying earlier. She wasn’t a virgin. And currently, she wasn’t protesting. He was infinitely grateful that Lara was stil in control, because he couldn’t conceive of being without his Lara at the moment. She began to move with him, writhing her hips, rocking back to meet his slow thrusts.

  He slid an arm beneath her bel y and slowly eased her up onto her knees, his cock only slightly buried within her. He pressed a hand on her shoulders to keep her face on the mattress as he thrust into her from behind. He reached around to stroke her clit and seek her slick juices. When she began to moan and rock back against him harder and harder, he moved his hand to her ass and slid his slickened finger into her back entrance. She relaxed, accepting his finger deep and groaned in bliss when he began to rotate it inside her.

  Reece’s pleasure began to build, tugging at his balls, drawing him towards release.

  When he felt her orgasm grip his cock in hard spasms, he let himself follow her, driving himself hard into her body as the bursts of pleasure at the base of cock and deep inside sent him into an abyss of satisfaction. He groaned in bliss as his fluids flooded her body in hard pulses of ecstasy. He tugged his fingertip free of her ass and wrapped both arms around her waist, drawing her back against his belly as they col apsed on the mattress in front of them.

  That was when Reece lost his grip on his host’s actions and Kojiro returned. The coldness within his heart melted within the heat of his little ninja woman’s body.

  Still buried inside her, Kojiro kissed Hana’s shoulder with a tenderness he did not know he possessed. He’d known from the start that she was the one fate had chosen for him and these emotions, this pleasure, only solidified his feelings. Hana was his one.

  His only. His love. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew the sun would rise in East in the morning. That’s why he was so stunned when he realized her body was trembling beneath him, not because she was shuddering in mutual bliss, but because she was crying.

  “Hana,” he murmured, stroking her long black hair from her face. “Why do you cry, my love?”

  “H-how can I feel this way about you, when you are the one who kil ed my brother? I hate you. I must.”

  But he loved her. And she would love him, too. Very soon. He demanded it of her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lara blinked her eyes open when a beam of bright sunlight crossed her eyelids.

  Hana had spent the night lying beside Kojiro contemplating his murder and denying the tangle of confused emotions she was feeling. She’d eventual y passed out from exhaustion and apparently that al owed Lara to take the upper hand again, though she was feeling the effects of a mostly sleepless night.

  Reece was not beside her when she awoke, but her kimono was there, neatly folded. She got dressed and slid the door open. Had Hana been cognizant, she would have tried to escape and return to her village, but Lara just wanted to find Reece. As soon as she stepped onto the porch outside the room, a teenage boy stood and offered her a nod.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I am your chaperone, Hojo.”

  More like guard, she thought, and not a very good one. Hana could have easily taken him down with her mad ninja skills. Lara nodded in acceptance, however, and made her way down the wide wooden porch towards the lovely garden in the center courtyard. Trickling water fed into a smal pond. A bamboo tube on a pivot filled with water and dropped to thunk against a rock, spil ing water into an overflowing basin before returning upright to fill once more. Budding plants hinted at spring with tiny unfurling leaves in bright greens and deep reds. A bird chirped. An insect hummed. Lara descended the stairs and stood on a dirt path, searching the soothing area for signs of human life.

  “Where is Kojiro?” Lara asked the vigilant young man at her side.

  “He is training with the other samurai as he does each morning.” Lara imagined Reece shirtless and sweaty, his sculpted muscles straining with the exertion of his exercises. The corners of her mouth lifted with pleasure. “Can I watch?” When Hojo didn’t answer, Lara turned to look at him. He glanced wistfully to the East where the rhythmic shouts of maybe a dozen men could be heard. Lara assumed the samurai were making those sounds as they trained. “I am supposed to escort you to Aika so she can start teaching you to play the koto,” Hojo said.

  She’d much rather admire Reece than pluck strings
. “Just for a moment. You would like to watch them as well, wouldn’t you?”

  His dark eyes lit up with excitement. “I hope to start training with them soon.”

  “You wish to be samurai?”

  He nodded. “I will fight for our honorable Shogun. Do you wish to be samurai?” Lara took a step backward, thrown off-guard by his question. “Women cannot be samurai,” she said automatically.

  “There are very few,” he admitted.

  Lara hadn’t known that there were any female samurai, but then she hadn’t known there were any female ninja either. She wasn’t quite sure what the difference between the two types of warriors was. Was it merely social class? Fighting style? Rituals?

  Bushido? Whatever the heck that was…

  “Can we go watch the samurai train?” she asked again.

  “For a few moments, but then we must meet with Aika.” Lara nodded in agreement and offered him a friendly smile. She was surprised when he blushed and lowered his gaze. Did someone have a little crush on Hana? Or maybe he knew that she’d gotten off hard with her supposed greatest enemy the night before. They traversed the dirt path that led around the inside of the inner courtyard.

  Multiple traditional Japanese houses framed the glorious garden. There was something very comforting about the design. Lara took a deep breath, the tension of her body draining away. The path eventually took them between two houses to a sweeping vista in the foothills of the mountains.

  Hojo grabbed Lara’s wrist and tugged her down behind a large boulder. “They can’t know we are watching. Kojiro will be furious that I did not take you to Aika as soon as you awoke.”

  Lara silently cursed her kimono as she settled on her knees beside Hojo, hoping she was concealed by the rock because once she got down, it would take a forklift to get her back up and she was pretty sure they hadn’t been invented yet.

  “We’l just tel him that I slept in late,” she said.

  He smiled and turned his attention to the fourteen warriors going through drills in perfect synchrony. They used wooden swords as they practiced. It soon became apparent as to why they didn’t use their razor-sharp katanas when they trained. They held nothing back when they paired off and fought each other. Kojiro was the fiercest of the batch and, much to Lara’s disappointment, he was firmly in command of himself at the moment, which meant Reece was concealed from her eager gaze. So when Hana decided to take charge of her own body, Lara didn’t resist. She had no interest in watching fourteen strangers train. She’d only wanted to watch Reece—the man she loved.

  Hana watched the warriors train with keen interest. She absorbed the technique behind their motions like a sponge, imagining how her body would feel as she lifted the sword this way, thrust it that, slashed like so. She wasn’t even aware that she’d been mimicking their motions until Hojo grabbed her sleeve.

  “Stop or they’ll notice us,” he whispered.

  Off-balance she tumbled sideways, wishing she was in her peasant-garb as Kojiro had so rudely cal ed it. It sure made maneuvering a lot easier than this contraption.

  When she lifted her shoulders out of the dirt, she noticed a familiar pair of feet in her line of sight.

  “What are you doing here, Hana?” Kojiro asked in his deepest, most commanding voice. “You are supposed to be learning how to be a woman this morning.” Hana struggled to stand, remembering the way it had felt to be subservient to Kojiro the night before. How freeing it had been. How pleasurable. She would not be that woman in front of al these men, however. When Kojiro reached down to help her rise, she lashed out at him. He scowled and set her on her feet, before releasing her arm as if she harbored an incurable disease. She didn’t have time to analyze why his brusqueness made her heart pang. She was too angered by his existence to care.

  “I do not wish to be a woman,” she spat at him. “I wish to be a warrior.”

  “You want to be samurai?” Kojiro asked.

  The group of men laughed. Hana straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “I am ninja.”

  “Mercenary,” one of the samurai sneered at her.

  It was true that many of her comrades hired out their skil s for a fee, but Hana only fought to protect her people. She didn’t fault those who were mercenaries however. It was not easy to survive in these war-torn times. Her brother had been killed during a hired mission. She had wanted to go with him, but he’d left her behind to protect the village. She might have saved him—from Kojiro—had she been there. Or if the band had been better prepared to fight these warriors. Maybe if she pretended she wanted to be one of them, she could learn their secrets and share them with her clan.

  “But I would like to become samurai,” she said.

  Kojiro’s eyes widened. “You would?”

  “Yes. Fighting is a far more useful skill than playing koto or pouring tea.” The samurai laughed again, not at her this time, but with her.

  “Let’s see what your little demon flower has in her,” one of the samurai said. “I say let her fight.”

  “Hojo,” Kojiro said and flicked his hand toward the boulder.

  Hojo slowly rose to his feet, head bent in shame for failing to complete his task.

  “Yes, Kojiro-dono?”

  “You will be Hana’s partner today.”

  Hojo’s head lifted and he scarcely hid his wide smile before nodding curtly. “Yes, Kojiro-dono.”

  “I prefer to partner with you,” Hana said, meeting Kojiro’s gaze.

  “I thought she partnered with you last night,” one of the samurai said and laughed with his comrades.

  Hana’s face flamed. They knew? Hana narrowed her eyes at Kojiro. What had he told them? How she’d opened herself to him? How she’d accepted him into her mouth and swallowed his come? How she’d come herself just because he’d demanded it of her? How she’d begged for him to possess her? How she’d enjoyed every minute?

  “She will partner with me this morning as well,” he said, looking entirely nonplussed by their lewd comments.

  The instant a wooden sword was in her hands, she advanced on Kojiro, striking at him with every ounce of strength she possessed. He blocked her strikes but did not counter them. Hana struck harder, cursing her stupid kimono. If there hadn’t been fifteen men in attendance, she would have shed the blasted garment.

  “Don’t take it easy on me because I’m a woman,” she shouted, striking again, countered again.

  “I’m not taking it easy on you because you’re a woman,” he said, watching her motions closely and lifting his wooden sword to block every move. He surprised her by grabbing her sword with one hand and jerking her toward him. He caught her against his chest and lowered his head to whisper in her ear, “I’m taking it easy on you because I love you.”

  Love? What could this murderer possibly know about love? She shoved him, took several steps back, and hiked her kimono up her thighs so she could maneuver better.

  This elicited plenty of appreciative comments from their attentive audience, but Hana didn’t care. She wanted to kil Kojiro for daring to use a word such as love in her presence. A strange lust, yes, she understood and claimed that feeling for the handsome warrior, but not love. Never love.

  “Don’t take it easy on me at all!” she shouted angrily, hacking at him with imprecise retaliating blows.

  He blocked several strikes and then lifted his sword to strike back. Her hands went numb from the hard vibration that carried down her wooden sword. He struck again and the sword tumbled from her useless hands.

  “You are swift, Hana, but there is no strength in your blows,” he said calmly.

  She scrambled for her sword, flexing her fingers around the hilt as she faced him again.

  They sparred until Hana could no longer lift her fatigued arms. She was pleased to see that Kojiro had the decency to break out in a sweat.

  “She has potential,” one of the samurai said.

  Kojiro nodded, but did not take his piercing gaze from Hana’s. “Leave us.” Hana held
her sword at her waist, her lungs laboring for breath. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to be left alone with Kojiro, but she didn’t have the strength to follow the others from the practice field.

  “Do you feel better?” he asked, still holding his defensive stance as if he realized she would attack him the instant he dropped his guard.

  “About what?”

  “Things best forgotten.” When she did nothing but stare at him, he continued, “I did not kil your brother out of spite, but in defense. Do you know why the ninja attacked us that night? As far as we know, it was unprovoked. We have been trying to make sense of it.”

  The tip of Hana’s sword lowered despite her best efforts to keep it elevated. “What do you mean? They were protecting a village from the likes of you and your Shogun’s greed.”

  “I will not deny that the lower class always suffers to fund the wealthy, but we do not attack villages. Occasionally we must infringe upon their hospitality to remind them who protects them from the battling states, but we never attack.”

  “You lie,” she said.

  “That night three weeks ago, mercenaries attacked the castle. None of our enemies has claimed the attack. We know of no reason anyone would seek retribution. If you know something about the reason behind that attack, speak, Hana. The Shogun has lost his patience with your clan of peasant warriors. If he orders his samurai to annihilate you al , I am honor bound to abide by his wishes.”

  “That is all you care about,” she said. “Honor.”

  “I live and die by bushido’s creed, but that is not all I care about, Hana.” He dropped his guard, but she did not attack. She blamed it on her fatigue, but knew she was lying to herself. She did not want to injure Kojiro. She did not want him to die. She wanted to understand him. And she wished she could continue to blame him for killing her brother, but in her heart, she knew she would have done the same to protect her people as Kojiro had done to protect his.