The inn room was small. One bed, one chair, one window with the curtains open and the moonlight coming through. The sounds of the celebration were far away now. Muffled. Someone was still singing badly.
Nami locked the door behind us. Leaned against it. Looked at me.
Her chest was rising and falling. The brandy flush on her cheeks. Ink on her fingers. Red rims around her eyes from the crying. She stood against the door and she looked at me and she didn't move.
"Don't talk," she said again. Quieter this time. "Not about the fight. Not about the maps. Not about any of it."
"Okay."
"And don't be gentle because you think I'm fragile. I'm not fragile. I just spent eight years drawing maps for a fishman and I'm not fragile."
"Okay."
She pushed off the door. Walked toward me. Stopped a foot away.
Her hands came up. Touched my chest. Palms flat. She could feel my heartbeat. I could feel hers through her fingertips, the pulse rapid, too fast for brandy alone.
She found the bruise under my collarbone. Arlong's fist. The skin was purple and yellow and tender and she pressed her fingers into it and I hissed through my teeth.
"Does it hurt."
"Yes."
She pressed harder. Watching my face. Then she leaned forward and put her mouth where her fingers were. Lips on the bruise. Warm. The pain turned into something else. She moved to the next one. A welt on my ribs where Kuroobi's elbow had landed. Her mouth there. Then the bite wound on my shoulder, Nojiko's stitching rough under her lips. She kissed the edges of it. Her tongue touched the thread.
"You got this fighting him," she said. Against my skin.
"Yes."
"For me."
"For you."
Her hands found the hem of my shirt. She pulled it up. Over my head. Dropped it on the floor. Looked at what was underneath. The bruises, the cuts, the healing cultivation marks. Three days of Nojiko's sessions had repaired the bones but the surface damage was still mapped across my chest and stomach and arms.
She traced them. All of them. Her fingers following every line of damage like she was reading a chart. The cartographer in her, the girl who'd spent eight years turning the world into lines on paper. She was reading my body the same way.
"Here." Her finger on a scrape across my hip. "What was this."
"Hatchan's sword."
"Here." A bruise on my bicep.
"Kuroobi."
"Here." The bite. She already knew.
"Arlong."
She put both hands flat on my stomach. Looked up at me. Her eyes were wet again but she wasn't crying. She was doing something else. Something I'd never seen from her. She was just looking. No mask. No performance. No calculation behind the eyes, no angle, no transaction. Just Nami looking at me with her hands on my skin and her lips parted and the moonlight making her hair orange-white.
"My turn," I said.
I reached for the buttons on her shirt. She didn't help. Didn't rush. She stood still and let me undo them one at a time. The shirt fell open. Underneath she was wearing a simple bra, white, nothing special. Her stomach bare. The curve of her waist into her hips. I pushed the shirt off her shoulders and it caught on her elbows and she shook it free.
I unhooked the bra. She let me. It dropped between us. Her breasts bare in the moonlight and I looked at them because I wanted to and because she was letting me and because three days in a map room had felt like longer. I was hard enough that it hurt. Had been since she'd started tracing the bruises.
"You're staring," she said.
"Yeah."
"You've seen them before."
"I'm going to keep staring."
The corner of her mouth. Not a smile. The thing before a smile that she used to hide behind sarcasm. But she didn't say anything sarcastic. She just stood there and let me look.
Her legs. I knelt. My hands on her hips, thumbs on the bone, and I kissed her stomach. She inhaled. I kissed lower. The waistband of her shorts. She was still in them and I was on my knees and I could smell her through the fabric. The heat. The wetness she'd been carrying since the wall, since the brandy, since "I'm first."
I pulled her shorts down. Slow. She stepped out of them. Underwear next. Simple. White. Wet. I could see it in the moonlight, the dark patch where the fabric stuck to her. I pulled those down too. She stepped out.
Nami. Naked. In moonlight. Standing in front of me while I knelt. Her hands at her sides. Not covering herself. Not performing. Not the Nami who'd climbed on top of me in a dinghy off Shells Town with a deal in her mouth. Not the Nami who'd ridden me on a bench to prove she was first. Just a woman standing in front of me with nothing between her body and the air.
Her legs. The thing I couldn't stop looking at. The way they curved from her hips. The muscle in her calves from years of running and climbing and swimming. The softness of her inner thighs where the skin was paler. The slight tremble in them.
I put my mouth on her thigh. She made a sound. Not the bitten-off gasp from before. Open. A breath that had a voice in it.
I kissed up her thigh. Slow. The skin there was soft. Softer than anywhere else on her body. The inside of Nami's thigh was the place she never let anyone see, the vulnerable part, and she was letting me see it now. I kissed the muscle above her knee. The soft hollow behind it. Higher. The skin getting warmer the higher I went. She put her hand on my head. Not pushing. Just there. Her fingers in my hair.
I reached the crease where her leg met her body. She smelled like salt and skin and the particular sharpness that was just her. I'd been with Nojiko for three days and her scent was earth and citrus. Nami was the ocean. I'd missed it.
I kissed her other thigh. She made an impatient sound. I ignored it. Took my time. Kissed up the inside, slow, my breath hot against the skin, and I could see goosebumps rising in the moonlight. Her legs were shaking. Not from cold.
"Kai." Quiet. My name in her mouth like she was testing if it still fit. "Stop teasing."
I put my mouth on her.
Her hips jerked. Her hand tightened in my hair. She was standing and I was on my knees and it was the wrong angle for this but I didn't care. My tongue on her clit. She was soaked. Had been since the wall, since the celebration, since she'd punched my arm and walked away. The taste of her flooded my mouth and I groaned against her because I'd missed this, the specific salt and slick of Nami, and the sound of my groan vibrated through her and she made a sound that was almost a word.
"Ah- wait- I can't- standing-"
I picked her up. Her legs over my shoulders, her back against the wall, my hands under her ass. She yelped. Grabbed the windowsill behind her for balance. "What are you- oh. Oh."
Her weight on my shoulders. Her thighs on either side of my head. The heat of her against my mouth, the smell of her flooding my senses. I looked up. From this angle she was above me, looking down, her hair falling around her face, her breasts above me, and the expression on her face when she realized I was holding her up like she weighed nothing was worth every hour I'd spent training.
My mouth back on her. Better angle. She was open for me, spread by the position, and I could reach everything. My tongue flat against her, then pointed, circling her clit, then lower, pushing inside. She tasted different from three days ago. Sharper. Her taste concentrated by hours of anticipation. My cock throbbed against my pants. Ignored. I wanted to be inside her badly enough that my hands were shaking but this came first. Her first.
"Ah. Ah. Right- right there, don't- don't move-"
Her thighs squeezed my head. The muscle in them. The strength she didn't know she had. I sucked her clit and pushed two fingers inside her and she was tight, tighter than I remembered, the days apart having reset her body. She clenched around my fingers and her hips ground against my face and the sounds she was making were not the bitten-off controlled sounds from the dinghy or the competitive sounds from the bench.
These were open. Full. The sounds of a woman who didn't have to hide anymore.
"Kai- I'm- fuck, I'm-"
She came on my face. Her whole body went rigid. Her thighs crushed my ears. Her hand ripped away from the windowsill and grabbed my hair with both fists and she pulled and it hurt and she didn't care. Her hips bucked against my mouth and I held her through it, my tongue still on her, riding the orgasm. The moan that came out of her was the loudest sound she'd ever made during sex. Loud enough for the room next door. Loud enough for the street.
She didn't care.
I kept going. She tried to push my head away. "Wait- too much- I'm still-" Her clit was swollen under my tongue, post-orgasm sensitive. I licked slower. Gentler. Not stopping. She whined. High in her throat. The overstimulation making her twitch.
"You- bastard- I said wait-"
I didn't wait. I sucked her clit again. Softer. My fingers curled inside her, pressing the spot that made her abs contract. She was wetter now, the first orgasm having opened her up, and the squelch of my fingers was loud in the quiet room.
The second orgasm hit her in under a minute. She folded. Her upper body collapsing forward over my head, her arms around my skull, and she came shaking and gasping and saying "fuck fuck fuck" in a whisper that cracked on every repetition. I felt it on my fingers. The rhythmic clench. Tight. Release. Tight. Release. Five times. Six.
I lowered her to the bed. Her legs were useless. She lay where I put her, breathing hard, her hair spread on the pillow, her body still twitching from the aftershocks. She stared at the ceiling.
"That," she said. Breathing. "Was different."
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Different how."
"I don't know." She put her arm over her eyes. "Everything's different. I can't explain it. I'm just-" She moved her arm. Looked at me. "I'm not performing. I'm not counting. I'm not thinking about the deal or the money or the next island. I'm just here."
She sat up. Pushed me onto my back. Climbed between my legs. Her hair falling around her face. Her eyes still red from earlier, her cheeks flushed from the orgasms, her mouth swollen.
She pulled my pants down. I was hard. Had been since the wall. Since the celebration. Since she'd said "I'm first" with pink ears and brandy on her breath.
She looked at me. Her hand wrapped around the base. Squeezed. I twitched. She watched my face the way I'd watched hers. Reading it.
"I missed this," she said. Not to me. To herself. Her thumb ran over the head. Slick from the pre-cum. She spread it down the shaft. Slow. Then back up. Her grip firm. The calloused tips of her fingers from years of rope and rigging catching against the sensitive underside. I sucked air through my teeth.
"Sensitive?"
"Keep going."
She kept going. Both hands now. One on the shaft, one cupping below, her fingers exploring the weight of me. She wasn't rushing. She was relearning. Her thumb found the vein on the underside and traced it from base to tip and my hips shifted off the bed.
Then she leaned down and took me in her mouth.
Not the efficient Nami blowjob. Not the competitive one where she was proving something. She took her time. Her mouth warm and wet and slow, her tongue dragging along the underside, her lips tight around the shaft. She pulled back to the tip and circled it with her tongue and looked up at me.
Eye contact. She held it. Her mouth around me, her eyes on mine, and there was nothing else in them. No angle. No transaction. No "this is worth three hundred thousand berries." Just her mouth on me and her eyes on me and the wet sound of her lips sliding down.
"Mm." The vibration of the sound around my cock. I groaned. She liked that. Took me deeper. Her hand dropped from the shaft so it was just her mouth, just heat and suction and the squeeze of her throat. She bobbed. Slow. Pulling up until just the tip was inside her lips, the cool air hitting the wet shaft, then sinking back down. Every time a little deeper. The sounds she made were wet and deliberate. She was making them on purpose. She knew what the sounds did.
She pulled back. Tongued the head. Licked the slit. The taste of pre-cum on her tongue and she swallowed and went back down. Faster now. Her rhythm building. Her hand back on the shaft, twisting on the upstroke, her mouth covering the top half. The coordination was devastating. I could feel my legs tensing. The pressure building at the base of my spine.
She took me past where she usually stopped. Her throat worked. She gagged. Pulled back, spit connecting us, took a breath, went down again. Deeper. Her nose against my stomach. She held it. I could feel her throat swallowing around me, the tight constriction rhythmic, and my hands found her hair and gripped and she made a sound around me, "Mm-", the vibration of it through my cock nearly ending it right there.
She came up. Gasping. Saliva on her chin. A string of it connecting her lips to me, catching the moonlight before it broke. Her hand pumping where her mouth had been, the slick friction keeping the rhythm. The sound of her fist on wet skin was obscene in the quiet room.
Her eyes were watering. Not from emotion. From the depth. She wiped them with her free hand. Kept pumping with the other. Looked at me with smeared eyes and saliva on her chin and she'd never looked more like she was exactly where she wanted to be.
"Good?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Better than her?"
There it was. The flash in her eyes. Not angry. Competitive. She wanted to hear it. Needed to.
"Different."
"That's not what I asked." Her hand tightened. Squeezed at the base. She licked the head. Slow. Deliberate. Watching my face for every reaction. "I asked if it was better."
"You know it is."
"Say it."
"It's better."
"Mm." Satisfied. She took me deep again. Her hand on my hip, holding me down when my hips tried to buck up. She set the pace. Slow, deep, wet. The sounds filling the room. Slick. The pop of her lips releasing the tip. The wet slide of her going back down. Her breathing through her nose, fast, her own wetness building from doing this to me. I could see it in the flush spreading down her chest. In the way she pressed her thighs together. She was getting off on having me in her mouth and the knowledge of that made my cock twitch against her tongue and she hummed in acknowledgment.
She pulled off. Wiped her mouth. Climbed up my body. Her skin against mine, the heat of her, her breasts pressing flat against my chest, her hips settling over mine. My cock trapped between us, slick with her spit, pressed against her stomach.
She kissed me. Her mouth tasting like me. My mouth tasting like her. The kiss was long and slow and her hands were in my hair and my hands were on her waist and we lay there kissing like we had nowhere to be and no one to worry about and the moonlight moved across the bed.
She pulled back. Looked down at me. Her hair falling around us like a curtain. Her hips shifted. She reached between us. Took me in her hand. Positioned me. I could feel her against the head. Hot. Wet. The opening right there.
She rubbed the head against herself. Not teasing. Feeling. The slick slide of me against her clit made her hips twitch. She did it again. And again. Coating me in her. Her breath catching on each pass. My hands on her hips, not guiding, just holding. Feeling her thighs tremble on either side of me.
She angled me lower. Pressed the tip against her entrance. The heat of her. The give of her body starting to accept me. She held it there. Just the tip. The pressure without the push.
Her eyes found mine.
"Don't make me say it," she whispered.
"Say what."
Her forehead dropped to mine. Her breath on my lips. Her hips trembling with the effort of holding still. The head of me parting her open and neither of us moving.
"…you know what."