Grandmother Left Half the Onsen Inn to the Chef novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Citrus

By ten that night Sakura had walked the length of the attendant room forty-one times.

Genji had taken the evening bus to visit his sister in the next town.

He would not be back before morning.

She had said the same sentence to the paper wall six times.

"A fake letter. He looked me in the face and let me scrub his floors."

Yuzu sat on her futon with a small bowl in her lap and watched her pace.

"Sakura," she said.

"He watched me work off a debt that was never there."

"Sakura."

"I trusted him since I was nine years old. I called him uncle. He." Sakura's voice shook. "I can't think. I can't stop thinking."

"Stop."

"I can't."

"Then I'll stop it for you." Yuzu put the bowl on the floor. "Come here and kneel."

Sakura stopped in the middle of the mats.

Her hands were shaking.

She had been giving orders all day and her whole body hummed with them, with no place to put them down.

She knelt on the futon in front of Yuzu.

"Good," Yuzu said. "Now take your clothes off, and lie on your back."

Sakura undressed.

She did it fast, angrily, and flung her work kimono over the screen.

She lay down on the cool white sheet.

Yuzu rose and took a blue-and-white cotton hand towel from the rail.

It was a tenugui, thin and soft, washed so many times it had gone silky.

She folded it into a long strip.

"I'm going to cover your eyes," she said.

"Why?"

"Because your eyes are working. They've been working since six this morning." Yuzu knelt at her head. "Lift."

Sakura lifted her head.

The cotton settled across her eyes and tied snugly behind, and the room went dark.

The sounds got louder.

She heard the rustle of Yuzu's yukata, the creak of the old floor, her own pulse in her ears.

"Hands flat at your sides," Yuzu said. "Don't move them."

Sakura pressed her palms to the sheet.

"Don't think," Yuzu said. "Just taste."

Something cool and damp touched her lower lip.

She flinched.

It smelled sharp and sweet.

"Open."

She opened.

A small wet segment slid between her lips, and she bit down, and bright juice burst over her tongue.

Sour, then sweet, then a bitter edge.

She swallowed.

"Yuzu?" she said, wondering.

"Mm. Fresh from Kyoto. From my grandmother's tree." A pause. "A neighbour posts me the ripe ones."

Sakura smiled in the dark.

"Another," she said.

"Not till you've earned it." Yuzu's hand slid across her stomach. "Now lie still."

A drop of something thick and warm fell on Sakura's breastbone.

It rolled slowly down between her breasts.

"Honey," Yuzu said. "Warmed on the stove. Stay still."

Another drop fell on the swell of her left breast, and another beside her navel.

Sakura sucked in air.

Then Yuzu's mouth followed the honey, licking it up from her skin in slow wet lines.

Sakura's back arched.

Yuzu's tongue circled her nipple, sticky and sweet, and sucked it clean.

Sakura moaned out loud.

"Nobody's in the corridor," Yuzu murmured. "Let me hear you."

She moved from one breast to the other, kissing and licking, leaving little trails of heat across Sakura's ribs.

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