Grandmother Left Half the Onsen Inn to the Chef novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Call

The phone rang at ten at night, and Yuzu looked at the screen and went pale.

"It's the restaurant," she said. "It's the owner."

Sakura sat up on the futon.

Yuzu put the call on speaker, and set the phone down between them on the quilt.

"Hayashi," a warm old voice said. "I'll be brief. The head chef is retiring in March. The kitchen is yours if you come back. Nobody else has the hands."

Yuzu's throat moved.

It was the offer she had worked for since she was sixteen.

She looked at Sakura, and Sakura looked back at her and kept her face perfectly still.

"If you want it," Sakura said without a sound, shaping the words with her lips, "go."

Yuzu stared at her.

Then she picked up the phone.

"Thank you, Chef," she said. "I'm honoured. The answer is no."

"Hayashi."

"I have a kitchen. It has a sauce half, and I'm the grill half, and I'm not leaving her at the stove alone."

A long silence.

"Then I wish you joy," the old voice said gently, and the line went dead.

Yuzu put the phone down, and her hands were shaking.

"You didn't have to do that in front of me," Sakura said, and her own voice was raw.

"I did. I wanted you to hear it."

"You gave up Kyoto."

"I gave up a job." Yuzu's eyes were fierce and wet. "Do whatever you like to me. I'm yours."

Sakura went very still.

Something rose in her, warm and dark and certain, the same thing that had sat in the high chair in the suite.

"On your knees," she said quietly. "On the mat. Hands behind your back."

Yuzu's breath hitched.

She slid off the futon and knelt on the tatami in her thin yukata, and put her wrists behind her.

Sakura opened the cupboard and took out a strip of blue cotton, a tenugui towel.

She knelt behind Yuzu and wound it around her wrists, snug, and tied it.

"Too tight?"

"No, Okami-san."

"Good."

Sakura stood in front of her and untied her own obi.

She let the kimono fall, and stood naked in the lamplight, soft and strong, her hair loose to her hips.

Yuzu's eyes devoured her.

"Do you want to touch me?" Sakura asked.

"Yes. Please."

"You can't. You can look."

She sat on the edge of the futon, an arm's length away, and opened her thighs.

Yuzu knelt on the mat and watched with parted lips, her hands bound, as Sakura slid two fingers over her own clit and began to rub.

"Sakura."

"Quiet."

"Please let me."

"I said look."

Sakura touched herself slowly, with her eyes on Yuzu's face.

She pushed one finger inside, and drew it out glistening, and lifted it to Yuzu's lips.

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