I Indicted the Yakuza Heir, Then Married Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Sunday Dinner
The father pours her sake and names her mother's shop; they are kept overnight and take each other silently on the tatami; at 3 a.m. the study door stands open.
In the morning Tatsuya made eggs.
He stood at the stove in a black T-shirt, his sleeves of ink bare to the wrist.
Shiori sat on a stool in his shirt and nothing else, and neither of them mentioned the night.
"Chiba," said Tatsuya.
He set a plate in front of her.
"The Yokohama company is the one your office was meant to find. The money doesn't stay there. It goes on to a trading firm in Chiba, and you have to find the name yourself."
"Why wouldn't you just give it to me?"
"You'd think I was lying."
"I think that anyway."
"Then you will check it," he said. "That's better."
Shiori ate his eggs.
They were good, and she resented it.
The Kuzunoki house stood in Azabu behind a long wooden wall, with a gate roofed in black tile and a koi pond fat with orange fish.
Sakaki drove them there on Sunday evening.
On the way, Tatsuya said only one thing.
"Whatever he says to you, you bow, you thank him, and you eat everything."
"I've cross-examined worse men."
"No," Tatsuya said. "You haven't."
The old man was waiting in the main room, kneeling on the tatami in a grey kimono.
Genichiro Kuzunoki was slight and silver at the temples, with soft hands and the mild face of a retired schoolteacher.
He rose and bowed to Shiori, which no one had warned her he would do.
"Daughter," he said. "Welcome."
"Thank you for having me."
"I read your indictment too," he said, smiling. "Four hundred pages. A tremendous piece of work."
The table was laid with low trays and tiny dishes.
He poured the sake himself, first for Shiori, with both hands, and she watched his thumbs on the bottle.
They were very clean.
"Your mother," he said, filling the cup, "keeps a tea shop in Koenji. The narrow one by the station, with the blue curtain."
Shiori's hand did not move.
She did not let it.
"She's a clever woman," said Genichiro. "I stopped in last week for a cup of hojicha. She wouldn't take money for it, and I thought, a person like that should be kept from harm."
"She's very careful," Shiori said.
"I'm sure she is."
Under the table, Tatsuya's hand closed around her knee.
It was heavy and warm, and it did not squeeze.
It just stayed there, and her breathing slowed.
"The roads are wet," Genichiro said at the end of the meal. "Stay tonight, both of you. Tatsuya's room is made up."
"Father..."
"It isn't a request, my boy. I'd like my daughter in my house for one night."
Tatsuya looked at Shiori.
She gave him the smallest nod.
His boyhood room was at the end of a long wooden corridor, with paper screens and a futon already laid out on the tatami.
Sakaki took a place on a cushion at the far end of the hall, with his back to the wall and his arms crossed.
Across from their door was another, heavier door of dark wood with a brass handle.
"My father's study," Tatsuya said very quietly, closing the screen. "The walls are paper. Everything carries."
"Then we sleep."
"Yes."
Shiori stood in the middle of the room and untied the sash of the yukata they'd given her.
It fell open.
She let it slide off her shoulders onto the floor, and stood there in the lamplight in nothing.
"Shiori," Tatsuya said.
His voice had gone hoarse.
"I'm asking," she said, barely above a whisper. "Tonight I'm asking. Not for a page, or for a favor. For you."
He didn't move for a long moment.
Then he reached back with one hand and pulled his T-shirt off over his head.
She had seen the ink at his wrists and the tops of his shoulders.
She had not seen all of it.
The koi began on his right hip and climbed his whole back, black and silver and red, up through painted rapids to a waterfall at his shoulder blades.
The fish had dragon's whiskers and open eyes.
Waves ran down both arms.
His chest was bare, hard, and scarred in three places.
"Is this the part where you tell me you're afraid of me?" he asked, with the faintest trace of the crooked smile.
"Be quiet and come here."
He knelt on the futon, and Shiori lay down on her back and put her knees up.
His shadow covered all of her.
He undid his trousers, and she looked, because she wasn't going to pretend she didn't want to.
He was thick and long and heavy, so much bigger than she was ready for that her stomach swooped.
The head of him was dark and wet already.
"That's not going to fit," she whispered.
"It will," said Tatsuya. "Slowly. And you'll tell me how much you want."
"All of it."
"Not yet."
He put his mouth over hers to keep her quiet, and slid two fingers into her, then three.
She stretched around them, shaking, with her heels digging into the futon.
His thumb found her clit, and she bit his lip, and he made a low noise in his chest and pressed his forehead to hers.
"You're so small," he muttered. "God, look at you. Take my fingers first."
"I want you."
"I know."
He pulled his fingers out, and the head of his cock pushed against her, blunt and burning hot.
She was wet enough that it slid, but it didn't want to go in.
He held her hip down with one hand that covered most of her pelvis, and pushed.
The pressure rose and rose, and then her body gave, and the head slipped inside.
Shiori clapped her hand over her own mouth.
It was too much.
It was exactly the right amount.
"Breathe," Tatsuya whispered against her ear. "There. You've got the head, my wife. Look how well you're taking it."
"More."
"Slowly."
"Tatsuya, more, please."
He gave her another inch.
Then he gave her another, with his teeth set and a tremor running through his arms.
She felt every one of them as a full, stretching, impossible pressure that lit her up from the inside.
When he stopped, he was only about halfway.
She was full to her ribs.
"Bite me," he said, and put his shoulder in front of her mouth.
She did.
He pulled out almost all the way, and slid back in, deeper this time.
She took it with her teeth in his skin and her nails in the ink on his back.
She came the first time, helplessly, clamping down around him.
"Good girl," Tatsuya breathed. "That's it. Again. I've got you."
He kept the rhythm slow and deep, a long drag out and a slow push in, until she was crying quietly into his shoulder and her legs were wrapped around his waist as far as they would go.
He fit his whole hand under the small of her back, lifted her hips, and the angle changed.
She saw white.
"Right there," she choked out. "Right there, don't stop."
"I won't stop."
He didn't speed up.
He just leaned into the spot, grinding, over and over, with his breath shuddering out of him against her neck.
She came again, harder, with a sound she smothered in his shoulder.
He followed her with a groan he had to bite off.
He shook above her, buried deep, and she felt him pulse inside her, hot, again and again.
For a long time neither of them moved.
His heart was hammering against her chest.
"Shiori," he whispered, in a voice she had never heard from him. "My wife."
She lay in the dark with his weight on her and his come running out of her, and for the first time in thirteen months, she wasn't thinking about the case.
He fell asleep first, one big hand spread over her stomach.
Shiori woke at three.
The corridor was black, and a thread of yellow light lay across the floorboards from under the screen.
She eased out from under his arm, put on the yukata, and slid the paper door open one inch.
Sakaki's cushion was empty.
Across the hall, the heavy wooden study door stood ajar.
Inside, a single lamp was lit, and a black lacquer box sat open on the desk.
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