What Runs Deeper

a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi

chapter fourteen
"Depth of Feeling"

Mukuro burned, then.

She was amazed at him—how he could be so dangerous and so gentle, able to heal the deepest of her wounds despite the immeasurable ones he had inflicted in his life. She would always be amazed.

Her flesh hand found the back of his neck, and she threaded her fingers in his hair. "Hiei," she breathed, overwhelmed with too many emotions to comprehend.

She wanted him.

He discovered her ear with his mouth, catching the lobe lightly in his teeth, and his face was so warm against hers as he nuzzled her cheek, her jaw.

For a moment, she was timid as she felt his hands play over her back, finding the bare skin beneath her shirt.

"Mukuro," he murmured to her.

Then she followed her impulse, her legs drawing him nearer to her as her hands drifted lower, touching him as he had her. But then she changed, pulling at his shirt as she sat up, taking him with her.

He was so close, and she never wanted it to cease.

But he grasped her shoulders and held her away from him, eyes intent on her face.

"Mukuro," he said again.

"Hiei," she replied, suddenly worried. "I—do you . . . want to . . ." she trailed off, fear taking her; had she made an assumption? Had she been wrong?

But his expression relaxed. "To make love?" he asked quietly. "What a silly question." He released her shoulders and in one easy motion pulled his shirt over his head.

Mukuro's eye widened.

He had not wanted to stop—no, he wanted to continue.

He touched her hair, her face, bringing her near again as he tugged at her own clothing, attempting to remove the material concealing her torso.

"I'm . . . glad that you're here," he said.

"I am, too," she answered him, and her shirt came away.

They lay back down and her mouth found his again, the remnants of her fear dissipating as her hands clutched at his waist.

He eased her onto her back, and he was over her. It felt strangely familiar, in a faraway place, but none of it was remotely similar to the present moment. The depth of what she felt—lingering somewhere in the eyes that looked down at her now—both drowned and cradled every bit of her.

Mukuro thought for a moment before she ultimately decided what she should do, and her hands found her own pants, lifting her body as she pulled them down and away, leg at a time.

She would reveal herself entirely, of her own will, bare beneath him and offering—giving now and not taking.

Hiei's touches progressed: his lips on her face—his hand, extraordinarily hot, now moving up her stomach, over her ribs—

Mukuro breathed in tightly as his fingers brushed over her nipple, arching to his touch almost involuntarily.

There was no more reason to pretend she did not wish for this. She grasped him tighter, her fingers bearing into his hips, but she would not push him to reveal himself—rather, her metal hand rested on his shoulder, the other on his stomach; then, it wandered lower.

Hiei froze, the smallest noise escaping him.

Then, in a sudden flood of apparent desperation, his hands flew to his belts, and he unclasped each one, hurriedly shoving away his pants and kicking them off behind him.

He was bare now, with nothing to press against her skin but his.

They had been so once under far different circumstances, but now it meant more than ever before. Now they shared far more—now they shared everything.

Mukuro's fingers caressed him slowly, and she felt a strange breed of selfless pleasure at the way he moved against her hand.

He touched against her as she continued—inevitably from their closeness—and she moaned just barely, her lips grazing his jaw with affection.

Mukuro was enjoying their nearness—enjoying what she could do to, and for, him—when his hand slipped between her legs, and she released a small cry of both surprise and rapture as his fingers slid over her.

Mukuro had never felt this before. The gift of him was nigh unbearable to entertain, much less experience.

"Hiei," she groaned, lifting to his touch even as she moved her fingers along him.

He said her name, the movement of his fingers increasing until it fell away entirely, and the haphazard kiss he pressed to her lips told her how lost in feeling he was.

Mukuro did not stop, and Hiei continued to move as her grip intensified, the both of them beginning to lose themselves somewhere between bliss and desire.

But Mukuro wanted to go further, and she found her legs drawing back, threatening to enclose him while her touch receded and she drew him nearer to her.

She had wanted him always, and nothing now would take it; she was nervous, but more than that, she was ready.

"Don't stop," she told him. "I want you to have me."

"No," he said gruffly. He caught her retreating hand in his own, briefly squeezing it before placing it upon his shoulder. "We're going to have each other now."

Hiei sank into her, and Mukuro rose to meet him.

Nothing about this was as familiar as she might have thought, and everything about it was bewildering. It was an entirely new experience—not only in the major differences of this act in itself but everything that it, that he, made her feel.

Mukuro had never expected it to be like this, and the way he felt inside of her and around her, so warm and loving, nearly stole all her strength away.

She never again wanted to imagine a life without this.

She moved in his grasp, wrapping him up in every way that she could conceive, the tips of her fingers bearing into his shoulders, his back. She sighed his name at the sensation, barely comprehensible, but her body was unconcerned—if only he would not stop.

She needed nothing more.

His tongue slicked over her throat and Mukuro thought that she could be no more smothered in sensations, tangled as she was, but that was when he bit into her.

Her cry was as instinctive as it was raw. It did not hurt—it layered upon the multitude of other feelings she was experiencing and imprinted in her the marvel that was completely and distinctly him.

It was amazing, but it was even more than that; it woke a desire in her that spurned her nails into his skin, tightening her around him with a growing, uninhibited desperation. Her mouth sought him out: his shoulder, his throat, his ear, finding them all in turn with her lips and tongue and teeth.

He moaned to her and Mukuro could not stop her smile—she enjoyed so much being the one to know him in this way, and that she had given him this, had shared it with him.

"Don't stop," he said to her, and she knew that he spoke what she had been thinking. In each and every way they did not want this to stop, to break away from every new and phenomenal feeling they had begun to discover.

Hiei pushed into her so roughly that she just barely had stifled her outcry, and then it was all she could do to keep herself from completely tearing into him, wildly, with every bit of need that she felt.

They only wanted to know how far they could go before they would break.

"More," he growled.

Maybe a while ago, in a totally different world, Mukuro would not have liked this demand—but now, she only felt it echoing off of the walls of her own soul, and met it.

The bed under them might have disappeared or else they were floating, but Mukuro did not care; she pushed back at him, hard, and suddenly as the thought had come to her, Mukuro had him on his back and she was experiencing for the first time in her life a position she had never had the pleasure of knowing.

She bit into him, her nails leaving passionate red lines on his chest; she lurched back as she came down on him again. She could only touch and feel, a trance comparable to one she had felt many times in her life before but yet entirely different.

He was in her so deep—her body, her heart, her whole being—maybe they were the same, after all.

She did not know what she was doing—each second only made that clearer—but she could not bring herself to care. It was too much to imagine that there might be a right or a wrong to what they were doing now. Terms such as that did not even apply here; they had no foundation in a place like this.

There was no winning and losing anymore, only feeling and being, this pliancy and resistance, and all of it pleasing.

But Mukuro did know that they could not stay here much longer. She did not think it—she felt it, though it nearly drowned in everything else she was feeling, in the way she had lost herself to something so beyond her that she would not have guessed it existed even in a million years.

She moved, instinctively, naturally as anything had ever been for her, a strain in her throat as she cried out his name yet it was only a murmur in her ears.

Hiei . . .

He was the one: who had given her this, who she could feel so well, who she needed more than anything, who she loved.

All at once everything seemed to morph, the experience reaching its pinnacle, and Hiei shuddered as fervidly and yet delicately as she had ever felt him, his heat melting low in her belly.

Mukuro ceased moving her hips and grew still, amazed at the feel of him in her as she looked down at him, so exposed. She felt almost guilty for stripping him of so much that was essential to him: his defenses and his restraint. But just as that thought had only begun, her next startled her out of it—the fact that he somehow saw enough in her to allow it all.

She leaned in, her lips brushing over his face. She felt a sudden chill.

"Thank you," she said. "For believing in me."

"Consider it payback," he said, his arms coming around her.

She wanted to ask him what it was payback for, but she did not. For now, she would only imagine as he kissed her.

"Lay with me."

She could do that—at this point she would not have even considered doing otherwise.

Mukuro wanted to stay with him. The way that she felt with him—the way he made her feel—was more than she could bear to lose. At least not now, not until she could soak it in and attempt to understand it all, imprint its taste in her mind and her memory so that maybe she could return to this place and hold it closely to her heart no matter what happened in the future.

Mukuro blinked quickly, turning her face in his hair, her mouth finding the softness of his ear, and she wrapped her lips around it, gently, then released.

"I" was what she was going to say, but her throat closed, and she shut her mouth.

Saying it might have been too much, she felt, as if the magic of whatever spell they were under might be broken by the reality of it; as if, somehow, this beautiful and delicate thing would fall apart by the weight of her words.

He rested beside her, and Mukuro had stayed awake for a time, watching him in the darkness until he fell away into sleep before her eyes settled on the ceiling.

Was what they had done truly real? It had to be, all of it. Would everything be different now?

She knew that she did not regret it, but the harsh truth in it all frightened her. She had never known this side of herself, or this side of him. Now it was something that was inevitable. Could she handle the responsibility of it? Could she learn how to cope with a life so different that she hadn't the first idea of what to do with it?

Could she learn to live with happiness, with love, with him?

Mukuro looked at Hiei again.

She wanted to try.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! We decided to remove the epilogue and, instead, make a blog for our excess writings and other inside information that may interest you! Go to revealtherest on blogspot to check it out!