In which Ichigo reveals an unhealthy obsession with food and why he considers his kitchen table "investment furniture." Rukia is stunned.

"You are going to regret tampering with the order of sex before food in this apartment."

Disclaimers: No food was burned during the writing of this fic. And Bleach still does not belong to me.

As there are no appropriate lines in John Donne on the theme of food and sex, I offer instead the words of the man whom I associate most with the poet. This also serves as a light-hearted apology to a thought-provoking email and review from Adam Epp:

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought." – Lord Peter Wimsey

Insatiable by Laurie Bunter

When she got to his apartment, there occasionally would be home-cooked food on the table waiting for her, or nothing at all.

Nothing at all meant that she was on the menu, no questions asked. He wanted to have sex right away, preferably with her sprawled wide open on the table, and during these times he would not take no for answer. A no would result in a long, drawn-out battle of moods, vicious words and high-level binding spells.

And then night would still end with violent and furious sex on an empty stomach.

As Rukia's hands fumbled with the keys to his apartment, she caught Ichigo twisting his new engagement ring on his finger idly. He stood there, oblivious of his unconscious gesture. Rukia knew he was going to make it a new habit.

Unfortunately, the sight of ring twisting reminded Rukia of excited young virgins and flushed adolescent girls dreaming of matinee idols.

Rukia wanted to chortle but bit her lip instead to check her smirk.

"Is there a problem with the front door?" Ichigo asked. "It's stuck again, isn't it?"

Rukia flashed him a guilty look and swung the door open immediately. "Not at all."

As they entered and shed their shoes, Ichigo commented, "You sure looked like you were thinking about something."

"Nothing," she lied, as she switched on all the lights and walked towards the kitchen-dining area. "I'm just hungry. Is there anything edible in here?" Rukia peered into the refrigerator, her body bent over as her eyes scanned over condiment bottles, frozen seafood, and fresh produce. How could there be nothing ready to eat in this well stocked fridge?

Rukia felt Ichigo's presence directly behind her, looming large. His warm hands sidled down her bare arms, giving her goose pimples. His hands came to rest on the sides of her waist, his thumbs already hooked on to the elastic of her panties through her dress.

His lips brushed lightly against the side of her nape, making her toes curl. "There are no leftovers," he whispered. "And you know me. I have to eat before I can cook."

"Hell no." Rukia snarled. She just knew what he was planning to do.

He deftly entwined her in a bear hug from behind and shut the refrigerator door with a resolute kick.

"Ichigo! No. Not again. I'm hungry. For God's sake, feed me first."

"No," he said, ignoring her squirming protests.

"I am going to render you incapable of any sort of sexual performance if you don't unhand me now."

"Idle threats," he coaxed, as his knees crashed together, easily catching her foot about to kick upwards. His stomach muscles clenched to receive the successful blow from her elbow. "You're so optimistic. As if you could reach me that way." He spun her around. "No kidou, either." He cut off the half-finished binding curse on her lips with a fiery kiss and trapped both her hands to the side.

He propped her up on the sturdy hardwood table again, her feet swinging a few feet from the floor.

Ichigo just loved this piece of furniture.

She tried to shove him away with her shoulders, just short of head-butting him with her skull. Ichigo had a sardonic grin as he merely smothered her with another kiss.

Rukia was undaunted. She waited for an opening. She pretended to succumb to the softness of his lips. She willed herself to stop struggling. Satisfied that he had earned her submission, Ichigo released her hands and began unbuttoning her white summer dress leisurely. He smirked, remembering she didn't put on a bra today. He spent the train ride home staring at her semi-erect nipples, thinking of the many ways he could show he was sorry for his past moodiness and neglect. Most of his ideas involved creative foreplay. Lots of it.

Ichigo had gone so far as exposing her breasts, letting the cool air of the room flutter against her flesh, when Rukia went into action.

Her fingers found his throat. She began to throttle him.

For good measure, she whispered a binding spell into his ear, effectively twisting his arms behind him.

The ensuing struggle was neither quiet nor gentle.

Ichigo's face was red as he tried to pull away from this harridan of a fiancée. "You really don't want to do that," he croaked in half-breaths.

"Why not?" Rukia glared ferociously, her nails still gorging his large neck. "You are not in a position to bargain."

"If you sever -- my vocal cords -- I can't tell you why -- I like to make love to you on this table," he threatened in gasps.

Rukia blinked. There was an actual reason behind his madness? Her grip loosened.

Ichigo wretched himself away from her grasp, glowering. "I love you but you're a bitch, you know that?"

"So you were lying," she shot back. "Asshole."

"No I wasn't," he retorted. "I just don't talk much. It's personal."

"So tell me and maybe I'll give you what you want on this table, every time you want it." Rukia folded her arms across her exposed chest. "You can tell me while you cook."

His eyes were still watery but rebellious. "You're going to regret tampering with the order of sex before food in this apartment."

Rukia was about to kick him in the crotch when he stepped back. "Fine," Ichigo moved towards the stove. "Just remember I win if you change your mind."

"I won't," she snapped. "Just feed me already. And start talking."

Rukia was still sitting on the table, waiting. Ichigo demanded that she stayed put or else he wouldn't cook at all. Ten minutes had passed. He was taking too long on his food preparation. Why Ichigo never had any ready-to-eat things in this apartment when he was a busy doctor always mystified her: maybe it was a mania for nutrition. She watched him chop his vegetables professionally, his fingers properly angled over the carrots as the knife whizzed by, reducing them to a neat mince. Onions and potatoes soon followed.

"You never told me how you got to cook so well," Rukia said.

"During training, the Vaizards made me cook whenever I failed to lengthen the time I could control my Hollow," he explained.

"But weren't you stuck at eleven seconds for –" Rukia stopped then laughed. "So you were cooking all the time."

Ichigo grunted. "Hachi taught me his specialties." He stopped to add salt to the noodles bubbling away on the burner. "After the… after the War, when Yuzu was feeling bad – which was all the time – I helped out in the kitchen, remember? When I was up to it. You did everything else, including the care of the clinic."

Rukia's face fell. "Yes, I remember," she said softly. Yuzu cried everyday for a month after Karin's passing. She cried even harder when Karin started training as a Shinigami because Yuzu realized what fate had in store for her too.

Ichigo's face was impassive as he hunted for some chili powder. "I found Yuzu's little box of recipes. They turned out to be Mom's. The entire time she spent cooking all those years… she was remembering Mom." All of the original index cards were a wreck, tear-stained, batter-splattered, but Yuzu had treasured them. "It's no wonder why all her work in art school centers around food. Giant-sized wagashi… plaster casts of fish…"

"I wondered why she didn't go for culinary school instead," Rukia said.

"Maybe there wasn't anything else for her to learn," Ichigo replied. He was determined to lighten his tone. "Unlike you. You can even muck up boiling water. What you do to make everything turn brown and mushy is beyond belief."

She bristled. "When I was young there was nothing to cook. When I became a Kuchiki the servants hustled me out of the kitchen."

"Yeah, kitchens aren't meant for Shinigami princesses," Ichigo deadpanned. "Only for lowly humans with medical degrees."

Rukia hurled a red bell pepper at his head. He caught it and started chopping that, too. He then turned off the burner and drained the noodles into a colander. He added a dollop of butter on top.

Her curiosity was getting the better of her. "So tell me… why the table?"

Ichigo turned around and stopped chopping. It caught her off-guard: his expression was unguarded and tender. "Remember my eighteenth birthday? We went for a picnic."

"Yes," she answered, matter-of-factly. "The first time we had sex."

The kitchen knife clattered on the cutting board. Before she could even take another breath, Ichigo was in front of her, his eyes blazing.

"Did I say something wrong?" she inquired.

"Cut me some slack." His low voice rumbled. "I'm trying my best to be communicative here after your little stunt today. I may have been a moody bastard for the past few years but try to remember I never viewed that day as 'just sex.' Not on that day or any other time, either. You damn well know that."

Her gaze fell to the floor under the strength of his rebuke. Rukia was surprised that he was offended, but she wasn't going to apologize after his earlier attempt to initiate sex while she was starving. So instead she reached out and cupped his face in her hands, bringing him closer for a chaste kiss.

Mollified, Ichigo returned to his work without a word and started sautéing the vegetables.

"You were talking about the picnic," she reminded him.

"Remember what was in the basket? We had sushi, onigiri, fried gyoza, those vodka-laced juice boxes, and fruits. Lots of fruits." The memory of food seemed to excite him. "Plums, Rukia, plums. Nice rounded imported plums, their skins all purple – firm, ripe and sweet."

There was something in the way he said plums that made her shiver. Rukia thought it was irrational. When did he have such a thing for plums? Was she always too busy to notice?

"We weren't talking much, so I just watched you eat," he said, his eyebrows lightly furrowed. "You were sitting with your legs stretched out to the side. You were wearing a violet dress and you already kicked off your shoes. You were so comfortable and languid. Each movement you made on the picnic blanket was in slow motion – reaching for your drink, pulling the straw to your lips, your cheeks hollowing as you sucked in. It really caught my attention, the way you moved."

Rukia was fascinated by the spell of his words. Each annunciation was like a slow caress, the tones in his voice disrobing her with infinite tenderness.

"But it was the plum that really turned me on," he continued, his eyes glazing over as he stirred in some peeled shrimp into his pan. "First you handled all the plums in the basket, your fingers skimming over their surfaces as if you were trying to determine which was the juiciest. When you finally picked one to your liking, you lifted up the hem of your skirt and polished it a bit – flashing me a bit of your inner thigh."

God, did she really do that? That was ages ago. How did Ichigo remember every single detail as if it was yesterday?

Pleasant warmth began to permeate her body, and Rukia felt herself relaxing on the hard wooden table. "Go on," she said, her voice just a bit strangled.

Ichigo heard the tension in Rukia's voice and snickered to himself. Maybe this was the way to get what he wanted right now. He had a semi-hard on all the way home. Screw cooking dinner, he thought. He turned off the stove – he was going to burn everything with his mind half on the job – and leaned against the counter. He felt himself getting even more aroused, just by saying this stuff.

"You lifted the plum to your mouth, and took a nice big bite," he said. "A little plum juice stained your lips as you took your first swallow, and you licked it off. You kept at it, after the first mouthful. I couldn't take my eyes off your tongue, the way it would dart out and then disappear. It was then I realized I had to kiss you and steal the taste of the fruit from you."

He wondered how this revelation affected his listener. Rukia's lips were slightly parted now, as if in open invitation. Her face was flushed.

Ichigo had no choice but to persist. "But we hadn't kissed yet. So I just picked out a plum of my own, and decided to imagine I was sharing yours."

Rukia could feel her nipples growing erect without provocation, her breasts ripening under her half-unbuttoned dress. The cloth was suddenly heavy and constricting.

"The first bite of the fruit is always the best," his voice was low and confiding. "The skin is unblemished and taut and hides everything within. When my lips and teeth bit down, the flesh was torn and sweet. I then looked at the fruit and imagined it was you."

Rukia felt unbelievably hot in this kitchen.

"First I imagined it was just your lips but then I thought it would be like kissing the lips you keep hidden from me."

The body part he just referred to was stirring, unbidden.

"I wanted to see the most intimate part of you looking like that. I wanted to see you all swollen, your flesh translucent and yet tinged with red. As I ate the firm meat of that plum, I imagined you being just as moist, and growing even more wet and delicious with each lick and bite. I really wanted to know if you'd taste like that – or even better."

Rukia felt herself growing quite wet right now, a hunger radiating from her empty core.

Rukia unconsciously shifted on her perch, grinding her hips down on the table, her panties soaked, her thighs parting slightly as if she was waiting for Ichigo to approach her any moment now.

Yet he was still slouched against the counter now so far away from her touch, saying such sensual things she never knew he was capable of articulating.

"I couldn't finish eating it," Ichigo's eyes suddenly bore down on her. "I decided I just had to touch you. I wanted you so much. The vodka may have gone straight to my head, but all my blood rushed elsewhere."

She wanted him to know she suffered exactly the same thing now.

"I inched my way towards you on the picnic blanket. You didn't notice what I was doing at first. You gave a little shiver when I pulled you into my arms and kissed your lips. You didn't put up any sort of fight for once, you just relaxed and let your tongue wander in and encountered mine. You pulled me on top of you."

Rukia felt so heavy with longing, every inch of her body ripe and her skin just screaming for contact.

Ichigo felt the same way himself, watching her unraveling just a few feet away from him. He was rock hard from studying her every slight reaction to his memory.

"Rukia… you do remember the rest after we kissed, right?" his voice was ragged.

"Show me, Ichigo," she finally spoke, her eyes dark with desire. "Remind me."

Rukia pulled the dress over her head and revealed her heated body to him.

Note:

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P.S. Please don't forget to leave a review. Thanks again for waiting for the update. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story. – Laurie B.