In The Lap of Luxurious Love

“My deepest condolences, Master,” Isuzu said. “I will do as you have ordered.”

“Thank you, my boy,” he said. He turned his attention back to me, and asked me again. “Will you come with me, Duo?”

“Yes, Master,” I said. He lifted me into his arms, and we quickly made the teleportation jump into the tunnel that lead to the demon world. He used his healing powers to stop the bleeding, but could do no more. My senses were heightened in this warped space, and I could once again smell Kurama’s rosy fox scent. The scent was nearly intoxicating, and I breathed in deeply to take in as much as I could of it.

“You enjoy my scent, I presume,” he said, smiling as he saw me doing this. I nodded, and he tightened his grip on me. “I’m glad you do, because I want to… I want to offer you a place as my partner in the ownership of the estate.” I gasped, unsure of what to say or do. “This would come with it an option to be my partner in other ways, but I would expect nothing of that nature right away, if at all. There can be no words for the great loss you must feel right now, but perhaps this partnership can help to alleviate some of the pain and loneliness.” My eyes met his, and he smiled sweetly. “Please say you will, Duo.” I nodded, and he quickly kissed me, gently and carefully.

“Master…” I whispered, but he cut me off with another kiss.

“You needn’t call me master any longer either,” he said. “We are now equal partners, and you will have all the privileges afforded with the position.”

“May I call you… Koi?” I asked, and I could tell that it touched him. He nodded, kissing my head softly. We finally arrive at the other side of the portal, traveling in silence from that point, and we appeared in a private bedroom. Kurama deposited me on the bed with a soft kiss, which I voluntarily deepened for the moment that it lasted. I understood now what Heero had meant when he’d said that Kurama was an intoxicator. I cupped the back of his head with my hand as we continued kissing, and I felt his grip on me tighten even more. “Koi… I want you…”

“Patience, love,” he said. “We must see that your wound is taken care of, or it could become infected.” With a powerful grip on his hair, I pulled his lips down on mine, opening my mouth to his tongue as, with a soft cry, he quickly gave in to desire for a moment. When I finally let go of his hair, he looked down at me with a somewhat cross look on his face. I knew, however, that he wasn’t really angry, because he was also looking at me in a playful way. “You wish to play rough, do you? Well, when the chance presents itself, believe me, we WILL play rough.” He kissed my hand, then brought his hand to my face. “You need rest now, though, Duo, and it may take some time for a doctor to get here to see you. I will help you to fall asleep with my magic, and then I’ll wake you up when he gets here.” I nodded, already beginning to fade, feeling his magic anesthetic filling my body.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------When I woke that afternoon, I felt myself leaning into Kurama’s arms, my wound dressed and wrapped, wearing a clean set of pajamas. By this time, Kurama too was asleep, having had little sleep the night before. As I looked at him, I realized that through no magic of his, I was beginning to fall in love with him. Perhaps I hadn’t been as totally head-over-heels in love with Heero as I thought I was. It was a very peaceful sight, seeing this silver-haired demon fast asleep, perhaps dreaming of happier times. I placed my hand on his cheek, kissing him softly, and he slowly awoke.

“Well, it’s good to see you awake,” Kurama said after blinking for a moment. “I tried to wake you when the doctor arrived, but you were out like a broken light.” I laughed, and kissed him again. Even through the immense pleasure I was experiencing with him as he kissed and touched my head, arms, and upper body, my lower body refused to react to it, and I stopped for a moment. Kurama immediately noticed. “What’s wrong, Duo?”

“I still can’t feel anything below where the gunshot wound is,” I said. “I WANT to feel my body come to life, but nothing’s happening.” Kurama wilted in sympathy for me, and I knew that it meant that his worst fears for me had come true. “I’m paralyzed.”

“Yes, the doctor was afraid that this would happen,” he said. “You will probably never walk again, and the paralysis will affect your ability to feel other things as well. I’m so sorry about this, Duo.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kurama,” I said. “I just don’t want you to think that all you’re good at is taking care of sickly, invalid, and decrepit people. I mean… You understand what I mean, right?”

“Yes, I fully understand,” Kurama said. “You, on the other hand, seem to get your hands on the widowers.” He ruffled my hair a bit, trying to lighten the mood. That‘s when I realized that my hair was unbraided, and clean.

“You washed my hair?” I asked, and he nodded.

“It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure, especially with your injuries, but I managed,” he said. “We had to undress you to get you cleaned up. I must say that you have a very beautiful body.” I blushed in spite of myself, feeling slightly jipped that Kurama had already seen me naked but I had yet to see him that way. I understood, however, that it had been necessary. “Your hair is so soft, like my wife’s was when she was alive.”

“If you don’t mind, Koi, could you tell me about your human life?” I asked. “All I know is that you were forced to hide in a human body after nearly being killed, and that you were in a team that won something called a Dark Tournament and a Demon World Tournament.”

“Is that all Heero told you about me during the weeks you were together?” he laughed. “Looks like we have a lot of talking to do, because I want to learn all there is to know about you as well.”

“Yoko…” I whispered. “Tell me.”

“Well, if you don‘t mind being here for a while, then I don‘t mind telling the story,” he said, kissing me for a few moments. He quickly got out of bed and grabbed a photo album from the shelf, then jumped back into the bed. “This picture was taken shortly after I was born. That’s my father with us. Mother was so happy when I was born, but she would’ve been devastated if she’d known that I had killed her own child in the process of hiding in her. I should’ve at least given her twins. When Father died, I was unexpectedly devastated, but my pain was nothing compared to what my mother was going through. These are some pictures that our family members took at the funeral. I was only a child, but I wanted to make my mother happy again. That quiet, reserved, beautiful woman is not the kind of person I would’ve expected to fall in love with, but her caring and gentleness claimed my heart. When I met Heero, we were in elementary school. Here’s our class picture from second grade.”

I looked at Heero’s face in the picture, and was amazed. His hair was exactly the same as it had always been, but his face was actually happy. He was sitting next to Kurama, who was just sitting there with the sweetest smile on is face, much like that of the seducer I knew him to be, only much younger, and with his human body’s red hair. A few other pictures showed Kurama standing next to a couple of boys from another school, one wearing green and the other wearing blue.

“I met Yusuke Urameshi when Mother was deathly ill, about 12 years ago, when I was about sixteen years old,” he continued. “I had met up with Hiei and another powerful demon by the name of Goki, and stolen one of the Artifacts of Darkness called The Forlorn Hope. Had it not been for Yusuke’s intervention, I would have died to save my mother. But because he stepped in at the last moment, the Forlorn Hope had mercy on both of us, granting my wish without taking a life. This has made me eternally indebted to Yusuke, because without my mother, I would not be where I am today. After a number of other great struggles, I was finally to begin leading at least some semblance of a normal human life, but had no one to call my own.”

“Before I met my wife, Sheila, Hiei and I were incredibly close, but I didn’t have feelings for him in that way yet, and I even told him that, point blank. He tried to come on to me one night, and it hurt him greatly when I told him that I didn’t feel that way, and that was the first time I’d ever heard him cry. The next morning, in an effort to apologize to him, I went to his bedroom. Neither of us had gotten much sleep that night, and were both tired. He was asleep when I walked in, and when he awoke, in a completely spur-of-the-moment impulse, I offered to spend the rest of the morning in his bed with him. He agreed, and for the first time, I fell asleep in his arms. Nothing else happened, but it was at least a comfort to know that someone cared.

He acted like my rejection didn’t matter to him, because he was always there for me when I just needed someone to vent to. I met my Sheila at, of all places, a gay bar. I stumbled onto it one night when I went driving after work when I’d had a very difficult day. It had no outward appearance of being a gay bar, and no one was going in or out when I drove up to it, so I just thought that it was a regular bar. The shock came when I walked in and saw a female couple making out in the corner: Heero’s sister and her girlfriend.” I chuckled, remembering with fondness how devoted Ami and Hilde were to each other. “I was about 22 at the time, and we were married on my 23rd birthday, much to my mother’s joy. Unfortunately, shortly after we returned from a retreat we took for our first anniversary, her doctor diagnosed her with leukemia. While she knew that I was an apparition, I had not told her about this city, so I would’ve scared the living daylights out of her had I suggested bringing her here for medical treatment, even though it could’ve prolonged her life.”

“When she died, I felt as though I was in hell,” he continued. “I knew where she was going, and that she would be given a good afterlife, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. There were many nights after work, when I would wish that I could go home and be greeted by her at the door, that I would go home and just sit in the darkness of my living room, staring at nothing, and I would actually contemplate killing myself. But I never had the guts to do it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “I’d have never made it without you.”

“And neither would most of the boys that I’ve taken in since then,” he said. “It was the day of her funeral, when I was kneeling next to her grave, that Hiei found me again. He had been living in the demon world with a friend named Makuro during much of the last several years, but had recently come back. When he found me, he ran his hand through my hair as he stood beside me. ‘Oh, Kurama,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about you losing Sheila. She was a wonderful woman.’ My eyes fell on his with surprise. ‘But you will be all right now, because I’m here for you.’ I’m just glad that he understood that I needed to go through a time of grieving for Sheila, and that he wasn’t pushy in our relationship. When he was in a car accident a few months later, and nearly died, I realized how deeply I actually was in love with him. While he was in the hospital, I used some of the personal money I had invested from my company’s profits to buy my estate, which thrilled Hiei to pieces. That’s when I enlisted Heero’s help in bringing young men and boys into the home from the street. There were already about five hundred people in my estate when I bought it, and they welcomed us with open arms. And that’s about it about the time between the end of my high school years till now.”

“Incredible,” I whispered. “You’re… Kurama, if there’s anything I can do to repay you for salvaging my sanity, just give me the word.”

“Actually, there is one thing I could use right now,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Allow me to make love to you. I know that you won’t really be able to feel it, but it would help me.”

“Take me, Kurama,” I said. “I am yours.”