“Stay away from Sakura,” Daiki warned quietly.
“I don’t want her,” Kiyo answered honestly.
Hearing the truth in it, Daiki frowned. His eyes flickered behind Kiyo in suspicion.
Kiyo tensed. He didn’t need anyone realizing how important Niamh was to him, but he suspected it was perhaps too late.
Understanding seemed to dawn on Daiki, and hating the idea of the wolf knowing anything that made Kiyo vulnerable, he spoke to distract him. “Sakura made it clear she’s not done with me. Instead of warning me to stay away from her, perhaps you should warn your mate to stay away from me. There’s nothing more off-putting to me than someone who uses their power to try to coerce me into their bed.”
Daiki lunged, faltering as he gasped out in pain.
Enough. Kiyo heard Niamh’s disapproving voice in his head.
Without another word, he turned on his heel, eyes to Niamh, and strode toward her as if he didn’t feel bruises on his body from the few powerful hits Daiki managed to get past his defenses. It had been a joke of a fight. Other than the sucker punch he’d gotten in, Daiki never got near Kiyo’s face again.
Taking hold of Niamh’s hand, he marched them past Daiki’s wolves who had surrounded the one who was slowly coming back to consciousness. Their furious glares followed him and Niamh, but they didn’t dare make a move.
It wasn’t until he’d safely ensconced Niamh in the back of a cab that she spoke. “You were toying with him. The fight. Not just the mean dig about Sakura afterward. That fight was nothing to you.”
He didn’t need to answer. They both knew it was true.
“Then why?” she huffed, her exasperation finally drawing his attention to her face. She stared at him like she didn’t understand. “Why fight him at all?”
“Because he wanted it.”
“Seriously? So, every time someone wants to fight you, and I’m sure that happens quite a lot, you capitulate?”
“Not every time. Daiki has been waiting for this fight for a long time.”
“Why didn’t he kill you, then?”
“That wasn’t the point.”
“Explain the point. Because you just seem like a bunch of Neanderthals to me.”
He scowled. “The point was to defend Sakura’s honor. He didn’t get the chance last time.”
“Her honor?”
“He thought I took her virginity. I didn’t.”
“Why not tell him that, then?”
“It wouldn’t be right.”
A cloud flickered across Niamh’s face. “Because you care about her?”
“No.” Kiyo sighed impatiently. He was exhausted. Not from the fight but from the emotional energy he’d expended in the last few days. “Because Daiki needs to believe in Sakura’s honor. He needs to believe that her virtue was taken, not given. It’s part of the way he views her. Screwed up or not, old-fashioned or not, he needs to believe she’s virtuous. Why would I disillusion him?”
Niamh considered this. “While that’s very gentlemanly of you, it might have had a bigger impact if you hadn’t rubbed his nose in the fact that his mate wants to sleep with you.”
Maybe it was Niamh’s prudish disapproval or maybe it was just the strangeness of the past days, but amusement bubbled inside him.
Suddenly he was chuckling … and then laughing. He leaned his head back on the cab bench seat, fingers pressed to his closed eyes as his body shook.
Then her voice was in his head, her own laughter dancing through the words as she said, I don’t know why you’re laughing but you should do it more. I like the sound.
A tender ache flared inside him.
He opened his eyes to look at her, his laughter drifting away.
There was something like affection in her expression. “Are we really friends, then, Kiyo? Or did you just say that to make them stop touching me?”
Friends.
What was Niamh to him, really? She was kyoka suigetsu. She was a flower in the mirror. She was the moon’s reflection on the water. A beautiful but unattainable dream. She was an emotion inside of him that couldn’t be described in words.
“Friends,” he agreed. It was the truth. But it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was something he couldn’t admit out loud. And Kiyo felt fear.
For the first time since he’d been bitten, he felt true fear.20Niamh was suffering from emotional whiplash.
Just when she thought she and Kiyo had figured out how to treat one another, he turned around and decided the opposite.
It was frustrating to say the least.
At the market she’d been enjoying herself, mostly because Kiyo was finally relaxed around her. She thought he was relieved that she’d decided not to be friends. Perhaps he’d sensed her infatuation with him and now knowing she had no plans to pursue it, he was able to be himself?
And being himself was a wonderful thing. Kiyo was patient and interesting and seemed to enjoy introducing her to Japanese culture. Even if she was slightly confused when his eyes dropped to her mouth now and then or how his dark gaze gleamed with male appreciation.