All Those Little Things

When
he showed up at her home, nothing more than thirst and free sake pulling him
there—or so he always told himself—she met him at the door, her usual loose
tunic open over her pale breasts and her hair free and down around her
shoulders. She made a disgruntled sound that might’ve been, “You again?” and
led him into her dining room, where she was apparently halfway through a bottle
already.

“Getting drunk without me? For shame, Tsunade,” he teased. A frown wrinkling
her forehead, she took out another shallow cup, filled it, and shoved it at
him. Deftly, he took it from her before she dumped sake on his shirt, and
sipping from it, he absently reached out to skim his thumb over her mouth. She
easily caught his thumb between her first two fingers, and flicked his hand
aside; he shrugged and went back to drinking. “Frowning will give you
wrinkles.”

“No, it really won’t.” Arms crossed and elbows planted on the table, she eyed
him as he picked up the little sake bottle and carefully poured another cupful.

“That’s cheating,” he pointed out, and wondered what she’d look like without
her illusions on.

She just shrugged.

He leaned back to rest on his elbows, lazily drank from his cup, and watched
her under the soft, yellow light. The name Tsunade to him had once been
synonymous with possibilities. She was the first—only?—woman he could’ve
fallen in love with, if she’d given him a half-second of encouragement.

She hadn’t, so he didn’t. Oh, he had cared for her, like he cared about every
other person who’d ever mattered, even—once—Orochimaru if in a grudging kind of
way, and certainly he lusted over her. Who wouldn’t? And instead of flowers and
promises and sex (of course) and marriage and kids and monogamy, which probably
would’ve been tolerable because it was Tsunade—hopefully would’ve been
tolerable, because otherwise, he would’ve found himself smacked into something
with the general consistency of rice pudding—his greatest plans for her
involved spying on her in the bath and looking up her skirt.

Only when he knew she wouldn’t catch him, of course. He really didn’t
appreciate getting tossed around like a rag doll by a woman. Sometimes his
calculations were off and he had ended up staring at her long, bare
legs—probably with a stupid leer on his face, because hey, Tsunade had some
nice legs on her—realizing in slow motion that they were too close for safety,
and then her hand would tighten into a fist and hoo boy, that wasn’t any fun.
But even that risk was well worth it, because he’d discovered she had a heck of
a time keeping her towel secured above the pretty curve of her breasts when she
was pummeling him.

It had been years since he’d last peeked at Tsunade. It had once been
dangerous; now with that student of hers, Shizune, it would have been deadly.
The what-might-have-been feeling her name had once provoked was now a vague
half-memory. No one hung onto to every sentiment from their youth; if they did,
they’d go nuts.

Now she was just another woman. That, and a good drinking buddy—

Oh, and she was his Hokage.

But beyond that…

Perhaps he liked her elegant collarbone, her long fingered hands, the subtle
contrast of blond hair against fair skin, the generous curve of full breasts
and full hips…okay, especially that. But that wasn’t anything unique. For a
fifty year old woman, she was damned attractive, but there were always other,
younger pretty women, ones without that killer right hook.

They weren’t Tsunade and never had been, ever, but that didn’t matter. He liked
to look at women and see if he saw traces of her in them—some had the right
sort of breasts, heavy and pale and tipped with dusky rose, or a similar
profile, arrogant and stubborn—but when all was said and done, he didn’t
pretend in the dark or brood over it. Nah, he whispered their names, pretty
names that he still remembered, and loved their hair as much when it was red or
brown or black as when it was blond, even if it was just that shade of
blond; a beautiful women was intoxicating, Tsunade no more so than the rest,
and that was that.

So it didn’t really matter

But maybe he was slightly drunk—though certainly no more than she, and he’d
been drunk around her before without doing anything more rash than usual—and
definitely he was just a little stupider than usual, because he kissed her
before he thought better of it.

-

Drink had definitely dulled her reflexes, because his mouth rested on hers for
a good five seconds before she had hold of his wrist.

“Normally, I’d fling you over my shoulder with the hand you’d put on me,” she
said. “Should I use your mouth this time around?” Amused by the mental image of
herself taking hold of his lips and swinging him around by them, she had to
laugh; she choked on her mouthful of sake and ended up sputtering.

“For what?” he asked with a leer.

“To toss you over my shoulder, you pervert,” Tsunade said good-naturedly. With
a regretful sigh to tell him she’d rather not be doing this but had to, she
twisted the wrist she’d captured, but not half as roughly as she might’ve.

“The better to—to haul me up to your bed with your freakish strength?” Jiraiya
asked.

Hand still on his wrist, she lifted her cup with the other and took a sip of
sake, jaw tilting in consideration. It actually wasn’t a horrible prospect,
except that she didn’t sleep with Jiraiya. Just one of those unspoken rules.
She couldn’t remember why not, with her brain slightly sluggish. After all, it
would just be sex, just hungry sex that would hopefully be hot, if the reality
matched the reputation, and it had been a long time since she’d last filled up
her bed with anyone. Potentially good sex…and then, more tempting than she
liked, was the thought that when she woke up in the middle of the night, she
could fling an arm out and cuddle up next to his solid chest, feeling cozy and
comfortable, in a way she would deny in the morning—well, provided he stuck
around until morning.

Not a bad tally on the other side of the scale, but still, those rules of hers
had never served her badly before, with the exception of the gambling one that
said ‘when in doubt, double the stakes’—which she followed anyway, simply
because it was her rule damn it. Which was why of course, she should
just—

“Wha—Tsunade! What the—Tsunade, what are you doing?”

One problem. Her bed was sort of—far off. Well, she hadn’t exactly planned
to do this. She ought to drop him at her feet before she did anything stupid.

Stupider. Whatever.

She might still do that after she figured out where her bed was in relation to
herself and hefted his bulk there. “You’re fat,” she informed him, even though
it wasn’t precisely true—he was just solid.

His only reply was to pat her bottom.

She supposed there were certain…risks when one had the pervert sennin slung
over one’s shoulder.

It would be hypocritical, she told herself, to smack him for groping her when
she was planning on bedding him, so she just sighed and pinched his butt.

There was a grunt, but nothing more. Perhaps he didn’t want to waste this
opportunity. His hands ducked under her shirt and raked it up as they coasted
over her belly. That was—oh. Really, she ought to put him down before
she did anything she’d regret. It had been a long time since she’d done this,
and it had always had a sour edge to it when she was through, because she
couldn’t help but remember the times it had meant something beyond a pretty man
between her legs.

Oh, Dan. She shook her head. i>thi>that was where that rule had come
from, though on further thought, she suspected it had existed before she loved
and lost Dan; it had to do with a bet—that she’d lost obviously, as per
usual—over whether or not that scruffy Jiraiya kid would ever lose his
virginity. But the one she’d made it with had left them years ago, and she
doubted collecting on an idle childhood bet was a big priority for Orochimaru
right now.

“It would be easier, you know, to do this if all my blood wasn’t collected in
my head,” he complained, his breath on the small of her back. A thrill traced
her spine and raced down between her legs, but she let him back down and sat
down heavily at the table, picking up the sake bottle.

“You weren’t having any trouble,” she said, remembering the press of his groin
against her shoulder.

“Ah—but that’s because I’m the great Jiraiya.” He settled back down next to
her. “I guess you aren’t going to haul me over to your bed, then?”

“No. I was…was proving a point,” she said, and tried to decide whether or not
to get drunk off her ass.

“Too bad. I’m good at it, you know.” His jaw lifted thoughtfully as he looked
at her, with that unlly lly perceptive glint in his narrowed eyes that always
creeped her out. She couldn’t help but think of him as this dense kid with a
preoccupation with breasts, and yet sometimes she could swear he could see into
her and take her apart, break her down to the basics. She wondered what he saw
and if he liked it, and then wondered why she cared.

“Probably,” she agreed distractedly, wishing it was Dan who was looking at her
like that. Okay, so get drunk off her ass it was. She poured sake into her cup
and drained it.

He shrugged, reached out and snared the bottle from her hand.

She frowned. “Jiraiya, I’m trying to drinke.”
Frowning, he sipped from its mouth slowly, rolling it around on his tongue and
then swallowing; she watched him and was fascinated by the little rivulet of
dark liquid at the corner of his mouth. His tongue poked out of his mouth and
swept that up. Her thigh muscles clenching, she decided there were better
things to look at than Jiraiya. Her eyes settled on her hands, and she absently
picked dirt out from beneath her nails.

“You already are. I think you were when I came in. And Tsunade? I think a
Hokage needs more noble recreations than good sake—that way there’s more for
me—and gambling. (Because it’s bad for morale when even genin can beat their
Hokage in a high stakes game.) Maybe you should take up sport fishing or
something like that. Or hey, sex would be a good hobby. I’m always available.”

“Hhhmph,” she said. “Look, I’m trying to get miserably drunk. You’re really not
helping.”

He was quiet for a minute or two, in which she got out another bottle and got a
decent start into it. Then his long fingers drummed noisily on the table, but
he still wasn’t talking, so that worked too; she wasn’t terribly picky. “Well,”
he said at last.

She glared at him.

“Were you miserable before I showed up or only after you thouabouabout it and
realized you weren’t skilled enough to compete with me in bed?” he grinned at
her, but she thought there might’ve been a hint of hurt in there before his
natural arrogance kicked in.

Misery loves company, and she’d been alone with hers for too long. “It was the
thought of you naked,” she said irritably.

No sign of hurt this time, but as far as insults went, it was a bit weak. Drink
was dulling her wit. “I’m wounded, lady. Cut to the heart and all that. How
about some nice healing sex?”

“Jiraiya,” she warned, crossing her legs under the table.

“Okay.” Prying her fingers from the bottle of sake, he took it aet iet it at
his side, still sipping from the last bottle he stole. “You aren’t going to
drink all of this yourself, you know.”

She smirked. “Wanna bet?” she said, and dove across the table.

Dodging, Jiraiya grinned at her. “Famous last words, Tsunade-sama.” He
deliberately took an almost dainty sip from the bottle, and then leaned b fla flat on his back as she flung her arm out to recapture it, chest flattening out
on the table.

“I’ll—execute you if you don’t stop stealing all the sake. I’m the
Hokage, remember?” Still lying across the table, she rested her chin on her
palms and blew blond hair out of her eyes with a puff of air.

And that grin of his only widened.

Oh. Well, that would be why. She reached to draw her tunic shut, but then
thought better of it. Instead, she lazily drew circles on the curve of her
breasts, still pretty and firm and unmarred by age. Cheating, perhaps, but
Jiraiya certainly wasn’t complaining now, was he? Slowly, she inched the
fabric away, brushing it aside with each widening circle. “Give me the bottle
back,” she purred.

Such a stupid expression on his face. But it was familiar—his features, she
thought, probably relaxed into that expression while he slept—and accompanied
by the comfortable sort of déjà vu that came from two good drinking buddies
running through the same pattern again and again. That brought back memories of
happier times, when Sarutobi-sensei was alive and so were so many other people.

She wanted to kiss him out of empty nostalgia, amplified by alcohol.

And then he had the nerve to take his intent gaze from her breasts, fling his
head back, and down the bottle’s contents…well, some of them; a fair amount of
the liquid ended up sloshed over his clothes.

With an annoyed huff of air, she shut her shirt. “Bottle. Back. Now.”

“It’s empty,” he said, turning it back upside down to prove it, and looked
surprised when a good fourth of the bottle’s worth of sake spilled onto the
floor.

“All right, that’s it. We’re going to a bar.” Planting her hands on the
tabletop, she pushed her body off the table. “No more wasting good sake for you.
We’ll get you the cheap kind that’s probably diluted with dog piss.”

-

At a booth at the nearest inn, where the soberer people in the room took a
double take at their Hokage and the air stank of unwashed bodies and cheap
alcohol, Tsunade and Jiraiya went back to the business of getting drunk. Or at
least Jiraiya did. She sat back and watched him lazily, twirling a lock of
blond around one finger and wishing.

Just wishing. For what? Well, she wanted vague things that she couldn’t even
begin to put a name to, and if she tried to while drunk, it would just give her
a splitting headache. There was time enough for that in the morning. So she
just looked at him, thinking that he was almost handsome in a way, although
that might’ve been the sake or the lighting at fault there. There was nothing
really extraordinary about his face, but his features were strong and even and
had a certain degree of charisma, and she liked the powerful, solid line of his
shoulders under his clothes.

So for that reason and because his attention was on his sake, she tried out a
seductive smile, the smile of a bitter old siren who ought to know better. She
wondered how long it had been since she’d smirked at someone that way and meant
it. The last time she’d smiled at someone that way, she’d just been trying to
throw off an enraged debt-collector.

She wondered if she meant it now.

His gaze met hers, and she realized he hadn’t been so very absorbed in his weak
sake as she’d thought. “What do you want, Tsunade?” he asked tiredly, instead
of the leering insinuation she expected.

With a little sigh of irritation, she took a sip of crappy sake, swallowing
quickly so she didn’t have to hold it in her mouth very long, and thought about
the answer.

“Well?” now he sounded impatient. He was staring at her with harsh, curious
eyes, and again she had the feeling that he was trying to take her apart.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. That was, after all, the question she’d been
avoiding because it would give her the headache she didn’t want. “To get
drunk,” she amended after a moment. “So shut up and drink your sake.”

His mouth turned down in a frown that she would’ve called thoughtful if it
wasn’t, you know, Jiraiya wearing it, or if she weren’t feeling petty and
resentful.

“Frowns,” she said with a little mimicry flourish in her voice, “will give you
wrinkles. And you’ll wear them on your face the way I won’t.”

Slowly, he lifted his cup so that it rested against his lips, but didn’t drink
from it. Tsunade met him frown for frown, stare for stare, chewing impatiently
on her thumbnail. “What do you want?” she turned the question back at
him, and poked him hard in the breastbone with her forefinger.

His mouth spread in a lopsided grin, which was better than that disconcertingly
perceptive expression of his. “From you? That’s an easy one—”

“From life. From the future.” She hesitated. “And oh all right, from me too.”

He scratched the back of his neck lazily. “From life? Good sake. Pretty women.
Book sales good enough to support the good sake and the pretty women
lifestyle.”

She snorted, because it was so utterly typical of him. So much for a deep
answer; she’d just tick off all the little niceties she wanted to continue to
have, like sake and soap and a warm—if empty—bed, when the turn came back to
her.

Then his face turned serious, his mouth tensed and his brow creased in thought.
“Orochimaru dead.”

An involuntary shiver running down her spine, she scowled. “Yeah.” She thought
about training with Orochimaru, sparring him in a swift blur, often with naked
blades, and wondered why she had never forgotten to hold back when he was too
slow with a block. She thought about the times she had saved his life and
wondered why she hadn’t been a second too late.

For Dan, she had been too late.

She whispered, “I want to kill him myself. Not with a summon or a jutsu either;
I want to do it with my hands.”

He finally took a thoughtful sip from the cup he held against his mouth. “Nah,
I’ll do it. You’re the Hokage—”

“Which is why I’ll do it.” She lifted her chin stubbornly. Thinking of her
sensei, she felt hollow and hurt, and wondered if it would have made a
difference if she’d returned to the Leaf before Jiraiya came after her. There
were so many ifs…and that’s all they were, wisps of might-have-beens. It was a
waste of energy dwelling on them.

But sometimes she couldn’t help it.

Reaching inside a pocket, he took out his pipe; without lighting it, he stuck
the end in his mouth. “Want to bet?”

“…All right,” she said. What a morbid thing to bet on, and yet, somehow it felt
appropriate.

“Wonder if the winner will be around to collect, or if the loser will be around
to collect from,” he said casually.

She grinned at him, feeling rakish in a bleak way. “Isn’t that what makes it
interesting?”

He shrugged. “No. I don’t particularly want to die and I don’t want to bury you
either.”

She returned the shrug. “Everyone’s got to go someday, and no Hokage has ever
died of old age, you know.”

“Hhhmm,” he said. After that, he was silent, absorbed in his thoughts, and on
that dark note, she finally managed to get miserably drunk. She left sometime
around two in the morning, settling her share of the tab onto the table with a
heavy thunk and stumbling outside and in the general direction of her
home; he, for all she knew, stuck around til dawn.

-

What do you want, Tsunade? he’d asked her, and once she’d gotten over
her hangover, she gave it some thought. She hadn’t intended to, but it kept
coming to mind anyway, so in starts and fits, she decided what she wanted.

She wanted all the little necessities of life: food, water, clothes on her back
and a roof over her head. She wanted to protect the Leaf; that was her borrowed
dream, passed onto her from her lover and her brother and held in trust for
Naruto, and since she had taken it up, she had held it inside herself and made
it fully hers.

…She wanted to be happy.

Happiness was such a vague, big concept; it was impossible to pin down what
would make her happy. Once Dan had made her happy, but Dan was gone.

Once Jiraiya and Orochimaru and their own peculiar brand of friendship—with
Orochimaru sarcastic and cruel, Jiraiya loud and overconfident, and she clearly
the only sane one in their team—had made her happy, but the old days, when they
wanted small things and knew only their small world in which they fought small
battles, had passed. Maybe that was the secret to happiness, and once one
reached a certain age, it was impossible to have for longer than an hour or two
at a time, because one understood too much.

She wanted a storybook romance, with a neat little ending and all the loose
ends wrapped up. Her love should bring Dan back without any catch, like
Orochimaru’s hands healed to perform the jutsu or Jiraiya’s body dead to hold
Dan’s soul. The two of them would say cheesy, perfect words to each other and
then she’d fold him into a fierce, almost harsh embrace. The audience would
groan; she’d groaned over similar trite endings when she used to read cheap
romance novels, but what she hadn’t realized was that the people wrapped up all
cozy inside the sappy, silly ending? Were happy. They didn’t give a damn
that their ending was clichéd and unlikely, because they had each other and
hey, sometimes unlikely things happened.

Just not to her.

What do you want, Tsunade?

She wanted what she couldn’t have, so badly that it hurt inside, but she also
wanted what she could have; she wanted companionship and comfortable
back-and-forth banter, sake overflowing her glass and Jiraiya settled between
her legs. She didn’t want a grand love story—fortunate since she suspected if
he’d wanted one, he’d have found it years ago—not with anyone who was not Dan,
but there was a lot to be said for a familiar face and a warm body in her bed
and a good conversation.

Jiraiya was not right for her, per se, but he knew her and had known her
for years. When one got to fifty in the ninja business that counted for a hell
of a lot; when one was lonely and horny, it counted for more. Because there
were so many things he knew about her, little things no one else alive who wasn’t
Orochimaru could know. And it was the little moments, long gone and
half-forgotten and so utterly unimportant at the time, that were now terribly,
irrationally significant.

He had been there for the feel of the training field’s dirt under bare feet, the
way it had sat grainy and cool under thousands of shinobi feet, but somehow
unique because it had hers and his and Orochimaru’s that scuffled over it. He’d
been there for the rush of adrenaline as she made her first kill, blood that
was blessedly not hers or his or Orochimaru’s all over her; he’d been there for
her cool admiration as he killed for the first time, muscle sinewy and
taut under his tanned skin and kunai striking quick and efficient, and then
he’d puked afterwards. And he’d heard her scornful words, what exactly she
didn’t remember and he probably didn’t either, and felt her hand pull his mass
of white hair back for him.

And it mattered, that he had been there and he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t
Orochimaru.

Nostalgia was a crappy reason to sleep with someone, but lust was a very good
one, and she figured the two balanced out.

She was out of practice when it came to this romance stuff; maybe she’d never
really been in practice and it had just been that Dan was right for her and she
for him, and everything had clicked in that comfortable way. But she had good
instincts for…well, everything; no she wasn’t arrogant, just honest. So she
took a stab at it.

-

So maybe she made a point of mentioning she wanted a drinking buddy that night,
and maybe she wore a thinner shirt that fell just a little lower on her
breasts. When he showed up, she said “You again,” because that was what she
always said, and held the door open for him.

He followed along behind her, through the hallway to her dining room, and maybe
her hips swayed a little more than usual. “Thirsty?” she asked casually,
feeling an ‘I’m going to get laid’ type of thrill coil between her legs.

“Yeah.” He stretched, his clothes pulling taut over his broad shoulders.
Deftly, she picked up the sake bottle and put it to her lips. When he looked at
her, she gave him a pouty smirk and took a sip. Holding the smooth liquid at
the front of her mouth, she crossed to him. “Gonna give me the bottle or not?”
he asked.

Hiding it behind her back with a playful little smile, she put her first two
fingers on his jaw, tipping it down, and then reached her mouth up to his. It
took a moment, but realization flashed in his eyes; and for some reason, she
found the stupid leer charming this time. His mouth pressed back on hersrm
rm
and wet; her lips parted agreeably and he drank. When he had finished, she
pulled away and swatted at the hand he brushed over her right breast. “You’re
too impatient. Take your time.”

She filled her mouth again and put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him down so
that he sat on an available chair; his face was on level with her breasts.
Trying not to laugh at his wide eyes, she bent over; when her lips closed
hungrily on his, thke ske spilled into his mouth and dribbled down his chin. This
time when she broke the kiss off, she licked rivulets of sake from his jaw. One
droplet escaped down the line of his throat; she pressed her mouth to his
collarbone and caught it.

Drawing back, she looked down at his face. He flashed a lopsided grin and cupped
the back of her head with one hand, pouring himself sake with the other.
“Sounds good,” he said conversationally, circling his thumb at the base of her
skull. He gulped the liquid distractedly and afterward, swiped the back of his
hand across his lips; the fingers of the other hand slipped down the line of
her neck.

Gooseflesh prickling, she splayed her hand on his chest and leaned in again for
another kiss. This time, no sake to stand in the way, his tongue traced her
outside lower lip. Her mouth opened and his tongue moved slowly over the inside
of both lips and just as slowly, skimmed over her teeth. Exhilaration building,
she tangled her hands in his white mane.

“You’re too slow,” she said, the words muffled against his mouth. br>
He pointed out, “You just said I was too impat—” The rest was unintelligible,
as her mouth come crashing down on his, putting an end to the calculatingly
seductive note she’d begun on. It was a fierce, hungry kiss, tongues and lips
all mashed together; somehow, the distance separating the rest of them vanished
in the process, so that her breasts were flattened against his shoulders, one
of her legs flung over his lap.

This time he ended it, leaning his head back to rest on the back of the wooden
chair. Hands taking a firm grip on her outer thighs, he pulled her hips toward
his groin; already standing awkwardly on only one foot, she lost her balance.
Instead of regaining it with her battle-honed reflexes, she tumbled forward
agreeably onto his lap. Unthinkingly, she arched her back, thrusting her hips
forward against his; he was hard against her and it cued an aching, echoed
arousal in her.

He ducked his head so that his wild hair feathered around her throat. It
tickled in an interesting, distracting way so that her skin prickled; then
there was warmth and wet on her throat and she forgot about his hair. Her hips
bucked again involuntarily as his mouth trailed down to her right breast, but
then he stopped just short of her neckline. Instead, he glanced up at her,
resting his chin on the breast he’d just deserted, and leered at her.

She tested out a leer of her own, as his hands curved at her waist, his fingers
tapping at the small of her back in little tantalizing dribbles of contact.
Inside, she was achy and anxious, and her breasts itched. She lifted her chest
a little as a hint, but he didn’t seem to figure it out, his tongue instead
flicking out over her collarbone.

“Damn it,” she said raggedly. “Put your mouth back there already.”

“Huh?”

With an irritated sigh, she yanked her collar further open and, hand laced into
his hair, guided his mouth down the slope of one breast.

“Oh,” he said. Tugging one lacy bra cup—that maybe, just maybe, she had on
on
especially for the occasion; not that she needed pretty underthings to look
good, hhhmmph—from her flesh, he touched his tongue to her taut nipple. Her
skin felt shivery and flushed; feet arching, she clutched the chair’s legs with
flexed toes.

That rocked her hips back against his, hard, and this time she didn’t bother to
pull them back. Abruptly, his hands—the ones of the featherlight contact at the
small of her back—tensed under her tunic, against her skin, pushing her against
him again. Something inside of her twisted and ached. She laughed and,
balls of her feet on the floor for balance, moved back and forth, now brushing
groin to groin, now rocking back towards his knees, now sliding down again. He
groaned and, hands spread on her back, tried to keep her pressed to him.
Instead, she slung her leg back over his knee and crossed back to the sake,
which she sipped slowly, ignoring the wet thrill between her legs.
Deliberately, she let some spill down her chin so she had to lick her lips.
Fair was fair, after all.

He tilted his head up and looked at the ceiling with a groan. “Man, come on,
Tsunade! Get back here.”

“It’s traditional to do it in bed,” she said, absently undoing her two
ponytails and then threading her free hand into her hair so that it fell loose
over her breasts. “Since I’m a nice, traditional kind of girl, you’ll need to
stand up sooner or later and get yourself into my bed.”

Doing her best to maintain her casual manner, she sat on the table and then
leaned back, pulling up her shirt to bare her waist. Sucking in her stomach,
she carefully trickled a few drops into the hollow created. “This,” she said,
breathing shallowly to keep her belly concave, “is the first stop on the road
to the bed. Hurry up.”

“Heh. All right, then.” He stood slowly and walked to her, one hand resting
lightly where his erection raised the loose material of his trousers. Planting
his hands on the wooden surface to either side of her hips, he bens hes head so
that he could brush his mouth over her skin. They were faint, barely
perceptible little kisses that seemed intended to avoid the sake itself. She
hissed at the wet, twisting want building at the apex of her thighs, and could
hardly concentrate enough keep her stomach pulled in. Finally, his tongue
flickered out, lapping the liquid up; as he pushed himself up on his hands, he
kissed the underside of her ribcage in a way that made her tremble.

Standing with a scooping motion that brought his groin against hers, he
stumbled a few steps backwards. Body shivering and on glorious edge, Tsunade
went to him, arm looping over his shoulder and other hand brushing over his
erection. His hands fell on her outside thighs, grinding her against him. This
time, she did not pull away, but instead let her hips move the way he wanted
them too, feeling the tension inside her tightening; but when his fingers
slipped under the waistband on her pants, she caught hold of his wrists. “This
way,” she said, and his hands still at her thighs, tugged him toward her
bedroom.

“If you have to be this way, you should’ve moved a futon into the kitchen,” he
complained.

On the way, he took out his pretty, well-practiced compliments; she actually
liked them and felt like a giddy teenager. “Sssh,” she said, with a laugh; it
felt like she was sneaking home with her boyfriend in tow for a secret
assignation.

She laced her fingers with his, because that was a teenager thing to do and she
liked feeling young; he rubbed his thumb over the lifeline on her palm.
Shivering, she wondered how she’d failed to realize how sensitive hands were.
“Do that again,” she hissed at him; his attention had moved on to the nape of
her neck and that was nice, too, but—

“Jiraiya. Do that again.”

“What?” he asked, the word muffled against her throat.

“The thing with the hands.”

“Oh, this?” She felt his free hand splay, open-palmed, on her leg, his fingers
firm and strong on her inner thigh through her pants. “How’s that?” he
whispered against her ear, cool breath making her skin tingle.

That wasn’t the right thing with the hands, but she decided not to point that
out because she liked this one better. She rested hend lnd lightly over his.

His fingers trailed up her thigh, taking an agonizingly slow path towards the
wet heat building between her legs. With an impatient huff of air, she caught
his hand against her skin and tucked it there herself. “You’re slow, Jiraiya.
It’s annoying.”

“Hahaha, and you cannot resist the great Jiraiya,” he said in a puffed up,
exaggerated voice, his hand curving between her legs, thumb glancing over her
sex. There were so many silly unnecessary clothes between them, she thought. He
needed to stop distracting her.

“And that spoils the mood. I don’t sleep with people who talk like cheesy
door-to-door salesmen.” No, not even when they licked the lobe of her ear like
that. Really. She had her standards—

Oh. Well…maybe that was a lie. Just maybe, because he had exhaled a cool
whisper into her ear, and perhaps she could forgive him anything if he’d just breathe
like that again.

“First time for everything,” he said, using the hand between her thighs to draw
her to him. His erection pressed against her bottom; he rocked her back against
him. Tsunade, suspecting that if he didn’t stop they’d never make it to her
room, pushed him back with one hand and then used the hand still holding his to
yank him after her.

-

She stretched out on her bed, back arching and breasts rising—all deliberate,
of course—and then rolled over onto her stomach. Propping her fist under her
chin, she blew strands of blond out of her eyes and watched Jiraiya. “So,” she
said, and felt awkward.

“So,” he said. He sat down on the bed alongside her, looking perfectly at ease,
aside from the fact that he had a hard-on. “How long since you last did this?”
he asked conversationally, a teasing glint in his eyes. “Maybe you seem a
little rusty.”

She snorted, because while she might’ve been, she was sure she didn’t seem it.
“A year or two,” she said; it had been more like a decade. “You?” she asked and
then shook her head at him. “Never mind, it’s not important, just so long as
you haven’t picked up any nasty diseases.”

“Want to examine me, doctor?”

“Your pick-up lines suck. C’mere.” Tilting her head deliberately so that her
hair fell over one eye, she crooked her finger at him. Damn straight she was
better at seducing people than he was, even with her smaller amount of prior
practice; of course, it helped that she had more natural resources than he did,
since she was gorgeous after all.

He leaned over so that he had an arm slung over her shoulders and his chin
rested on the top of her head. “Well, I’m not exactly picking you up; I think
that’s what you did back there with the sake and the kissing. So I can slack
off.”

“Hhmmph.” She looked at his neck, which was just at eyelevel at the moment, and
licked his adam’s apple. “That’s all you can slack off on, you know. I expect
to enjoy this as much or more than you.”

“Okay, now I’m hurt. I do have a reputation you know.”

“I’m just warning you.”

She reached out for his clothes and fumbled with his shirt, pulling it over his
head. His hair got in the way and she had to laugh. He laughed too, and it felt
nice. With her calloused fingers, she traced his stomach muscles and whistled
appreciatively, though hard planed bellies weren’t exactly rare in a ninja
village. Nor was the solid bulk of his shoulders or the hard lines of his back;
she pointed that out just to be contrary.

“So?” was his answer, as he slid her shirt down around her shoulders so that it
framed her breasts.

“It’s easier if you pull it over my head. Really, Jiraiya, it isn’t that
difficult.”

He tugged her bra straps off the shoulder, too, and then grinned at her. “You
should wear it like this everyday.”

She rolled her eyes and took off her shirt herself, since he was taking his
time about it. As he curved his hands over her breasts, she admired the
contrast of his broad, dark hands against her fairer skin. Hands trailing
around to her back, he deftly undid the clasp. Obviously, he knew his way
around bras.

It reminded her of how Dan so clearly hadn’t, how he’d blushed and fumbled at
the back and then finally, staring at his feet, asked her if she could turn
around so he could see what he was doing.

Jiraiya set a finger on her mouth. “You’re frowning. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I was thinking about the paperwork I should be doing.” She
smiled. “You’ll have to help me.”

“Procrastinating? You used to do that back in the academy. And then you tried
to cheat off of me on the tests.”

“What?” There was a nice bit of revisionist history, all right.

He shrugged and brushed his thumbs over her nipples; they were calloused and
rough and made the lust, subsided somewhat, flare again between her legs.
Covering his hands with hers, she guided his fingers, getting them to move just
so on her skin.

His mouth hot on her throat, she slid her hands down his powerful abdomen and
grabbed his waistband, hauling it down to mid-thigh and then to his knees. His
hips bucked, pressing his bare groin against her belly; she cupped one hand
over him and kissed his ear, using her free hand to push him back against the
sheets.

He pulled her down with him so that she straddled him, just her trousers and
underwear—which were black, and silk—between them. The thin fabric was somehow
more arousing than nothing at all as she moved over him, falling into a quick,
sure rhythm, clenching the muscles inside herself with each rocking motion of
her hips to increase the pressure. His lips and tongue were on her mouth, his
hands gripping her outer thighs. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth, and then he
groaned, “Tsunade, why are your pants still on?”

She tossed her hair. “I took off yours, so that was your oversight,” she said,
and then gasped at his fingers slipping between her pants and panties. When he
stroked her through the thin silk, she couldn’t keep up the thrust of hips;
instead, with a breathy little sound, she leaned back on her palms, sitting on
his upper thighs.

“Just how many layers do you have on?” he griped, brushing at her again and
propping himself up on his elbow.

“The usual two.” She raised her hips and widened her legs pointedly, letting
her knees fall to the sides.

After what felt like forever, he slid his first two fingers, bare skin on bare
skin, down the curve between her thighs; with the other hand, he worked her
pants down to bare her hipbones. She lifted her pelvis so he could tug the
waistband to her knees, then settled back on his lap and helped him divest her
of them completely. With the other hand, he spread the folds between her legs
and rested the tip of his middle finger over the opening. One quick stroke from
clit to the bottom of her slit, then another—She hissed as he eased the finger
inside her to the knuckle and withdrew it quickly, transferring his fingertips
to the small of her back and leaving her feeling achy and distinctly empty.

His cock, just to the front of her sex, was high against his belly, and she
covered it with her hands. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and when she
tightened her grip, his back arched and he grunted. Bending her neck, she
kissed the tip, and then flicked her tongue out, kissing the length of him.
“Ready?” she said, looking at him.

He snorted. “No kidding.”

She shifted position, so that she was on her hands and knees over him. Struck
by an impulse, she licked the marking on his right cheek, then the one on the
left, and wondered if he’d be there in the morning. He grinned at her, and
traced the line of her jaw with his thumb, before reaching for her hips, hands
spread over her thighs. They slid down to her groin; with his thumbs, he spread
the folds of her sex for her as she came down over him. There was a moment of
awkwardness as she missed the tip, it instead pressing against her hipbones as
she slid downward. The second time, everything lined up and his cock pressed at
her entrance; she relaxed her muscles and took a deep breath, bringing herself
down on him. There was a moment of discomfort as she widened inside to fit him
that passed swiftly when her inner muscles flexed around him. Smirking at him,
she twitched her hips to make him groan.

As her hands wove into his hair, he kissed her hard, thrusting up into her and
panting into her mouth; she moved in response. For a few seconds, she was a few
beats off from him, but then she found the rhythm, matching his thrusts.
Hungrily, she met his kiss, deepening it from her side. It was hot and wet and
fierce, lacking most of her earlier finesse, but he didn’t seem to care. Her
tongue slid in and out of his mouth, grazing over his teeth each time, almost
in sync with her hips. Bracing his palms at her back, he bucked and held his hips
up above the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked. He jackknifed his body to the side; since she
was curious, she let her body roll with the motion, so that he flipped her
over. With a grunt, he pulled out almost to his tip and then drove back inside
her. She groaned and lightly bit his collarbone.

“Do that again,” he said. When she did, she felt a spasm run through his body.
Again, he withdrew from her and then drove in deep, and again. The inner
pressure intensified each time and she could feel herself spiraling toward
orgasm—and then, abruptly, his fingers digging into her thighs, he came, the
muscles in his face clenching in ecstasy, his body shuddering and then falling
heavily on top of hers.

She drummed her fingers on his back as he breathed against her collarbone. “You
still need to finish me off,” she pointed out, feeling the tightly coiled lust
beginning to unwind, though he was still inside her. To keep it from fading,
she flexed her inner muscles tightly around him.

“Just a minute,” he said. “It takes a little bit, even for me.”

She just laughed at that, and admired the powerful muscles connecting neck and
shoulder. Planting her hands on his chest, she pushed him off, hooking a leg
around his firm buttocks so that she could maneuver him over onto his back.
Once a, sh, she straddled him as he lay back against the bed. Pulling his cock
out from inside her, she scooted up along his chest. He laughed then, cupping
her bottom with his hands. Knees to either side of his face, she held her hips
over his mouth and gripped the headboard with sweaty fingers.

Using his hands to draw him towards her, he raised his lips to her. One, two,
three, four little featherlight kisses, and damn it, he needs to move faster.
She trembled and clenched her thigh muscles in the effort to hold still; it was
sort of counterproductive to buck her hips at his mouth. Her hands clutched at
the headboard when his tongue slipped out, tracing between the folds of her
sex, and then—

Her back arched, everything tightened into a wonderful hot implosion
exhilaration as his tongue slid inside her and he took a hand away from her
backside to thumb her clit, stroking with his hand and flickering his tongue in
her. She came in a blaze, clinging to the headboard and shouting out something
wordless and ragged. Afterwards, she dropped down next to him, draping a sweaty
arm over his chest and giving him the smirk of a woman who has just gotten
laid.

“Well,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Get dinner with me tomorrow,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “Maybe we’ll
do this again,” she added, casually.

“Sounds good.”

She thought it might just be a hell of a start to…something…and that was
good enough for her.

-

He was still there in the morning.