The Chemistry of Desire

Title: The Chemistry of Desire
Author: Sintari
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

The Chemistry of Desire

Kiba always had that puppyish way about him. When they were Team 8, Kurenai had found it hard not to ask him to fetch things, or to ruffle his messy hair after a job well done.

“Kurenai-sensei, look at me!” He always reserved his best tricks for her. Whether they were newly-mastered clan jutsu, or back flips or astonishing feats of eating prowess. “Look at me. Look at me!” is what she thinks when she thinks back on teaching Kiba. In her mind it’s as synonymous with him as stony silence is to Shino or aching need is to Hinata.

But three things are true, she’s found – things change, people lie, and puppies grow up to be dogs.

Asuma is in the bathroom, “breaking the seal” he’d muttered, and she’s alone nursing her drink. She taps her fingernail against the oversized glass just to have something to do with her hands. The drink is something fanciful and lemony with the word “pirate” in the name that is totally inappropriate for a snowy night in Konoha. She recalls Asuma and Genma inventing the drink back when alcohol and its many combinations was exciting rather than depressing. They’ve all drank their way around this bar’s menu more than a few times. It’s what old adrenaline junkies do to take that edge off between missions.

Kiba walks in talking to companions she doesn’t recognize and brushing snow off of a wool coat that she at first thinks is fur. He spots her, catches her looking, and bares his fangs in a smile. She doesn’t think he can control the predatory gleam that creeps into his eyes. That’s the curse of Inuzuka blood. A dog sees no reason to hide his feelings.

She nods at him. An unwritten rule warns Jounin to keep their distance from Chuunin, even former students. Unlike Asuma or Kakashi, Kurenai has never had any difficulty with that restriction.

She sucks on her straw and suddenly a warm hand is over her eyes. She lies to herself that she hadn’t seen him coming. She feels his wooly sleeves tickling her ear. He smells like musk with a faint undercurrent of wet dog. It’s not entirely unpleasant.

“Guess who, sensei?” he says into her other ear.

“Sensei. Sensei. Who would call me sensei? Shino?” She feels like she could have come up with something more clever, but by then the lemony drink has already gone to her head and she was never very funny anyway.

He drops his hands in dismay. Momentarily, smiling eyes and the tops of his tattoos sidle sideways into her line of vision as he leans around her.

“Long time no see, sensei.”

She rolled her neck to look at him, her chin coming to rest on her shoulder. She can feel the heat of his body behind her, warm even after a trek through the snow. Disconcerting.
“Inuzuka Kiba. Are you even old enough to be in here?”

“Eighteen in July,” he grins, then raps the bar. “I’ll have what the lady’s having.”

Kurenai doesn’t miss the bartender’s exasperated eyeroll.

“Legal for four months and you’re already popular around here, I see,” the drink has her smiling back, even when he makes himself comfortable beside her, straddling Asuma’s vacated seat.

Kiba twirls a coaster against the scarred bar with one finger. A little procrastination for courage she realizes a moment later, when he turns to her. “You alone?” A pregnant pause. “Sensei?”

She takes a sip of her drink before answering, for some reason she won’t even try to fathom. And then Asuma is making his way toward them.

Kiba follows her gaze. “Ah, your old man. No doubt.”

“He’s not my old man,” she lies. It’s the worst kept secret in Konoha, after all, but she keeps up the pretense just the same.

They both watch Asuma stop in the middle of the crowded barroom and clap Genma on the shoulder.

“Everybody knows, sensei.” His drink comes and he makes a manly show of downing the whole thing. “Urgh, too sweet.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The motion leaves his lips wet and red. Kissing him right now would be sticky-sweet. Kurenai pushes the remainder of her drink away before that line of thought can progress any farther.

“Everybody knows,” Kiba repeats himself. “I saw you… together one time, you know. I came by your house on your birthday.”

Kurenai’s eyes narrow.

“Your uh… shades were open.”

“My shades haven’t been opened in years.” But somehow she’s more amused than angry, and it shows in her voice. That seems to give him courage.

“But he’s not your old man.” He leans in closer. “So tell me, sensei. You do things like that with people who aren’t your old man?”

Kurenai swallows, dimly recalling that birthday and what exactly it was she’d been doing. Who is this kid? she’s thinking. This puppy with the nerve to say something like that with Asuma ten feet away. No, not even ten feet away.

“Inuzuka.” Her old man mouths the name around his cigarette. It’s not precisely an unfriendly greeting. He stares at Kiba until Kiba slides backward out of his seat.

“Asuma-sensei,” Kiba greets. Kurenai feels a school-marmish urge to order him stop being a smart-ass, though all he said was Asuma’s name.

“Bye, sensei,” Kiba tosses over his shoulder.

“Let’s go home, babe,” Asuma growls. Growling is normal with him now. It’s all those years of smoking. He isn’t looking at her. Yamanaka Ino has just come in with another man she doesn’t recognize. There are more and more of those around every year. People she doesn’t recognize. She chews on that thought to distract her as she pointedly doesn’t notice Asuma and Ino pointedly not noticing one another. She feels Asuma’s hand, possessive on the small of her back, as they exchange the warm bar for the snowy night.

()()()()()

Later, in bed in the dark, Asuma slides her nightgown up over her thighs with a minimum of foreplay. Practiced kisses taste of smoke.

“I saw you… together one time, you know.”

Kurenai feels the first pang of desire sizzle through the base of her spine.

She is sure of what Kiba saw now. She and Asuma had been gone on separate missions that year, and by some happy coincidence had both come home on the morning of her birthday. He’d dragged her out of the shower with her hair still slick from conditioner. The dresser was closer than the bed and he’d taken her from behind, steadying her hips with one hand, gripping a handful of her breast with the other. Hot and rough, just the way she liked it. The calluses on his hands had chaffed the tender skin beneath her breasts red for days. She’d reveled in that feeling back then.

Tonight, his mouth moves over all of the right spots, but she wriggles out from under him.

“Asuma, how about over the dresser?”

“Your birthday,” he remembers. The moonlight allows her to see his lazy smile.

Out from under the covers, her bare feet are cold, and Asuma’s calluses hurt. She impatiently moves his hand from her breast to her stomach and not surprisingly, he doesn’t bother to protest.

The she looks over to the window, directly across from them. They might as well have been on stage when Kiba spied on them. Her former student’s eyes had darkened when he asked, “You do things like that with people who aren’t your old man?”

She realizes then that she has cried out.

“That’s right,” Asuma mutters behind her. “Talk to me, baby.”

“That’s good,” she says. “So good.” She’s watching the window out of the corner of her eye. “Fuck me harder.” That’s all it’s ever taken for Asuma. Dirty words out of her usually prim mouth. She wonders how long Kiba would last if she let him take her from behind like this. Like a bitch in heat. Spewing encouragement. Her orgasm comes quickly after she reaches between her own legs. For once, Asuma’s follows hers. He pulls her to him for a moment as he finishes, breathing heavily against her shoulder blade.

They fall asleep, entangled, under the bedroom window.

()()()()()

“Kurenai-sensei, over here!”

It’s plausible that she doesn’t hear him over the noise of the Spring Festival, yet she does, and it’s all she can do not to look at him. Months have passed since that drunken night when her mind wandered where it never should have gone.

“Sensei! Look at me!”

Anko, ever-nosy Anko, taps her on the shoulder and points. “I think that’s one of yours.”

Kiba sees her looking and waves enthusiastically. Holding an oversized stuffed puppy, hair flying in all directions, he looks more like the kid she taught five years ago than the panty-wetting fantasy that keeps her up after Asuma is snoring.

Beside her, Anko licks her lips. “He’s cute. Think he likes older women?”

Kurenai takes too long to respond. She’s watching Kiba make his way toward them, while simultaneously formulating an excuse to extract herself.

Anko looks at her sideways. “He does like older women. Well then. I’ll just leave you two alone then, cougar.” Anko dances away in the wake of the stilt-walkers before Kurenai can move to slap her.

Akamaru reaches her before Kiba does, and she tentatively pats his massive head.

“Yeah, Akamaru, I think so too,” Kiba tells the dog.

“What’d he say?” Kurenai asks mock-suspiciously.

“He said you look like a woman in need of a guard dog.” Kiba grins cheekily at her for a long moment, allowing the words to hang between them before offering her the stuffed puppy.

Kurenai rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Kiba. But I think I can take care of myself. And it’s nice to see you again, but I really do need to be getting home.”

Kiba follows her, still clutching the puppy. He bumps her with his shoulder, on purpose, and before she can think she shoves him lightly back.

“This is a festival. Why aren’t you with the kids your own age?” Her voice has turned flirtatious without her permission.

“People my age aren’t kids anymore, sensei.”

“Then what does that make your old sensei? Ancient?”

Kiba’s gaze drinks her in and he shakes his head. “Nuh uh.”

They’ve left the main body of the festival now. They’re surrounded by the cheap booths that sell plastic trinkets and sour candy. No one they know is anywhere near here.

“I have to ask you something, Kiba.”

“The answer is yes.”

Kurenai sighs. “I’m being serious. You said you saw… back on my birthday. What did you do?”

His deep dimples are apparent even under his tattoos. “I was fourteen. What do you think I did?”

Kurenai has to look away to keep from blushing. That was… flattering. “Kiba! I am your sensei! And I meant, did you tell anyone? You know the sensei aren’t supposed to cohabitate.”

“You’re my former sensei and no, I didn’t tell anyone. I’m good at keeping secrets.” He’s serious now and she nods. Of course he’s loyal, she shouldn’t have doubted.

She doesn’t know why she says what she says next. She can’t even blame the fruity drinks this time.

“After you saw us you…?” She is blushing now. Fiercely.

He leans in close to her ear. “For years.”

She feels her knees turn to water but then Akamaru picks that moment to nose at her skirt in a way that’s entirely too familiar.

Kiba’s voice is as irritated as she’s ever heard it. “Akamaru! Go home!”

“I should… go, too. Bye, Kiba.”

She leaves him standing by a display of plastic dolls. It takes all her willpower not to look back.

()()()()()

When she’s home alone, Kurenai relaxes before bed by sipping on a glass of wine and reading a book. While her last team broke up long ago, going off to their own specializations and squads, Asuma still goes on missions with his. He’s often out with his lazy Shikamaru, and his gluttonous Chouji and his… Ino.

Kurenai feels the presence outside before she hears the knock. She automatically glances at the clock. So absorbed in her book, she’s stayed up much later than usual. The knocking persists, growing louder.

“Who is it?” she calls to the latched door, even though she knows.

“Let me in, sensei.” Her former student’s voice is slurred. “It’s my birthday.”

Kiba pours into the kitchen when she opens the door. He smells vaguely of alcohol, even more faintly of sweat – the result of a cool night after a hot July day. Akamaru is nowhere to be seen. And after the way he eyes her, she has to check to see if her dress is still properly done up.

But she realizes he hasn’t been celebrating that hard when he displays the presence of mind to ask, “Your old man around?”

“Kiba…” she begins. She’s about to admonish him like this isn’t happening. Like she didn’t just let him in the door in the middle of the night, and like bubbles of liquid fire aren’t pooling in the pit of her stomach. She’s about to admonish her wayward student, like he hasn’t just completely ignored her and cupped the base of her neck to pull her close. Like his other hand hasn’t snaked up her thigh to grope her ass beneath her panties.

She’s about to admonish him like she hasn’t just kissed him first. Like his lips aren’t just as sticky-sweet as she’d fantasized.

She’s about to admonish him.

In just a moment.

She’d dimly registered that he’d grown taller and broader, but never is his size more apparent than when he manhandles her to the kitchen table. The table cloth bunches up under her thighs and she hears a clatter when the salt shaker hits the floor and rolls.

She’s on her back on the table and he’s followed her down, nearly crawling on top of her. A big hand has engulfed one of her breasts but he can’t get at skin through the fabric and he’s half-laughing when he finally catches his breath to ask, “How does this come off?”

She’s fully aware of what she’s doing when she parts the straps and shows him.

“Oh.” It’s just as the involuntary gasp is leaving his lips that Kurenai realizes that nobody has looked at her that hungrily in years. He takes a moment, just gazing. Then his hands are on her, and his mouth. His movements might be clumsy, puppyish, but that’s fine, because they’re genuine. He looks up at her as one of her nipples disappears into his mouth. She watches his tongue circle her areola. The muscles in his back are long and lean under her grasping hands.

“Oh my god. Sensei. Oh god.” Kiba doesn’t need to tell her how he feels. She can see it in his darkening eyes, smell it in the heat rising between them. She revels in the sound of his voice, deepened with lust.

“I need to taste you,” he says suddenly.

At that, frissions of anticipation light her nerve endings on fire. A big hand is pawing at her panties, roughly lifting her ass and extricating her from them. He’s looking at her face still.

“Then do it.”

She can see his messy hair above the pushed-up hem of her dress. He rubs his hands up the backs of her calves, to the tender skin behind her knee, to between her thighs. She’s anticipating his warm tongue, but he suddenly stops, shoots her another one of those cheeky grins, sticks his tongue out at her.

“I don’t think you want it enough.”

She responds with a frustrated groan.

“So tell me. Do you want me to eat you out, sensei?”

Her body feels so thick and heavy with desire that she can barely lift her eyelids to glower at him.

“Kiba. Get down there and lick me.”

He looks pained, suddenly. “Fuck, now I’m gonna come.” He stays very still, fangs peeking out of his partially open mouth. He finally opens his eyes again after a long moment. “But not yet.”

What he lacks in experience he makes up in enthusiasm. She’s unaccountably wet, and has to dig her fingernails into the table to stop herself from coming almost immediately. When she begins to shudder – too soon, too soon – he presses his tongue flat to her clit, riding it out. He’s always reserved his best tricks for her.

He’s almost as breathless as she is. “Sensei, if I don’t fuck you I think I’m gonna die.” She’s been quiet through most of this, afraid of what she might shout, and now she merely opens her legs invitingly.

She watches him paw his zipper down, fumble with the button. Her calves wrapped around his sides. She helps his pants slide down around his hips, watches him steady his thick cock in his hand.

“Is this okay?”

She could giggle, because he’s just asking that now?

“Yes, Kiba. It’s okay.”

He throws his head back when he pushes into her. She can tell he’s trying to look down at her, but a haze of pleasure has veiled his eyes. Wantonly, she slips out of her sleeves to further expose her breasts to him. The dress is just wrinkled cloth around her middle now.

“… Never been like this.” He’s talking to her. He was always a talker. “Not gonna last long…”

He doesn’t. She feels ever muscle in his body strain and relax, then he half falls on her, only catching himself when his face is close enough to hers to kiss.

“Now give me a second,” he says huskily. “And we’ll go again.” Then his mouth is back on hers in a kiss that pins her to the table.

“Again?” she teases when the long kiss ends.

In answer, he bumps against her thigh. Kurenai blinks. He wasn’t lying.

“Thank you for the birthday gift, sensei. Your old man isn’t about to bust in and make this my last birthday, is he?”

She wraps her arms around his neck and he lifts her up so that she’s sitting on the edge of the table. “Why are you so interested in my old man?”

Kiba looks her up and down. “I’m not.”

“Good, because he’s on a mission until Tuesday.”

She can practically see the thought bubble as Kiba does the math in his head. Two good hours of sex plus one half hour to cool down, add in a few incidental hours to eat and sleep, and divide that all into seventy-two. She doesn’t dissuade him from this presumption. Not just now.

“Come here,” he says gruffly, when he’s done with his math. He picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. “The table didn’t look all that comfortable.”

“I never really noticed.” She should be embarrassed, confused, or ashamed, she knows. But horniness, and the way Kiba can’t seem to tear his eyes away from her body, wins out over propriety.

The second time is slower, but not that much slower.

“I knew you wanted me,” he says. He’s rolled her over onto her stomach and is taking her from behind, just liked she’d imagined far too many times since that night in the bar. He’s talking to her between long, torturous licks up her shoulder blades and against the most sensitive parts of her neck.

She takes a moment to respond. “How did you know?”

There’s satisfaction in his voice, commingled with the lust. “I could smell it on you.”

As soon as that registers, Kurenai sees white stars behind her eyes. She’s never come from that position before and it feels… it feels like dissolving. He really has saved all his best tricks for her.

The sun is up when they’re finally spent. At least, she thinks they’re spent this time. She could be mistaken – she’d thought that two hours ago, too. He traps her ankle when she rises to leave the bed, but she gently extracts herself and takes one of Asuma’s big t-shirts out of the dresser. She feels Kiba’s eyes on her when she puts it on, hears his little groan of protest when she’s covered up again.

“If anybody asks, you came by this morning for jutsu tips.”

He takes the hint. When he’s dressed, his clothes are still clearly rumpled. His messy hair is flat in the back and she reaches up and ruffles it for him. Like a puppy. Oh god. The sun is up and look what she’s done.

He senses her mood change when she dodges his kiss. For once, he doesn’t say anything. But he does press his face to her hair. He inhales.

He can smell it on her, she knows. And he always will.

END