This was a hard chapter to get right, with some tricky evolution in Jason and Chiyo's characters. There's a lot they still have to figure out, but hopefully I did a decent job with this chapter. I'm really curious to see what people think in the comments about both of them.
*****
I kicked the door closed behind me and dropped my bags to the floor. "Welcome home, Chiyo."
My fox spirit looked around curiously, holding my arm to help keep her weight off her broken leg. My apartment was a loft in a converted warehouse; a giant open space with a high ceiling, no walls except for the bathroom in the far corner. The main area contained an open kitchen and an assortment of couches and chairs scattered around. There weren't clear definitions, but I had grouped things to divide the loft into rough quarters. To the right of the entrance, an open kitchen and a large dining table. To the left, there was the bathroom, washer/dryer, my computer desk and wardrobes and storage. Above that I'd built a large elevated wooden platform that served as my bedroom, reachable by a ladder. The far side of the loft was the social space - entertainment center and couches, fully stocked bar, foosball table, etc. The far corner was my home gym, with a punching bag and a weight bench.
I nudged Chiyo to balance on her own while I knelt down and unlaced my hiking boots, tossing them over to land in the pile with the rest of my shoes. Standing up again, I scooped Chiyo into my arms and carried her over to my favorite chair, a big leather recliner near the TV. I lowered her into it and pulled up the footrest so she could rest her leg.
"So, what do you think of your new den?"
"It's . . . big? And kind of messy."
"I'm a bachelor; I'm allowed to be messy." I was a little disappointed in her reaction; I'm proud of my bachelor pad. I don't know why I'd expected her to ooh and aah over how cool it was like a chick I brought home from the bar. The only human habitation she had to compare it to was the motel room we'd fucked in earlier in the day.
"So, this is . . . home?"
"Yeah, this is where I live, and where you live, now. I'm going to make some coffee, you want some?"
"Coffee is . . . a bitter drink that keeps you awake? We're not going to sleep yet?" She yawned and stretched, squirming into a more comfortable position on the recliner.
"I'm not. It's past three in the morning and I have to start trying to figure out what to do about Kylie and getting your pearl back. We're going to need to go out again in a few hours anyway to see a doctor about your leg; I'd rather get a head start on things. If you want to try and nap for a bit you can, or you can stay up and talk with me while I work."
As I spoke, I busied myself measuring water and beans into the coffee maker. I always make a full pot whenever I make coffee, and just pour out the extra if I don't finish it. I don't know why I do it that way; it's just what I do.
"I'll stay up with you, Master. Talking sounds good; we haven't done much of that yet."
She was right about that. After I trapped her, she'd been too frightened to talk much as we worked our way down the mountain. Then there'd been the encounter with that cop, then the motel which had mostly been us fucking and her napping. Then we'd had the run in with Kylie in the parking lot, where Kylie and I had carried the majority of the conversation. Chiyo's main contributions had been admitting that she was a Kitsune and asking Kylie to hit me with the shock gun after Kylie stole Chiyo's pearl from me.
I hadn't spoken to Chiyo after I recovered from the shock except for short instructions. It's pretty much impossible to carry on a conversation while you're roaring down a highway on a motorcycle, and I hadn't felt like talking during our brief stop to charge the battery.
I heard a cute little growl of frustration over the sound of coffee brewing and turned around from the coffee pot to look at Chiyo. My breath caught in my throat. She'd taken off my shirt, folding it and setting it on the arm of the chair, and had my pants mostly off, bunched up around the knee of her bad leg where she was trying to work them over the splint. She was sitting on one hip so she wouldn't crush her tails, and her nude body was facing me, her thighs open as she wrestled with the pants. Pale skin, lean muscles, perky breasts, the triangle of very dark orange hair between her legs that matched the short mop on her head . . . I was instantly filled with the same urgent need to possess her that I'd had when I saw her bathing in her little mountain lake.
"Jesus, Chiyo, what are you doing?"
She looked up at me in confusion. "This is home. You said I could take these ugly clothes off as soon as we got home. Did I do something wrong?"
"Yeah, I guess I did say that, but if you're sitting around my place naked, I'm going to have a really hard time not fucking you."
"Okay." She turned her attention back to working the pants over her splint, wincing in pain as she jostled her leg.
"Stop, stop, let me help. You're going to hurt yourself."
I walked over and carefully lifted her leg, sliding the pants over the splint as gently as I could. I set her leg back down gently, tearing my eyes off her tits and looking at the wall.
"Um, I'll dig through my clothes and see if I can find something you like better. Let me grab you a blanket or something while I do that."
"A blanket sounds nice I guess. Why do you want me to cover up though? I thought you liked looking at me naked."
"I do, I really, really do. But like I said, looking at you naked makes it hard for me to not just grab you and fuck your brains out."
"I don't understand. Isn't that why you captured me? So you could fuck me?"
Fuck me; this was going to be a hard conversation. I pulled a footstool over and sat on it, burying my face in my hands, trying to figure out how to answer that.
"Yeah, I guess it is why I trapped you, but I was thinking about it while we drove back. I don't like what Kylie did; we don't know anything about her, and I absolutely don't trust her to have your pearl. But she did have a point; keeping you as a sex slave is kind of a shitty thing to do. I wasn't really thinking about it like that at first; I was thinking of you as a thing, not a person. And you're not a human, but you are kind of a person."
