“The Barrier that Protects the Princess,” Lilian murmured. She sounded drowsy.
“Right, your barrier technique.” Kevin used his free hand to scratch the underside of his chin. “It’s awfully convenient that you had a technique like that handy. I’m kind of surprised.”
In response to his words, Lilian kissed his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be. Back when I fought Kiara, I realized that I needed more defensive techniques in my arsenal—offensive ones, too, but I really needed something that could protect me from blunt force trauma. Half the reason Kiara’s attacks hurt me so much is because I’m not very proficient at reinforcement. I can’t do much about that, since I don’t have enough youki to use it properly, so I decided to create a technique that I could use with my current reserves.”
Like all yōkai, be they kitsune or otherwise, Lilian’s techniques were fueled by youki, the mystical energy that yōkai were born with. Being only a two-tails, she didn’t have much youki, which meant she needed to improvise when using techniques.
“And that technique is The Barrier that Protects the Princess?”
“Yep. It took me a while to create it, because I don’t have anyone who can teach me celestial techniques. This is something that I had to come up with from scratch.”
“No wonder it has such a horrible name.”
“This coming from the guy who needs to use anime to name his attacks.”
“Gurk.”
“At least I can come up with something on my own, Mr. Stop-Ogling-My-Girlfriend-Kick.”
“All right! All right! I get it. My naming skills suck. I see your point.”
Lilian grinned. “As well you should.”
“You’re being awfully mean today.” Kevin pouted. He would have crossed his arms for good measure, but one of them was currently full of beautiful girl. “First that mean prank on me after our near-death experience, and now you’re making fun of my inability to name my attacks.”
“I did apologize for that first one,” Lilian pointed out, smiling brilliantly at him. “And you totally deserved that second one. Someone who has no talent at naming attacks has no right to make fun of me for what I name my attacks.”
In the face of such flawless logic, Kevin could only pout.
“You’re still being mean.”
“Aw, I’m sorry.”
Lilian slowly turned and climbed onto his lap. Kevin sucked in a deep breath as her thighs rested on either side of his legs. He twitched against her stomach as Lilian leaned in, her soft, feminine hands pressing against his chest, and a face that could make angels cry with envy coming so close their noses touched.
She wore a grin that was so Lilian it made his heart skip a beat—and made his erection twitch some more. It was a grin that said, “I’m trying to look coy, but I don’t really know what ‘coy’ looks like, so there.” Kevin loved how surprisingly innocent Lilian was, her desire to mate with him aside.
“How about I make it up to you?” she suggested.
Lilian’s eyes were mesmerizing, half-lidded pools of liquid emeralds glimmering with an otherworldly light. Kevin stared into those eyes, through which so many emotions were reflected back at him. He didn’t need to be an expert to read her gaze. She was an open book to him.
His eyes were inevitably drawn to her lips, which were light pink and glistening. The impulse to partake of those lips was so strong that he probably would have given in if he didn’t know how to play the game.
Patience, he told himself. He couldn’t just give in to his impulses. This was as much a game to see which of them cracked first as it was anything else. Kevin usually lost these battles, which was odd. You’d think that Lilian would have been the one who was overeager to get straight to the ecchi stuff, but no, more often than not, it was Kevin who couldn’t hold himself back. This time would be different. He would make her make the first move.
“Kevin.” He shivered at the earnestness in her voice. No one else he knew could suffuse such sweetness into their tone like Lilian could, especially in a situation like this. “Is there anything I can do to make up for being so mean? You know I’ll do anything for you.”
Those words made his body burn with an intense hunger. He wanted her. Right. Now. It was almost frightening how much he craved this girl.
Kevin held back. He resisted. Two could play at this game.
“Anything, huh?”
Lilian gasped when a pair of hands grasped her rear end. The gasp became a low moan when those same hands kneaded the pliant flesh underneath their fingertips.
“Are you sure that’s a wise thing to say? There are an awful lot of demands that I would like to make.”
“If you asked me to, I would do anything for you,” she said, and Kevin knew there was truth to her words. Lilian really would do anything he asked. It didn’t matter how depraved, disgusting, or immoral it was, if he asked her to do something, she would do it.
It was frightening, the hold he had over her. He knew why. Lilian was a kitsune, a being that was fundamentally different from humans. They didn’t have human morals. The things that his culture considered taboo meant nothing to a kitsune. He could have even asked her to let another girl join them in bed, and she probably would have allowed it. That fact made it all the more imperative to him that he not betray her trust.
“Kevin,” Lilian whined, and he realized that her resolve was breaking. Just a little bit more, and he could chalk up a win on their imaginary score board.
“Yes?” he asked. He tried to make his voice sound husky, but he wasn’t very good at husky. It would’ve been probably lost on Lilian anyway.
Lilian was rocking back and forth now. Every time she did, her crotch would rub against him, though she was careful not to take things further than rubbing. She knew that he was reticent to have sex. She’d told him that she was willing to wait. Kevin wondered if Lilian knew how much that meant to him. Probably not, which made the fact that she was restraining herself all the more meaningful.
Eventually, I’ll give Lilian exactly what she wants, he promised himself.
Despite them not going any further, the way her butt ground against his erection made him delirious. His hands moved of their own accord, squeezing her plentiful ass and causing her to groan. He could feel her nipples rubbing against his chest. He wanted to lean down, take one of them into his mouth, and suckle on it.
“I—” Lilian started.
Lilian was interrupted when the door suddenly burst open and Kyle rushed into the room.
“We’ve got a problem! I need you two to come with me!”
Kevin and Lilian froze. Despite being chest deep in steaming water, it felt like someone had dumped several gallons of snow on them. Slowly, they craned their necks to look at the person who’d intruded upon their game. While they were in the hot spring. Naked.
Cue two indignant squawks.
“Don’t you ever knock?!” they shouted in unison.
Kyle blinked. “Oh, were you two about to have sex? That’s too bad. I need you both to get dressed and—”
“Shut up!” Kevin and Lilian shouted in sync. Lilian’s tails extended and slammed into the kappa, launching him clean off his feet and out of the hot spring. Those same tails then grabbed the doors, pulled them shut, and locked them.
Silence descended upon the room. Kevin wondered what he should say in a situation like this. Should he lighten the mood with a joke? No, that would be in poor taste. Maybe he should try to get the mood going again, but… no. Kyle had killed the mood with all the subtlety of a Butt Monkey walking in on a group of girls while they were changing.
Great… now I’m going to have blue balls for the rest of the night.
“Kevin…”
Hearing his name being called, Kevin turned to face Lilian—
“Yes—whoa!”
—and then he had to brace himself as she pounced on him.
“L-Lilian! What are you doing?!”
“I’m starting back where we left off.”
“Where we—w-wait! You can’t do that! The mood’s been ruined!”
“Ufufufu, not for me.”
“Well, it has for—what are you doing with that tail? Wait! No! Stop stroking me, dang it!”
“I thought you liked it when I did this?”
“I do, but you need to at least give me time to emotionally prepare myself!”
“Sorry, Beloved, but my patience isn’t going to let me wait anymore. Now, then, let’s enjoy ourselves, ufufufu.”
“Gya! Li—no! I’m not ready yet! Please! Lilian! Stop! Iyahn!”
Kevin’s unmanly screams echoed down the hall.
***
Her blade was an extension of her arms. The constant shifting of her feet was a beautiful dance. Kotohime never stayed in one place for long, not even a tenth of a second. She was moving continuously, dancing an infinite dance within a storm of needles. Her blade lashed out against a countless barrage. A seemingly-infinite number of attacks were defended against with an equally uncountable number of sword strokes.
The attacks suddenly ceased. Kotohime stood in an expanding puddle of water.
“H-how were you able to defend yourself against so many needles?!” a disembodied voice shouted.
She breathed in. Then she breathed out. The tension in her arms left. Kotohime looked around the room, her eyes sharper than the blade she wielded.
“While that attack was indeed troublesome, it has several major weaknesses. As someone whose body has been adapted to high-speed movements, defeating such a technique is well within my capabilities. That aside, you seem to have forgotten that I, too, am a kitsune capable of controlling water.”
“That shouldn’t matter! River Kitsune aren’t able to control salt water!”
Kotohime said nothing. She shifted her stance, sliding her right foot forward and bending it at the knee, and moving her left foot backwards. She raised her blade next to her head, the tip pointed at the wall in front of her. The blade was covered in water, which swirled along the gleaming surface, a tiny typhoon contained along the length of a silver edge.
“Now, it is my turn.”
“Ougi.”
“Water Art: Tsukuyomi’s Typhoon.”
Spinning on a dime, Kotohime made a full 360-degree rotation. Just as quickly as the spinning started, it stopped. She then thrust the blade forward, and from the tip, a powerful tornado of wind and water erupted.
There was a loud scream. Water flew everywhere, and a four-tailed kitsune appeared within the blast, flying backwards as her attack slammed into him. He crashed into the wall, which crumbled against her technique, throwing her opponent into the world outside as the tornado continued moving. It didn’t disperse until the enemy kitsune struck the wall of a building on the other side of the street, which also crumbled underneath her technique’s power, burying him in a pile of rubble.
Kotohime calmly stepped outside. She stopped several feet from the rubble and waited. One second passed. Then two. Nothing happened.
Her eyes narrowed. Was he truly dead, or was he playing possum? After several seconds of waiting and nothing happening, she shrugged and turned around.
“Water Art: Water Combustion.”
Faster than quicksilver, Kotohime spun around and interposed her katana between herself and the explosion of water. The water made contact with her blade and was split in half, the two halves traveling behind her to strike the building she’d come from, demolishing more of the wall.
She looked around and spotted her quarry. The kitsune she’d nearly killed was limping away, trying to escape—a prudent course of action, but one that she was not willing to allow. This was one of the people who’d killed Lilian and Kevin. He would die this night.
“Water Art: Blade Extension.”
The technique she used was simple. As the name suggested, it extended her katana’s length by gathering moisture from the air and compressing the water along her katana, thereby extending the blade’s length. If she wanted, she could extend that length indefinitely, provided she had enough youki.
The blade extended within seconds, piercing her opponent through the back, right where his heart was. The kitsune, skewered on her extended blade of water, died instantly—or so she thought.
Dark eyes widened when the kitsune on her blade dematerialized, and a vortex composed entirely of water appeared in the fox’s place.
“That’s—!”
She couldn’t say any more as the tip of a blade composed entirely of water pierced her through the back, right where her heart was.
***
Neither kitsune could understand what happened. One second they had her. Kiara had been dead to rights. The next, an explosion of energy burst from her body, encasing her in youki so thick and potent that it bent the air and became visible. The tridents that had been heading towards her were destroyed, splattering against the ethereal red flames that covered her body.
Kiara stared at her foes.
She was grinning.
One of the kitsune took a frightened step back. “H-how…?”
“How did I break out of your little trap?” Kiara finished his question, her grin widening to reveal razor-sharp canines. “It’s pretty simple, really. Once I saw the two-tails over there, I realized what was happening. You didn’t cast an illusion to make me think I was being choked to death. It was a water technique, and you weren’t even the one casting it.” She pointed at the two-tailed kitsune who stood off to the side, gawking like an idiot. “He was.”
The two kitsune were stunned. Kiara was on a roll.
“I’m guessing you led me to this place in order to trap me,” she continued, enjoying the fear in their eyes. “You had the two-tails hide behind an illusion, and then you launched a standard attack, knowing that it wouldn’t do much. That technique was actually done to set up the two-tailed kitsune’s technique, which I’m guessing was to block my esophagus with water. After that, you decided to make extra sure I wouldn’t survive by launching those tridents at me.”
“How… huh… what…?”
The four-tails was pretty much struck dumb by this point.
“It was a good idea,” Kiara admitted. “Had I been anyone else, it probably would have worked. Unfortunately for you, I’ve been sparring with a River Kitsune for a while now. The moment I saw your friend, I knew what was happening. It didn’t take much to evaporate the water clogging my throat with my own youki. After that, it was just a matter of overpowering your technique with an even more powerful attack. Now, then…”
Kiara brought her only remaining hand into a standard Muay Thai guard position—at least, it would have been if she still had two hands.
“Let’s begin this battle for real.” Her vicious grin caused the two foxes to quake in fear. “This party’s just getting started.”
***
Kevin and Lilian were led to a garage by Kyle, where they were forced into a car, which was then driven out of the garage.
It had only been fifteen minutes since they started driving, and Kevin already wanted to get out. They were speeding down the street. Buildings, cars, and people passed by in blurs. The car skidded along the ground with every turn Kyle made. The kappa didn’t even bother slowing down as he cranked on the wheel. Kevin was surprised they didn’t have a horde of cops on their tail.
In an effort to take his mind off Kyle’s reckless driving, Kevin tried to make conversation.
“So, Kyle the Kappa—”
“Don’t call me that!”
“—How come you can drive?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kyle nearly growled.
“Ah! No. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Kevin was quick to reassure the kappa that he wasn’t trying to be insulting. “I’m just surprised that a kappa knows how to drive.”
Obviously, he failed.
“Are you saying I’m too stupid to drive or something?”
“No, I’m just saying that I didn’t think kappa would care for dr
iving because you guys are, you know, yōkai.”
Sure, Kiara drove, but he thought of that woman as a human who just so happened to have a tail. And floppy dog ears. And youki. And she could kill him with a flick of her fingers…
Right, so maybe he did see Kiara as a yōkai, but she owned the largest chain of fitness centers in the world. She needed to drive if she wanted to get anywhere.
“That’s a very racist thing to say, Kevin,” Lilian responded to her beloved’s words before the kappa could. “A lot of yōkai live in human society. Naturally, yōkai like Kyle the Kappa and his clan have been forced to adapt to human ways in order to survive in this ever-changing world.”
“Listen to your mate—and stop calling me that!”
“Get your eyes off my mate’s boobs and I might.”
“Tch!”
Lilian giggled and scooted closer to Kevin, both as a means of hiding her body from Kyle and because her mate’s words pleased her.
“So, where are we going, exactly?” asked Kevin. He looked out the window but couldn’t figure out where they were headed. Everything looked the same. The streets looked the same. The buildings looked the same. The lights looked the same. How Kyle drove with such surety was beyond him.
“We just received a report that a fight has broken out between two yōkai and those Ocean Kitsune,” Kyle informed them.
“Gotcha.” Kevin nodded, then asked, “and why are we going with you?”
“Because I was asked to take you two back to your resort after I check this out.”
“Do you have a description of the two yōkai currently fighting the Ocean Kitsune?” Lilian asked before Kevin could respond.
Kyle nodded, even as he took a left-hand turn. The car skidded along the ground, tires squealing. Kevin’s teeth rattled as he was nearly thrown from his seat. One of Lilian’s tails, which had wrapped around him, kept his face from becoming a pancake on the car window.
“According to the report, the two yōkai fighting are another kitsune wearing a kimono and an inu with one-arm and wearing a business suit.”
“That sounds like Kiara and Kotohime,” Kevin said. Lilian nodded in agreement.
A Fox's Vacation (American Kitsune Book 5) Page 21