"YOU'RE having a lot of fun with my cousin."

Akai sounds positively dangerous. I take a step back. "Maybe."

"Don't deny it, Iris."

My heart skips a beat. "Oh, so you're finally dropping the formalities? And besides, why do you care? You've made it plain you don't like me."

Akai turns away from the sink and the intensity between us immediately dials up to eleven.

"Do not mistake me, Miss Iris," I mimic mockingly. "You are utterly, and completely, not the kind of woman I could ever fall in love with."

Now he's walking toward me.

"I believe I have mentioned before that you are not exactly my type, Miss Iris." My voice turns shrill. "You're not a very subtle woman – "

Akai has cornered me against the wall. There's a tempest raging on in his eyes. As if he's on the thinnest veneer of self-possession.

"You talk too much, Iris."

I swallow hard. "Don't call me that."

"Call you what?"

"Iris. I don't ... I'm not used to it."

His eyes flicker down to my lips. "Because I've always been formal with you?"

"Yes."

"So now it's a different feeling?"

"I – yes."

"Then you know why I didn't use it before."

This is not the Satoh Akai I'm used to. What happened to the stone-cold façade? The inability to express, engage in and entertain any semblance of emotion?

"I believe I told you before," I squeak out, "not to do this if you don't plan to – "

My back slams into the wall as Akai's lips crash down on mine. And every thought process I've ever had comes to a screeching halt.

It's not Akai I'm after, I tell myself. It's Tomiichi. Company CEO. Rich man. Husband 2.0. Kissing his cousin would be a horrible idea. In fact, kissing any other man is a horrible idea.

Yet I don't stop myself from reaching both hands up. I don't stop myself from feeling my way across his skin. There's tequila on his tongue, but he makes it sweet. And when I kiss him back; fervent fingers clawing against the front of his shirt, I can feel Akai's entire frame shudder.

He's kissing me like I'm the last meal he'll ever had. Savouring my lips like they're wine, and he's a connoisseur. Drawing my breath from me like he's a parched man, and I'm the only oasis. His hands are rough, but his touch gentle; he kisses me with fervour even as he takes his time to linger.

We break apart, chests heaving.

"We shouldn't be doing this," I breathe furiously, even as every inch of my body argues that yes, yes we should. "It's not – it's not proper."

"Fuck propriety," Akai growls. "I've held back long enough."

"You – "

But I don't get to finish the sentence, because he's kissing me again.

Tender and fierce. Wild and wanting.

It's as if everything I've done for the past month has been building up to this moment. All the uncertainty, all the fears, all the disappointment ... I've spent so long hammering away at Akai's iron walls of defences that I've long given up on them coming down. But here he is. And here we are.

Not that I'm much better. "Iris," he murmurs in my ear, and it's enough to make me unravel. "I'm getting blood on your dress."

"That's okay. I don't plan to keep it on."

Groaning, he nips the skin just below my ear. "Don't say things like that. There's a limit to my self-restraint."

I slide my hands underneath his shirt and over the hard ridges of his muscles. Akai shivers. Bless the Lord for farm work. "Good. I've always wanted to see you snap."

"I almost did. Several times tonight." As he speaks, he plants feathery kisses along my jaw. "When you entered the dining room in this dress. Whenever Tomiichi looked your way." Now his mouth is on my collarbones. "And when you sucked on that lime."

The summer smell of him makes my head spin dizzily. "I thought those things don't affect you. You never show any emotion."

"Perhaps I don't." Akai pulls away, expression hard. "But I'm still a man, Iris."

"I know you are." The combination of tequila and Akai's kisses makes me high – and extremely bold. "I feel it."

It's like the last vestiges of his resolve have finally snapped.

Hands gripping me by the hips, Akai yanks me near and into the nearest toilet stall. The door slams shut behind us and I scrabble with the lock even as Akai pushes down the spaghetti straps of my dress.

I utter his name like a protest. He murmurs mine like a prayer.

"Iris?" comes Jeanette's loud voice from outside. "Did you find Akai? Is he okay?"

The two of us freeze.

"Fuck," I hiss.

"Iris?" Jeanette's voice comes closer. "Are you in the toilet?"

"Shove your head in the toilet bowl," Akai says urgently.

"What? No, you shove your head in the toilet bowl!"

The sound of heels clicking on linoleum. A push, and the door of the toilet stall swings open – revealing Jeanette, standing there.

She stares at us.

"There there," I say loudly, patting Akai on the back. He's got his head in the toilet bowl. "Just throw it all up. You'll feel much better."

A retching sound echoes from where Akai is kneeling. Jeanette wrinkles her nose.

"Ugh." Her eyes land on me. "What happened to your dress?"

As if in response, Akai gags again, and this time, his bleeding right hand comes up to clutch desperately at the fabric of my gown. I make my best what-can-I-do? face. Jeanette nods sympathetically.

"Just use hydrogen peroxide," she advises over the sound of puking. "Cleans it right out."

Leaning forward, the brunette thumps Akai hard on the back. Only I can see the grimace on Akai's face as he rolls his eyes, and I try hard to keep my face straight.

"Now, now, Akai," Jeanette says lustily. "Obviously this is your first time drinking, and you went a little too hard! You'll wake up with a shitty hangover next morning and a fucking sense of disappointment at embarrassing yourself – but hey, that's okay! It happens to the best of us. Not to me, of course, but it happens."

Akai is glaring at me with a look that leaves no doubt as to what he's thinking – which is probably something along the lines of if you don't get her off me now, I'll murder the two of you.

Clearing my throat, I tap Jeanette on the shoulder. "I'm going to bring Akai back to the house. Can you tell Tom for me?"

Jeanette pulls herself straight in her six-inch heels, swaying a little. "A'right. Leave it to me. Lovely to meet you, darling."

The second she's gone, Akai unfolds himself from his kneeling position and stands.

"I don't like it when you do that," he states stiffly.

I laugh. "You have to admit, it was funny pushing your head down the toilet bowl – "

"I mean calling him Tom."

"Oh," I stutter. "What am I supposed to call him then?"

"Don't call him at all."

"That's silly. I have to call him something." I put on my most thoughtful expression. "Tommy? Miichi? Tomchi?"

Akai scowls, taking a step toward me – only to fail his balance in the most spectacular of fashions. He would have shoved his head back into the toilet bowl if I hadn't been there to catch him.

"I am either inebriated," he declares, his voice just the littlest bit slurred, "or the planet has just lost its gravitational force along the x-axis."

I press my lips together, trying not to laugh. "Or maybe it's because you're losing blood."

"That is also a considerable option."

Grunting, I help him up. It's not easy lifting a full-grown man. Especially not one who's hugging me the way a koala bear hugs a tree.

"What shampoo do you use?"

With great difficulty, I push and keep open the toilet stall door. "Why – are you also looking to have silky smooth, ultra-glossy hair?"

"You smell nice." Akai shifts. "And if I use it, I won't be able to sleep at night."

My heartbeat quickens. Liquor really doth loosen a man's tongue.

I decide to save Akai from the indignity of being paraded through a crowd of customers, and so we exit the pub by using the back door. The typically ten-minute journey back home took half an hour tonight, because Akai simply couldn't decide whether he need assistance or not.

"I am perfectly capable of commandeering my own two feet," he would say, pushing me off right before he tripped over an invisible pebble.

Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the road, he would blink child-like, before saying slowly, "Perhaps I do need help."

And then I would help him up, and about two minutes later the whole process would start over again.

By the time I push him through the door of my bedroom – I didn't even dare think about attempting the stairs – I'm beyond exhausted. All I want to do is face-plant into the bed and sink into oblivion.

Akai seems to have the same idea. Except he's chosen the floor.

"No," I say firmly. "Get up. We're going to look at the cut, and we're going to get you cleaned ... somehow."

I move Akai to the edge of my bed, where he sits obediently. "Stay," I command.

He nods a bit too vigorously.

It's a mad dash upstairs to his bedroom as I scour his wardrobe for that navy blue kimono-pajamas of his. All I can think of is dear Lord, if he has to break something, please don't let it be the lamp. Let it be the Jimmy Choos, since I'll probably never get them repaired anyway.

I'm back in record time, and luckily Akai hasn't moved an inch. It's the bathroom next, where I meticulously rinse the cuts in his palm. The wounds are more long than deep, and I find no embedded shards, but it's got to sting like hell. Yet Akai's reflection in the mirror is undisturbed.

"Are you showering with me?" he suddenly asks.

"What?" I'm spluttering. "I – no! Why would I?"

He gives the most casual shrug ever.

"You're a grown-ass man, you can shower yourself." I bang the bathroom door shut behind me before any hormonal impulses can take over.

The dim sound of water splashing down on tile. I will not visualize Akai naked and showering. I will not visualize Akai naked and showering. I will not – I'm visualizing. Grabbing a nearby hanger, I try to slap some sense back into myself.

It's been ten minutes now. I knock on the door. "Akai?"

No response. A little bit of panic starts to seep in. Did he fall down? Did he hit his head? Is he unconscious? He could barely navigate the village road – how can I expect him to handle a slippery bathroom floor?

"Akai?" I count to ten, then take a deep breath. "I'm coming in."

The knob turns easily beneath my hand. My heart is thudding a mile a minute and I'm looking a lot more upwards than I usually do. Which is why it takes me a second to register that Satoh Akai is sitting on the shower floor.

Naked. In a pool of suds.

"Hey!" I say, my voice just a bit shriller than usual. "What are you doing down there?"

His voice carries over the sound of water, just. "Today would have been Niko's eleventh birthday."

Gingerly, I crouch down, bunching up my dress to keep it dry. Do not look at his penis, do not look at his penis.

"Who's Niko?" I ask.

Akai's eyes shimmer in the sheet of water pouring down from the showerhead above. There's a fragile, melancholic expression in them. It's as if I'm peering through the tiniest gap in the world's heaviest curtains, peering at something that I was never meant to see. That no one was ever meant to see.

"When I found her, she was the tiniest ball of golden you ever saw." Akai doesn't seem to mind the fact that he's speaking right inside a waterfall. "All fluff, with a bark that was more like a yip. Some kids had been throwing rocks at her, laming her leg. She never healed properly. But that didn't stop her from running by my side."

Akai's looking at me and yet through me at the same time. He looks as if he'd wandered down memory lane and forgot the way home.

I know what that felt like.

"She grew up strong. Niko we called her, meaning daylight. She had the glossiest coat of fur. Bright golden, like the sun. She wasn't my first pet dog, but she was my favorite. I loved her." Akai inhales sharply. "God, did I love her. She showed me that it was fine to have a weakness. She showed me it didn't matter. When my parents died – "

Akai's voice cracks and my heart wrenches painfully.

"The coroner said it was swift. Big truck, small car, instant death. One second I had parents, the next I did not. One second I had a home, the next it was just a house. And I was all alone. Except for Niko. She was the only thing the lawyers let me keep. I guess with her lame leg, they figured she wasn't worth the trouble. But they took everything else."

Akai splays his fingers. "The house. The car. The horses. Cows. Sheep. My own pillow. Everything. If you're younger than 21 they call you an orphan. But if you're older than that they call it life. And that's just how it is."

I can hear him struggle to maintain his composure. Pretend it's alright. Something I recognize all too well.

"I tried hard to stay in Japan. Not many people are keen to hire high school dropouts, but I did my best. I've tried about every odd job there is. I've gone to bed hungry and woke up hungrier, too many times. And through it all, Niko never left my side. She stayed unfailingly loyal, and that was her undoing. I couldn't afford us a proper home. Couldn't even keep three meals a day. So she got sick, and I couldn't bring her to the vet, and ... she died."

The hem of my dress is slowly soaking up the shower water. Midway through Akai's story, I must have reached out to clasp his hand, because I now feel just how much they're trembling. The water running down his face looks like an endless river of tears.

"After that I just stopped trying. Curled up in a corner of the street in the same position, day and night. I didn't feel hunger. I didn't feel pain. I didn't feel the sun, nor the rain. Just laid there. I don't know how long, but next thing I know my uncle's crouching down in front of me. He'd found me somehow. Had people searching for me. He told me that for one week I didn't speak to him. It wasn't that I refused, he said it was more like I couldn't. He made plans then, to bring me to London. In a sense, to adopt me."

The air around us feels delicate, tender. I feel as if I've just been given the very heart of Satoh Akai, the essence of what defines him, and I can't move for fear of dropping it. It's not just the drink talking, I realize. Maybe he's sober and maybe he isn't, but I know that this isn't the product of a reckless impulse.

Somewhere along the line, Akai made the conscious decision to trust me. It touches me to the quick, even as it overwhelms me with guilt.

"I've lived with him since," Akai finishes. "My aunt and uncle ... I owe them a debt I'll never be able to repay."

I squeeze his fingers. "I think you're doing a pretty good job though."

The ghost of a smile. He looks around. "I think I'll stay here for a while."

I sit down. "Okay."

"Your dress is getting wet."

"I know."

Leaning forward, I touch my forehead to his. Now we're both in the waterfall.

"You're getting wet," he says.

"I know."

"You don't have to stay. I'm perfectly capable of brooding alone in the shower."

I sigh. "Just shut up and let me, Akai."

Akai interlaces my fingers with his and squeezes tightly. I reciprocate. Can you love someone so much that every heartbeat is an ache?

For the first time in my life, I think that I can.