Seiran Academy

Chapter 18

Minako awoke in a strange bed and did not even stop to wonder where she was or how she got there. The day and night before slammed into her like the first rays of the sun, hot and heavy and demanding of her attention. Minako turned in the bed to look at the figure who stood before her at the window, opening the curtains wide and into her eyes.

“Sage?” she croaked out. Why did she feel like she had a hang over, she certainly had not been drinking?

“Good afternoon, sunshine,” he said brightly.

“Afternoon?” she asked lamely.

“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”

Minako groaned and rolled back over in her bed. “I might as well just sleep some more and then it will be nighttime.”

“I think not.” Sage pulled the covers forcefully from her body and exposed her naked body to the sunlight. Had she undressed herself so completely when there were two, and now three, men in the hotel room? Had she not thought to put something on? Where was her bag? She had not seen it, and had not bothered to remember to pull it from the motel with the roaches. Had she truly left the expensive clothes behind?

Yep, she went to bed completely naked and now Sage was looking down at her with the same eyes her step-father used on her every time he saw her. From Draco in the dark it had been pleasing, from Sage it was making her skin crawl. Last night, pressed against a wall, she would have done anything he asked of her. Today, in the light, she only wanted to hide back under the covers.

“I need a shower,” she said stubbornly, rolling off the other side of the bed and hiding her body from him.

“Do as you wish,” he told her. “I just wanted you to know I dropped off some clothes for you and they are in your closet. We left your clothes last night behind, but it is good because he will think he found where you are hiding when he finds the clothes, but instead he will not.”

“So that room was a decoy all along?” Minako asked hesitantly.

“Of course,” Sage laughed. “You think I would not accommodate you to better when I’m meant to be your knight in shining armor, though you are the only one shining this morning in the sunlight. Was that a bit of wetness between your-”

“I’m taking my shower,” Minako snapped before he could say more. She slid into her private bathroom and indulged in the hot waters that rushed down her body. The droplets beat against her body like tiny fists wanting her attention, and the slight pain of the heat and the sharpness of the droplets was the reality of being alive. She did not adjust the showerhead to soothe her skin from the pounding beats of water; instead she allowed the pinprick pain to keep her from lashing out against something, anything.

She leaned her back against the ceramic tiles, enjoying the feel of the coolness that fought against the heat of the scalding water. Her head swirled with the thoughts that Sage had banished from his own mind and imprisoned within hers. She was lost in a swirl of emotions that left her hollow. She did not feel her own hot tears, they could not rival the heat of the shower. She did not realize she had been in the bathroom for an hour or that Draco was pounding on the door demanding her to come out. She was hardly aware the heat had gone and now she was being pelted with similarly freezing drops of water that stung at her reddened and raw skin. She only noticed when the water was gone and she was left huddled in the bathtub crying into her knees and Draco stood over her, his silk shirt soaked from reaching in and turning off the shower. She looked up at him with baby blues and cried, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“And you don’t have to know right now,” Draco assured her, wrapping a fluffy white cotton towel around her body. “You have time, Sage is just… don’t listen to him, sweetie.”

Minako shook her wet golden locks, that even when drenched with water were not losing their brilliant shade of gold. “He’s right, though,” she sobbed. “What have I done to stop this, any of this? I’m a pawn and I have allowed myself to be.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Draco asked. “Not just to get away, but with your life. Are your ambitions to be a doctor? A teacher? Are you going to play your fiddle for the rest of your life and join Nemesis’s father’s orchestra?”

“I… I don’t know,” Minako admitted. She sucked in her sob and sighed. “I have never thought beyond what I was told. Since I was a child I did everything my mother wished, including sleeping with my step-father. Now that I’ve suddenly been asked what I want, I don’t even know what it is I want.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Draco laughed.

“Well, what do you want?” Minako looked up at him, still forgetting she was naked and dripping wet and Draco was positively masculine at that moment. “Are you going to cross dress the rest of your life?”

Draco smiled slightly and kisses Minako’s lips, first chastely, just a loving kiss, then his kiss suddenly deepened and stirred a rash of emotions Minako was not ready to feel. When she made to pull away he would not release her, dragging her body from the tub and pulling her against him, the towel lost in the struggle between man and woman. She felt his hardness, his need, but knew he was not going to do what he wished to do. “Do I seem like a man who is so intent on being a woman for the rest of my life?”

“No,” Minako admitted honestly.

“Minako…” Draco trailed off, releasing her and turning from her to adjust himself. He was now terribly uncomfortable. “Maybe it is time Nemesis told you the truth about what’s really going on.”

Minako reached down for her towel and wrapped it around her body, suddenly very conscious of her naked body. She smiled slightly to herself when she said, “Should I be honored that it really wasn’t all just to fuck me?”

Draco’s face was not what she expected when she met his eyes. His eyes were sad, his face crestfallen slightly. “No…” he trailed off and turned away from her, readying to leave the bathroom. “No, Minako, what we wanted was much worse, and I think it is harder on Nemesis than anyone, but… he also still wants you to do it more than anyone.”

“Would you just tell me?” Minako snapped, her patience once again worn thin.

Draco turned and stared her directly in the eyes with his solemn face never losing its appeal, but gaining something, a certain maturity, that he never had dressed in drag. “He… we, wanted you to seduce Bartholomew Rose.”