Luck be a lady (ReD)

Yoka was flattered at the delivery of his answer. It was quick and without shame.

It was another reason she liked him.

He tilted his head to get a sideways glance at her and Yoka studied him from her vantage point on his back even as he studied her. She could see how these cycles of self-deprecation worked.

"I met you the day I was looking to open up a brothel on the strip," Yoka told him. "I decided to open an Onsen instead. it was an idea I had in the back burner, but meeting you made me push it forward. It made me remember that sometimes, we need to relax. And on that day, you were honest with me, and you helped me get a new employee, and she's still with me to this day. You were an asset. So that is how I know you, and hiring you was one of the best things I've ever done."

Yoka shrugged. She would not correct his self-deprecation. She could not change how he felt overnight--she suspected he probably couldn't do that, either. It must be hard to go through a life with powers like his and be anything other than cynical and suspicious. Was he seeing this as just the calm before the storm?

She wondered, though, if she should show him something.

"Murphy, I like you because you are real and half of the damned things on this island aren't real," she said. She stood up over him and instructed him to roll over, so she was now standing over his prone body. Her bra was already on the bed.

"You have watched men with literal invulnerability and immortality fail to seduce me," she repeated. She shifted show one of her legs peaked through the slit in her kimono and she began to pull down the nylon stocking. She tossed it to the side of the bed.

"You have seen angels and demons not worthy of my time dismissed without a second thought," she said, removing her other stocking. She tossed it onto the floor.

"And it was you," she said, placing a hand at her hips, and then shimming them slightly. "It was you, Murphy, who captured my attention. It is you that is the first to come to mind when there is a situation and I need someone competent, someone I can rely on, to handle."

She moved her hips in a slow circle. She placed her bare foot on his chest gently when she said the next you for emphasis.

"It is you that I trust and you that I need, Murphy."

She removed her foot and flung her panties there instead. They were silk and lacy, because really, what else would they be?

"And it is you that I want."

Yoka started to undo the obi on the back of her kimono.

"You are real, Murphy. You're not hiding behind a damn illusion," Yoka snapped her fingers to make a point and traces of bright sparking fire shot out of them and landed on the bed around them. They appeared to smolder for a second and then grew into a fire, but the fire wasn't hot. The flickering light spread around the room until it started to fade, and it appeared that Murphy was lying on the hot sand at the edge of a beach, with palm trees swaying, the warm sea breeze caressing them, and the distant sound of seagulls.

Yoka tossed the obi to the side of the bed. The kimono started to slide down her shoulders.

She snapped her fingers again and the beach started to fade, the fire coming back and trailing up her legs and her body even as she slid the kimono off completely, letting it drop down onto Murphy's hips and chest.


She let him see her as she was, naked in all her glory, for only a moment, and then she let the fire consume her.

She appeared to vanish a few moments later, only for the kimono covering Murphy to shift as a five-tailed fox perked her head up from beneath it. She kicked it to the side and crawled up onto Murphy's chest, her tails fanning behind her. Fire flickered over them.

"So the next time you think you get to doge my questions, Murphy Banks, remember that I didn't want anyone else. I wanted--and I still want-- you," she said.

Yoka liked the way he flushed when he looked at her.

It was a completely honest reaction. She knew some people had an issue with blushing, which, she imagined, was probably because of the word itself. Blushing is something dainty little girls did.

But it was hot.

People highly underestimated how hot it was when you could see someone's body reacting to you. Yoka had been tempted to reconsider her course of action before she transformed herself, but it wouldn't have mattered. She was losing her grip on her powers anyway. It was very hard to be a person when she was this drunk, but she was with Murphy, and that meant she was safe.

He reached up to stroke her draw and she let him, dropping her head and giving him a heavy-eyed look as if to say ooh yeah the way dogs do. Only a few weeks earlier her face had been tangled shut in barbed wire and now there were his gentle hands instead.

When he bore out what she wanted, Yoka was again disappointed that she hadn't stayed it out to be a woman for just a little bit longer just so she could kiss him. She filed this instead under further evidence that Murphy is a good boy.

"It's better than I was expecting," she said. She pressed his nose to his instead, boop. She flicked her tails and the lights in the room started to dim.

After a moment, though, Yoka reconsidered. And she said, "But I have some bad news for you, Murphy. And that is that I am going to protect you like hell. You. are. mine."

And with that, she started to turn in a circle, right there on his chest, until she curled up with her five tails draped over him.

"So Murphy, get some sleep, because I'm serious. If your leg kills you I swear to all the gods, the old and the new and myself, that I will fucking kill you."