The Fallen Vampire

Chapter 157: The Sixth.

Taira got around to explaining about half of his ominous vision to Inadu before he realized that she was hardly focusing on the words coming out of his mouth.

Instead, her eyes were somewhat glossed over as she stared at his bare chest, and she was simply moving her arm around in circles.

If she rubbed his body with the towel one more time, he was almost certain that his skin was going to start coming off.

Finally, Taira remembered that his lower half was uncovered as well.

"Ah, sorry. I need to borrow this."

"E-Eh?"

He took the towel from Inadu and wrapped it around his midsection so that he was atleast halfway decent and stood up.

He held out his hand for Inadu to take, and she looked at it somewhat confused.

"D-Don't you need to bathe for longer..? I'm sure that you aren't fully back to your peak yet…"

Truthfully, Taira wasn't.

The pool had helped, sure, but he was still a long way off from being whole again.

To get all of his strength back, he would have to stay for well past the time he was set to leave.

"I'll survive. For now, we should get you inside."

"Me? Why?"

"I heard you say that you have been out here with me all night. You haven't slept, and I'm certain you haven't eaten either. We need to go inside and fix that."

Inadu shook her head in refusal.

"I will be fine. For now the most important thing is that you have your strength back. Please, get back in the water."

"No, I'm going to make you something to eat first and tuck you into bed."

"Taira… get in the lake."

"No, now tell me what you want to eat."

This back and forth subsisted for several minutes, and by the end it had devolved into a simple shouting match.

"Lake!"

"Bed!"

"Recovery!"

"Eat!"

""Stop being stubborn!!""

Inadu and Taira all but glared at each other as they realized that neither of them was going to budge from their position.

Silence persisted between the two for an unnecessarily long time.

Taira thought that maybe he'd finally gotten the better of her, but Inadu finally changed the rules of the game completely.

She reached behind her head and pulled off the kimono that she'd looted from Taira's closet.

The world seemed to devolve into slow motion as the fabric that was covering her fell onto the riverbank.

And Taira was hit full force by her charm that he often forgot about.

She was beautiful, even though she had lost an unhealthy amount of weight recently.

Her slender figure had no real curves except for her chest that was around the same size as Vermeil's… which was really quite impressive.

Inadu started walking towards the crystal blue waters and immersed herself more and more with every step.

When she was finally neck deep, she turned around to face Taira with something of an embarrassed look in her eyes.

"If you want me to go inside… you will have to pull me out of here first."

Taira blinked several times in disbelief before ultimately accepting his defeat.

"Well… I guess I don't really have much of a choice now, do I?"

"You never did. Victory was mine from the beginning."

"How cute…"

The fox spirit discarded his towel and Inadu turned her head at the last moment.

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As he intruded closer and closer to her, he could plainly hear the sound of both of their hearts beating loudly in tandem.

When he finally reached her, his arms slipped around her waist naturally without him even realizing it.

When she flinched, he started to pull away out of instinct but she held onto his hands firmly to keep him from running.

"I-I'm fine… just surprised." She said shyly.

Taira wasn't really sure what came over him in that moment.

Maybe it was the shy and innocent way that Inadu looked, or maybe it was the fact that blood flow was being diverted from his brain into other areas.

But for reasons that he didn't understand, he brought his head down towards Inadu's lips and kissed her softly.

He started off gentle at first so as not to spook her or step on her wellbeing, and waited for her to become the aggressor.

He was surprised by how little time it took.

Not two seconds after Taira initiated the kiss, Inadu ran her hands through Taira's hair as she bit his lower lip.

And since she lost all of her inhibitions, he ended up losing his right after her.

He dropped his hands down to her small, perky butt and gave it a firm squeeze.

Inadu trembled in his grasp and pulled him further into her lips; both delighting and arousing him.

In the middle of their embrace, Taira felt droplets of water run onto his face and he opened his eyes in concern.

Once he pulled away, Inadu finally realized that she had started crying at some point.

She hurriedly wiped her face while trying to hide her own embarrassment.

"I-I'm sorry… I don't really know what came over me."

Taira held Ina's hands away from her face so that he could stare at her un-impeded.

"Ina… I want you to marry me." He blurted out.

If Inadu was a cartoon character, her eyes would have popped out of her skull at that exact moment.

She nervously twirled her braids between her fingers as she tried to respond to such a bold declaration.

"…You will not regret your decision..?" She asked quietly. "I-I am not whole, Taira! I couldn't possibly love you the way the others do and-"

"I know that you've been through something terrible, and you are still in the process of recovering, but don't use that as an excuse to disqualify yourself from being happy.

I don't ask you to marry me lightly, and neither I nor the girls are unaware of the things that trouble you. But we all want you to be in our lives just the same."

Taira pressed his forehead against her own and just barely grazed her lips.

"If you deny me, I will only ask you again. And again, and again. I will have you, Inadu. Simply because I have grown far too accustomed to having you in my arms like this."

Even though the temperature in the water and in the air was chilling, Inadu had never felt warmer as she smiled sheepishly in his embrace.

"It seems… my new husband is quite the spoiled man."

Delighted, the two of them shared another passionate kiss that lasted for several minutes.

Eventually, Inadu broke the kiss and turned her head back towards the compound where their home sat atop a hill.

Now, it was Taira's turn to be surprised, because he could hear exactly what she was thinking.

"…Are you sure?"

After taking a moment to calm her throbbing heartbeat, Inadu finally nodded in acceptance.

"I am… Can we go to the bedroom…?"