01. Lust.

Love at first sight didn't exist. Shikamaru knows this. He might have thought it did, once, when he was a child — but that was before he met Temari.

"So you're the guide." It's a statement, not a question. Her voice is flat and cold like an iceberg. He doesn't know if she is aware that she sounds angry, but the stoniness of her words doesn't hit his preoccupied mind very hard. Moreover, what hits him hard is how much of a woman she is.

She has matured since the last time he saw her, which was around three years ago. Yes, she has matured a lot. And suddenly, for a very brief moment, Shikamaru believes in love at first sight — what else could this swooping feeling in his stomach be? He's struck so abruptly by this gorgeous woman in front of him that all of his thoughts are narrowed down to her, and just her, forgetting the coldness of her voice and focusing only on the gentle curve of her hips and the gracious way she simply exists.

Her eyes are pretty despite their narrowness. She is almost a head shorter than him but he can still see the blue-green color of her irises: It looks like water and earth have been mixed together in a bowl, shaking, rumbling, like an earthquake, but at the same time they are still and shimmery, like a pond. They are rimmed by thick lashes as blonde as her hair, and when she blinks they brush her cheeks, which are freckled, but just barely. Her neck is long and slender, and connects to her sharply defined collar bone in a graceful but powerful way. Shikamaru feels tainted and dirty for it, but he can't stop looking at her — he doesn't want to stop looking at her.

She has long legs, slender, sleek, and muscular, with thighs that blend gracefully into her hips; they are cocked to one side as she studies him furiously. The type of clothing she's wearing is not risqué, but rather very covering, overlapping everything important enough to make Shikamaru's sixteen-year-old mouth water.

He's being indecent and he knows it, but as his eyes travel up and over her stomach, her bust, and her perfect angular shoulders he feels that this is somehow worth the vehement expression that her face has settled into.

"What?" she snaps. Her voice is sharp and cold again, colder than before. He wonders what it sounds like to hear that voice in a different context, a softer context, smooth and supple, flowing over his bare skin as his hand flow over hers. He feels dirty again.

They stand there staring at each other for a while. Shikamaru still can't tear his eyes from her. Temari seems to get angrier and angrier, and after a bit she says, "Idiot" in a chilly, biting voice, scowls brilliantly, and turns to stalk away.

Still enjoying the view, Shikamaru rolls over the prospect of love at first sight again in his mind. Of course, he reasons, this couldn't be that, because to love someone you'd have to actually know them first. And he didn't know her. Yet.

No, this definitely wasn't love at first sight, concludes Shikamaru with a smirk that would make his mother ashamed. But he has never felt lust before and he finds it just as enjoyable.

Author's Note: REVIEW! Please! Don't just favorite and run! FAVORITING AND RUNNING IS NOT NICE! It doesn't take that much effort to push that little button and leave me some love~! :D

In other news, this will be a fourteen-part installment of Shikamaru and Temari and how they implement the seven deadly sins into their relationship for each other. So yeah. There's a chapter for each sin for each of them. Seven plus seven equals fourteen, geddit?

Up next: Gluttony. You will stick around, won't you?