Kagome had the itch again.

‘Itch’ was more of a euphemism, really. She had a compulsion, a part of her acknowledged. But the other part of her viciously denied it, and so an ‘itch’ it remained in her mind. A hankering, not a need.

Only now she was starting to shake. It began as the subtlest trembling of her fingers. Then the anxieties started to weigh. She started to pace. She raked her hands through her bangs and snapped at Kanako, or Rin, or whoever else happened to be in close proximity to her. Then she felt guilty for snapping, and the anxieties compounded.

How many straws could a camel’s back hold before it broke?

Kagome grimaced, only half joking with herself. It was a stupid joke. But right now everything was striking her as stupid and pointless and irritating to an absurd degree.

She felt oppressed. Oppressed by Sesshoumaru, oppressed by her circumstances. Oppressed by the secrecy and the lies and the crushing grief and loneliness of it all. And the great irony was that, as she shoved her feet into her sandals and went out into the night, the only relief she felt from this oppression lay in an oppression of another sort.

And when he brushed back the door curtain in advance of her approach, she felt the beginnings of that oppression come to bear in the knowing sweep of his glance. But still he moved aside like a gentleman to let her enter. Kagome’s nails lanced into her palms.

“Do you have any sake?” she asked without preamble.

“I might,” Kohaku replied, his arms crossed before him. One dark sleeve draped from his elbow as he pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Then again, I might not.”

Kagome’s eyes narrowed. Always this back-and-forth with him. It set her teeth on edge, and distantly she realized he must get some sort of perverse satisfaction from it.

“I have gold,” she said.

Kohaku shook his head. “I’m not interested in that.”

“Of course you’re not…” Kagome muttered.

“Spend the night with me,” he said.

“I’m not interested in that.”

Kohaku shrugged. “No? Well, never mind, then…”

Retracing the short distance to the door, he pulled the curtain back for her. Kagome stood rooted to the spot, both of them knowing that he had her.

“What do you want from me,” she asked him, “specifically?”

Kohaku’s eyes rested level upon her. For a moment, he thought.

“I want you to take off your clothes, get in my bed—”

“Not happening,” Kagome grit out, incensed.

As she stalked toward the exit, his hand shot out to intercept her. Kagome glared forward, not sparing him so much as a glance.

“—and touch yourself,” Kohaku said coolly, as if she’d never interrupted him in the first place.

Kagome’s eyes scored over his face. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“And you’ll give me a whole bottle?”

“I will,” he said.

“All right,” she decided hotly.

Jerking out of his hold, she turned around and crossed over to the futon. Not wanting to make this into a strip tease, she shed her clothes perfunctorily, almost ripping them off before she thrust herself under the sheet. For a few moments she lay woodenly there beneath it, as Kohaku stepped over and knelt down at the bedside.

“Well?” he prompted.

Kagome’s look was withering. “You’re just going to sit there, looming over me like that?”

“Why not?” the taijiya said lightly. “It’s my house. My sake.”

Point taken, Kagome thought acridly. Letting out a terse breath, she shifted uncomfortably, hating how her nipples had taken it upon themselves to self-project. But covering her breasts with her hands would only draw more attention to them—and there wasn’t a chance in hell that Kohaku’s sharp eyes hadn’t already glimpsed them on display, at any rate.

Kagome shook her head. “I can’t relax.”

“Close your eyes,” he said.

Kagome closed them—screwed them shut, to be more precise. There was a whisper of fabric as he either rose or turned, but whichever it was, by the time Kagome’s gaze snapped to him, he was seated back in place with a bottle of sake in hand. The miko scowled.

Unfazed, Kohaku poured the wine into a wooden cup. “Maybe this will relax you,” he said, pressing the cup to her lips.

Balefully, she swallowed, not a little of the wine dribbling past the edges and down her chin. But after a few minutes, she did feel more at ease, and the hand resting on her belly wandered south. With disconcerting raptness, Kohaku’s eyes followed her fingers’ meandering path beneath the bedsheet. But as he tipped another cup of sake down her throat, she started to forget to be bothered by it anymore.

Her curls felt like strands of silk they were so feathery and light, her sex so damply soft—like lips moistened and parted in wait to be kissed. She told Kohaku as much, in drowsy murmured fragments, and he nodded faintly, leaning in.

“I remember,” he said to her, low and musing, as he drank from the bottle himself. “It’s all I can think about, sometimes, how you felt in my hand as my knees held you open.”

Kagome frowned, stilling her touch. “I shouldn’t have asked that of you, Kohaku-kun…it was wrong.” Her head lolled to one side as she sighed in dismay. “…When did everything start to go so wrong?”

Shortly, Kohaku laughed. “If you keep thinking like that, Kagome-san, you’ll never be able to stop.”

The sake was in her mouth again, so sweet and so bitter. It burned in her throat. It burned behind her eyes. Her fingers slipped deeper between her thighs, and she was lost to any sense of discretion or shame. She was lost to all other sensation except the pursuit of her own base release.

There was an honesty in it. An honesty in the sex, in the sake—an honesty in being here with him like this. He knew almost everything about her, and still he didn’t hate her for it. Maybe he almost hated her, like how she almost hated Sesshoumaru. But there was something so blissful in that distinction that Kagome’s back was arching from the mattress already.

Her slick hand tumbled listless from her thigh. Between the spent splay of her legs, the thin covers settled, adhering to the wetness there. Pinching the sheet near her belly, Kohaku drew it taut over her puffy cleft, and through the transparency of the fabric, her throbbing inner flesh was exposed.

“…You’re going to sleep in this sheet tonight, aren’t you?” Kagome mumbled, coming down.

“Eventually,” Kohaku said, and after she’d emerged and re-dressed, he handed the bottle to her.

She accepted it, but not without saying as she eyed it grimly, “This was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

–

It was what she said to him the next time, too, after he’d demanded she talk dirty to him while he pleasured himself. Taking a rueful swig from the cup he extended, she sat down on the floor across from him.

“Keep it in your pants,” she told him archly.

Kohaku smiled. “Tell me a fantasy of yours,” he said.

“A real one or a fake one?”

Slipping a hand beneath the loosened ties of his hakama, he replied, “Does it matter? And anyway, how am I supposed to know the difference? All you do these days is lie.”

“You used to be such a nice kid,” Kagome muttered, the sake already making her head feel light. “Okay, here’s a real one for you—Inuyasha is alive, and I’m sober and back at home taking his cock, instead of sitting here getting drunk and watching you play with yours.”

Kohaku’s lips twisted. “All right—a ‘fake’ one, then.”

Kagome’s legs curled to one side as she relaxed onto her hip and refilled the cup that he’d drained. Nursing it for a few minutes, she let her mind wander freely along the path of subconscious desire.

“I’m a young girl again, and I don’t know much about anything,” she began, almost dreamily. “I only know enough to think I’m less ignorant than I am. I’m in danger, but I don’t fully appreciate it. It’s a fuzzy feeling, just a tickle at the back of my mind. It’s instinct, and it isn’t all fear—there’s excitement in it, too.” Kohaku’s gaze was riveted on her, his posture utterly still. “He’s taken me away, somewhere—”

“He?”

“Him,” Kagome said simply. “Anyway, he’s taken me…wait, I’m out of sake.” Kohaku brought the bottle to her and poured. “Thanks. Where was I…”

“He took you away?”

“Oh, right.” Taking a sip, Kagome collected her wispy thoughts. “So, I’m on my own with him. There’s no way out. No one’s coming to save me. I don’t even think about any of that though, until he grabs me.” Her lashes lowered. So did her tone. “I shouldn’t like how he shoves his tongue down my throat like he owns it, but I do like it. I like it a lot.”

Kohaku’s eyes darkened, the tendons in the wrist of his hidden hand going taut. “Then what happens?”

“I push him off. It’s too much, my head is spinning—no, really it is,” Kagome said with a wince, rubbing at her temples. Kohaku frowned. “…But he doesn’t care. He wants me anyway—wants me even more now, because I tried to resist him. He grabs me again, and I hit him, and it’s all tooth and nail after that.” Gripping at her knee, the fingers of her free hand dug through the cloth into skin. “I fight him, but he’s so much stronger than me, it’s pathetic. He’s on me, ripping at our clothes, and I can feel how hard he is—how badly he wants to be in me—and it’s making me wet in spite of everything. I’m so angry and terrified and turned on all at once that all I can do is scream and struggle and soak through the shreds of fabric that are still covering me.”

Kohaku’s breathing was audible now, his expression intent. Beneath the dark fabric of his hakama, Kagome could see just how hard he was, and his hand was anything but still. He didn’t need to prompt her to continue. A phantom shiver zinged down her spine, and she resumed.

“He twists me on top of him somehow, and I don’t know whether it’s him rising or me falling, but either way all of a sudden he’s stabbing into me. I’m impaled on him, and it hurts so bad it feels like I’m dying. He’s laughing, howling like a beast, and I’m sobbing in pain, and all the while he’s slamming up into me while he holds me down. I’m bleeding and ruined, and I want to kill him for it. I shriek at him and strike him, and when I’m attacking him is when it starts to feel good…so good inside…”

Kohaku groaned, his arm jerking. On her hands and knees, Kagome crawled over. Drinking from the cup, she leaned up into him, bringing the wet rim to his lips.

“…I’m fighting him and fucking him, and I can’t stop doing either. I can’t decide what I want more. But I know what he wants. It’s what he’s wanted all along.” In the sprawl of Kohaku’s lap, she skimmed her fingers over the fisted bulge straining his pants at the seams. As her touch glided over him, his own hand fell away to let her. “He wants to come in me, Kohaku. He wants to pound his seed so deep into me that he doesn’t care if it kills me. He flips me over and crushes me beneath him because he’s mad at this point, he’s crazed with lust and abandon. I can’t breathe and still he doesn’t let up. I’m clawing at him, he’s clawing at me—what’s insane is that I’m on the verge of coming, and I’m still trying to kill him. We’re killing each other, and there’s only one way to end it, there’s only ever been one way to end it.”

Her hand was running up and down the taijiya’s clothed sex, tracing a heated course from base to tip. As if in unendurable pain, he panted to her, “…And then?”

Her eyes locked with his as she clamped her hand down on his cock in a series of forceful, rapid constrictions. “…And then I finish him.”

Kohaku choked—then stiffened. Cum bled through the cotton of his hakama, dampening Kagome’s wrist like a dab of sticky perfume. Releasing him, she wiped her hand off on his pants leg and snatched up the sake, swaying a little as she went.

–

But it was another time still, when it hit her in a rush that things had gone too far.

Much too far.

In the bed with him, she was naked and kneeling and striving against him. Her thighs straddled his, his cock pumped in her fist. She held onto his shoulders with her other arm as his fingers fucked her from below.

“This is what you really need, isn’t it, Kagome?” Kohaku seethed. Seizing her by the jaw, he moved his buried digits apart to stretch her. “More than the sake, this is what you thirst for—to be punished for your sinful ways.”

Kagome whimpered, gasping outright when the finger in her ass plunged deeper. Her own hand pinched around him, but Kohaku just chuckled and hooked into her harder.

“You’re like a cat in heat for this kind of abuse,” he said lowly, hissing in a breath when she raked her nails along his shaft. With a little gush of sound his hand wrenched out of her, and Kagome yelped as he smacked her open cunt before thrusting his fingers into her again. “…No one else sees it. No one else would believe it, what a wicked little slut you are.”

Viciously, Kagome ground against him, the head of his sex turning almost purple as she grated her fist around it. “…Fuck you, Kohaku.”

Breaking his hold on her jaw briefly, he took a swig of sake and crushed his mouth to hers. Wine spilled from the corners of their fused lips, trickled down her front where he descended swiftly to chase it away—leaving bite marks on her neck and breasts that she’d have to exhaust herself later to heal. Still she groaned and bucked her hips at each scrape and nick of his teeth, imagining they weren’t blunted, but in fact very sharp.

The whiplash of shame that accompanied this thought sent her plummeting over the edge. Her head fell back as she cried out, and Kohaku bit down hard enough to bruise her. Hot fluid coated her belly and breasts. The musk of sex saturated them both.

Kagome felt so raw, without and within. She cringed as he removed his fingers from her. It was a good sort of pain, uncomplicated and purely physical. Like her release, it temporarily purged her. In its acuteness it masked, for a time, the formless and terrible agonies that rankled beneath her skin.

The sex, the sake, the pain…

She was addicted to it because it made her forget—she was addicted to forgetting.

With a damp cloth, Kohaku wiped her chest clean, though she wished he wouldn’t. The tacky discomfort of her flesh being pulled was a distraction in itself. But it was in his hooded gaze that she felt the first pangs of real alarm. It was in the way he gathered her to him and pressed his cheek to hers.

“I don’t want to keep punishing you, Kagome,” he murmured, curling his fingers into her hair. “We both know what you did. Just tell me why you did it.”

For a moment, fear closed her throat. Her heartbeat pounded through them both as she shook her head. “…I don’t know what you mean.”

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. Haven’t I told you already that I forgive you? Haven’t I proven to you that you can trust me?” His arms squeezed around her, and she couldn’t breathe. “Just tell me why you came to me that night. Be honest with me about it, and we can move past this, I promise.”

Kagome swallowed in dread. She longed to tell him the truth. But if she confessed to him why she’d come to him that night, she would have to tell him everything—about the vial, about Sesshoumaru…

Her heart ached, and she realized the gravity of her mistakes. In her selfish quest for relief, she’d gotten too close. She’d put Kohaku in danger once again. Pressing her palms to his chest, she pushed back from him, stifled by his closeness, his intimacy.

“What’s there to tell?” she said curtly. “A little fooling around is all it was. That’s all it’s ever been, as far as I’m concerned. Life’s hard when you have a pristine image to maintain, and it’s good every now and then to blow off some steam. I thought you understood all that, but I guess I was wrong.”

Rising quickly from the bed, she yanked on her clothes and fled for the door. Against her back, Kohaku’s glare was scorching.

“You’re so full of shit,” he said.

Kagome glared back. “And you’re too damn clingy.”

–

She didn’t go back to him after that.

Instead, she kept her secret suffering to herself, bottled up inside.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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