For a while, Kagome just lay there–bare-chested and pants-less on the moss covered ground, the aftereffects of her orgasm and subsequent near-coupling still humming like morphine through her veins. The Sesshoumaru effect, she murmured in her mind. A dreamy sigh escaped her, desire pooling within her once more as she remembered the warm wet rasp of his tongue between her legs, the fleeting tortuous pressure of his hardness pushing into her.

She bit her lip, still not quite believing he’d been inside her. It had hurt, somewhat, when he’d first breached her–but nothing like the splitting agony she’d always been led to believe. The pain had faded fairly quickly, replaced by the most sublime feeling of fullness she had ever experienced. His touch had felt wonderful within her, that day by the stream, but this sensation was on another level entirely.

Reaching between her weary thighs, Kagome probed gingerly at her raw, tender skin, her fingers coming away wet but clear. Not even a trace of red. Maybe he hadn’t gone far enough in to tear her. Or maybe all that stuff she’d heard about bleeding the first time was another myth designed to scare girls into chastity. Since he hadn’t gone ‘all the way,’ was she still technically a virgin? Kagome’s lips twisted wryly–she certainly didn’t feel very virginal.

As the sun began to set, she picked herself up at last and began taking inventory of her scattered clothing. Snapping her bra back into place, she frowned as she picked up her matching shredded panties–a lost cause if she’d ever seen one. Despite Sesshoumaru’s rough handling, her hakama and haori were crisp and perfectly intact, Kagome silently rejoicing over the resilience of youkai outerwear. To have to return to camp and face Jakken in nothing but sex-tattered rags would be a fate far worse than death.

Shuddering at the thought, she tied her hakama and gathered up the scattered pile of branches she’d been so diligently collecting before Sesshoumaru had swept in and reduced her to a creature of mindless, reckless need. A blush fanned out across her cheeks as she approached the campsite. Bracing herself mentally, Kagome ascended the last needle-laced slope, a breath of relief whooshing from her when she saw that only Entei was there.

The horse youkai turned to regard her as she stepped into the clearing. They were subtle, but over the time she’d spent with her equine companion, Kagome had gotten better and better at deciphering his looks–and the one he was directing at her right now was particularly shrewd.

“Don’t even start,” she groused at him, dropping the sticks in her arms as she ran a hand through her hopelessly tangled hair. “I know exactly how this looks…”

With a smoky snort, he glanced away. Huffing, Kagome strode over to him, snatching up the yellow pack he’d clearly been nosing through in her absence. Assuming the stream she’d seen from above wasn’t too far away, she figured she had just about enough light remaining to take a quick icy bath and return before the sun set.

As Entei rose, deigning to accompany her, Kagome swung up astride him and set off. She could just hear the sound of running water when a familiar impish voice from up ahead set her teeth on edge. Glancing through the evergreen trees, she rolled her eyes as Jakken hopped around Ah-Un in the midst of an angry tirade.

“No, you slothful beast! How dare you sit down again?! This Jakken commands that you stand at once!”

Blithely, the dragon ignored him, one head nodding off as the other snapped up a fish in its sharp-toothed jaws. Kagome watched as Jakken foolishly whacked a scaled leg with his nintojou, Ah-Un’s drowsy half setting the imp’s hat alight with a puff of flame.

“Arghhhh–curse you!” Sesshoumaru’s vassal seethed as he stomped up and down on his singed headgear.

Reluctant as she was to miss out on this circus act, Kagome was conscious of the time. Together, she and Entei traveled upstream, the horse youkai wading at once into the chilly current as the miko stripped down on the bank. Shivering, she made her way toward him, sighing as she finally stepped into the circle of warmth around him. In his immediate vicinity, the water was bath-temperature, and Kagome’s muscles relaxed as she washed and de-tangled her hair, her wet locks steaming as she draped them over Entei’s hot back and scrubbed at her skin.

Her arm and chest were streaked with red where Sesshoumaru’s claws and armor had scratched against her, her lower half chafed and sore. Irritating as they were, Kagome was secretly glad of these reminders–visible and tangible, irrefutable evidence of his passion for her. Her mind could mis-remember, could bend or twist the facts or color them with her own desires, but the marks he had left upon her were proof that he had wanted her, that he had taken her–

Almost.

Even now Kagome wondered why he had stopped, why he always seemed to stop. Like with the breaking of the seal, he was once again drawing out the fulfillment of their arrangement. And now, just as then, the reason for him delaying it eluded her.

She understood that he’d harbored a dark secret lust for her, but all of that was out in the open between them. There was nothing left for him to hold back anymore where she was concerned. And yet…she sensed somehow that he was holding back–that once more they were skirting around the inevitable, spiraling slowly down into it like water circling a drain.

The impatient shake of Entei’s mane snapped her out of her musings. The sky burned red as the last light of day bled sluggishly away. Toweling herself off on the shore, Kagome dressed and mounted her questionably noble steed, heading back toward camp.

Somehow, Jakken had managed to drag Ah-Un back to the clearing. Reluctantly handing him a chunk of salted meat (which he reluctantly accepted), Kagome set to work building a fire with Entei’s help. Huddling close to the cheery warmth before her, she chewed absently on a piece of jerky while the imp and dragon began to snore, her mind dulling as she lost herself in the mesmerizing flicker of the flames.

She had no way of knowing how much time had passed when she finally looked up again. Night had fallen dark as pitch around them, but he was as bright as ever, pale skin and silver hair glowing with ghostly radiance in the moonlight. Reclining against the trunk of a tree, he had been watching her, his brilliant eyes unguarded and steady–golden as they had been when he’d hovered over her that afternoon and told her that she’d never belong to anyone else.

Gold, she realized, her chin rising from the perch of her knees. Not red…

As her gaze met his, Sesshoumaru’s expression shuttered. Coolly, he looked away.

“Go to sleep, Kagome.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi