While the women bathed, Sesshoumaru leaned with his back to them against a nearby tree. As much as he had resolved to keep his distance from her, after Kagome’s inept display earlier that day, Sesshoumaru had been reluctant to let her out of his sight.

She did not smell it, but perhaps she was ill in some way. Frailty was so intrinsic in humans that it was difficult, at times, for him to distinguish between their various afflictions. Once, he recalled, Rin had slept fitfully for the better part of two days simply because they had passed by the village of her birth.

Kagome certainly seemed afflicted in his estimation, and he had observed her long enough to judge. For a human, she was remarkably resilient–no doubt owing to her vast spiritual power. Yet, if he thought back some weeks, he could see the beginnings of this decline in her. As much as it vexed him to consider, the symptoms traced back to the night he had taken her.

Remote though it was, he considered the possibility that she was with child. This union of theirs was unheard of–who knew what toll such a conception might take? He was as dubious of the efficacy of her contraceptive as he was of its safety. The false fertility it seemed to evoke in her set his instincts on edge.

When her blood had come upon her a week ago, it had been all he could do to keep himself in check. False or not, her heat antagonized him almost as much as the girl herself. The urge to go to her was near insurmountable, but he had endeavored not to give in to the base demands of his own blood. Callously, she had rejected him, and before he could lie with her again–before he could even acknowledge her again–he needed her to admit that she had wronged him.

His pride demanded no less.

When she had come to him the night before, meek and contrite and seeming at last properly humbled by his reprimand, he had thought that she sought to make amends with him, to ask for his forgiveness. But instead…

His fist clenched at the recollection. Instead of submitting herself to him, she had insulted him once again. As if he would leave his own woman in enemy lands–and with her in such a weakened state. The mere suggestion of it was offensive.

He had underestimated her stubbornness–her sheer nerve. It was rare that anyone dared to try him, and the absurdity of being tried so relentlessly by a human girl chafed at him to no end. What, he wondered, could she possibly hope to gain from it?

Sesshoumaru grit his fangs in frustration. What did she want from him?

“…Thanks, Sango-chan, but I think I’ll stay out by myself a little longer.”

“Are you sure? It’s getting late…”

“Yeah.” A tired sigh. “I’m not ready to go to bed just yet.”

The taijiya was hesitant. “All right, Kagome-chan.”

There was the sound of splashing as the slayer returned to shore, the rustle of cloth as she dressed a minute later. As her footsteps faded in the direction of the camp, Sesshoumaru turned.

Thin and hunched as Kagome was, standing alone in the shallows of the spring, the moment his eyes fell upon her, Sesshoumaru realized his error. At the sight of her wet, naked body in moonlit profile, his weeks-long frustration reached a vicious peak. Her dripping hair clung to her back and shoulders, a few glossy tendrils curved over her breasts as she hugged them close to her chest. Water glimmered diamond-bright from her skin, a few drops glittering in the dark fur that dusted her sex.

Sesshoumaru’s claws gouged deep into the trunk of the tree.

In that moment, he despised her.

He doubted she would even resist him if he pinned her to the bank and ravished her. A perverse part of him whispered that perhaps this had been her plan all along–to bring him to such a point of desperation that his will would be shattered. Perhaps this is what a woman did to a demon like himself.

Like his father.

Brought him to ruin, Jakken had said.

As her arms fell away, Sesshoumaru’s resistance crumbled.

With the last vestiges of his self-control, he retreated into the wilderness. He cast off his swords, his armor. He tore off his clothes and surrendered to his lust. On his hands and knees like the low beast he was, he pleasured himself raw to that hateful image of her until all the venom he held for her bled out of him onto the dirt below. Panting and quaking in the aftermath, he sat back on his haunches and gripped his face in his soiled claws.

When the red haze cleared from his vision, he picked himself up at last.

Clean and clothed once more, he returned to the campsite in resignation. She was awake still, her leaden eyes fixed upon the fading embers of the fire. When he looked at her now, he didn’t see a conniving seductress–he saw a young girl, wan and fatigued, and perhaps even as defeated as himself.

She gazed up at him as his shadow fell over her, and he wondered, as he gazed down at her in turn, if that made her hold over him all the worse.

“Come with me,” he said.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi