Sesshoumaru frowned as he regarded her.

He should leave. He had brought Kagome here to rest and recover her strength. To remain any longer ran counter to that aim.

Yet he asked her all the same, “You wish for me to stay with you?”

Her grip on his hand tightened as she nodded, her large brilliant eyes gleaming up at him in supplication, and he knew that he could never refuse her. Setting his swords aside in the grass, Sesshoumaru unclasped and removed his armor as he reclined against the jewel-fruited tree and pulled her to him. With a contented sigh, she settled into the crook of his arm, her hand splaying across the center of his chest.

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes closing briefly as her fingers curled against him, “for bringing me here.”

His arm fell, curving around her waist as he drew her closer in. “This place pleases you, then?”

“It’s wonderful.” Red fanned across her cheeks as she gazed up at him. “You’re wonderful.”

For a moment, as he gazed back at her, Sesshoumaru found himself at a rare loss. A curious warmth spread through him at her words, his pulse quickening ever so slightly beneath her palm. 

“The hour is late,” he said, his free hand rising to her face as he touched the pad of his thumb to the shadows beneath her eyes. “You should sleep.”

She nodded, her own fingertips lifting to trace the stripes on his cheek.

His claws curved back into her hair. “You need your rest for the journey ahead.”

Nodding again, she guided his face down to hers. Their brows touched briefly, his lashes descending as he breathed her in.

“Kagome…” he murmured, as if in a dream.

Her lips brushed against his as she spoke his name in turn, her fingers trailing to his neck. There was no sense of urgency, no mad drive in him to possess her. Closing the meager distance between them, he kissed her slowly, lingeringly, savoring the glide of her mouth against his.

The only need he felt was to be closer to her—a need she seemed to echo as she slipped her fingers beneath the collar of his haori. Lips remaining upon hers, he shrugged out of both layers of silk, her hands leaving his skin only to bare her own. Their need for one another ferried them to the ground, a soft, shared groan passing between them as his naked chest fit to hers.

Sesshoumaru broke briefly from her then, continuing languorously down her throat, her breasts, her stomach and thighs—his mouth departing her body only to return to hers, again and again. It was her small deft fingers that loosened the ties of his hakama at last, that drew him to her as he rose from the cradle of her hips and combined her two heavenly tastes together between them.

Her tongue pressed into him as he pressed into her. Each unhurried thrust pulled them both deeper in, her arms and legs clutching around him as she embraced him fully from within. He was lost in her, drowning in her. As he felt his desire for her close over him, he could see that she was drowning, too.

“Sesshoumaru,” she breathed out as her bliss overcame her in waves. “Oh, Sesshoumaru…”

In the centuries he had walked upon this earth, he had never heard a sweeter sound. The rock of her hips carried him over, the pulse of her release resonating with his own. He brought his lips to hers again as they rode out their pleasure together as one, his body continuing to surge forward, continuing to seek her still.

At the scent of her tears, he drew reluctantly back.

Her head turned away, her bent arm rising to shield her features as they crumpled. Still inside her, Sesshoumaru raised his hand to her wrist, feeling strangely helpless as he pulled Kagome’s arm aside. Tears trickled down her temples as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Kagome,” he said, his voice roughening as he entreated her, “look at me.”

Grimacing, she shook her head.

“Look at me,” he faintly growled. “Tell me what is wrong.”

“Please, Sesshoumaru,” she whimpered, shaking her head again. “Please, don’t make me…”

He grit his fangs as he took her face between his claws. “Tell me.”

She swallowed dryly as her damp lashes parted, the pain mirrored in her eyes arresting him completely. He could see now what it was that had been plaguing her. He could see what it was that had made her so perilously feeble, so acutely wretched—this frailty, this weakness. He recognized what it was long before the words fell from her lips—he could see it all in that eternal moment when he looked into her eyes and saw his own weakness reflected back.

“I love you,” she whispered brokenly. “Sesshoumaru, I love you…”

The truth hit him like a death knell, his claws biting into her as he clenched his eyes shut in denial.

I love you.

His breath hissed through the vise of his fangs, his face snapping sharply to the side.

I…

He could feel it rising within him, smothering him—this knowledge, this feeling.

This affliction.

…I love you.

Lurking within him, the sickness swelled, dark and mocking—lying latent in his bones since the very beginning. Since the first time he laid his eyes upon her, it had been there—festering, waiting. The evidence, the proof—

“No,” he snarled, wrenching her over to hide her damning gaze. “No.”

But it was not enough. Even with her face pushed to the grass, he could still see it. Written in her skin like a proclamation, like a decree from the gods themselves—

His fate, inescapable. The curse of his blood, irreversible.

Incurable.

“…Sesshoumaru!” Kagome choked out as his claws lengthened. “Sesshoumaru, stop!”

He heard her only distantly as he roared in anguished protest, the red fog of his desperation eclipsing all else. He could feel death bearing down upon him as he bore down upon her—

“…Sesshoumaru—“

His claws were sinking, scraping—

“…S—Sesshoumaru–NO!”

Rending—

Tearing.

Liquid heat gushed over his fingers, the scent of iron assaulting his senses—jolting him violently back to himself.

As his hellish vision began to clear, a new nightmare rose to replace it, sharpening into terrible, vicious relief.

Beneath him, Kagome was silent and still. Her glassy eyes stared at nothing, her back ripped open from shoulder to hip. Blood streamed from her scored flesh, spilled over her sides as she lay lifelessly there.

Then, to his deepening horror, she stirred.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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