NOTE: Will make more sense if you’ve read this one.

…Maybe.

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Still shivering in the wake of Sesshoumaru’s chilling departure, Kagome shakily stood. In a purifying wave, she banished the spill of his seed from the floor, banished all trace of him that remained. But she couldn’t banish the knowledge of how she had violated him.

It was a filthiness that sunk beneath her skin, what she had done to him. Not that he didn’t deserve all of it and more—but that she had lost herself in it filled her with self-loathing. Swept up in the baseness of the moment, she had given herself over to the lust of her own hatred, reveled in an act of vindictive carnality that left her sickened and reeling in the undertow.

To punish him was fair, but she had gone far beyond that. It was a sense of imbalance that threatened to upend her from the soul. Clasping the table edge, she willed herself to calm, but it was impossible. In her heart she couldn’t even cry out to Inuyasha. She was too ashamed to bring him into the same sphere of thought.

Beneath her skin, her blood was boiling with the urge to correct this—to redeem herself. To wrest herself back from the infernal depths of her rage-induced hysteria.

Afire with this self-directed fury, she sweated and paced. She needed to purge herself, but she didn’t know how. A priestess sodomizing a demon?—who could conceive of such a vile blasphemy of nature, let alone divine some remedy for it? Desperate to right her toppled worldview, desperate to dampen her hellish defilement, Kagome sloshed a few buckets of icy well water into her wooden bathing tub and stripping off her miko attire like it was aflame, plunged herself shivering into the bath.

The frigid stab of the water struck her like a well-deserved blow, tormenting and bracing all at once. Her skin stung, then numbed. Her nipples puckered, still chafing from having stood so long erect against the starched layers of her haori. She hadn’t consciously noted it at the time, her own physical reaction. The roiling of her reiki in response to Sesshoumaru’s antagonized youki had masked the rush of blood to her face and chest, the pounding and swelling and stiffening of the flesh between her thighs.

Guiltily, she clamped them together, whimpering as she drew her legs to her breast and hugged her arms around them. Crushing her forehead to her knee, she stared into the dark void the curl of her body had created. Wet at the ends, her hair veiled the rest of her as it slid slow and heavy from her bowed back.

How long she remained locked in this tortured state she couldn’t say. Unhinged from time and space, she was suspended in the core of her ancient soul, in the primordial, trench-like darkness which was nothing and everything. Horrified and comforted, she contemplated the infinite emptiness of it all.

Then, across the gulf of eons, she heard a distant voice. “…Kagome-san?—Are you there?”

Inhaling sharply, she returned to herself. Prying her fused brow from her knee, she glanced fearfully to the door, not even realizing she’d been chewing on the knuckle of her index finger until the masculine voice spoke again.

“Kagome-san?”

With a start, she flung her hand from her mouth in revulsion. Her own voice was strangled as she called back, “What is it?”

The curtain swung aside as the man entered, and dimly, she recognized him at last.

“We need to—” Kohaku began, before his jaw snapped shut at the sight of her. His eyes were flinty as slate as he turned away.  “Gods, Kagome—if you were in the bath, why didn’t you say so?”

Kagome paled. In truth, she hadn’t remembered that she was. But now she perceived the chill of the water, the keenness of her near-total exposure. Mortification coursed through her, her body flinching reflexively to shield herself from him—before an epiphany of conscience made her stop, made her remain still and naked in his view.

Narrowly, Kohaku glanced back at her, his scowl slipping at the sight of her humiliated trembling. “Are you ill?” he asked, crossing the short distance between them and crouching down to take hold of her arm. When she didn’t answer, his grip tightened. “Are you drunk?”

Haltingly, Kagome raised her eyes to his. “I…”

Tears welled as she fought to still her trembling lip, contemplating him and all the injuries she had dealt him. She could see it there—repressed beneath the severity of his expression. Transfixed by it, her guilt and shame compounded. In a flood of terrible, inexorable revelation, she knew then what must do to atone for her injustices. Frightened yet compelled, she grasped him in return.

“I need your help, Kohaku-kun,” she said, her voice breathy with urgency as she pulled him closer. “Will you help me?—Will you do exactly as I say? Promise me you will.”

Kohaku’s gaze widened. Eventually, with clear reluctance, he nodded in assent.

Closing her eyes, Kagome exhaled as she stood, releasing him. Water streamed down the curves of her body, the starkness of the open air assaulting her with perfect cruelty. Tortuously intent upon her, Kohaku’s cold dark stare raked over her nakedness, making her shudder in utter vulnerability.

“Take off your armor,” she said faintly to him. Rising at once, the young man complied, the metal plates and their fastenings clanging to the floor. As he started to reach for the clasp of his collar, Kagome grabbed his hand. “No—leave your clothes on.”

Kohaku frowned deeply. Stepping past him as she exited the tub, Kagome made her way dripping to the spot on the floor where Sesshoumaru had lain tethered for her vindictive pleasure. Pausing there, she turned back to the taijiya, whose brows were knit in consternation.

“Come here,” she said, lowering herself to the floor as she continued to face him.

Warily, Kohaku approached her. “Why there?” he asked shortly. “The bed would be better.”

Ignoring him, Kagome lay back. Her heart hammered as she spread her arms and legs, the sudden hitch in Kohaku’s breathing mirroring her own. Her face scalded with primal fear and unease, her thighs trembling violently as she forced herself to stay so helplessly and shamefully splayed before him.

“G-get on top of me,” she stammered out. “I need you to hold me down…at the knees and at the wrist—the left wrist,” she added hastily.

Kohaku remained rooted to the spot, the weight of his silence tangible. “Kagome—”

“You promised,” she bit out. “Do as I say or leave.”

The boards creaked as he stepped toward her at last. Kagome tensed, her breasts quivering in trepidation as he knelt between the spread of her thighs.

“This is madness,” he muttered, leaning forward nevertheless.

His shadow fell over her as he pressed his knees just above her own. Though the majority of his weight was off her, Kagome whimpered as her thighs were flattened and forced even farther apart, her left arm jerking as gloved fingers closed over her wrist. She felt like an insect pinned alive to the canvas, only the crippling weight of her ignominy keeping her free hand frozen at her side. Kohaku’s brooding gaze met her own before he turned his face aside, the dark fall of his bangs obscuring his stern features.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked lowly, embarrassed for her sake. “It’s disgraceful.”

At this cutting censure, Kagome’s right hand thawed at last. Bringing it forward over the bone of her hip, she curved her twitching fingers into the too-hot cleft between her legs, her forefinger slipping first into the fiery slickness that glazed her. Above her Kohaku abruptly stilled, his fist clenching like a vise around her captive wrist.

It was the pain she needed to proceed with her self-abasement. Her eyes burned with degradation as she rolled her fingers brisk and hard over her firing nerves, watching as Kohaku observed her fiercely in return—his piercing, contemptuous gaze a just witness to all the shame she couldn’t otherwise admit to him. In the agony of subjecting herself to his ruthless scrutiny, she could feel the scales within her mercifully shifting. In making herself into a lurid spectacle, in offering herself up so blatantly for his dissection and scorn, she felt her anguish softening, blurring around the edges even as the blaze within her ratcheted to new heights.

He was weighing her, judging her—she could see that, and she reveled in it as the searing friction made her writhe and arch and wretchedly moan. A terse, gritted breath left Kohaku at this. His free hand rose to his mouth. There was the stark flash of an incisor as he wrenched off his glove and joined his fingers with hers in the balmy wetness of her sex.

Kagome jerked. “Don’t—”

But biting her lip bloody, she cut herself off, abashed, and let him have his way. She couldn’t stop him at any rate—and wasn’t that the point? Callused fingertips rasped along her slick inner lips, seeking her defenseless entrance. Primed and open, there was nothing she could do but await his invasion. At the first stretching sensation of it, Kagome cried out, her eyes sealing shut. Hot tears welled along the twitching seams, leaking as steadily as the wetness between her cramping thighs.

“I never wanted to be cruel to you,” Kohaku confessed huskily as he continued to breach her. “It’s the furthest thing from what I wanted. But you…”

Kagome’s back bowed as she gasped out, “I know.”

“I thought you were perfect,” he seethed, sheathing his finger into her to the base. “But you’re not. You’re perverted and deranged.” Sharply and bitterly, Kohaku laughed, the sound of it hitting her like a whip crack. “When I thought you were perfect, I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t even dream of it—and you know what the truth is? I like you better this way.”

Stricken, Kagome groaned as he drove his finger in and out of her in a punishing circuit. Her walls seized when he hooked toward her navel, her nipples tightening desperately.

“Harder,” she panted, grinding the heel of her hand harshly over her pulsating clit.

Raggedly, Kohaku breathed, forcing her hand out of the way as he slammed his own against her with bruising force. Yelping, Kagome relished the violence he was inflicting upon her. In it, she was free to torture herself with the image of what would have happened if Sesshoumaru had grabbed for her instead of his cock when she had released him.

In her mind’s eye, she saw herself screaming as he snatched her and shoved her beneath him in an instant, felt with every strained heaving of her lungs how her breath would have burst out of her—how in that single stunned second, he would have ripped off her clothes and thrust himself into her with unchecked brutality. She could feel her head spinning, her body contorting and reiki exploding as she struggled just to stay alive while he devastated her from behind, each jarring crash of his hips unmaking her from within. She could feel herself splitting as he pillaged her with bestial abandon, as he roared and reared and swelled and tore into her with his claws and fangs—

“No!” Kagome sobbed out at the raging height of her torment.

A terrible ecstasy roared through her as her pummeled sex convulsed in a parody of death. Wasted and abused, she collapsed listless in the aftermath, devoid of all sensation.

Only when Kohaku shifted did she feel her bloodless limbs again, her spent and sullied flesh. Yet in this debasement she at last felt a measure of relief from the hellfire that had ravaged through her. Starting to push herself up, she was distantly surprised when she realized Kohaku was still pinning her down at the thighs.

Dazed, she looked up at him as he pulled himself free before pushing her to the floor once again. Roughly, hatefully, he laid claim to her open mouth, his buried fingers withdrawing from her with an audible suck. Craning up her neck, she watched as he leaned back on his heels, eyeing the way her wetness webbed and gleamed between the spread of his fingers before smearing it over the length of him.

With a feverish intensity she recognized all too well, he stroked himself to the sight of her battered and brought low, and with a pang of familiar remorse, Kagome lay back and endured it.

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Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi