Kagome’s first muddled thought was of her husband—

And then, she remembered.

The flood of recognition that pounded through her was as terrible as the aching need. Squeezing her eyes shut, she did her best to block him out and see to it. Even if this was because of him, it wasn’t for him—and she clung to this distinction like a lifeline in the crashing waves.

“You…” she reminded them both hoarsely through the tumult. “I’m only doing this to keep you at bay. I’m only doing this to protect the others.”

The skin of her foot cooled as Sesshoumaru’s balmy mouth broke from it. “How noble of you.”

Each word dripped with poisonous derision. Within her, she felt the aftereffects of that venom twisting through her guts, making the muscles of her abdomen cramp and seize. Her fingers were clumsy, yet fluid. She had reached the point where even the least well-placed touch ignited her with pleasure. From that little locus of nerves, peeping shamelessly and greedily from its silken hood, her radius of bliss had expanded. Even with her hand held still, the pressure alone was enough to make her shudder and groan, as her slick swollen flesh pulsed wantonly against it.

When he slid his claws around her skewed thigh, she lurched forward that much more into the burning cradle of her palm. Her puffy lips, her blood-stiffened clit crushed against skin and bone, her tortured cry muffling beneath the ringing rush in her ears. It was the sound of blood, crying out against her. In gratitude or horror at her martyrdom, Kagome couldn’t say. All she knew was that a grim sort of relief lay at the end of it all, and she was hurtling toward it.

“This is never what I wanted,” she despaired to no one.

Whether worn down simply from lust, or something else, Sesshoumaru said roughly, “I know.”

There was a snapping—a shifting—and it wasn’t only from within her. Without her even realizing it, a leg of the battered table had given way, and Kagome gasped as she started to fall with it, before his arm went around her middle. Her ass hit his muscled torso. His erection grazed her inner thigh. Supporting her against the incline, he gripped her hard as they came together emptily, into the open air. Time drained between them, a slow, seeping series of moments. Bitterly spent in the wake of them, she sagged with him back to the floor, the clawed hand at her hip as slick and sultry as her own.

For a while, she sat slumped with him there, mired in the cooling evidence of their depravity. Wallowing in the depths her ‘noble’ intentions had sunk her to. Down in the thick of it with him, she struggled to catch her breath as he panted raggedly against her neck, his arm still locked around her. As soon as she was able, she wrenched herself free of his lingering hold, yanked herself to her feet so swiftly that her head went light for a moment, and she clasped the leaning table edge for support.

Down her legs, mixed liquids trickled in a sickly ooze. Banishing what she could of them, Kagome grimaced, her palm crushed to her lancing brow. Behind her, she felt rather than heard Sesshoumaru stand. Her shoulders hunched, her hair still warm and damp where he had breathed against her. Shielding her face behind the fall of it, she banded her arms about her and waited for him to go. But as usual, he was in no hurry to leave her in peace.

“You owe me a new table,” she muttered out of spite, glaring at the scarred, crippled wreckage of it.

The press of his claws to her lower back made her whirl with a start. Her eyes flashed at him in latent fury, but before she could open her mouth to berate him, his eyes cut glinting to a particular spot in the floor.

“Your little servant has overheard us,” he said.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi