Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

—Job 3:9-10

 

 

 

 

For a while, Kagome lingered beside the hilltop shrine, frowning after Sesshoumaru in thought. Just what had been the point of all that posturing just now? After hearing nothing but radio silence from him for more than a year, he’d decided to drop in on her just to—what, exactly? Rattle her, intimidate her? Throw his weight around here, just for the hell of it?

If there was one thing she still trusted about Sesshoumaru, it was that he didn’t do anything without a purpose.

Out of spite, he had shunned her all this time. Now, to reappear on her out of nowhere, even as coldly and derisively as he had, she was tempted to think—

But Kagome shook her head, no. It wasn’t a possibility worth considering. Even to give voice to it in her mind would only embitter her that much further.

She was angry that he’d come here. It was like tearing open an old wound, just to breathe the same air as him again. Seeing him, she couldn’t help but look into the past—and that was precisely the thing she wished least to do.

At her feet, Ikiryou whined. Kagome glanced down from the shadowed spot where Sesshoumaru had vanished, and saw what had distressed her canine companion. In the gathering dark, it was even more glaringly obvious—the rose-white glow that surrounded her. It wasn’t soft or faint, but lambent and flickering, like a candle flame. An unconscious outpouring of spirit.

Reiki bleed, Kagome realized grimly, as she quashed the unbidden flames.

Luckily, no one else had been around to see it. Edged in red or glaring bone-white, that sort of supernatural radiance wasn’t exactly a serene or reassuring sight. Tainted with her lifeblood, it was closer to a demonic aura than she liked to admit.

Destructive and seething—long story short, Kagome was dying a slow and painful death. A death of a trillion cuts, as her own spiritual power ate her up from the inside-out.

Mortal flesh could only endure so much abuse. Cracks in the human shell, and the spirit would start to spill out unchecked. Warrior priestesses who channeled too much reiki too often had a history of hemorrhaging fatally out. Kagome’s transcendent reiki was so powerful, it wounded and healed her almost simultaneously. But even so…this rapid cycle of wear and repair was taking its toll.

Kagome’s body ached constantly, from housing a layered multitude of infinitesimal, invisible reiki scars.

Perhaps not so invisible to Sesshoumaru’s eye, she considered narrowly, as Ikiryou edged around her. Scampering off into that fringe of dark forested slope, he left her alone to her grim contemplations.

…

It was night in full by the time she returned to the palace.

The maids had long since taken their leave from her personal quarters. Kagome didn’t like people hanging around to fuss over her, especially when there was absolutely no need for it.

And she valued her privacy, scarce as it was.

But as Kagome slid back the door to her bedchamber, she saw at once that she was not alone. Inwardly, she cursed herself. In all that to-do over Sesshoumaru’s unexpected arrival, she had totally forgotten about the one waiting upon her within.

Clothed in a sheer robe of silk, Natsuko lounged on Kagome’s futon, her long sleek hair spilling free over her back and shoulders. She propped herself up on her hands as Kagome walked toward her.

“My lady,” she purred, “what kept you? I’ve missed you so.”

Through the flimsy veil of peach silk, Kagome could see the dusky peaks of Natsuko’s breasts, the little dark thatch between her thighs. Her legs were spread akimbo, ever so slightly. Just enough for that slip of silk to depress into her damp cleft and outline its luscious shape.

Kagome knelt down beside her on the bed. At once, Natsuko reached for her kimono, but Kagome brushed her off, and opened Natsuko’s thin robe instead. Natsuko sucked in a breath as her bare skin met the chilly autumn air. Her nipples drew taut, her belly also. As she lay back, that snowy plane of skin faintly shivered. Kagome’s fingers skimmed her from collar to navel. Dusting lightly over the soft dark fleece at her mound, Kagome gazed down upon Natsuko as she spasmed and gasped.

“Kagome-sama! Touch me, please.”

But Kagome refrained. Her eyes were trained heavily upon those delicate blushing folds. Like filmy lips they parted, moist and eager to be claimed.

“Is there sake still?” Kagome asked, skirting around and dipping her finger just barely into the warm, satiny crevice where hip met thigh.

“Yes, my lady!” Natsuko said, scrambling to fetch it. “Yes, of course.”

From an unsealed jar on the bedside table, Natsuko poured a cup. She offered it to Kagome, who declined, pressing the cup back toward Natsuko’s lips instead. At her insistence, Natsuko obediently tilted back her head and opened her mouth. Kagome tipped the contents of the cup to her. The slightly cloudy liquid spilled sinfully from the corners of Natsuko’s red lips, dripped down the ample curves of her breasts, skittering toward the junction of her thighs.

Still fully clothed, with her hair still pinned, Kagome let her eyes flick to Natsuko’s wide, dark almond gaze.  “Touch yourself, Natsuko-chan. I want to watch.”

Natsuko nodded faintly. With sake-laced lips she pressed a kiss to Kagome’s lower lip, tugging briefly. Lying back on the silk pillows, she spread her thighs open for Kagome to see within them. Lightly furled, those nimble musician’s fingers stroked down to rest between the splay of her legs. Teasing at the flushed fringes of her sex, she circled inward to test at her own brimming wetness. Then, from that dark little pit to the swollen red pearl that crested it, she traced a shining trail.

Again and again Natsuko traced this path, strumming over her sex with skilled fingers as Kagome settled back. Leaning on her hip in the downy softness of the bed, she watched this performance play out as though from afar.

…

After Natsuko left, Kagome couldn’t help but feel bereft in her absence. It was Kagome’s command that had sent her from the room. So of course, she only had herself to blame.

Hadn’t she ever?

Draining the sake bottle of its last precious drop, she ripped the pins from her hair with several strands in the bargain. She made just as short and vicious work of her kimono as well, before lowering herself into the wooden bathing tub with a splash. The water was as cold as her insides, and she grimaced in sullen recognition.

Scrubbing at her hair and skin, Kagome settled back to silently fume. Over the pale, bleared outline of her body, her hair fanned in a dark spidery veil. It was getting too damn long again, and uncomfortable comparisons rose to the forefront of her mind.

But, Kikyou had been beautiful, hadn’t she? Revered and lovely as a statue etched out of cold unfeeling stone.

Not for the first time, Kagome measured herself against her previous incarnation and found herself coming up woefully short. Angrily, she splashed her fist down into the bathwater, sending a few entrained lotus petals flying out with the spray. It would all be so much easier, Kagome reflected, if she could just not feel.

But there was nothing for it. She was just lifting herself up from the tub, just reaching for the pale silk sheath of her sleeping robe, when she felt him enter. Kagome’s eyes snapped back toward the door in mild irritation.

If he was coming here, at this time of night, there could only be one reason for it.

“Hirokin,” she said, letting her gaze slide back toward the pretty circular windows nested together at the back of her bed. “It’s late. What do you want.”

It wasn’t really a question, and he didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he stepped toward her. His footsteps were soundless, his aura dense and cool like the air after rain.

“Kagome-sama,” he said, a furtive smile in his voice. “I glimpsed candlelight, and wondered if you were yet awake.”

“Did you now?” Kagome said, glancing back.

Hirokin nodded. Her hair flicked in a dark heavy curtain over shoulder. His eyes seemed to follow each diamond droplet that cascaded from it.

“What I’m wondering,” she said lowly, “is why you’re still clothed.”

Hirokin tensed for a moment. Something in him, some instinctive reluctance toward her, still caused him to hesitate. But the moment passed. In its wake, she watched as he divested himself of his flowing blue-and-white robes in a shimmering wave. Kagome looked upon him in full, taking in each sparkle of jewel-like scale that studded him like birth-marks, each shadow that fell over the cut lines of his slender, marble physique. Hanging long and artful between his thighs, his cock stirred faintly under her brusque appraisal, blue-veined and elegant as the rest of him. For all his faults, he was certainly a magnificent-looking creature.

Coolly, Kagome took up her pipe and lit it. “Kneel,” she said.

Hirokin knelt. Riveted upon her, his blue eyes were slightly dilated. The head of his cock kissed the floor. Kagome stepped toward him, letting him wither in the all-encompassing sear of her presence.

“Arms behind your back,” she said briskly, as though annoyed she had to remind him.

At once, Hirokin clasped his hands together, letting them rest at his tailbone. Kagome circled around him, her gaze assessing. She surveyed him as a falcon might survey from on high its half-suspecting prey. Taking a long slow draw from her pipe, Kagome cocked her head to one side.

“Knees apart,” she said. “Spread those cheeks for me. Don’t be shy.”

Casting her a quick, dark look, Hirokin obliged her. He spread his legs like a woman would, so wide that his cock, half-hard, curved up from the floor like a weaver’s hook. Between his split cheeks, that portal into him was puckered in clear display. As her gaze scored over it, the little ring of muscle contracted and quivered. In that transition of motion, she discerned the beginning and end of his resistance, and it made her wet between the legs.

“Some prince of demons you are,” she remarked, sitting cross-legged upon the tatami platform above him. “Whoring yourself out for me like this—don’t you have any shame?”

Hirokin grimaced, his cock throbbing at the degradation. Kagome drew slow and leaden from her smoking pipe again. For a half-hour or so she sat, smoking and watching him in silent condemnation. The flush that stained his throbbing cock rose up his pretty frame. His chest crawled with red. His fey features flushed with it.

At last he could only gasp out, “Kagome-sama, please.”

“Please what?” she said, tapping the ashes out onto his thigh.

Hirokin winced at the sting, though it was more psychological than physical. “Please, let me ease my suffering.”

Kagome stood from the tatami platform. For a long moment, she eyed him before saying, quite clearly and succinctly, “No.”

Hirokin groaned, flexing his hips in sheer frustration. Kagome watched his cock grate hard and pulsing along the wooden floorboards. Idly, fleetingly, she wondered how it would feel inside her. Then she turned and walked over to a little side table, where the remnants of her dinner stood. Natsuko, that spoiled girl, had picked through the choicest bits of course. Taking up a pair of chopsticks bound by a fine silver chain, Kagome sifted through a little bowl of fragrant rice, turning it over from the warm underbelly at the base.

“I met with Sesshoumaru today,” she said, in feigned nonchalance. “You might’ve warned me he’d be coming to call.”

Hirokin’s voice was strained. “…Had I known, my lady, I would surely have.”

Kagome didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Regardless, she sampled a few grains of rice before descending to the level where he languished, sweltering in abject humiliation. Kagome liked the look of him there, prostrated and bound by his own clasped hands.

But she could do better.

“Lean forward,” she said. Since she hadn’t told him to unclasp his hands, only the bank of glittering mist that formed beneath him kept his face from hitting the floor. “No youki.”

Hirokin’s aura seemed to thrash, like the sullen flick of a tail. Then he withdrew his youki. In the absence of that cushioning mist, his cheek crushed to the gleaming pine. For a little while, as she picked at her rice, Kagome took in the sight of him so shamefully bent and exposed.

His hips were raised above the rest of him, his sundered ass on full display. His balls were high and heavy, his stiff cock minutely quivering as it hung suspended in the empty air. His noble face, half-hidden against the floor, was scalded so ridiculously red Kagome itched to laugh. She settled for a contemptuous half-smile instead. A faint tremor ran through him as though he could sense her disdain. No doubt he felt more vulnerable to her with his youki suppressed than anything else.

Finished with the rice, Kagome set the bowl aside. She kept the chopsticks, though. Meditatively, she chewed at the tips as she approached him. At her leisure, she let her reiki unfurl against the bare, sculpted backs of his thighs.

“It’s a pity I don’t have a cock,” she said wryly, eyeing that pretty shying hole of his. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he groaned, his voice ragged and muffled against the boards—so rough with raw need she could honestly believe him.

“But then if I did, everything would be different, wouldn’t it? If I had a cock, I’d be just like him, and I wouldn’t enjoy this nearly so much.”

There was no need to clarify who she was speaking about. There was no need for Hirokin to reply either. But there was affirmation in his silence all the same.

Taking the wet ends of the chopsticks from her mouth, she reached out, extending them toward him. Hirokin seemed to swallow back a curse as she teased his entrance with them, skimming just barely over it as she traced his cleft from tailbone to taint. Reflexively, he flinched away—only for half an instant, before something stronger had his hips easing back to submit to this undignified probing. Whether it was grudging obedience that forced him to do it, or just sheer galling lust, Kagome could only speculate.

He was a filthy fucking pervert though, to be sure.

It was this dark, errant thought that had her own pulse quickening as she circled that little ring of crinkled flesh that seemed to contract and expand with every stammer of his pounding heart. After a little while of this skimming, circling, and stroking around the periphery, he seemed to soften somehow. It was an inexplicably alluring sight to her, as he smoothed and opened in acquiescence to her demands. Dipping the tips of her instruments into him just barely, she gently pried. Warmth pooled low in her belly at the way he shimmered for her, his watery character easing the way of her plundering course.

Truly, he was meant for this, Kagome decided. The frustrated longing was almost more than she could bear, as she worked those glistening tips in and out of him. In amazement, she watched his pink inner flesh bloom outward, gripping fleetingly as the slender shafts impaling him withdrew. On a sultry whim, she let her reiki flow into the wood, heating it in a way that made his youki roil violently in violation. His sharp nails drew blood from his wrists. His spun-silver hair frazzled, as he snapped out a curse in some guttural, draconic language that sounded like fangs grinding through bone.

Despite all this, he skewered himself that much deeper on the chopsticks in her hand. All reason and pride in him were gone; he was reduced to a come-starved beast. Greedily, he thrust back onto the shafts goring into him. He moved his hips in such an urgent, wanton way that Kagome sensed he was trying desperately to guide them over a particular spot inside him. Intuitively, she followed this cue, seeking out that mysterious gland and grating over it in a way that would have been dangerous for a mortal man, but for him seemed the most sublime of tortures.

“Yes, my lady, just like that…” he panted out, sounding half-crazed. “Rape me just like that. I’m your demon whore, your filthy slave. Fuck me with those crude little sticks of yours. Gouge me out, make me bleed…”

“Shut up,” Kagome said, though her voice was breathless and frayed. Feeling dazed herself as she continued to torment him, she murmured, “I played with Sesshoumaru like this, once.”

Even in the grips of such mad, ravening lust, Hirokin froze. His eyes flared wide as he glanced back at her, in mingled shock and horror. Aghast as he was, that didn’t stop the shivering moisture beaded at his cock from dripping to the floor.

Dryly, Kagome smiled. “He didn’t care for it much,” she admitted. Loftily, she started plying at Hirokin again, the sordid contrast of her cool manner and vulgar probing making him shudder and groan. “I used my finger to fuck him, but you don’t get that privilege. You don’t deserve to feel my naked touch, do you?”

“…No, my lady,” he gasped out, gyrating his hips a bit more than was necessary to savor those filthy inner strokes.

But Kagome liked the little show he was putting on for her. It was obsequious and obscene, excessively degrading. Perfect for him. And so, she decided to throw him a bone.

“He hated it,” she reiterated. “At first, anyway. But by the end, for all his snarling and seething, he was throwing himself back on my hand anyway. I’ve never seen him come so hard.” Kagome paused, watching as Hirokin absorbed this with a shiver. “Well, I take that back. He came harder the time I let him fuck my ass.”

Hirokin went briefly still. Lips quirking at the corners, Kagome resumed.

“It was a compromise,” she said lightly. “I couldn’t let him fuck me otherwise, so it was a way for both of us to blow off some steam. You’ve seen how scarily well-endowed he is, right? Then you can imagine how it felt to try to swallow down such a massive cock through such a tiny hole. Gods, it felt impossible, the way he was forcing me open. It was like my whole body had to stretch to work him in—and that was just the tip. And he was so throbbing hard, so fucking hot and raging I felt like I was being shoved full of hellfire, like a pillar of solid flame was pushing apart my insides, hollowing me out—hey now, none of that!”

Subtly and slyly during the course of this salacious tale, Hirokin had been rubbing his cock against the floor, seeking a relief he knew damn well he wasn’t entitled to. With a lash of reiki, Kagome set him straight.

“Apologize,” she demanded.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he grit out, but the wicked glint in his eye said he wasn’t sorry in the slightest.

“Why don’t you put that smart mouth of yours to good use for a change,” she said, and a real look of dread flickered across his expression, before she added, “and tell me something interesting.”

Still hobbled pathetically on the floor, Hirokin thought for a moment, his sapphire gaze darkening in dreamlike reflection. “As children, Sesshoumaru and I were always together.” The lack of honorific caught Kagome by surprise; she couldn’t recall him ever dropping it before, and felt herself already piqued. “We were as close as brothers—closer, even. For he had none, and mine were not worth considering.

“We did everything together. We trained together, played together. Bathed together.” Deliberately, it seemed, he paused, smiling faintly toward her. “Into adolescence, this closeness did not change. But we were changing. I could feel it in myself, and I wondered if he felt it too. I wondered this more and more, until it was all I could think about. One day, when we were alone, I decided to ask him…”

…

The heavy steam of the hot springs eclipsed Sesshoumaru’s naked form. Even so, Hirokin could see enough of the lines of his maturing body as to sketch a picture of the rest. Though it was softer than the bulk of him, which seemed to be growing more muscular each day, the blurred length of his cock was no exception.

As they soaked for a while, Hirokin mustered his nerve. He had never broached such a subject with Sesshoumaru before. Though they spoke of everything, regarding this Hirokin had felt strangely fearful. This fear simmered low in him, festering. It made him darkly excited, distantly ashamed—and inexplicably aroused at the muddying together of the two.

“Sesshoumaru,” he asked at length, “do you ever get hard…between the legs?”

Sesshoumaru’s golden eyes cut to him through the haze, slightly narrowed. Hirokin cursed himself for faltering, for ending the question so lamely and inanely. It made him feel girlish and weak, the way he’d asked it.

But even to ask it, and even to have asked it in such a mincing way, he felt a dark delicious throb snake its way through him from root to tip.

“Sometimes,” Sesshoumaru replied, to Hirokin’s relief. Then, to Hirokin’s dismay, he added, “When I see a girl with a nice set of breasts.”

“…Is that all?” Hirokin couldn’t help but grumble.

“No.” Sesshoumaru arched a brow. “Why?”

“Because other things make me hard…as well,” Hirokin hedged.

“Sure,” Sesshoumaru said. “I’m hard right now.”

Hirokin gaped. “You are?” Then, recovering himself, he said, “…Me too.”

An awkward silence ensued. Awkward on Hirokin’s part, for he was grappling with how to proceed. Sesshoumaru, however, seemed as implacable as ever. He even looked rather bored, as though he would soon wish to leave. Realizing this, Hirokin forced himself to blurt out—

“It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

Sesshoumaru’s claws dripped as he lifted his hand from the water in a dismissive wave. “Yes, but it’ll pass. It always does.”

“Have you ever tried,” Hirokin ventured, grateful for the steam to account for his flushing face, “relieving it yourself?”

There was a beat of silence, as Sesshoumaru’s eyes slid to him. “How?”

“With your hand,” Hirokin replied. “It feels really good if you close your fist over it and squeeze up and down. If you do it just right, there’s a big release at the end, which feels better than anything.”

Sesshoumaru’s lids lowered slightly, his gaze intent and darkly curious. “Show me then,” he said.

Hirokin could scarcely breathe as he levered himself up out of the spring, to sit atop the ledge. Legs slightly parted, his cock stood erect, glittering with moisture and wobbling slightly from a combination of nerves, adrenaline, and the sudden motion of coming to rest against the ledge before Sesshoumaru’s piercing eyes.

“Like this,” Hirokin said, breathy and low, as he reached forward.

His heart pounded in his ears, in his straining cock. Wrapping his fingers around it, he began to pump himself out here in the open the way he’d only ever done so alone and in secret. Having Sesshoumaru’s gaze lancing into him had made him so painfully hard, he spasmed bodily when he rubbed his thumb over the sensitive, weeping slit. He showed Sesshoumaru how he’d learned to smear himself there, to spread that slickness over the head of him to make his touch glide that much smoother, that much more pleasurable, in time with the squeezing stroke of his fist.

In no time at all, Hirokin could feel his balls boiling in that inevitable way. Bracing one hand against the rock behind him, Hirokin arched his back as the pleasure surged through him, an outrush more blissful and strong than any he’d ever felt before, as he locked his misty gaze with Sesshoumaru’s at the end.

Seed pulsed onto his flinching stomach, dribbled down from the cock that was still hard in his sticky hand, as he panted to Sesshoumaru, “Now, you try it.”

But Sesshoumaru only smiled at him, a curve of lip so dark and scathing it fleshed Hirokin out like a knife. “Don’t be absurd.”

…

As Hirokin’s tale concluded, Kagome sat riveted, kneeling beside him. The tender flesh clamped between her thighs ached, hot and slick. Mouth twisting, she shook her head.

“That story was a lie,” she said. “You made that whole thing up just now, didn’t you?”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, eyes glittering as he smirked, “but so was yours.”

Kagome laughed at this. As she rose, she glanced down at him where he still lay hunched and naked and throbbing. Catching her eye, he begged her, in wordless, worshipful supplication.

Kagome gave him then what he wanted, what he really wanted when looked to her for deliverance—

She denied him.

…

It was a while before Hirokin cooled off enough to collect himself. Dressed in his fine flowing silks, with his silver-white hair smoothed and dusting gracefully at his collar, he was the esteemed and elegant regent once more. But somewhere in the shadow of his gaze, that dark lust lay dormant, lurking in wait.

Sitting atop her bed, Kagome brushed out her hair with a pretty comb of blue jade he’d given her. A late wedding present, he’d called it, with a twinkle in his eye she had distinctly misliked. Kagome liked the comb, however. She used it often, because it never snagged or pulled no matter how tangled up in knots she was.

“Are you going off to your boyfriend now?” she asked him.

Hirokin turned. His lips were slightly pursed, no doubt from mentally dissecting the term ‘boyfriend’. They’d never spoken of it, but it was a hunch Kagome had, from the wistful expression she sometimes glimpsed from him, when his guard was down and he’d gaze off toward a particular point on the horizon.

“He doesn’t fully satisfy you though, does he?” she pressed. “He doesn’t give you…this.”

“It’s no fault of his,” Hirokin said, glancing off. “He wouldn’t understand it, and I wouldn’t expect him to. He is not like you and I.”

Kagome nodded. “But you love him.”

“I love him,” Hirokin said.

“You want to be with him.”

“I do,” Hirokin said, looking toward her again.

Now it was Kagome’s turn to frown askance. She felt petty for detaining him. With her questions. With her presence. As though sensing this, Hirokin crossed over to her and knelt down beside the bed.

“I can stay for awhile, if you’d like.”

Kagome shook her head. The last thing she wanted was pity from Hirokin, of all people.

“Please, don’t,” she said, turning her face away when he took the comb from her and sorted through the last of her stubborn snarls.

“Your hair is getting long again. These ends are hopelessly frayed.”

“I’m going to cut it all off,” Kagome said angrily.

“Please, don’t,” Hirokin replied, and with her own words turned back upon her, Kagome relented with a sigh.

“Just go now,” she muttered. “I need to rest.”

“Very well, my lady. Sleep soundly.”

With that, Hirokin set the comb down upon the lacquered tabletop with a little snap. It was a sound of finality, and Kagome couldn’t help but let her gaze stray toward him in parting.

“Don’t be mean to your boyfriend, okay?”

Hirokin’s lips twitched. “I won’t.”

…

But Kagome didn’t sleep.

Not in the hour that Hirokin departed, nor in the hours after that. For all her weariness, she stared restlessly across the room, through one of her ornate floor-length windows. Through it, she gazed out upon the sliver of waning moon, and smoldered away, all alone, in her great and empty bed.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Ahhh almost 5k words! Sorry for the delay this week, but this one-shot turned out to be way more of a behemoth than I’d thought 😅 Y’all are saints for indulging me, especially when I’m late with things. Hope you enjoyed this one! Since it’s so long and ‘hot-off-the-press’, please forgive any fuck-ups. I will tidy it up later – just didn’t want to keep y’all hanging any longer. 💕