Some time in the night Sumire awoke. In her bed they lay curled together, her back to his chest. Through the thin silk of her robe, she could feel him, every inch. Against her backside he was hard and hot, grating the cleft in her cheeks with every breath. When she’d stirred awake, so had he, and now his callused hand was skimming her from breast to hip, his voice warm and heavy at her ear.

“…Sumire,” he murmured, “let me make love to you.”

Her chest constricted. Between her legs she was very wet. She knew that he could feel this, too. That sheer, clinging wisp of silk concealed nothing. It was as though her body were naked to him already. Under the graze of his thumb, her nipple drew taut to the point of pain.

She wanted him, gods knew that she did. But the timing wasn’t good. She had no wish to carry a child at forty. That time for her had passed, whether her body agreed with her or not. With how easily she had conceived with him before, it was a possibility she couldn’t dismiss. A chance she refused to take.

“No, Kohaku,” she said quietly, drawing his wandering hand up from her breast to press it to her lips instead.

Against the side of her throat, he sighed. “…All right.”

He was put-out, of course. So was she. Almost sullenly he throbbed against her. Sumire bit the inside of her cheek in thought. She hated to disappoint him. When she rocked back against him meditatively, he exhaled a gruff, warning breath.

“Sumire…”

“Lie back,” she whispered huskily, extricating herself from him only to guide him over with the press of her hand.

In the soft grey dark, he lay back and watched her disrobe, his onyx eyes glittering. When she reached for the sash at his waist, he took it upon himself to rip free of the offending garment altogether. Naked as she was, he reached for her at once, but Sumire shook her head and pressed her palm to his chest again, urging him back down. Stiff and restless he lay there, only grudgingly submitting. His fists clenched in the bedsheets. Agitation simmered off him in waves.

But before he could give voice to his discontent, she mounted him. One knee slid to his shoulder as her thighs parted above his face. With both knees settled, she lowered herself along the length of his body. Her breasts pillowed to his lower stomach as she reached for him. In her hand his thick, rigid manhood seemed to jump. Her breath flowed over the tip, which shimmered welling in the muted light of predawn.

“Sumire,” he rumbled, his low tone reverberating against the tender insides of her thighs.

Taking her by the hips, he brought her down swiftly against his hot, rising mouth. She gasped at the hungry crash of his lips. Her sex flinched, fluttering at the entrance when his broad tongue speared into her. He growled with relish into her prone womanhood, dripping now with more than the evidence of her own teeming lust. Sumire shivered at the way he devoured her, gripping her ass hard and spreading her apart so that he could feast that much deeper on her drawn, defenseless center.

Because he was a gentleman, because he was the father of her child, it had been easy for her to forget how ferocious he could be. He was a man of war, and she was his present conquest. He was a hunter, and she was his captured prey.

The ferocity of his passion frightened her. The passions of men had always frightened her.

But Kohaku was no mean brute. Sensing her distress, he gentled against her. His fingers relinquished their biting hold on her cheeks, soothing over her there instead. His mouth relented, his tongue withdrawing to glide along her tender folds with tortuous ease. The hard lips that had been crushed to hers now traced them, catching the sensitive peak that lay nestled from him and coaxing it forth with such soft, slow strokes that Sumire’s eyes began to brim.

“Kohaku,” she whispered against the crown of his sex, taking him into her at last.

In the heat of her mouth, he swelled, pulsing with unmistakable yearning. She remembered the taste and feel of him so keenly. On top of him like this, wrapped around him like this, the years melted away. There was only that eternal night, and here they were still reveling in it, taking their pleasure from one another.

Only older now, and less reserved in the taking.

She was working him in and out of her throat when his steady torments on her sex began to unravel her. Forced to break from him briefly, she rested her head at his groin, panted her heated encouragements against the base of his shaft as she pumped his slick length in her fist. Her hips pistoned up and down, shameless in their seeking.

“Yes, Kohaku, just like that—keep sucking me just like that. Flick me again there, harder—more, yes, please, oh gods…” Her hips were jerking, bucking wildly against his buried face. Her nipples were pinpoints of the sweetest agony. Her fist clenched and churned, making him growl at the way her heel ground over his sensitive head. “Kohaku, Kohaku…I…I’m going to—Kohaku!”

At the pinnacle of her pleasure, she swallowed him down again so that he could feel it in the force of her smothered cries, just how utterly she was coming to pieces in the heat of his mouth. Kohaku groaned raggedly, wetly, as he broke from her. Panting into her sex, he rolled his hips up into her whimpering throat, frenzied in his need.

“Gods, Sumire, you’re too good at this. I haven’t felt good like this in so long…so very long, I…” He hissed out a breath when she drew back to flick the tip of her tongue over the slit in his sex, tasting the salt and musk of him there. “I needed this, you know that I did…you always know what I need…”

Inwardly, Sumire glowed, her euphoria extending at the praise. Tracing a hand over his hip, she dipped down between his legs, curled her fingers around his testicles, which were so warm and weighty in the cup of her palm. Kohaku’s back arched like a drawn bow beneath her, as she squeezed and rolled them with the faintest pressure.

“Fuck…grip me harder, Sumire, I want to feel it. Stretch me out, pinch me with your nails.”

When she did as he said, he let out a hoarse cry. She released him from her mouth then, before the stimulation overcame him. He was disgruntled, annoyed at her for letting up. But there was something that she wanted to do. She slid lower over his body, fit her full breasts to the base of him. He was slick and snug there in the valley of her flesh. As he began eagerly to thrust, she caught the tip of him in her open mouth, again and again, little teasing licks and brushes of lip that had him rearing into her with abandon.

With her hands, she clamped her breasts around him that much tighter, these breasts which had nursed their daughter, she now used to nurse him to his shuddering, senseless end. When he erupted at last, she caught only a fraction of his spend on her tongue, her lips. The rest rained down upon her breasts, glowing white in the fading dark. While he lay boneless and breathless beneath her, she continued to milk him, until the last of his seed dribbled out from the tip, foamy and delicate as it crested and broke on her tongue.

By the time she’d cleaned herself off, he was gloomy once more. Over his face his arm was thrown. It remained there unmoving as she wet a fresh cloth and wiped him down. Though she couldn’t see his expression, she knew he was scowling.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said bitterly, after she was through. “I should have stopped you.”

“Are you feeling guilty, Kohaku?”

“Yes.”

“For your wife’s sake?”

“No,” he said, to her surprise, “I haven’t betrayed her.” Sumire thought he had a very narrow interpretation of the idea, but she kept this thought to herself. “It’s you I’ve betrayed.”

Sumire’s lips twisted. “How so?”

“The last time I had a woman’s mouth on me, I…” Kohaku broke off, as though he could not bring himself to say it. When at last he spoke again, his voice was miserably frayed. “I did something monstrous to her, Sumire. I should have told you before. It was wrong of me to let you pleasure me without knowing it.”

“Kohaku—”

“No,” he said fiercely. “I know what you’re going to say, but you weren’t there. You don’t know what I did, what I made her do. I don’t deserve to feel pleasure like that, not after what I’ve done.” His flung arm returned to the floor with a slam. “But my lust got the better of me, just like it always does. It always fucking does…”

Sorrowfully, Sumire gazed at him through the waning dark. She could feel just how wretched he was, lying there, and she pitied him in her heart. It wasn’t her place to forgive him, but she felt the urge to offer him what solace she could. Her dark hair fanned over him as she knelt down between the splay of his legs and brushed her lips over this soft, spent part of him which he so viciously cursed and yet which had blessed her beyond measure.

“Hush now,” she said, after, as she moved up his tense, trembling frame and lay down against his chest. “The sun will be up soon.”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, the terrible tension in him bleeding out along with it.

He took her in his arms, and together they slept. It was well past dawn when they woke again. Late mornings were a given around the brothel house. Most of the girls would sleep well past midday. And so it was quiet as she and Kohaku rose and dressed. Only the dim bustle and drowsy chatter of the servants filtered through from the courtyard beyond. The maid who fetched their breakfast yawned all the while as she mounted the steps, as if she were scaling some great height.

Kohaku’s mood had soured at the prospect of returning to Edo. He complained of having a headache. He didn’t want to eat. After stirring some medicinal powder into his tea, Sumire was trying to ply him with a choice morsel from her own tray. Her chopsticks were poised at his lips when the door to her rooms banged open, and Shurei appeared with a skein of silk trailing from each hand.

“Oh!” the young woman said in shock, glancing between them. At her heels, Yuki likewise froze, every white fur standing on end as she eyed Kirara, who sat perched in the open window through which she’d just returned. “Mother…Fa—Kohaku-sama,” she said hastily, blushing. “…Excuse me, I didn’t mean to intrude—”

“Shurei,” Kohaku said, rising, “you remember me?”

“Of course,” she said, her blush deepening as he stepped toward her.

“Your mother tells me you’re to be married soon.” Kohaku’s dark eyes caught hers, the expression in them so warm it made Sumire’s heart ache. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you,” Shurei said, her eyes very bright.

And now, gazing over at them, Sumire felt as if she were the one intruding. While they spoke together, she sipped at her tea and looked toward the window. Cautiously, Yuki had crept closer and was now eyeing her youkai counterpart. The stalemate ended when Kirara padded over and rubbed her cheek to Yuki’s. Purring, the snowy housecat nuzzled her back.

When Kohaku returned to her side, Sumire knew that it was time for him to go. They said no goodbyes. She smiled at him, and he nodded at her in turn. As easily as he’d slipped back into her world, he now slipped out. Through the open window she watched him sail off into the sky, and berated herself for the sting in her eyes.

“Oh, Mother,” Shurei chided half-heartedly, dropping down to sit beside her, “why didn’t you tell me you were expecting him?”

“I wasn’t expecting him myself,” Sumire replied, turning her wistful smile upon her daughter. “I figured he’d be gone before you woke.”

Shurei tossed her head, her loose braid swaying with a gleam. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking about those stupid wedding silks! As soon as I figured you were awake, I wanted to get your opinion on them. But now I feel just awful for barging in like I did.”

“Oh, Shurei, we were only having breakfast.”

The young woman pursed her lips. “Mother, please—why play coy with me about him?” Giggling, she burst out, “In this place of all places!”

Sumire sighed, defeated. Shurei sobered, smiling slightly.

“Truly,” she said, “I’m glad for you, Mother. You’re too lovely not to have a lover.”

Sumire looked away, to the eastern window once more. “Kohaku isn’t my lover, Shurei.”

“No?—well then, what is he?”

At the end of that golden horizon, at the end of her youth, she said, “He’s my dearest friend.”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Finally, we reach the end of this chapter in this series-within-a-series. @_@ It’s like fic-ception lol. Next part will be something a little different, I think 😉

Btw, if you’re wondering why the update cadence here has been what it is, that’s because I’m currently in the process of editing & cross-posting The Pact to Ao3, etc. Once I’m caught up on all of that, The Pact will be the next blog series I’ll be focusing on completing here 🙂

‘Til then, hope y’all continue to enjoy these installments in The Rebel Anthology – it’s been fun to spend some more time fleshing out this universe. <3

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