Kagome winced as Sesshoumaru pulled her to her feet. Her left hand clutched at her right arm. Gingerly, she attempted to lift her shoulder. An abrupt flare of pain made her eyes screw shut.

Sesshoumaru’s claws touched to her sleeve. “Your shoulder is out of socket,” he said.

Biting hard into her lower lip, Kagome nodded, remembering how the bandit leader had wrenched her up onto his horse. Before she could protest, Sesshoumaru was pulling her to him. One hand went to her mouth as the other gripped her injured upper arm. With a quick, fluid motion he shoved her sprung joint back into its socket. Her teeth sunk into the side of his offered thumb in brief, acute agony. The flood of relief she felt afterward came just as sudden. A whimper escaped her as she drew back, dashing a hand across her welling eyes.

“…Thank you,” she said softly, giving her arm an experimental shrug.

Sesshoumaru regarded her for a moment, his bitten hand falling to his side as he turned. “Follow me.”

Stepping carefully around the torn scattered corpses, Kagome trailed uncertainly after him. Bile rose in her throat as her sandals squelched unavoidably through a broad slick of blood. Though she had killed her fair share of demons, seeing humans struck down like this—deserving or otherwise—was a gruesomely jarring sight. Another chilling reminder of what he was, and the difference between them.

“How did you find me?” she asked him after a while.

Without pausing, he answered, “I heard your scream.”

“From the village?” she ventured.

“No,” he replied, glancing back.

Kagome bowed her head, suppressing the impulse to question him further. To know that he had been farther away or closer were both equally disturbing scenarios. Instead, she kept her eyes to the ground, not realizing until her feet touched the shores of a stream that he had been leading her deeper into the woods.

She tensed as his swords and armor dented the sand. Her first instinct was to flee, but somewhere along the way she had lost her bearings—and her bow. Defenseless, directionless, and still somewhat in shock, she remained rooted to the spot. The sight of him still fully-clothed as he waded into the stream eased a bit of her tension.

“You should wash as well,” he said, his eyes falling pointedly to her once-white haori.

Worrying at the inside of her cheek, Kagome plucked at the dingy fabric, streaked and crusted with dirt and dried blood. Reluctant as she was to get into that stream with him, returning to the village in this state would raise a lot of unnecessary panic—and questions. Walking as far away from him as she deemed suitable, Kagome stripped down to her bra and panties and slipped into the clear, chilly current. She scrubbed at her soiled clothes as best she could. They weren’t spotless by any means—but at least they weren’t so glaringly marred anymore, as she spread them out over the grass to dry.

Briefly, she dipped beneath the water’s surface, rinsing her face and her hair. Her bra grew uncomfortably heavy as its thin padding swelled like a sodden sponge. Pressing out the excess moisture with a care for her tender breasts, she drifted back toward the bank. Her elbows sank into the sun-warmed grass. Her head fell into the cradle of her arms as she trembled. The lingering ache in her shoulder was the least of her troubles. By now, the shock of her ordeal was lifting. The awareness of nearly being gang-raped by that group of bandits was razing through her—not to mention the grisly horror of watching Sesshoumaru tear through them, after.

Kagome wasn’t sure which was worse: their savagery, or his. Still, when his arm went around her, pulling her back against his chest, she melted into him all the same. The warm, familiar solidity of his presence comforted her despite the circumstances. Despite the fact that he had closed in on her unnoticed. Despite the fact that he was way out of bounds, touching her like this in the first place. Despite the fact that his clothes were gone, and she could feel his naked erection stabbing into her spine.

Kagome shivered afresh as his claws fanned and flattened over her stomach. The tip of his nose brushed her ear.

“What are you thinking of?”

“How you killed those four men,” she answered faintly.

As his voice fell, so did his hand. Between her thighs his fingers curved, sure and strong.

“There could have been four hundred.”

Kagome gasped. Sudden fear spiked through her. Wriggling from his hold, she turned back to glare at him.

“…What are you doing, Sesshoumaru?”

Squarely, he met her gaze. “Your time is approaching, is it not?”

Kagome sagged against the stream bank. Her heart thudded in her chest. How he knew this, she didn’t want to contemplate. Her body wasn’t exactly punctual, but she recognized the signs. And so, apparently, did he. Though the timing wasn’t optimal, it was possible. She knew she should take the chance. But still she hesitated, gripped by a dread she couldn’t place.

“We’re too close to the village,” she protested lamely instead.

“No one is near.”

Swallowing, she turned her back to him again. “Sesshoumaru, I—I’m not sure I can keep doing this anymore.”

And now she could feel him moving toward her. Water rippled around her waist as he came to a stop. His arms caged her in against the bank. Shrinking, she looked warily at the cords of his muscles, the slashes on his wrists, the tapered points of his claws as he bent in toward her.

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m afraid,” she whispered, curling her fingers into the grass as the heat from his body bled into her, “of you.”

One set of claws detached from the shore. Between her hunched shoulders his hand came to rest. She stiffened when his palm smoothed her shoulder blades apart, pushing her wet, heavy hair aside in its upward course.

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

His claws closed around her neck. His warm palm pressed to the clammy skin at her nape. As the edge of his nail caught against the scar at her throat, Kagome sensed that she had more to fear from him now than she ever had before.

“That mark,” she demanded, struggling to keep her voice from shaking, “what does it mean?”

Sesshoumaru’s grip tightened fractionally before his hand slid down. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Will it fade?”

At the back of her bra, he paused as if considering. His claw wedged beneath the clasp.

“No.”

With a brisk snap, the metal eyelets gave. One splashed down into the water beside her as she clutched the broken garment to her chest. Unhindered, Sesshoumaru ran the pads of his fingers along her exposed back. The trailing skim of his claws turned her skin into gooseflesh. As his touch descended, his hand pivoted, sliding claws-first into the bow of her lower back. Sharp nails hooked into her clinging panties as his palm arced around her.

“Wait,” Kagome rasped, halting him by the wrist.

While she wavered, Sesshoumaru remained still as stone. A moment of dark decision came and went. Her ruined bra dropped to the bank. The wet, intact clump of her panties followed suit as she wrenched them off herself.

At once, his hand went to her, cupping around her bare slippery flesh, shielding her wetness from the greedy current that threatened to lick it away. She arched into his palm, opening herself against him as he half-stroked, half-kneaded her captive sex. She cringed at her readiness, her eagerness—her wantonness for him—clinging to what he had said about her time approaching like a lifeline of sanity in the sea of madness she was drowning in at his touch.

“I don’t want this,” she groaned pitifully, as if it made any difference. “I don’t want to feel this—please.”

As usual, he ignored her. His hand pulled back as two hard fingers plunged into her, stretching her on a shout. “I don’t care what you want.”

Her walls clenched as his other hand left the bank, crushing her back to his chest. Tightly, roughly, he thrust his fingers between the narrow gap in their bodies. Her whole self quaked as he brought the pad of his thumb to her rear entrance. A sob tore from her throat as he stroked her there as well.

“This,” he growled, “is what you need.”

Piteously, she moaned, because this was so wrong—this was so good. He was so right. Gushing against the water around them, she gave in to this knowledge, this sensation. Every muscle within her constricted like a noose. Her filthy release swept through her in a torrent, numbing the ache in her back and breasts. Breasts that he was now exploring freely, she realized, as the haze of her orgasm began to recede.

Outraged, she ripped at the claws tracing around one tender, heavy swell. Rumbling low in his chest, Sesshoumaru withdrew his hand—only to seize and pin both her wrists to the bank. She whimpered as he extricated the fingers buried within her, molding them over her breast instead. Her shoulders slumped in surrender. Her full flesh spilled into his palm as he weighed and squeezed. The firm warmth of his touch made her sigh in guilty relief.

He dipped his hips to hers. His free hand massaged her all the while as he rubbed his hardness against her. Helplessly, she rocked back. Her lower cheeks compressed against his abs as she strove to catch the tip of him within her. But he was ruthless in his control. His slick fingers swirled and flicked at her pebbled nipples as he continued to deprive her.

“Please, Sesshoumaru…” she outright begged, no dignity left in her to preserve.

Roughly—cruelly—he pinched one hardened peak between his knuckles, eliciting a sharp, short cry. “Please, what.”

Kagome’s chest heaved. Her drooling entrance pressed open against his shaft like a hot, hungry mouth. What she wanted was a perfunctory coupling. Harsh and short, detached and devoid of pleasure. But this wasn’t about what she wanted—had it ever been?

This was about what she needed—a cure for the festering emptiness within her. An emptiness that was threatening to overtake not only her, but the one she loved as well. She needed him to fill that void. She needed him to make her whole again, to make her right again.

To make this right again.

She needed…

“Please, Sesshoumaru,” she panted, her wild gypsy eyes flying back to him in desperation, “I need you to fuck me.”

Kagome could count on half a hand the number of times she’d seen the stoic demon lord caught off-guard. But it was an unmistakable look of surprise that widened his eyes an instant before they narrowed, darkening frightfully with lust. He held her gaze as he forced her over the bank. Her face pressed to the grass. His iron-hard length drove into her with more vicious strength than ever before.

“Yes…” she groaned, her eyes rolling back in sheer carnal bliss, “gods…yes, Sesshoumaru…just like that.”

He snarled. The bones in her wrists ground together as he clenched his fist around them, pounding into her so powerfully deep that she felt the echo of it in her skull. As high as she could with him bearing down on her, she raised her hips to meet him fully. His hand went to her breast again at the provocation, twisting her nipple so sharply that she hissed in pain even as her core pulsed around him in violent pleasure.

Once more, she was hurtling toward the edge. Her stomach and thighs drew perilously taut beneath his onslaught. There was his grip at her breast, the crash of his body, the stroke of him against the front wall of her core. Any of these would have been enough, but she chose to focus instead on that point deepest within her—the point closest to his own—where he slammed against her, so brutally, at the hard limit of her sex. She bent her mind to that spot. As it gave way at last beneath the force of their union, she carried them both over the blinding edge.

So deep inside her, she relished the flood of his seed. His waning hardness spilled into her even more as she consciously tightened her clutch around him. His mouth was against the scar on her neck. His lips trailed over it as his claws released their bruising hold. His whole warm body withdrew from hers in a clean, cold break—leaving her empty as before.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 7/19/22

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