“Hey, baka, watch where you’re shooting off those things!” Inuyasha yelled as a wisp of smoke rose from the singed point of an ear.

When a second jet of light streaked past his other ear a moment later, the hanyou jumped angrily to his feet. Kagome giggled as he took off after Shippou. Youki-enhanced firecrackers whizzed from the fox kit’s pockets in all directions. Inuyasha yelped and cursed as a few dragon-shaped missiles exploded against his toes. The others spiraled upward into the night sky in a shower of red and gold sparks.

“Why, you…get your ass back here, and I’ll give you something you can really celebrate, Shippou—me letting you live to see another day!”

“Inuyasha’s in quite the festive mood,” Miroku remarked dryly to Sango, who laughed as she snuggled deeper into the crook of his arm, the reflected flames dancing merrily in the dark mirrored surface of her eyes.

On the other side of the campfire, Rin and Kohaku talked and laughed together as they roasted marshmallows three-at-a-time. Wreaths of wildflowers draped from their necks—Kirara’s, Ah-Un’s and Jakken’s as well. The imp eyed the cartoonish designs on the plastic food packaging critically as he muttered beneath his breath about “human frivolities.”

Smiling, Kagome lay back in the cool grass with a sigh. She was weary down to her bones. In the morning, she knew she would feel it, but for now, she was light as air. At long last, Naraku had been defeated. The Shikon no Tama had been destroyed for good. Her sacred burden had been lifted, Miroku’s curse had been broken, and all of her beloved friends had found their well-deserved peace.

It was a day she knew she would always remember, for these reasons and more.

Raising her left hand before her in the firelight, she studied the thin green ring encircling her finger—an engagement band Inuyasha had fashioned out of a grass-blade at Kagome’s behest, when he’d proposed to her earlier that evening. Like the small knot at the ring’s center, everything in her fairytale life seemed neatly tied off in the happily-ever-after she’d always envisioned.

Yet there was something that plucked at her—a loose thread she couldn’t quite place.

Restless, Kagome sat up and pushed herself to her feet. She hadn’t been looking for him. But she wasn’t surprised to find him, either, as her wandering path led her to the cliff where Sesshoumaru stood, staring out over the moonlit valley below. When he shifted his reflective gaze to her with the slightest frown, Kagome stopped in her tracks.

“Sorry,” she said, crooking a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You are not,” he said simply, his attention returning to the wilderness before him.

A little uncertainly, Kagome approached, coming to a stop near his side. Beneath the light of the full moon and its company of stars, the sprawling lands of Sengoku Jidai glowed in mythic splendor. Breathing in the clean scent of the air, faintly imbued with the magic of the woodland spirits who inhabited the region, Kagome released a wistful sigh.

“I’m really going to miss this place.”

“You are returning to your own era, then,” Sesshoumaru stated, catching her eye.

Kagome met his gaze with a soft smile. “Yeah. I’m going home to finish my schooling.” Her eyes lifted to the radiant moon above. “But I’ll come back here on the weekends, and whenever else I can get the chance. Still…it won’t be the same.”

“No,” Sesshoumaru agreed, to her surprise.

Fiddling with her makeshift ring, Kagome glanced aside. “I wanted to thank you, by the way—for protecting me during the battle. You’ve been there for me so many times, really, and I—”

“Your thanks is unnecessary,” he cut her off coolly.

Heat rose to Kagome’s cheeks. “Fine,” she said shortly, turning on her heel. “Forget I said anything, then.”

Golden eyes slanted after her as she started to step away. Maybe it was that trailing look of his. Maybe it was the bitter sting of her own rejection. Maybe it was just a moment of brazen insanity that provoked her as she rose to the tips of her toes and reached out, leaning in toward the side of his face—

Sharply, Sesshoumaru intercepted her hand. His gaze snapped to hers fiercely.

Kagome’s breath stilled in fear. Slit by the edge of his claw, her grass ring tugged loose in the wind, though she scarcely registered its loss. Her eyes were riveted on his as he continued to glare at her, in unmistakable challenge.

Five years later, Kagome had found herself standing on the edge of that precipice once again, staring down the beast she’d so recklessly sought out—the dangerous rogue element threatening to rip her storybook ending to shreds.

She could have backed down. She should have backed down.

But she hadn’t.

And, now, it was too late.

The moment his name left her lips, Sesshoumaru closed in on her completely—all her darkest fears realized in that paralyzing instant when he sealed his hellish mouth to hers. Over and over, his lips seared across hers in a fiery brand. His fangs bled her as they pierced and scraped at her in wicked, unfettered greed. Digging her fingers into his sleeves, Kagome gasped against him in terror and desperation, giving him the very opening his rasping scourge of a tongue demanded.

His claws left the wall as he breached her with a low, guttural roar. Her own helpless whimpers smothered. Her yukata split open at the seam. The thin fabric of her panties sheared off with an elastic crack. His hot fingers went at once to her drenched, burning sex—plumbing and stretching her in time with the broad, gouging strokes of his tongue.

Heat built rapidly and furiously within her—a blistering torrent that scalded her senses until they threatened to numb altogether. As her body sagged against his, he lifted her up. His clawed hands gripped her roughly under the thighs. She had a moment to dread before the head of his erection impaled her, the rest of his hard vicious length following suit in a thrust that had the air ripping from her lungs in a panicked, muffled shriek.

Black spots flecked her vision, flashing to red as she shut her spinning eyes. His body crashed against hers in a brutal, bone-jarring rhythm. The wall of the hut creaked ominously behind her as he slammed them both into it again and again. Her knees tried to clench around his plunging hips. Her nails curved futilely for purchase against his silk-clad chest as he continued to devour her open mouth. At both ends, he prised her apart, stoking her from above and below. Perilously deep in her center, an inferno blazed, consuming her as he retraced that terrible, perfect path within her.

Relentlessly. Knowingly.

She could feel herself unraveling at the core. Breaking from her lips at last, his mouth fastened to her throat instead, etching her name into her skin in a seething, sharp-toothed growl. At the sound, all the efforts he had spent loosening her came to nothing. Her throbbing walls constricted violently. Her arms cinched around his neck like a noose. Her fingers strangled themselves in his hair as she strove to bring him into her even deeper, even harder. Her hips screamed and strained toward that fateful finish. Her bruised captive thighs went rigid in his grasp.

“Sesshoumaru!” Kagome cried out as if she were dying. “Sesshoumaru, Sesshoumaru, Sesshoumaru—”

And now his name was leaving her in a ceaseless current. She couldn’t stop it pouring out of her any more than she could stop the pleasure pouring out of her—into her, as Sesshoumaru kissed her again, harsh and feverish as the mad, rampaging course of his sex inside her. Hungrily, needfully, she kissed him back. Her head hit the wall behind her in abandon. Her back arched against him to the breaking point.

As their motions slowed and softened, she clung to him still, adrift in the bliss of their ending even as she felt herself approaching that inevitable fall. There was no pact to keep her head above the water this time—nothing to keep her afloat from the sinking knowledge, from the crippling truth she now had no choice but to face.

This wasn’t just fucking. This wasn’t just sex.

This was selfishness—

This was weakness.

This was giving in.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 8/11/22

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