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WARNING: Rape.

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It was not difficult to find the tree.

Even before he alighted in the lone castle’s courtyard, Sesshoumaru perceived its telling gleam. Small and scrubby, the green thorny branches bore no leaves—only a smattering of dark silver fruits, roughly the size and shape of plums. Bitter fragrance filled the air as he plucked one from its waxy stem. As a child, his mother had cautioned him that this tree was poisonous—a warning he had readily believed, judging by its foreboding scent and appearance.

Studying the fruit cradled in his palm, Sesshoumaru was more wary of its effects now than ever before.

“About time you showed back up.” As Sesshoumaru turned toward his ill-tempered brother, the hanyou scowled at what he held in his hand. “What the hell are you doing, picking fruit at a time like this?”

The demon lord glared. “Leave me be.”

“Fine, whatever,” Inuyasha bit back, stomping away. “Just stop dawdling and get on with it already—all this back and forth is starting to piss me off.”

Resisting the urge to break his brother’s jaw, Sesshoumaru fixed his gaze upon the castle. Only the fact that Inuyasha was as on edge as himself allowed the daiyoukai to overlook such impudence. That, and Sesshoumaru’s own preoccupation with the trials ahead of him.

Striving not to crush the fruit in his fist, he stopped before Kagome’s room and raised the plum before him. It shone back at him temptingly enough, its silver skin creasing slightly beneath the press of his thumb. With his free hand braced upon the door, he sank his fangs through the plum’s supple flesh—as the screen door slid open from the other side, and Hikari met him with a gasp.

Snarling, Sesshoumaru reeled back, shutting his eyes on instinct as the acrid taste of the fruit met his tongue. “Get out,” he thundered at her.

“H-hai, my lord!” the demoness cried, fleeing from him as the daiyoukai cursed himself for his distraction.

As a mixed breed, Hikari’s youki signature was muddled and uncanny. Still, he had been beyond careless not to have detected her presence sooner. Breathing harshly through his fangs, Sesshoumaru entered the room blind, only opening his eyes once more as he sealed the screen door shut behind him.

Staring up at the ceiling, he began to wonder if perhaps he had overreacted. As the tense seconds ticked by, he felt no different than he had before. Eyeing the half-bitten fruit, he was contemplating whether or not he should eat the rest of it, when his gaze strayed to the center of the room—what he saw there stealing the air from his lungs.

His claws opened, the plum rolling listlessly to the floor as he approached. Pausing at the foot of the futon, he looked upon Kagome in frozen disbelief. She was herself again—whole and unblemished. Well, and merely sleeping.

…Awaiting him, it seemed.

Dimly, Sesshoumaru realized he was hallucinating. Yet his starving eyes could not stop tracing the beautiful contours of her face and neck and shoulders. If this was a dream, he had no wish to wake from it. Longingly, he gazed upon her, his pulse pounding in his ears.

As if in a daze, he bent down to touch her, the pads of his fingers trailing over her cheek. But instead of the scarred flesh he knew to be there, he felt only perfect smoothness—and withdrew his hand in sluggish shock. This illusion was far stronger than he had suspected, and now he could sense it taking root in his mind all the more, a tinge of red coloring his vision as the full force of his desire for her slammed through his veins.

Seething, he gripped his face in his hands, at desperate war with himself. His claws scored down from his heated eyes as he fought to hold on to the dwindling shreds of his reason. He did not want to hurt her. He did not want her to feel pain ever again.

He only wanted to touch her, that was all. Just to feel her skin against his—just for a moment.

If only he held her to him for a moment, that would be enough.

Brazenly fast, he stripped off the layers of his haori, the forgotten Jewel thudding to the tatami mats below. Through the haze of his delirium, it glowed a mocking silver, Sesshoumaru sweeping it angrily aside as he bared the rest of himself and slipped into the bed alongside her.

Turning her with care, he drew Kagome back against him, the chill of her skin above the bedsheet bracing him momentarily. Sliding his hand down her arm, he grit his fangs at the rush of remembered sensation, recalling with piercing vividness the last time he had held her this way. Even now he could scent the meadow and the trees, the vines and the sun-warmed wood. Even now he could hear the lilt of her voice as she smiled disarmingly up at him from the edge of that fathomless dark well—the very edge which he had hauled her back from in stark, furious confusion.

“It’s alright, Sesshoumaru—you can let me go.”

Let me go…

“No,” he rasped against her throat, breathing her in like a drowning man. “I cannot.”

Forgive me, I cannot…

As his grip on her tightened, as he pressed himself flush against her, her latent reiki stirred beneath her skin, alarming at the threat of him. Sesshoumaru checked himself at the simmer of her purification, relaxing his hold—though not abandoning it. Even unconscious, her power was deadly, but the demon lord was not deterred. Steadily, he pushed back with his youki, subduing her gradually until at last he felt her spiritual defenses give way.

Growling at this tacit submission, he flexed his hips, seeking her entrance and finding it with a ragged groan. Though he had told himself that just this contact would be enough, he could already feel himself urging forward despite his better sentiments, what little remained of his self-restraint now seeming the illusion. Her physical resistance gave him pause—enough presence of mind to position her more comfortably beneath him with his fur, to reach for the jar of oil before he attempted to breach her again.

Slick and shamefully hard, he penetrated her with tortuous ease, mounting her only as much as his instincts demanded that he must. He held her to him as though she were made of glass, his searing eyes clenching shut as his muscles strained beneath the onslaught of lust and self-loathing. He hated himself for how good she felt, despised himself even as he panted and increased his pace within her.

He was no different from those other demons who had taken their pleasure from her. He was merely the last.

“Never again, Kagome,” he promised her huskily just below her jaw. “No one will force you ever again.”

Even in his disordered state, the words sounded hollow to him. Agonized at this, Sesshoumaru surrendered himself to the mercy of his instincts, letting them carry him mindlessly over the edge as he sank his fangs into the base of her neck, as he drew them back in the mark that would bind her to him forever—as he poured himself out into her in turn. His essence, his power, his immortal strength…

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Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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