The smell of smoke was in her hair, in her clothes. Rank and heavy, it polluted her lungs. It grimed her skin to the point that even after she’d stripped down and shaken off the ash, she felt it clinging to her still.

It was unshakeable—tireless and singular in its oppression. It had plagued her first when she was nine, her fingers so small and trembling in her Mama’s, as the dark wisps had curled and thickened above the smoldering wreck of her father’s car, and her sobs had stifled in her throat. And then years later, when she was nineteen, watching the flames lick at the charring body of her husband, it had nearly smothered her altogether.

It was the specter of death, and it had returned to haunt her all over again.

Kagome knew that it was pointless to try to flee from it. Yet she found herself doing so anyway. Submerged in the scalding waters of a hidden spring, she did her best to wash away all the evidence of that invisible menace, which the funeral smoke had revealed. When she broke the surface, the scent was gone. All that remained was the memory of it. Unsealing the jar of sake she’d left resting on a stone, she leaned back and prepared to wash that away, too.

The rim was at her lips when she felt his presence, like a rap at the door. Her sigh whistled across the narrow opening as she relaxed her barrier and let him pass.

Through the billowing steam, his handsome form materialized.

“I’ve arrived just in time, it seems,” Hirokin said, his brilliant blue eyes glancing to the jar in her hand, “to save you from this small grief, at least.”

As Kagome frowned in consternation, the demon prince withdrew a flask from his shimmering robes. It was an ornate bottle, subtly resplendent as he offered it to her. The youki-laced contents chilled at her touch.

“What’s this?” she asked, though she knew well enough what it was.

Hirokin smiled, slight and fleeting. “My condolences, Kagome-sama. I heard of the death of your old master, and came to pay my respects.”

“She wasn’t my master,” Kagome said bitterly, uncorking the pretty gold stopper all the same. “I didn’t learn very much from her, to tell you the truth.”

“Your elder then,” Hirokin amended, gliding toward her. From his inner haori he withdrew two small jeweled cups, carved in the shape of shells. “Shall we drink to her memory?”

Kagome poured for them both. At the wry way his eyes glittered at her, heat rose to her cheeks. No doubt she and her ceremony were as inferior to him as the jar of sake she’d set aside.

Her eyes slid briefly shut as she sipped from the cup. She had to hand it to him though: this wine of his was damn fine stuff.

“Does Sesshoumaru know that you’re here?”

“I feel no need to apprise him of our little exchanges,” Hirokin replied as he lowered the shell from his lips. Beneath the silvery wingtips of his lashes, his hooded gaze levelled with hers. “Do you?”

Kagome’s blood ran hot in her veins. Feeling the beginnings of a blissful lightheadedness, she straightened against the stone at her back. Her naked breasts bobbed just above the water’s mirrored surface, her nipples hardening as she brazenly appraised him.

Hirokin’s head tilted slightly. “Do you find me attractive, Kagome-sama?”

“Who wouldn’t?” she murmured, letting her eyes trail half-lidded over the divine proportions of his face. His features were so sharp and so delicate, so masculine and feminine all at once. “If you were my subject, I’d keep you pinned beneath my heel, just for the sheer pleasure of it.”

His eyes widened a fraction, the veil of his jaded indifference lifting so abruptly that Kagome’s breath caught in her chest. For a moment he looked at her with piercing interest, his irises faceted and gleaming like sapphires caught in the light.

“You have a passion for service, don’t you, Hirokin?” Kagome all but purred. “And you love it as much as you resent it.”

The veil slammed back down. Hirokin’s smile was faint and obscure.

“I have a passion for you, Kagome-sama.”

The miko laughed. “Okay, you can cut the bullshit already.”

“You are beautiful and powerful,” Hirokin calmly insisted, turning her words back upon her. “Who wouldn’t want you?”

“Not you,” she said. “Even Sesshoumaru would be staring at my tits, but you’ve hardly spared them a glance.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t desire you.” His voice lowered seductively. “If I told you that to touch you was forbidden, would you believe it?”

“Maybe,” Kagome allowed. “But that just means you don’t want me badly enough. Me, or any woman.”

The water burned so hot around her that it evaporated to below her navel. Kagome gasped as Hirokin closed the distance between them. Still fully clothed, he plucked the flask from her hand, and pressed it to her lips.

“Drink, my lady,” he softly implored. His pupils thinned to slits as she nursed it readily, never breaking his gaze. “…By the gods, you do tempt me.”

Kagome smiled against the rim. She could feel the violence simmering from him, and she delighted in it, because it was real.

“I want to fuck you, Hirokin,” she breathed out, once the flask had been drained. “I want to pin you beneath me and ride you until you come cursing my name.”

“Gods damn you,” he breathed back, and the flask was cast away. “You mortal wench, you would ruin me completely.”

“You would ruin yourself,” she said coldly, seizing him by the balls. “You should fear your lord more than me.”

Hirokin’s expression twisted, whether from contrition or pain, Kagome couldn’t guess. “If only you knew the fear that I do.”

“Make me understand, then,” she said, tugging him closer. Against her belly, she felt the curve of his cock, growing harder and fuller by the second.

“From your mouth I hear the echo of his voice,” Hirokin said, and if he had seemed pained before, he was in agony now. “For all his cool composure, for all his callous shrewdness, there is a savagery in Sesshoumaru-sama that can never be fully reckoned upon—nor understood.”

Kagome’s fingers twitched. Released from her hold, Hirokin shrank back, flushed alluringly and wary.

“And you revere him for it,” she surmised.

“As do you,” he said, and the truth of it settled like ashes in her soul.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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