I Fell for Myself by Stella Mira

That Bastard Is Mine!

Kagome felt as if she had been enmeshed in a finespun dream where nothing and everything made sense. Underneath layers of awareness and shock, flares of satiation simmered, embers of fugacious pleasure. Her pulse fluctuated, writhed inside her veins, blood pumping into her heart, feeding the human organ. Realization rippled through her, crested with violent waves. Human. She was back in her body. Exhaustion merged with exhilaration, her thighs trembled, muscles constricted. Heat, skin against skin, flesh inside flesh – then she fainted.

Sesshōmaru felt her body tighten then loosen beneath him, coming undone like a silk-corded knot. He grunted, cursed the intrinsic convulsions, the sultry grip of her walls. Even unconscious, she urged him, spurred his baser instincts – to take, to ravage. Once more. She was soft and wet and hot – and dangerous. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he slid out of her, consigned such impulses to the darkest, deepest recesses of his mind.

Their clothes were strewn in careless piles across the river's bank. Sesshōmaru should dress and leave, but the notion of abandoning her to the wilderness, vulnerable and exposed, was disconcerting. He would touch her body one last time, help her into her clothes, then deliver her to the hanyō – and never again. There would be no more contact between them, perhaps not even words exchanged.

~~~~~

The village was quiet, perhaps too quiet, when Sesshōmaru returned with the miko slung over his shoulder.

"Took ya long enough!" Inuyasha's gruff voice shattered the tranquility of the night, irritated Sesshōmaru's hearing, but he didn't care for petty squabbles with his sibling tonight. When the hanyō sought to take the miko, Sesshōmaru relinquished her with gladness, overwhelmed by her scent, haunted by visions of roughness and fresh-rooted lust.

"The ritual was successful."

There was no need for such statements, but he felt the need to vocalize the change, make it more real than it already was, tangible. It wasn't that he underestimated the hanyō's powers of deduction, but Inuyasha took it as that, snapped either way.

"I can smell it, asshole! She reeks of you and things I don't wanna think about. Ever."

For the first time in his long, seamless life, Sesshōmaru was in accord with his half-brother. Then he turned to depart, turned his back on the woman and the memories she evoked.

"Hn."

"You want me to –" Inuyasha's voice stopped him, hesitant, as if he struggled to say the next words. "– tell her anything when she wakes up?"

Sesshōmaru wasn't aware of the reason, but the hanyō's question angered him. Rage welled in his blood, slinked into the gold of his eyes, stained the pale hue with streaks of crimson.

"There is nothing more to say, only things to be done. For this indignity, I will not merely slay Naraku, I will not kill him upon sight."

"That bastard is mine! Get in line!"

He barely heard Inuyasha's hollering as he took to the skies, intent on finding Naraku's trail and making true of his promise. The filthy hanyō would die by his hand, but it would be neither an easy nor a quick death.