Heavily, Kagome breathed. Her fingers twitched in the loose silk of his hair. As her blood cooled and her fatigue came to bear upon her, she released her tenuous hold on her brother-in-law altogether. Trails of tingling saliva chilled the tops of her feet, the ball of her ankle chafing beneath the languid stroke of his tongue. Kagome shuddered, her groin giving a disturbing throb.

“Okay, that’s enough,” she bit out, pushing against the hard clammy breadth of his shoulders. The claws at her hip arrested her motion, fixing her firmly in place as his other hand skimmed up along the back of her leg, his damp mouth detaching from her ankle to latch onto the clothed junction of her thighs. “Sesshoumaru!”

Indolently, he looked up at her, his claws tightening around her waist. His eyes were dull, dark. Seizing his head in her hands, Kagome forced him to focus.

“Cut it out,” she growled, digging her nails in sharply when he buried his face back between her legs. “You just got off five minutes ago!”

Sesshoumaru rumbled peevishly into her, his nose knocking against her swollen clit as he finally withdrew. Clenching her jaw against the stab of sensation, Kagome swayed a little when he swiftly stood—catching her around the ribs and pressing her back flush against him.

“W-what are you doing?!” she shrilled, struggling futilely in his hold.

“Apologizing,” he answered as he pulled open the neck of her haori and slid its torn left sleeve halfway down her arm. “You are injured.”

Kagome clutched the falling fabric to her breast in a panic. The moment his mouth touched her shoulder wound, she stiffened.

“I can heal it myself,” she said hoarsely, attempting to shrug him off again.

But with her reiki exhausted, she had no real choice but to endure the tortuous slide of his tongue over her hastily-mended flesh. She hissed in a breath as her thin scabs sloughed off, the charged wetness of his mouth anesthetizing the pain. Whimpering, she slumped in his overpowering grip, trying to ignore the fact that he was stark naked and semi-hard against her. Slowly, methodically, and disconcertingly erotically, he knit her broken skin back together again. As the healing swipes of his tongue shallowed to a flicker, she wriggled free at last. Staggering away, she turned her eyes pointedly from him.

“Go clean yourself off,” she said in strained voice, her fingers trembling as she set her fragile haori to rights.

“Very well,” she heard him say behind her. The rustle of silk and clink of metal punctuated the ensuing silence as he gathered up his discarded clothes and armor and ventured from the burned-out clearing. “Stay near—your strength is gone.”

Banding her arms about herself, Kagome waited a few minutes more before she turned, peering narrowly in the direction he had taken. Her lost weapons found and retrieved, she trudged off in the opposite direction, wandering for perhaps half a mile or so, until she came upon a mountain stream.

Stripping off her ruined sandals, the miko sank her feet into the crisp, frothy current, her teeth gritting at the bite of the cold water against her blistered soles. Her hands were similarly scorched. Dunking them beneath the surface, she cursed aloud at the pang.

It had been a long time, since she’d been this injured in battle. Collapsing onto a log, she let her feet soak as she drank a palmful of icy water and splashed another onto her frowning face. Her whole body felt like one big, nasty wound—hot and aching and grimy. She wanted to bathe, to wash away the dirt and the blood, the stale sweat and, most of all, the lingering arousal. A physical response to being inundated with so much spiritual and sexual stimulus—but even so, she itched to be rid of it. Without any fresh clothes to put on, though, the effort seemed pointless.

Rattled and weary, Kagome picked herself up and walked along the rocky shore. Finding a moss-blanketed overhang, she settled down to meditate and recover a bit of her strength. But her thoughts were hopelessly distracted. Glaring up at the gibbous moon above her, she could feel herself fading from the strain. Her breath misted out in a crystalline fog, her lashes weighing heavy as lead.

In a moment, she would get up and go find Sesshoumaru. In less than an hour she would be back in Edo village, sleeping soundly in her own bed. These were the thoughts that whirled within her as she sank down into the lush undergrowth, to rest her body and mind—

Just for a moment.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi