“Hirokin.”

From the crumbled sill where he’d been resting, Hirokin glanced over, straightening his hair in the red glare of dawn. Across from him on the moss-covered stones, Kou still lay sprawled, half-naked below the waist and frowning heavily.

“What is it?”

“Something is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Hirokin snapped. “What do you mean? What is wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” Kou hedged. Over his muscled thigh, the drape of his spent cock seemed to frown as well. “But something. Something has changed. Between us.”

Hirokin’s mouth flattened into a thin line of annoyance. “Gods damn it, Kou, I hear you speaking, but you’re not saying anything. Spit it out already, or let it be.”

“I’m trying,” Kou said, a rumble of frustration underscoring his voice. “Perhaps I don’t know how to say it…no, perhaps I am afraid to say it.”

Now Hirokin was truly on edge. “Say it,” he said darkly. “Whatever it is, you say it now.”

Kou looked wretched. “You called me ‘my love’. You’ve never done that before.”

“That’s what’s upsetting you?” Hirokin glowered outright. “One would think you’d be pleased to hear it.”

“Yes,” Kou said uneasily. “That’s why.” As Hirokin stared at him, he elaborated, “That’s why you said it, is it not? Because you know that’s what I’ve long wished to hear.”

Kou’s words needled at Hirokin, only because their aim was true. Hirokin saw now that he’d been overcompensating. The belated realization chafed at him. His eyes sliced toward the window again. 

“Kou…” he muttered, “I’ve gone to great lengths to be with you, you jabbering cur. Your thankless whining is pissing me off.”

To Hirokin’s consternation, Kou’s youki actually perked at his words, scathing and envenomed though they were. Madness—or perhaps Kou was simply riled. Glancing aside, Hirokin saw the inuyoukai eyeing him intently. That gimlet look was so like Sesshoumaru’s it took Hirokin aback.

“There is someone else,” Kou said slowly, painstakingly, as though each word drew its toll of blood. “Is there not?”

“Of course there is,” Hirokin said, swift and cutting. “You have always known there would be. I have a reputation to maintain. I’d thought you’d accepted this.”

At Hirokin’s deflection, Kou squared his jaw. “This one is different.”

Hirokin said nothing. Within the cage of his being, the seethe of his aura was neatly contained. Kou’s eyes narrowed upon him anyway.

“Sesshoumaru-sama?” he pressed.

Hirokin laughed, short and cold. He couldn’t help it. Kou’s guess was both asinine and astute all at once. It was absurd. But then, the gods did love to afflict him with their petty ironies. They would be death of him, Hirokin knew. Those lofty fucks best hope the pits of hell could contain him.

“No,” he replied, his lips twitching still. “But close.”

Kou blinked, baffled by this revelation. Well then, that made two of them.

“Kagome-sama…but, she is a woman.”

“A keen deduction,” Hirokin quipped, but to himself, he ruminated darkly, I wonder.

Kou’s broad shoulders sank. “How?”

“It’s quite simple,” Hirokin said breezily. “There’s a space between her legs, which coincidentally enough—”

“I meant,” Kou said, frowning away, “how did this happen? How did you come to feel for her so strongly?”

Now there was a question…

Hirokin looked heavenward. “If I knew the answer to that, Kou, I’d know the answer to everything.”

Kou was silent for a time. Dawn light bled across the ageless stones.

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Better than me?”

“No, not better. Worse, if anything. She has a hold upon me, not unlike a compulsion. It’s difficult to explain. Perhaps I cannot explain it. When I think of her, reason eludes me.”

“Try,” Kou insisted.

How to explain, Hirokin pondered. It was like trying to describe the shape of the very swamp one was mired in. He felt that he lacked the proper perspective. He feared that there was no perspective for him in this.

How to articulate to the one he loved that she fleshed him out with a fire and force more demonic than any he had ever felt. That she penetrated him to a depth no cock could ever touch. That she was divine punishment to him in the unlikeliest of forms, and perhaps even for this she was all the more perversely enthralling to him.

The words escaped him. He, who had never been short of tongue. Mere words, he felt, were not enough.

And so Hirokin did what he’d been so adamantly determined not to do. He reached for the ties of his hakama and unbinding them, showed to Kou just how gross and insidious Kagome’s hold on him was.

…

There had been no words from Kou, either. Just one eternally long glance before he’d averted his eyes altogether. There’d been no need for more response than that.

In Hirokin’s mind, the image of Kou turning his face away seared into him. He was burning, burning when he returned to the palace. When he came upon Kagome in the bath of all places.

Perhaps the gods knew something of benevolence after all.

She was under, taking on water before she even realized what had snared her. Then she did, and her reiki was tearing into him, dissolving him almost as quickly as he could reform, drawing upon the boundless source of the spring. Still, she might have overwhelmed him, sliced him up in her distress just like she’d done to her dead, half-breed husband.

But in the heat of the moment, Hirokin didn’t give a fuck.

He fit his mouth to her blazing lips, forced air into her starving lungs. Her reiki relented, taking on a more sporting edge when she realized he wasn’t trying to kill her. But only slightly. 

Viciously, she fought him still as he hauled her up to the surface. As she broke it, gasping, she continued hotly to struggle, slippery as a seal in his grasp. Hirokin held to her, listening with some petty satisfaction while she choked and swore.

“Where is it?” he demanded, seizing her by the jaw as her spluttering curses subsided.

Kagome’s eyes flashed at him. “Where is what?”

Something superior in her tone incensed him afresh. It went beyond impishness, this shade of cool softness. It sounded almost like dark triumph. Hirokin plunged her spitefully under again.

“You know what,” he said acidly, as she resurfaced. “So, where is it?”

Shoving her wet hair out of her face, Kagome tossed him a smile. “What’s wrong, Hirokin? Did you and your boyfriend get in a spat?”

Hirokin smiled back at her, thin and murderous. “One day, after Sesshoumaru’s whelp makes a bloody cratering out of you, I think I’m truly going to enjoy it, raping your wasted corpse.”

Kagome’s smile slipped. Her guard as well. It was enough. Hirokin speared into her mind, racing along the path of her thoughts through the point of contact between them. Lightning-fast, he skimmed the turbulent surface of her consciousness, a tumult to rival Sesshoumaru’s. Then he glimpsed it, like a splinter of sunlight gleaming at the crest of a wave—a moment before her spiritual defenses slammed down on him, shutting him out.

Kagome’s eyes were wide with shock and fear as she stared up at him, clutching at her skull as though it pained her. “You—what was that? What the hell did you just do? Hirokin!”

But he was already sweeping past her, toward the place in her rooms that he’d glimpsed in her mind. It lay underneath a flower vase, the pin to his chain. This one, at least.

Stripping off his robes on the spot, he winced as he took his gilt-caged cock in hand and slid the golden spine into his flesh. The moment he’d picked up the pin, he’d felt that only her touch could yet undo the seal that bound him. But he’d threaded the thorn into himself, anyway. The delicate walls of his sex flared with pain. Cursing her name, he closed his eyes as he waited for the agony to soften in that predictable way, to become almost blissful by comparison.

Squeezing himself through the mesh, Hirokin felt the pain blossom in him anew. Because it was the pain he lusted for, more even than the pleasure. The pleasure was only the pale shadow. It was the pain that was divine.

Hirokin sank to his knees on the tatami. No matter how vindictive, Kagome’s intentions were beside the point. Whether she’d truly had the cunning to strike at him through his relationship with Kou, the blow had been dealt. Blunted shaft in hand, Hirokin knelt, languishing in the aftermath, until he heard her footstep at the door.

“Release me,” he said, the moment the screen slid shut behind her.

“Why should I?” Kagome said, padding toward him. She circled around to face him. Hirokin glanced up. “Maybe I like you better this way.”

“No,” Hirokin said, “you don’t.”

She cocked her head, the damp waves of her hair cascading darkly down her chest. “Really? Did you steal that thought from me too?”

Hirokin’s eyes glinted up at her. “I don’t need to be a mind-reader to see how much you enjoy my cock.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Kagome-sama. Take off this cage. Take off your robe, and maybe you can still get me hard enough to fuck you.”

Kagome’s nose wrinkled. “No thanks. Your attitude is a major turn-off. Seems to me like you need some more time in the clank.” Turning on her heel, she began to walk away. “Besides, my little finger feels better than your shitty excuse for a cock.”

Hirokin laughed, throbbing. “You lying whore!”

Kagome whirled. “Keep your voice down, Hirokin. My son’s sleeping in the next room.”

“Fuck your son.”

Storming over to him, Kagome snatched him by the hair. Her reiki-edged nails cut into his scalp.

“Apologize.”

“I apologize, my lady,” Hirokin said graciously, “to your son.”

Her grip tightened. “And?”

“And to you,” he added, more graciously still, “his lying whore of a mother.”

Kagome smiled, shoving him back. “That cage is never coming off, Hirokin. Enjoy living out the rest of your days as a cockless wonder—oh wait. You already were.”

With that she struck out for the door again. Hirokin reached after her, clasping her by the heel.

“My lady, wait.”

“Let go of me,” she said coldly, arrested.

“I’ll apologize—”

“It’s too late for that.”

“I’ll apologize if,” Hirokin murmured, “you’ll prove to me that I’m in the wrong. Open your legs to me. Show me your cunt is honestly dry.”

Kagome stiffened. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

“No,” he said mildly, “you don’t.” When she started to pull away, he wrenched hard on her captive foot, ripping her leg out from under her altogether. “But you should know a male condemned to celibacy has nothing left to lose.”

Kagome grunted as she smacked the floor. Far faster than any human, Hirokin had her rolled and pinned before she could even collect her thoughts. Of course her reiki was swift to act. It scalded him mercilessly, scorching and blackening his flesh, causing even his adamant scale-marks to char as he held her down by the wrists with one hand and sought between her legs with the other.

“My,” he said, even his voice cracked and frayed from the pain, “you’re dripping.”

“Fine,” Kagome hissed up at him, “you proved your stupid point. Now get the fuck off me before I purify you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Hirokin…” Kagome frowned. “You really want to die?”

Hirokin sighed. At her wrists, he watched his ashen fingertips crumble to glittering dust. “…I’ve been wanting to die for a thousand years.”

Kagome’s reiki withdrew from him. “Well,” she said stonily, “I forbid it. I forbid you to die.”

Hirokin laughed mirthlessly. “Yes, my lady.”

“Give me a kiss, and I’ll take off the seal.” He started to brush his cracked lips to hers, but she shook her head. “No, I want you to kiss my lying cunt.”

It wasn’t your cunt that was lying, Hirokin thought wearily, but he had no energy to dispute the point. With effort, he eased down her body, in quite possibly the worst physical state of his life. A miserable wretch, he kissed her between the legs, right at the font of her welling cunt. She was so fucking wet he actually drew some strength from it. Shaking his head at the spectacle of himself, Hirokin groaned.

Kagome had to help him sit up. Dazed, he stared at her, breathing heavily.

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Water,” he rasped.

“Okay.”

She returned with a basin’s worth, which Hirokin downed like it was nothing. Four more trips and he was beginning to reform himself.

“Incredible,” Kagome said, watching his ruined flesh slough off, to reveal the pearly new underskin beneath it. 

When he’d stabilized, she urged him to kneel up. Still in its cage, his hobbled cock rared for her, a sight dimly and grotesquely amazing to them both. Kagome smiled wanly.

“What’s this?” she said.

“The mating urge,” he replied. “It’s indefatigable.”

Her robes were hopelessly skewed. One breast and the better part of another were exposed, her messy sex also, its dark curls webbed with diamond-beaded strands.

“I’m that irresistible to you, huh.”

“Your body is of little interest to me.”

“Right.”

“Of all the females I’ve fucked,” he added sincerely, “you’re the least fair by far.”

Kagome scowled. “Wow, Hirokin. You really know how to charm a girl.”

“But I desire you, plainly.”

“Stick to that line,” she said huskily, reaching for his cock. “Cage or not, I like you best when you’re humble and eager to please.”

The shouji screen slid open behind them. They’d both been too distracted, too caught up in one another, to notice the subdued aura emanating from beyond it.

In the threshold, Sesshoumaru stood. His golden eyes swept coolly over the scene. His wife, mussed and crouching with her hand outstretched. Hirokin, kneeling and cock-caged before her. With bated breath, they watched him as he watched them in turn—before he chuckled, turning away from them both with an expression of bemused distaste.

The door slid shut behind him as he left, sealing them together in his contemptuous wake.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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