InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ FMLYHM ❯ Chapter 1

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Blanket Disclaimer:

Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.


========================


Extended disclaimer:

“FMLYHM” is the title of a Seether song, though this one-shot is not a song-fic. I am in no way affiliated with Seether nor do I make any money from borrowing their song title. There is also mention to two other songs within the story text, but they are also the sole property of their respective owners.


A/N:

This is an Americanized modern-day AU in which humans and humanoid youkai peacefully coexist, the youkai fully integrated into the human world and legally considered people via a peace treaty put into effect centuries prior. Humans with spiritual powers still exist as well and are merely considered another type of human, just like youkai are people yet different. Miko and houshi are a different type of magical being, but not the mortal enemies of youkai any longer; it’s all water under the bridge. Of course, racism and prejudice still exist at times; such closed mindedness will never fully go away. Hanyou are not sterile in this universe and so the genetic mixing of human and youkai DNA can go beyond half and half, creating people who are one-quarter human, or one-quarter youkai, and so on. Not that there’s a whole lot of hardcore racism or breeding going on in this particular story; just setting the stage for the generalized type of universe you’re about to enter. Enjoy!


“Oh my God, Kagome, you so have to get those jeans.” Sango stated with finality.

“They do make my butt look super sweet.” Kagome agreed as she turned around in the hall outside the dressing room to check out her own ass in the mirror. “Score!” the miko giggled before disappearing back behind closed doors to put her own pants back on.

Kagome absolutely loved going shopping with her best friend and roommate Sango; she didn’t get to do it nearly as often those days as the martial arts instructor was spending more and more time with her boyfriend, Miroku.

*bing-bong* went Sango’s text messaging alert tone, which sounded like a doorbell.

Speak of the devil, I’ll bet…

Kagome emerged from the dressing room in her own clothes, her soon-to-be new pair of jeans draped over her arm, to see Sango hard at work typing a reply back to whatever her boyfriend had said. Kagome waited patiently, and then when Sango put her phone away, she smiled at the slightly older girl and enthusiastically proclaimed, “Okay, you’re turn!”

Laughing, Sango said, “I don’t need any new clothes, Kagome, Miroku’s bought me plenty in the last few months.”

Frowning slightly, not because she felt jealous of Miroku’s affections for his girlfriend but because she was trying to think of something else that she and her friend could shop for instead, she asked, “Okay, how about new makeup?”

“You can never have too many shades of lipstick, right?” Sango agreed with a playful wink, and they were off.

*bing-bong*

Rolling her eyes, Kagome decided to see if the lady at the makeup counter had any tubes of her favorite shade of pink in stock, since she was running low, while Sango, head down and thumbs moving a mile a minute, gradually caught up with her.

I love you more, no I love you more… Kagome made fun in her head, honestly happy for her friend though all the lovey-dovey crap could get a little tiresome after a while.

“Hey, Kagome, guess what.” Sango said as she approached the makeup counter.

“Chicken butt.” Kagome answered, giggling with the sales lady as she took the little shopping bag that contained her new tube of lipstick.

“But do you know why?” Sango asked, not missing a beat.

“Chicken thigh!”

“But do you know where…?” she pressed.

Pretending to think it over, Kagome said after a moment, “Well, if we’re talking about Miroku, then definitely in your underwear!”

“Kagome!” the older girl hissed in embarrassment as the sales lady behind the counter tried not to laugh.

“Anyway…” Sango stressed, giggling as well despite herself, “…turns out Miroku’s here at the mall, came to drop off the watch I gave him at the repair place, and he’s invited us to meet him in the food court for lunch in five minutes.”

“Okay, let me just pay for my jeans.” Kagome started as she and Sango made their way to a clothing register. “Wait…” the miko spoke back up after a moment. “Inuyasha’s not with him, is he?”

It was Sango’s turn to roll her eyes.

“Honestly, what’s with you two? You’ve been at war with one another since high school!”

“Well it’s not my fault the guy’s a total asshole.” Kagome defended as she bought her jeans and made her way with Sango out of the department store and into the mall, towards the food court.

“I swear, Kagome, sometimes I think you must have some neko-youkai in your ancestry because you two fight like cats and dogs for no real reason at all.”

“So I take it Inuyasha is with him, then?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, Inuyasha is with him.” Sango admitted, truly baffled by her best friend and her boyfriend’s best friend’s mutual hatred towards one another. Kagome’s attitude certainly wasn’t one sided. “Promise me you won’t make a scene, no matter what Inuyasha says?” she asked with puppy-dog eyes.

“Okay, fine, I promise I’ll play nice even after the dick insults me.” The bright smile Kagome had on her face as she said that gave Sango pause, but shrugging it off after a moment she silently prayed that security at least wouldn’t be involved as the food court came into view.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` `````````````````````````````

“Jeeze, Miroku, why not just buy a new watch?” Inuyasha asked as he and his roommate arrived at the mall to drop off the monk’s damaged timepiece to be restored.

They were supposed to be at the hardware store, but Miroku had dropped his watch on the bathroom tile while putting it on that morning, cracking the crystal, and so he’d made the executive decision that first and foremost he needed to get his watch refaced.

“Because I like this watch.” the houshi answered matter-of-factly. “It was a gift from Sango, and look…” he said, holding it up, “…even though it’s cracked it’s still working otherwise. Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.”

“Are we still talking about your watch, or your girlfriend?” Inuyasha asked with a smirk, to which Miroku chuckled before realizing he’d better let Sango know what had happened so that she wouldn’t be upset to see him not wearing it at dinner that night.

Heading out of the watch shop with a claim check stating that his watch would be ready in five days, he grabbed his phone and texted: “Hey love, accidentally damaged my watch so I’m getting it fixed at the mall. Sorry.”

“You wanna grab a bite to eat in the food court before heading to the hardware store?” Miroku asked Inuyasha, to which the hanyou gave his friend a knowing look. “Ah yes, I forgot, when do you not want to eat?” the monk asked rhetorically, chuckling as his friend laughed.

*brrrrriiiing*

Glancing at his phone as he and Inuyasha walked, he was pleasantly surprised by the message on the screen.

“No worries, accidents happen. You’re here at the mall now? Kagome and I are here shopping. Small world!”

“That Sango?” Inuyasha asked casually as he paused for a moment to let his friend compose a reply.

“Yeah, turns out she and Kagome are here somewhere shopping.” Miroku answered with a silly grin on his face. “Hey, is it cool if I invite them to have lunch with us?”

Inuyasha sighed.

“Don’t you see enough of Sango already as it is?”

Miroku furrowed his brow.

“I thought you liked Sango.”

“I like Sango just fine, but you said Kagome was with her.”

Miroku rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, you two need to grow up. I hear enough of it from Sango to know that the feeling’s mutual, though I have absolutely no idea why you two hate each other so damn much.”

Inuyasha just shrugged, whether unable or just unwilling to put his exact feelings for Kagome into words Miroku couldn’t be sure, though either way the houshi was having none of it.

“For crying out loud, Inuyasha, we’re not in high school any more. You’re a grown ass man. I’m inviting Sango and Kagome to lunch, and you’re going to behave yourself.”

“Fine, I’ll leave that bitch alone even though she’s a total bitch.” the hanyou grumbled under his breath, crossing his arms.

Sighing himself, Miroku just shook his head, then texted: “You and Kagome wanna grab lunch with Inuyasha n me in 5 at the food court?”

“Sure! We’re almost done here, meet you in 5.”

“Okay, it’s settled, they’re going to come meet us for lunch.”

It was Inuyasha’s turn to roll his eyes. “Fabulous.”

“Come on now, be a good dog and I’ll give you a treat.” Miroku teased.

“Shut up, jerk.”

“Oh? So you’ll gladly pay for your own ramen, then?”

Inuyasha’s eyes lit up at that. Free food was worth any price.

“Like I said, I’ll leave her alone.”

Laughing, Miroku made his way with Inuyasha over to the ramen place.

`````````````````````

Poor Sango and Miroku couldn’t decide if lunch was comical or awkward. After Inuyasha and Kagome exchanged ‘pleasantries’ that involved greeting each other as “Bitch” and “Ass” respectively, though they’d both kept smiling faces and friendly tones of voice while doing so, miko and hanyou had then proceeded to outwardly ignore one another though their friends were fairly certain that they were each trying to cause the person across from them to spontaneously self-combust through telekinesis.

The houshi and martial arts instructor were both tremendously grateful that neither the hanyou nor miko truly possessed such mental capabilities. If they did then they would’ve both burned to a crisp years ago. Nobody could say for certain what it was about those two that rubbed each other the wrong way, though Sango and Miroku had come up with a reasonable hypothesis based on shared notes throughout the years. Apparently, on the first day of senior year, as Kagome and Inuyasha had found themselves assigned as each other’s lab partner in chemistry class, it had been mutual hate at first sight.

Kagome reminded Inuyasha far too much of his bitchy ex-girlfriend Kikyou. They’d had a rather spectacular falling out junior year, the miko breaking off their yearlong relationship because, apparently, she’d just been using him to piss off her bigoted, purist father, and the game was over now. She hadn’t personally been repulsed by his youkai features, there was no way she could’ve faked how much she was into their midnight romps, but apparently to her it’d just been about the sex and she’d never meant for him to fall in love with her. As Kagome had taken a seat beside him, the girl having similar physical features to Kikyou, not to mention the fact that she was also a miko, had really rubbed Inuyasha the wrong way, and he’d bristled automatically, not ready to deal with another miko bitch who thought she was better than everyone else. Still, Inuyasha always insisted to Miroku that Kagome was the one who’d started their war, by being a total bitch to him for absolutely no reason, just as he’d known she would. He was convinced the girl was racist and just didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

As for Kagome’s side of things, Inuyasha had reminded her of this totally chauvinistic asshole she used to date in junior year named Kouga. Kagome prided herself on not being prejudice, but after having learned the hard way just how difficult it actually was to reason with ookami-youkai, she’d finally come to accept that some of the personality traits you could read about that were associated with certain youkai species were actually true and not just stereotyped rubbish. Having immediately realized as she’d sat beside him that Inuyasha was inu from the feel of his youki, Kagome had groaned to herself in a ‘here we go again’ kind of manner, having simply not been in the mood to deal with another canine male’s pissing contest. Though according to the miko, she’d been ready and willing to cut Inuyasha some slack and give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he was half human and therefore she had no way of knowing just how dog-like he’d actually be, not to mention Kouga had been a wolf and so maybe there were enough differences between wolves and dogs that she and Inuyasha could get along just fine. She insisted that he was the one who’d immediately been a total dick to her from the beginning, instantly proving in her mind that whether it was because he was half inu or not it didn’t matter; he was a jerk, plain and simple, and she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

To Sango and Miroku, who’d met and started dating during the summer break between junior and senior year, it was fairly obvious that their mutual friends had simply suffered from a horrible case of getting off on the wrong foot, and at first, all throughout senior year and even into the first couple of years after high school, they had each tried to get their friends together with them into almost double-date kind of settings, hoping that once they each put the silliness of their joint misunderstandings behind themselves that they’d each realize just how perfect they actually were for one another. That they’d each made it through chemistry class alive without murdering one another was proof enough that they actually could get along when they put their pettiness aside, the houshi and his girlfriend both knowing of at least one occasion where Kagome and Inuyasha had been forced to work together in one of their homes after school in order to complete work on an experiment that had been a major part of their grade.

Eventually, though, they’d come to accept that matchmaking the duo together would never happen, and so now Sango and Miroku just wished that Kagome and Inuyasha could act civilly towards one another. Especially since after high school Sango and Kagome had ended up renting an apartment together, and likewise had Miroku and Inuyasha moved in with one another, as part of getting out there and spreading their wings, leaving the nests of their parents’ houses. Nobody could quite afford rent on his or her own yet, and so everyone had readily agreed that having a best friend for a roommate was far less stressful, and less dangerous, than some random stranger from Craigslist, not that it still hadn’t made things stressful in its own right, considering how each ‘friend’ felt about the other person. Neither Sango nor Miroku considered their friendships with their respective BFFs to be worth ruining their own relationship over, however, although fortunately Kagome and Inuyasha both did at least seem to have the decency to know to draw the line at threatening their friends’ romance over their own petty squabbling. Kagome never gave Sango grief for Miroku being friends with Inuyasha, and likewise Inuyasha tried to ignore the fact that his buddy’s girlfriend lived with the miko. They did usually try to avoid hanging out together as one big group, though. The shared opinion Kagome and Inuyasha had about it was that they had no objections regarding who their roommate was dating, they just didn’t want to have to deal with their roommate’s date’s roommate. Was that really too much to ask?

Finally making it through the most tension-filled mall lunch known to man, Sango and Miroku shared a look with one another that silently communicated that they would never again force their friends to eat lunch together in public.

`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` ```````````````````````````````

Checking the time on his newly repaired watch, Miroku smiled to himself as he confirmed he was right on schedule; all his plans were coming together perfectly for his stay-at-home evening with Sango.

Except…

“Hey.” Inuyasha greeted casually as he padded into the kitchen barefooted to grab himself a can of Coke out of the fridge.

“Inuyasha, my friend, I hate to ask this of you, but…” Miroku began, looking sheepish.

“Yeah yeah yeah…” the hanyou waved off, used to the routine by now.

On a few rare occasions Miroku and Sango had actually gotten a hotel room for the night, but that just seemed so silly when the monk could just invite his girlfriend over to their apartment. Inuyasha had no problem with Sango whatsoever and didn’t mind the martial artist and his roommate having sleepovers, but it bothered Sango because she was a shy girl and she couldn’t quite get settled with the knowledge that he’d be hearing, and smelling, everything going on in the other room. Of course, Sango knew that he knew that she and Miroku were sleeping together, but it was just the principle of the thing. It would feel like Inuyasha was right there in the room, watching them, and while the houshi might make some sort of lecherous joke at the notion, Inuyasha wasn’t a voyeur, and so he had no qualms with giving the two their privacy even though it meant being evicted from his own bedroom for the night. He had a place he could go.

Drinking his soda, Inuyasha then made his way back to his room, and donning his shoes, he took a quick glance at himself in the mirror, decided he looked good enough, and headed back out into the living room. Offering Miroku a casual, “See ya after breakfast.” he was out the door.  

Shaking his head, Miroku couldn’t help feeling a little guilty though he did also feel tremendously grateful to his friend for being so understanding. Fortunately, as a hanyou, it was true that Inuyasha did not need nearly the same amount of sleep as humans did, and there were a few options available for Inuyasha to keep himself entertained as he wandered the city all night. There was more than one store in town open twenty-four hours a day, not to mention the local casino, plus at least half a dozen restaurant options. It might get a little boring, but at least the hanyou wasn’t exiled to the outdoors. Not that he couldn’t stay outdoors all night if he so chose; Miroku happened to know that one of his friend’s casual pastimes was napping in the tallest branches of an old elm tree down at the local park. Perhaps that was where he camped out on nights such as this one. As a courtesy, Miroku did always make sure the weather was pleasant when he scheduled his stay-at-home evenings with Sango.

`````````````````````

Kicking back on the roof of the apartment building across from his, Inuyasha tilted his head skyward for a moment, the first few stars of night beginning to make themselves visible in the gradually dwindling twilight. The western sky still bore a deep, crimson hue, though that would fade soon enough as the velvet blue sky overhead darkened to black, more stars twinkling into existence as the earth fully embraced the night. Nowhere near the amount of stars that would be visible if it weren’t for all the city lights, of course, though his hanyou eyes could pick out more of them than the average human could. He knew that because even under a full moon he could see more stars in the heart of the city than on the moonless night. Of course, nothing beat the countryside for stargazing, but as the subtle purr of an engine drew Inuyasha’s attention and he gazed back down to the street to nod with satisfaction at the sight of Sango’s car pulling into the guest parking, making the two-hour run to his favorite spot for stargazing was the furthest thing from his mind.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` `````````````````````````````

Popping a frozen entrée into the microwave, Kagome couldn’t help chuckling to herself in amusement as she thought back to the way Sango had blushed ten shades of red when she’d teased that Miroku could come over to their place some of these nights, waggling her eyebrows while saying “Promise I won’t tell Mom.” She’d even done the ‘cross your heart’ gesture with her right index finger.

As if I’m her little sister and she’s ‘sneaking’ her boyfriend into the house… Kagome mentally snorted, amused at the imagery.

In reality she was only a few months younger than Sango, though the girls did almost think of each other as sisters since in real life they each only had a younger brother, but Sango was fortunate that they had not actually grown up in the same house, her face would have permanent rosacea from the number of times Kagome would’ve made her blush over the years. It was quite amusing, indeed, how shy Sango could still be when it came to such things. Though of course, knowing how Sango would react to the teasing, she’d actually done it on purpose.

Bad Kagome… she laughed to herself as the microwave dinged that her dinner was ready.

The truth was that Kagome wouldn’t give Sango any grief about it if she actually did want to have Miroku spend the night at times, but she definitely preferred it that the woman always went to his apartment, instead. It was just so much more…convenient, this way.

Taking her ‘healthy’ – though she didn’t think something with so many unpronounceable ingredients could really be all that healthy – chicken and noodles into the living room, she sat the cardboard tray on the coffee table before having a seat on the couch, and reaching for the remote, she clicked on the TV and turned it to the home improvement channel before digging into her meal.

Taking the empty cardboard tray into the kitchen a few minutes later, after scraping up and licking off her fork all the extra sauce, she tossed the tray in the trash, putting her fork in the dishwasher, and was just on her way back over to the couch when a sudden and authoritative knock on the door had her figuratively jumping out of her skin. Heading over to the front door to answer it once she’d gathered her wits, she kept her expression neutral as she opened the door to reveal none other than Inuyasha, the insensitive jerk, standing on her doorstep.

Silently appraising his appearance for just a moment, she noted his casual demeanor as he stood with his hands in the pockets of his faded blue jeans, a fairly new but deliberately ‘vintage’ looking red t-shirt sponsoring Coca-Cola adorning his upper half, with a beat up pair of sneakers completing the look.

“May I help you?” she asked, deadpan.

He quirked a brow at her tone, also taking a brief moment to take in her appearance, her simple yet pretty pale blue blouse contrasting nicely against her dark blue denim, her bare feet showing off perfectly pedicured toes.

He snorted at her question, removing his hands from his pockets to cross his arms in front of his chest. “Now that all depends…” he started, giving her breath an experimental sniff. “Got any more chicken alfredo?”

“And what if I do?” she asked, crossing her own arms defiantly. “It’s not my job to feed you.”

“You’re right…it’s not…” he purred with a dangerous edge to his voice as he straightened his arms and stepped over the threshold, entering her apartment without invitation, bending his right arm behind his back to shut and lock the door behind himself without averting his eyes away from the miko who started to tremble slightly under the intensity of his gaze as she took a few steps backwards to accommodate his entry.

“I’m not hungry, anyway…” he continued after a moment, herding her further into the apartment and over towards the couch. “At least not for food.”

“Jerk.” she grumbled out as she continued to walk backwards, the word almost sounding like a pet name. Her legs hit the side of the sofa, and she stopped, a look of dawning in her eyes as she suddenly realized they were all the way in her living room.

He chuckled at the look on her face. “Bitch.”

“Asshole.” she shot back, her eyes challenging as she gathered herself and squared her shoulders.

He smirked. “Skank.”

“Dick.”


“Cunt .”

She opened her mouth to shout out the next word on her list, but he suddenly rushed her, closing the gap between them faster than she could react, and her inhale of air was stolen from her as he sealed his lips over hers, his tongue shooting into her mouth to wrestle with her own. His firm grip on her shoulders prevented her from escaping, not that she tried or even wanted to.

“Were we playing word association? ‘Cause I want my dick in your cunt…” he whispered in her ear once he pulled back from the kiss, relishing in the sound of her gasps for much needed oxygen.

Tingles shot through Kagome’s body at his nasty words, and then the song ‘Dirty Talk’ by Wynter Gordon became her own personal, mental soundtrack, as he wasted no more time before kissing her senseless once again. Immediately melting into him, Kagome lifted her arms from where they were almost trapped between them, reaching his chest to grab twin fistfuls of his shirt, and he rumbled approvingly in the back of his throat at her own show of brazenness.

Leaning over, he forced Kagome to lean backwards, and soon enough her legs bucked and he followed her down as she tumbled over the side of the couch, landing on the cushions with her legs draped up over the armrest, the back of the couch to her left and his right. Inuyasha landed on top of her, pinning her down, his legs straddling her own as he continued to kiss her senseless. It barely registered somewhere in the back of her mind that, during the tumble, he’d moved his hands from her shoulders to the back of her neck and head, protecting her from hurting herself in the fall. Now those same hands were tracing her collarbone, fingering the neckline of her blouse, and then before Kagome could even think to say anything he pulled, ripping her blouse open down the middle as buttons went flying.  

Her hands were far from idle, rubbing frantically across his shoulders, across the hard plains of his muscular back, down to his denim-covered ass which she gave a fierce squeeze before her hands then made their way up to the top of his head, rubbing both ears. Oh yes, she knew how to get him just as good as he could get her.

Dammmmnnnnnn… Inuyasha mentally groaned as tingles shot down his spine to land in his groin with such force that his dick was instantly hard. The bitch knew just how he liked to have his ears rubbed, but two could play at that game.

Finally breaking free from her delicious mouth, he smirked for a moment as she once again took in heaving breaths of air, which of course caused her chest to rise and fall dramatically, drawing his attention to her lacy bra, the tops of her breasts almost spilling out of the fabric as if in anticipation of what was to come. He wasted no time giving her what they both wanted. Kneeling slightly over her, his legs on either side of her body, he lifted himself up off of her just enough to yank her, hands under her armpits, up the length of the couch some, so that he’d have more room to work. That done, he shimmied himself a bit further down along her body, putting his ears in a more comfortable position for her to continue to fondle with those wickedly talented fingers of hers as he used his own fingers, or more accurately the claws that tipped them, to slice her bra down the middle with the tiniest spark of youki, freeing her breasts for his viewing pleasure without cutting into her skin. Her creamy mounds weren’t exposed to the air for long, though, as he immediately covered her left one with his mouth, laving her nipple almost viciously with his tongue until it pebbled stiffly under his touch, his left hand firmly but not quite painfully squeezing and massaging her right breast.

Kagome moaned wantonly from the delicious torture, arching her back as much as she could to press her breasts more fully into his hand and mouth. Her right leg lolled to the side, falling off the seat of the couch with her heel thumping almost soundlessly on the carpet, and Inuyasha smirked, removing his left hand from her chest and taking it lower, palming her hot core roughly through her jeans as he continued to suckle from her left breast as though he were a greedy demon baby.

He wasn’t a baby, but he was a greedy demon.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard it’ll take your weak human body days to recover.” he promised hoarsely as he removed his mouth from her breast and attached it to the left side of her throat, his left hand working loose the top button on her jeans before pulling down the zipper.

Kagome moaned again at the feel of his fangs scraping against her vulnerable neck, her right hand slipping away from his left ear as her right arm, bent at the elbow, landed helplessly on the cushion above her head. Her left hand managed to stay attached to his right ear, continuing to rub gently as his words finally registered in her brain. She absolutely loved what he did to her senses, but puppy needed to learn his place.

“Mmmm…you better behave, or I’ll turn you into a weak human.”

To emphasize her point she sent just a tiny bit of purifying electricity into the fingertips of her left hand, proving she wasn’t the only one who could channel their magic at will, and he yelped at the sudden jolt, pushing back on his arms which were immediately both off her body and on the couch cushion below her so that he could raise himself up enough to look down at her. A tiny bit of crimson bled into the outer edges of his golden irises at the not-so-subtle threat, and then his mouth was on hers again, commanding and unrelenting, as he lowered his body over hers again, once more trapping her between himself at the sofa as he ground his throbbing erection against her burning core. His inner youkai got off on her bitchy defiance; it would relish in breaking her. She knew the rules of the game by that point, but then of course, so did he, and so he knew if he wasn’t careful she actually would make good on her threat to zap him one. That she honestly did have the power to turn the tables on him only excited him all the more. Where was the fun in dominating somebody who was so much weaker than you they never stood a chance? But the key to dominating a miko was different than dominating an inu-youkai bitch, who could only be tamed by brute force. A miko was still a human, after all, and so he did have to be careful; the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally cause her legitimate injury. But a miko’s spiritual powers could not be subdued with physical restraint, regardless. Her strength wasn’t in her body but in her mind and so in order to protect himself from her mental powers he had to turn her brain into jelly so that she could no longer remember how to call upon her holy gift, and the easiest way to do that was…

“Fuck!” Kagome cried out, arching her back as he scooted himself off of her again just enough to give her such freedom of movement, as he leaned with his back partially against the back of the couch, his left hand down her opened jeans and underwear, his index and middle fingers fully inserted into her burning hot and slippery pussy, thrusting steadily in and out in a familiar dance. He knew what he was doing and knew he wouldn’t accidentally hurt her with his claws. They were harmless blunted talons without the charge of his youki making them razor sharp. Unlike his fangs, which didn’t need the aid of magic to tear into flesh at will.

“Patience, miko…” he whispered in her ear as he leaned over her, licking the side of her neck before giving the base of her throat a burning nip that caused her skin to raise and turn red, but not bleed. “I’ll fuck you in a minute.” he added in a teasing tone as he pulled back to watch her face, retracting his sopping digits from her opening to rub them rapidly against her swollen clit.

Kagome not only lost the ability to call upon her miko powers, but she lost the ability to speak, to think altogether, as wave after wave of almost unbearable pleasure wrecked havoc on her soul, as she curled herself into him and fisted his shirt once more, her breathing shallow and shaky as she pinched her eyes shut and whimpered.

The sound was music to his ears, the way she scrunched her face making her the most beautiful he’d ever seen her as he kept the pace swift and steady, waiting for her explosion to ignite.

He didn’t have long to wait.

With her eyes suddenly flying open, a strangled gasp wrenched from her throat as if she’d just been stabbed in the belly with a knife, Kagome cried out in a high-pitched wail as her body seized, the grip of her fingers as she clutched his shirt becoming impossibly more strong as she clung to him instinctively as if her very life depended on it.

He didn’t cease his ministrations until the desperate, pleading cry of, “St-stop!” reached his ears.

Withdrawing his hand from her pants, then, he easily backed up off of her, or at least as easily as one could maneuver with a raging hard-on pressed as uncomfortably tightly within a pair of jeans as his was, and effortlessly scooping the miko-turned-rag-doll up in his arms, he carried her into her bedroom. He knew which room was hers; he knew that room inside and out by that point, although he’d identified it easily enough through scent alone on his first visit to the girls’ apartment.

Laying Kagome bonelessly on her bed, he made quick work of shedding his clothing, knowing damn well that ‘stop’ she’d uttered had only been in reference to his earlier pleasure-torture and had absolutely no bearing on what was next to come, or more precisely, who was next to cum. She would never tell him to stop, though at that precise moment in time Inuyasha couldn’t be certain he even could stop. They’d passed the point of no return long ago, both in regard to that evening specifically, and with their whole damn relationship.

Finally regaining a marginal amount of awareness, Kagome leaned up on her elbows to see a naked Inuyasha staring at her hungrily from the foot of her bed, his rutilant gaze sending shivers down her spin. She was still dressed, for the most part, though her jeans were unfastened and resting dangerously low on her hips, her blouse and bra both ruined and hanging open to reveal her bare chest. Gulping at the promises in his silent, commanding eyes, she divested herself of her garments as quickly as humanly possible, and she was only human, spiritual powers or no. Her lover was more beast than man at that moment, however, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.

Inuyasha waited, watching, as Kagome ridded herself of her clothing as fast as she could, his mind stalking her like his prey though he remained perfectly still until she was naked. Then, he pounced.

Kagome’s body had barely started to come down from its high when suddenly, there was a snarling man-beast lying above her, his clawed hands pinning her wrists above her head. Without even the use of a hand to help guide himself in he thrust his hips and was home, his massive erection burying itself deep inside her searing heat, and it was his turn to whimper as she gasped, the sensation of suddenly being one nearly tearing both of them apart.

The faint traces of red faded from his eyes, then, leaving pure yellow-golden irises gazing down at her in what Kagome dared not hope was love. As quick as the look had come it was gone, and then he smirked, tightening the grip he had on her wrists. Retracting his hips, he asked her “Are you ready?” but didn’t wait for an answer before he started thrusting his hips at a pace almost too much for a human to bear.

Kagome could take it.

Kagome was used to it.

Her answer to his rhetorical question was to bend her legs back at the knees and hook them over his shoulders, and growling with an animalistic timbre in the back of his throat no human being could accomplish, Kagome’s response to the guttural sound was to turn her head to the side, baring her throat including the tender spot he’d marred with his fangs.

“Fucking bitch…”

Yeah, that’s right, fuck your bitch… Kagome thought to herself, though she answered aloud “Arrogant dick.” with a sparkle in her eyes as she tilted her head back to protect her neck and meet his gaze head on.

“Yeah, that’s right, that’s my dick inside of you…” he rumbled smugly, pulling back slower to deliver a mighty thrust that had her gasping in what she couldn’t be sure was pain or pleasure though the feeling was over too quickly to tell. “Feel that?” he bragged, knowing what he did to her. “It’s got a right to be arrogant, fucking such a perfect pussy.”

That was as close as she’d get to a compliment out of him, and she’d take it.

“Fuck me like you hate me.” she purred in return, knowing he absolutely loved it when she talked dirty back.

Eyes sparkling at her command, he lowered himself so that he was practically folding her in half as he captured her mouth in another searing kiss, his tongue battling hers for dominance though resistance on her part was futile, especially with the way the rest of him already had her entire body surrendered to his will. He nicked her lower lip on a fang and the taste of blood only fueled his inner beast all the more.

“As you wish.” he murmured then.

Adjusting his angle slightly, Inuyasha began pistoning his hips forward in short and rapid strokes, and Kagome was seeing stars, his enormous cock hitting something just right at that angle that had her cumming again in seconds. She tried to scream but couldn’t as he swallowed the sound, feeling the way her inner muscles clamped down tightly around his sensitive shaft. Smirking into the kiss as she struggled in vain to shift her position and lessen the intensity of sensation flooding through her, he hammered into her relentlessly, relishing in the way she vibrated below him, tears springing to her eyes as pleasure morphed into the white hot pain of abused nerve endings. She didn’t beg him to stop; she knew he wouldn’t, not until he climaxed, and she loved every minute of it. Biting his lower lip like a bit she rode out the pain until it turned back into pleasure, his amused chuckling as her blunt human teeth tried and failed to pierce his skin enough to immediately shove her right back over that edge, and that time she did scream.

Inuyasha kept his pace for as long as he could, but even hanyou couldn’t fuck like rabbits…well, not unless they were rabbit hanyou, but he was definitely no wussy herbivore and as his own release suddenly rushed up his balls to flood the deepest walls of his lover’s perfect pussy, his knot forming tight to lock him in place, he somehow just barely managed to resist the urge to sink his teeth into her throat as he pulled back from the kiss, burying his face in the pillow beside her instead as he roared with a mouthful of cotton. It was an instinctive thing for canine youkai, biting the neck of one’s partner, and an inu bitch would easily survive such trivial mating wounds, but it would be fatal to a human and he did not want to get arrested for manslaughter. Accidents happened, but a youkai mistakenly killing their human sex partner would be no less serious of a crime than two humans getting it on where the erotic asphyxiation got out of control.

The lesson: know your partner’s limits.  

Even though he was half human himself, his pure youkai father was a very powerful daiyoukai, and so his canine attributes almost completely overrode his human feelings as a result. Still, his father had never once harmed his mother while she’d been alive – her death had not been his fault – and neither would he ever cause Kagome any serious pain. She liked it a little on the rough side, and for that he was grateful, but he knew not to push it too far.

Kagome could see it in his eyes, his struggle, his victory and relief, for that brief moment that his gaze met hers before he collapsed and was lying flush on top of her once more, her legs off his shoulders to flop spread eagle on either side of his body as he buried his face and fangs in the pillow right beside her head, and she knew; she understood probably more than he thought she did. Gently petting an ear in reassurance, Kagome told him without words that she didn’t fear him, and she never would. She knew he’d never accidentally kill her in bed, no matter how much they might want to strangle each other outside of the bedroom.

Sighing to herself at the thought, she thought back on their twisted secret romance and how it’d all begun back in high school.

It really had been hate at first sight, the feelings truly mutual, and being forced to work together on lab projects had been so horrible for each of them that they both would have gladly traded it for almost any other kind of high school horror one could imagine. Kagome had thought she’d rather have the popular girls lie about her being a slut; even a rumor that she’d been pregnant with Kouga’s baby before getting an abortion would’ve been better than dealing with Inuyasha on a daily basis. Who cared about stupid rumors you knew weren’t true, right? And so what if people you didn’t even know thought they were true? You’d never see those idiots again after school was out so what difference did it make? Likewise, Inuyasha would’ve rather Kikyou had spread rumors about him being a lousy lover, though of course probably nobody would have believed those rumors anyway since everyone knew canine youkai were literal beasts in the sack. But he would’ve rather dealt with anything anybody could have thought of: racism from the stuck up purebreds for his mixed heritage, rumors that he did drugs, rumors that he was gay and that was why he’d been lousy in bed with Kikyou…anything other than dealing with Kagome day in and day out.

But life did not usually grant silent wishes, no matter how many times you wished them, and so they’d been officially stuck together for the entire school year. For the most part they had been able to put their mutual disdain for one another aside just enough to actually get passing grades. Their grades had fortunately been important enough to each of them to be willing to do whatever was necessary to pass the class, and so after the first few rounds of calling each other ‘bitch’ and ‘asshole’ had landed them in trouble with the teacher, they’d each agreed to just deal with each other for the sake of the class, vowing to stay the fuck away from each other as soon as the bell rang for next period. Their mutual friends who’d recently started dating had tried to get them to get along outside of class and those few forced outings had been torture and a half, but they’d each suffered through them for the sake of their friends, figuring that if they flat out refused to comply they’d never give up and so letting Miroku and Sango see for themselves that they would never get along would make their friends eventually drop it and leave them alone. It’d taken a little longer than anticipated, though they did finally leave them alone those days, for the most part at least.

Thinking back to that recent impromptu luncheon at the mall food court Kagome barely suppressed a giggle, not wanting to risk Inuyasha thinking she was laughing at him and the way he was still lying flush against her body, his knot not yet softened to the point where they could separate as the occasional shudder wracked his silent and sweaty form.

Kagome couldn’t rightfully say if she and Inuyasha could get along civilly those days, ‘cause the truth was they’d never even tried it. Outside of playing secret lovers behind their friends’ backs they never saw each other, or even spoke with each other, of their own free will at least, and so whenever they did bump into each other it was almost an automatic reflex that their old insults for one another would start up again, slinging their mutual hatred back and forth. It did seem to be more of a joke to each of them those days, though Sango and Miroku clearly weren’t laughing. But while she couldn’t speak for Inuyasha and his feelings, Kagome knew that she honestly didn’t hate him any longer. Far from it, in fact.

They’d each long since realized the truth of their shared botched first impressions, she knew all about Kikyou and more than one growl had left his throat when he’d learned of Kouga, but she supposed it was true what they said: you only had one chance to make a first impression.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped their secret trysts from blossoming into the full-blown forbidden romance they each now enjoyed. Kagome would never forget how it’d all started.

It had been well into the second half of the school year, their disdain for one another firmly established, when their teacher had decided to spring yet another ‘take home’ experiment on the class; the kind of crap that ruined your weekend and turned your parents’ kitchen into a mockup of Bill Nye’s laboratory.

Most of the time each lab partner was assigned a specific part of the test, a test that as a whole required two parts somehow or another, thus forcing the partners to work together, yet separately, each doing his or her own part at home knowing that their grade would be ruined if their partner didn’t pull his or her own weight with their half of the experiment as well. Though a bummer when it came to the aspect of the ruined weekend, the Mondays following such experiments were always prosperous for Kagome and Inuyasha. Neither dared screw up their end of the bargain because they knew they’d never hear the end of it, and they always aced such challenges as a result. During one previous time, however, the experiment had been the kind that required both partners to work on it together, at only one of their houses, together, and the first time they’d had to do that nearly all hell had broken loose. They’d managed to get through it only after Inuyasha’s dad had ordered him to suck it up like a man, and so going over to Kagome’s house he’d cooperated with her and done his share of the experiment, all the while taking note of her loving home environment, despite her own dad being out of the picture. He hadn’t told Kagome at the time, but the way her mother had welcomed him warmly, acting as if her daughter had never once bent her ear with talk of what an asshole he was, really surprised and touched him. Either the woman was tremendously polite, or Kagome was, miraculously, actually not talking shit about him at home. He’d quickly realized that maybe he’d been wrong about thinking she’d been raised to be a spoiled miko brat as Kikyou had been, although he hadn’t told her that, either.

They’d made it through the evening unscathed, earning a passing grade.

Then there had been the next time their teacher had sprung such an assignment on the class, the time that had changed it all.

It had been a Thursday, first of all, giving them only one night, that night, to work on what needed to be finished at home before turning in the results the very next day, on Friday. Why? Because it was a three-day weekend, that Monday being some stupid holiday or another, and heaven forbid they actually got three whole days to work on something that would in reality only take one night. Any other night it wouldn’t have been a problem, but that night had been the night of the new moon.

Inuyasha had freaked, to put it mildly, as Kagome thought back on it. He’d kept his cool in class of course, waiting appropriately until school was out to tell her in private that there was no way in hell he was going over to her place that night and that they could just damn well figure out how to each do the experiment on their own. They didn’t need a chemistry partner, they could each do the entire experiment themselves as both people and log the results and then compare notes over the phone or something. He’d sounded almost desperate, too desperate, and even though Kagome hadn’t been raised to be a stuck up miko with a superiority complex, she was still a miko, from a long line of spiritualists, and as a result she had family knowledge about youkai that the average ‘normal’ human might not know about without doing research in a medical text.

“Oh, I get it…” she’d said with an almost sage-like nod of her head, and he’d rolled his eyes, thinking she was full of it, until the words, “You turn human tonight…” had next left her lips, whispered so quietly in their isolated corner around the side of the building that they were guaranteed nobody else had overheard. For that small favor he’d been grateful though his eyes had still widened in horror all the same at just the fact that she knew.

Of course, logically, since she’d hit the nail on the head, there’d been no real reason to avoid doing the chemistry experiment the way they were supposed to any longer, and so after mumbling with a defeated tone that he still wouldn’t come over to her place simply because he never left the house on such nights, he’d then swallowed his pride and acknowledged that she could come over to his place, instead.

It was there that Kagome learned that Inuyasha lived alone with his father, his mother having passed a couple of years prior. It was something they actually had in common, since she also only had one parent. Instead of a younger brother, he had an older half-brother who was long since out of the house, and Inuyasha’s father worked the graveyard shift as a high-end security guard for the swanky gated community in which they lived, so after barely meeting the man for a second he was out for the night, leaving the barely eighteen-year-olds to their own devices.

The experiment had plugged along as well as could be expected with Inuyasha wholly not himself, and finally unable to take it any more, Kagome had more or less called him on it, wanting to know where the hell the spunky hanyou she loved to hate had gone. She’d seemed genuinely concerned, and that had surprised him, though it had seemed a rather stupid question to him since it should have been obvious to her that the normal him just wasn’t home at the moment. He’d laughed humorlessly and shrugged off her worry, stating that his human emotions just got the better of him on his mortal nights and he’d be back to normal in the morning, and then his brown eyes had darkened with a hint of his old spark as he’d threatened that she had better not tell anybody about his weakness. Kagome had blinked in surprise at his use of the term, and had then proceeded to tell him that having human emotions wasn’t a weakness. Looking back on it she couldn’t really say what’d triggered it, specifically, but they’d ended up staying up well into the night, long after their experiment was finished, talking about this and that. That was when the truth had come out about Kikyou and Kouga respectively, and Kagome had giggled at the rather impressive growls Inuyasha could pull off with his temporarily human vocal cords. Somehow or another, one thing had led to another, and Inuyasha, the one less experienced with dealing with human emotions around a woman since he’d never spent any of his human nights with Kikyou, had been the one to crack first, leaning forward and giving Kagome a kiss. She’d blinked in surprise again, but not finding herself all that opposed to the idea of kissing Inuyasha at the moment she’d then proceeded to lean forward herself to reciprocate.

“What are we doing?” she’d asked once two kisses had turned into five or six, and chuckling, Inuyasha’s only answer had been “Call it another experiment.”

They’d made love gently that night, each with the mindset that they were adults and could do whatever they wanted, to hell with the consequences. Kagome had at some point called her mom before it’d gotten too late just to let the woman know that she’d be crashing at Inuyasha’s since the experiment was taking longer than they thought and they had to get it right for their grades; a mild white lie yes though she hadn’t wanted the woman to worry. As for Inuyasha’s father, if he’d found it inappropriate that Kagome had spent the night, he hadn’t said anything about it the following morning when she’d sheepishly excused herself just as he was coming home from work. To her credit she hadn’t been blushing, even though she’d known that Inuyasha’s father could undoubtedly smell what had happened between her and his son. They were both eighteen, so he couldn’t really be too upset, and it’s not like either of them had been a virgin, anyway.

Morning light had dawned on the human couple sleeping soundly together in Inuyasha’s bed, his arms wrapped protectively around Kagome’s nude form as he spooned her from behind, and then immediately the change had consumed him, and he’d awoken with a start and stumbled out of bed with a horror-struck look on his face, like waking from a night of having way too much fun in Vegas.

Kagome hadn’t been able to sleep through the fiasco, of course, and she’d bolted awake immediately too, both at the feel of his youki returning as well as the way he’d so abruptly vacated the bed, and she’d groaned aloud not in regret of her own actions, but because of the regret she could see plainly visible on his face.

She’d immediately tried to assure him that she for one didn’t regret it, reminding him that they were both adults and could do whatever they wanted. In turn he’d proceeded to insist that just because they’d had sex, it didn’t mean it changed how he felt about her. He had been human the night before and so he might as well have been drunk, his emotions much closer to the surface than normal, with no inhibitions when it came to saying or doing what he felt. She’d seen the way he’d flinched, though, when he’d said the word human, and going out on a limb Kagome had guessed that he might have been thinking the only reason she’d slept with him was because he’d been in his human form, and so she’d immediately tried to assure him that that was not the case. Perhaps being human was why he’d opened up to her the way he had, but that was what had made her fall for him, his softer side emotionally, not his physical appearance. She had absolutely no problem with him being a hanyou.

At that point she’d gestured to his now silver pubic hair, and he had actually blushed to realize he’d been standing before her completely naked for the last five minutes of their argument. She’d only laughed and had proceeded to get up out of bed, revealing her own nude form, as she’d approached him and told him she found his youkai physical features to be quite exotic and how she would relish in the feel of his fangs and claws on her skin. She’d said it on purpose just to get a rise out of him, which she had, almost literally though definitely figuratively as he’d stuttered out something about her being a teasing bitch, and she’d laughed, but there’d also been a spark of challenge in his golden eyes as he’d ogled her nakedness. He had been the one to start things the night before, but now she was upping the ante; he would call, he wanted to see her cards.

Him being hanyou meant that, at least most of the time, he had a youkai’s mind and a youkai’s emotions, not just physical attributes. If she truly didn’t mind that he was a hanyou then she should be willing to accept him for him, as in all of him, insensitive jerk and all. He would only be the sappy human he’d been the night before one night a month, the rest of the time he was the asshole she loved to hate. She couldn’t possibly handle the real him. He’d meant to call her on her shit, but she hadn’t backed down, and instead she’d arched an eyebrow and said “Try me.”

He’d tried her that very evening, after school, behind the bleachers.

He’d meant once again to call her on her shit, when he’d told her once they were alone that if she really was willing to accept him for him that she’d be willing to accept all of him, whenever he wanted it, wherever he wanted it. She’d gawked at first, of course, but then something inside her mind had just snapped, and she’d told herself screw it, and had then proceeded to screw him behind the bleachers. He’d warned her as a legitimate courtesy in advance that he’d knot, and she’d been intrigued, not repulsed. Trying to pull away before they could would be painful, but if they just lied still until they could separate then it wouldn’t hurt her, he’d promised, and he’d been right.  

At first they’d merely been thinking about their reputation, knowing it would invite too many unwanted questions if people started asking why they were suddenly getting along so much better than before, and so they’d kept up the act of hating each other day to day to keep things normal, to not ‘blow their cover’ they’d each laughed, getting a kick out of the notion of being secret lovers. But their pretend hatred had become less of an act when one or both of them would say something that royally pissed off the other person. They both really knew how to get under each other’s skin, and so soon enough they each once again became the person the other one loved to hate, not because of any misconceptions, but because they knew each other by that point. Inuyasha didn’t assume Kagome was a bitch because of his bad experience with Kikyou, he thought she was a bitch because she was one; she had quite the wicked tongue and knew how to use it – and not in a pleasurable, literal sense. And as for Kagome, she no longer hated Inuyasha on principle because she was merely assuming he’d be an arrogant and possessive asshole like Kouga had been, she knew he was an arrogant asshole, and while he didn’t really seem all that possessive that was only because she was not technically his girlfriend. If they ever made their relationship official she was fairly certain he would immediately turn into the overbearing, possessive, paranoid and untrusting jackass her ex-boyfriend had been.

Yet, even as they’d resumed the natural flow of their mutual dislike for each other, something had changed between them, and could never be changed back. Inuyasha had always been the one to seek her out, at least at first, as if she were a drug he was becoming addicted to, though Kagome was just as far gone because after spending a whole hour of honestly feeling hatred for the man as they struggled to work together in chemistry class she would then immediately melt under his ministrations once an entirely different type of ‘chemistry’ became their main focus. Soon enough, though, she wasn’t satisfied with just the times he decided to seek her out, and she began sending him signals to let him know when she wanted it as well. Kagome had already been on the pill, something she’d started when she’d been dating Kouga and hadn’t stopped afterwards because she’d liked the way it’d made her more regular, and so with accidental pregnancy not a concern they’d pretty much thrown caution to the wind otherwise and had started to do it whenever they could, wherever they could. Once high school was over with and she could freely go wherever she wanted during the day she would even sometimes text Inuyasha and he would meet her at a motel. Later, after they’d each gotten jobs and moved out of their family’s homes into apartments shared with their friends, their new living arrangements had made things a little bit trickier, but Sango and Miroku still going steady had worked to their advantage, providing them with plenty of opportunities to get together whenever the houshi and martial arts instructor also got together. They didn’t feel bad about how they were behaving behind their friends’ backs; aside from not mentioning the fact that they were sleeping together they were each completely honest with their roommates. Every time Sango and Miroku tried to hook them up, thinking that they’d make a good couple, no amount of acting had been required for them to be completely perturbed in each other’s presence. They didn’t ‘do’ dates and had no desire to ‘date’ one another. Even though the sex was good, and kept getting better – it turned out Kagome had a wickedly talented tongue in the pleasurable, literal sense after all – neither of them could actually get along with each other in non-sexual situations and so they didn’t even bother trying. They were each other’s booty call and nothing more. They didn’t have to like each other as individuals for the sex to be good.

So why did I let myself fall in love with him? Kagome asked herself as Inuyasha finally grunted a last little woof of satisfaction before experimentally seeing if he could pull away from her.

What Kagome didn’t know was that Inuyasha had just spent the last few minutes of quiet time as he came down from his high asking himself basically the same thing.

It’s like that Three Days Grace song… he thought to himself, even as he made sure his mask was in place as he shot her a cocky, satisfied smirk before backing fully away from her to get dressed. I hate everything about her…why do I love her?

He knew why, though. The truth was, even though he fucked her like he hated her, he didn’t actually hate her, not any longer. It wasn’t just about the sex anymore, though he’d never trade their sex life for anything else in the world. But even though he knew she thought he only thought of her as a good fuck, the truth was he’d fallen in love with her at some point along the way, and the little things he used to hate about her didn’t bother him at all any more. His youkai side actually liked what an argumentative little bitch she could be; it’d be no fun if she just submitted to him right out the gate. Besides, it was the 21st century; he didn’t want a meek little woman who’d been raised to please her man without ever voicing her own opinions. But they’d been keeping up the pretence of hating each other for so long, Inuyasha felt trapped now. How could he possibly tell her how he really felt? He didn’t even know how she really felt about him in return and so the last thing he wanted to do was ruin what they had together if it turned out she was perfectly content to hate his guts but love his cock and him getting all emotional would scare her away. And even if she would be willing to come out to their friends, so to speak, and give having a real relationship with him a try, what the hell would Sango and Miroku say if they learned the truth? Would they laugh it off? Or feel betrayed? Perhaps it’d be best to just gradually work their way into it, somehow or another subtly deciding to give each other a chance until Sango and Miroku could be led to believe that their perpetual attempts at match-making had finally been successful. It was a workable plan, but there again everything truly hinged on what Kagome thought, and he’d never know how she really felt about it all until he asked her, and he was too afraid to do that. He’d rather continue to have her only as he had her now than not at all.

Tying his shoes, he shot Kagome another smirk as she completed her own redressing with a replacement blouse that looked identical to the one he’d wrecked. The deal was that he could destroy the top half of her outfits but her jeans were off limits; those were simply too expensive for her to keep on buying more.

Whenever she went shopping by herself, when Sango wasn’t with her, she’d always buy at least two or three of each simple, inexpensive top she picked out, just for this reason, always wearing something affordable and that she knew she had a spare of whenever she expected he might come over. Her solitary, individual and more high-end pieces were saved for only when she knew Sango would be with her and by default it meant that they would not be getting torn to pieces. At least in this case the actual blouse she’d been wearing earlier could be repaired; she just hoped she could find all the buttons.

Sending Inuyasha a smile she hoped wasn’t too awkward – they never did have much to say to each other in the afterglow of banging each other’s brains out – she moved over to her dresser and brushed her hair out a bit, trying to get rid of her ‘freshly fucked’ look just in case Sango came back that night though she really wasn’t expecting the woman back until sometime tomorrow morning.

“If you really are hungry, since you probably skipped dinner, I do have more frozen chicken alfredo, if you want…” Kagome spoke up after a moment, trying to be cordial.

Her offer startled him, though the truth was he was kind of hungry.

“I suppose after such a strenuous workout on an empty stomach, I could probably stand to eat something.” he answered with a chuckle, trying to mask how touched he actual felt at the simple gesture since he usually bailed after their ‘sessions’ as quickly as possible.

Kagome was surprised that he accepted her offer, though she was also mildly surprised at herself for having made it in the first place, and heading out into the kitchen she tried to hide the faint smile that threatened to sprout on her face. She couldn’t risk having him think she actually enjoyed his company, after all.

Inuyasha stayed quiet as he followed after her into the kitchen, leaning against the living room side of the kitchen counter while she retrieved the desired microwaveable entrée from her freezer and placed it in said heating device. She was doing her best to help the microwave cook faster by watching the seconds as they counted down on its clock when Inuyasha’s cell phone going off in his pocket caused both of them to jump in surprise.

As Inuyasha answered his phone after a cursory glance at the screen had him raising an eyebrow in surprised recognition, revealing he knew the caller but had not been expecting their call, Kagome shifted her eyes back, not to the microwave’s timer still counting down his food, but to the digital clock on the conventional oven below it. What the hell was anybody doing calling him at this time of night? And who the hell was calling him in the first place?! She hadn’t missed the look he’d given his phone.

Calm down, Kagome, don’t let him smell your jealousy…inu-youkai, remember? she told herself, taking slow, calming breaths through her nose. He wasn’t her boyfriend and she had absolutely no right to be jealous. Besides, she was sure it was something innocent…right?  

“Yes?” Inuyasha had answered his phone in the meantime, not immediately aware of Kagome’s growing distress, as she could not hear the other side of the conversation with her limited human ears and quickly began jumping to wrong conclusions.

“Hey, Inuyasha, it’s me…Rin…” his sister-in-law greeted in a weird tone of voice, causing the hanyou to roll his eyes, grateful she couldn’t see it.

“I know that, Rin.” he answered with a hint of a sigh; he did have her name in his phone, after all.

“Oh yeah, duh.” she acknowledged with a nervous chuckle, not yet getting to the point of her call, though she couldn’t hide the fact that something was bothering her.

“Are you okay?” he asked her then, his tone of voice immediately showing his concern. He too glanced at the clock, his eyes not even meeting Kagome’s for the briefest of seconds as he did so. “You never call me this late at night.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, it’s just these silly hormones of mine, and you’re the closest thing I have to a human friend, so…”

She let her words trail off there, and he cringed, his ears flattening to his head. He was not a human, damn it! But he did feel sorry for his brother’s wife; she’d always been a bit of a recluse, orphaned with no living family members at all that anyone knew of, and marrying into a mostly pure inu-youkai family had definitely destroyed whatever minor human acquaintanceships she’d had. Not because his family was cruel towards humans, obviously, since the men of his family kept marrying them, but they were just so powerful as daiyoukai went that their very demonic auras freaked most humans out. Sesshoumaru had given Rin’s friends the creeps, to put it mildly, and so they’d bailed. But now that she was pregnant, Rin’s rainbow of mood swings gave Sesshoumaru the creeps; the poor guy had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Rin tried her best to carry herself like a female inu-youkai, but she was human, and so somehow or another she’d ended up deciding that if she vented to Inuyasha then he could make her feel better where Sesshoumaru couldn’t, and then she didn’t have to go off on her husband for, well, for being an insensitive jerk.

Heh, guess it runs in the family… he thought with a faint chuckle before growing serious.

Sighing again, Inuyasha looked defeated, completely unaware of Kagome’s scrutinizing gaze as he shook his head to himself. Sure, okay, he was half human, but he was still a guy and he hardly thought he was qualified to deal with overly emotional, breeding human wenches. But…he did care for his sister-in-law, and so he would do his best to be there for her however she needed him. That was all he could do, and Rin loved him for it.

“Start at the beginning.” he said then, nodding to himself or occasionally saying ‘Uh-huh’ aloud when appropriate as she immediately launched into the tale of the latest thing Sesshoumaru had unintentionally said or done to hurt her feelings.

“Dinner’s ready!” Kagome spoke up with a falsely chipper edge to her voice as she placed his ready meal in front of him on the counter, pulling Inuyasha out of his daze to glance her way in mild contemplation. What was with her?

Rin heard Kagome too, as had been the miko’s intention, and interrupting herself mid-story she asked, “Who was that?” in an innocent, curious tone of voice, knowing her brother-in-law’s roommate was a guy. That had definitely been a woman’s voice.

Glancing nervously in Kagome’s direction because he wasn’t sure how the miko would take to being referred to as such, Inuyasha cleared his throat and somewhat hesitantly answered, “Oh, um…she’s a…she’s just a friend.”

He could not tell Rin he was at his booty call’s house! Rin knew absolutely nothing about Kagome, she didn’t even know the miko existed, plus she was under the impression that he was single, so he could hardly tell Rin that Kagome was his girlfriend. That would only trigger a million questions he wouldn’t want to answer, not to mention how the miko would react to being called that. They had a silent agreement that they were fuck buddies and nothing more. Hopefully she wouldn’t take offense to him calling her a friend, though that word was also sort of phone code, at times, for what you called somebody you didn’t want to address another way for one reason or another. It didn’t necessarily mean they were really your friend.

Unfortunately, Rin seemed to pick up on the fact that the woman was not just a friend, herself, from the way he’d cleared his throat first, and she immediately gushed out with, “Oh my God, I’m sorry! I didn’t even think you might be entertaining right now. God! I can be so stupid! Stupid freakin’ idiot! Why am I such a bitch?! God! I don’t-”

Inuyasha pulled the phone away from his head for a second at her self-belittling tirade; even with the earpiece down at his temple and away from where his ears actually were, she could still squeal too loudly for the sensitive appendages at times, especially when she hit those high notes.

Kagome could faintly hear her ranting as unrecognizable screaming, managing to just catch the word ‘bitch’ before he got back on the phone and shushed her.

“Rin! Rin, calm down, you’re overreacting. It’s not what you think. Everything’s fine, just tell me why you called.”

Sniffling, Rin hesitantly complied and got back to her tale. Inuyasha growled low in his throat as she finally got to the point, realizing she actually did have one. His brother could be such a thoughtless bastard at times. Rin had been looking through the family photo album and had compared her current ‘fat cow’ appearance – her words – to how breathtakingly beautiful Sesshoumaru’s mother had looked while pregnant with him. Though Inuyasha knew his brother hadn’t meant anything hurtful by saying that naturally, as an inu-youkai, his mother’s perfection would not be affected by childbearing the way a human’s body could change, what that idiot should have said was something along the lines of how gorgeous Rin was in his eyes, and that the fact that she was carrying his pup only made her look all the more radiant; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, blah blah blah. Reluctantly, Inuyasha admitted to himself that maybe being half human actually did help him understand Rin better after all, but now she was crying, and the one thing he absolutely could not stand was crying women. Not in an angry way, but in a nervous wreck kind of way. He just had absolutely no idea how to handle them.

“Shhhh, Rin, please don’t cry. I think you’re beautiful.” he tried desperately, his eyes growing comically wide with panic.

Meeting Kagome’s gaze as if silently begging her to rescue him, he mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry’ with a horribly guilty face as it finally dawned on him how utterly rude it was of him to be so fully engaged in his phone call while she’d been trying to be nice by inviting him to stay a bit longer to have dinner. The look in Kagome’s eyes gave him pause, though. She didn’t look pissed at his thoughtlessness. Rather, she looked completely distraught and almost on the verge of tears herself. So much for the idea that, as a human woman, maybe she could relate better to Rin and help him calm her down. He had just been about to push the mute button on his phone and give Kagome the briefest of rundowns on his situation with the offer of a temporary truce with regard to their love/hate relationship if she could just please get Rin to calm down, and now she was crying too. Oh sure, they hadn’t fallen yet, but he could smell her tears all the same. Her back was to him now, as she hand washed a glass she didn’t need to hand wash, not with the dishwasher visible right there in the cabinet beside the sink.

What the hell? Is this ‘gang up on Inuyasha with tears’ day?

Things usually happened in threes, so he prayed that Sango would not suddenly come barging through the door in tears because of something hopelessly stupid the houshi had said or done.

One disaster at a time.

“Rin, listen to me, everyone in my family is a bunch of idiots, including me, all right? But you’re gorgeous, no matter what my bastard of a brother leads you to believe. Don’t make me get you one of those cheesy t-shirts that says ‘I’m not fat, I’m pregnant’ because I will, I will...” he stressed, relieved when she giggled a bit. “Look, if we all thought that inu-youkai females were really better than human females, then what the hell are we all doing with humans?” She giggled again. “You should know better than to compare yourself to his mother, she’s a bitch, in more ways than one. Why do you think our father divorced her ass? So just…don’t worry about it, all right? You’re perfect just the way you are, and I for one wouldn’t want you any other way.”

“Thanks, Inuyasha, you always know just what to say to cheer me up.”

He grinned a bit, “That’s my job, wench.”

She giggled again at his nickname for her, and then bidding him a good night she hung up.

Now on to disaster number two.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket, Inuyasha sighed in exasperation at the way Kagome was clearly avoiding looking in his direction, and taking a bite of his still kind of warm chicken alfredo, he said, “This is good, thanks.”

“Uh-huh.” she answered, wiping off the back counter. He rolled his eyes.

“Look, I’m sorry about that phone call. I know it was rude. I just-”

“You know, it’s fine, you don’t need to explain.” she interrupted, turning to glance his way for a second before deciding the inside of the microwave probably hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

There was no way he could ignore the look of pain that had been in her eyes as his had met hers for the briefest of seconds.

What gives?

Quickly deciding he’d done enough thinking like a human man for one night he took a long, hard sniff in her direction, not bothering with trying to conceal the fact that he was scenting her, and besides the spike in panic he immediately detected from Kagome’s realization that he was scenting her, there was also an almost overwhelming sense of…betrayal?

What the hell?

Kagome felt betrayed? Because he’d ignored her dinner for a moment in order to talk to his sister-in-law? And then it hit him like a ton of bricks. Sniffing in her direction again, just to be sure he was sure, it was all there; jealousy, hurt, resignation…

“Son-of-a-bitch…” he mumbled, chuckling a bit to himself both at the unintentional double meaning of that expression, though it technically wasn’t applicable in his particular case, as well as just finding humor in the entire situation.

Kagome ignored his mumbled curse and subsequent chuckle, of course, not caring if he was laughing at her and figuring he had a right to, for the complete and total moron she’d been this whole time, falling in love with him when he was a no good, low down, two-timing dog. If he thought she was going to continue to spread her legs for him when he had a fucking family on the side then he had another think coming! For Sango and Miroku to not know anything about this Rin person she had to be just another casual fling, in a way, but if she was pregnant and calling Inuyasha at all hours of the night, and getting upset with him for being in the company of another woman whom he had to lie about and pretend she was only a friend, then Rin was obviously a more important person to him in his life, baby-mama or no.  

“Kagome…”

Go to hell… she hissed in her mind, outwardly ignoring him as she continued to rant to herself. So okay, I’m not his girlfriend, and maybe Rin isn’t technically his girlfriend, either, but that doesn’t mean he can just go behind both of our backs and-

“Kagome, Rin is my sister-in-law.” Inuyasha stated then, causing the miko’s spiraling thoughts to come to a screeching halt.

“What?” she asked timidly as she turned around to face him, a bizarre mix of self-ridicule and hope in her eyes.

“Yeah…” he answered, sighing again and raising his right hand to rub at the back of his head a bit awkwardly. “I guess…I guess it’s really my fault, for the misunderstanding, since I never really delved into my family with you all that much. We don’t really spend a lot of time talking, do we?” he chuckled sheepishly.

“That’s not what our relationship is about.” she answered in a tone meant to imply it wasn’t his fault, that it wasn’t his responsibility to tell her about his family, trying to salvage what little dignity she had left. Her words would have stung him, if it weren’t for the new and different touch of hurt he could detect in her own scent as she spoke them.

The miko had gone and gotten herself all worked up, and now there was just no putting a cap on her emotions; it was late, she was tired, and everything she’d been keeping bottled up for the last couple of years was on the verge of spilling over.

Inuyasha silently thanked his brother for being an idiot, because if it hadn’t been for Rin’s impromptu phone call then he and Kagome would’ve continued on living a lie for who knew how much longer, maybe even forever. He couldn’t say for certain that Kagome wouldn’t have eventually decided to confess her feelings to him, but he did know that he for one certainly never would have ever confessed such a thing without her admittance first, for fear of scaring her off, of ruining what they had – which was undoubtedly the same fear that had been holding her back. He rolled his eyes again. But now that her scent had betrayed her – the only true betrayal that had happened here tonight – he would not keep his newfound knowledge a secret from her, nor would he keep her in the dark about his own feelings.

Baby steps, though. He wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, no matter what he knew he knew thanks to his demonic sense of smell.

“I’m still sorry, though, for the misunderstanding. I didn’t realize at first how my half of the conversation could be taken since you couldn’t hear anything Rin was saying.”

Kagome squared her shoulders a bit; she didn’t need his pity.

“I heard her call me a bitch.” she decided to point out then, hands on her hips.

He just shook his head, chuckling again a little before arguing, “She was calling herself a bitch, for not thinking I might be otherwise…engaged…and just up and calling me out of the blue.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you told her I was ‘just a friend’?” Kagome asked, lifting her hands from her hips to do air quotes as she said that part.

Inuyasha laughed a bit louder at that one, his eyes genuinely amused as he told her completely honestly, “It would’ve triggered way too many questions with her if I’d told her you were my girlfriend, plus I thought you might just flip out on me.”

Kagome paused for a moment at that one. He’d considered calling her his girlfriend but had decided not to because of questions Rin would’ve asked him, and because of how she might have reacted? Did that mean that he, by himself, didn’t mind the idea of using such a term?

Inuyasha smirked as he saw the wheels turning behind her eyes; Kagome had fortunately taken what he’d said in the direction he’d wanted her to.

“I didn’t mean to make you jealous.” he admitted then, his smirk only growing wider as she blushed at being called out on it. Then he barked out a laugh at his own idiocy, and said “God, what you must have thought! Here I am banging you on occasion when I’ve got a pregnant woman hidden somewhere?” He shook his head. “And a woman who’s close enough to my family for my brother to have said something that upset her, no less.”

He looked Kagome in the eyes then, and asked her with all seriousness, “Kagome, would you like to meet my brother?”

Her jaw dropped, and for once, she was honestly speechless. He couldn’t be serious! He wanted to introduce his married brother to his… What was she, anyway? Did people still use the term concubine? She supposed the term mistress might be appropriate, though most people usually associated that term with women who were sleeping with married or otherwise involved men, and Inuyasha was thankfully not having an affair with her, she’d just learned with a tremendous wave of relief. But still, that didn’t make her his girlfriend, did it?

“I don’t think that would be appropriate.” she finally answered, taking his barely touched chicken without another word and sticking it back in the microwave to heat back up for him.

“That wasn’t what I asked you, though.” he countered, making no comment of her reheating his dinner although the seemingly reflexive action had not gone unnoticed.

“Just let it go.”

“Why?” he stressed, sensing she was about ready to boil over and trying to push her that final step of the way.

“You know why.” she answered defiantly, turning back around to stare at the microwave again.

“I think I know a whole lot more than you wanted me to know.” he hinted.

“Goodie for you.”

“Kagome-”

“No! Drop it.” she interrupted.

“No, I won’t drop it!” he argued hotly, raising his voice a bit though only to agitate her. “Why wouldn’t it be appropriate for you to meet my brother?”

“Because you don’t introduce family to the whore you fuck on the weekends!” she finally shouted, spinning back around to glare at him harshly, tear tracks running down both of her cheeks.

His eyes softened, for once not feeling flustered in the presence of a crying woman as he came around the counter to pull her into his arms.

She collapsed into his embrace, once again clutching at his shirt in duel fistfuls of cotton though for an entirely different reason than earlier that evening as she buried her face in his shoulder and cried, his arms wrapped tenderly around her as he stroked her hair with his right hand.

“And here all this time I thought I was your whore…” he murmured quietly, smiling a bit when she chuckled faintly. “You love me, don’t you?” he asked her point blank, and he felt the way she stiffened in his arms, though he knew that at that point in her emotional breakdown she wouldn’t lie to him. There wasn’t any point in lying; her feelings for him were obvious and she knew it.

“Yes…” she whispered after a sniffle, and then she tried to pull back and out of his embrace.

He wouldn’t let her budge, his arms around her body becoming unmovable objects, even as she tried to struggle as a bit of defiant anger returned to her spirit, as she began getting mad at him for forcing her to admit her feelings instead of allowing her the dignity of allowing them both to continue pretending. Finding out the woman he’d been talking to had been his brother’s wife and that she was pregnant with his brother’s baby, Kagome had been relieved, and more than willing to continue on with their relationship, such as it was, for however much longer he’d have her. Damn him for making her reveal what was in her heart!

“I love you, too.” he murmured tenderly then, and her struggling immediately ceased.

“Wha…what?” she asked faintly, as if not daring to hope in case she’d heard him wrong.

He pulled back a little himself then, holding her at arm’s length so that he could look her in the eyes.

“I don’t know when it happened.” he admitted. “I really had pretty much hated your guts in high school.”

She couldn’t help laughing at that since she’d felt the same way.

“But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you, Kagome.” he confessed, and feeling it was appropriate, he pulled her into a tender kiss, which she immediately responded to.

They kept the kiss gentle and sweet; there would not be a repeat of earlier activities, at least not on that night.

The microwave dinging that his dinner was ready, again, pulled them both out of the kiss and he offered her a crooked grin before taking the cardboard tray out of the microwave himself and setting it down on the counter. Reaching for his fork, he dug in, taking another few bites before offering one to Kagome; a symbolic peace offering.

Raising an eyebrow at him, she leaned forward and ate the bit of chicken off of the fork he held, and then she said, “Maybe I could meet your brother after all.”

He nodded in approval, letting her know they were both definitely on the same page, and then sighing a bit, he admitted, “Though, of course, we’ve got other issues to deal with, first.”

She knew exactly what he was referring to.

“Sango and Miroku.”

His ears lowered a bit as he nodded.

“However you think we should handle it, I’ll follow your lead.”

Weighing the pros and cons back and forth while he finished eating, it was eventually decided that they would try to gradually work up not ‘hating’ each other any more in public, so that Sango and Miroku could each think they’d gradually come around, and then they could ‘start dating’ and eventually become boyfriend and girlfriend. After they were officially together, and all four of them could openly get along as one big happy family of friends, then Kagome and Inuyasha would see about biting the bullet and confessing the truth, if the moment ever felt right. Right now, they were both too afraid that Sango and Miroku would skin them alive for all the hell they’d put them through!

“I guess that means I should get going, then, even though Sango’ll probably be staying with the bouzu until after he’s had a chance to make her breakfast in bed.” Inuyasha said, to which Kagome, reluctantly, agreed.

After taking a quick moment to use his sense of smell to track down and collect for Kagome all of her missing buttons, an act which had the miko laughing at the sheepish way he apologized for ruining her shirt, said miko then tweaked an ear in reprimand and told him he had better not start thinking he had to suddenly be more gentle with her during their love making from there on out. She liked how he could be a literal monster between the sheets and didn’t want him to stop.

Smirking then, a crooked grin that had one of his fangs popping out from behind his lips, Inuyasha leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Until next time, then.” and then he was gone, leaving a shuddering Kagome in his wake.

“Until next time.” she repeated, a faint whisper, as she closed and locked the front door long after he was gone from sight.

Smirking to herself after a moment, Kagome thought that for Sango and Miroku’s upcoming anniversary she would surprise the happy couple by sending them on a cruise. Oh what she could do with that hanyou if given five straight days.