Sweet dreams are made of this,

Who am I to disagree?

I travel the world and the seven seas,

Everybody's looking for something.

- The Eurythmics

When Kagome woke, she was warm for once. She could feel the sunlight on the blankets that covered her. She could feel arms around her.

… Arms around her.

She threw herself into a sitting position and looked down at the spot next to her, wondering what the hell she'd done under the influence of alcohol. She recalled nothing of the night before - and squeaked when she saw Inuyasha. Inuyasha blinked rapidly to disperse sleep, looking up at her. As he did it, she remembered him with black hair - she remembered him taking it off, standing at her doorstep - she remembered his black hoodie - which was now replaced by clothes she knew better than anything else.

Inuyasha lay in her bed, looking up at her with beautiful golden eyes. His bangs had been left untouched, while the rest of his hair was now clipped so that it only draped to his shoulders. His face was thinner, and he bore a little bit more resemblance to Sesshomaru now.

Sesshomaru. Rin. Mortal Rin.

Memories of her friends rushed back to her. Sango and Miroku were gone, and Rin… She wondered what had taken place after she'd left.

A mewl came from beside her bed, and she looked down to find Kirara, whose eyes were trained on Kagome. Kagome smiled, but an abrupt thought of Sango being happy to see her, as well, hit her. She sobbed. Kirara jumped up on the bed, mewling again, crawling into Kagome's lap. Inuyasha sat up, gently grabbing her and pulling her closer to him.

"They were happy, Kagome. They missed you, but they were happy. I last saw Shippo about two hundred years ago in Thailand," he tried to console her, rubbing her arm gently through her sleeve.

"You've been to Thailand?" she asked reflexively.

The loneliness she had endured until now had made Kagome tough. She knew this would happen if Inuyasha were to seek her out like he'd said he would. The pain from wishing she could have seen them again remained, but the habitual expectation of seeing them when she saw Inuyasha faded into nothing. She was nothing if not realistic. She pet Kirara gently, scratching her ever so slightly behind delicate little ears. She'd missed Inuyasha's response if he'd made one, too lost in the emotions coursing through her.

"Inuyasha?" Kagome inquired after a few minutes of silence.

"Yes?"

Kagome couldn't get over how mature his tone of voice had become, and how his speech had improved. "What did we do last night?" She sounded nervous, even to herself. She didn't want him to think that it was normal for her to wake up next to someone, wondering what she'd done the night before, when it was the very opposite. She woke up next to no one, and remembered everything that had happened the night before.

"You fell asleep. I think my appearance was a little much for you…" he smiled grimly.

Kagome's eyes widened at the idea that she'd actually collapsed. Her cheeks went a little bit rosy with embarrassment.

"I drink every Friday night… I do the same thing every week, so that I don't have time to think. I work… on a schedule." She was thankful that he'd come on a Friday, so that she'd have the weekend to spend talking to him. The idea that he was here to stay was too good, so she didn't allow herself to consider it a possibility yet. It was all too likely that he'd just come to tell her to stop waiting for him.

"Have you been waiting for me?" He asked softly, as though in tune to her thoughts. She didn't dare look at him, so she stared at her fingers, entwined in Kirara's fur.

"I… did not expect you to come. But I guess you could say I have been waiting for you. I thought… because you didn't come after I'd graduated high school, that you had died. It was too much for me to handle."

Inuyasha reached up to gently tilt her chin his direction. His ears quirked to each side at different times, and then both flicked forward at the same time, focusing on her breathing, and she knew it.

"I've been looking. I spent some time in England… I lost track of where the well was. I was away for a good hundred years. When I came back, it was completely different… I've been with Sesshomaru in England. The culture there is older. I've been training, reading… learning."

Kagome's face went from worried to oddly, slightly surprised… And more worried.

"What's bothering you, Kagome?"

Her eyebrows pulled tighter before she responded. "Have you been with anyone else?" she whispered.

Inuyasha gripped her hand. "No… No one else is you. I was made for you. I've been to every continent, though. I was working on going to every country when I came back. I was in the western regions of Japan… I made the mistake of not making any sort of note of where the well was on any map. I'd been away for about a century and a half. This is just a sprawling metropolis now. I had no idea.

"Have - have you been with anyone? You should be… twenty-two now, it's been five years since you last saw me."

Kagome's face was relaxed now. "Nope," she said calmly. "I've been keeping busy, busy, busy."

Inuyasha's eyebrows betrayed his complete confusion for a moment before he asked. "Is that why your scent leads to the office building?" he asked finally.

Kagome nodded. She looked down at him for a moment before she'd understood what he'd said earlier, about having saved himself for her. Her eyebrows pulled together again.

"You mean - you plan to stay with me?" she asked incredulously.

"I thought we could stay with each other," he smiled slightly. "Sesshomaru has changed. So has Rin, she'll be happy to see you again, they've been attacking that pocket telephone with their radio signals once a week for the last two years -" he stopped once he comprehended her hugely confused expression.

"Rin is - alive?"

"It is only something mates can share… If Sesshomaru were to die, Rin would die within hours of his passing."

"You can do that - ?"

His expression became guilty for a moment. This wasn't how he wanted to tell her.

"If - if I were to let the demon take over… I haven't allowed that in more than two hundred years. It would be dangerous. I don't know if I can trust myself, Sesshomaru is better balanced, he's learned how to control it almost precisely."

Kagome stared at him in his ability to talk about it so openly. She looked down at herself and flushed, wondering if he'd thought about this when he thought about that, like she had, all of those broken, fragmented fantasies -

She flinched away. This was much, much too fast. She'd only woken up fifteen minutes before.

Fifteen minutes.

Kagome jerked around and looked at the clock on her bedside table. She'd slept until nine. That was two hours over the usual allowance of time. But she looked back at him, in all of his perfection, and she felt it again. Unwanted heat, betraying her.

"It… seems that you still want me, the same way I want you," he said softly.

She threw her arm over her stomach and she swallowed hard. "You can smell it?" she asked bluntly.

"Yes," he said in an even softer tone. He sat up finally, sweeping some of her hair behind her shoulder and gently kissing her jawbone. "We do not need to rush. Take time. And if you want me gone, I stay away," he said gently against her ear. He smiled a little bit and pulled away. "I'll make breakfast," he announced, swiftly, yet silently and elegantly swinging out of bed.

Kagome was left breathless from the touch of his lips, and she knew that he knew that it had made the heat increase. She'd had the momentary urge to expose her neck to him. He was just about to leave her bedroom, and she could see that he was headed towards the kitchen. "Don't ever leave me."

Inuyasha stopped and spun on the ball of his foot to face her. "I'm only making breakfast," he said with a smile. He got his desired reaction when Kagome put her face in her hands, smiling and giggling slightly.

However, when he turned, his expression was suddenly serious. "Don't ever leave me again," he said under his breath as he padded barefoot in the direction of the kitchen.

Kagome caught the silhouette of a sword on her kitchen counter. The Tessaiga! I've missed it, she thought as she got up slowly to avoid a hangover rush of dizziness. Successfully diverted, she thought to herself as she trotted - probably unwisely - towards the kitchen counter, which was stationed directly across the apartment from her bedroom door. All she had to do was cross the small living room.

Tucking her hair behind her ears and noting a chip in her purple nail polish, Kagome picked the Tessaiga up gently by the hilt and unsheathed it in a swift movement. It made a singing sound as it slid out of its lacquered wood saya. She admired it and touched the scuffed metal, running her fingers down its flat side, remembering what good times she'd had with the sword in company. Inuyasha had turned to look at her, staring at her as she admired it.

She looked up and made eye contact with him, feeling her heart thud just a little bit harder as she looked into his now-adult face. Slowly, he walked to the other side of the counter where she was and held his hand out for the hilt of his sword. He didn't ask for the saya. He was going to show her the Fang, which he himself had not seen in months. He smiled as she moved to hand it to him. Their fingers touched in the exchange of the sword, and the moment was likely the most intimate they had ever shared. Kagome's eyes widened and his expression became devious as he took the hilt from her hands gently. Moving so that he wouldn't hit anything, he surged his demonic energy toward the sword.

It flared like a match catching fire. There was the Fang, dwarfing Kagome's worn leather couch in comparison. She smiled graciously at the blade, happy that it and its master had made it back to her.

And then it hit her. She didn't have to pretend that he'd never existed to tear her apart with his absence anymore. She gasped and looked away from the sword, searching for Inuyasha's eyes with her own. As soon as they met, his carefully exuded control broke. He dropped the Tessaiga, which landed on the floor in a flare and a surprisingly loud clatter on the thin carpet. They broke towards each other, his hands for her waist, her hands for his head -

Their lips met. It was like the last five hundred - or five - years just melted away as Kagome tangled her fingers in his shortened hair. She suddenly decided that she liked his hair that way, and liked almost anything he could do at any time better than she liked what it had been like without him.

He was the only one in the tangle of body and emotion that was trying to control themselves, and he knew that she was out of her mind completely and would regret it if anything happened. She made it a lot harder when she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him down on top of her on the couch.

He felt himself against her warmth - the scents were driving him almost completely out of it. He found himself grinding his hips into her, gripping the back of the couch to remind himself that he mustn't allow it to go too far - not far enough, said the youkai in his mind.

He nearly tore himself apart. The demon was surfacing.

It wouldn't allow him to break away. He was going to force her -

Disgust tore it apart and he regained control of himself, slowing the kissing against her lips until he could break away. He gasped and pulled himself away from her, breathing heavily and gripping the arm of the couch behind him. Kagome looked at him with such frightful worry that he almost trusted himself to get close to her again to comfort her.

"Kagome," he panted, gripping his stomach. She felt as though she'd been shocked as she heard her name escape his lips. "Think about what you're doing next time, please?" he looked away towards the curtained window in the back of the room.

She knew she'd screwed up. "I'm… I'm sorry, I…" her face flushed with embarrassment and she got up and went to her bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her.

He could hear her rustling around in the closet connected to the bathroom. She was getting dressed, hopefully in something more substantial than a skirt.

While she was gone, he got up and picked the Tessaiga up, sheathing it quickly and wrapping it back up. When he'd methodically tied the bag that he'd procured over the last three hundred years, he set it down next to his backpack on the kitchen counter and walked back to the couch to sit down and stare at the blank television screen. If he'd been younger, he would have been completely bewildered at what had happened. However, he was stoic and calm, trying to contemplate the idea that the future he'd so imagined with her was coming true.

After a few minutes, Kagome came back into the living room and sat down next to him.

"I was a fool," she whispered. When he looked to the side, he was happy to see her wearing black tights and a white shirt that hung from her slim frame in gentle drapes.

"I lost control and… I could have ended up forcing you into something you didn't want to do," he said softly.

"It wouldn't have been forced. I just would have been terrified afterwards."

His head snapped up and he looked at her face. "I won't leave you, Kagome. Never. I was made for you. The way we just fit together makes it that much more real…"

Kagome fixed her face forward and closed her eyes before she grasped for his hand. She was ready for everything. What she'd just felt was the informal introduction - there was no turning back. She smiled at the thought. Something in her spirit had changed. Something was latched onto him now.

"Do you want to stay here?" she asked him.

"I want to be with you, wherever you are," he responded softly.

Kagome smiled as tears escaped from under her closed lids.

"Don't cry, honey, I'm sorry -" he began, wiping the tears away from her cheeks gently before she softly interrupted.

"That's not it, Inuyasha. I've been waiting for this. This is what I've been waiting on, each day, waking up and going to work, acting like everything was fine until you showed up yesterday," I can't believe that was just last night. Her chestnut-brown eyes opened to look into his before she came close to his face. She didn't know how he could not be sure if he'd waited five hundred years to bind himself to her, but she had to make sure that he'd thought this through.

"You want this, then?" he asked, reaching a hand up and pulling on one fluffy ear. "For the rest of an immortal life?"

Kagome nodded as he asked. She continued to nod slowly for a few moments after he'd finished.

Inuyasha picked her up and brought her back to her bed. She looked at him as he crawled up next to her, putting a hand on the side of his neck. He shifted nervously before he spoke.

"Are you ready for sex?" he asked gently, avoiding her eyes. This was the shy hanyou that Kagome remembered.

Kagome blushed before she answered. She felt herself flush so deeply that she wanted to hide her face. Her tights suddenly felt too warm, and she uncrossed her legs.

"Maybe… with you," she whispered. She shut her eyes tightly and waited for his baited response.

"Kagome, I could hurt you… I know that the first time does hurt you in more ways than one. In order to claim… We must bite our mate's neck. Hard."

Kagome's mouth twitched slightly. She was surprised, because she liked that idea. Even with the pain, she wanted his mouth against her neck, his teeth to slide against her skin, to be scarred by him in an act of possessiveness -

She was torn out of her thoughts by a little bit of laughter. "You're a sick girl, Kagome," he chuckled softly, looking away towards the curtained bedroom window.

Kagome's eyes narrowed suspiciously and she moved to cover herself up with her comforter. He didn't stop her, but he did place his hand over her lower stomach just after she'd done it.

"I like the smell," he said, his voice soft with hunger. At this, Kagome tensed, though thoroughly enjoying what he was doing.

That was when her stomach decided to make itself apparent. His soft laughter picked up again and he got up. "We don't need to be doing this right now. We're both hungry," he said, lightly stepping out of the room to go back to the kitchen. Kagome benignly wondered where he'd learned how to cook, and how. Perhaps it was Kaede, she thought, getting up to slide her moccasin slippers on and gently padding behind him.

He made eggs sunny side up, cooked nearly perfectly. When they had both finished eating, he sat back in the bar stool that had been pushed up next to her kitchen counter and looked around the apartment. He ruffled his hair with his hand before turning to Kagome, who sat, staring at her plate with a troubled expression. She wasn't used to the world outside going by around her anymore. Usually she moved with the world, and its time. Weekends had been her bane, with no engagements to keep her busy for eight hours, she'd resorted to cleaning and perfecting the way her apartment looked in between useless outings to the mall she hardly bought anything at.

"You seem so troubled," he noted, leaning back towards the counter to rest his elbow on it.

"I usually spend my Saturdays cleaning. I'm just not used to… hanging out. Having fun," she explained. Since she'd thrown herself at him, she'd become uncomfortable with herself.

"We can clean, if that's what you want to do. But this place is more immaculate than the house in England," he said, smiling and leaning forward to rest his forearms on the countertop.

"You've changed so much, Inuyasha. You've become so much more mature."

His ears quirked and he leaned further towards her. His expression became slightly confused.

Kagome smiled finally. It broke like dawn over him. He smiled with relief at her lightened expression, reaching out for her hand on the counter as he did so.

"I haven't heard you say 'keh!' the entire time you've been here," she giggled.

"Keh," he said softly, but with none of the attitude he used to say it with. He smiled broader when she did, gripping his hand. He could still smell anticipation on her. He wondered if she was hoping that something would happen, or whether she would stop him if he acted on what their bodies were saying. He could feel his erection on his pants, and hoped it wasn't showing - he didn't want it to make her uncomfortable, or make her feel pressured.

"Kagome, I love you."

She breathed deep, and the words seemed to seep into her soul and ease her. She could feel something important coming on. "I love you, Inuyasha," she whispered before leaning towards him to kiss his lips gently.

Her movement surprised him. But he'd said that she loved him, the woman he'd waited for, for such a long, drawn out time. Her scent of anticipation grew, and he had the sudden, overwhelming feeling that he did not want to wait any longer.

He'd spent all of his seven hundred years but for about a year and a half without her. Without this woman, his very oxygen felt less genuine. He stood up, keeping their lips locked together, and picked her up. He moved with demonic speed and set her under him on the bed, deepening the kiss by licking her lips slightly. She moaned into the kiss and granted him access to her mouth. They explored each other's mouths, he thinking about how lovely she smelled, she revelling in the sensation of part of him being inside of her.

It was the moaning that made him feel like his control was breaking down. Instinctively, he pulled her hands away from her, holding them down on the mattress above her head with one hand as he quickly grabbed for her breasts. She didn't stop him, but moaned further into the kiss, trying to wrap her own tongue around his -

His control was splintering. Purple youkai marks inherited from his father stood out against his paling face, his eyes going completely white as he held off the transformation between human and demon. He realized with a pang that he needed to ask her - ask her if she was sure about this - and he couldn't. Because the demon was not allowing the hanyou to pull away from the kiss.

The trimmed claws lengthened to their natural, sharpened points as he pinned her to the bed. Kagome desperately broke away for air, and he took his chance as he moved to her neck. "Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked heavily. His voice was distorted. Deeper than it had been minutes before.

Kagome found it enthralling, and she throbbed and twitched for him. "Yes," she whispered huskily. Her eyelids were beginning to grow heavy, and relaxation into the act took her body as his lips touched her neck.

She moaned. It was the only way to express the feeling his lips to her throat gave her. It was so intimate that she wanted to rush things further, and not wait for him to pull their clothes off.

Luckily, the connection they had told him what she wanted him to do, because he quickly pulled her shirt over her head and buried his face in between her breasts. He groaned, lifting her up to unhook her bra and push her against the mattress again when she was free of it. His lips and tongue played at her nipples until he pulled himself off of her to admire her body. He looked down at her, barren from the waist up, and his eyes went from being red with blue irises to gold again. He looked down at her face with such love in his gaze that she wondered how he had been coping, just less than twenty four hours ago. She wondered how he'd nursed those emotions over the last five hundred years.

He lowered himself again and nipped at her left nipple, calmly, but generously, before kissing downward. She didn't comprehend his intentions from the fog in her mind. After reaching her hip bone, he stood up and pulled the Robe of the Fire Rat off. It landed on the floor in a small heap. He slid his yukata off of his shoulders, where it fell to hang around his waist, held up by his obi. She gasped at the perfection of his bare chest. He quickly put his hips between her legs and bowed to kiss her stomach again. He lingered around her waistband for a minute, kissing, nipping and licking to make sure she would be comfortable when he slid her tights down her legs. Thankful that her slippers had fallen off, he gently hooked two fingers on each side of her waistband and pulled her tights and panties off.

The unbridled scent hit his nose, making his head spin. As he pulled them down, she tried to hide herself from him - pushing her legs together, though her expression was relaxed. He finally got them off, he pulled her legs apart gently with one hand while kissing her hips again.

The scent got impossibly stronger, and he couldn't wait any more. He wanted her to be comfortable, but he had to taste her. He had to hear her cry his name.

That she did, when his tongue gently slid in between her folds. She gasped at the sensation, trying to force her eyes open. It failed, and she simply allowed him to do what he needed to do. What I need him to do, she thought as his tongue hit the most sensitive part of her and her body jolted involuntarily.

"Yes," she heard him hiss, before finding it again with his tongue. He rubbed the nub a little bit before cupping his lips over it to suck - and when he began, she buckled.

"I've always dreamed of this," she gasped, wrapping her legs around his head and holding onto his hair for dear life. Her back arched and she gave a soft cry, pleasure shocking through her entire body. He hummed slightly, and she nearly thrashed under the sensation.

He slipped a finger into her, causing her to shiver. She could feel it building under his ministrations, sucking and gently pressing a finger upward inside of her. She couldn't stop herself from saying things that she never thought she'd say to him. Not in a million years. "Inuyasha, don't stop, please," she begged. A few moments later, she felt herself throb, and he picked up his pace. It felt even better than it had a moment ago - something she didn't know to be a possibility.

"Oh!" she gasped, tightening her grip on him. Despite her holding on with all of her tortured strength, he broke away for just a moment.

"Come for me, Kagome," he said, pushing his mouth back against her and humming deeply this time.

That did it.

She tried to hold him closer than he already was. He kept his pace as she came, crying his name and moaning with release. The sensations that wracked through her amazed her - she'd never imagined anything so good. It didn't stop her from completely relaxing, accepting the pleasure like he'd commanded her to.

He was pleased, feeling her muscles tighten around her and her little, match-head sized nub contract and relax under his lips. Sensations like no other seemed to wrack her body for what must have been at least thirty blissfully intense seconds before she came down. When she did, her hands went to cover her mouth and she shivered as he pulled his fingers out of her.

She expected the next few moments to be awkward, but they were the opposite. He pushed her up on her side and wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissing the back of her shoulder. Tremors still wracked her little body, and it seemed to her that he understood that he could not go forward without giving her time to come down and become less sensitive. She could feel his erection, but the strange, new, mature Inuyasha did not push it. He only held her until she no longer shivered with aftershock.

"Do you want to keep going, honey?" he asked softly. Kagome revelled in the pleasure his voice gave her, nodding after a moment.

Inuyasha gently rose from the bed, gently pulling his obi loose and allowing his hakama and yukata to fall to the ground. Kagome's eyes lingered on his erection and she bit her lip as she watched him move closer. She hadn't been feeling terribly aroused until he went to touch her thighs, gently easing them apart as though they were gates. He looked at her with concern for a moment before he proceeded to put his hips between them.

"This is like human marriage, Kagome, but it can't be undone. Are you sure mine is the face you want to look at for the rest -"

Kagome's expression in her eyes stopped him from continuing his question as she nodded, biting her lip and looking down at his body again and again. She knew she couldn't get enough of looking at this, she knew that the feelings she had now would dull anyone else's love or care in comparison. She'd turned Hojo down for years because of Inuyasha. She'd lived the past five years desperately in love with him, never considering anyone else - living in her little one bedroom apartment with the ultimate privacy, not bothering to go to coffee shops or bookstores to meet another man. Those ideas sounded as ridiculous now as they had then; obscene, because the only one that could ever hold her tether was more than human. It was almost as though he'd captured and captivated her from that first time she'd seen him, the immature hanyou stuck to Goshinboku by an arrow that her previous incarnate had put into his chest. He was half man, half beast.

And she wouldn't want it any other way. The fact that they were about to bind themselves together forever was breathtaking. Not just she to him, but he to her as well.

Inuyasha saw the loving madness in her eyes and gently eased himself forward. He pressed his tip to her sex and his body tightened up. The youkai in him was rising up, telling him to go, go and claim her so that no others would touch her. Protect his heart with his bite, so that what happened with Kikyo would never happen again.

Fighting to keep himself calm, he slowly eased himself in, wincing as Kagome's little body tensed up and she covered her ample breasts with her thin little fingers. Feeling her barrier at the same time she felt it threatened, he went forward quickly, tearing through it. Tears of pain escaped the corners of her eyes, and he reached down to brush them away and calm her with his touch. He ran his hands down her shoulders and torso to ease her anxiety, while staying completely still inside of her, surprised at his ability to stay in his right mind. They stayed this way for a few minutes, before the walls in his mind finally broke down and he noticed her walls hugging him tightly. He'd blocked it for as long as he possibly could. The youkai rose its ugly head and turned his features again. He pulled away from her, and her expression was no longer painful.

"Go, Inuyasha," she said quietly. He was stunned by her voice, despite how often he'd heard it before.

He gripped her hips and pulled himself out, slowly pushing himself back in, fighting against her walls to get where he needed -

Instinct took over and Inuyasha thrust again, roughly. Kagome moaned, digging her short nails into his back. He growled in approval before resting his weight on his elbows, so as to not crush her.

Kagome's mind was gone. Each thrust made her want to cry out with pleasure, all of them seeming to touch something absolutely wonderful inside of her. She exposed the side of her neck to him, inviting him to bite - because she wanted it. She wanted him to claim her. She knew his youkai was changing her as they continued, her senses heightening with each passing moment. Her vision and sense of smell became sharper, her body's tingling became more apparent.

He needed release. Release into her, into his mate, into Kagome, his Kagome, who had somehow fallen in love with him, who somehow felt the same way he did. He gave in and thrust into her with abandon.

Kagome's gripped for any part of him that she could hold, writhing under his body. He felt her squeeze him, and let out a loud, guttural snarl before finally tumbling over the edge. Just as he did, he bit into the side of her neck, keeping his teeth there. His orgasm seemed to last a lifetime, and he couldn't believe how intense it was. As he finished, the youkai in him faded. It was sated. He'd pleased her, and his mark on her neck was puckered, red and bleeding. As his fangs receded, he gently sucked on the wound to make the pain ease.