AN: as promised a new chapter. Enjoy X
Chapter 4
"Inuyasha" she groaned, terrified by this open betrayal of her desire.
"Hush, my little dove, my sweet eyes, don't argue, don't think…"
Shuddering, the rigours sensitising her aching body, her hands crept up from her side and wound themselves about his neck. She gloated at the heat in his skin, the dampness that betrayed his passion, and slid her fingers into the small strand of black hair at the nape of his neck, stroking with a delicate touch as his tongue stabbed into the depths of her ear.
Another groan forced its way up her closed throat. She gasped for air and her hips began to move, slightly yet with inborn provocation in a rhythm as primitive and as old as male and female, coaxing, supplicating, promising all the delights of a forbidden paradise.
Inuyasha muttered something in French and those possessive hands slid the length of her back, pressing and urging, as his mouth opened over hers and he made himself master of her responses. He was braced and ready, the narrow hips and wide shoulders rigid with desire. When Kagome moved with sensuous grace against him she was responding to the explosive tension in his every muscle and sinew, and beneath his her mouth shaped a siren's smile, alluring, blindly offering the satiation of his hunger in the sweet heated depths of her body.
"Touch me" he ordered harshly. "I am mad for you; I want your hands to learn to know me again"
Her lashes fluttered up so that her eyes met the burning, devouring molten heat of his, and she ripped his shirt open, uncaring of the material. He was magnificent, tanned and smooth, skin like heated, oiled silk covering a muscular strength which should have terrified her. With a desperate little moan she pressed open-mouthed kisses to his shoulders and over the width of his chest, glorying in the clenching of the muscles beneath.
"My lovely one" he whispered, half laughing, half on a groan. "Ah, Kagome, give me the same delights I have offered you. I want to see your beautiful body, feel the beat of your heart against mine…"
The little dress slid easily over her shoulders and on to the floor and she was left in the teddy, so transparent and fragile that it was as though she had nothing on. Through the pale material her skin gleamed ivory gold, warm and beckoning and rich, her small breasts not needing the support of the silk.
"And how does this pretty thing come off?" Inuyasha asked deep in his throat, running a questing hand from her throat to the hard peak of one breast.
Kagome couldn't think. Her whole brain had turned into nothing more than a receptacle for the messages from her nerve ends, the incredible sweep of sensation through her body, the urgent, almost painful demands it imposed on her, the surge of hunger and delight that raced through every cell. She kissed the pulse in his throat, her own leaping in time, and sensuously delicately as a cat, licked a bead of sweat from his shoulder.
Somehow, she never knew how, the teddy was lowered to waist level, and his mouth moved to plunder the soft curves of her breast while one hand slid lower, and touched and pressed. Trembling, unable to speak, she clung to him with febrile passion, holding his head to her breast, shaking with need as the molten heat of his mouth enclosed the sensitive nub. Sensation pure as crystal, stabbed through her body transfixed her with rapture.
She must have moaned something because he lifted his head and smiled into her dazzled face and whispered. "Take it off, my hear, my siren"
And something in his face, something buried deep in the dilated gold of his eyes, perhaps a twist of the lips which had so sweetly suckled on her a moment ago, betrayed him.
She whispered. "You bastard!" and tried to stiffen her limbs to fight free.
No longer caressing, with the power of fulfilment in their fingertips, his hands turned cruel, tearing the remnants of the little teddy from her shrinking form, and when he had done that he demanded with vicious irony,
"Who won, do you think? Shall we say honours even?"
His eyes swept the length of her body. Deep in his chest his breath caught harshly; he still wanted her, but the clamour in his body was being subdued by that iron will, and after a moment he flung her away and said harshly, "Get into bed."
Shocked and icy cold, Kagome was shivering, her body raw with need. She stood staring numbly at him, and he swore beneath his breath and picked her up and dumped her on to the bed, dragging up the sheet to cover her as though he couldn't bare to see her.
The light snapped off; she heard the swish of the curtains being drawn free of the windows, a rustle as he removed the rest of his clothes, and then the side of the mattress dipped and for the first time in nine years she was sharing a bed.
Rigid as a board, hardly daring to breathe, she lay waiting for his onslaught, but he stayed strictly on his side and made no attempt to turn her way, and after long minutes she realised incredulously that he was not going to make love to her.
The whole tempestuous episode had been coldly, ruthlessly calculated. Inuyasha had wanted to show her that he could use the merciless attraction that existed between them to persuade her into doing anything, and having proved his point he was going to sleep. Once more she had seen the violence in him, the dark side of his nature which he was able to harness to his determination. It was this intense driving force which made him so brilliant a businessman- and so feared a man. He was never sidetracked; he had no self-indulgent weaknesses which got in the way of his aims. It was no wonder the business world regarded him and his brother in awe; no wonder his adversaries feared him, no wonder that governments treated them with respect.
As she lay stiffly beside him Kagome told herself that it would be fatal to believe he was invulnerable. He was just a man, not, perhaps, as other men, but not so very difficult, either. He had weaknesses, if only she could find them. And he had the devil's own nerve to treat her as though she were a lesser form of life.
I'll show you, she thought savagely, welcoming the anger with desperation, using it to wipe away the shame and the lingering ache of desire which corroded the fragile fabric of her composure.
But her anger only lasted a short time. She was not like him, able to put it on hold until she had chance to exorcise it.
Now, when she needed it, it ebbed away, leaving her with the acrid taste of apprehension in her mouth. He was a cruel swine, implacable in his need for revenge and he had shown her how he was going to make her pay for what he saw as her betrayal all those years ago. With her body and her pride, and of those two, it was her pride he wanted to humble most. The corrosive frustration which was even now eating into her nerves was only the start. He wanted her so hungry that she would do almost anything, surrender all that she had won, her independence, her self-possession, to satisfy her need for the sensual oblivion he held so tantalisingly just out of reach. And her blood ran cold, because she knew that when she was broken, he would laugh in her face and leave her.
That would be his revenge.
For long minutes she lay listening to his deep slow breathing, measuring it against the tender hush of the waves on the little beach below, and gradually realised that it was altogether too even, too deep. She remembered other nights when she had lain wakeful and bitter beside him; he had been a restless sleeper, turning as if that magnificent body and brain were never entirely at repose. His breathing had altered cadence quite often.
So unless he had managed to unlearn the habits of a lifetime, he too was lying awake in the quiet of the night.
Fiercely, angrily satisfied, the smile that widened her mouth was not pleasant. She toyed with the idea of making advances towards him, and then rejecting him as he had her, but common sense banished that idea very quickly. She had no illusions about Inuyasha; he would think nothing of taking her, and he would make sure that it happened in the most humiliating way possible. And when it came to humiliation, Inuyasha was an expert.
No, much better to leave him aching with the same need that stretched her body taut on a rack of unsatisfied desire.
Smiling sardonically, she drifted off to sleep.
And awoke to another beautiful day, the early sun still hidden behind the bulk of the island, but it s rays dancing over the glittering waters of the bay, gilding the mainland so that it glowed like some celestial country, the Promised Land, the land of lost delights.
Beside her Inuyasha muttered something in his old language, and groaned; she froze, and then turned slowly, her breath painful in her throat, to look at him.
Even the unconsciousness of sleep couldn't hide the predatory strength of his features. She was reminded of many paintings she had seen with their stark classical perfection of feature and form, strength allied to beauty. It was incredible that after so many years the type should still be so prevalent, for Inuyasha not alone in his stunning attractiveness. There were many others in his country that pleasured the eye as he did, although Kagome had seen none with the same combination of passion and control stamped in their features.
She held her breath as he turned his head slightly; his lashes flickered and he frowned, but only for a second until his face resumed the calm impersonality of sleep, and the breath hissed slowly from her lungs.
Lashes like fur, thick and innocent against the bronze of his cheek, concealing eyes which were sharply intelligent, yet the veneer of beauty could not hide the power and force of the man.
Remembering that he had always been amorous in the morning, Kagome slid slowly and stealthily from the bed. Remembering too, that in spite of the cut-throat world in which he functioned; Inuyasha had a Japanese appreciation for the simple things in life. Like dancing, and drinking, and eating, and the soft pleasures of a woman's body. Any woman provided she was beautiful.
And with the superb body and the brilliant mind and direct sensual appreciation went other attitudes, just as simple, just as primitive, and like vengefulness, and cruelty, and an icy, determined willpower.
Moving quietly as a cat, she went through into the dressing room and slid open a drawer in which she was sure she had seen some swimwear the day before. But she was wrong, for all that was in there were bikini pants.
Irritated, she jerked open other drawers, but some-thing niggled at the back of her mind, and she came back to the first drawer, pulling out a silk concoction, holding it at arm's length as she frowned over it.
Her mouth tightened as she finally caught the wisp of recollection. In those hectic months between her engagement and her marriage when she had been taken around the couture house shopping for clothes by Sesshoumaru's mother, they had bought exquisite underwear in a shop in Paris, and there she had seen just such items.
The saleswoman had been amused at her naïve interest, and shown them to her, smiling when Kimiko (Sesshoumaru's mother and Inuyasha sort-of adopted mother) had said "No, not for you Kagome"
"Why not?"
The two older women had exchanged glances, and it was the saleswoman who had explained. "These are to swim in" she said, hiding her amusement. "They are for men who need to be-" she had paused delicately, her black eyes snapping, "-Excited. Monsieur Takahashi is not such a one. At his age he will be ardent, eager".
Kagome had been embarrassed, as much by Kimiko's open amusement as by the flimsy little garment, which was probably why the incident had remained in her mind.
Now she knew exactly what there were for. For a long moment she stood with one of the pretty decadent things twisted in her hands, her mouth tight beneath bleak, suddenly tired eyes. She might just as well wear nothing. But as she put it back a sudden gleam arrested her misery. How often she had read that nakedness was not nearly as arousing as the erotic promise of it?
Wad it true? Her expression hardened; she didn't know why, but she would feel less humiliated naked than wearing a flimsy little cache-sexe chosen to underline Inuyasha's caustic contempt. She could carry off nakedness with pride.
For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she had the courage, wondering if he would see her nudity as an invitation and a surrender, but pride stiffened her shoulders. He was extremely perceptive; he would know what she was doing, and her resistance would make her feel better.
Defiantly she tiptoed into his bathroom and slid into the robe behind the door, collected a towel, then crept out of the house and made her way through the wet dew to the beach. Once there she walked across the warming crispness of sand to the shade of one of the tall trees, standing into protection while she wondered if she had been incredibly stupid. Perhaps it would be better to go back to the house…
But the sea gleamed an invitation, and why should she creep around like a mouse hunted by a cat? Her shoulders lifted. Moving with conscious grace, she draped both the towel and the robe over a convenient twig and stepped out of the shade to run down through the glorious gold and blue morning.
The sand was damp beneath her feet; she welcomed the shock of the water with pleasure, because it stopped the forbidden stirrings of her body.
Swimming naked was a sheer delight, a sybaritic yielding to all that was unfettered and free in her nature. Normally she would have revelled in the flow of water over her limbs and the sleek pale skin of her body, but as she swam lazily across the bay she was soon lost in angry speculation about Inuyasha's motives. Was he going to taunt her again and again with her weakness where he was concerned? It seemed likely, and she respected his willpower enough to realise that he would be able to control his own desires with a ruthless rein while using his sexuality to force her capitulation.
She dived to the sandy bottom, her eyes mutinous as she scooped up a shell. No, she was damned if she was going to submit to that kind of emotional terrorism. If he wanted to play dirty she could too. How would he respond if instead of fighting him she deliberately succumbed, and used all her allure to get him into bed?
It would be a difficult part for her to play, that of temptress. But at least, if she did, his plan would backfire, especially if he weakened and they ended up making love.
The shell was deceptively fragile, a semi-circle of pale gold mother-of-pearl, translucent and pure. Kagome held it cupped in her fingers, watching the opalescent play of sunlight on its crinkled surface; her jaw set and she clenched her hand, opening it just before the fine pretty thing cut the skin.
A movement on shore snapped her head up. Inuyasha was coming down the path, the sun playing over his body with the complacent caress of a lover. He wore brief black trunks and had a towel slung over his shoulder. For a moment Kagome's breath was stifled in her lungs; he looked like one of the gods on his way to dally with a Nereid. Her eyes swung reluctantly back to the frail glowing shell in her hand and she firmed her mouth, her mind made up.
So be it. If he was looking forward to seducing a reluctant wife, she would be far from reluctant. She would aspire to a worldliness she knew she would never attain; she would be flirtatious and cheerfully amorous, and she would make it quite clear that when he went she would return to her life with Miroku without a pang.
If that didn't infuriate him and destroy his pleasure in his schemes, she had forgotten what the man was like!
Her hand opened. She dropped the shell and dived under the water again, summoning as much composure as she could, and trying hard to ignore the nasty little voice that whispered that no one played games with Inuyasha Takahashi- especially after the first one.
If his plans were proceeding nicely he wasn't revealing it. The sunlight played across a face as impassive as a statue's, picking out the arrogant strength of line and plane. Kagome trod water as he walked into the sea, watched gravely as he dived beneath the water to emerge very close to her. He didn't look astonished at her cheerful greeting, although his eyes narrowed momentarily; the sun gleamed on his head as he responded formally, "Good morning. You slept well"
"Like a log" she said blithely, adding "You looked very peaceful. Have you been overworking lately?"
Yes, he didn't like to think that she had watched him in his sleep. Some unknown emotion glittered beneath his lids, but he answered. "A little. I tried to get as much done as possible so that there would be little to intrude on this second honeymoon"
His tone invested the last few with the sharp bite of sarcasm. Kagome grinned. "If you think this is anything like a honeymoon you're romantic" she taunted maddeningly, and dived, unable to cope with the sight of so much bronzed and gleaming flesh.
He caught her within a few seconds, his hand on her arm urging her up through the sunlit water to the surface, and held her there, his golden gaze searching her face with merciless assessment.
"You look mischievous" he said slowly. "Why, I wonder?"
"Perhaps because it's a glorious morning" she offered. "Or because this is the first holiday I've had for some years"
"Holiday? What do you do that keeps you so busy you need a holiday?"
She reacted to the jeering note in his voice with a quick anger, hastily hidden, but she could have cursed at the flare of satisfaction she saw in his eyes.
"I work quiet hard" she said deliberately. "The station can't compare with Takahashi Corporation, of course, but there's enough work to need a secretary, and that's what I am".
The satisfaction turned into disbelief. "I find it difficult to believe that you enjoy doing such work."
She smiled patiently. "That's because you've always thought I'm an idiot. I'm not, you know. I'm quite capable of using a computer"
"You and any other little office girl" said Inuyasha in cruel disparagement, adding cynically. "But your work is not so necessary that your absence will cause any problems"
The waves lifted them a few inches, let the, down gently, and because they were both out of their depths, the pressure of the tide eased their legs together. Kagome gave a wild little shudder, and so that he wouldn't notice said crisply. "Everything is under control. I've paid all the bills for this month and everything else can wait. Like you, I can work long hours to catch up"
He smiled oddly. "But we have years to catch up" he said deliberately tangling her legs with his as he pulled her into the cool length of his body. Kagome caught her breath, alarmed at the arc of fire that streaked between them. The smile on his mouth eased into something more impersonal yet more intimate, hardening into lines of passion.
"Years and years" he murmured, watching her as his hand came up to the wet smooth globe of her breast.
His eyes darkened. Beneath his fingers the nipple flowered, as blatant as the virility he could not hide. Sunlight glittered on Kagome's lashes, creating a rainbow, a prism of radiance, and she said something, the words floating through the warm salt-spiced air, insubstantial as bubbles.
Inuyasha smiled and slid his hand from her breast up to her throat, long fingers tightening for just long enough to make her catch her breath, then he laughed and picked her up and held her upright out of the water, his satyr's face pagan and fierce in the sun, before he buried his face in the taut flatness of her stomach. She gasped and grabbed the wet black hair, trying to tear his face away, but the muscles in his neck stood out bullishly, and whatever she did she could not wrench his mouth from its erotic, leisurely exploration of her navel.
Only when she was hot and pulsing with desire did he slide her, the full length of his body, holding her with brutal lack of finesse against him so that she was assailed by the blatant hunger he did not try to hide. Mutely she stared up into his mocking face, automatically noting the signs that signalled arousal, the dilated darkness in the centre of his eyes and the dark flush outlining his cheekbones, the curve of his mouth, sensual and yet tightly disciplined.
As if her survey was an intrusion he watched her a long tense moment with half-closed eyes before opening her arms to let her float free.
Kagome said tightly. "I'd better go up and get breakfast"
"No, stay here" it was an order, not a suggestion.
Striving hard to regain some of the equanimity he had wrested from her with that little bit of provocative byplay, she shrugged and turned away, swimming for the raft. He made no attempt to some after her, but as she sat there watching him swim she was not fooled. She was as much his prisoner ad if he had chained her to a wall, and he enjoyed forcing her to accept it.
Pride demanded that she hold her head high. Inuyasha had hidden contempt for women; he had loved his gentle mother but respected and admired his dominating father who had been born, lived and died a chauvinist. After the tragically early death of Inuyasha's mother; Izayoi. Inutaisho had surprising remarried his previous wife. Demanding that Kimiko raise their son; Sesshoumaru and his son; Inuyasha as equals.
Kimiko was still alive, a woman whose smile his malice. Kimiko liked shopping and displaying her jewellery, entertaining her friends and spoiling her sons. At first Kagome had tried to become friends with her but Kimiko was fiercely possessive of her position and had made it quite clear to Kagome that she was not wanted, not in the house, not in Kimiko's life at all. It had been an impossible situation; from the vantage point of nine extra years Kagome realised that nothing she could have done would had won over Kimiko. But at the time she had been hurt by yet another rejection. And she had learned to despise Inuyasha because he had been angry when she complained, telling her that she would have to learn to live with his stepmother. That had been a rejection too. It was then that she realised that, like her father, he didn't really care whether or not she was happy. Coupled with his behaviour over Kikyo, and the shattering realisation that he wasn't going to give the French-Japanese woman up, she had been devastated.
Now, when her emotions were no longer involved, she could see that his behaviour was on par with his unspoken contempt for women. He abrogated to himself the right to punish her for her supposed adultery, yet he had expected her to except his women, his lifestyle, without protest because he was a man.
The double standard, she thought ironically as she pushed her wet curls back from her face, was new-minted and fresh-forged each time a boy-child was born in Japan. But at least Taisho was safe from its crippling effects. Or as safe as she could make him, she thought with a certain mordant humour, recalling some chauvinist attitudes still rampant in New Zealand. Not even Miroku was immune.
But it wasn't taken entirely for granted, as it was in Japan, where the dowry, the payment made by one family to another to sweeten the acquisition of a wife, was also still alive and flourishing.
The dowry made her wonder calmly what had happened to hers, the bribe her father had paid out. Lord, but she'd been naïve! She felt sorry for the seventeen-year-old child who had innocently believed in love and the right to happiness.
But surely one was entitled to be a little naïve at seventeen? Surely all girls did not have to grow up as quickly and roughly ad she did. As for power, the promise of control over her father's business empire which had persuaded Inuyasha to marry her, she wasn't interested. She had grown up with money and power; she knew, none better, that they didn't bring happiness. Too much money was as dangerous as too little; it was much better for Taisho to make his own life than be saddled with an inheritance which could lead to indulgence of the worst sort.
"What are you thinking?"
She looked down into his face, her reluctant eyes appreciating the picture he made. Strong forearm rested along the edge of the raft, the dark fine hair already drying in the sun. As he moved, exerting pressure, the muscles flexed eloquently beneath the warm skin; he hauled himself up beside her, water streaming in a veil over his splendidly sculpted form.
Kagome dragged her bemused eyes away to watch a gannet dive into the water beyond the reef, envying it its freedom. It was, of course, an illusion; the bird was bound just as immutable by instinct as she was by the ties of the body and the heart. To Taisho, with a fierce protective maternal instinct, to Miroku because he was her best friend, to the man who stretched out beside her with the splendid ease of a great cat, because she had married him and borne his child.
"Tell me" he insisted lazily. "You looked- oh, half angry, yet very determined"
She smiled. "Did I? I was wondering what had happened to my father's estate"
"It all came to me" he said dryly. "You were not mentioned in the will"
She nodded, not at all surprised. "He wanted a son. I'm glad he finally got what he wanted".
"You could apply to have the will revoked" Inuyasha was watching her with the clear scalpel-sharp regard of a master surgeon. "As his child you are entitled to a share".
Her smooth honey=gold shoulders moved in a slight shrug. "Money means nothing- well very little. You're welcome to it. My father hated me the day I was born because I wasn't a son, and when he realised that I'd managed to damage my mother so much that she couldn't have any more children, his hatred increased each year that went past. As a child I was convinced that there was something drastically wrong with me, that I was horrifically ugly, because he couldn't even bear to look at me. I loved my mother and my nanny because I thought they were wonderful to be able to look at me without showing their revulsion. I must have been about ten when I realised that it wasn't my face he couldn't bear, it was me"
Her voice was light, but he put out a hand and took hers, holding it for moment in a grip which had nothing more to it than the sympathy of one human being for another.
As he released it he said dryly "You should have been born to family like mine, Kagome. Our children are treasures. If he wanted a son so much it was a wonder he did not divorce your mother and marry again"
His understanding left her feeling somehow exposed, raw and wary. She did not want to like him, to have him reveal himself as a man who could feel for a bewildered child caught in a hell not of her own making. Deliberately she summoned the memory of the emotions she had not felt when she realised that he was not going to give up the beautiful French-Japanese woman who had shared so many nights with him.
In an acid voice she said, "In some strange frightening way I think he must have loved her. He treated her like dirt, yet when he did suggest a divorce so that he could father those sons he wanted so desperately, he wanted her to be his mistress. She told him that if he divorced her he would never see her again, so he gave up the idea. Of course, he made her pay every subsequent day of her life for refusing him"
Inuyasha said quiet gently, "She must have loved him also"
"If she did, she was crazy." Pain for her mother made her reckless and forgetful. "God, I wouldn't let a man do that to me!"
"So I found out" he said caustic mockery edging his voice. "You were too frightened to permit a man to do anything to you! A silly weak little adolescent who ran at the first sign of trouble"
The injustice of it stung her into an unwise response.
"It wasn't the first sign" she said acidly. "I ran when I managed to struggle through the romantic mist I'd conjured up about me and understood at last that I was just a convenience. I saw what s life like that did to my mother, I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life waiting for you to come home after sleeping with an assortment of girl friends"
She turned and looked down at him, at the broad back and narrow waist, the tight masculine buttocks beneath the thin material of his trunks and the long, heavily muscled legs. A pang of desire almost tore hr in two so that she had to wait a moment before she could steady her voice enough to finish, "You must know how it feels, Inuyasha. You said I made a fool of you- well, not until you had made a laughing stock of me!"
He had been lying with his face pillowed in his arms, eyes closed against the brilliance of the sun on the sea. Now he sat up and pulled her roughly across the raft to a foot or so away from him, holding her by her wrists. His eyes leaped, disconcerting her, but he asked calmly enough. "Was that why you left me? To pay me back?"
Kagome shrugged. She was not going to reveal the secrets of her poor adolescent heart for his unkind amusement.
"Why not? We have a saying, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I don't really see why you're so angry. After all, you got what you wanted, more power, more money, and any woman you care to take. Nine years ago you didn't consider your marriage to be important enough to give up even one of those things for. I find it rather difficult to believe that you suffered so much pain that you have to seek revenge for it"
His grip on her arms tightened. He snarled, "But you do not understand anything, do you? You are still the foolish little girl who let Kimiko humiliate her in her own home, who ran crying at the first setback, who refused to even fight for her marriage! Your vows meant nothing to you!"
"My vows meant as much to me as yours did to you!" she spat back, deliberately and untruthfully.
His hands relaxed. He lifted them and looked down at the white marks, now filling with colour, and made a soft little sound. "Ah" he said, bending to put his mouth against the bruised skin. "I am sorry, Kagome. See, I will kiss them better…"
She pulled away, but he jerked her off balance and she found herself laying across his lap, his warm persuasive mouth tenderly smoothing over the marks. Her breath rasped painfully in her lungs, a tight knot forming under her heart; Kagome released that she was holding her breath and forced herself to release it, to fix her eyes on a speedboat tearing across to the mainland, to ignore the black head so close to her breasts and the sweet touch of his tongue across her skin.
Desire clutched her stomach in its torrid grip. She exclaimed, "No!" and tried to pull away, but her limbs wouldn't move and she obeyed limply as he spread her down on to the raft, her breath coming in shallow pants through lips slack and tender.
He muttered, "So beautiful. Slender as a dryad…" His mouth moved to the indentation of her wrist, and she rediscovered just how potent a man's kisses could be against the smooth perfection of her skin. Hunger pulsed through her in heated waves of sensation, drugging, infinitely rousing, and yet she could not move.
The sun glided her long legs and the sweet high curves of her breasts, so that when at last Inuyasha's head blocked out its rays she made a small sound of protest. He was smiling, the taut, angry smile of a man caught in the web of unwanted desire, and he said through his teeth. "Touch me, Kagome. I want you to touch me"
It took all her willpower to shake her head. She could not resist this golden tide sensation, but she could stop herself surrendering to it. So through the tips of her fingers tingled with an urgent need to discover the contours of his splendid body, she let them lie laxly by her side, and beneath the long gilded lashes her expression was of stony resistance.
His face tightened into a mask of anger. "Damn you!" he whispered. "I know you're not frigid! Give me what I want, you little bitch!"
She said through stiff lips. "What do you want?"
His mouth swooped on to the curve of her breast, "I want what you give your lover" he said grimly. "I want you. All of you, mine for as long as I want you. I am going to see your beautiful calm face pleading with me to take you, and I am going to take you in every way there is. I want to sate myself in this lovely treacherous body until I can look at you without feeling anything but disgust. And when I've done that I'll send you back to your lover and tell him what we've done, and then we will see if he still wants you back!"
Anger and revulsion roiled in her stomach, but she didn't dare move. There had been a note of bitter determination in his voice which frightened her; he was dangerous, almost uncontrolled, and she didn't know how to deal with him. She had never seen him like this before.
The hunger in his eyes had faded to another need, another desire, more dangerous than simple passion; she stayed still and he lay with his cheek on the smooth mound of her breast, his big body tensed and challenging. It was almost as thought he was bracing himself for some test. Wearily, she asked "Is revenge so important to you, Inuyasha?"
He laughed and sat up, his eyes very bright and hard.
"Kagome, koi, for nine years this revenge has been a little pleasure I promised myself whenever I wondered whether it was worth working so hard with only my brother daughter to pass on my inheritance to. Nine years is a long time, and the pleasure of my revenge had increased in a direct ratio for every one of those years. I have waited too long to leave you without achieving my goal. Only when I have had my fill of you I divorce you and marry again, and make myself some children"
The brutal statement ran jagged across Kagome's nerves. She flinched and his eyes brightened, that cold little smile making his mouth a frighteningly merciless slash in the dark contours of his face.
"Does that frighten you?" he asked softly, watching her with the relaxed menacing confidence of a panther which sees an antelope in its range.
"Oh yes" her voice was shaking, but she met his eyes without evasion. "I don't understand such stubborn hatred"
He grinned, but his eyes were still cold, almost speculative. "I find that strange. By your own admission your family was a tangle of repressions and dark, twisted emotions. Your father had to be the coldest man I have ever met"
Fear and distaste ran chill like a shudder across her skin. "Yes. Is it any wonder I tried to steer clear of complications? My mother was so unhappy, all her life". She shivered. "And I don't suppose my father was very happy, either"
Kagome sat up, using the movement to get away from him.
"I used to think that you loved someone you wanted them to be happy. Simple, and easy. But if what my father felt for my mother was love, then I want nothing of it"
"Your mother should not have spoken of this to you"
Incredibly, Inuyasha sounded angry.
"How old were you when she died? Only sixteen, wasn't it? You were a child, too young to have that sort of twisted relationship dumped on to you"
She laughed, caught her breath and laughed again with wry, un-amused fervour. "Too young for that, but only a year later you didn't think I was too young to lean that my husband had no intention of being faithful to me, and that he didn't care a hoot whether or not I was unhappy in the house he brought me too"
A faint note of hysteria warned her and she stopped, blinking furiously, appalled to discover that the pain was still there. How could she blame Inuyasha for his desire to be revenged, if the anguish she thought she had overcome years ago was still present, lurking like an unwelcome visitor in the shadows of her life?
"Perhaps I expected too much" he said curtly, further astounding her. "But at least I did not run away. I was prepared to try hard at our marriage, find ways to make it work"
She couldn't let herself laugh again, or the underlying hysteria would burst through. Instead she said with a sudden savage bitterness. "Yes provided you didn't have to give up anything, your mistress, your pleasant life on your island with your stepmother and everyone in the house rushing around to obey your every whim, the woman who flocked around you whenever you went out into the world. You wanted it all, Inuyasha, and you have the nerve to be angry with me because I wanted a little more from you than clothes and jewels and the occasional moments you could spare me from work and woman, and your immense generosity in allowing me the occasional use of your body to get me pregnant!"
She spat the last words at him as if they were stones from a slingshot, uncaring of the darkening storm signals in his eyes and the harsh clenching of his face, finishing with contempt, "And a pretty shop-worn body at that, one that's known almost every pretty woman it's seen!".
She was a fool, but he had always been able to abrade the raw nerves that fed her temper. He was the only person to have this effect on her; normally she was calm and placid. As she should have been then.
While the red glow of her temper faded she tilted her chin frightened at the reaction her taunt caused. His mouth tightened into a thin, scornfully arrogant line and with cold eyes she scanned the defiant outrage in her expression.
"That" he said as he pushed her down on to the raft, "was a challenge. I enjoy challenges, Kagome, especially those I know I can meet and win".