CHAPTER 18: KNITTED INTO YOUR BONES

"One day you will meet someone
Who will see the universe
That was knitted into your bones,
And the embers of galaxies glow to life before your eyes.
And you will finally know
What love is supposed to feel like."
(What Does Love Feel Like?, Nikita Gill)

Sesshomaru does not loiter after his uttered threat, does not pause to wait for Akira to reply because he could not care less what she might have to say more than what she has already done. She has already potentially ruined the best thing to happen to Sesshomaru in centuries. He means what he said. If he ever sees Akira within arm's reach of Kagome again, he will not hesitate to rend her limb from limb. He would enjoy every second of it.

But right now, that did not matter to him.

He said his peace, made his promise to her and that was all that needed to be said. Now there as only one thing on his mind, one thought screaming at him inside his head, one alpha urge coursing through his blood like hot liquid primal need.

Find Kagome.

There was no words to describe how much he wants, no, needs, to find her, to explain. To explain that yes, that was what it had started as, why he befriended her, why he was kind to her. But it had not been that for so long. He could not imagine being that man anymore. He must make her understand, would have to make her understand. There was no where she could go that he would not follow, but eventually she would make her way to his half-brother. Though it would be abhorrent to him to make a scene of himself with a hanyou as witness, he would. For Kagome.

That would not be an issue if he found her first.

So he tears back up the halls. Adrenaline must make him lose a part of his sense of reason, for the first door he flings open is his own. Maybe he is merely remembering the last place he saw her before the scene in the drawing room, standing shyly from a bed that they had shared, her lips reddened from his mouth. But of course she was not there, why would she be? There was nothing of hers in that room.

With a muffled curse, he turns, leaving the door slamming on its hinges behind him, and makes a beeline for the room Tetsu had assigned to her. There are no sounds coming from within. He does not knock, just wrenches to door open so hard that it rips from the frame. The room is empty, untouched, it appears from when she had gotten readied for the ball there the evening before. Her garments are folded neatly on the chair, her overnight back is untouched on the floor.

Another curse and he turns and bounds down the stairs. Why had he thought that Kagome would be stupid enough to linger in the same house as him? She would know his strength, his speed. She would know that time was a factor, that getting a head start would be her only possible means of escaping him. She was far too intelligent to care about a few measly articles of clothing and some easily replaceable toiletries. No, she would have headed straight for the door, straight for a quicker, swifter means of escape.

He skids into the stables, startling the young tanuki boy grooming a horse. Counting doors, he comes to the one where Ah-Uh should be stabled. As he had expected, it was empty.

"You, boy." The child yelps and cowers before Sesshomaru's glaring façade. "How long ago did she leave?"

"T-ten minutes, or thereabouts, m-my lord."

His mind whirls. She must have bolted out the door immediately after fleeing the room. She was fast, he'd give her that. There were no wasted moments in her escape. But, as sweet and kind as she was, as much as Ah-Un was fond of her, that dragon positively adored Rin, and Sesshomaru knew that even if it wasn't her plan, that beast was going to bring her straight home, whether she wanted him to or not.

"S-shall I saddle you – "

"No." Then he is gone, bursting from the stables on a cloud already half-formed, taking to the skies with all the speed he can muster. He does not think about if she does not believe him, he will show her that he is being honest with her. Instead he plans what he will do if she is not at the castle, where he will look first, how he will track her, what he will say to Rin, to Kagome, to his brother. He plots and he plans for every inevitable outcome. But it all goes flying out of his head when he lands, swiftly and ungracefully stumbling, in his courtyard.

Ah-Un is standing with his heads nuzzling a confused looking Rin by the door. She takes one look at Sesshomaru and her expression brightens into something hopeful. Pointing to the open door, she mouths "She went that way," and Sesshomaru nods and enters.

Even from the entranceway he can hear the sounds of sobbing.

It wrenches his heart in two directions, like someone is twisting it, pulling it towards opposite sides of his chest. There are no plots as he races up the stairs. There are no plans as he runs down the hall. There are no thoughts as he shoulders into the room and is confronted with what the truth has done.

She is shoving her belongings into her giant yellow bag, though how she can see through the tears streaming from her eyes is anyone's guess. She is taking in great, heaving, hiccupping breaths and his resolve shatters at the sound. There is a prick of pain in his eye, a burning, and, with a shock, he knows that it is tears.

"Kagome…"

She spins to face him with a startled cry, holding a blanket she'd been packing between them like a shield. Her eyes are wide, red-rimmed and rough, there are dirty tear tracks on her cheeks. But even so, even with her knotted, windblown hair and disheveled kimono, she is still the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

"Kagome," he says again, now that he has her attention. He takes a step forward, reaching out, his arm aching for want of folding her into his chest. "Let me ex – "

"No!" She scrambled backwards. "No, I don't want to hear it! No more lies Sesshomaru – no more falseness. Akira showed me the papers, I saw them. You lose everything without getting married." She chokes on a sob. "And I guess I was just the only person too stupid to realize you were just using me."

"I – "

"You can't stop me from leaving."

There was a high likelihood that he could. She was a terribly powerful miko, but as angry as she was right now, there was no hum of spiritual powers. She would not hurt him. "I will find you."

"Not where I'm going, you won't. More than space will separate us."

He had no idea what that meant, but it hardly mattered. "There is no where you can go that I will not follow you. If you would just let me – "

Another heaving sob cuts him off, stilling his forward motion. "Just tell me the truth, Sesshomaru."

He knows that he could lie, could say that Akira once coveted the seat at his side and he saw through her and dismissed her. He could spin a believable and plausible lie that she had fabricated everything to remove Kagome from the picture and try and win him back. But he didn't want to lie to her.

"My father, in his will, made a stipulation that I must be mated, that there must be a Lady of the Western Lands, before my centennial name day or the title reverts to the next of kin." Her eyes are brimming with tears, but she has not moved, has not said anything since he began speaking, so he takes a hesitant step forward. "I did not dwell on it for many centuries for I had assumed there was a loophole. There was not." Another soft, slow step, like he is inching closer to a frightened deer. "When my half-brother was born, I resolved to finally remedy the situation. While there were no demoness women that I felt could fill the title my mother had left behind, I did not wish the title to fall to Inuyasha, who I was sure would ruin these lands with his egotistical pride and foul manners. But I still wished the title to go to a woman who was deserving of the great seat. Akira, the last woman I courted with that in mind, was not made for it. She is greedy, thinks only of herself. I could not do that to my father's legacy."

"And me…" Her voice is wavering. "Where do I come into all of this?"

"I tried to fight it, at first. Find ways around it. But there were none. My father's will had been clear. So I resolved to mate, to keep my title and my power, and deal with the consequences later." He makes a vague, self-deprecating gesture at his face. "But Akira left a lasting impression that meant no demoness, as vain as they all were, would have anything to do with me." There was a flash of pity in her eyes, but it is gone between one blink at the next. "When you… found me… this Sesshomaru had given up. I was simply waiting for the last of my power to leave me."

She just stares at him, chin wobbling, daring him to continue.

"I had… an idea," he says, struggling to speak around the terror in his chest that she will not allow him to finish, "that you might heal this injury, thus allowing me to mate any demoness who would agree to the proposal before the deadline."

Her eyes flare open. "So you did want to use m-"

"And then I got to know you," he continued, speaking quickly so she did not leave. Another step forward and he is right before her. He reaches us to run a finger tracing the contours of her face. "I got to know you intelligence. Your strength. Your wit." His hand is trembling and he finds that he does not even care. "I could think of no one I would wish by my side but you."

She draws in a long breath, shaking and weak.

"The thought of forcing you to do so, of using you in such a manner…" His own indrawn breath as he struggles to steady himself is as unsteady as hers had been. "I could not fathom such a thing." He swallows around a thick weight in his throat. "This Sesshomaru would rather give up my title and my lands and my father's power then to ever hurt you." He takes a trembling breath. "I find that I care about you too much."

He has not realized that he had closed his eye, clenched it closed as he waited for her response, until he hears her let out a great sob and he is suddenly barreled into, and there are salty, tear-stained lips pressed against his.

She had been waiting for him to lie, to be honest. Or to make a dismissive, haughty comment for her not to worry about it. But he had done neither of those things. He had told her the truth. She could hear it in the ring of his voice, wobbly with emotion that she had never heard there before. He sounded nervous, scared even, of what she would do. She could see the tremble in his hand, hear the waver in his voice, sense the pain he was exuding.

A part of knew that he if spoke to her, she would forgive him. She didn't have it in her heart to hate anyone, no matter what they had done. So she had thought to flee back to her own time, away from all of this. But of course he found her first. And of course he had to go and exceed all her expectations and tell her the truth. The truth would have been enough, a reasonable explanation. She hadn't needed to hear his admission that he cared for her.

It had broken inside of her, like they were the words that she had been waiting to hear, and she had launched herself at him without conscious thought. There were no thoughts in her head except that she wanted to be closer to him and she pressed her lips to his frantically, needing to be closer, wanting to sink into his skin like molten wax.

When she leans back to suck in air, his lips follow her and she hears him make a keening groan, his mouth following hers like a moth towards a flame. His arm wraps around her shoulders tight enough to lift her off the floor, and all she does is wrap her arms around his neck, grasping at his hair, drinking down his panting breaths, moaning into his hot kisses.

She cares for him, too.

And she doesn't want to wait any longer.

So she pulls away again, and pants into his mouth. "Bed." He goes as rigid as iron underneath her, even his breath stilling. She can sense that he about to be noble and gentlemanly, but that is not want she wants. She wants skin on skin and closeness and heat, and she has never wanted this like she has in this moment before. "Please."

He goes pliant in her arms, a wanting moan rattling up from his gut, and then she is spun in a dizzying circle. A few stumbling steps forward and, with a gut-wrenching fall, they fall horizontal. She expects the heavy weight of him falling on top of her, but he catches himself on his arm and when she pulls back they are curtained off in the fall of his hair, like waterfalls of moonlight, around their faces. His golden eye is roving her face, looking, no doubt, for any hesitation in her. So she smiles, reaches up with both her hands and cups his face, smooth skin under one palm, and scarred flesh under the other. "I want this." She brushes her thumbs along her cheeks. "I want you."

That is all he needed to fall down on her and what little control she had had over the situation vanishes like smoke in the breeze.

His lips are hot and demanding when he presses them to hers, but they are gone too quickly, laving open-mouth down the column of her throat. She gasps at the feeling, then lets out a surprised moan when teeth nip at her tender skin. She can feel his smile against her, just before he bites her gently. The feeling is so… It makes her tilt her head for more, and he complies. Until she it panting, her hands fisted in his hair, holding him in place. She does not notice when her legs fall open to let him fall between them, she is too focused on the sparks shooting through her from the scraping of his fangs on her pulse point.

So distracted is she that she does not notice when his hand slips into her kimono until a thumb brushes across her nipple. She gasps. When he does it again, she tilts upwards, into the sensation. When he rolls the hardening nub in his fingers, she arches up into him. There's a slow and steady heat building in her. She can feel it in the places where they are pressed together, his mouth on her neck, his fingers on her breast. He continues his toying, first nipping at her throat, then tugging at the flesh in his hand, until she is whimpering under him, wanting more.

She is writhing underneath him and he uses the motion to slip the cloth from her shoulders. There is a split second of cold air on her bared breasts, not even long enough for her to process the thought, before a hot mouth has replaced those playful fingers.

"Oh, oh…" Not her hands in his hair are holding him against her chest and she cannot think around the feeling of his tongue flicking at her hardened nub. Her hips twist and turn, there's an ache…

A hand, slipping lower, makes her kimono gape wide, until it is open, leaving her bare. Playful fingers ghost down her flat stomach, twirl a circle around her navel, then dip lower. Her face burns with embarrassment as they start a slow trek to her womanhood, the intent clear. When one finger slides against her damp folds, the electricity that shoots through her is as carnal as lightning. It slides in deeper, starts a smooth glide of friction that makes her nerve endings buzz with energy. She is arching into the motion without thought, her mind torn between the twin pleasures of suction at her breast and clever fingers sliding in and out of her. Her gut feels stretched as tight as a rubber band about to snap. Her head thrashes from side to side as she arches against him. She knows what is happening, she's not naïve. But she has no experience, does not know how to get there, to make it better.

"Please, oh please…" When those sinful fingers slide out she almost wants to cry, but then they are rubbing at a bundle of nerves and pleasure is shooting through her light lightning bolts, like she is filled to the brim with starlight. She feels like she is burning, her muscles tightening like steel, shaking with release. "Oh… oh yes… yes…"

Her muscles relax, going limp and pliant. He slides up her body, pressing his lips to hers, the curve of his smile pressed to hers. When she arches closer, she feels the hard press of his interest against her core, only the thin layer of his own hakama between then. He is still and unassuming above her, giving her time to make a decision, but she had decided this before they tumbled onto the bed.

So she pushes at his chest until he flips their positions, and then she lets her own hands explore. Sliding open the top to reveal his chest, she brushes against his flat, male nipples, fascinated by the way he hisses and arches upwards. She traces the ridges of his muscled stomach, the markings on his hips, watching the way he shifts and settles repetitively, his eye glowing like a sun as he watches her. When she shuffles awkwardly until she can remove his hakama, it is with slow curiosity that she reaches out to touch the purely male part of him.

He groans, head falling back and eye fluttering closed. The grip on her hip is borderline too painful, but she is too fascinated by the noises she can pull from him with one single hand.

Between one stroke and the next, he becomes a flurry of motion and suddenly their positions are flipped as they roll to the side again. His lips are on hers harshly and then… then he is sliding into her and they are suddenly joined and it burns. It hurts.

"Kagome," he hisses through clenched teeth, pressing his forehead to hers. "You did not tell me that I would be…" He pants for a moment. "That this was…"

"My first time?" She laughs and the motions makes him groan and press down into her, muscles taut lines of sinew and strength. "Didn't seem important."

"Didn't seem…" It's his turn to chuckle, the sound somehow both amused and disbelieving at the same time. "You are a wonder."

Her face burns at the endearment.

"I am going to move now."

She nods and he pulls out, sliding back in slowly. She gasps at the sensation, at the burn of it. He continues his slow motion, until eventually it does not hurt anymore. There is that same coiling starting low in her stomach, and she wants to climb that peak again, so she wraps her legs around him. The motion makes him slide in deeper. She gasps, but the sound is covered by the sound of the ragged, growling, groan he gives. His hips snap forward and she gasps again. And again and again and again, when he repeats the motion, until she is sliding along the bed with every thrust.

His face is pressed into her throat, pressed so tight she wonders wildly if he can even breathe, but she can feel him mouthing words against her skin, though she cannot make them out. The rubber band is pulled tight, about to snap at any moment. She undulates against him like a wave, seeking release. She's mumbling pleas and cries into his hair, dragging her fingers down his spine/

When her release comes around, she clenches around him and Sesshomaru goes suddenly completely and rigidly still, his hips stuttering in unconscious motion as he tumbles over into his own release. He slumps down on top of her, panting into her neck. His weight should be uncomfortable, but she finds that it is not. AS she catches her own breath, her hands idly card through his hair. There's a gentle vibration running through him that she suddenly recognizes as some sort of purr. She smiles, but doesn't say anything, and presses her face against the top of his head.