Disclaimer: Inuyasha, etc. is owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and not me. Raidon is temporarily borrowed from Fairia13, but as he is not appearing in this chapters, and will not appear outside of 'blush'...on with the story...
A/N: Quick thanks for revived inspiration from Fairia13, Vyncent and Tausha. A whole gallon of thanks to the first IY movie, which sparked some great emotional fire in me to resolve this chapter, which has been two months in the writing and bucketfuls of gratitude to Jazngurl, who translated my requests/ideas into proper Japanese vocab. My AOL account is back up, and I will try to catch up on my email. Thank you for your patience and continued support. Here's a little nonsense that goes on behind the scenes...heh-heh-heh.
Fairia: Hola.
Fate: (silence)
Fairia: Turn up the volume on your speakers!!!
Fate: Oops. Oh, hey, girl.
Fairia: Question. Where's my OC, Raidon?
Fate: (silence)
Fairia: Hello? Fate?
IM Note: "The subscriber you seek is no longer signed on."
Fairia: DAMMIT! I need him for just ONE scene in "Stronger"!
Fate: (Offline) "Here, kitty, kitty..."
'Raidon licks dry lips, hiding under the bed.' "Gawd, please, no...please, gawd..."
WARNING: LEMONS! (LIMES FOR FF . NET) NO ONE UNDER 17!
Chapter Fifty-Six (Promise Me)
He was heavy atop her, she couldn't breathe, and her sobs were gasping against his shoulder as he shuddered and groaned. Sango closed her eyes, her body afire with the pain. She had not known what would happen when she thrust herself into the crimson blaze of his demon lust.
He stirred above her, and she choked back a sob as he removed his weight to fall back into the swirling water. His claws still curled over her hips and she flinched at the deep scratches he had left there in his consuming lust. He slid her deeper into the spring with him, and she gasped as the heated water seared across the scratches on her belly and breasts. His hands moved up her back, and hauled her close to him, and she tried not to stiffen in his tight embrace.
His head rose up from where it rested against her shoulder, and his eyes opened, the red mists of the inu youkai receding as the gold re-emerged. She shivered in reaction, and his eyes suddenly blazed amber, his ears flattening against the wet tangles of his whitened silver hair.
"Sango?" He asked, his voice soft and wondering.
She closed her eyes, unable to meet his gaze. How could he have known what the demon had done to her? How could he guess?
"Damn." His breath seared across the throbbing mark at the side of her neck. His eyes locked on it, watching as a single drop of blood pooling and dissolving into a red cloud as it touched the water. Steam curled her bangs over her forehead, and her skin was white, the wet tracks of her tears a sign he couldn't ignore.
"Sango, I..." He cleared his throat, uncertain.
She just shook her head, mute. She had paid the price of her incaution. He had not known, neither of them had known, what the inu was capable of.
"It's...all right..." She whispered, her voice hitching.
"No it isn't, damn it." He growled at her, and she flinched. He stilled suddenly, his eyes widening as his ears perked. He looked at her intently, the gold of his eyes deepening.
'How could he have known? The demon was too strong...'
"Too strong?" He asked her in confusion, and her brown eyes opened in surprise. Had she said the thought aloud?
"You didn't say a word, but I could hear you...in my head." His ears flattened, and he stared uncomfortably at the red mark that pulsed at her throat. "That must hurt." He said in a gruff voice, and leaned forward to touch it with the tip of his tongue, intending to use his healing saliva to close the small edges of the wound that still remained opened.
Sango shuddered at the touch, something flaring across her awareness as his tongue lapped over the mating mark. Heat pooled low in her belly, and she flinched at the raw hunger of it.
His nostrils expanded, taking in her scent, and the amber of his gaze darkened. He lapped once more at the mark, watching her shudder in reaction, and then pulled his mouth free.
'I don't understand. How can I feel this way? Does he know what is happening to me, when he touches me like that?'
"I can smell your desire." He said, voice husky. She opened her eyes in surprise, a flush staining her pale cheeks. She should have known. Inu youkai had the strongest sense of smell, stronger than any other...
His eyes traveled over the scratches on her breasts and belly. "I'm sorry." He said, ears lowered.
"It's all right." She murmured, embarrassed that he was looking so closely at her body. She had never been one to care, overly, but her skin was marked with the scars of battle. It was not smooth and white, unblemished and unbroken. Her past battles, both triumphs and defeats, were mapped out on her skin, and she didn't like him staring so intently at her.
Drawing back, out of his embrace, she lowered her arms over her breasts. Hugging herself, she kept the shame inside. "I'm all right." She said in a low whisper.
"No." He replied, his voice hard. She looked up, startled. The gold that blazed in his amber eyes made her frown and her spine stiffen.
"InuYasha. I'm fine." She insisted, daring him to disagree.
He grit his teeth at her, his amber eyes glowing. "No. You're. Not."
"InuYasha, don't you dare think that you are---" She started, her brown eyes lightening into outrage.
He grinned at her, fangs flashing. "Is that a challenge?"
She blinked in surprise at the amusement that lit his eyes. Was he crazy?
"Yes." He answered her thought, grabbing her by the shoulders and hauling her close to him. He pushed her body up out of the water as if it were weightless, jumping out beside her to lean across her shivering frame and snag his red haori up off of the ground. The snow still fell in lazy flakes, which dissolved as they touched the water or their heated skin. The ground, as well, was not frozen enough for the flakes to stay, and the earth remained damp and dark, untouched by the whiteness that sprinkled down from the hovering clouds.
He swirled his haori out across the ground, grabbed her by the waist with one arm and hauled her onto his lap so that they sat upon the thick cloth, their feet dangling in the water.
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He chuckled slightly, a smug chuckle, and she wanted to smack him upside the head with her Hiraikotsu, the hentai.
"Hentai, am I?" He growled at her, and she flinched. She would have moved away, but his arms around her wouldn't let her go.
"InuYasha..." She warned, growling herself. She could easily slip out of his grasp, she had the training. She just didn't want to hurt him, and it was so easy to---
"Not so easy." He tightened his arms and turned her around in a single motion that made her dizzy with the hanyou-aided speed of it. They lay, him half-covering her, on the bank, his haori blanketing the colder ground beneath them. The heat from his skin drove the shivers from hers, and she moved instinctively closer to his warmth.
His eyes searched hers, the amber darkening as he sought something in her gaze. She blushed, uncertainty weaving through her mind, unable to fathom why he stared at her. Even now, when she was irritated with him, she could not keep the love from creeping across the back of her thoughts like the swirling vapor of steam that curled over and around them.
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His eyes glowed with the knowledge of her love, the mating mark at the pulse-point of her throat ensuring that her mind was now bared to his, though she could not know the thoughts that consumed him, could not understand how deeply the mark had now sealed them together. She knew---dispassionately, with her knowledge of youkai---what it was, but not what it meant.
She lowered her eyes, unable to keep up the intensity of his stare. She turned her head to the side, looking out toward the snowy sky beyond the tree-shrouded spring that surrounded them. Her unconscious movement exposed her neck, an inu response for submitting, and he kissed the mark of his dominance. She trembled at the brush of his lips on her wound, uneasy with the arrow of fire that shot through her body.
She stirred, but his powerful thigh thrown over her legs kept her still as his claws lightly circled the curve of her breast. The tip puckered in response, and she made a low noise in the back of her throat. "InuYasha...I'm..."
"Shhh..." His hot breath whispered across her skin. He bent his head, his tongue coming out to lap at the scratch that covered one side of her breast.She hissed in her breath at the warm touch of his mouth, her body quivering as he concentrated on healing the small wound with the curative properties of his saliva. He turned his attention to the next one, a deeper flick from his claws. His ears lowered to his head in mute apology. She tried to shift her hips aside, but his hands firmed on her stomach, keeping her supine...
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Bracing himself up above her, he waited for her erratic breaths to quiet into softness, for her awakened body to stop trembling in the aftermath of discovery, and for her to open her eyes---her beautiful, cinnamon-touched brown eyes that had kept buried her most secret thoughts behind a cool regard and solid shield against a desolately horror-filled world.
'Always lonely, and always alone...'
How long had he heard that mantra repeated in his own mind? How often had he gazed upon the world, a smirk hiding the pain beneath as he saw others doing what he had never been given a chance to...to reach out across the empty space of lonely existence and find another reaching back, without fear that he might cause hurt and ruination, and find dread and rejection returned because of the difference of his blood...
The taijiya was so like him his gold-swept eyes burned with the knowledge. Honed by desperation and internal doubts...strengthened by resolve and a determination to succeed where others expected failure...sharpened into a keen edge by bitterness and loss...shielded firmly and forever by rejection and deficiency...they were two sides of a single blade. He might hide his emotions behind a veneer of impatient argument, she a cool detachment of self-reliant independence, but both were inaccessible behind the walls they had built around their hearts, afraid of exposing themselves to the fear and rejection they sensed in others...
Each of them had been touched by love, and had it snatched away by cruel claws. Manipulated and taunted, their very heart-strings had been plucked and pulled like a lutist's guitar by the dark hanyou, Naraku. He had been amazed and awed by how Sango had kept herself free from doubting that love...until her brother's death had turned her heart into an icy stone that could not weep for the sorrow and pain that filled its heavy weight. He now knew what gift she had given him...now knew that she, who had loved her brother Kohaku more than her own life, and had once sought to end hers for the mere comfort of her brother's unaccompanied soul, had been given the choice of saving Kohaku or him, InuYasha. He now knew what choice she had made, what price she had paid, and all because her heart delve more deeply and loved him, half-breed bastard that he was, more than anything...more than kin, more than kindred, more than life, more than love...
"Sango..."
He whispered her name, his eyes liquid gold and pierced with unspoken emotion. She loved him...HIM...hanyou...half-breed...bastard son of a demon lord and despised mother...loved for far longer and far deeper than he could ever guess, could ever dream...
The whisper of fevered dreams when she lay ill in his arms by youkai-battled wounds had hinted of her heart. But her mind, now bared to his by the mating mark that glinted like fire on the white column of her throat, told him the secret, sad whispers of her isolated heart.
Always lonely, and always alone...
She had believed---as he had---that there would never, ever be a chance for her to find love...to find solace and comfort and unconditional acceptance...loyalty and and companionship...a haven of trust and a home for her lonely and embittered soul...battered by loss, strengthened by pain, shielded by barriers against riddling recrimination and seething self-doubts as to the worthiness of ever being found deserving of that love...
Always lonely, and always alone...
His breath caught as her eyes fluttered open, the scarlet outline tattooing the ivory lids as she blinked up at him shining like a trail of unshed tears, pouring out her heart's blood in a scarlet line of bleak sorrow. Her eyes were honeyed and dazed with wonder, and the strong heart that beat in his chest clenched tight as understanding burned his amber eyes into molten gold.
As her eyes focused on him, the cinnamon dominating the beautiful brown depths, he leaned down and whispered against her lips, "Yakusoku shite."
'Promise me.'
Always lonely, and always alone...
Confusion sparked across her honeyed gaze, and she repeated his words in a whispered question. "Yakusoku wa?"
...Promise me?...
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Always lonely, and always alone...
His gaze was intense, the gold of his eyes overwhelming her vision as his body overwhelmed her senses. His voice was low, and fervent with the demanding emotion of his sad and lonely soul. "Yakusoku shite kudasai...kimi wa ore no da."
'Promise me...you are mine.'
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Always lonely, and always alone...
"Kimi wa ore no da, Sango." He said again, his breathless voice warm against her as he nuzzled the mark of his mating. His words burned across her mind in wonder, and she stared at him in sudden realization at just what he was saying, though his spoken words said nothing except to claim her as his.
'You are mine, Sango.'
"Aisheteru."
I love you...
I love...YOU...
He made sweet love to her, his heart glowing in his eyes, the gift making the tears of soul-touched understanding bathe her cheeks. She could not stop staring deep into his eyes.
They stared at one another, golden amber and honeyed cinnamon. The silver white luminance of his hair fell forward to shield her, so that it seemed the world around them had dissolved into only theirs. Her love blossomed in her eyes, and she repeated the words he had whispered into her ear, the wonder of them curling between them.
"Yakusoku shimasu. Watashi wa anata no."
...I promise. I am yours. ...
He shuddered as she admitted her inner heart into his keeping, and could not keep the possessive growl that rumbled through him as she cried out her heart's pledge to his.
"Anata no!"
...Yours!...
He buried his silver head into her shoulder, locking his arms tightly around her as his soul shuddered with the release of pent-up emotion and fear and loneliness and became healed by the unfathomable gift of eternal love and trust and acceptance.
Always lonely, and always alone...
Never again.