Okay, this is the second time I'm trying this, so forgive me, I hate this piece of crap! This chap goes to my best buddy Rachel, and whoever reviewed the last one. My alerts aren't working, strangely, so I can't tell who has reviewed, and for a while there, I was really depressed cuz I thought no one did, but its the comp's fault, piece of shit!!
Sweet Temptation
When Rin and Shippo got home, Sango yelled, "Okay, they're here, let's go!"
Kagome jumped into the passenger seat of Sesshoumaru's Mustang and Inuyasha, Kouga, and Miroku all tried to squeeze in, but Sesshoumaru yelled, "For Christ's sake, take your own car! What do I look like, a friggin' chauffeur?"
Kikyou opened the door and pulled a sulking Inuyasha to his Hatchback, where three girls and three guys fit comfortably. Rin and Shippo climbed in behind Kagome and Sesshoumaru, and when everyone was belted in, they took off to the Bowling Lanes in Town.
S.T.
"Go Sango!" the girls yelled, as Sango hurled her ball down the lane, the ball bouncing twice before hitting one pin.
"That was pathetic!" Miroku shouted from the next lane, where he was jamming his fingers into a shiny blue ball. "And you even have bumpers! Come on!"
Sango stuck out her tongue. "Shut up, lech! This isn't a competition!"
Kikyou laughed at her sister, who stomped back to the bench to stew over her bad bowling. She tried to put a comforting hand on Sango's shoulder, but she hissed, "Don't touch me! I can do this without any of you touching me!"
"Calm down, Sango," Kagome soothed, the worry still evident in her face. Sango uncrossed her arms and sighed. She forgotten just how badly her sister needed this to relax, and here she was making things difficult. She smiled.
"I'm sorry, he just makes me so..."
"Angry?" Rin supplied.
"Yeah!"
They all laughed, and leaned over to look past each other into the boys' lane. Miroku had gotten a gutter ball while they were talking, and Sango smiled sweetly at him, to which he only glared. Kouga was up next, and he let go of the ball so smoothly that he made it look effortless. Ayame picked up her ball, a metallic white one, and aimed for the pins, as her sisters loudly cheered her on.
When she released it, it swerved left and right, hit a bumper, and knocked over five pins.
"Yeah! Go Ayame!" Kikyou jumped up, and Sango did a little victory dance. Kouga had gotten a strike, and a new set of pins was being set up in their lane, and Sesshoumaru approached the line, his own red ball from home in his hand.
Kagome also got up; it was her turn now, too, and she gently hefted a soft green ball, and caught Sesshoumaru's eye as she did it, and he smiled.
"Ladies first," he said gallantly, gesturing with his free hand, but she grinned and shook her head.
"After you, I insist," she giggled, and he shrugged.
"Alright."
Releasing his ball, it knocked down nine pins, and his brothers cheered, Inuyasha coming up to sort a dark red ball from the bunch in the dispenser.
Kagome smiled when Sesshoumaru looked to her for comment.
"Very good."
He grinned, and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, eager to see her throw her ball.
Rin leaned over to Sango and whispered, "She's our secret weapon. They aren't gonna know what hit 'em."
Miroku and Kouga watched with a jaundiced eye as Kagome toed the line, and crouched over it, positioning her ball on the centre mark.
Sesshoumaru raised a brow. What is she doing?
Sango elbowed Ayame, who grinned and looked over at the guys, puzzled looks on all their faces, and a smirk on Inuyasha's. Kikyou could almost hear what he was thinking: She's gonna Granny bowl? Ha! What a loser!
But she knew better. Kagome had been a champion bowler when she was in high school, but none of the guys knew that because they'd been busy with their own lives then, and didn't pay any attention to what the older kids were good at. Sesshoumaru didn't even know, for he'd been too busy fending off girls in high school to ever bother to find out what Kagome was good at. All he had known then was that she was hot and that he was tongue-tied whenever she was around.
Kagome let go of her ball, and watched it as it slowly made its way toward the pins, swerving every now and then as if it was going to miss the pins completely, but at the last second, it straightened out and all ten pins went down, and the Higurashi girls exploded in sound.
"Yeah, Kagome! You did it!"
"That was so awesome!"
Sango ran to the divider between the two lanes and said, "In your faces! Our sister can hit more pins than your brother! Ha ha ha!"
Kagome grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her away, saying, "Now Sango, no one likes a gloater! The boys are just as good as we are."
"Yeah!" the boys' chorused, and Sesshoumaru winked at Kagome, who smiled in return.
"Okay Rin, your turn."
Rin grabbed a black ball and whipped it down the lane, looking almost as professional at the game as Kagome did not, but she only managed to hit four pins, much to her chagrin. Regardless, her sisters praised her effort.
Shippo, an orange ball in hand, tried to bowl like Kouga, but missed all the pins completely and got a gutter ball. He frowned and went to join Miroku in what their brothers dubbed, "Gutterball Heaven" or the end of the bench. Both of them just glared back at their more talented brothers.
Finally, Kikyou's turn came, and, talking sweetly to her red and white-striped ball, she threw it gracefully down the lane, scoring a spare.
Inuyasha, his ball in hand, chuckled at her, and she raised a brow, clearly challenging him to do better.
Smirking, he let the ball loose, and made swerving motions with his body when he wanted the ball to swerve, which it did, up until the very last second when it hit a small bump in the wood and nicked one pin before rolling into the gutter. The pin spun and tipped crazily, but eventually it slowed and stopped, still standing upright.
"Damn it!" he exploded, as they all laughed at him. Crossing his arms and glaring at Kikyou, who smiled a smile of pity for him, he plunked his butt in Gutterball Heaven, next to Shippo, who pushed him away because he sat too close.
"I hardly see how this counts," Inuyasha grumbled, Shippo and Miroku nodding. "They have bumpers, for shit's sake! They're practically cheating! It's not fair!!"
Again, his brothers nodded.
Sesshoumaru listened to his brothers complain, and, sitting next to them, he pointed out, "Remember, it's not their fault that you suck. They admitted it when we got here, and you were okay with letting them have the bumper lane. Are you admitting that a bunch of girls with bumpers are better bowlers than you?"
Inuyasha's face flamed with anger. "No! I just think that they should have their bumpers taken away, to even the odds."
"In other words, you want to prove just how bad at this you are by taking away their bumpers? They'll make mincemeat of you. Let them have their bumpers. Kouga's keeping us slightly ahead. You can't be good at everything, Inuyasha."
Pressing his chin to his chest, Inuyasha muttered, "We might not win if Kagome keeps getting strikes. She hasn't missed yet, and even though Kouga's a champ, he's missed twice already."
Sesshoumaru smiled a little. "Well, maybe there's more to Kagome than just good looks and a great bod, no?"
Inuyasha looked up with his eyes, but nothing more. After a long pause, Sesshoumaru heard a quiet, "Maybe."
Grinning, he left, and went to get something to eat. Up at the counter, the Manager handed out a pair of size three shoes to a small girl's mother and turned away, to write down their names on a signup sheet.
"Hey," Sesshoumaru said, trying to get his attention.
"Whatta ya want, kid?"
"Can I get some chilidogs, please?"
"How many?"
"Ten."
The Manager looked at him as if he'd grown a third eye, and then let his gaze travel the length of Sesshoumaru's tall yet muscular frame.
"You really think you can eat ten chilidogs, son?"
"No, I know I can't. They're not all for me, they're for my brothers and my girlfriend's sisters."
"Oh." He looked at Sesshoumaru for a minute, then, shaking his head, whacked a bell on the counter and yelled into the back, "Ten chilidogs for lanes Three and Four!"
"Thanks." Sesshoumaru paid him, and went back to his seat, only to have to get up and shoot again. He eyed Kagome in her lane, crouched down so ridiculously in her guaranteed method of striking, and decided to copy her.
Crouching, he looked at her again, and she looked back, smiling in approval of his stance, and he felt his face flush red. Letting go of his ball, he watched as it made a strike at the same time hers did, and on an impulse, he jumped into her lane and pulled her close, kissing her soundly in front of all their siblings, who looked on with varied reactions, from red faces to brilliant grins of happiness for the two.
Pulling away, he whispered, "You know, someone once told me that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery."
She took a breath. "Did they? Well, I'm certainly flattered." and she kissed him this time, then led him back to sit with her on the girl's side, only letting him go back to his own when it was his turn.
When the chilidogs came, Kagome sat quietly and reflected on the afternoon. It had been a lot of fun, and she looked at her watch. It was five thirty.
Shit, she thought, I have to go.
"Sesshoumaru, we have to go, I have to be at work in half an hour."
He jammed the last of his dog in his mouth and replied around it, "I'll get my keys."
Rin looked over and said, "You going now?"
Kagome nodded, and Sesshoumaru came back with his jacket, which he draped over her shoulders.
"Good luck you guys," Sango and Ayame said, and Kikyou held Kagome's hand a moment longer than necessary, her touch much more than any words of hers could convey.
Kouga, Miroku, Inuyasha, and Shippo watched forlornly as Sesshoumaru led her away, all feeling the tinge of fear for them knife through their guts. When they were out of earshot Inuyasha remarked, "God, I hope they know what they're doing."
His brothers nodded in agreement, and Kikyou, her hand over her heart, whispered, "So do I."
S.T.
Kagura sighed. She was laying on the couch in the living room, a magazine open before her, but she hadn't read a word. It had been a week; she had done everything her Father had told her to do to regain the Higurashis' trust, but still nothing that she wanted had happened.
Now, as she heard her Father come down the stairs, she thought about asking him to speed things up, then thought better of it when she saw what he was wearing.
Normally a man who wouldn't be caught dead in anything less expensive than Armani, Naraku Onigumo stood before the mirror on the landing in a pin-stripe suit, adjusting a tacky, mis-matched tie. His hair, which he normally wore long and tied back, was gone; it had been trimmed to within an inch of its life, and Kagura gasped. He looked really sharp, though the suit was a little beneath him. As he came the rest of the way down, he spotted her watching him and scowled.
"Kagura, Kaede has dinner ready for you. Go eat it."
She frowned. He was such a tyrant sometimes!
Huffing in annoyance, she did as he told her, but on her way past, he caught her arm.
For the first time in her life, Kagura looked up to see a paternal look to her Father's face, nothing in it suggesting just how much he loathed her.
Shocked, her mouth fell open, but he pretended not to notice her inarticulate lapse in dignity.
"Kagura, I am going to see Kagome tonight. Stay near the phone; I may need you later."
Kagura nodded dumbly, still stunned that her Father had just spoken to her so nicely. What does he have planned? She thought. It must be something great, if he's practicing his nice-guy act on me.
Continuing on her way, an evil little grin spread over her face like a rising sun. She was sorry now that she had been impatient; Daddy will fix everything, she reassured herself, and sat at the table to eat her roast chicken.
Naraku felt in his pocket, and took a quick inventory of what was in there.
The Jewel was there, and several twenties, and his most expensive watch. The one he had on had been a gift from his employees, and was a cheap knock-off, but it suited the look he wanted to achieve. Without his long, greasy hair, he would go unrecognised except to those who knew him well.
Slipping on a matching jacket, he left the house, and instead of getting into his limo, he walked to the garage and backed out the Benz, black in colour, his favourite colour.
Re-checking his new haircut in the rear-view mirror, he smiled his most confident grin, and was pleased with what he saw. He was going to knock her off her feet, and she'd never know until it was too late. It was this thought alone that kept him smiling all the way to the club.
S.T.
Sesshoumaru looked over at Kagome as he drove. She had her hands folded in her lap, and she was silent; he couldn't even hear her breathing. If not for the rise and fall of her chest, and the occasional blink, she could have been frozen. As he drove back out to the suburbs to their houses, Lips of an Angel came on the radio. Smiling, he turned it up and grabbed Kagome's hand, and rested it in her lap.
He mouthed the words as he drove, turning to smile at her often, and she smiled back. She appreciated the effort he was putting in to relax her, but she could not shake off the terrible feeling of premonition in her gut.
When they pulled in, she said, "I'll only be a minute. Wait here." and ran into the house.
While she was gone, Daichi and Amaya came out, and leaned in the driver's side window.
"Sesshoumaru, darling, please be careful," Amaya warned, leaning into the car to hug her oldest son.
"I will, Mom. She means everything to me…I refuse to let anyone take her away."
The conviction in his son's voice made Daichi smile, and he patted Sesshoumaru's back. "That's my boy."
Sesshoumaru smiled back. Amaya smiled too, but her nervousness was quite apparent. "Mom, are you gonna be okay?"
Amaya, busy looking around in the darkening light, quickly replied, "I'm great, Sesshoumaru. Don't you worry about me." With these last words her gaze came to rest on his face, and she visibly relaxed, and Daichi clutched her tighter to him.
"Listen, son, if anything happens, and you need us, just call." He handed Sesshoumaru his cell phone.
"Your mother can have the Feds down there faster than you can blink. We want that man caught, and soon."
"I know, Dad. I just wish Kagome didn't have to be the bait."
"Us either, Sesshoumaru."
Rolling up his window, he watched his parents re-enter the house, their fingers locked together, and he couldn't help but marvel at them. They'd been apart for five years, but to look at them you'd never know it. To love and trust each other again so completely in such a short time, after such a long separation…he hoped he could forge a bond that strong with Kagome, though he had no intentions of ever letting her go, not without him there to watch her back.
Slamming the door, Kagome was dressed in her long coat, and pulling her keys from the pocket, she locked it and ran back to the car, her hair whipping around her head like a black halo in the wind that had picked up, and the first fat drops of rain splattered the windshield as she climbed in, a flash of lightening proving the storm above them was about to break.
"Let's do this thing," she said, her voice completely void of emotion.
"Yeah." Backing out, he drove back into town, to the strip club known as High Thighs.
S.T.
Sorry guys I'm in a hurry gotta go to work, but review please, cuz I been writing while I wasn't updating, and I gotta tell ya...it's getting intense! Stay tuned!