Lord of My Dreams
8: Confrontation
She was sneaking from somewhere to somewhere else. She could not remember where from or where to, or what she carried in the sack over her shoulder, only that it was very important that she get where she was going quickly—and that no one see her on the way.
She reached a door at the side of the barn, and opened it as quietly as she could. She saw many men, wearing only ragged tunics, sleeping in the hay. She snuck by them, trying her best not to waken any of them. She came to a stall that had belonged to a mare that had been killed during a raid of the village. She knew at once that He was there.
She unbolted and opened the stall gate as quietly as she could, and entered, reaching over the door to bolt it again once she was inside.
He was there, leaning against the wall beside the stall door, so that he would not be seen from outside unless someone knew to look. His body was bruised, but his eyes were strong as ever and the way he sat was as regal and powerful as if he had been a king. Only she could have discerned the exhaustion from the angle of his head and the slight droop about the corners of his eyes.
"Show me your back," she whispered, urging him to turn.
He did so without argument, and she smiled, suddenly knowing that there had been a time when he would not have turned his back to her. She lifted his tunic, and he complied in her wordless request to remove it.
The welts on his back from the whip were horrendous. She did not comment on his defiance of his superiors, knowing that he had never listened before and would only resent her for bringing it up again.
She took some herbs from her sack and applied them to his back.
"They're sending me away soon," she whispered.
"I heard."
"I'm to marry a man of some importance."
"What every Irishman wants for his daughter."
"I would rather be stolen by a Viking."
He froze beneath her fingers.
"I have never stolen a maiden away."
"No," she agreed, thinking of his unsociable outlook on life. "But you must have taken a maiden's…virtue."
He turned around to look at her squarely. "I have no interest in the rape of women."
She smiled suddenly, more deeply in love than ever. "I want you. It would not be rape."
He smiled wryly. "An Irish maiden asking for a Viking to take her virtue." He reached up to run a hand along her cheek reverently. "I have never met anyone such as you. You were never even afraid of me—yet even my own crew feared me."
She leaned into his touch, and a tear slipped down her cheek. "I don't want to marry him. He's an old man, and I will be his sixth wife. Please—if I must lose my virtue, if I bear a child, I want it to be yours."
He drew her to him, and her heartbeat quickened—and a moment later she felt disappointed, knowing that he had no intention of complying. He only meant to comfort her. She knew, then, that he would let her cry, let her calm, and then send her back to bed.
So, she thought, this is the end.
But if that was the case, why not endeavor to seduce him? Many women managed it on other men, and he himself had admitted that she was special to him.
She shifted to draw up her skirt out of the way, and sat so that she was kneeling with a knee on either side of his lap, her hands on his shoulders. Hands automatically settling on her waist, he looked up at her with seemingly emotionless eyes—then she noticed the slight arc of his eyebrows, and knew that he was surprised.
There she knelt for a few moments, feeling his shoulders strong and firm beneath her fingers; the brush of his breath on her breast. She wondered what it would feel like if he moved that small amount forward, where his mouth would be touching the swell of her breast through her thin dressing gown. The thought sent a shiver down her spine, and she tensed her thighs as her breasts brushed his nose.
She uttered his name, and held his eyes with hers as she slowly lowered herself onto his lap—and almost jumped back up again in shock when she realized that there was already something there. And felt her face flush bright red a moment later when she realized what it was.
She lowered herself again, trying not to shudder as the something pressed against her through layers of clothing. She realized that this was exactly what was supposed to happen—only without the layers of clothing. Another shudder ran through her body.
"I…didn't think I'd done anything yet," she whispered, shifting in embarrassment.
His hands came to her hips, holding her still.
"As I have said—you are unlike anyone I've ever known."
"You want me."
"I treasure you."
"So make me yours." He made to move away, and she brought her hands over his to hold him in place .
"They would kill us both if they found out," he said, but his thumbs were moving, stroking her. "The Irish have no need for ruined daughters."
"I don't care," she said, and pressed her lips to his. When nothing happened immediately, she began making little nips and licks at his lips, hoping to entice him to do something by conveying her impatience. "No matter where I go, or to whom I am wed, you are my Lord. You shall remain forever in my heart and mind as the only man who can truly possess any part of me. I love-"
And then his mouth had silenced hers. As his tongue reached forth to stroke hers, she almost didn't notice that he was removing his hands from where she had placed them; he wrapped one arm about her waist, and his other hand he brought to her cheek. He pulled her close, and kissed her as if he would die if they weren't close enough. She whimpered, and shifted her body, trying to meld their bodies together. He broke the kiss when he bent her back so far that they collapsed in a pile in the hay.
"If you feel the need to make a noise, bite my shoulder," he told her between kisses as their hands slipped under cloth, endeavoring to strip one another of clothing without pulling away.
She was lost in a haze of sensation after sensation then. She ended up biting his shoulder so hard that she drew blood. He never made a sound, save for a sharp gasp at the end.
The moments she spent in his arms afterwards felt like forever. But then she saw the sky outside, in its beautiful shade of turquoise, as if in anticipation of the dawn.
Then it hit home that it was all over. She curled up in his arms and began to cry.
Rin woke up feeling the coldness of the space beside her and the wetness on her face. A few more tears leaked at the memory of the sheer despair of knowing that there was no hope for her and her beloved, and then she remembered that Sesshoumaru was unreasonable and bordering on insane. She launched herself out of bed wiping her face furiously on her sleeve, and resolved not to think about Sesshoumaru today.
She had been so angry after the strange encounter the previous day that by the time she got home, she had tossed the book onto the desk and went straight to bed to not think about Sesshoumaru.
Apparently, her dreams had had other ideas. On one hand, it was the first time in a week that she had dreamed of a time period that wasn't the Sengoku Era. On the other hand, she would rather have dreamed about the same time period than dream what she had just dreamed.
Rin was not going out today, because every man she met would remind her of Sesshoumaru. She hoped that she could go through the day not so much as running into Inuyasha, because she was certain that one look at him would show her only his resemblance to Sesshoumaru.
"Rin, are you up?" called Kagome, accompanied by a knock on the door.
"Yeah—what is it?" Rin replied, making no move to open the door.
"We're leaving in thirty minutes, just giving you a heads up!" Kagome's footsteps retreated down the hallway accompanied by calls of, "INUYASHA! Where are those earrings your mother gave me!"
Leaving? Rin wracked her brain, trying to recall what was happening today.
To her alarm, her memory turned up a matching card—a family dinner with Inuyasha's parents.
At least Sesshoumaru won't be there—he hates that family, Rin reassured herself, but the resemblance of Sesshoumaru's father resembled him even more than Inuyasha.
She dragged her feet over to the closet and began to dress, resigned to a day of smiling and chatting with Inuyasha's only too friendly parents.
There were a lot of hugs and warm greetings at the door, and then Izayoi ushered them into the living room—where Sesshoumaru was sipping a glass of wine on the sofa.
Rin bit her lip. Sesshoumaru met her eye and gave a small, secret smirk. A thrill shot through Rin that should have been more terrifying than exciting, but wasn't.
She sat down across from him and gratefully accepted the glass of wine. Inuyasha's parents were rather…unorthodox, and had been allowing her to drink at these dinners since she was sixteen. Usually she refused. But just now, a little relaxation seemed like a good idea.
Kagome and Inuyasha did not bat an eye at Sesshoumaru's presence. Rin tried to recall if she had been told that he would be here. If she had, she'd forgotten. Kagome and Inuyasha were eyeing her surreptitiously—or what they thought was surreptitiously. Rin was tempted to roll her eyes, but Sesshoumaru caught her eye and offered that quirk of an eyebrow that he had always offered to share a secret joke when Jaken thought he was being particularly clever…and wasn't.
Rin quickly averted her eyes to keep the smile from breaking out on her face. A fuzzy warmth was growing in her chest that she had never felt outside of her dreams. It was exhilarating, and her eyes kept darting back to Sesshoumaru, who rarely met her eyes directly, but his gaze always hovered nearby; he was watching her out of the corner of his eye.
Kagome, Inuyasha, and his parents chatted about current events and neither Rin nor Sesshoumaru contributed more than the occasional monosyllable. They migrated over to the dinner table after half an hour's talking, and somehow Rin found herself sitting across from Sesshoumaru.
And then the topic shifted.
"So, Sesshoumaru…this is what, the second time that we're seeing you in five years?"
The comment jerked Rin back into reality, and she looked at Sesshoumaru. For the first time since Sesshoumaru first caught her eye that night, he had let her out of his sight to look coldly at his father.
"Indeed," he remarked calmly.
"How was college in England?" asked Izayoi.
"England?" Rin broke out. "I thought- but you were going to Harvard!"
The table went quiet. Rin felt all eyes at the table turn to her, and Sesshoumaru glanced at her. A shock ran down her spine, but not the pleasant kind. Thenhe looked away.
"I never was going to Harvard," Sesshoumaru told her, and his voice was colder and harder than it had even been the day before.
In some corner of her mind, Rin knew that this was where she should comment about some overheard conversation and backtrack. But she had pivoted her life around the fact that he was going to Harvard.
"What…what happened?" Her voice was weak and came out more like a squeak than a voice.
Sesshoumaru opened his eyes and after a moment, met her eyes squarely. "What do you think happened?"
"But-but-" Rin stuttered, feeling her mind shutting down.
Sesshoumaru was eyeing her sharply. "Why was Harvard so important to you?"
Rin jumped to her feet and slammed her hands down on the table. "I left so that you could go to Harvard! Not so you could go to some school in England I've never heard of!"
Sesshoumaru placed his glass down. It clanked on the coaster, and Rin knew that he was more agitated than he was letting on. Good riddance, Rin thought, half insane with confusion and frustration. "And what business of yours was it, Rin, which college I went to?"
Rin was furious. "I never asked you to take me away. I never asked you to defy every law and moral and social convention in existence to look after me. I never asked you to give up your possibilities for me!"
Sesshoumaru's eyes flashed, and he stood to face her in an uncharacteristic display of anger. "I will attribute this to the influence of my idiot half-brother and his wife, because the Rin I knew had better sense than you."
"Do not insult them—that's my sister and brother-in-law."
"Ah, of course." And I'm just the outsider, the tone said.
"That's not what I meant," Rin responded to the unspoken remark.
"And what did you mean?"
"I meant- I mean—you gave up so much for me. I didn't want you to give up anything more than you already had." Her voice growing quiet as she admitted it.
"There was nothing I did reluctantly."
"There was nothing in it for you!" Desperation now, for a justification that would make the world make sense again.
"There was everything in it for me." He said it softly, like a pledge.
"But—but Jaken always said-"
"When did you ever trust Jaken's word over mine?"
She blinked. "Never."
"So explain to me why you ran out and threw yourself into the arms of the first family that would take you."
"I didn't!" Shock, that he could think such a thing of her.
Disbelief in his eyes, and she knew at once that he had lived the past five years in misery and pain—thinking that she had deserted him. For she was as critical a piece of his life as he was of hers. She had had the conviction to hold on to that he would return as soon as he was done with his education, and that it was for the best; he had harbored the illusion that she no longer needed him.
Rin was leaning over the table, suddenly needing more than anything to touch him. "I would never have sought to leave you," she whispered, a promise made with her palms cupping his cheeks.
"Yet you did."
"Kagome asked where I lived. I panicked and told her…well, what I told you I told her. She took me to her family, and adoption came up, and I thought of Harvard, and…"
She trailed off and looked away, feeling foolish. It had been five years, she realized. Five years of believing that she thought nothing of him. She had been thirteen when he left, and hardly an object of anything but friendship to him. How many women had been in his life? Who was to say that there wasn't one now?
Sesshoumaru gave a long-suffering sigh and she sprang back like she had been burnt. He walked calmly to the door and she felt her heart drop into her feet.
"Come," he said without turning around. "You may enjoy this, but exhibitionism is not a fondness of mine."
Rin blinked, and then suddenly remembered the family. Against better judgment, she looked. Inuyasha was half way between infuriated and awed, Izayoi was smiling, Mr. Taisho was expressionless except that his eyebrows had disappeared under his hairline, and Kagome looked simply startled.
Rin squeaked and fled past Sesshoumaru out the door.
"I will have her home this evening," Sesshoumaru announced calmly, and shut the door behind him. This was a dangerous calm—there was something lurking under that calm, and Rin was terrified to find out what it was.
"We're leaving?" asked Rin, her voice still a squeak.
"Eventually." And he led her down the hall.