Sesshomaru had noticed that everyone once coming to work had changed into their sutra-free clothing that Tuesday. When he asked Kouga why it was that everyone was dressed in such a way he was told, "Kagome sent a memo stating that Rin wouldn't be in today or tomorrow so we could dress however we wanted."
Sesshomaru growled thinking that she had gone over her head, but then he thought about Rin being at home for two days and wondered if his decision had anything to do with it. Unfortunately he would not allow himself to check in on her because he needed a clean break from her if he was to survive the rest of his life without her.
On Wednesday Rin waited for Kagome to pick her up. It was Kagome's idea that they both come into the office together so that Kagome could introduce her to everyone in their natural state of being. As they went floor to floor Rin noticed all of their surprised expressions as they noticed her there. She figured out quickly that Kagome had sent a memo stating that she would be out of the office that day. They were grateful, however, to find out that they could wear their sutra-free clothing again without fear while they were at work.
Once they reached the top floor Kagome made sure to knock on Jaken's door. The small demon yelled out, "What do you want?" through the door.
Kagome started shouting at Jaken through the door and he finally emerged by peeking his head out the door. What he had not anticipated was seeing Rin standing there in the hallway behind Kagome. After a shriek escaped his lips he slammed the door closed again. Rin now walked up to the door and said in a normal tone of voice, "Jaken, it's okay. It's me, Rin. I promise that I don't do anything to you."
Jaken once again opened the door to find the human girl smiling at him her beautifully bright smile. She picked him up in her arms and gave him a big hug. "Do you remember me?" he was able to barely squeak out as the breath was knocked out of him by her tight hug.
"I do remember you perfectly," she said happily as she put him back down. "I am glad to see you still alive. I almost lost you once." She watched as he blushed slightly the day the young Rin had risked her own life to find the antidote to save him from the poison of Naraku's insects. Granted, it had been her fault that they had to battle with the demons since she was the one who came across them.
Kagome butted in by saying, "Jaken, could you do us a big favor?"
"What could you want, human wench," he snapped at her only to feel her high heal come down on his head.
"Don't think you can take that tone with me!" she screamed out at him in anger for the degrading name he called her. "Now, you don't have a choice in the matter. You are going to get Rin in to see Sesshomaru as soon as possible."
Jaken rubbed his head slightly and cursed under his breath as he waddled to the small desk sitting on the other side of the room. He picked up an appointment book and announced, "He won't be available again until 10. Come back then." He slammed the appointment book down on the desk and sat in the chair with his arms folded in a pouting mood.
Rin decided it was best to leave her former traveling companion alone and grabbed Kagome's arm to drag Kagome with her back to their floor. She would just have to get plenty of work done in the next hour and a half before she could get her chance to see Sesshomaru.
At five minutes to ten o'clock she gathered her courage and marched herself up the stairs to Sesshomaru's office two floors above her. Jaken gave her a face until he realized that Rin this time was not accompanied by Kagome. He slipped past her down the hallway to the grand doors that stood between her and Sesshomaru. Jaken knocked on the door and announced, "Lord Sesshomaru, you have a visitor."
The booming voice on the other side of the door replied, "Tell them I am too busy to talk today."
Jaken's voice shook as he said to the door again, "But I think you might want to see this person."
The door to the left opened and Jaken scrambled away from the door. As Rin slowly approached she heard a desk chair creak as he sat down in it. She wondered if his demon senses was able to smell her, but he said not a word positive or negative to her.
The office was quite large, and immediately Rin noticed a couch in the corner of the room visible from the open door. She stepped in and noticed that there were file cabinets and bookshelves grouped in the corner across from the couches and the desk sat near the large windows that made up the next corner of the room.
Sesshomaru's eyes grew brighter upon seeing Rin's form standing there in his doorway. His mind was now filled with wonderment as to why she was standing there and how much she had seen on the way to his office. His heart and stomach started fluttering upon the mere sight of her. He rose to his feet and closed the door behind her as she moved to the center of the room. "To what do I owe this pleasure."
Before any more words could be said she had thrown herself around him in a hug. He normally did not like to be touched, but right now he could certainly make an exception because of the woman hugging him. "I'm sorry, Sesshomaru-sama," she excused herself as she let go of him and stood up straight again. The name she called him burned a whole in his heart remembering how she had called him that a long time ago. Why had she suddenly decided to be so formal with him?
He reached out to her but she backed away from him slowly. "Rin, why are you so formal with me all of a sudden?"
She turned away from him slightly. "I can't help it. It's just that you have been my protector for so long." He once again tried to reach out for her but she once again backed away from him. "I'm sorry, but I just have to know something."
"Ask whatever it is that your heart desires," he said to her affectionately. He wished more than anything to be able to touch her right at that moment. Since that kiss only a couple of nights before he had desired nothing more than to feel her touch again.
She looked down at the ground and then back up at him but turned her eyes away so that they were now looking anywhere else. "Do you still hate humans?" Sesshomaru furrowed his eyebrows trying to figure out where this question had come from. "You did love a human once, but you would not take her as yours because she was what she was."
Sesshomaru's heart ached as she talked about the first Rin as if she had personal knowledge of everything that had happened. Rin felt her heart beat more and more wildly in her chest as she anticipated his answer. "Has Kagome been telling you stories again?"
That was not exactly the answer she had expected from him. "No, she didn't tell me of my past. She did help me to draw forth my memories from the deepest reaches of my mind." She looked up at his eyes again to see them become softer from her words.
He once again reached out to her but took a small lock of her hair in his fingers and stroked it gently. It was not hard for him to sense the anxiety coursing through her body at this moment. Thinking it best that she sit down her offered her a seat on the couch and sat down in an adjacent chair in order to give her space. "I did fall in love with you all of those years ago, but I had let my pride get in the way of making you my mate. It was hard to be without you all of these years, but I had to move on to protect the decreasing number of demons put under my trust."
Rin hung off every word from his mouth entirely aware of the slightly negative tone that was laced in his voice. There was something large that he need to tell her that he was afraid to tell her. "Now I have the chance to make you mine again but you didn't know who you were. I thought it best not to reveal to you what you were because I thought you could not handle the shock. I have to admit that you always were stronger than I ever gave you credit for.
"But only a few years ago I found out that there was only one more dog demon left in this world, and it is a female demon. As the remaining two of our clan it is my responsibility to mate with her and bring more dog demon pups into this world." The words crushed Rin's heart even more than the first time he had told her that he could not be with her. He was the lord of the demons, and he had a great responsibility towards those he was protecting.
"It hurts me to say these things to you. I wish this was under any other circumstances." He wished to hold her in his arms and hold her there close to him for the rest of his days because the complete sorrow she was feeling at this moment was radiating off of her. The tears started pouring out of her eyes and she planted her face in her hands to hide them from the man she loved. As each tear fell from her eyes the more he gained the courage to walk over and hold her close to him.
She felt him pick her up and then sit down on the couch again with her wrapped up bridal style in his arms. "I love you, Rin. Please know that I do love you with all of my heart," he told her softly. She would remain in his arms for the next five minutes until she could calm herself down. She leaned back from him so he asked her, "Are you okay?" She nodded her head like a child having just had their scrape kissed by a loving parent.
She stood up insensibly and stared at the door. Her mind was telling her to get away, but her body stayed rooted to the spot she was in. As she debated with herself another thought popped into her head. She felt a little awkward giving into the thought and asked him in a shaky voice, "Sesshomaru-sama, may I please see you once more as you were when I was under your care?"
He stood up right next to her and put his index finger and thumb on her chin again to make her look up at his face. "Please don't call me Sesshomaru-sama again. I am simply Sesshomaru." He stood back from her. "I have sutras on nearly every article of clothing on me. Do you still wish to see me without them?" The nod she gave him was all the answer he got from her.
He unbuttoned his shirt and put it gently on the couch to keep it from wrinkling as Rin watched him intensely. This would be the most she would see of her love's body since he had always stayed well clothed in the Feudal Era. He then lifted his undershirt over his head revealing his muscular upper body and upper arms. Rin blushed as she noticed that he was well aware of where her eyes were going.
He then unbuckled the belt on his pants and slipped them off one leg at a time. His boxer briefs did little to disguise the full blown erection he had at the thought of being nearly naked in front of the woman he desired above all. She looked him over drinking in the sight of his white hair and golden eyes to the well sculpted muscles on his legs, arms, and chest.
Without thinking Rin stepped closer and took his left hand in hers. She examined the claws on his fingers that had always been so gentle when he touched her but had also killed hundreds of humans and demons many times in order to protect her. She lightly touched the stripes on his wrist with her lift index finger as she held his hand in her left one. The feelings her touch gave to him made his skin crawl from sheer delight.
She then delicately examined on his left arm the spot where he had once lost his arm. It was now flesh and blood again, but there was still a slight scar left over. He watched as her fingers slowly ran over the scar as if trying to feel if there was a ridge left in the smooth skin. Sesshomaru then looked back at Rin's face to see that her cheeks were turning scarlet as if she was starting to understand how bold her actions were. Her eyes, though, we entirely fixated on the skin under her fingers.
Her hands then ran over the muscles on his upper arms feeling the way in which they rippled under her fingers. Her hands ran over his chest and down to his waist where she traced the stripes there with her fingers just as she had with his left wrist. She could easily see that his erection was now peeking out from the waist band of his underwear as if reaching up to her begging for her to touch it, but she knew better to give in to that temptation.
Her hands ran over his chest again upwards and then skipped over to his face. She moved even closer to him in order to reach up to his face better. Her height only came up to his chin so she had to reach up while he leaned his head down so that she could trace the stripes on his cheeks and the crescent moon on his forehead. She could feel in his chest deep rumbling from the pleasure he was deriving from her touch.
Her hands then both went to the ears and her fingers stroked the edges of the ears starting at the earlobes and making their way up to the pointed tips. The lust building up in Sesshomaru finally came to a boiling point and he greedily kissed her running his hands all over her body. Rin moaned and arched into his body not knowing what kind of reaction it was causing his body to have.
Before he could do anything more Kouga burst through the door. Seeing Sesshomaru standing there in only his underwear and socks while kissing Rin made him close the door again before Sesshomaru could inflict any harm on him. "Sesshomaru, you need to see something immediately," he announced through a the now slightly cracked door.
Rin walked around Sesshomaru and grabbed his undershirt from the couch as Sesshomaru hastily put his pants back on. As he put his undershirt on Rin held out his shirt to him. She was disappointed that their brief moment of happiness had to end, but she was rather glad that things didn't go as far as they could have because it would have been more difficult for her to leave him then.
Once Sesshomaru started buttoning his dress shirt Rin left the room signaling to Kouga that he could enter the room again. Sesshomaru growled at him but Kouga did not shrink back. "Hey, you said that you weren't planning on producing heirs with a human. But right now there is something much more important than you getting laid."
Kouga strode over to the TV on one of the cabinets against the wall and flipped to a local news channel. There was a female reporter talking as the picture zoomed in on a couple of the employees of the company. The reporter said, "Yesterday night these two demons exposed themselves to a couple of women. No one has seen demons in a hundred years, and the fact that they were able to disguise themselves makes authorities wonder how many more demons may still be out there. No word yet on what will happen to the demons, but experts are saying that the prime minister might find it best to end their lives before they try to breed with human women."
Sesshomaru jerked the remote from Kouga's hand and shut off the TV before slamming the remote on the cabinet next to the TV. "Who in the hell let the both of them go to Hiroshima together?"
"I don't know exactly. But we don't have much of a choice now."
Sesshomaru slumped into his chair thinking about the great many lives that would now be displaced because of the carelessness of a couple of demons. They had known for a long time that one day they would have to be prepared for the day in which they would be discovered. If they were to stay they would be hunted down like animals and all put to death. Sure, they could take on an army of humans any day, but there were far too many humans these days and most of the demons and half-demons remaining had mated with humans making it difficult for them to kill humans.
Only a few years before Sesshomaru had sent a number of demon scouts out to find an island in the Pacific Ocean that was yet to be settled and could handle the population of their kind. An island was found and quickly a barrier was placed over it making it invisible to all except those who knew it to be there. The island was quickly settled by a number of demons who went ahead to settle the island by producing hydro power from the many waterfalls and build houses for all of the demons when the time was needed to move the entire immortal population there.
That was how he had met her, Haruka. She was one of the demons he had sent ahead, but he had hoped that Rin wouldn't be accompanying them when he was to be united with Haruka again. He would have to keep his promise, but now it would be more difficult for him to do the responsible thing.
"I want the women and children and the human males to leave on the first shift tonight. They are to leave at nine o'clock tonight. Please dismiss them from work now to make sure they pack." He turned his chair to face Kouga full on now. "And Rin is to come with us. Now that she knows the truth we cannot leave her or they will destroy her also." He leaned his head down to disguise the grimace on his face at the thought of his dear Rin being hurt by her own kind because she loved and was loved by demons. "Now go!" he yelled to get Kouga out of his office.
