Chapter Four

Echoes in the Night

It felt like forever had passed before everyone had left and Kagome was snuggled down in her bed, the soft, deep green quilt pulled up under her chin as she tried to settle her restless mind. Try as she might, she simply could not push what had happened in that little room out of her thoughts. Chestnut eyes locked on the ridges of the darkened, vaulted ceiling above her as she attempted to sort through the left over emotions. It would have been easier, perhaps, had that energy not felt familiar. That familiarity had not been simple to place, either.

Only when she recalled her own reaction—that something about it had caused a warm, tingling blush to flare in her cheeks—that she thought she grasped who or what it was. By the time this occurred to her, however, her mind was reluctantly slipping into the first, soft, cozy folds of slumber. Kagome knew, even as her conscious thoughts began to slide away, what to expect from the dream that was about to envelope her.

When she again opened her eyes her room was flooded with soft, glimmering moonlight and the air around her felt weighty, but soft, somehow. This wasn't right; she distinctly remembered closing the curtains before she'd gotten into bed. Before she'd even turned her head to look toward the window, she knew what she would see, that he would be there. She could already smell the scent of his skin- strangely wild and brisk, always reminding her of the garden after a rainstorm- knew how much he enjoyed looking out at the moon.

Kagome slowly pulled herself to sit up as she turned to look over at him, aware of how loud the shifting rustle of the quilt around her must seem in the dead quiet of the night, to find him already watching her. His long silvery hair shone white and glittering in the moonlight, his gold eyes gleamed as though they somehow reflected the brightness at his back, as well.

Long, lean-muscled arms were folded loosely across his bare chest and she held in a wistful sigh at the sight of that perfect, golden-tinged alabaster skin. He never seemed to be clad in anything more than a pristine white Feudal period-style hakama, even his feet were bare.

"Once more you call me into your dreams," he said softly as he padded silently across the floor toward her.

Somehow she always seemed to know what he was intending and she shifted forward on the bed in response to that unbidden knowledge, making room for him to settle behind her. "No I didn't," she shook her head as he slid his legs beneath the quilt to rest alongside hers, "you just always show up here."

"You are simply unaware that you are doing it," he challenged, sliding his hands gently down the length of her arms until his fingers intertwined with hers.

Kagome let her head fall to one side against his shoulder, her eyes drifting closed as he lowered his mouth to brush gently over the pulse in her throat. "Will you tell me who you are?"

"Will you be angered if I do not?"

She thought that over, pulling his arms tightly around her beneath the quilt and snuggling back against him. His voice was always so calm, so level . . . somehow, though, she felt that being the target of someone's anger was not anything new for him—perhaps he was even expecting that—but no, anger was not what came to her mind.

Frowning, she delicately rubbed the pads of her thumbs over his knuckles. "No, but it would make me sad."

"Sad?" He echoed as though that tiny word puzzled him.

"Yes. No one in my waking life is honest with me . . . it would hurt to think someone I only ever see in my dreams is keeping something from me, too."

He seemed to take a moment with this, during which she could feel the deep, steady rise and fall of his chest behind her as he breathed. "I am Sesshomaru."

"Sesshomaru," she said the name slowly, as though she was testing the weight of it on her tongue, the way it sounded falling from between her lips.

This . . . this simple, tender closeness was the same. This was the same warm, tingling familiarity she had felt earlier, during the ceremony when she'd been all alone . . . . "Sesshomaru?"

"Yes, Kagome?"

She did not give a start at his easy use of her name- he'd known it the very first time she'd found him lazily and gracefully traipsing across her dreamscape. "Is it you? I mean," she paused, running the tip of her tongue over her suddenly parched lips and starting over, "Are you what's in that little room in the cellar?"

His breathing slowed behind her and she could tell that, even with how minimally his face changed to reflect his expressions, he was frowning. "I am never truly anywhere," he murmured hollowly, his voice barely a thread of sound in the still night air.

Sesshomaru's words, his tone, were so sad that it caused a thick, painful lump to lodge in the center of Kagome's throat. She knew what had to be done to quell his loneliness for even a brief, flickering moment—had always simply understood how much comfort he took from physical contact—and shifted and shuffled against him until she had her nightgown tugged up enough that she could pull his arms beneath the fabric. She placed his arms around her bare waist and then lifted her own, slipping her hands under his silky hair to link them behind his neck, leaving him to do what he wished.

He let out a deep, heavy sigh, running his fingers in gentle caresses along the skin of her abdomen and then higher, tracing the under-curve of her breasts. "Sometimes," he whispered, his voice sounded strangely primal and guttural for a moment, like he was restraining himself, "this is enough."

"You're holding back," she observed, knowing to follow what she felt in her gut when it came to him.

"Yes."

"Why, Sesshomaru?"

Again he took a long moment. She knew those beautiful golden eyes had drifted closed, and he was silent for so long that she thought he was not going to furnish her with an answer at all.

"Because," he finally said, his voice barely audible, despite his mouth being so close to her ear, "it is you."

"Me?" she repeated, the word feeling heavy with meaning for a reason she knew she didn't grasp.

He nodded slowly, his arms tightening around her for a brief moment. "Because you are not like the others."

Kagome bolted upright in her bed, gasping for air. Her eyes darted immediately around her still darkened room, looking for any sign that something was amiss as she played the dream over in her head.

Sesshomaru . . . .

He was here—he'd been right here! She turned quickly on the bed, running her hands over the mattress around her and immediately snatched her hands back. The surface all around her, where the sheet should have been cool to the touch, was deeply warm, as though someone had been lying with her for a long while.

She clamped her hands over her mouth, tears of uncertainty and shock pinging the corners of her eyes suddenly. An echo of that last interrupted conversation with her sister rang through her head, then.

"Have you been having . . . dreams? I—I mean about a man with silver hair?"

"You, um, you know about that? Do you have them, too?"

"Not exactly . . . I catch glimpses sometimes. I just wanted to know where they were coming from. Besides, I don't think he's interested in me."

"Don't think he's . . . . You're talking about, well, him like he's an actual person."

"I don't know that he is, but—"

But . . . ? She needed to find a way to talk to Kikyou again. She needed to know what her twin had been about to say.

More troubling to her still, though, was what he—what Sesshomaru—had said. Because you are not like the others. She lowered trembling fingers, running them once more over the mysteriously warm spot around her on the bed.

Just who had he been talking about?