The Lucky Ones
Chapter Fourteen
xmlns:st1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
The Lucky Ones
By Terri Botta
Disclaimer: I don’t own
Inuyasha. Sole copyright belongs to Viz and Rumiko Takashi. I’m poor so don’t
sue.
Rating: R for later chapters.
Pairing: Inuyasha/Kagome,
Miroku/Sango
Summary: Sometimes Fate hands
you a gift you never thought you’d ever get, and it’s up to you to accept it
for what it is.
Feedback to:
tci100@psu.edu
Website: http://www.wordsmiths.net/Botta
*******
Chapter Fourteen
The next
two days passed uneventfully. Kagome had her tests to study for and take, and
most of her time was consumed by those two things. Inuyasha stayed behind with
Yukio when Kagome went to school, but he would bring Yukio to her during her
lunch break. She had half an hour for lunch and she would sneak up to the roof
of the school. There Inuyasha would give her his haori,
her lunch and the baby, and sit next to her while she ate her lunch and nursed
Yukio. When she was finished, she would change him quickly and give him back to
his father, then she would return to her classroom and Inuyasha would bring the
baby back to the shrine.
On Friday
morning she had her worst test: math, and she came out
of it feeling fairly confident that she’d done well. The test finished just at
to the roof where she knew Inuyasha would be waiting for her. She was in such a
rush that she didn’t notice the older woman she passed in the hall; the one who
frowned when she saw Kagome and followed her into the stairwell.
“I’m sorry
I’m late,” Kagome apologized breathlessly, crossing the roof and joining
Inuyasha by the sidethe the utility room on top of the school.
He snorted
at her and gave her his haori.
“How did
the test go?” he asked.
She slipped
the red garment over her shoulders, sat down, and reached for Yukio. “I think I
did well.”
He handed
her the baby, who had already begun to fuss at the scent and sight of his
mother.
“That’s
good.”
“
the nursing flap on the bra.
She didn’t
cover herself and the baby with the haori. Yukio’s
latest thing was to try to push and kick it away when she draped it over his
head. It was as if he wanted to be able to see her face while he nursed and no
longer liked being covered up. Now she took the sleeve of the
skin from view, but leaving Yukio uncovered. The compromise kept Yukio happy,
but didn’t leave her feeling exposed.
“Your last
test is this afternoon?” Inuyasha asked, sitting close and watching her feed
Yukio the way he always did.
“Yes.
He
can’t we Kagome? We can go back tonight?”
She sighed.
So much for a couple of quiet days in her time.
did give me five days here without too much fuss, and he’s done a wonderful job
of looking after Yukio.’
“We need to
go shopping for supplies, but yes, after that we can go.”
“Good. I
want to get the pup back home. The air here is no good for him, and you’re
almost out of liver.”
where you don’t have to hide what you are,’
ball cap he wore to cover his ears. Yukio didn’t have a hat on, but no one ever
saw him because Inuyasha kept him in his baby sling and moved too fast for
normal humans to see.
“I’m eager
to get back too. I miss Shippo, Sango and the others.
But I want to come back for my birthday.”
“When is
it?”
“Next
month. I’m sure my friends will want to throw a party for me because I’ll be
seventeen.”
He nodded
and she saw him make a mental note of it. “Are these the friends I met that
time?”
and Yuka.”
“And that
guy… that Hojou guy. Him too?” he asked, his voice
already holding a hint of jealousy.
I’m not interested in Hojou.”
Yukio
wanted to be switched so she undid the nursing flap on the other side and moved
him over, draping the haori sleeve across her breast.
“Is he a
threat to the pup? Will he try to hurt Yukio because I’m the rival male?”
She blinked
at him, stunned. “No, not at all. We don’t do things
like that, Inuyasha.”
He gave a
grunt of acknowledgment.
“You wanted
a week?” he asked.
She was
shocked that he remembered. “Y… Yes. If I may.”
He frowned.
“I’ll give you three days.”
She frowned
back. “Five.”
“Four and
not a day more!” he countered with finality.
“Okay,
four, but you have to come with me to help take care of Yukio.”
He nodded.
“He’s
starting to teethe. I can feel the bumps on his gums,” she commented.
Inuyasha
agreed. “His fangs will come in first.”
She nodded,
looking down at the baby who was looking up at her, big golden eyes staring at
her as he fed. She smiled at him and stroked his puppy ears.
“My little
big dog,” she cooed to him.
his head whipped around.
“What is
it?” she asked, seeing the look on his face and getting worried.
“Someone’s
here,” he replied.
As if on
cue, a female figure came into view, walking carefully and obviously looking
for something. The newcomer turned and saw them sitting against the utility
room exterior wall. Kagome recognized the woman and gasped, her blood turning
cold. Inuyasha, reacting to her obvious upset, began to growl warningly as she
shrank back behind him, trying to shield Yukio from view.
“
coming towards them. “I came here to your school to make sure you were doing as
ordered. I see that you are not. I will…”
She was cut
off by an extremely pissed off hanyou grabbing her by the throat. He’d moved so
fast that he’d been nothing more than a growling red blur before his inhumanly
strong hand was wrapped around her neck.
“You!” he
snarled. “I know your stinking scent. You’re that bitch doctor!”
The cap had
become dislodged in his leap to grab her, revealing his ears- ears that were
now pinned flat against his head in fury. The older woman saw the dog ears
sticking out from the mass of silver hair and her eyes opened wide, even as her
face began to turn blue from lack of air. She scratched weakly at Inuyasha’s
hand and wrist, but her struggles were useless.
“You’re the
one who made Kagome cry! You’re the one who hurt her and made her feel dirty
for feeding a motherless pup. Just who the hell do you think you are, bitch?”
“Inuyasha,”
Kagome begged, standing and tentatively making her way
over to where he was strangling the woman. Yukio had stopped nursing when he
heard and felt the upset, and was now letting out little whimpers of distress
that could easily graduate into his trademark wails if things didn’t calm down
soon.
school will come running up here and I’ll be done for.’
“
The enraged
hanyou just continued to growl and lifted the kicking woman off the ground by
her neck.
“Inuyasha,
don’t make me subdue you. Let her go right now!” she cried desperately.
With a
final snarl, he dropped the doctor unceremoniously to the rooftop. She crumpled
in a sprawling heap, her hands going to her throat as she gasped for air. He
stood over her, a menacing look on his face, and kept placing himself in her
line of sight every time she tried to look at Kagome and the baby.
“What… what
are you?” she rasped, she staring up at him, her throat raw.
“Inuyasha,”
Kagome scolded gently, coming to stand beside him. She held Yukio close, but he
was thankfully calming down now that she was relaxing.
There was
an eerie silence. Kagome looked down at the terrified and shocked doctor,
knowing full well that the older woman could see that Yukio had dog ears, and a
strange calm came over her. Inuyasha stood at her shoulder and together they
presented a unified front. A gentle wind blew through their hair as they stared
the doctor down and time seemed to stop for a long, breathless moment.
Kagome knew
she should be stunned, horrified and worried sick at the repercussions of what
was happening, but she felt oddly detached from it. What was done was done and
there was nothing she could do about it. Inuyasha was there and she knew he
would protect her, and Yukio was safe in her arms. The doctor was helpless to
do anything against them, and the knowledge brought her peace. She raised her
chin proudly and lifted her son closer to her chest, allowing him to turn and
look down at the woman as well. The doctor’s eyes opened even wider when she
saw the infant’s golden eyes.
Inuyasha
snarled and stepped forward, blocking the doctor’s view again. She skittered
backwards on her hands and rear end, her feet scraping along the rough rooftop.
“Quit
staring, bitch. You don’t have the right to even look at her, you worthless
hag. If I had my way, I’d rip you to shreds for what you did to Kagome, and it
is by her grace and kindness alone that I let you live,” he seethed, sounding
more like his half-brother than he ever had.
The woman
stammered incoherently, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“But I warn
you. If you ever come anywhere near Kagome or my son ever again
Will. Kill! You! Now get the fuck out of my sight, bitch, before I
lose my temper!” he ordered, backing up his threat with a vicious snarl as he
drew Tessaiga and brandished it in front of him.
With a
choked scream, the woman scrambled to her feet and ran, practically pissing
herself to get away. Inuyasha gave a satisfied grunt and sheathed
the rooftop door banging heavily behind her.
“I
used,” Kagome said as she rejoined him.
He tensed,
waiting for the threatened punishment, but it never came. Instead, her head
pressed softly to his shoulder and she sighed.
“But I’m
not going to because I understand completely.”
“
Yukio
burbled and yipped.
“I need to
change him and get back downstairs,” she whispered, reluctantly pulling away.
He gave a
short nod and walked with her back to the wall of the utility room, pulling a
fresh diaper and a cleaning cloth from inside the chest of his kimono as she
handed him his haori. They were back to the cloth
ones because the ‘modern’ disposable diapers gave Yukio a rash. Kagome changed
him and wrapped the dirty diaper up in a plastic bag for later cleaning. Then
she kissed Yukio’s cheek sweetly and put him in his baby sling.
“I’ll see
you when I get home,” she said as Inuyasha took the sling and put it around
him, securing Yukio against his chest.
She rolled
her eyes, but agreed. “Yes, yes. I will.”
“We’re
going back tonight. I want to leave as soon as possible.”
“I know. I
know.”
She moved
to leave but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see him
looking at her intently.
“Be safe,
Kagome. Do well on your test.”
She gave
him a tender smile and a nuzzle. “I will. Thank you.”
He snorted,
but his eyes were kind.
With a
final soft look, she headed back down the stairs, leaving Inuyasha behind.
Little did she know that he didn’t return to the shrine right
disgusting scent and tracked it to the doctor’s little white ‘
knuckles and left four deep gashes down the length of her hood and roof. No
sense in making a serious threat if you couldn’t back it up with a little show
of power.
********
Kagome did
as promised and returned home as soon as school was over, ignoring her friends’
invitation to join them for hamburgers. She knew that Inuyasha would be furious
if she was late, and she didn’t want to do anything to anger him. Besides, it
had been more than four hours and she knew Yukio would be getting hungry soon.
Inuyasha
was waiting for her at the top of the shrine stairs when she arrived. He was
holding Yukio and the baby gurgled at her when she came into view. Kissing his
little cheek, she took him from his father and he snuggled into her shoulder
happily as she and Inuyasha walked side by side to the house.
“How’d the
test go?” he asked.
“Great. It
was the best of the three,” she replied brightly. “I’m just glad they’re all
over. I have my assignments for the next two weeks and no more tests until next
month.”
“Then we
can go?” he questioned eagerly.
“We need to
go shopping first,” she reminded him as they entered the house.
“
“If we
don’t go shopping we won’t have any ramen or potato chips.”
He sighed.
“There is that,” he admitted. “Alright. We will go
shopping right away.”
“Just let
me feed and change Yukio, then I’ll leave him with Mama,” she said, going up to
her room.
“Leave
him?”
“He’ll be
fine. He always naps after he eats. I’ll wrap him in his blanket and sling and
he won’t even know we’re gone.”
Inuyasha
snorted. “That’s what you think. He’ll start bawling the moment we’re both out
of scent range.”
“You
think?”
“You’re
joking, right?”
She sat on
her bed and he gave her his haori as he sat next to
her. It was a ritual for them now, and she was gathering up her courage to ask
him what it was about her nursing Yukio that fascinated him so much and why he
insisted that she wear his haori when she fed the
baby.
“Well, he
has to get used to other people taking care of him,” she said, continuing the
conversation as she went through the motions of feeding her son.
Yukio
didn’t care if his adoptive parents talked while he ate. He had all he wanted
in his mouth and couldn’t care less what the adults did so long as it didn’t
interrupt his food-time.
“Why?”
Inuyasha asked.
“Because
sometimes he’s going to get left behind and he’ll have to be okay with that.”
“We are
never leaving this pup behind,” he replied sternly.
Kagome
blinked at him. “Not even when he’s older and harder to carry? Do you really
want a toddler on a shard hunt with us?”
“It’s too
dangerous to leave him with anyone. Until he can defend himself he’s a target.
We’ll just teach him to be quiet and not get in the way, but we’re taking him
with us everywhere we go.”
Kagome
sighed and reluctantly agreed. “Okay. We’ll put him in his sling and I’ll put a
hat on his head, and we’ll take him with us.”
“Good.”
She changed
Yukio when he finished eating and put him back in his sling, then she put the
sling on and carried him next to her chest as she and Inuyasha went grocery
shopping.
Mama had
dinner ready for them when they returned and by the time they had eaten, packed
up their supplies and made their way through the well, several hours had passed
and it was already nightfall in the Sengoku Jidai.
Inuyasha carried the supplies and her bag out of the well for her as she
climbed up.
“
air. “It feels so good.”
Beside her,
Inuyasha grunted in agreement and she could see all the lines of tension and
stress that always marred his body and face whenever they were in her time
slowly fade away.
‘
admitted to herself, looking up at the sea of stars.
“Let’s go,
Kagome,” he said, hefting the bags over his shoulder.
But she
wasn’t ready to go down to the village just yet. She wanted to stay in this
peaceful forested place and be alone with Inuyasha for a little while before
they had to join the others.
“Wait,
Inuyasha,” she said softly.
“Eh?” he
replied, turning to look at her.
“Let’s just
stay here for a little bit, ne?”
He blinked
at her. “Why?”
“Because…
Because it’s a beautiful night and I just want to relax for a few minutes and
look at the stars before we have to go. We can sit here and I can feed Yukio
and we can both recover from our trip.”
“
She gave
him a tender smile and she saw him blush at the attention. “I know. But humor
me, okay.”
have been any shard rumors while we’ve been gone,” he agreed.
She gave
him another smile and picked a tree on the edge of the clearing to sit under.
“I know,
but we can’t go anywhere until morning anyway so a few more minutes won’t
matter, right?”
“I guess,”
he admitted, sitting down next to her.
Yukio was
fussing in his sling, hungry and aware that something about his environment had
changed again. Kagome drew him out of the carrier and changed his dirty diaper.
Then she held him in her lap, humming softly to him as she began to lift up her
shirt.
“Here,”
Inuyasha interrupted, holding out the haori.
She looked
at him, her eyes soft, and offered her shoulder. He leaned over and lightly
draped the red garment across her shoulders, drawing the fabric to drape down
over her arms. She pushed it back and placed the huge sleeve across her chest
as she brought Yukio up to the nipple. She sighed as he began to nurse, and let
herself relax.
There was
something deep and easing about sitting there with Inuyasha. When they were
alone together, his gentler, sweeter side came out and she treasured those
moments. He could be tender and loving when he wanted to be, and she knew a man
of deep feeling lurked under his gruff exterior. There were many times she
wished he would show it more, and not be so afraid to appear ‘weak,’ but she
knew many years of pain, loneliness and hardship had shaped him into the man he
had become, and she could not expect him to suddenly cast off the defense
mechanisms that had kept him alive for so long.
Still,
there were times like these when she was alone with him, and he was watching
her with a soft look in his eyes, that she knew her love was healing him and
easing his lonely heart. They were times when she could forget about the
be Kagome, the one who loves Inuyasha with all her heart and soul (well, most
of it at the very least.) Times when she felt closer to him than to anyone
else, and she entertained dreams of a happy future with him by her side and
their own children at their feet.
Sometimes
she thought he had those dreams too. She could see it in his eyes when he
thought she couldn’t see: the hope, the longing. Often she’d wanted to reach
out and touch him, to tell him that, yes, she felt the same way, and he didn’t
have to be afraid that she would reject him, but fear that he would rej
fear that in the end she would lose him to Kikyou always stopped her.
But
tonight, under the stars and trees and gently blowing breeze, there was no
Kikyou. There was only her and Inuyasha and Yukio, and they were the only three
people that mattered in the world for those precious moments.
“So many
stars,” she whispered. “You never see this many in my time unless you’re out in
the country, and even then I don’t think you can see as many as I do here.”
“Your eyes
can see perfectly in the dark, can’t they,” she commented.
at night. Much better than your human eyes,” he jibed lightly.
She smiled
at him as she switched Yukio. “It’s a good thing I’m with you then. You’ll make
sure I don’t stumble or walk into anything.”
“What? Does
that mean you won’t?”
He snorted.
“If it comes to that, I’ll just carry you.”
“You always
carry me,” she whispered. “In more ways than one.”
He looked
at her and she could see his blush even in the moonlight. “Feh,
you need carrying, wench. With that weak, human body of yours,” he scoffed,
covering his embarrassment.
She didn’t
take offense. Nothing, but nothing was going to ruin this night and this
perfect time for her. Not even Inuyasha himself.
“I’m better
though, aren’t I? I’m not as weak as I was two years ago.”
He sighed
and lowered his head, his ears drooping. If she didn’t take his bait and argue
with him, he never kept it up for long.
“No. You’re
strong. Much stronger than I ever thought you’d be, and you’ve got guts. You
never back down from a fight,” he admitted.
“I have a
good role model,” she teased.
“You will
be to Yukio.”
“He should
expect to be disappointed.”
“I don’t
think so. I think you’ll always be there for him, just as you’ve always been
there for me.”
“Not
always...” he murmured softly.
“That
doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
He was
quiet, having no answer, and she looked at the nursing infant. She could tell
he was almost finished. Soon Inuyasha would insist they go down to the village,
but she didn’t want their quiet time to end just yet. Besides, she was working
up enough courage to ask him about the haori and her
nursing. It seemed that he might be in the mood to talk about it if she could
ask the right questio/p>
/p>
“Inuyasha...”
“May I ask
you a question?”
He bristled
a little and her heart fell. “What kind of question?”
“What about
it? You need covering otherwise anyone can see your parts,” he replied
defensively.
“That’s not
what I meant. You want me to wear your haori when I
feed him. Even when I have something else I can use, you always give it to me.
And you always watch me feed him. There’s something there, I can feel it. You
get this look in your eyes... Will you tell me about it?”
He sneered
and looked away. “Bah. What are you going on about, woman? There’s nothing to
tell.”
It wasn’t
the answer she was looking for, and for some reason she felt horribly
disappointed. She had hoped the feeling of closeness and love that she was
feeling for him would be reciprocated tonight, and they would talk of his past
and of their future. His cutting dismissal dashed all her wishful expectations.
“I’m
sorry,” she whispered faintly, unable to hide the sadness in her voice. “Forget
I said anything.”
“Huh?
What’s your problem tonight?”
She closed
her eyes and held her temper. He was really trying to bait her into a fight,
and it was making her more sad than angry.
been through, he still won’t share with me...’
She shook
her head, burping Yukio because he was finished, and pulling her shirt back
down.
“It’s
nothing.”
“It’s not
means something,” he countered gruffly.
She sighed,
patting her son and soothing him as she put him back into his carrier. He was
already drifting off to sleep.
“I don’t
want to fight with you, Inuyasha. I just want to sit here with you and feel
some peace. I was hoping you would share with me, but if you don’t want to,
that’s okay. I won’t try to make you.”
She didn’t
answer, just looked down at the sleeping infant, and smiled wistfully. Then she
drew the edges of Inuyasha’s haori around her to ward
off the night chill. It was warm, and wearing it was comforting to her. After
all, giving her his haori had been the first gesture
of affection he had ever offered her, and the gift had saved her life more than
once.
“It’s
because I want to be part of it,” he said suddenly after a long silence.
She blinked
at him, surprised, but remained silent. He looked at her with guilty eyes, his
hands in his lap and his face contrite.
“If you’re
wearing my fire-rat, I know you and the pup are protected. That’s important to
me,” he went on.
“Inuyasha...”
she breathed softly, her heart melting.
“And I want
to feel like I’m helping you in some way. That I can do something worthwhile
for you and the pup: protect you, provide you with meat and liver. I want to
know that I can give you something you need.”
She gave
him a tender, grateful look, and reached out to hold his hand.
“Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that with me.”
He shook
his head, accepting her hand in his and lightly grasping it. “No. I should be
thanking you for what you did.”
“Me?” she
replied, blushing, but inwardly smiling at his soft look, his tenderness. “I
didn’t do anything...”
“And that’s
what makes it more beautiful. You don’t see what you did as anything special
when the rest of us are in awe of you. You asked me why I watch you when you
feed him. I watch because I still can’t believe it. I have to see it so I know
it’s real.”
“Why?”
He let her
hand go and looked away, his head down and his eyes dark with deep emotion. She
waited, holding her breath, because she could feel the change in him and knew
that he was going to talk, really
Will you? Will you really...’
“Because no one fed me,” he said
quietly.
“What?” she repeated, uncertain
that she had heard him correctly.
He took a deep breath and let it
out slowly before speaking again.
“No one fed me. When my mother
died, no one fed me. No one cared if I lived or died. My mother was a
noblewoman but no one gave a damn that I was her son. I was just a filthy
half-breed nobody wanted. I had no idea how to feed or take care of myself. I
scrounged food from the kitchens and the garbage, eating whatever I could get
my hands on. They’d chase me out when they caught me and beat me for
‘stealing.’ I was filthy and starving, but nobody cared.”
“Eventually my brother came for me
and he took me with him, but by then I was in pretty bad shape and he was
furious at my mother’s relatives. I think he even killed a couple of them. But
even he didn’t feed me or bring me food. He told me the extent of his
obligation ended with his protection, and if I wanted to eat I had to find food
for myself. Sometimes, though, when I was really hungry, he’d toss me a rabbit-
raw. Most of what I learned about how to feed myself, I had to learn on my own
because he never taught me. My first kills were messy and bloody, but it was
either that or go hungry, and if I ate something that
made me sick, I’d be punished.”
He paused and looked at her to see
if she would say anything, but she was just staring at him in shock.
‘Inuyasha...’
He went on, his voice thick with
old pain.
“There was an inu-youkai
bitch with three pups on my brother’s lands. I watched her for weeks, hoping
that if she got used to my scent and I learned her ways, that maybe she’d
accept me. That’s how I know so much about pups. But she rejected me when I
approached her, and my brother scruffed
and cuffed me severely for even trying. I was sore for days from his beating,
and I’ll never forget what he told me that night. He said no
with human blood, and the dirt beneath a true youkai’s
feet. No one would ever accept me. That was when I understood my mother’s tears
that one time. Why she had cried for me. She had known what my life would be
like, and she had wept for my sake.”
He stopped and shook his head as if
getting rid of a hurtful memory. Kagomitedited, her heart pounding and breaking
for this poor soul who had suffered so much.
‘Inuyasha,
my beautiful Inuyasha. You didn’t deserve any of it...’
She wanted to throw herself into
his arms and hold him until the pain went away, but the words stuck in her
throat, and he was speaking again before she could swallow them.
“So you have no idea how it affects
me to see you with Yukio, to see you feeding him. To me, it’s a miracle. I
don’t care that it’s normal. I don’t know anything about hor-oh-moans
or fizz-ee-olo-gee and women. I don’t care if any
woman he’d nursed from would have made milk for him. They wouldn’t have. None
of them would have even tried. They would have let him starve to death before
any one of them would have given him a breast.
“You are the only woman I know who
would allow an orphan half-breed to nurse from her dry breast just because she
wanted to comfort him when he was missing his dead mother. You are the only one
I know who would have cared that much, loved that much, given that much. To
take a hanyou pup who was not your own and nurse him,
to feed him from your own body…”
He raised his eyes and looked at
her still staring at him with watery eyes. His own eyes were wide and filled
with adoration, awe and love.
would have happened with anyone. For me it’s amazing and unbelievable. That’s
why the third meaning of ‘Yukio’ is so fitting to me, why it means so much to
me. To me… to me, I see you with him aI seI see God.”
Finished and embarrassed by his own
runaway mouth, he looked away, concentrating on his hands, his claws.
“Inuyasha…” she breathed, and he
cast a glance up.
Tears were streaming down her face,
her cheeks wet with them, and he knew she was crying for him. Unable to stand
it, he looked away again, and almost stood to leave.
“Don’t. Please,” Kagome
He nodded, still not looking at her
and sat back down. A moment later a sleeping Yukio was placed in his lap. He
touched the pup’s hair with one finger, tracing the side of his little face. He
smelled of pup and milk and Kagome.
There was a rustle of cloth and the
sound of something falling to the ground, then
Kagome’s hands were on his head and shoulders, turning him to look at her.
She’d taken off his haori and her shirt and bra, and
her bare breasts were exposed to him, the nipples reddened from Yukio’s earlier
nursing. He blinked at her, confused and unsure of what she was doing.
“Kagome?”
She shook her head,
her eyes still brimmed with tears, put one hand on the back of his neck and the
other on his cheek, and pulled him towards her. Gently, she brought him to her
breast and pressed his mouth to her nipple.
“I would have fed you. I would
have…”
He let out a choked sound that
might have been a whimper, and her hands tangled themselves in his hair, urging
him to take what she offered. Opening his mouth, he let his lips surround the
toughened nipple and began to lightly suck.
Kagome felt him start to nurse and
put her arms around him as she let more tears fall down her cheeks. His sucking
was so different from the infant’s, his mouth gentle and his tongue softly
licking. She knew she had only a very little bit of milk left, no more than a
mouthful at the very most after Yukio finished nursing, but she didn’t need
milk to feed him. The very act of bringing him to her breast and letting him
suckle was enough. Right now, she was feeding the abandoned orphan whom no one
wanted, the little boy Inuyasha who had lost his mother and never known his father;
the lonely, bereft child that still lived inside the adult hanyou and begged to
be comforted.
Later she would nourish the man he
had become, using a much different part of her body. With Yukio sleeping
soundly and tucked in his sling hung from a nearby tree branch, they would kiss
passionately for several minutes, and finally couple on the moss-covered
ground. For years afterward she would remember and cherish that first time, not
minding that it was awkward, and hurt a little, or that he had finished too
soon. She would always remember how he’d held her wrists tightly as if he was
afraid she would run away, then how he had clutched her to him with both arms
wrapped around her as he moved desperately inside her. The look of stricken awe
on his face when he first mounted and breached her was burned into her mind;
how it changed to shocked bliss as he slid all the way in, and the tears that
rolled down his cheeks as they made love- tears of old pain, of joy and of
healing.
She would remember his face after
his first climax, the way his eyes rolled back and his jaw dropped open, and
how he had cried out her name in the final moment. Then the look of shocked
embarrassment when he learned that women could climax too, and that she had
been left unsatisfied. She’d asked him to help her pleasure herself and he did
her one better, insisting that her pleasure was his responsibility. He’d
brought his mouth to the juncture of her thighs, and she discovered that his
tongue was the most amazing thing in the world.
Their second time followed shortly
after her first climax, when she was still wet and open from the first, and
relaxed from her orgasm. He mounted again, this time a little bolder and more
self-assured, and never took his eyes off of her for a single second. Even when
she closed her eyes in rapture and arched her back, when she opened them again
he was still watching her intently. It was as if he didn’t want to miss a
moment, especially the moment of her climax, when her body jerked and she
gasped and her passage clenched around him like a rippling vice that milked his
own orgasm from him. Then he threw his head back and howled his triumph and
victory as he emptied his seed into her with self-satisfied pride.
And little Yukio slept soundly
though it all as if instinctively knowing that his adoptive parents were busy
in the throes of passion and pleasure, that all was well, and that he was
perfectly safe from harm. When they were finished, they retrieved him from his
bough-cradle, and cuddled him between them as they snuggled together at the
base of the tree. He rolled towards their warmth, never waking, and tucked his
tiny fists under Kagome’s breast as they fell asleep still holding each other.