Progression

4. The Art of Freedom


*}----(past)

Kagome chewed her bottom lip as she nervously eyed her canvas, tucking a short strand of wildly tussled wavy black hair behind her ear. Her nerves were strung taut, though she was firm in her convictions. She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with much needed air…holding it there for endless moments…before letting it escape her in a slow exhalation, trying to allow the sounds of the rainfall to sooth her.

She could do this! He was counting on her to do this!

She raised her hand, her chosen artistic instrument held between carefully steadied fingers.

She had trained herself for the past nine months for just this moment. And while she knew she was fully capable, when it came down to the deed, she found herself second guessing her ability. Her teacher had assured her that she would excel in this…and so far, he had been proven correct. She remembered the very first time she had implemented his teaching and the pride on his face as she had succeeded magnificently on her ‘maiden voyage’. The recipient of her efforts had been kindly encouraging, fully expecting to bear the brunt of any mistake on her part…yet there had been none. Of course, his kindness might also have been about the artist herself, because she was a unique sort of beauty that was rarely seen. The man had been fully aware of how dangerous it could have been if he had so much as touched her in any way outside the demands of her present occupation. And that had only added to the appeal…

Now, Kagome tried not to fidget as her canvas lay quiet and willing under the needle.

On his own, stretched nude as he lay face down on the table with his chin propped on his crossed forearms, Sesshomaru was a work of art. She was still slightly unsure how she had managed to attract someone like him…but somehow she had, and it had led to this very moment.

Unable to mark him in the ways of his own kind, they had found another way around his innate need to be marked as hers.

That, and his father’s newest attempt at bringing him in line had prompted his sudden burst of creativity.

When told that his father had possibly found him a potential mate in the daughter of a minor youkai noble from Europe, he had only barely managed to keep from leaping over the mammoth desk and gutting his own Sire. The instantaneous flare of rage he had disguised behind hooded eyes, even as he had stood in stony silence before his ignorant father, who had foolishly informed him that he was to slowly wean himself away from the presence of the Miko, because such a relationship was unseemly of a promised young male. Certainly, the elder male knew that he was connected to the young human girl that he had allowed his sons to bring into his home. But he had been unaware of the fact that his son had mated her almost a year ago.

That night, Sesshomaru had contacted an old friend who had taken up a slightly more alternative profession, that of a tattoo artist. He’d been just a bit leery at first, of the ability of such a young female. But had swallowed his doubts and allowed her to practice by drawing out more and more complicated pieces…before letting her embellish them. She’d displayed a natural talent that had first stunned, then delighted him. He’d taken her designs and worked them into the flesh of his customers. And then he’d taught her the same craft.

Sesshomaru was nothing if not cunning, and while it would take a bit of careful maneuvering it was completely doable. He had marked her as was proper, but she had yet to do the same what with her lack of the proper fangs of a youkai female. But with the almost ritualistic marking of a youkai in their coming of age, his opportunity would present itself.

And it had.

The Inu male was now twenty years of age, and was due the markings of his rank. Kagome had sat by on the few nights where he had pondered the placement, shape, and coloration acceptable for his station. But it had all been for naught, when he had completely bypassed the Taiyoukai class and the required markings. Instead, he was to be marked as Warlord-class Daiyoukai.

The almost feline-like striping over his shoulders, biceps, hips, thighs and calves were to be a darkly metallic shade, instead of the expected blood red. The effect against his deeply tawny flesh was striking in the extreme, though it only seemed to add to his fiercely inhuman appearance. Years past, his face would also have borne the markings, but now it was left to choice and he had other uses in mind for those particular sets of stripes.

There was only the faintest twitch of muscle as the needle finally alighted on his shoulder blade. His breathing remained untroubled and slow as she pressed the needle in…then further still in accommodation of his youkai healing abilities. The entire project would be done much deeper than would have been required on a human’s body, the ink infused with his own blood to give it permanence as his youkai power recognized and accepted the additions as a natural part of his own being. It was highly unlike the silver stud he had just had pierced through his tongue the hour before, because that small intrusion would be healed long before she placed the final touch on his tattoos.

The Miko slowly regained her confidence in her skill as she progressed; carefully blotting away the blood and excess ink with a soft cloth as it accumulated before it could roll down the slope of his ribs. The needle gun vibrated in her hand and she occasionally would switch the instrument to the other, shake away the tingling in her fingers resulting from the higher setting, before resuming her task. He watched her from under the dark sweep of his lashes, his very own onyx-haired pixy wielding a needle gun, while the dark marks slowly climbed their way from the back of the muscled slope of trapezius and deltoid to trail halfway down his pectorals. Another set wrapped around his biceps in stylized tiger stripes. She couldn’t help running her fingers over the powerful thighs as she began to ink them, even though his low, dark laughter followed in the wake of her touch with shiver inducing heat. She had offered to stop a time or two to give him time to breathe and relax, but he had refused every opportunity, and she half suspected that he was just plainly enjoying this.

And she was proven correct when he sat up with that faintly devious curl of his lips that she had found often to be accompanied by his blatant physical arousal. He shifted his weight, before coming to stand before her, almost daring her to touch what was now at eye level as she sat on the slightly elevated chair. He shivered as his hair flipped down over his back and brushed over the sensitivity of his freshly tattooed form, the sensation a painfully pleasurable chill that continued the erosion of his grasp over his hunger for his mate. And her small hands settling over his hips as she encouraged him to turn about so she could continue did not help matters.

This had been left deliberately for the last…because it was the most vital. Sesshomaru almost groaned as she once again set the needle to his body, beginning from just brushing his gorgeous butt, curving around his lean hips, before dipping in to point teasingly towards his ever more painfully aroused cock. He was almost shuddering by that point, thankful that it was nearly over before he damaged her work with his inability to hold himself in check. His eyes were already bleeding with lust as he sank his fangs into his lower lip to distract himself from throwing her against the nearest wall and ‘staking’ his claim in the most graphic and forceful of ways.

Then she was done. The buzzing abruptly ended as she switched off the needle gun and watched as he slowly brought himself to heel before he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. He seemed to become both more controlled, yet increasingly restless, as he stood there with a look of tense watchfulness…as if one quick movement would set him off.

She was half tempted to make that move…

But the moment passed and he moved to help her set everything safely aside, before he lifted her from her seat and set her on the table he’d abandoned. That wicked smile was back in place as he noted the faint wariness in her eyes, the way she watched him as if he may very well devour her.

“You ready for this, Miko?”

The husky, nearly solemn, tone was completely at odds with the way his hands had begun to strip her of her own clothing. She shivered as the cool air hit her newly exposed body, her bare breasts bouncing as he tugged her top up over them. The small, firmly rounded mounds caught his attention and he watched them for a moment as if entranced before a soft growl escaped him and he continued where he’d left off. He pressed her backwards against the cool leather of the tabletop; her jeans were stripped upwards over her thighs and calves where her delicate feet rested atop his shoulders, lightly pressing against the slightly raised dark slashes of the tattoos. His fangs grazed her left ankle as he leaned into her, his lips nipping to sooth the scrapes before he slid his tongue along the graceful arch of her foot.

She squirmed and giggled as she felt his lips curve against her toes, before he moved on and set his hands around the upper curve of her hips and rocked them backwards. The position did not allow her to sit upright, though she could still reach his shoulders after he shrugged her feet from them and bent over her prone form.

She muffled a small gasp as his lips traced patterns over her breasts and shoulders, heat searing her skin in their path. “Are y-you sure you want it to be this way? I’m a-ah sure that we can-”

“This way, Miko.” Where his words might have failed to cut off her stuttering protests, wrapping his lips around a puckered nipple and roughly suckling had managed to succeed. Her protests died a painless death as his mouth tugged at her, and she bent instinctively into place, curling her heels behind his thighs and spreading her own to hug his hips. He hissed as the pressure dug into the needled flesh, but it wasn’t nearly hard enough to satiate him.

Wrapping her hands around his neck finally gave her the leverage needed to press herself against him, and he allowed it as he released her hips, his hands shifting downward to squeeze the rounded cheeks of her backside, lifting her upwards for a moment before he took her breath away with an endless, impossibly slow thrust into her waiting body. She squirmed as she took him in, forcing herself to relax, to breathe and welcome the invasion. No matter how many times they’d done this, she was never entirely prepared for the way he seemed to overwhelm and dominate everything that made her female. That very first time, it had terrified her, because she couldn’t have known just how completely he would take her over, and he hadn’t been in the headspace to offer her any sort of comfort.

Now, she knew that he felt just as taken, just as lost in her, only he welcomed that sense of abandon with his lover.

“It’s time, little girl,” he purred the nickname; one he used whenever he dared her into moving out of her comfort zone. And she never failed to meet him head on in anything. Her hands left his shoulders and slid down his chest to his hips. She hesitated there, for a moment, and he growled softly to urge her on, sliding back and driving deeper. She inhaled sharply…and her nails dug into his hips to hold him. It was exactly the thing he craved, and when he repeated the motion with a sliding twist that had had her arching into him, the tenderness of his needle softened flesh giving under her grip as her nails sliced into him with four tiny, perfect crescents over each hip where she purposefully broke the pattern of the tattoo. The tattoos, themselves, were a symbolic marking from his mate’s hands that would hold weight in any court. But the small nail marks were very personal…and permanent, now. They marked him, like an autograph of sorts, as her lover in a way that he knew would not be refuted.

But such thoughts were fading as she relaxed against him just enough to allow him to begin a short, sharp rhythm. “Harder.”

She trembled, but complied, because she knew that this event was both momentous and unforgettable and she wanted him to take everything he needed. Her nails dug deeper and he howled.

She lay quiet under him for a moment, before throwing herself into motion. Her legs looped higher around his back and it opened her further, allowing him that everything. She sank her teeth into him as if she could give him what he had craved, starting for a moment as her small, human canines opened his shoulder. But he held her there when she would have drawn away, and soon she was biting him with all the demand of a proper Inu bitch, growling back at him as best she could and matching his increasingly more powerful thrusting, further marking him with dainty teeth marks through the nearly healed bands over his left shoulder. She had never been a passive partner, but this was making new inroads into her own uninhibited responses to her occasionally feral lover.
Sesshomaru abruptly lifted her from the table and pivoted to press her against the cold wall. The contrast made her jump, chilled from her nape to her bottom, heated everywhere else, and now trapped as she had nowhere to escape his ever growing intensity. Not that she could ever want to…

Rumbling growls and low vibrating purrs shivered down her body along with waves of a pure glittering pleasure that swept her away from herself. Tumbling her up for a moment, before dragging her back down and then forcing her higher still.

He turn to watch her as she rolled her head back against the wall, enjoying the way her eyes slid shut and her cupid’s bow of a mouth tipped upwards into a small blissful smile. He didn’t notice the way he smiled in return, almost gentle as he eased out of the heavy driving pace he’d previously set, before he dipped his head, unable to resist the lure of tasting her smiling lips. She welcomed him with every bit of the generosity that her body had shown his own, even as he lifted her hands from his hips to teasingly pin them to the wall on either side of her head, lightly raking the small silver stud along her palate. Only, teasing with him still meant that she could not pull free, and the only movement possible was to arch her back in acceptance with each of his rolling thrusts.

“Good?” His voice was barely more than a murmur, but she heard him.

“Yessss…” Her voice trailed off on a hiss, as she felt the beginnings of her climax begin to tighten her body, her heart thudding almost painfully in her chest. He stiffened for a moment at the sensation, before he drove in full stretch and held. She mewled as she came apart, and he groaned as he attempted to hold back, but it was in vain as the pressure that had been building abruptly released…taking the tension from his body with it. He slowly sank onto his heels, easing her into his lap as he went, and Kagome felt his heart thundering under her cheek.

A car drove by the outside of the shop with a muffled splash as it drove through a small lake in the middle of the road, the continued rainfall making a quiet pattering against the roof.

And Sesshomaru knew that his future, along with his mate’s, was once again under his own control.

*two days later*

Sugimi Taisho sat in his darkened office with his head in his hands.

Up until this very night, he’d been unaware of how little control he still held over his eldest son. Namely…none at all.

When he’d informed the younger male of his impending political alliance, i.e. his mating to a business partner’s young daughter, he’d assumed that his son was either open to it, or that he simply did not care one way or the other. And when he’d told him that he was to sever his ties to the little female he’d become so oddly attached to, he’d assumed that his son would obey.

But not even ten minutes ago, that same son had stalked into his office with coldly flat eyes and with a studied calm pulled his shirt over his head to display the newly acquired marks of his rank. He had surpassed his Taiyoukai father, and the elder Inu saw that the promise of power in his progeny had more than lived up to its boasts. He’d opened his mouth to congratulate him, when something in the stance of his eldest caught his attention…a challenging stillness at odds with his previous simple silence.

He fought back the oddest reaction, one he’d never felt the need for with his own family in the past; the need to bare his fangs and reassert his dominance. The urge was so foreign to him, one that he had not felt in centuries, that he was almost unable to process the accompanying emotions such as shock, unease…and the most uncomfortable sense that he no longer held any sway whatsoever over the other male.

It was a strangely frightening realization, as it threatened his perception of his family and his place in their lives.

Then he shook away the seeming insanity of it. His son had yet to move from his place before his desk, and while his body language spoke of aggression, he made no overtly threatening gestures. “Is there anything you needed, son? The work is beautiful, by the way. Who is the artist?”

He assumed it was one of the youkai artists that were trained for centuries in the art and only to be had by the most affluential families.

He found himself fighting not to squirm under the unwavering intensity of the chill golden eyes, feeling as if he were being measured against some unknown percentage. And was being found wanting.

Sugimi suddenly realized that he had no idea what was going on in his son’s head. It had been years since he’d held an actual conversation with the boy and now he felt the distance between them. And it was brought home with brutal efficiency with Sesshomaru’s words.

“My mate.”

His words gave emphasis to the revelation as the Taiyoukai caught sight of small ‘decorations’ against the young Daiyoukai’s tawny flesh, so casually bared yet proudly displayed. And it was as his son turned from him and moved back to the door that he realized just how estranged he and his son had become.

“You lose, old man.”

Then he was gone…moving through the shadows as if he belonged in them.

Now here he sat, contemplating this newest turn of events. He didn’t know how he had failed to notice any of it. And if at first he might have been inclined to blame it on the priestess, only a moment’s worth of rethinking told him that his first line of reasoning was faulty. Because she would never have urged him to defy his father’s wishes, nor would she have conceived of physically scarring someone the way she had been called upon to do.

For a few moments, he felt a profound sense of grief as he realized that he’d lost the respect of his son. Allowed him to slip from his grasp and become someone he was unsure could ever be reached. The level tone had spoken of loss, losing his merger certainly, but not giving voice to the loss he suffered of his very own son. He was not even family to the younger Inu…simply an obstacle to be circumnavigated

He let the scene replay itself in his head, but even still, all he saw was detached rebellion. And the most painful part about it, was the fact that it was all brought home over a topic that he now realized was terribly unimportant. His son’s happiness should have been all that he sought. Not a higher number in a list of columns that raised a monetary value. His son’s respect was worth infinitely more.

And he began to consider the ways to reach the creature Sesshomaru had become, through coldness and detachment…his perfect power now being worn in perfect defiance.

(present)----{*

The Western lord smiled from a distance as he watched as two of his children danced in the moonlight, careless of the world and complete in each other’s embrace. It had taken years to restore himself in his son’s eyes, but the time spent was well worth every moment in his own estimation. Along the way he’d gained a greater understanding of his youngest son’s failings…and his human mate’s needs. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost sight of what it meant to be a father, as well as a mate. That very night so long ago, he’d sat Izayoi down and placed himself at her feet as he had begun to confess his sins. They had spilled from him in an endless torrent, though his mate had the grace to allow him the needed purge.

Together, they had come up with ways to rectify the issues. The painful loss of his elder son’s love and respect, along with his subsequent rebellion. His younger son’s careless disregard of anything that did not please his immediate needs, his deceits born of the blind eye turned to him. His own seeming neglect of his beloved family.

Izayoi might very well have qualified for sainthood in his eyes for having stayed through it all. And she allowed him to prove himself to her again, over time. He once again became the warm father he had been short years ago, fitting the broken pieces of his family back together with more patience than he remembered having. Kagome had swiftly and efficiently stolen her way into his heart, and he had found that the road to his son’s acceptance lead through her. He loved the little miko girl like one of his own, something that took a shockingly little amount of time. It had been his growing respect and affection for the girl that had led to her moving in with them not six months later.

If at times, he wished he could have informed Inuyasha of the goings on behind the scenes, he refrained. It was not his place, even if he might have regretted the slowly growing desire in his hanyou son’s eyes when they might have rested on Kagome. And while Inuyasha may never have had the love of a mate from her, it would open his eyes to the female who might fit him as perfectly Kagome and Sesshomaru fit together, that he might treat her with the respect needed to keep her. It was an experience that was needed in his young life, where everything had been handed to him. Now, Inuyasha could learn that last, most needed lesson in life: to respect the gifts given, and appreciate whatever form they might take. Because no matter how his son might wish it, he could not go back and regain the most precious gift…one that he’d never understood to begin with.


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a.n. – this chapter was dedicated to chaoswingdragon for her continued support.

I also wished to extend my thanks towards her, and a few special others. Kagehime, Kaiganeru, and Anakatanai for their massively timely ‘behind the scenes’ support…I was honestly beginning to doubt myself and they have helped me to shrug off those doubts and continue. To ShadowsWeaver1 for the kind name-dropping…it was very much appreciated! And to demonlordlover…still one of my favorite authors and always a thrill when she reviews!