Instinct

Every animal has instincts, but not every demon obeys them. The consequences can be more than ever expected.

Disclaimer:I do not own Inuyasha. I am merely using the characters in creative ways that earn me no money. Get it? Got it? Good.

A realistic “love” story, born of a realization that I haven't ever written porn or hard language--writers can't afford to be prudes-- and the subsequent refusal to write porn without a plot. Eventually supposed to be Kouga/Inuyasha, Inuyasha/Kagome, Kouga/Kagome, Kouga/Kagura, and everything else I can think of before I get bored. There is a picture from later in the story available. Feedback helps with that, I'll have you know, and does anyone know of anyone/any site that would host this thing? Lemme see, warnings...nonconsentual (with reason, not random rape), masturbation, angst, plain ol' sex in kinky positions, a canine outlook on life, and a reality where love doesn't happen neatly overnight, even a night of getting it on.

*****
Instinct: Dog Vs. Demon Vs. Human
*****

He had been staring at Kagome all day before it hit him that there was something wrong. She was weeding in Kaede’s garden, hands stained green with plant juice and her face lit with laughter as Shipphou attempted to unstick his hair from his lollipop. Sango and Miroku were fighting (i.e., flirting) inside the hut, giving a loud background for Shipphou’s squeals and Kagome’s giggles. The old hag was grumbling, but a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. It was a completely normal day for the shard hunters, and Inuyasha’s presence high up in the tree filled out the scene. As much as he scowled and glared about it, he always watched over the group. He watched, they rested, and afterward they would head out looking for more shards. It was a regular thing, and everyone was doing what they usually did with the same level of innocence they usually possessed. Miroku groped Sango, Sango slapped Miroku, Kagome listened to Kaede, Kaede taught Kagome, Shipphou played, and Inuyasha sat in his tree. It was good.

…except that Inuyasha knew that there was something wrong today. Kagome wasn’t doing anything different, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Well, he did normally watch her, but now it was nearly physically painful to force his eyes away. When she bent over to pluck a weed, her scandalous skirt shortened even further, and when she was kneeling in the dirt like she was right now, gaaaaaaah…

Something wet dripped onto his chest. He tore his wide-eyed gaze away from the forbidden flesh it felt glued to and looked down with a frown. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened, and then he wiped his mouth hastily with his sleeve. Right. Something was definitely wrong. Miroku drooled; he did not, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. The hot ache in his lap had no business in this pastoral day, despite the fact that Kagome’s soft curves and temptingly exotic clothing had brought those urges to the forefront of his mind on a regular basis before. Before, he’d always been able to push it aside. No matter what he acted like for the benefit of his macho image, Inuyasha did have a solid core of responsibility, and it was his duty to protect Kagome, even from himself. From what he understood about her world, she wasn’t ready to mate. She had years to go before she would take a mate. If he touched her now, it would be like pursuing a child.

Saying that, however, did nothing about his erection today. His face felt flushed, and he noticed with rising panic that tiny, quivering, full-body shivers were starting to make his vision shake. His muscles were pulled as tight as bow, resisting the urge to jump down and run to Kagome. His eyes caressed her where she worked, and he groaned audibly as an errant breeze brought her scent to him, potent and head as only a virgin’s scent cocktail could be. She was clueless to what she was doing to his libido, crawling around on all fours like that while his vision edged with red lust and blood throbbed in his--

*Shit,* he thought in a sudden moment of clarity. *I’m going into rut.*

That wasn’t a good thing. As far as he knew, all male demons went into rut at some point in their lives, no matter what species. It was a period of intense sexual energy, the point of which was to drive the male into finding a mate. Whether that was for companionship or breeding depended on the species, but Inuyasha really didn’t know all that much about the subject. It wasn’t like he could go around asking demons about it, now could he? He’d slit his own throat before asking Sesshoumaru, and he had no memory of his father at all, much less anything about this. In his admittedly limited experience, it was merely about a release of sexual tension. Maybe it had something to do with him lacking a pack. His dog instincts could be urging him to be the inherently social creature dogs were…in the most primal, claiming, howl-at-the-moon way imaginable. It had almost worked the few times he’d slipped into rut before, but fortunately he’d been far enough away from humans and demons that he could deal with his raging hormones without ending up with a bitch he wouldn’t want later. Taking a human or demon female while in rut would have made him take her as his mate simply out of guilt for forcing her, but the last time he’d gone into rut he’d actually been thinking about asking Kikyo to mate him. He’d fled as soon as the uncontrollable arousal started and had--thank all the gods--been far enough away by the time it had truly gotten a grip on him that he hadn’t gone back for her. He’d isolated himself in a cave up in the mountains. After that, when the need got too bad…well, the local wildlife would never be the same. Violence could take the edge off, and with the larger game…

*I am not going down that train of thought again,* he decided uneasily as his blood surged. He was losing control over the thought of fucking a deer, for gods’ sake. *I’ve got to get out of here. If I lose it now, I’ll take Kagome.* Something in him gagged at the very thought. Despite what he was used to from girls her age, Kagome had none of the awareness a woman had of herself in this day and age. Unlike the village women, she wasn’t ready for pups, even if her body was. If he took her, she wouldn’t understand. She’d hate him. He couldn’t do that to her. Yes, he wanted her, but he’d wait until she was ready by the standards of her world.

Tell that to his libido.

The wind ruffled that short skirt and he held his breath in panic, squeezing his eyes shut as if clamping his hands around his morals with the same fervor. The breeze whisked over him, and he let his breath out in relief, stopping his reflexive sniff. He’d run. He’d run until he collapsed with exhaustion, and then he’d find a den. Hell, he’d make one. The work would tire him out even more. It couldn’t last that long. The last time had lasted barely a week, and he’d been able to return before Kikyo had questioned his absence. Of course, the problem was that of the three times he’d gone into rut, each had lasted longer than the previous time. He had the sneaking suspicion that the cause for the frequency and flux of his rut had to do with his human blood, not his demon side. *Damn human half.*

His groin twinged, expressing appreciation of a certain human’s half. Particularly the one with a flash of white under green. Thank the gods Kagome wore those ‘panties’ of her time, or he’d have fallen out of the tree at the eyeful she just gave him. Instead, he jumped down to land on shaky legs, holding onto the Tetsusaiga’s sheath with white knuckles. *Don’t look directly at her, don’t look directly at her, don’t take deep breaths--* He modified that hastily when he inhaled. *--breath through your mouth, sweet, mouth-watering, don’t, don’t, don’t!*

“I’m going away for a while,” he said in a rough voice. He was rather proud that he didn’t squeak. Kagome and Kaede looked up at him in surprise, and he swallowed a possessive snarl directed at, of all people, the old hag. Why he would see her as a threat was beyond comprehension. Although, now that he thought about it, she did take up a lot of Kagome’s attention…*No! It’s Kaede, and I will not bark at her like some animal!* He tried to rein in the killer glare he was shooting at the old woman because he didn’t dare look at the beautiful girl next to her. “I’ll…I’ll be looking for shard rumors, so stick close to the village.”

Kaede blinked, probably wondering why the announcement seemed to be said to her, but Kagome immediately scrambled to her feet. “Oh! Why don’t we all go? We’d be better off--“

“No!” The word came out a smidge away from being a bark, and he snapped his mouth into a tense line. The hurt look on Kagome’s face had the blessed effect of softening him in more than one way, allowing him to turn his head to look directly at her. He could drown in those huge eyes, edged by lush lashes that only made them seem larger. “I need to get away,” he said gruffly, realizing too late that he hadn’t improved the situation. He could almost see her adding ‘…from you’ to the end of his sentence because those eyes began to shimmer with tears. *Aw, shit. I’ve got to get a lock for my mouth.*

“Fine,” she ground out, turning on her heel to stomp toward Kaede’s hut. “Go without us,” she tossed over her shoulder. “You don’t need us anyway!”

He opened his mouth to argue with her and probably get himself Sat, but he made the mistake of drawing breath right then. *Sweet with anger-spice, oh-so-delectable, and if I don’t get out of here right now I’m going to jump her!* He hesitated, staring after the retreating girl and unable to make out what the hag was saying through the pounding rush of his heart in his ears. His tongue flickered out as if to taste the air left in her wake.

Kaede raised an eyebrow after the red-white blur fleeing into the trees, thinking wryly that the half-demon hadn’t heard a word she’d said. A long, noisy sigh made her look around to see its source shaking himself vigorously. The fox kit smiled sheepishly when he saw her watching, but it piqued her curiosity when he didn’t say anything. Shipphou was normally very exuberant, almost annoyingly so, but he was only sitting there using his hands to smooth down his puffed-out tail. Between Inuyasha’s unusual distraction and the quiet kit, she knew there was something up. “What troubles you, child?” she asked in a casual way, returning to her weeding.

The kit gave her another half-hearted smile. “I dunno, Kaede. Something about Inuyasha…” he trailed off, looking in the direction the dog demon halfbreed had run.

“Be he in danger?” she asked with some concern.

“I…I don’t think so. I think he just smelled, uh,” his face pinched, brow furrowing and fangs peeping out to bite his lower lip. “I don’t know the word for it. I don’t think humans could describe it. He’s just, um, different today.”

“This difference frightened you,” she observed slyly, glancing in the direction of the hut as a resounding shriek and slap came from it. Miroku, again.

Her words got a reaction: Shipphou’s chest puffed out, and he bounced in a place. “Did not!” he protested. He deflated a bit under Kaede’s knowing gaze. “Alright, maybe,” he muttered. “Just decided I should stay still, that’s all. Wasn’t scared, really.”

She nodded thoughtfully and asked in a gentle voice, “Why?”

He tried to think about it, but some things are buried too deep in subconscious thought for young minds to analyze. It only confused him to try and root out the cause of his reaction. Why had his fur bristled? What had warned him to stay quiet and still? He was too young to know that it was his instincts protecting him, telling the kit to remain unobtrusive in the presence of an aggressively sexually active male.

He could only shrug in answer.

Already leagues away, the halfbreed in question veered away from another village, his open-mouthed pants giving him far too much information about the women therein. His clothing chafed on increasingly sensitive skin, pulling startled gasps from him as he changed direction and charged through the underbrush. It seemed that at the speed he was going there should be a cooling wind in his face, but it felt like he was burning, crashing, going down, and when he hit bottom there wouldn’t be anything left but the animal demon, maddened by lust. *Gotta get away, gotta run, can’t stop gotta run run run until the shaking’s from being tired, not from wanting to lift that scrap of green and plunge my--*

He moaned and deliberately sprang upward, letting the tree foliage pummel him as he raced through the tree tops like Naraku wanted to kiss him. *Oh, gods.* His eyes bulged as his groin throbbed hotly. His stomach roiled, and he threw himself forward, letting the branches beat his blood-flushed body. It was punishment. Had he just found the thought of Naraku arousing?! True, with the long hair and girl-pretty face…

He swallowed bile and reached for extra speed. His clothing felt like sandpaper rasping the skin off his body, but if he stopped now--but if he didn’t stop, if the village was attacked--

Dirt spattered as he flung himself back downward and to a dead halt. Heaving for air, he practically danced in place. If he went much farther away, he’d never be able to make it back in time to protect the village if it were attacked. But Miroku and Sango were quite formidable in their own right. Against Naraku, though? And they might leave to go on a demon hunt or after a shard. If he didn’t get farther away, he’d only follow Kagome’s intoxicating scent back to her, rip the interfering cloth away, and *For gods’ sake, stop that thought right there!* Miroku and Sango could take care of her. Except that his fevered mind immediately provided an assortment of times when they hadn’t been enough. How helpful of it.

A harsh whine fought its way from his throat as he turned in place, hesitation and urgency tearing him into short sprints in each direction in turn. He had to, had to, couldn’t, he couldn’t, he must, must not, no no no! *I can’t think through this, goddammit!* For all his somewhat comical indecision, the intensifying ache in his crotch was slowly dissolving all his higher brain functions. His hands plucked at the fabric smothering him, and he gasped when the pulled clothing brushed against the erection taking over his mind. His hair snapped behind him as he whirled, pupils fully dilated despite the bright day. The ground looked like a battle had been fought on it, dug up by sudden starts and stops, but the only person he was fighting was himself. He couldn’t leave but he couldn’t stay.

With a frustrated howl, the halfdemon flung himself sideways, blurring through the trees at top speed. The fragrance tugging at his nose acted like a tether, keeping him inside a set distance; the stubborn scrap of human left in the sea of male demon instinct knew Kagome’s scent would reel him in eventually, but he couldn’t abandon it. So he spiraled in on one village in particular before a hard kick to his instincts sent him spiraling out again to the limit of the scent, where he’d work his way back in again. Villagers all around huddled in their homes warily, an unfortunate few scared witless by the blur of red-white that cut through the very edges of the rice fields. “Demon,” they whispered. “Let it not come back,” they prayed.

But the frighteningly quick demon returned twice more before dusk, its tormented howls disappearing into loud panting. It always came from the same direction, and the villagers wondered fearfully what it was doing. It didn’t occur to them that the apparition was circling the entire area. The idea was too farfetched. Demons attacked and took what they wanted. They didn’t agonize over what to do, losing a battle with their morals and desperately outracing lust with physical exertion. Because that was what Inuyasha was doing. By the time the blue sky had dimmed to indigo and the near-full moon had risen, even the demon strength in Inuyasha’s legs had eroded. He stumbled to a halt in a quiet meadow, filling it with the sound of rasping heaves as he doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees. Air seared its way into his lungs, then razored its way out in parched blasts over the tongue lolling out of his mouth. His body was so worn he was shaking. It should have been enough.

He found he was stumbling toward the trees, following a distinct human scent…

It was testimony to how hard he’d pushed himself that the weak grip he managed on a tree stopped his forward progress. His claws dug in, and he reluctantly dragged himself back. His other hand came up to gain a similar hold, forcing him to face the tree. He gritted his teeth and tried to smell only tree sap and crushed grass from under his feet. Blood throbbed and pulsed, and with each twinge his hips jerked forward a tiny measure. That rubbed him against cruel fabric, and it was too much to ask a full demon to bear, much less a halfbreed like him. One hand pried itself out of wood to fumble his sword loose and drive it into a crevice in a nearby tree, then lowered to war with the ties of his pants. He was willing to struggle one-handed if it meant he wouldn’t lose his grip on the tree. One claw ripped a small hole, however, and his control snapped. Moments later, large pieces of red firerat fur drifted to the grass. Torn at the seams, he noted with the tiny portion of his mind not reveling in the sensation of cool night air over every inch of flushed skin. But air wasn’t what he needed to feel right now, no…

“Oh, gods…”

His forehead fell forward to hit the tree, eyes squeezed shut to allow him what little pleasure he could take from this act. His left hand remained planted in the three, but his right stole down to wrap around his rock-hard cock, calloused against tender skin but the best he was going to get tonight. He pumped his hand and moaned at the immediate tightening, like every sensation in his body had suddenly been sucked into the hard shaft in his palm. With his eyes shut, he could almost imagine it was Kagome’s hand working frantically on his length, Kagome’s shoulder under his forehead, Kagome, Kagome, Kagome--*But Kagome’s hand is small, and her calluses are from archery, not handling a sword,* his traitorous mind reminded him. The animal instinct in him growled, wishing it would shut the fuck up. *It’s tree bark under my forehead. It’s me, me, me!*

“Oh, gods,” he repeated in a breathy moan, tightening his grip on the downstroke and feathering it out on the way up, brushing his knuckles against the dense snowy pubic hair covering his balls. Amber eyes forced their way open, the pleasant illusion shattered as he stared down at his own hand pumping away. His hips twitched and jerked, and one fang bit into his bottom lip as the slow drip of white from the tip of his straining cock became a brief fount onto the tree he clung to. He sagged forward as the orgasm rippled through him, short but intense.

The ridged tree bark made him wince. The ultra-sensitivity hadn’t gone away, apparently. With a building sense of dread, he drew away from the tree enough to look down. His cock was still in his hand, but it had barely softened. He bit back a groan as it twitched, and his fingers automatically closed again. *Shit. I knew it’d only be a temporary solution, but I hadn’t thought it’d be this temporary. I can’t just jack off, obviously. Dammit, what the Hell am I supposed to do, then?* He let his head fall forward, absently trying to ease the ache in his loins again as he continued thinking. *I could kidnap a peasant woman, but…* He grimaced and stroked faster, hating the way his breath stuttered with each scrape, however gentle, of his claws along the nerve-packed rod they caressed. *I could never look Kagome in the eye again. It’s not like I want to rape anyone, but if the choice is between her or someone else…aw, screw it. Even if I could take avoiding Kagome, Kikyo can see right through me. How could I tell either of them I love them when I took another woman against her will?*

He shifted until he could move his arm more freely, his hand almost acting on its own as he grunted into tree bark. However dissatisfactory a partner his hand was, it allowed him to think, and think he had to. *Gods, if only Kagome was--huh? Wait a second, why--?* He paused for a moment and regretted it. Blood tainted his mouth before he swallowed, and, for the briefest second, the dog demon’s eyes glowed reddish before his hand resumed its movement. His thoughts stuttered, then picked up where they’d been…interrupted. *Why not Kikyo? I was so worried about harming Kagome, but by moving out so far I might run into Kikyo!* The idea of hurting his undead love caused an unpleasant flip-flop in his stomach, but his discomfort became almost revulsion at the thought of raping her.

…and not because it would hurt her.

He blanched and dug his forehead into ridged bark as if the pain could take away the traitorous feelings back. His mind recognized the woman he had loved, but his instincts recoiled in disgust, shrieking distaste about touching a thing of clay and bone. With hormones raging barely within his control, there was none of the guilt and memory that tore him between the reincarnation and original; Kagome was the one he wanted. Kikyo? That was no living, breathing woman to take and claim! She wasn’t a warm, plush female to dominate, to spread and fill and--*Not thinking about that!*

Breathing in the scent of the tree with deep, chest-straining gulps of air, he let his hips thrust into the welcome, tight grip of his hand. If his eyes had been open, the reddening stain of the whites would have become more visible as he bucked toward his peak. He didn’t consciously know why his body rejected Kikyo so utterly, but for the moment he felt only relief. There was one woman safe from him, at least. The only left most of the countryside vulnerable.

He hissed out a long sigh and wiped his hand down the tree trunk, red eyes opening to blindly stare at the white smear it left. Aqua pupils bloomed out of the crimson, but he assumed that his vision swam for different reasons. Mating instinct fought bloodlust, and he wearily dropped his hand to stroke his returning erection, drowning in the clash between animal, human, and demon without even knowing it. Tetsusaiga remained jammed into a nearby tree, forgotten, and he wondered what the hell he was going to do.


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End Part One
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