InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cold ❯ Chapter Seven ( Chapter 7 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter Seven

 

March 12th, 4035

 

Kagome glared at the virtual pieces, silently willing the holographs to lead her to the hard fought win she deserved. Strings of anxiety pulled taunt within the deep recesses of her abdomen, while the hot pulse of excitement pounded through her veins.

This was it.

She stood at the precipice overlooking the valley known as victory, was poised to make that leap into triumph and wash away the humiliating stain of defeat. After more losses than she cared to count, luck had at last turned its bright rays her way.

It was finally her time to shine!

She could feel it.

‘Calm down and focus! Don’t forget who you’re dealing with here! He could still pull this off!’

Sufficiently self-reprimanded, she turned the entirety of her focus back to the checkered board. Studying both her position and his, Kagome pondered her next move, along with any he could possibly make.

Her raven brows crinkled.

Something wasn’t right.

There was a hole in his defense, unheard of in the weeks they’d been playing this frustratingly entertaining game. It wasn’t a glaring opening but it was certainly tempting enough to draw her contemplation. He was either being cocky and careless or luring her into a vicious trap.

She was more inclined to believe the latter.

But if it was the former…?

She could win in two moves!

She swallowed and reached out to make a move.

Did she dare risk it?

Sweat beaded her forehead and her hovering hand hesitated above the squares. She knew he was watching her, she could feel his golden regard like the blazing intensity of high beams. Despite the dense weight of his musing silence, she was sure he was endlessly entertained watching her dangle on the hook of trepidation he’d created for her. She didn’t need to look up to see it, she could practically taste the arrogance radiating from his lax posture. He was a quietly circling shark and she, a panicked swimmer paddling desperately for shore.

Pearly white teeth nibbled her bottom lip.

Fuck it.

Churning with equal parts exhilaration and consternation, Kagome tapped one of the silver boxes and watched her banshee Princess spread her bony arms before unfurling the elongated claw tipped appendages meant to be fingers. Shrouded in the torn silk of her gown and the billowing whirl of gray smoke, the willowy, wispy female replica drifted towards his howling canine and destroyed the bristling wolf with a familiar eerie screech Kagome had never gotten used to hearing. The fanged, violet fur ball exploded and as it shattered into small, digital squares, the dreaded derisive grunt she knew all too well, followed. It was the ‘you fucked up and I am amused’ sound that indicated a painful evisceration was in her future.

Dammit…vicious trap after all then.

Kagome glared as he reached over and placed his finger on the panel three paces from his roaring dragon Prince. The scaly beast unfurled its leathery wing, lifted its hefty body and flapped three squares. Hovering above her Princess, the overgrown reptile blew the shrieking female into oblivion. Annoyed, brow twitching, Kagome watched as a ball of magma eviscerate the last of her defense, and in turn, opened a direct path to her sloth queen.

“Your move.” Sesshomaru challenged as his big fat, stinking dragon took the spot of her banshee.

Brow twitching, Kagome contemplated giving vent to her irritation and turning the board over like last night. It’d certainly make her feel better, not to mention, save her from having to eat crow. She met his impassive, hawkish gaze. There was such a lack of emotion in those honeyed depths that the urge to throw a tantrum was nearly quelled by that cold regard…but then it happened. A single brow lifted and the corners of his lips curled upward. He was taunting her! What an arrogant dog’s arse he was! So freaking smug because he had her cornered. She regretted the day she’d invited him to play. He was determined to ruin her favorite game! The only one she was any good at! She should have never taught him to play Battle of the Beast.

Kagome huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You cheat.” she accused.

That infuriating smirk widened.

“I would assume you have more than an angry assertion to validate your claim.” he drawled, further goading her temper.

“What more do I need? Its blatantly obvious! There’s no freaking way you can beat me so easily. Four days ago you had no idea this game existed yet here you are winning every round. Do you know how long I’ve been playing this game? I mop the floor with everyone I play against,” she touted, “including my little brother and he was practically born with a game in his hand. You have to be cheating.”

Open amusement met her bogus charge.

“You were warned, were you not? I show mercy to none that oppose me and spare no one in the midst of challenge,” he reminded her, “Regardless of the pursuit, if there is victory to be gained, even at something as unimportant as a board game, I will obtain it. That dictum was not one of exaggeration. Pitting your wit against the incompetent has awarded you an inaccurate representation of your skill level. Your ire is understandable. Disillusionment at the hands of an opponent with my intellect and adroitness often prompts the defeated to conjure unsubstantiated accusations in an effort to invalidate a loss.”

Aggravated with his cutting assessment, Kagome grabbed a corner of the board game in question and flipped it. The conduit of her irritation clattered noisily to the ground, tumbled over the tile and came to a rest on her kitchen floor.

Amber eyes gleamed below his raised brow.

“I assume the game is over?”

Kagome looked away, red staining her cheeks, plush lips pursed with attitude. That was an incredibly petty move on her part but boy did it make her feel better. Besides, he deserved it for that insulting tirade. So what if he was right, that he was better than her or anybody else she’d ever beaten, it didn’t give him the right to rub her nose in it.

Damn right the game was over! She was never playing this with him again!

“Got that right buddy.” she tossed his way.

“You are easily riled.” he mused aloud.

She turned back to his smirking face, hands on hips.

“Yeah, what of it?”

“A simple observation.”

Kagome rolled her eyes and stood from the dinning room table. The soft, fluttering hem of her floral top caressed the smooth expanse of flesh just above her naval ring as she rose. Suspended from her shoulders by two translucent spaghetti straps, the truncated garment appeared vibrant against her pale skin. The bright pink, deep crimson and pearly white flower more brilliant settled against the backdrop of salmon fabric. She brushed imaginary dirt from her light pink shorts, then flipped one of her pigtails over her shoulder.  

“Yeah, sure it is.”

She glanced out the transparent window left of her.

Clear lavender skies, lazily drifting clouds and a temperature displayed on the holographic glass that read seventy-eight degrees. Environmental circumstances she couldn’t ignore. This was her first day off in several weeks, and she was not going to spend it in doors getting decimated on a board game. Besides, Sesshomaru hadn’t left the house in nearly a week. He seemed to be in the final stretched to full health and his energy level was at a rapid incline.

Fresh air and a moderate walk around the park would do him some good she was sure.

“Want to go out for a bit?” she asked, turning back to the quiet male.

He was watching her, that heated, assessing glint in his eyes again. Slow and thorough, it roved unhurriedly over her lush figure, leaving little doubt as to where his thoughts lay. Pink bloomed across her cheek, for another reason entirely this time. She returned his undisguised interest with her own, sapphire orbs tracing the hills and bulges of granite he called muscles outlined beneath his clothing. In the close quarters of her apartment, it was difficult for her to deny her attraction to the composed alien male. Outside of her bedroom, there weren’t many places for her to go that didn’t put her in the vicinity of her handsome guest. She could see his desire when they were together and knew he could see hers. There was a heat between them, a not so subtle tension that buzzed between them in close proximity. For her, it stemmed more so from the puissant wavelength he exuded, than his painfully pleasing visage, though, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit his good lucks certainly didn’t hurt.

But she’d seen many a pretty face before, had gone out with a couple, and while he was certainly the prettiest she’d seen, it wasn’t the main reason she wanted to rip his clothes off.

It was his aura. That delicious cloak of confident magnetism he draped about his broad shoulders. That fine edge of dark mystery that whispered power. His energy pulsated beneath his flesh, reverberating over and around the various receptors within her body and psyche.

She’d never felt a surge like it.

It was titillating, akin to the rush of a rollercoaster or the delicious climb just before the explosion of the big O. She felt it the keenest in moments like the one she was in presently. When his intense focus was fixed to the curves of her figure.

Churning heat settled in her tummy and she fought the urge to fan her flushed face.

Definitely mutual attraction.

Even without the underlying current of want that bounced between them, she was quite intrigued by Sesshomaru Tenno. In the duration of his stay, she’d learned quite a bit about him. They’d shared woefully edited versions of their past, and though he wasn’t much of a talker, she’d glean several details of his life whilst in his secretive company.

He’d left home at the tender age of sixteen, skipping several courses of standard education programming, though he explained as disinterest on his part. He’d found the material and testing formats too simplistic and lacking the challenge his sharp mind desired. Self teaching had not only solved the problem, but propelled the significant measure of his intelligence to new heights. In his element, he’d taken to constructing his own learning files and continued to do so throughout his intergalactic training and beyond. Joining the service right after leaving home, he spent four years in basic training, thirty years as an interplanetary enforcer, touring multiple solar system in the Kyroctin galaxy and then ten years as a private gun for hire following his discharge. Following a particularly brutal mission, he’d left that world of violence for another, taking his considerable earnings and bought a small pharmaceutical company, grooming it into a successful and competitive corporation.

At present, he was in the process of expanding his pharmaceutical empire throughout the vast corners of the universe.

His mother and father divorced several years before he left home, his father remarrying a few years after, the union producing his younger half-brother.

Of course, she’d accessed the public database to confirm his story, and indeed a Sesshomaru Tenno existed. The picture and information attached to the name matched what he had told her and for a normal person, it would have been enough to satisfy any lingering doubts but Kagome was no ordinary person.

She was heavily skeptical of the finer details within his story.

There were too many things he skirted around when they talked, too many deflections when she probed too deep. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the curtailing of information when his evasive nature was a reflection of her own. She’d started off regurgitating the information he’d already stolen, confirming she’d been a citizen of Rektan 7 since the age of twelve when her parents immigrated to the diverse planet in a bid for the relative peace and economic stability it boasted.

A lie that was so well practiced, parroted so often, that, sometimes, even she believed it.

She followed that untruth with another, explaining away her lack of a father with a convenient death following the immigration that hadn’t happened the way she said. With daddy dearest written out of her fantasy past, she’d moved on to another tall tale that easily rolled from her tongue.

Mother’s passing.

Five years ago, the final, fatal outcome of a disease native to Rektan 7.

Outwardly, he hadn’t challenged her falsehoods, however, she wasn’t naive enough to believe he bought her story any more than she bought his. He was too shrewd, too astute. Mistrustful, by nature or nurture, to a heightened degree. The holes in her data had only roused his suspicion, and she knew her deceitful , prevarication would only deepen his doubts. She tried her best to quell his burning curiosity, explaining away the missing information as an unfortunate malfunction during the digital transfer of her residency that resulted in corrupted data unrecoverable and unusable to Rektan 7’s registration system. She was sure he’d verified her words as she had done him, and was thankful the information he’d find was vague enough the she could pretty much craft any reality she desired.

And craft she had.

Expertly.

Smoothly ignoring a probing question here, giving vague, unverifiable specifics about her life there, she’d settled into a familiar cadence of lies and omission, a delicate mix of fact and fiction that afforded her a smoke screen of protection. The only truths to come from her mouth was the assertion she couldn’t remember what her birth planet was called or where it was and since mother hadn’t really spoken of their origins she was unable to contact her previous home world to have the ‘gaps’ filled. With those half truths out of the way, they’d become familiar strangers, connecting over various subjects and hobbies.

He stood, indicating his agreement to the suggestion of a stroll and bringing her back to the here and now.

She looked forward to the change of scenery in his company.

Perhaps the cool breeze and warm sun would relax his lips, though she doubted a gorgeous day would move him to offer a clearer depiction of his life or the inner workings of his psyche. Sesshomaru Tenno personified aloof indifference, seeming to allow only quiet curiosity and burning lust past the iron control with which he contained his emotions…or at least she assumed there were more emotions beneath his placid facade. She had never met one of his species and had nothing to compare him to but that lack of knowledge had only served to whet her appetite for exploration and discovery. While the frost of his golden gaze took some getting used to, the complexity of his mind and thoughts were a treasure trove waiting to be unearth, an impressive depth she found….fascinating.

She found him fascinating.

She was skeptical of her success in drumming up conversation outside her abode, but it couldn’t hurt to try. She’d either come back with a deeper understanding of her silver haired guest, or merely refreshed from a nice walk on a rare day off.

Win win in her book.

Feeling magnanimous, Kagome scooped the abandoned game board from her kitchen floor, placed it back on the table and lead the way out her front door.

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