InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ Married to a Mistress ( Chapter 5 )

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

CHAPTER FIVE
Hatchi was waiting for Kagome outside the staff-room when she emerged in her jeans and T-shirt. Pale and still bug-eyed with shock, he gaped at her. "You must be out of your mind to treat Taisho Inuyasha like that!"

"Envy me...I don't work for him anymore." Kagome flung her ebony head high. "May I have my pay now, please?"

"Y-your pay?" the young bar manager stammered.

"Is my reaction to being forcibly held to the spot by the owner of this hotel chain sufficient excuse to withhold it?" Kagome enquired very drily.

The silence thundered.

"I'll get your money...I don't really think I want to raise that angle with Mr Taisho right now," Hatchi confided weakly.

Ten minutes later Kagome walked out of the hotel, grimacing when she realized that it was still pouring with rain. It had been lashing down all day and she had got soaked walking into town in spite of her umbrella. Every passing car had splashed her. A long, low-slung sports car pulled into the kerb beside her and the window buzzed down.

"Get in"' Inuyasha told her in a positive snarl.

"Go take a hike! You can push around your staff but you can't push me around!"

"Push around? Surely you noticed how sloppily that bar was being run?" Inuyasha growled in disbelief. Thrusting open the car door, he climbed out to glower down at her in angry reproof, "insufficient and surly staff, customers kept waiting, the kitchens in chaos, the tables dirty and even the carpet in need of replacement! If the management doesn’t either act together fast, I'll replace them. They're not doing their jobs."

Taken aback by his genuine vehemence, Kagome nonetheless suppressed the just awareness that she herself had been less than impressed by what she had seen. He had changed too, she noticed furiously. He must have had a change of clothes with him, because now he was wearing a spectacular suit of palest grey that had the exquisite fit of a kid glove on his lean powerful frame.

Powered by sizzling adrenaline alone, Kagome studied that lean, strong face. "I hate you for following me down here…"

"You were waiting for me to show up..."

Her facial muscles froze. The minute Inuyasha said it, she knew it was true. She had known he would track her down and find her.

"I'm walking home. I'm not getting into your car," she informed him while she absently noted that, yet again, he was getting wet for her. Black hair curling, bronzed cheekbones shimmering damply in the street lights.

"I have not got all night to waste, waiting for you to walk home," Inuyasha asserted rathfully.

"So you know where I'm living" Kagome gathered in growing rage, and then she thought,"What am I doing here standing talking to him?" "Well, don't you dare come there because I won't open the door!"

"You could be attacked walking down a dark country road," Inuyasha ground out, shooting her a flaming look of antipathy. "Is it worth the risk?"

Angling her umbrella to a martial angle, Kagome spun on her heel and proceeded to walk. She hadn't gone ten yards before her flowing hair and long easy stride attracted the attention of a bunch of hard-faced youths lounging in a shop doorway. Their shouted obscenities made her stiffen and quicken her pace.

From behind her, she heard Inuyasha grate something savage.

A hand came down without warning on Kagome's tense shoulder and she uttered a startled yelp. As she attempted to yank herself free, everything happened very fast. Inuyasha waded in and slung a punch at the offender. With a menacing roar, the boy's mates rushed to the rescue. Inuyasha disappeared into the fray and Kagome screamed and screamed at the top of her voice in absolute panic.

"Get off him!" she shrieked, laying about the squirming clutch of heaving bodies with vicious jabs of her umbrella and her feet as well.

Simultaneously a noisy crowd came out of the pub across the street and just as suddenly the scrum broke and scattered. Kagome knelt down on the wet pavement beside Inuyasha's prone body and pushed his curling wet black hair off his brow, noting the pallor of his dark skin. 'You stupid fool...you stupid, stupid fool,' she moaned shakily. inuyasha lifted his head and shook it in a rather jerky movement. Slowly he began to pick himself up. Blood was running down his temples.

"There were five of them," he grated, with clenched and bruised fists.

"Get in your car and shut up in case they come back," Kaogme muttered, tugging suggestively at his arm. "Other people don't want to get involved these days. You could've been hammered to a pulp—"

"Them and who else?" Inuyasha flared explosively, all male ego and fireworks.

"The police station is just down the street.."

"I'm not going to the police over the head of those little punks!" Inuyasha snarled, staggering slightly and spreading his long powerful legs to steady himself. "I got in punch or two of my own—"

"Not as many as they did " Kagome hauled at his sleeve and by dint of sustained pressure nudged him round to the passenger side of his opulent sports car.

"What are you doing?"

"You're not fit to drive—"

"Since when?" he interrupted in disbelief.

Kagome yanked open the door. "Please, Inuyasha...you're bleeding, you're probably concussed. Just for once in your wretched life, do as someone else asks."

He stood there and thought about that stunning concept for a whole twenty seconds. There was a definite struggle taking place and then, with a muffled curse, he gradually and stiffly lowered himself down into the passenger seat.

"Can you drive a Ferrari?" he enquired.

"Of course," Kagome responded between clenched teeth of determination, no better than him at backing down.

The Ferrari lurched and jerked up the road.

"Lights," Inuyasha muttered weakly. 'I think you should have the lights on...or maybe I should just close my eyes—"

"Shut up...I'm trying to concentrate!"

Having mastered the lights and located the right gear, Kagome continued, "It was typical of you to go leaping in, fists flying. Where are your security guards, for goodness' sake?"

"How dare you"' Inuyasha splintered, leaning forward with an outrage somewhat tempered by the groan he emitted as the seat belt forced him to rest back again. "I can look after myself—"

"Against five of them?" Kagome's strained mouth compressed, her stomach still curdling at what she had witnessed. Damn him, damn him. She felt so horribly guilty and shaken.

"I'm taking you to Casualty—"

"I don't need a doctor...I'm OK," Inuyasha bit out in exasperation.

"If you drop dead from a skull fracture or something," she said grimly, "i don't want to feel responsible!"

"I have cuts and bruises, nothing more. I have no need of a hospital. All I want to do is lie down for a while and then I'll call for a car."

He sounded more like himself. Domineering and organized. Kagome mulled over that unspoken demand for a place to lie down while she crept along the road in the direction of the cottage at the slowest speed a Ferrari had probably ever been driven at. Then the heavy rain was bouncing off the windscreen and visibility was poor. "All right...I'll take you home with me—but just for an hour" she warned tautly.

"You are so gracious."

Kagome reddened, conscience-stricken when she recalled the amount of trouble he had taken to ensure that she was properly looked after when she was ill. But then Inuyasha had not been personally inconvenienced; he had paid others to take on the caring role. In fact, as she drove up the lane to the cottage, she knew she could not imagine Inuyasha allowing himself to be inconvenienced.

Her attention distracted, she was wholly unprepared to find herself driving through rippling water as she began to turn in at the front of the cottage. In alarm, she braked sharply, and without warning the powerful car went into a skid. "Oh, God!" she gasped in horror as the front wheels went over the edge of the stream bank. The Ferrari tipped into the stream nose-first with a jarring thud and came to rest at an extreme angle.

"God wasn't listening, but at least we're still alive," Inuyasha groaned as he reached over and switched off the engine, "I suppose you're about to kick up a whole macho fuss now, and yap about women drivers,"Kagome hissed, un-clamping her locked fingers from the steering wheel.

"I wouldn't dare. Knowing my luck in your radius, I'd step out of the car and drown."

"The stream is only a couple of feet deep!"

"I feel so comforted knowing that." With a powerful thrust of his arm, Inuyasha forced the passenger door open and staggered out onto the muddy bank. Then he reached in to haul her out with stunning strength.

"I'm sorry... I got a fright when I saw that water."

"It was only a large puddle. What do you do when you see the sea?"

"I thought the stream had flooded and broken its banks, and I wanted to be sure we didn't go over the edge in the dark...that's why I jumped on the brakes!" Fumbling for her key, not wishing to dwell on quite how unsuccessful her evasive tactics had been, Kagome unlocked the battered front door and switched on the light.

Inuyasha lowered his wildly tousled dark head to peer, unimpressed, into the bare lounge with its two seater hard-backed settee. Without the fire lit or a decorative face lift, it didn't look very welcoming, she had to admit.

"All right, upstairs is a bit more comfortable. You can lie down on my bed."

"I can hardly believe your generosity. Where's the phone?"

Kagome frowned, "i don't have one."

Tangled wet black lashes swept up on stunned eyes. "That's a joke?"

"Surely you have a mobile phone?"

"I must've dropped it in the street during the fight." With a mutter of frustrated Greek, Inuyasha started up the narrow staircase.

He was a little unsteady on his feet, and Kagome noted that fact anxiously."I think you need a doctor, Inuyasha."

"Rubbish...just want to lie down—"

"Duck your head!" she warned a split second too late as he collided headfirst with the lintel above the bedroom door.

"Oh, no," Kagome groaned in concert with him, and shot out both arms to support him as he reeled rather dangerously on the tiny landing. Hurriedly she guided him into the bedroom before he could do any further damage to himself.

"There's puddles on the floor" Inuyasha remarked, blinking rapidly.

"Don't be silly," Kagome told him, just as a big drop of water from somewhere above splashed down on her nose.

Aghast, she tipped back her head to gaze up at the vaulted wooden roof above, which she had thought was so much more attractive and unusual than a ceiling. Droplets of water were suspended in several places and there were puddles on the floorboards. The roof was leaking.

"I'm in the little hovel in the woods," Inuyasha framed.

Kagome said a most unladylike word and darted over to the bed to check that it wasn't wet. Mercifully it appeared to be occupying the only dry corner in the room, but she wrenched back the bedding to double-check. Inuyasha dropped down on the edge of the divan and tugged off his jacket. It fell in a puddle. She snatched up the garment and clutched it as she met dazed black eyes. "I shouldn't have listened you. I should've taken you to Casualty."

"i have a very sore head and I am slightly disorientated. That is all." Inuyasha coined the assurance with arrogant emphasis. "Stop treating me like a child."

"How many fingers do you see?" In her anxiety, Kagome stuck out her thumb instead of the forefinger she had intended.

"I see one thumb," he said very drily. "Was that a trick question?"

Flushing a deep pink, Kagome bridled as he yanked off his tie. "Do you have to undress?"

"I am not lying down in wet clothes," Inuyasha informed her loftily.

"I'll leave you, then...well, I need to get some bowls for the drips anyway," Kagome mumbled awkwardly on her passage out through the door.

Just the thought of Inuyasha unclothed shot a shocking current of snaking heat right through her trembling body. It was only nervous tension, Kagome told herself urgently as she went downstairs, the result of delayed shock after that horrendous outbreak of masculine violence in the street. She had been really scared, but Inuyasha was too bonedeep macho and stupid to have been scared. However, she should have forced him to go to the local hospital... but how did you force a male as spectacularly stubborn as Inuyasha to do something he didn't want to do, and surely there couldn't be anything really serious wrong with him when he could still be so sarcastic?

In the scullery, she picked up a bucket and a mop, and then abandoned them to pour some disinfectant into a bowl of water instead. She needed to see close up how bad that cut was. Had he been unconscious for several seconds after the youths had run off? His eyes had been closed, those ridiculously long lashes down like black silk fans and almost hitting his cheekbones. Dear heaven, what was the matter with her? Her mind didn't feel like her own any more.

Inuyasha was under her rosebud-sprigged sheets when she hesitantly entered the bedroom again. His eyes seemed closed. She moistened her lower lip with a nervous flick of her tongue. She took in the blatant virility of his big brown shoulders, the rough black curls of hair sprinkling what she could see of his powerful pectoral muscles and that vibrant golden skintone that seemed to cover all of him, and which looked so noticeable against her pale bedding...

"You're supposed to stay awake if you have concussion," she scolded sharply in response to those unnecessarily intimate observations. Stepping close to the bed, she jabbed at a big brown shoulder and swiftly withdrew her hand from the heat of him again as if she had been scalded, her fair skin burning.

Those amazing golden eyes snapped open on her.

"You're bleeding all over my pillow," Kagome censured, her throat constricting as she ran completely out of breath.

"I'll buy you a new one."

"No, you buy nothing for me...and you lie still," she instructed unevenly. "I need to see that cut."

With an embarrassingly unsteady hand and a pad of kitchen toweling, Kagome cleaned away the blood. As she exposed the small seeping wound, a beautifully shaped brown hand lifted and closed round the delicate bones of her wrist. "You're shaking like a leaf."

"You might've been knifed or something. I still feel sick thinking about it. But I could've dealt with that kid on my own—"

"I think not...his mates were already moving in to have some fun. Nor would it have cost them much effort to drag you round the corner down that alleyway—"

"Well, I'm not about to thank you. If you had stayed away from me, it wouldn't have happened," Kagome stated tightly. "I'd have stayed in the hotel until closing time and got a lift home with the barman. He lives a couple of miles on down the road."

With that final censorious declaration, Kagome pulled herself free and took the bowl downstairs again. She would have to go back up and mop the floor but it was true, she was shaking like a leaf and her legs felt like jelly. Unfortunately it wasn't all the result of shock. Seeing Inuyasha in her bed, wondering like a nervous adolescent how much, if anything, he was wearing, hadn't helped.

Five minutes later she went back up, with a motley collection of containers to catch the drips and the mop and bucket. In silence, she did what had to be done, but she was horribly mortified by the necessity, not to mention furious with herself for dismissing the agent's assessment of the cottage's condition on the phone. This was the first time it had rained since she had moved in and clearly either a new roof or substantial repairs would be required to make the cottage waterproof before winter set in. It was doubtful that she could afford even repairs.

As each receptacle was finally correctly positioned to catch the drips from overhead, a cacophony of differing noises started up. Split, splat, splash, plop... "How are you feeling?" Kagome asked thinly above that intrusive backdrop of constant drips.

"Fantastically rich and spoilt. Indoors, water belongs in the bathroom or the swimming pool," Inuyasha opined with sardonic cool. "I can't credit that you would prefer to risk drowning under a roof that leaks like a sieve sooner than come to me."

"Credit it. Nothing you could do or say would convince me otherwise. I don't want to live with any man—"

"I wasn't actually asking you to live with me," Inuyasha delivered in gentle contradiction, his sensual mouth quirking. "I like my own space. I would buy you your own place and visit—"

An angry flush chased Kagome's strained pallor. "I'm not for sale—"

"Except for a wedding ring?" Inuyasha vented a roughened laugh of cynical amusement."Oh, yes, I got the message. Very naive, but daring. I may be obsessed with a need to possess that exquisite body that trembles with sexual hunger whenever I am close," he murmured silkily, reaching up with a confident hand to close his fingers over hers and draw her down beside him before she even registered what he was doing, "but, while I will fulfill any other desire or ambition with pleasure, that one is out of reach, pethi mou. Concentrate on the possible, not the wildly improbable."

"If you didn't already have a head injury, I'd swing for you!" Kagome slung fiercely. "Let go of me!"

In the controlled and easy gesture of a very strong male, Inuyasha released her with a wry smile. "At the end of the day, Toutosai did quite a number on your confidence, didn't he? Oh, yes, I know that he dispatched you from the hospital and screeched for Kaede. Suddenly you found yourself back on the street, alone and without funds. So I quite understand why you should decide that a husband would be a safer bet than a lover next time around. However, I am not Toutosai..."

Kagome stared down into those stunning dark golden eyes. Fear and fascination fought for supremacy inside her. She could feel the raw magnetism of him reaching out to entrap her and she knew her own weakness more and more with every passing second in his company. She hated him but she wanted him too, with a bone-deep yearning for physical contact that tormented her this close to him. She was appalled by the strength of his sexual sway over her, shattered that she could be so treacherously vulnerable with a male of his ilk.

!Come here...stop holding back," Inuyasha urged softly. "Neither of us can win a battle like this. Do we not both suffer? I faithfully promise that I will never, ever take advantage of you as Toutosai did—"

"What are you trying to do right now?" Kagome condemned strikingly.

"Trying to persuade you that trusting me would be in your best interests. And I'm not laying a finger on you," Inuyasha added, as if he expected acclaim for that remarkable restraint.

And the terrible irony, she registered then, was that she wanted him to touch her. Her bright eyes pools of sapphire-blue dismay and hunger, she stared down at him. Reaching up to loosen the band confining her hair to the nape of her neck. Inuyasha trailed it gently free to wind Jong brown fingers into the tumbling strands and slowly tug her down to him.

"But that's not what you want either, is it?" he said perceptively.

Her skin burning beneath the caress of the blunt forefinger that skated along her tremulous and full lower lip, she shivered violently. "But I won't give in. This attraction means nothing to me," she swore raggedly," it won't influence my brain—'

"What a heady challenge..." Golden eyes flaring with heat held her sensually bemused gaze.

"I'm not a challenge, I'm a woman..." Kagome fumbled in desperation to make her feelings clear but she didn't have the words or, it seemed, the self-discipline to pull back from his embrace.

"A hell of a woman, to fight me like this," Kagome confirmed, with a thickened appreciation that made her heart pound like mad in her eardrums and a tide of disorientating dizziness enclose her. "A woman worth fighting for. If you could just rise above this current inconvenient desire to turn over a new leaf—"

"But—"

"No buts." Inuyasha leant up to brush his lips in subtle glancing punishment over her parted ones, scanning her with fierce sexual hunger and conviction. "You need me."

"No..." she whispered feverishly.

"Yes..." Dipping his tongue in a snaking explorative flick into her open mouth, Inuyasha jolted her with such an overpowering stab of excitement, she almost collapsed down on top of him.

Pressing his advantage with a ruthless sense of timing, Inuyasha tumbled her the rest of the way and gathered her into his arms. She gasped again, "No."

The palm curving over a pouting, swollen breast stilled. Her nipple was a hard, straining bud that ached and begged for his attention, and she let her swimming head drop down on the pillow while she fought desperately for control. She focused on him. The brilliant eyes, the strong nose, the ruthless mouth. And that appalling tide of painful craving simply mushroomed instead of fading.

"No?" Inuyasha queried lazily.

She inched forward like a moth to a candle flame, seeking the heat and virility she could not resist, all thought suspended. He recognized surrender when he saw it, and with a wolfish smile of reward he closed his mouth hungrily over hers and she burned up like a shooting star streaking through the heavens at impossible speed, embracing destruction as if she had been born to seek it.

He curved back from her when her every sense was thrumming unbearably, her whole body shaking on a peak of frantic anticipation, and eased one hand beneath the T-shirt to curve it to her bare breasts. She whimpered and jerked, the most terrifying surge of hunger taking over as his expert fingers tugged on her tender nipples and then his caressing mouth went there instead. For long, timeless minutes, Kagome was a shuddering wreck of writhing, gasping response, clutching at him, clutching at his hair, her denim clad hips rising off the bed in helpless invitation.

Abruptly Inuyasha tensed and jerked up his dark head, frowning. "What's that?" he demanded.

"W-what's what?" she stammered blankly.

"Someone's thumping on the front door." By then already engaged in gaping down at her own shamelessly bared breasts, the damp evidence of his carnal ministrations making the distended pink buds look even more wanton, Kagome gulped. With a low moan of distress she threw herself off the bed onto quaking legs.

"You swine," she accused shakily, hauling down her T-shirt, crossing trembling arms and then rushing for the stairs.

She flung open the front door. Her nearest neighbor, Hinten Thunder, who had called in to introduce himself the day before, stared in at her. "Are you aware that you have a Ferrari upended in your stream?"

Dumbly, still trembling from the narrowness of her escape from Inuyasha and his seductive wiles, Kagome nodded like a wooden marionette.

The Dark haired veterinary surgeon frowned down at her. "I was driving home and I saw this strange shape from the road, and, knowing you're on your own here, I thought I'd better check it out. Are you OK?"

"The driver's upstairs, lying down," Kagome managed to say.

"Want me to take a look?"

"No need," she hastened to assert breathlessly.

"Do you want me to ring a doctor?'"

Kagome focused on the mobile in its holder at his waist. "I'd be terribly grateful if you'd let me use that to make a call."

"No problem..." Hinten said easily, and passed the phone over. "Mind if I step in out of the rain?"

"Sorry, not at all."

Kagome walked upstairs rigid-backed, crossed the room and plunked the phone down on the bed beside Inuyasha. "Call for transport out of here or I'll throw you out in the rain!"

His stunningly handsome features froze into impassivity, but not before she saw the wild burn of outrage flare in the depths of his brilliant eyes. He stabbed the buttons, loosed a flood of bitten-out Greek instructions and then, cutting the connection, sprang instantly out of bed. Maddeningly, he swayed slightly.

But Kagome was less affected by that than by her first intimidating look at a naked and very aroused male. Coloring hotly, she dragged her shaken scrutiny from him and fled downstairs again.

"Thanks," she told Hinten.

"Had a drink or two, had he?" Wicked putting a machine like that in for a swim," Hinten remarked with typical male superiority as he moved very slowly back to the door. "Your boyfriend?"

"No, he's not."

"Dinner with me then, tomorrow night?"

Words of automatic refusal brimmed on Kagome's lips, and then she hesitated. "Why not?" she responded after that brief pause for thought. She was well aware that Inuyasha had to be hearing every word of the conversation.

"Wonderful!" Patrick breathed with unconcealed pleasure. "Eight suit you?"

"Lovely."

She watched him swing cheerfully back into his four-wheel drive and thought about how open and uncomplicated he was in comparison to Inuyasha, who was so devious and manipulative he would contrive to zigzag down a perfectly straight line. And she hated Inuyasha, she really did.

Hot tears stung her eyes then, and she blinked them back furiously. She hated him for showing her all over again how weak and foolish she could be. She hated that cool, clever brain he pitted against her, that brilliantly persuasive tongue that could make the unacceptable sound tempting, and that awesome and terrifying sexual heat he unleashed on her whenever she was vulnerable.

Barely five minutes later, Inuyasha strode fully dressed into the front room where she was waiting. He radiated black fury, stormy eyes glittering, sensual mouth compressed, rock-hard jaw line at an aggressive angle. His hostile vibrations lanced through the already tense atmosphere, threatening to set it on fire.

"You bitch..." Inuyasha breathed, so hoarsely it sounded as if he could hardly get the words out. "One minute you're in bed with me and the next you're making a date with another man within my hearing!"

"I wasn't in bed with you, not the way you're implying." Her slender hands knotted into taut fists of determination by her side, Kagome stood her ground, cringing with angry self-loathing only inside herself.

"You don't want any other man!" Inuyasha launched at her with derisive and shocking candor. "You want me"

Kagome was bone-white, her knees wobbling. In a rage, Inuyasha was pure intimidation; there was nothing he would not say. "I won't be your mistress. I made that clear that from the start," she countered in a ragged rush. "And even if I had slept with you just now, I would still have asked you to leave. I will not be cajoled, manipulated or seduced into a relationship that I would find degrading—"

"Only an innocent can be seduced." His accent harshened with incredulity over that particular choice of word. Degrading?' Outrage clenched his vibrant dark features hard.

"Fool that I am, I would have treated you like a precious jewel!"

Locked up tight somewhere, to be enjoyed only in the strictest privacy, Kagome translated, deeply unimpressed.

"I know you don't believe me. but I was never Toutosai's mistress—"

"Did you call yourself his lover instead?" Inuyasha derided.

Kagome swallowed convulsively. "No, I—"

Golden eyes clashed with hers in near physical assault. "Theos...how blind I have been! All along you've been scheming to extract a better offer from me. One step forward, two steps back. You run and I chase. You tease and I pursue," he enumerated in harsh condemnation. "And now you're trying to turn the screw by playing me off against another man—"

"No!" Kagome gasped, unnerved by the twisted light he saw her in.

Inuyasha growled, "If you think for one second that you can force me to offer a wedding ring for the right to enjoy that beautiful body, you are certifiably insane!"

His look of unconcealed contempt sent scorching anger tearing through Kagome. "Really...? Well, isn't that just a shame, when it's the only offer I would ever settle for," she stated, ready to use any weapon to hold him at bay.

Evidently somewhat stunned to have his worst suspicions so baldly confirmed, Inuyasha jerked as if he had run into a brick wall. He snatched in a shuddering breath, his nostrils flaring. "If I ever marry, my wife will be a lady with breeding, background and a decent reputation."

Kagome flinched, stomach turning over sickly. She had given him a knife and he had plunged it in without compunction. But ferocious pride as great as his own, and hot, violent loathing enabled her to treat him to a scornful appraisal. "But you'll still have a mistress, won't you?"

"Naturally I would choose a wife with my brain, not my libido," Inuyasha returned drily, but he had ducked the question and a dark, angry rise of blood had scoured his blunt cheekbones.

Kagome gave an exaggerated little shiver of revulsion. The atmosphere was explosive. She could feel his struggle to maintain control over that volatile temperament so much at war with that essentially cool intellect of his. It was etched in every restive, powerfully physical movement he made with his expressive hands and she rejoiced at the awareness, ramming down the stark bitterness and sense of pained inadequacy he had filled her with. "You belong in the Natural History Museum alongside the dinosaur bones."

"When I walk through that door I will never come back...how will you like that?"

"Would you like to start walking now?"

"What I would like is to take you on that bed upstairs and teach you just once exactly what you're missing!"

Wildly unprepared for that roughened admission,Kagome collided with golden eyes ablaze with frustration. It was like being dragged into a fire and burned by her own hunger. She shivered convulsively. "Dream on," she advised fiercely, but her voice shook in self-betrayal.

The noise of a car drawing up outside broke the taut silence.

Inuyasha inclined his arrogant dark head in a gesture of grim dismissal that made her squirm, and then he walked.