InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ Married to a Mistress 8 ( Chapter 8 )

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

This history does not belong to me, it belongs to Lynne Graham, and the characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. I just post this story for fun.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Warm color fingered into Kagome's pale cheeks.

Thirty yards from them a long, low white villa sprawled in isolated splendor across the promontory. It overlooked a pale sandy beach, and the rugged cliffs and dark blue sea supplied a majestic backdrop for Inuyasha's island home.

"I was born on Chymos. As a child I spent all my vacations here. Although I was an only child, I was never lonely because I had so many cousins. Both my parents came from large families. Since my father died, this island has become my retreat from the rest of the world." Dropping an indolent and assured arm round her stationary figure, Inuyasha guided her towards the villa. "You're honored. I have never brought a woman here before, pethi mou."

As they entered the charming hall she saw into the spacious lounge opposite. In one glance she took in the walls covered with pictures, the photographs scattered around, the shelves of books and the comfortable sofas and rugs. It was full of all the character of a family home. "It's not like your apartment at all!" Kagome surprise was unconcealed.

"One of my cousins designed my London apartment. I did tell her what I wanted but it didn't quite turn out the way I had imagined it would." Inuyasha closed his arms round her from behind. "We're alone here. I gave the staff some time off."

Kagome tensed. He pressed his wickedly expert mouth to the smooth skin just below her ear. Every treacherous pulse jumped in response. Kagome quivered, knees wobbling. With an early chuckle of amusement, Inuyasha scooped her off her feet as if she weighed no more than a doll and strode out of the hall down a long tiled corridor.

It was the end of the line of restraint and Kagome knew it. She parted her dry lips nervously. "Inuyasha?" she muttered urgently. "I know you think I've slept with—"

"I do not want to hear about the other men who have preceded me," Inuyasha interrupted with ruthless precision, glowering down at her in reproof. "Why do women rush to make intimate revelations and then lie like mad about the number of lovers they've had? Why can't you just keep quiet?"

Not unnaturally silenced by that unexpected attack, Kagome chewed her lower lip uncertainly as he settled her down on the thick carpet in a beautifully furnished bedroom. Her entire attention immediately lodged on the bed.

Seemingly unable to tolerate an instant of physical separation, Inuyasha encircled her with his arms again and loosed a husky sigh of slumberous pleasure above her head. Curving her quiescent length into glancing contact with his hard, muscular physique, Inuyasha tugged down the zip on her dress. As cooler air hit her taut shoulder-blades, followed by the sensual heat of Inuyasha's exploring mouth, Kagome braced herself and surged back into speech.

"Actually," she confided in an uneven rush, "all I wanted to say is that I'm really not that experienced!"

"Theos..." Inuyasha ground out, abruptly dropping his arms from her and jerking away to stride across the room. Peeling off his jacket and pitching it aside under her bemused gaze, he sent her a look as dark and threatening as black ice under spinning wheels.

"Sorry, what—?" Kagome began.

"Why are you- doing this to me?" Inuyasha demanded rawly as he wrenched at his tie with an exasperated hand. "Why tell me these foolish lies? Do you think I need to hear them? Do you honestly believe that I could credit such a plea from you for one second?"

Marooned in the centre of the carpet, her dress lurching awkwardly off one bare and extremely taut shoulder, Kagome let her gaze fall from his in a mixture of fierce embarrassment and resentment. If that was his response to the mere admission that she was not a bedroom sophisticate likely to wow him with the unexpected, or possibly even with moves he did expect, she could only cringe from the possibility of what an announcement of complete inexperience would arouse. And she did not want to go to bed with an angry man.

"No doubt next you will be offending me beyond belief by referring to the man who kept you for three years...don't do it," Inuyasha told her in emphatic warning, "I do not wish to hear one more word about your past. I accept you as you are. I have no choice but to do otherwise."

Kagome tried to shrug her dress back up her arm.

"And why are you standing there like a child put in the corner? Are you trying to make me feel bad?"

Hot color burnished her cheeks. "You're in a very volatile mood—"

"Put it down to frustration...you've done nothing but freeze me out since I married you this morning," Inuyasha drawled with raw impatience.

"And you have done nothing but think about sex."

Having made that counter-accusation, Kagome collided with scorching golden eyes of outrage and tilted her chin. Like a child in a corner, was she? How dare he? Her bright eyes blazed. The silence thundered. She shrugged her slim shoulders forward and extended her slender arms.

Inuyasha tensed, eyes narrowing. The scarlet dress shimmied down to Kagome 's feet, unveiling her lithe, perfect figure clad in a pair of minuscule white panties and a no more substantial gossamer-fine bra. Inuyasha looked as if he had stopped breathing.

Stepping out of the dress, she slung him a catwalk model's look of immense boredom and, strolling over to the bed, kicked off her shoes and folded herself down on it.

"What are you waiting for? A white flag of surrender?" Kagome enquired dryly, pride vindicated by the effect she had achieved.

"Something rather less choreographed, a little warmer and more enthusiastic," Inuyasha purred with sudden dangerous cool, strolling over to the side of the bed to stare down at her with slumberous eyes of alarming shrewdness. I'm developing a strong suspicion that to date your bedroom forays have been one big yawn; because you really don't understand how I feel, do you?"

Face pink, and uneasy now, Kagome levered herself up on one elbow. "What are you trying to imply?"

"You're about to find out." His bold golden eyes flamed with amusement as he began unbuttoning his shirt.

"Is that a threat?" Kagome said breathlessly.

"Is that fear or hope I hear?" With a soft, unbearably sexy laugh, Inuyasha dispensed with his shirt and gazed down mockingly into very wide blue eyes. "Your face...the expression is priceless!"

Kagome veiled her scrutiny, her fair complexion reddening.

Inuyasha strolled across the room, indolent now that he had her exactly where he wanted her, fully in control. "As for me thinking about sex all the time...don't you know men? I've been celibate for many weeks. I've wanted you for an incredibly long time. I'm not used to waiting and fighting every step of the way for what I want. When you have everything, what you cannot have naturally assumes huge importance—"

"And when you finally get it, I suppose it means next to nothing?" Kagome slotted in tightly. Inuyasha elevated a slanting ebony brow. "Lighten up," he advised, not even pretending not to comprehend her meaning. "Only time will decide that. I live in the present and so should you, pethi mou."

He undressed with fluid ease. She watched him. Ever since that night at the cottage, his powerful image had been stamped into her brain like a Technicolor movie still. But she was still hopelessly enthralled, shaken by the extent to which she responded to his intensely physical allure. Yet she had never seen beauty in the male body until he came along. But from his wide brown shoulders, slim hips and long, powerful hair-roughened thighs, Inuyasha made her mouth run dry, her pulses race and her palms perspire.

"You've been so quiet since that ceremony...and now you recline like a very beautiful stone statue on my bed." Inuyasha skimmed off his black briefs in one long, lazy movement. "If it wasn't so ridiculous, I would think you were scared of me."

Kagome managed to laugh but her throat was already constricting with nerves. He was so relaxed about his nudity, quite unconcerned that he was hugely aroused. And while common sense was telling her that of course God had fashioned men and women to fit, Kagome just could not begin to imagine how at that moment.

Inuyasha came down on the wide bed beside her. He scanned the sudden defensive upward tilt of her perfect profile, trailed a slow and appreciative hand through the lush tumble of ebony strands of hair cascading off the pillows. He threw himself back and closed his hands round her slender forearms to bring her gently down to him. "And now my reward for waiting," he breathed with indolent satisfaction. "Nothing can disturb or part us here."

Kagome gazed down into smoldering golden eyes full of expectancy. "Inuyasha..."

He reached up to run the tip of his tongue erotically along the tremulous line of her generous mouth. "You feel like ice. I'll melt you," he promised huskily, deft fingers already engaged in releasing the catch on her bra.

Kagome trembled, feeling her whole body filled with delicious tension. She closed her eyes. He kissed her. And every time he kissed her it got just that little bit more tormenting, and she would open her lips wider, needing more pressure, more passion, begging for it as the feeling of unstoppable hunger began to build and race through her veins.

He rolled her over and closed a hand over the pouting swell of one pale breast. Her taut body jumped as he smiled brilliantly down into her shaken eyes. "And yet you are so red-hot, responsive when I touch you. Every time that gives me a high," Inuyasha confessed thickly. "I love seeing you out of control."

Threatened by that admission, Kagome shifted uneasily. "I don't like that—"

"You'll have to learn to like it." Inuyasha bent his dark, arrogant head over a pink straining nipple and laved that achingly tender tip with his tongue, engulfing her in sensation that she now struggled instinctively to resist.

"No..." she gasped.

"Don't fight what I can make you feel..." he urged hoarsely, employing expert fingers on her sensitive flesh, making her squirm in breathless, whimpering excitement.

Her body wasn't her own any more, but by then she didn't want it to be. With every atom of her being she craved those caresses. Wild sensation was addictive. She was hooked between one second and the next, her mind wiped clean of all thought. The hot wire of his seduction pulled tight as heat flared between her shifting thighs. She moaned his name low in her throat.

He took her mouth with a hot, sexual dominance then. He sealed her to the abrasively masculine angles of his hard, hungry body. She panted for breath when he released her swollen lips, sensually bemused eyes focusing on the brooding intensity of that darkly handsome face now curiously stilled above hers.

" Inuyasha...?" she mumbled, her fingers rising without her volition to trace the unremittingly harsh compression of his mouth.

He jerked back his head, so that she couldn't touch him. In pained bewilderment Kagome lowered her hand again and stared up at him.

"You used to watch me all the time," he breathed grimly. "But the instant I turned in your direction, you looked away...except that once, seven months ago. Then I knew you were mine, as much mine as if I had a brand on you!"

Stricken by that assurance slung at her out of the blue, Kagome twisted her head away, feeling naked, exposed. Even then Inuyasha had been able to see inside her, see below the surface which had dazzled other men. And, worst of all, he had immediately recognized the hunger she had refused to recognize within herself.

"So I waited for you to make your move," Inuyasha admitted in a tone of growing condemnation. "I waited and I waited for you to dump him. But you still stayed with him! I began to wonder if you had a single living brain cell inside that gorgeous head!"

He was talking about Toutosai. Shocked rigid by what he was telling her. Kagome muttered, "But I...I didn't—"

Inuyasha vented a harsh, cynical laugh. "Oh, I know why you stayed with him now! You owed him too much money to walk out. Did you think I hadn't worked that out yet? But that's when you reduced yourself to the level of a marketable commodity, and when I think about that it makes me want to smash things! Because, having learnt that wonderful lesson with him, you then sold yourself to me for an even higher price."

"How can you—?"

"What else is this marriage but the price I had to pay for you?"

"You...swine," Kagome whispered brokenly, white as death as the contempt he had concealed from her sank into her sensitive flesh like poison.

"And I'll get you out of my system soon if it kills me," Inuyasha swore with ragged force as he gazed broodingly down at her.

"Start by letting me out of this bed," she demanded unevenly.

"No way...I paid with a wedding ring and millions of pounds for this pleasure."

"No!"

"But you're no good at saying no to me," Inuyasha murmured with roughened menace against her tremulous lips. "Sexually you are one very weak reed where I'm concerned. It's my one and only consolation while I'm making a bloody fool of myself over a woman like you!"

"How dare you?" Kagome gulped.

But Inuyasha skimmed an assured hand down the taut length of one quivering thigh and kissed her with fierce, angry hunger. And it was like instantaneous combustion. She went up in flames. He didn't hold her down. He didn't pin her to the mattress. He kissed her into submission, tormented her with every erotic trick in his extensive repertoire and the most overpowering physical passion. He swept away her defenses with terrifying ease.

Stroking apart her slender thighs, Inuyasha traced the swollen, moist sensitivity at the very heart of her with knowing fingers. With a strangled moan, Kagome clutched at him in desperation. He controlled her with the hunger she could not deny and made her ache for him. That ache for satisfaction tortured her. He groaned something in Greek, pushing her tumbled hair back off her brow with an unsteady hand, circling her mouth caressingly with his one more time.

As Inuyasha shifted over her she couldn't get him there fast enough. Her own urgency was as screamingly intense as his. And then she felt him, hot and hard and gloriously male, seeking entrance, and she shivered convulsively, on a high of such anticipation and excitement she was mindless.

So when he thrust hungrily into her willing body she was quite unprepared for the jagged pain of that forceful intrusion. Pain ripped apart the fog of sensual sensation and made her jerk and cry out in shock as she instinctively strove to push him away from her. But Inuyasha had already stilled to frown down at her with stunned, disbelieving golden eyes.

"Kagome —?"

"What are you looking at?" Kagome whispered in stricken embarrassment, utterly appalled and outraged that her own body could have betrayed her to such an extent.

With a sudden shift of his hips, Inuyasha withdrew from her again. But he kept on staring down at her in the most mortifying way, his bewilderment blatant. A damp sheen accentuated the tautness of the bronzed skin stretched over his hard cheekbones and the pallor spreading beneath. 'Cristo...a virgin...' he breathed, not quite levelly.

Kagome lay there, feeling horribly rejected and inadequate and wishing she could vanish.

"And I really hurt you," Inuyasha groaned even more raggedly, abruptly levering his weight from her, golden eyes holding hers with the same transfixed incredulity with which he might have regarded the sudden descent of an alien spaceship in his bedroom.

"Are you in a lot of pain?" In one driven movement Kagome rolled off the bed and direct in the direction of the bathroom. Dear heaven, he had been so repulsed he had just abandoned their lovemaking. "Kagome?" Inuyasha murmured grimly. "I think this is something we definitely need to talk about—"

Kagome slammed the bathroom door so loudly it rocked on its hinges and then she pressed the lock double-quick. Bang went the image of the cool sophisticate! And without that glossy image she felt naked and exposed. The last thing she could've faced right then was awkward questions. And as she turned on the bath taps she recalled his swinging verbal attack on her before they made love and she burst into gulping tears.

Inuyasha banged on the door. "Kagome? Come out of there!"

"Go to hell!" she shouted, cramming her hand to her wobbling mouth before a sob could escape and betray her.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm having a bath, Inuyasha... not drowning myself! Although with that technique of yours, I understand your concern!"

But no sooner had Kagome hurled those nasty words than she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. He hadn't meant to hurt her, he hadn't known, and lashing out in retaliation because she felt horribly humiliated was unjust and mean. Silence fell. Slowly, miserably, Kagome climbed into the bath.

Only then did it occur to her that it was foolish to be distressed by what Inuyasha had said in temper earlier. After all, he had now discovered that she could not possibly have been Toutosai's mistress. So that had to make a difference to the light in which he saw her, surely! Only what she had been given with one hand had seemingly been taken with the other. Inuyasha had been repulsed by her inexperience.

Devastated by that awareness, Kagome thought back seven months to that single exchanged glance with Inuyasha across that long table in the Taisho boardroom, that charged clash of mutual awareness which seemed to have changed her entire life. Inuyasha had actually been waiting for her to ditch Toutosai on his behalf and he had been furious when she hadn't.

Furthermore, Inuyasha could not now bring himself to speak Shio Toutosai's name out loud. In fact he had said she would offend him beyond belief with any reference to Toutosai before they'd even got into bed. Yet Inuyasha had been in no way that sensitive to that former relationship when he'd first come to announce his intentions at Sango's house...

Men were strange, Kagome decided limply, and none more strange than Inuyasha.

It took her a long time to emerge from the bathroom, but when she did, wrapped in an over-large short silk robe she had found, the bedroom was empty. It was something of an anticlimax. Kagome got back into bed, not remotely sleepy and very tense, while she waited and waited for Inuyasha to reappear. A postmortem to end all postmortems now threatened. Having emerged from shock, Inuyasha would take refuge in anger, she forecast glumly. He would demand to know why she hadn't told him the truth about Toutosai. He would utterly dismiss any claim that he would never have believed her.

She lay back, steeling herself for recriminations as only Inuyasha could hurl them. Like deadly weapons which struck a bull's-eye every time. He never missed. And she hadn't been fair to him; she knew now that she hadn't been fair. Sango had been right. She had reaped a twisted kind of relish out of pretending to be something she wasn't while she goaded Inuyasha on and taunted him. And so why had she reacted to him in a way she had never reacted to any other man? Kagome discovered that she was miserable enough without forcing herself to answer that question.

The door opened. She braced herself. Inuyasha stood poised in the doorway. Barefoot, black hair tousled, strong jawline already darkening with stubble, he looked distinctly unfamiliar in a pair of black tight-fitting jeans, with a black shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned on his bare brown hair-roughened chest.

"I now know everything..." he announced in the most peculiar slurred drawl. "But I am too bloody drunk to fly!"

Kagome sat up. Eyes huge, she watched Inuyasha collide with the door and glower at it as if it had no business being there in his path. He was drunk all right. And he just looked so helpless to Kagome at that moment that she abandoned her stony, defensive aspect. Concern for him took over instead.

Leaping out of bed and crossing the room, she put her hand on his arm. "Come and lie down," she urged.

"Not on that bed." As he swayed Inuyasha surveyed the divan with an extraordinary force of antagonism. "Right at this moment I want to burn it."

Assuming that her vindictive comment on his technique had struck home with greater force and efficacy than she could ever have imagined, Kagome paled with guilt but continued to try and ease him in the same direction. Was that why he had gone off to hit the bottle? Some intrinsically male sense of sexual failure because he had inadvertently hurt her? Kagome endeavored to drag him across the carpet. He was obstinate as ever.

"Lie down!" she finally launched at him in full-throttle frustration.

And Inuyasha did lie down. Kagome couldn't believe it but he sprawled down on the bed as if she had a gun trained on him. And he looked so utterly miserable. It was true, she decided in fascination, women were definitely the stronger sex. Here was the evidence.

Disaster had befallen Inuyasha when he had least expected it in a field he prided himself on excelling in and he couldn't handle it.

Crawling onto the bed beside him, Kagome gazed down at him until her eyes misted over.

She was shattered to discover that all she wanted to do was cocoon him in lashings of TLC.

"You were really great until the last moment," she told him in tender consolation. "I didn't mean what I said. You mustn't blame yourself—"

"I blame Toutosai," Inuyasha gritted.

In complete confusion, Kagome frowned. "You blame... you blame Toutosai?" she stressed, all at seas as to his meaning.

Inuyasha growled something in Greek that broke from him with the aggressive force of a hurricane warning. "English, Inuyasha..."

"He's a slime-bag!"

Focusing on her properly for the first time, Inuyasha dug a hand into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a great wodge of crumpled fax paper.

Kagome took it from him and spread the paper out. It was so long it kept on spreading, across his chest and finally right off the edge of the bed. She squinted down and recognized her own signature right at the very foot. In such dim light, it left her little the wiser as to its content, and in his presence she didn't want to be seen peering to comprehend all that tiny type.


"Toutosai took advantage of your stupidity—"

"Excuse me?" Kagome cut in, wide-eyed.

"Only a financially very naive person would've signed that loan contract," Inuyasha extended, after a long pause during which he had visibly struggled to come up with that more diplomatic term. "And a moneylender from a back-street would've offered more generous terms than that evil old bastard!"

Clarity shone at last for Kagome. Inuyasha had somehow obtained a copy of the loan agreement she had signed three years earlier. That was what was on the fax paper. "Where did you get this from?"

"I got it," Inuyasha responded flatly.

"Why did you say I was stupid...? Because I'm not"

"You'd still have been paying that loan off ten years from now." He got technical then, muttering grimly about criminal rates of interest and penalty clauses. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that she had become trapped in such an agreement because she had been too proud to ask someone else to read the small print out and explain the conditions.

"You were only nineteen," Inuyasha grated finally. "You signed that the day before you moved in with Toutosai. He blackmailed you—"

"No...I agreed. There was never any question of us sharing a bedroom or anything like that. All he ever asked for was the right to show me off. I was just an ego-trip for him but I didn't know what I was getting into until it was too late to back out," Kagome muttered tightly, squashing the fax paper into a big crunched-up ball again and throwing ii away.

"And Toutosai was getting his own back on an unfaithful wife," Inuyasha completed grimly.

Unsurprised that he should have known about Shio Kaede's affair, Kagome breathed in deep and decided to match his frankness. "My father is a compulsive gambler, Inuyasha.

He got into trouble with some very tough men and he couldn't pay up what he owed them. It was nothing to do with Toutosai but I went to him for advice, and that's when he told me he'd loan me the money if I moved in with him."

"Lamb to the slaughter," Inuyasha groaned, as if he was in agony. "Compulsive gambler?' he queried in sudden be-amusement.

"Dad would sell this bed out from under you if he got the chance."

"Where have you kept this charming character concealed?"

"I don't know where he is right now. We haven't been close...well, not since I took on that loan to settle his debts. Naturally Dad feels bad about that."

"The debt was his?" Inuyasha bit out wrathfully as that fact finally sunk in. "Your precious father stood back and watched you move in with Toutosai just so that he could have his gambling debts paid?"

"It was life or death, Inuyasha...it really was," Kagome protested. "He'd already been badly beaten up and he was terrified they would kill him the next time around. Toutosai gave me that money when nobody else would have. It saved Dad's life."

"Dad doesn't sound like he was worth saving—"

"Don't you dare say that about my father!" Kagome censured chokily. "He brought me up all on his own!"

"Taught you how to go to the pawnshop? Flogged anything he could get his hands on? Your childhood must've been a real bliss fest, I don't think!"

"He did his best. That's all anyone can do," Kagome whispered tautly. "Not everyone is born with your advantages in life. You're rich and selfish. Dad's poor and selfish, but, unfortunately for him, he has too much imagination."

"So have I...oh, so have I. I imagined you," Inuyasha confided, his deep dark drawl slurring with intense bitterness. "The only quality I imagined right was that you do need me. But all the rest was my fantasy. Tonight... deservedly...it exploded right in my face."

Kagome slumped as if he had beaten the stuffing out of her. She wanted to tell him that she didn't need him but her throat was so clogged up with tears she couldn't trust herself to speak. A fantasy? He had imagined her? That was even worse than being a one-dimensional trophy, she realized in horror. At the end of the day, when fantasy met reality and went bang, there was just nothing left, was there?

"I don't want to sober up," Inuyasha admitted morosely. "The more I find out about you, the worse I feel. I don't like regret or guilt. Some people love to immolate themselves in their mistakes. I don't. How could I have been so bloody stupid?"


"Sex." Kagome supplied, even more morosely. Inuyasha shuddered. It was a very informative reaction. "Was it that bad?" she couldn't help asking. "Worse." Inuyasha stressed feelingly. "I felt like a rapist."

"Silly ...just bad luck...life kicking you in the teeth...you get used to it after a while...least, I do," Kagome mumbled, on the brink of tears again.

"You should be furious with me—"

"No point...you're drunk. I like you better drunk than I like you sober," she confided helplessly. "You're more human."

"Christos...when you go for the deathblow, you don't miss, do you?" Unhealthily pale beneath his bronzed skin, Inuyasha let his tousled head fall heavily back on the pillows.

His lashes swept down on his shadowed golden eyes. "So now I know where I stand with you...basement footing—possibly even right down level with the earth's core," he muttered incomprehensibly.

"Go to sleep," Kagome urged.

"When one is that far down, one can only go up," Inuyasha asserted with dogged resolution.

Well, at least he wasn't talking about flying again. With a helicopter parked thirty yards away that had been a genuine cause for concern. She ought to hate him. She knew she ought to hate him for breaking her heart with such agonizing honesty. But the trouble was, she loved him in spite of that two-page list of flaws. She didn't know why she loved him. She just did. And she was in really deep too. He had just rejected her in every possible way and all she wanted to do was cover him up and hug him to death. Flaked out, silenced and vulnerable, Inuyasha had huge appeal for Kagome.

Why had she spent so long telling herself that she hated this guy? She had been cleverer than she knew, she conceded. Loving him hurt like hell. She felt as if she had lost an entire layer of skin and every inch of her was now tender and wounded. There she had been, naively imagining that he might have been upset because his sexual performance had not resulted in her impressed-to-death ecstasy. And all the time he had been ahead of her, whole streets ahead of her...

The minute he had found out that he was her first lover, he had fairly leapt into seeking out what her relationship with Toutosai had been based on, since it had self-evidently no been based on sex. Naturally he had immediately thought of that loan and probed deeper.

And now he knew the whole sorry story and her name had been cleared. But much good it seemed to have done her...

Sango had said Kagome enjoyed pretending to be what she had called a 'bad girl'. Kagome suppressed a humorless laugh. Poor Sango had never allowed for the painful possibility that Inuyasha, who had exceedingly poor taste in women, was more excited by bad girls than he was by virgins.