InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ Married to a Mistress 9 ( Chapter 9 )

[ 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 NINE

Kagome wakened the next morning in the warm cocoon of Inuyasha's arms. It felt like heaven.

Some time during the night he had taken off his shirt. She opened her lips languorously against a bare brown shoulder and let the tip of her tongue gently run over smooth skin.

He tasted wonderful. She breathed in the achingly familiar scent of him with heady pleasure. Hot husky male with a slight flavor of soap. She blushed for herself, but the deep, even rise and fall of his broad chest below her encircling arm soothed her sudden tension. He was still out for the count.

And she would probably never lie like this with Inuyasha again. He was only here now because he had fallen asleep She had plummeted from the heights of obsessive desirability like a stone. She had lost him but then she had never really had him. He had craved the fantasy, the Ice Queen, not the ordinary woman, and when in so many ways she had played up to that fantasy of his, how could she really blame him for not wanting her any more?

Easing back her arm, she let her palm rest down on that hair-roughened expanse of chest which drew her attention like a magnet. Her fingertips trailed gently through the tight muscles , delicately traced a flat male nipple, slid downward over the rippling muscular smoothness of his abdomen, discovering a fascinating little furrow of silky hair that ran...and then she tensed in panic as she recognized the alteration in his breathing pattern. She was waking him up!

And just at that moment Kagome didn't feel strong enough to face Inuyasha waking up, sober and restored to intimidating normality. Inuyasha would bounce back from last night's shock and humility like a rubber ball aiming for the moon. Lying absolutely still, she waited until his breathing had evened out again and then, sidling out from under his arm, she slid off the bed.

Gathering up her discarded garments, she crept out into the corridor. Through the open doorway of the bedroom opposite she could see her single suitcase sitting at the foot of the bed. And that sight just underlined Kagome's opinion of her exact marital status. She had no status whatsoever. Her possessions belonged in a guest-room because she was supposed to be a casual visitor, not a wife.

Pulling out a white shift dress, fresh lingerie and straps sandals, Kagome got dressed at speed. It was only seven but the heat was already building. The house was silent. Finding her way into a vast, gleaming kitchen, she helped herself to a glass of pure orange juice and swiped a couple of apples from a lush display of fruit. Determined not to face Inuyasha until she had sorted herself out, she left the house. Traversing the beautiful gardens, she wandered along the rough path above the beach.

Then she let her thoughts loose, and she winced and she squirmed and she hurt. Their wedding night had been a disaster. And how much of that final confessional dialogue would Inuyasha recall when he woke up? Would he remember the stupid, soppy way she had hung over him? Would he recognize the pain she had not been able to conceal for what it was? The mere idea that Inuyasha might guess that she was in love with him was like the threat of death by a thousand cuts for Kagome.

Last night, for the very first time, Inuyasha hadn't treated her as an equal. Kagome shrank from that lowering awareness. Funny how she hadn't really noticed or even appreciated that Inuyasha had always met her on a level playing tied until he suddenly changed tack. Now everything was different. She had been stripped of her tough cookie glossy image and exposed as a pathetic fraud. A virgin rather than a sultry, seductive object of must-have desire. A blackmail victim rather than a calculating gold-digger and the former mistress of an older man.

And who would ever have guessed that Taisho Inuyasha had a conscience? But, amazingly, he did. Inuyasha had been appalled by what he'd discovered. Even worse, he had pitied her for her less than perfect childhood and her gullible acceptance of that hateful loan agreement. Pitied. That acknowledgement was coals of fire on Kagome's head.

Inuyasha now regretted their strange marriage but he felt guilty. Kagome didn't want his guilt or his pity, and suddenly she saw how she could eradicate both. It would be so simple. All she had to do was tell Inuyasha about the conditions of Takeda Kagura's last will and testament. When Inuyasha realized that she had had an ulterior motive in marrying him, he would soon stop feeling sorry for her...at least she would retain her ride that way.

As Kagome rounded a big outcrop of rock, she saw two little boys trying to help a fisherman spread a net on the beach below. As she watched, unseen, their earnest but clumsy efforts brought a warm, generous smile to her lovely face.

"You have never once shown me that ravishing smile." Kagome was startled into a gasp by the intervention of that soft, rich, dark drawl, and her ebony head spun.

Inuyasha stood several feet away. Clad in elegant chinos and a white polo shirt, he stole the very breath from Kagome's lungs. Her heart crashed violently against her breastbone.

He looked drop-dead gorgeous. But her wide eyes instantly veiled. She knew how clever he was. She was terrified he would somehow divine her feelings for him.

"But then possibly I have done nothing to inspire such a reward," Inuyasha completed tautly.

He stared at her, golden eyes glittering and fiercely intent. In the brilliant sunlight, with her air shimmering like a veil of ebony and the simple white dress a perfect foil for her lithe figure, she was dazzling. Moving forward slowly, as if he was attuned to her pronounced tension, he closed a lean hand over one of hers and began to walk her back along the foreshore.

"From today, from this moment, everything will be different between us," Inuyasha swore with emphasis.

"Will it be?" Briefly, involuntarily, Kagome stole a glance at him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks.

"You should have told me the truth about Toutosai the very first day—"

"You wouldn't have believed me..."

His long brown fingers tightened hard on hers. He looked out to sea, strong profile rigid. He released his breath in a sudden driven hiss. "You're right. I wouldn't have. Nothing short of the physical proof you gave me last night would've convinced me that you weren't the woman I thought you were."

"At least you're honest," Kagome muttered tautly.

Apparently enthralled by the view of the single clique anchored out in the bay, Inuyasha continued to stare out over the bright blue water. "Considering that there were so many things that didn't add up about you, I can't say that I can pride myself on my unprejudiced outlook...or my judgment. You asked me to stay away from you and I wouldn't. You even left London..."

He was talking as if someone had a knife bared at his throat. Voice low, abrupt, rough, every word clenched with tension and reluctance.

"I have never treated a woman as badly as I have treated you... and in the manner of our marriage I really did surpass myself, pethi mou."

He sounded like a stranger to Kagome. Inuyasha having a guilt trip. She trailed her fingers free of his, cruel pain slashing at her. It was over. She didn't need to hear these things when she had already lived them, and most of all she did not want him feeling sorry for her. In fact that humiliation stung like acid on her skin.

"Look, I have something to tell you." Kagome cut in stiffly.

"Let me speak...do you think this is easy for me?" Inuyasha slung at her in a gritty undertone of accusation. "Baring my feelings like this?"

"You don't have any feelings for me," Kagome retorted flatly, her heart sinking inside her, her stomach lurching.

"You seem very sure of that—"

"Get real, Inuyasha. There are rocks on this beach with more tender emotions than you've got!" Having made that cynical assurance, Kagome walked on doggedly. "And why should you feel bad for trying to use me when I was planning to use you too? It's not like I'm madly in love with you or anything like that!" She paused to stress that point and vented a shrill laugh for good measure, "I only married you because it suited me to marry you. I needed a husband for six months..."

Against the soft, rushing backdrop of the tide, the silence behind her spread and spread until it seemed to echo in her straining ears.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Inuyasha finally shattered the seething tension with that harsh demand.

Kagome spun round, facial muscles tight with self-control. "My godmother's will. She was a wealthy woman but I can't inherit my share of her estate without a marriage license. All I wanted was access to my own money, not yours."

Inuyasha stood there as if he had been cast in granite, golden eyes fixed to her with stunning intensity. "This is a joke... right?"

Kagome shook her ebony head in urgent negative. She was so tense she couldn't get breath enough to speak. Inuyasha was rigid with incredulity and in the stark, drenching sunlight reflecting off the water he seemed extraordinarily pale.

"You do realize that if what you have just told me is true, I am going to want to kill you?" Inuyasha confided, snatching in a jagged breath of restraint.

"I don't see why," Kagome returned with determined casualness. "This marriage wasn't any more real to you than it was to me. It was the only way you could get me into bed."

His hard dark features clenched as if she had struck him but she forced herself onward to the finish. "And you didn't expect us to last five minutes beyond the onset of your own boredom. So that's why I decided I might as well be frank."

Turning on her heel, trembling from the effect of that confrontation, Kagome walked blindly off the path and up through the gardens of the house. He wasn't going to be feeling all sorry and superior now, was he? The biter bit, she thought without any satisfaction as she crossed the hall. Now they would split up and she would never see him again...and she would spend the rest of her life being poor and wanting a man she couldn't have and shouldn't even want.

" Kagome...?"

She turned, not having realized in her preoccupation that Inuyasha was so close behind her. The world tilted as he swept her off her startled feet up into his powerful arms. A look of aggressive resolution in his blazing golden eyes, Inuyasha murmured grittily, "It should've occurred to you that I might not be bored yet, pethi mou"

"But—"

The kiss that silenced her lasted all the way down to the bedroom. It was like plunging a finger into an electric socket. Excitement and shock waved through her. He brought her on the bed. Surfacing, Kagome stammered in complete bewilderment, "B-but you don't want me any more...you imagined me—"

Engaged in ripping off his clothes over her, Inuyasha glowered down at her. "I didn't imagine that clever little brain or that stinging tongue of yours, did I?"

"What are you doing?" she gasped.

"What I should have done when I woke up this morning to find you exploring me like a shy little kid...I didn't want to embarrass you." Inuyasha focused on her. This sheer incredulity at that decision etched in every line of his savagely attractive features.

"How could I possibly have dreamt that you could be embarrassed? Beneath that angelic, perfect face you're as tough as Teflon!"

Kagome was flattered to be called that tough. She didn't mind being told she was clever, or that she had a sharp tongue either. This was respect she was getting. It might not be touched in terms most women would've recognized but she knew Inuyasha well enough to see that she had risen considerably in his estimation since the previous night. Indeed, it crossed her mind that Inuyasha responded beautifully to a challenge, and that acknowledgement shone a blinding white light of clarity through her thoughts. She sat here transfixed.

"Why are you so quiet?" Inuyasha enquired suspiciously. "I don't trust you quiet."

Kagome cast him an unwittingly languorous smile over one shoulder. "I presume we're not heading for a divorce right at this moment...?"

"Theos, woman...we only got married yesterday!"

The heat of his hungry gaze sent wild color flying into her cheeks. He still wanted her.

He still seemed to want her every bit as much as he had ever wanted her, she registered in renewed shock. And then he brought his mouth to hers again and her own hunger betrayed her. Her hands flew up to smooth through his hair, curve over his hard jaw line.

The need to touch, to hold was so powerful it made her eyes sting and filled her with instinctive fear.

"I won't hurt you this time...I promise," Inuyasha groaned against her reddened mouth while he eased her out of her dress virtually without her noticing. He cupped her cheekbones to stare down into her sensually bemused eyes, his own gaze a tigerish, slumberous gold. "To be the first with you...that was an unexpected gift. And telling me crazy stories in an effort to level some imaginary score is pointless. You ache for me too...do you think I don't see that in you with every look, every touch?"

Crazy stories? The will, her godmother's will. Obviously, after a moment of reflection, he hadn't believed her after all. But Kagome couldn't keep that awareness in mind. She did part her lips, meaning to contradict him, but he kissed her again and she clutched at him in the blindness of a passion she could not deny.

"Why should you still fight me?" Inuyasha purred as he treed her breasts from the restraint of her bra and paused to run wondering dark eyes over her. He brushed appreciative fingers over the engorged tip of one pale breast and then lingered there in a caress that stole the very breath from her immediate responsive body. "Why should you even want to fight me?"

There was something Kagome remembered that she needed to tell him, but looking up into those stunning golden eyes she could barely recall what her own name was, never mind open a serious conversation. Inuyasha angled a blinding megawatt smile of approval down at her and it was as if she had been programmed from birth to seek that endorsement.

She reached up and found his lips again, a connection she now instinctively craved more than she had ever craved anything in her life before.

His tongue played with hers as he lay half over her. He smoothed a hand down over her slim hips and eased off the scrap of lace that still shielded her from him. With skilled fingers he skimmed through the ebony curls at the apex of her slender thighs and sought the hot, moist centre of her. A whimper of formless sound was torn from Kagome then.

Suddenly she was burning all over and she couldn't stay still.

And, as straying shards of sunlight played over the bed, Inuyasha utilized every ounce of his expertise to fire her to the heights of anguished desire. When she couldn't bear it any more, he slid over her. He watched her with hungry intimacy as he entered her, the fierce restraint he exercised over his own urgency etched in every taut line of his dark, damp features.

The pleasure came to her then, in wave after drugging wave. In the grip of it, she was utterly lost. "Inuyasha..." she cried out.

And he stilled, and Kagome gasped in stricken protest, and with an earthy sound of amusement he went on. She didn't want him ever to stop. The slow, tormenting climb to fevered excitement had raised her to such a pitch, she ached for more with every thrust of his possession. And when finally sensation took her in a wild storm of rocketing pleasure, she uttered a startled moan of delight. As the last tiny quiver of glorious fulfillment evaporated she looked up at him with new eyes.

"Wow," she breathed.

Struggling to catch his breath, Inuyasha dealt her a very male smile of satisfaction. "That was the wedding night we should have had."


Kagome was still pretty much lost in wonder. Wow, she thought again, luxuriating in the strong arms still wrapped around her, the closeness, the feeling of tenderness eating her up alive and threatening to make her eyes overflow. Oh, yes, wouldn't tears really impress him? Blinking rapidly, she swallowed hard on the surge of powerful emotion she was struggling to control.

"I think it's time I made some sort of announcement about this marriage of ours," Inuyasha drawled lazily.

Kagome's lashes shot up, eyes stunned at all that went unsaid in that almost careless declaration. Evidently Inuyasha no longer saw the slightest need to keep their true relationship a secret from the rest of the world.

"Don't you think?" he prompted softly, and then with a slumberous sigh he released her from his weight and rolled off the bed in one powerfully energetic movement. "Shower and then breakfast...I don't think I've ever been so hungry in my life!"

Only then did Kagome recall what he had said about 'crazy stories' before they'd made love.

Her face tensed, her stomach twisting. "Inuyasha...?"

He turned his tousled dark head and he smiled at her again.

Her fingers knotted nervously into a section of sheet. "What I mentioned earlier...what I said about my godmother's will...that wasn't a story, it was the truth."

Inuyasha stilled, his smile evaporating like Scotch mist, golden eyes suddenly level and alert.

Kagome explained again about the will. She went into great detail on the subject of her godmother's lifelong belief in the importance of marriage, the older woman's angry disapproval when Kagome had moved in with Toutosai. But Kagome didn't look at Inuyasha again after that first ten seconds when she had anxiously registered the grim tautening of his dark features.

"You see, at the time...after the way you proposed...I mean, I was angry, and I didn't see why I shouldn't make use of the fact that you were actually offering me exactly what I required to meet that condition of inheritance..." Kagome's voice petered out to a weak, uncertain halt because what had once seemed so clear now seemed so confused inside her own head. And the decision which once had seemed so simple and so clever mysteriously took on another aspect altogether when she attempted to explain it out loud to Inuyasha.

The silence simmered like a boiling cauldron.

Slowly, hesitantly, Kagome lifted her head and focused on Inuyasha.

Strong face hard with derision, golden eyes scorching slivers of burning gold, he stared back at her. "You are one devious, calculating little vixen," he breathed with raw anger.

"When I asked you to marry me, I was honest. Anything less than complete honesty would've been beneath me because, unlike you, I have certain principles, certain standards!"

Kagome had turned paper-pale. "Inuyasha, I—"

"Shut up...I don't want to hear any more!" he blazed back at her with sizzling contempt. "I'm thinking of the generous financial settlement you were promised should our marriage end. You had neither need nor any other excuse to plot and plan to collect on some trusting old lady's will as well!"

A great rush of hot tears hit the back of Kagome's aching eyes. Blinking rapidly, she looked away. He was looking at her as if she had just crawled out from under a stone and sudden intense shame engulfed her.

"How could you be so disgustingly greedy?" Inuyasha launched in fierce condemnation.

"And how could you try to use me when I never once tried to use you?"

"It wasn't like that. You've got it all wrong," Kagome fumbled in desperation, deeply regretting her own foolish mode of confession on the beach when saving face had been uppermost in her mind. "It was a spur-of-the-moment idea...I was hurt and furious and I —"

"When a man gives you a wedding ring, he is honoring you, not using you!" Inuyasha gritted between clenched teeth.

Kagome started to bristle then. "Well, I wouldn't know about that...I only had the supreme honor of wearing that ring for about five minutes—"

"You gave it back—"

Kagome lifted shimmering blue eyes and tilted her chin.

"You took it!" she reminded him wrathfully. "And I don't want it back either...and I don't want you making any announcement to anybody about our marriage...because I wouldn't want anybody to know I was stupid enough to marry you!"

"That cuts both ways," Inuyasha asserted with chilling bite, temper leashed back as he squared his big shoulders. "And I'll be sure to ditch you before the six months is up!"

He strode into the bathroom.

Kagome flung herself back against the pillows, rolled over and pummeled them with sheer rage and frustration. Then she went suddenly still, and a great rolling breaker of sobs threatened because just for a little while she had felt close to Inuyasha and then, like a fairy-tale illusion, that closeness had vanished again...driven away by her own foolish,reckless tongue.

Yes, sooner or later she would naturally have had to tell Inuyasha about Takeda Kagura's will. But on the beach she had blown it, once and for all. After all, who was it who had told him that she had planned to use him? And the whole thing had struck him as so farfetched that within minutes of being told he had decided it wasn't true. Indeed he had assumed that she was childishly trying to 'level the score." Kagome shivered, belatedly appalled by the realization that Inuyasha could understand her to that degree...

That was exactly what she had been doing. Believing that their relationship was over, she had been set on saving face and so she had told him about the will in the most offensive possible terms. Now that she had convinced him that she was telling him the truth, she was reaping the reward she had invited...anger, contempt, distaste. And how could she say now, 'I wanted to marry you anyway and I needed a good excuse to allow myself to do I'll and still feel that I was control?' There was no way that she could tell Inuyasha that she loved him.

When he came out of the bathroom, a towel knotted round his lean brown hips, Kagome studied him miserably. "Inuyasha, I was going to tear up that prenuptial contract—"

"You should be writing scripts for Disney!" Inuyasha countered with cutting disbelief, and strode towards the dressing-room.

"You said...you said you couldn't pride yourself on your judgment where I was concerned," Kagome persisted tightly, wondering if what she was doing qualified as crawling, terrified that it might be.

"I'm back on track now, believe me." Inuyasha sent her an icy look of brooding darkness. "I'm also off to London for a couple of days. I have some business to take care of." Business? What business? They had only arrived yesterday. Kagome wasn't stupid. She got the message. He just didn't want to be with her any more.

"Are you always this unforgiving in personal relationships?" Kagome breathed a little shakily when he had disappeared from view, but she knew he could still hear her.

"I love that breathy little catch in your voice but it's wasted on me. You wouldn't cry if I roasted you over a bonfire!"

"You're right," Kagome said steadily, hastily wiping the tears dripping down her cheeks with the corner of the sheet.

Inuyasha reappeared, sheathed in a stupendous silver-grey suit. Lean, dark face impassive, he looked as remote as the Himalayas and even colder.

Kagome made one final desperate attempt to penetrate that armor of judgmental ice. "I really don't and never did want your money, Inuyasha," she whispered with all the sincerity she could muster.

Inuyasha sent her a hard, gleaming scrutiny, his expressive mouth curling. "You may not be my conception of a wife but you will make the perfect mistress. In that role you can be every bit as mercenary as you like. You spend my money; I enjoy your perfect body. Greek billionaires understand that sort of realistic exchange best of all. And at least this way we both know where we stand." Kagome gazed back at him in total shock.

Every scrap of color drained from her cheeks. But in that moment the battle lines were drawn...if Inuyasha wanted a mistress rather than a wife, a mistress, Kagome decided fierily, was what he was jolly well going to get!

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"Inuyash a doesn't know where you are? You mean he's not aware that you're back in London yet?" Sango breathed in astonishment when the fact penetrated.

Kagome took a deep breath. "I came straight here from the airport. I'm planning to surprise him," she said, with more truth than the older woman could ever have guessed.

"Oh...yes, of course." Sango relaxed again and smiled. "What a shame business concerns had to interrupt your honeymoon! It must've been something terribly important. When was it you said Inuyasha left the island?"

"Just a few days ago..." Kagome did not confide that she had left on the ferry exactly twenty four hours later—the very morning, in fact, when her credit cards had been delivered.

Credit cards tellingly made out in her maiden name. The die had been cast there and then. Inuyasha's goose had been cooked to a cinder.

And, faced with that obvious invitation to spend, spend, spend, as any sensible mistress would at the slightest excuse, Kagome had instantly risen to the challenge. She had flown to Rome and then to Paris. She had had a whale of a time. She had repaired the deficiencies of her wardrobe with the most beautiful designer garments she could find. And if she had seen a pair of shoes or a handbag she liked, she had bought them in every possible color...

Indeed, she could now have papered entire walls with credit card slips. If Inuyasha had been following that impressive paper trail of gross extravagance and shameless avarice across Rome and Paris, he would probably still think she was abroad, but he wouldn't know where because she had deliberately used cash to pay for flights and hotel bills.

"Are you happy?" Sango pressed anxiously.

"Incredibly..." Well, about as happy as she could be when it had been six days, fourteen hours and thirty-seven minutes since she had last laid eyes on Inuyasha, Kagome reflected ruefully. But to vegetate alone, abandoned and neglected on Chymos, would've been even worse.

"Do you think Inuyasha might come to love you?"

Kagome thought about that. She had set her sights on him loving her but she wasn't sure it was a very realistic goal. Had Inuyasha ever been in love? It was very possible that she might settle for just being needed. Right now, all she could accurately forecast was that Inuyasha would be in a seething rage because she had left the island without telling him and hadn't made the slightest effort to get in touch.

But then that was what a mistress would do when the man in her life departed without mention of when he would return. A mistress was necessarily a self-sufficient creature.

And if Inuyasha hadn't yet got around to putting in place the arrangements by which he intended to see her and spend time with her, then that was his oversight, not hers. No mistress would tell her billionaire lover when she would be available...that was his department.

Kagome had tea with Sango and then she called a cab. With the mountain of luggage she had acquired, it was quite a squeeze. She directed the driver to the basement car park of the building Inuyasha had informed her was to be exclusively hers. She was a little apprehensive about how she was to gain entry. After all, Inuyasha didn't even know she was back in London yet, and possibly the place would be locked up and deserted.

But on that point she discovered that she had misjudged him. There was a security man in the lift.

"Miss Higuraashi...?"

"That's me. Would you see to my luggage, please?" Kagome stepped into the lift to be wafted upwards and wondered why the man was gaping at her.

When the doors slid back, she thought she had stopped on the wrong floor. The stark modern decor had been swept away as if it had never been. In growing amazement, Kagome explored the spacious apartment. The whole place had been transformed with antique furniture, wonderful rugs and a traditional and warm color scheme. King Kong on stilts couldn't have seen over the barriers ringing the roof garden and, just in case she still wasn't about to bring herself to step out into the fresh air, a good third of the space now rejoiced in being a conservatory.

The apartment was gorgeous. No expense had been spared, nothing that might add to her comfort had been overlooked, but, far from being impressed by Inuyasha's consideration of her likes and dislikes, and even her terror of heights, Kagome was almost reduced to groveling tears of despair. Inuyasha had had all this done just so that they could live apart.

Looked at from that angle, the lengths he had gone to in his efforts to make her content with her solitary lot seemed like a deadly insult and the most crushing of rejections.

Kagome unpacked. That took up what remained of the evening and her wardrobe soon overflowed into the guest-room next door. She took out the two-page list of Inuyasha's flaws that had become her talisman. Whenever she got angry with him, whenever she missed him, she took it out and reminded herself that while she might not be perfect, he was not perfect either. It was a surprisingly comforting exercise which somehow made her feel closer to him.

How long would it take him to work out where she was? She lay in her sunken bath under bubbles, miserable as sin.

She wanted to phone him but she wouldn't let herself. The perfect mistress did not phone her lover. That would be indiscreet. She put on a diaphanous azure-blue silk nightdress slit to the thigh and curled up on the huge brass bed in the master suite.

The arrival of the lift was too quiet and too far away for her to hear. But she heard the hard footsteps ringing down the corridor. Kagome tensed, anticipation filling her. The bedroom door thrust wide, framing Inuyasha.

In a black dinner jacket that fitted his broad shoulders like a glove, and narrow black trousers that accentuated the long, long length of his legs, he was breathtakingly handsome. Her heart went thud...and then thud again. His bow tie was missing; the top couple of studs on his white dress shirt were undone to reveal a sliver of vibrant brown skin.

Poised in the doorway, big hands clenched into fists and breathing rapidly as if he had come from somewhere in a heck of a hurry, he ran outraged golden eyes over her relaxed pose on the brass bed as she reclined back against the heaped-up luxurious pillows as if she hadn't a single care in the world.

"You're here on my first night back...what a lovely surprise!" Kagome caroled.