InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ Married to a Mistress 10 ( Chapter 10 )

[ 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 TEN

Momentarily disconcerted by that chirpy greeting, Inuyasha stilled. His lush black lashes came down and swept up again as if he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, never mind what he was hearing.

Having learned some very good lessons from him, Kagome took the opportunity to sit forward, shake back her wonderful mane of ebony hair and stretch so that not one inch of the remarkably sexy nightdress hugging her lithe curves could possibly escape his notice.

"What do you think?" she asked gaily. "I bought it in—"

His entire attention was locked on her, darker color highlighting his taut high cheekbones and the wrathful glitter of incredulity in his brilliant eyes. "Where the hell have you been for the past week?" he launched at her with thunderous aggression as he strode forward. "Do you realize that I flew back to Chymos before I realized you'd left the island?"

"Oh, no," Kagome groaned. "I would've felt awful if I'd known that!"

"Why the blazes didn't you phone me to tell me what you were thinking of doing?" Inuyasha demanded with raw incredulity. "You can shop any time you like but you don't need to do it in time that you could be with me!"

"Why didn't you phone me to tell me that you were coming back?" Kagome's eyes were as bright as sapphires. "You see, I couldn't phone you. None of the villa staff spoke a word of English and I don't have your phone number—"

Inuyasha froze. "What do you mean you don't have my number?"

"Well, you're not in the directory and I'm sure your office staff are very careful not to hand out privileged information like that to just anybody—"

"Theos...you're not just anybody!" Inuyasha were in such a rage he could hardly get the words out. "I expect to know where you are every minute of the day! And the best I could do was follow your credit card withdrawals as they leapfrogged across Europe!"

What Kagome was hearing now was bliss. She had been missed. "I think it really would be sensible for you to give me a contact number," she said gently. "I'm sorry, but I honestly never realized how possessive you could be—"

"Possessive?" Inuyasha snatched in a shuddering breath of visible restraint, scorching golden eyes hot as lava. "I am not possessive. I just wanted to know where you were."

"Every minute of the day," Kagome reminded him helplessly. "Well, how was I to know that when you didn't tell me?"

Inuyasha drove raking fingers through his luxuriant black hair. "You do not ever take off anywhere again without telling me where you're going...is that clear?" he growled, withdrawing a gold pen from the inside pocket of his well-cut jacket and striding over to the bedside table.

To her dismay he proceeded to use the blank back page of her list of his flaws to write on. She had left it lying face-down on the table. "What are you doing?"

"I am listing every number by which I can be reached. Never again will you use the excuse that you couldn't contact me! My portable phone, my confidential line, the apartment, the car phones, and when I'm abroad..."

And he wrote and he wrote and he wrote while Kagome watched in fascination. He had more access numbers than a telecommunications company. It was as if he was drawing up a network for constant communication. Mercifully it had not occurred to him, however, to take a closer look at what he was writing on.

"I got the news that you had reappeared while I was entertaining a group of Japanese industrialists," Inuyasha supplied grittily. "I had to sit through the whole blasted evening before I could get here!"

"If only I'd known," Kagome sighed, struggling to keep her tide of happiness in check. Inuyasha was no longer cold and remote. He had been challenged by the shocking discovery that she did not sit like an inanimate object stowed on a shelf when he was absent. He had been frustrated by not knowing where she was or exactly when or where she might choose to show up again. As a result, Inuyasha had had far more to think about than the argument on which they had parted on Chymos.

Inuyasha was still writing. He stopped to sling her a penetrating look of suspicion.

"You were in Rome...you were in Paris...who were you with?" he demanded darkly.

"I was on my own," Kagome responded with an injured look of dignity.

Inuyasha 's intent gaze lingered. A little of his tension evaporated. Dense lashes screened his eyes. "I was pretty angry with you..."

She knew that meant he had been thumping walls and raising Cain. From the instant he'd found her absent without leave from the island, he had been a volcano smoldering, just longing for the confrontational moment of release when he could erupt.

"I'd offer you a drink but I'm afraid all the cupboards are bare," Kagome remarked.

"Naturally...I wasn't expecting you to move in here."

Kagome frowned. "How can you say that when this entire apartment has obviously been remodeled for my occupation?"

Setting down his pen, Inuyasha straightened and settled gleaming dark eyes on her. "Look, that was before we got married... you might not have noticed, but things have changed since then."

Kagome looked blank. "Have they?"

Inuyasha's beautiful mouth compressed hard. "I've been thinking. You might as well come home with me. I'll stick a notice about our marriage in the paper—"

"No...I like things the way they are." Saying that was the hardest thing Kagome had ever done, but pride would not allow her to accept the role of wife when it was so grudgingly offered. "I love this apartment and, like you, I really do appreciate my own space. And there is no point in firing up a media storm about our marriage when it's going to be over in a few months."

Inuyasha studied her intently, like a scientist peeling layers off an alien object to penetrate its mysteries. And then, without the slightest warning, his brilliant eyes narrowed and the merest hint of a smile lessened the tension still etched round his mouth.

"OK...fine, no problem. You're being very sensible about this."

Inside herself, Kagome collapsed like a pricked balloon. He sounded relieved by her decision. He saw no point in them attempting to live as a normal married couple. Evidently he still saw no prospect of them having any kind of a future together. But Kagome wanted him begging her to share the same roof. Clearly she had a long way to go if she was to have any hope of achieving that objective.

"But I would appreciate an explanation for your sudden departure from Chymos," Inuyasha completed.

Kagome tautened. "I didn't know when you were coming back. You were furious. It seemed a good idea to let the dust settle."

"Do you know why I came back to London?" Strong face taut, Inuyasha drew himself up to his full commanding height, the two-page list still clasped in one hand and attracting her covert and anxious attention.

"I haven't a clue."

"I had to sort out Toutosai."

Quite unprepared for that announcement, Kagome gasped. "Toutosai?"

With an absent glance at the loose pages in his hand, Inuyasha proceeded to fold them and slot them carelessly into the pocket of his jacket. Utterly appalled by that development, and already very much taken back by his reference to Shio Toutosai, Kagome watched in sick horror as her defamatory list disappeared from view.

"Toutosai had to be dealt with. Surely you didn't think I planned to let him get away with what he did to you?" Inuyasha drawled in a fulminating tone of disbelief. "He stole a whole chunk of your life and, not content with that, he ripped you off with that loan—"

"Inuyasha...T-Toutosai is a sick man—"

"Since he had the bypass on he is well on the road to full recovery," Inuyasha contradicted grimly. "But he's thoroughly ashamed of himself now, and so he should be."

"You actually confronted him?" Kagome was still reeling in shock.

"And in Kaede's presence. Now that she knows the real story of your dealings with her husband, she's ecstatic. Toutosai had no plans to confess the truth and his punctured vanity will be his punishment. He trapped you into a demeaning, distressing charade just to hit back at Kaede!" Inuyasha concluded harshly.

"I never dreamt you would feel so strongly about it," Kagome admitted tautly.

"You're mine now," Inuyasha countered with indolent cool. "I look after everything that belongs to me to the very best of my ability."

"I don't belong to you... I'm just passing through..." Hot, offended color had betraying flushed Kagome's cheeks. She wanted to hit him but, surveying him, she just gritted her teeth because she knew that the instant she got that close she would just melt into his arms and draw that dark, arrogant head down to hers. Almost seven days of sensory and emotional deprivation were making her feel incredibly weak.

Poised at the foot of the bed, lean brown hands flexing round the polished brass top rail, Inuyasha rested slumberous yet disturbingly intent dark eyes on her beautiful face. 'Toutosai and Kaede do, however, lead one to reflect on the peculiarity of the games adults play with each other," he commented levelly. "What a mistake it can be lo underestimate your opponent..."

A slight chill ran down Kagome 's backbone. Games? No. surely he couldn't have recognized what she was trying to do, she told herself urgently, for, apart from anything else, she did not consider herself to be playing a game. "I don't follow..."

"Toutosai neglected his wife. Kaede had a silly affair. She wouldn't say sorry. He was too bitter to forgive her. So they spent three years frantically squabbling over the terms of their divorce, enjoying a sort of twisted togetherness and never actually making it into court. Neither one of them allowed for the other's intransigence or stamina."

"Crazy," Kagome whispered very low.

"Isn't it just?" Inuyasha agreed, flicking a glance down at the thin gold watch on his wrist. He released a soft sigh of regret. "I'd love to stay. However, I did promise to show my face at my cousin Yuhiko's twenty-first celebration at a nightclub...and it's getting late."

Kagome sat there as immobile as a stone dropped in a deep pond and plunged into sudden dreadful suffocating darkness. "You're...leaving?" she breathed, not quite levelly. "I lead a fairly hectic social life, pethi mou. Business, family commitments," Inuyasha enumerated lazily. "But the pressure of time and distance should ensure that the snatched moments we share will be all the more exciting—"

"Snatched moments?" Kagome echoed in a strained and slightly shrill undertone as she slid off the bed in an abrupt movement. "You think I am planning to sit here and wait for "snatched moments" of your precious time?"

"Kagome...you're beginning to sound just a little like a wife," Inuyasha pointed out with a pained aspect. "The one thing a mistress must never ever do is nag."

"Nag?" Kagome gasped, ready to grab him by the lapels of his exquisitely tailored dinner jacket and shake him until he rattled like a box of cutlery in a grinding machine.

"Or sulk, or shout or look discontented..." Inuyasha warmed to his theme with a glimmering smile of satisfaction. "This is where I expect to come to relax and shrug off the tensions of the day... I'll dine here with you tomorrow night—"

Kagome was seething and ready to cut off her nose to spite her face. "I'm going out."

"Kagome..." Inuyasha shook his imperious dark head in reproof. "Naturally I expect your entire day to revolve round being available when I want you to be."

"For snatched moments?" Kagome asserted in outrage. "What am I supposed to do with myself the rest of the time?"

"Shop," Inuyasha delivered with the comforting air of a male dropping news she must be dying to hear. "Any woman who can spend for an entire week without flagging once is a serious shopaholic"

Kagome flushed to the roots of her hair, assailed by extreme mortification. She had spent an absolute fortune.

"And if it's a phobia, you should now be very happy," Inuyasha continued bracingly. "With me bankrolling you, you won't ever need to take the cure."

Kagome was mute. Her every objective, her script, everything she had dreamt up with which to challenge him over the past week now lay in discarded tatters round her feet. As yet she couldn't quite work out how that had happened. Inuyasha had started out angry, fully meeting her expectations, but he was now in a wonderfully good mood...even though he was about to walk out on her.

During that weak moment of inattention, Inuyasha reached out to tug her into his arms with maddeningly confident hands. Kagome was rigid, and then she just drooped, drained of fight. He curved her even closer, crushing her up against him with a groan of unconcealed pleasure and sending every nerve in her body haywire with wanton longing.

"If it wasn't for this wretched party, I'd stay..." Inuyasha pushed against her with knowing eroticism, shamelessly acquainting her with the intensity of his arousal. Kagome's heartbeat went from a race into an all-out sprint. Heat surged between her thighs, leaving her weak with lust.

"I could throw you down on the bed and sate this overpowering ache for fulfillment—“

Kagome said, "Yes...”

"But it would be wicked and unforgivable to make a snack out of what ought to be a five course banquet." Even as he talked Inuyasha was tracing a passage down her extended throat with his mouth in hot, hungry little forays. He slid a long, powerful thigh between hers to press against the most sensitive spot in her entire shivering body. "I really do have to go..."

"Kiss me," Kagome begged.

"Absolutely not...I'd go up in flames," Inuyasha groaned with incredulous force, tearing himself back from her with shimmering golden eyes full of frustration.

Kagome clutched the bed to stay upright. Inuyasha backed away one slow step at a time, like a recovering alcoholic struggling to resist the temptation of a drink. "Christos...you're so beautiful, and so totally perfect for me," he murmured with hoarse satisfaction.

Kagome blinked. All she could focus on was the fact that he was leaving. Everything that mattered to her in the whole world was walking out, and it felt as if it was for ever. The shock of separation from him was so painful it swallowed her alive. And a kind of terror swept over her then, because for the first time she tasted the full extent of her own agonizing vulnerability.

She watched him until the last possible moment. She listened to him striding fast down the corridor. She even strained to hear the lift but she couldn't. And then she collapsed in a heap on the soft thick carpet and burst into floods of tears. Dear heaven, what an idiot she had been to set out to provide Inuyasha with a challenge! All of a sudden she could not credit that she had been so insane as to refuse the chance of making something of their marriage.

He had said that he hadn't expected her to move into this apartment. He had said that she might not have noticed but things had changed. He hadn't even mentioned that wretched argument over that equally wretched will of her godmother's. "You might as well come home with me," he had drawled. Her stupid, stupid pride had baulked; he had sounded for all the world like a disgruntled male grudgingly facing up to an inevitable evil. But no matter how halfhearted that offer had seemed, shouldn't she have accepted it?

She would've had something to build on then. Her rightful place as his wife. Instead, she had turned it down, gambled her every hope of happiness on the slender hope that Inuyasha would learn to love her and. want her to be more than a mistress in his life. But, judging by his behavior in the aftermath of that refusal, she appeared to have offered Inuyasha exactly what he wanted.

No, she had not made a mistake in rejecting that offer, she conceded heavily. How long would it have been before he resented the restraints of such a marriage? He had only married her for sex. She shuddered. There had to be a lot more than that on offer before she would risk figuring in the tabloids as the ultimate discarded bimbo yet again.

Inuyasha certainly wouldn't have been offering a wife snatched moments of his time...nor would he have been taking off for a nightclub on his own. Kagome sobbed her heart out and then, after splashing her swollen face with loads of cold water, she surveyed her weak reflection in the mirror with loathing and climbed into her lonely bed.

Tonight she had got some things wrong, but ultimately she had still made the right decision. She had played right into his hands but it was early days yet, she reminded herself bracingly. Stamina—she needed buckets of stamina to keep up with Inuyasha. It was so strange, she reflected numbly, every time she rejoiced in the belief that she had got Inuyasha off balance, he retaliated by doing the exact same thing to her...

The instant Kagome was engulfed by the hard heat of a roughened male body; she came awake with a start. Pulling away with a muffled moan of fright, she sat up in a daze.

Dawn light was filtering through the curtains.

"I didn't mean to wake you up..." Inuyasha murmured.

Utterly unconvinced by that plea of innocence, Kagome struggled to focus on him in the dim light. Against the pale bed linen, he was all intriguing darkness and shadow. Her heart was still palpitating at such a rate; she pressed a hand to her breast and suppressed the lowering suspicion that Inuyasha might have more stamina than she had. "What are you ddoing here?" she stammered helplessly.

"It was a long drive home...what do you think I'm doing here?" Inuyasha demanded with sudden disturbing amusement. He rolled over to her side of the bed at the speed of light to haul her back into his arms and seal her into all-pervasive contact with every charged line of his big, powerful frame.

"Oh..." Kagome said breathlessly.

"I know anticipation is supposed to be the cutting edge of erotic pleasure but I am not really into self-denial, agape mou," Inuyasha confided huskily, his warm breath fanning her cheekbone. "It's been a hell of a week...seven very rough days of wondering if you had left me and found another man."


As it had genuinely not occurred to her that Inuyasha might interpret her departure from Chymos in that melodramatic light, Kagome was shaken. "But—"

"The thought of you out there...loose," Inuyasha framed with a hoarse edge to his dark, deep drawl.

"What do you mean by..."loose"?"

"The world is full of men like me. If I saw a ravishing beauty like you walking down a street alone, I'd make a move on her like a shot!"

Kagome was not best pleased by that assurance. "If I ever have the slightest reason to think you're two-timing me, I'll be out of here so fast—"

"How can a husband two-time his wife?"

“He has an affair...or a mistress.”

"Well, you've got the market cornered there, haven't you?" Inuyasha breathed with galling amusement, running his hands down to the curvaceous swell of her hips to cup them and urge her even closer.

Kagome quivered, her body responding with a wanton life all of its own, but she struggled desperately to keep on talking because potential infidelity was an extremely important subject, to be tackled and dealt with on the spot. "Wh-who was it said that when the mistress becomes the wife, a vacancy is created?"


"Some guy who hadn't had the good fortune to discover you," Inuyasha growled with blatant satisfaction. "You are like other women."

Kagome blossomed at what sounded like a true compliment. "Did you have a good time at the club?'"

"What do you think?" Inuyasha nipped at the tender lobe of her ear in sensual punishment and curved her suggestively into contact with the straining evidence of his arousal. "I've been like this all night, hot and hungry and aching—"'

Kagome kissed him to shut him up; he was embarrassing He seized on that invitation with a fervor that fully bore out his frustration. She came up for air again, awash with helpless tenderness. He was irredeemably oversexed but she just adored him. Something to build on. Obviously being a sex object was the something to build on. How the mighty had fallen, she conceded, and then Inuyasha kissed her again and all rational thought was suspended...
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Kagome crept out of bed and tiptoed across the carpet to the chair where she could see Inuyasha's clothing draped. She would get the list back before he found it. The very last thing their relationship needed now was the short, sharp shocking result of Inuyasha seeing that awful list of all that she had once thought was wrong with him. That list had been a real hatchet job. After all, when she had written it, she'd been trying to wean herself off him.

Kagome couldn't believe her eyes when she discovered that the jacket she was searching wasn't his dinner jacket! Before he had returned to her at dawn, Inuyasha had evidently gone back to his own apartment to change. She could've screamed... Stamina, she reminded herself, but her nerves were already shot to hell. "Kagome...what are you doing?"

Kagome jerked and dropped his jacket as if she had been burnt. "Nothing!"

"What time is it?" he queried softly.

"Eight..."

"Come back to bed, agape mou."

Kagome was so relieved he hadn't noticed what she was doing, she responded with alacrity.

An hour and a half later she sat across the dining-room table while breakfast was served by Inuyasha's manservant, Nikos. He had imported his own staff to remedy the empty cupboards in the kitchen. His efficiency in sweeping away such problems just took her breath away. Now he lounged back, skimming through a pile of newspapers and onto his third cup of black coffee.

He was a fantastic lover, she thought dreamily. He could be so gentle and then so...so wild. And he ought to be exhausted after only a couple of hours of sleep, but instead Inuyasha emanated a sizzling aura of pent-up energy this morning. I'm never, ever going to get over him, she thought in sudden panic. I need my list back to de-program myself from this dependency.

Without warning, Inuyasha bit out something raw and incredulous in Greek and sprang upright, sending half his coffee flying. Volatile, volcanic, like a grizzly bear, Kagome reminded herself studiously. He strode across the dining-room, swept up the phone, punched out some numbers and raked down the line, "That piece on Higurashi Kagome on the gossip page...who authorized that? You print a retraction tomorrow. And after that she's the invisible woman...you tell that malicious poison-pen artist to find another target. She's supposed to be writing up society stuff, not trawling the gutter for sleaze!"

About thirty seconds later, Inuyasha replaced the receiver. Kagome was suffering from dropped-jaw syndrome. Only Nikos, evidently inured to the liveliness of life with Inuyasha, was functioning normally. Having mopped up the split coffee, he had brought a fresh cup, and he now removed himself from the room again with admirable cool.

Inuyasha slapped the offending newspaper down in front of Kagome. "This is what happens when you stroll round Paris without protection," he informed her grimly. "You didn't even realize you'd been caught on camera, did you?"

"No," she confided, and swallowed hard, still in shock from that startling knee-jerk demonstration of male protectiveness. She cast a brief glance at the photo. "But do you really think that newspaper is likely to pay the slightest heed to your objections?"

"I own that newspaper," Inuyasha breathed flatly, his lean face sardonic. "And just look at what that stupid columnist has written!"

Kagome obediently bent her head. She put a finger on the lines of italic type to the right of the photo. The tiny words blurred and shifted hopelessly because she couldn't even begin to concentrate with Inuyasha standing over her as he was.

The silence thundered.

Then a lean brown forefinger came down to shift hers to the section of type below the photograph. "It's that bit, actually,' Inuyasha informed her, half under his breath.

Kagome turned white, her stomach reacting with a violent lurch. "I never read this kind of stuff...and you've caught me out. I'm horribly long-sighted..."

The silence went on and on and on. She couldn't bring herself to look up to see whether or not he had been fooled by that desperate lie.

In an abrupt movement, Inuyasha removed the newspaper. "You shouldn't be looking at that sort of sleazy trash anyway. It's beneath your notice!"

The sick tension, the shattering fear of discovery drained out of Kagome, but it left her limp, perspiration beading her short upper lip. How could she tell him? How could she admit handicap like dyslexia to someone like Inuyasha Like many, he might not even believe that the condition really existed; he might think that it was just a fancy name coined to make the not very bright feel better about their academic deficiencies. Over the years Kagome had met a lot of attitudes like that, and had learnt that any attempt to explain the problems she had often resulted in contempt or even greater discomfiture.

"Kagome..." Inuyasha cleared his throat with rare hesitancy. "I don't think there's anything wrong with your eyesight, and I don't think it's a good idea at this stage in our relationship to pretend that there is."

As that strikingly candid admission sank in, appalled humiliation engulfed Kagome. This was her worst nightmare. Inuyasha had uncovered her secret. She could have borne anybody but him seeing through the lying excuses that came so readily to her lips when her reading or writing skills were challenged. She sat there just staring into space, blocking him out.

"Kagome... I don't like upsetting you but I'm not about to drop the subject." Inuyasha bent and hauled the chair around by the arms, with her still sitting in it. "You are very intelligent so there has to be a good reason why you can't read ten lines in a newspaper with the same ease that I can. And, you see, I remember your notebook when you were a waitress...like a type of shorthand instead of words."

Kagome parted compressed lips like an automaton. "I'm dyslexic... OK?"

"OK...do you want some more coffee?" Inuyasha enquired without skipping a beat as he straightened.

"No, I've had enough...I thought you'd want to drag it all out of me," she said then accusingly.

"Not right now, if it's upsetting you to this degree," Inuyasha returned evenly.

"I'm not upset!" Kagome flew upright and stalked across the room in direct contradiction of the statement. "I just don't like people prying and poking about in what is my business and nobody else's!"

Inuyasha regarded her in level enquiry. "Dyslexia is more widespread than perhaps you realize. Yuhiko, whose twenty-first I attended last night, is also dyslexic, but he's now in his second year at Oxford. His two younger brothers also have problems. Didn't you get extra tuition at school to help you to cope?"

Relaxing infinitesimally, Kagome folded her arms and shook her head dully; "I went to about a dozen different schools in all—"

"A dozen?" Inuyasha interrupted in astonishment.

"Dad and I never stayed in one place for long. He always ended up owing someone money. If it wasn't the landlord it was the local bookie, or some bloke he had laid a bet with and lost...so we would do a flit to pastures new."

"And then the whole cycle would start again?" Inuyasha questioned tautly.

"Yes..." Kagome pursued her lips, her throat aching as she evaded his shrewd appraisal. "I was ten before a teacher decided that there might be an explanation other than stupidity for my difficulties and I was assessed. I was supposed to get extra classes, but before it could be arranged Dad and I moved on again." She tilted her chin, denying her own agonizing self-consciousness on the subject. "In the next school, after I'd been tested, they just stuck me in the lowest form alongside the rest of the no-hopers."

Inuyasha actually winced. "When did you leave school?"

"As fast as my legs could carry me at sixteen!" Kagome admitted with sudden explosive bitterness. "As my godmother once said to me, " Kagome, you can't expect to be pretty and lever.'' "

"I don't think I like the sound of her very much."

"She was trying to be kind but she thought I was as thick as a brick because I was such a slow reader, and my writing was awful and my spelling absolutely stinks!" Feeling the tears coming on, Kagome shot across the room like a scalded cat and fled back to the bedroom.

Inuyasha came down on the bed beside her.

"And don't you dare try to pretend that you don't see me differently now!" Kagome sobbed furiously.

"You're right. You are incredibly brave to cope with something like that all on your own and still be such a firecracker," Inuyasha breathed grittily. "And if I'd known this when I had Toutosai in my sights, I'd have torn him limb from limb... because you couldn't read that bloody loan contract, could you?"

"Bits of it...I can get by...but it takes me longer to read things. I didn't want to show myself up, so I just signed."

"Yuhiko was fortunate. His problems were recognized when he was still a child. He got all the help he needed hut you were left to suffer in frustration...you shouldn't be— you mustn't be ashamed of the condition.''

Tugging her back against him, Inuyasha smoothed her hair off her damp brow as if he was comforting a distressed and sensitive child, and she jerked away from him. He persisted.

Out of pride, she tried to shrug him off again, but it was a very half-hearted gesture and recognized as such. Somehow, when Inuyasha closed his powerful arms round her, she discovered, nothing could possibly feel that bad.

"What did that piece in the gossip column say anyway?" Kagome wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"That the rumors about you and I were complete nonsense. But that it looked like you had attracted another wealthy "friend"—the implication being that he was another married man."

"The columnist got that bit right." An involuntary laugh escaped Kagome.

Inuyasha's grip tightened. "It didn't amuse me."

Kagome then dug up the courage to ask something that had been puzzling her all night. "Why aren't you still furious about me deciding to marry you because of my godmother's will?"

"In your position, I might have reacted the same way. I fight fire with fire too," Inuyasha admitted reflectively. "I don't surrender, I get even. But, you see, there comes a time when that can become a dangerously destructive habit..."

"I'll stop trying to top everything you do," Kagome promised tautly.

"I'll stop trying to set you up for a fall," Inuyasha swore, and then he surveyed her with sudden decision. "And we'll fly back the island to enjoy some privacy."

"You really are a fabulous cook," Inuyasha commented appreciatively as Kagome closed the empty picnic hamper.

Kagome tried to look modest and failed. In the most unexpected ways, Inuyasha was a complete pushover. With all those servants around, and the ability to eat every meal at five-star locations if he chose, no woman had ever, it seemed, made the effort to cook for him. And he was wildly and unduly impressed by the domestic touch. If she cracked an egg, he made her feel like Mother Earth.

"You could make some lucky guy a really wonderful wife," Inuyasha drawled indolently. Kagome leant over him and mock-punched him in the ribs. Bronzed even deeper by the sun. narrow hips and long powerful thighs sheathed in a pair of low-slung cut-off jeans, Inuyasha was all lean, dark, rampantly virile male. She stared down at him, entrapped, heart thumping, breathing constricted. He threaded a lean hand into her tumbling hair to imprison her in that vulnerable position.

Disturbingly serious golden eyes focused on her. "Tell me, have you ever trusted a member of my sex?"

"No," Kagome Kagome admitted uneasily.

"I feel as if I'm on trial. We're married. You won't wear my ring. You still don't want anyone to know you're my wife—"

"You made the offer to announce our marriage out of guilt."

"I'm not that big a fool. I think you're paying me back for refusing to do it the right way from the start," Inuyasha countered steadily. "I hurt you and I'm sorry, but we have to move on from there."

Kagome 's gaze was strained, wary. "I'm not ready for that yet."

"Thanks for that vote of faith." Releasing her with startling abruptness, Inuyasha sprang upright and strode up the beach.

Fighting a sensation of panic, and the urge to chase after him, Kagome hugged her knees tightly and stared out at the sun-drenched blue of the sea. The first row since they had left London. It totally terrified her. She could not overcome the fear that she was just a fascinating interlude for Inuyasha, that she did not have what it would take to hold him.

She could not face the prospect of being his wife in public and then being dumped a few months down the line when he lost interest...

And yet, to be fair, so far Inuyasha had not shown the slightest sign of becoming bored with her. In fact, with every passing day Inuyasha made her feel better about herself, so much more than a beautiful face and body—something no man had ever achieved or even tried to achieve.

Yesterday he had had to fly to Athens for the day on business. Three gorgeous bouquets of the white lilies she loved had been flown in during his absence. And every one of them had carried a personal message, carefully block-printed by his hand. "Missing you." "Missing you more." "Missing you even more," Kagome recalled headily. So impractical, so over-the-top. Not bad for a guy she had believed didn't have a romantic, imaginative, thoughtful, sensitive or tender bone in his entire beautiful body.

But for the past ten days Inuyasha had been proving just how wrong she had been to attribute such flaws to him. The list? Well, as yet, since that dinner jacket was still in London, she hadn't had a chance to get hold of it, and the list might well have been dumped by Nikos or trashed at the dry-cleaners or some such thing by now. She knew Inuyasha couldn't have found it before they left London. He couldn't possibly have kept his mouth shut on the subject if he had.

He had presented her with a laptop computer with a wonderful spell-check mechanism on it so that she could write things with ease. He read newspapers with her. He was so patient with her efforts and, as her confidence had risen from absolute rock-bottom inadequacy, she had improved amazingly. How had she ever imagined he was selfish and inconsiderate? And how had she ever thought she could bask in such generosity and not be expected to give some thing back? And she knew what he wanted back. Total unconditional surrender. That was what trust was. She was being such a terrible, selfish coward...

Kagome found him in the airy lounge. Hovering in the doorway, she studied him, her heart jumping worse than it did when he took her up in the helicopter most mornings "I trust you," she said tautly, a betraying shimmer brightening her eyes.

Inuyasha dealt her a pained, unimpressed look, and then he groaned with suppressed savagery. Striding across the room, he pulled her into his arms in one powerful motion "Christos...don't look at me like that, agape mou!" he urged ruefully. "Forget that whole conversation. I'm just not very good at patience... not a lot of practice and too big an ego."

"I like you the way you are."

"The lies women tell in certain moods," Inuyasha sighed with an ironic look.

"It's not a lie, Inuyasha —"

"Possibly it won't be...some time in the future." And with that last word he sealed his sensual mouth to hers with a kind of hungry desperation.

The ground beneath Kagome's feet rocked. In that one way Inuyasha controlled her. He understood that. He used it. She accepted it; the passion he unleashed inside her was more than she could withstand. But, most importantly of all, it was the one time she could show him affection without the fear that she might be revealing how much she loved him. And if anything, after the past ten days, she loved him ten times more.

She was enslaved, utterly, hopelessly enslaved. So the minute Inuyasha touched her she let all that pent-up emotion loose on him. She clutched, she clung, she heaved ecstatic sighs and she hugged him tight. And he responded with a flattering amount of enthusiasm every time.

Probing her mouth with hot, sexual intimacy, Inuyasha un-dipped her bikini bra. As her breasts spilt full and firm into his palms, he uttered a hungry sound of pleasure. He let his thumbs glance over her urgently sensitive pink nipples. Kagome moaned, her spine arching as he used his mouth to torment those straining buds. She was so excited she couldn't breathe. Reaching down, he un-dipped the bikini briefs clasped at her slim hips and pulled them free, leaving her naked.

"I love exciting you," Inuyasha confided hoarsely, and he kissed her again, slowly, sensually this time. A long, powerful thigh nudged hers apart. A surge of unbearable heat left her boneless as he bent her back over his supporting arm, splaying his hand across the clenched muscles of her stomach. His skilled fingers skated through the cluster of damp ebony curls and into the hot, melting warmth beneath. She whimpered and squirmed under his mouth, and at the exact moment when her legs began to buckle he picked her up with easy strength and carried her down to the bedroom.

He stood over her, unzipping the cut-offs, peeling them off. And then he came down to her. "Inuyasha..." she pleaded, aroused beyond bearing.

Answering the powerful need he had awakened, he took her hard and fast, as always disturbingly attuned to the level of her need. And then there was nothing, nothing but him and the wild sensation that controlled her as surely as he did. She cried out as he drove her to a peak of exquisite pleasure and then slumped, absolutely, totally drained.

"Have you ever been in love?" Inuyasha asked lazily then.

Unprepared for serious conversation, Kagome blinked and met brilliant assessing eyes.

"Yes."

"What happened?"

Kagome lowered her lashes protectively. "He didn't love me back...er, what about you?"

"Once..."

Kagome opened her eyes wide. "And?"

Inuyasha focused on her swollen mouth, ebony lashes screening his gaze. "I fell victim to a feminist with high expectations of the man in her life. She thought I was great in bed but that was kind of it."

"Tart!" Kagome condemned without hesitation, absolutely outraged to discover he had loved somebody else and, worst of all, somebody wholly undeserving of the honor. There was just so much more to Inuyasha than his ability to drive her crazy with desire, she thought furiously. He was highly entertaining company and such a wretched tease sometimes...

Ambar eyes met hers with disturbing clarity. "She wasn't and isn't a tart...is that jealousy, I hear?"

"I'm not the jealous type," Kagome lied, and, snaking free of him with the Ice Queen look she hadn't given him in weeks, she slid off the bed. "I feel like a shower."

On the flight back to London, Kagome contemplated the wedding ring now embellishing her finger. It was new, a broad platinum band. It was also accompanied by a gorgeous knuckleduster of sapphires and diamonds.

"An engagement ring?" she had asked him incredulously.

"A gift," Inuyasha had insisted. But he had produced both at spectacular speed.

Indeed, her finger was now so crowded, a glance at a hundred yards would give the news that she was married to even the most disinterested onlooker. But why couldn't Inuyasha mention the prospect of having children...or something, anything that would make her feel like a really permanent fixture in his life? She wondered ruefully. Maybe he didn't want children. Or maybe he just couldn't contemplate the idea of having children with her. Certainly he hadn't taken a single risk in that department.

They parted at the airport. Inuyasha headed for the Taisho building and Kagome traveled back to his apartment, her new home. Barely stopping to catch her breath, she found the main bedroom, went into the dressing-room and searched through wardrobe after wardrobe of fabulous suits in search of that dinner jacket with her list in the pocket.

She found half a dozen dinner jackets, but not one of them contained what she sought. Obviously that list had been dumped. She relaxed.

Inuyasha called her at lunchtime. "Something's come up. I may be very late tonight," he informed her.

Kagome's face fell a mile but her response was upbeat. "Don't worry, I'll amuse myself—"

"How?" Inuyasha interrupted instantaneously, "I'll have an early night." Kagome worked hard to keep the amusement out of her voice.

"I have this recurring image of you hitting the town on your own."

"Because you know you got away with going to that nightclub by yourself, but you won't ever again," Kagome murmured with complete sincerity.

Kagome couldn't believe how much she missed him that night. She thought she would turn over at some stage and find him there in the bed beside her, and it was something of a shock to wake up at eight and discover she was still alone.

By the time she sat down to breakfast, however, the table was rejoicing in a huge bunch of white lilies. "Missing you too much," the card complained. Kagome heaved a happy sigh, consoled by the sight. Her portable phone buzzed.

"Thank you for the flowers," she said, since nobody else but Inuyasha had her number. "Where are you?"

"The office. I was out of town last night. It was too late to drive back and I didn't want to wake you up by phoning in the early hours."

"The next time, phone." Kagome urged.

"What are you wearing, agape mou?" Inuyasha enquired huskily.

Kagome gave a little shiver and crammed the phone even closer to her ear. The sound of that honeyed drawl just knocked her out. "Shocking pink...suit...four-inch stilettos," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't wait to take them all off."

"How am I supposed to concentrate when you say things like that?" Inuyasha demanded in a driven undertone, "I want you to miss me."

"I'm missing you...OK?"

"OK...when can I expect a snatched moment?"

"Don't go out anywhere. I'll pick you up at eleven. I've got a surprise for you."

Kagome flicked through the topmost newspaper and went as usual to the gossip column. She saw the picture of Inuyasha instantly. Her attention lodged lovingly on how wonderfully photogenic he was, and then her gaze slowly slewed sideways to take in the woman who occupied the photo with him, the woman whose hand he was intimately clasping across a table.

Aghast, she just stared for a full count of ten seconds. Her stomach twisted, her brow dampened. She felt sick. Natalie Cibaud, the movie actress...