InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 7: Avouchment ❯ Skin Deep ( Chapter 27 )

~~Chapter 27~~

~Skin Deep~

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

`How the hell did she talk me into this?'

 

Griffin's youkai snorted indelicately. `She guilted you, Griffin.'

 

He grunted, grimacing as he caught a glance of his reflection in the floor length mirror on the back of the dressing room door. `Oh, yeah . . . that . . .'

 

Well, that wasn't entirely true. She hadn't exactly guilted him, after all. No, what she'd done was much, much worse than that. Staring at him with those luminous golden eyes, her thick, sooty lashes fanning down over the tops of her cheeks as she blinked innocently at him, it had been plain, dumb luck that he'd finally given in to the urge that had been gnawing at him on the same day that she'd want to go Christmas shopping for her cousin . . .

 

“Griffin . . . I was wondering if you'd be willing to do something for me . . .”

 

“No,” he said without looking up from the translation notes he'd been sorely neglecting of late.

 

She sighed. “I was prepared for that,” she said, leaning against the corner of his desk, “so I've prepared a counteroffer.”

 

He snorted but did glance at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Let's hear it, fat ass.”

 

She laughed outright. It just never seemed to faze her whenever he called her that. “I'm willing to buy you all the butter pecan ice cream you can eat if you'll help me out for a couple of hours.”

 

He thought it over then shook his head. “Nope.”

 

Pushing away from his desk, she wandered idly around the room, clapping her hands together as though she were trying to come up with another means of coercion. Too bad he was onto her . . . “But you haven't heard what it is that I'm asking you to do,” she pointed out in an overly reasonable tone.

 

“Don't need to. Whatever it is, it's probably bad, Jezebel.”

 

She rolled her eyes and kept pacing. “Good is overrated,” she asserted. He could hear the amusement in her tone.

 

“Fine, fine. Tell me what you want so I can say no, and so you'll shut up.”

 

She drew a deep breath and giggled. “I need you to come with me to the store so that you can try on a few things so I can get a better idea of how they'd look on Bastian.”

 

He dropped his pen onto the desktop with a clatter. “Absolutely not,” he stated flatly.

 

“Oh, come on! You're a tall, big man like him! It's perfect!”

 

“Buy him a toaster,” Griffin muttered, cheeks pinking as he forced his attention back to his task once more.

 

Isabelle laughed. “I doubt Bastian knows how to use a toaster. Besides, I—” Cutting herself off short, she paused for a moment—long enough for Griffin to start to think that maybe she'd given up on the ridiculous notion—before she changed the topic completely. “Griffin . . .?”

 

“What?” he grumbled without looking back at her.

 

“. . . What happened to the garland?”

 

“What garland?”

 

“The one that was on the Christmas tree.”

 

“Was there one?”

 

“Yes . . .”

 

He was avoiding her, and she knew it. “Can you describe said-garland?”

 

“Hmm . . . popcorn . . . cranberries . . . pecans . . .”

 

He stopped for a moment, his back stiffening almost imperceptibly before he forced himself to reach for the ink pen once more. “Don't know what you're barking about,” he hedged.

 

She considered that, her feet whispering as she shuffled across the floor. “So you don't remember the pecan and popcorn garland I strung together for the tree?”

 

Griffin shifted his jaw to the side, digging a bit of pecan out of his teeth with the tip of his tongue. “Nope. Are you sure you didn't imagine it?”

 

“Re-e-eally . . . is that so?”

 

“They say that the mind is the first thing to go,” he informed her.

 

She didn't speak for a moment, but he could hear her footsteps drawing near, and he went stock still when she leaned over his shoulder, her lips close to his ear, her breath stirring his hair . . . “Griffin?”

 

“W-what?” he croaked out, desperately trying to ignore her very proximity.

 

“Did you eat my garland?”

 

He repressed a shiver that trilled down his spine. “Nope,” he lied.

 

She chuckled almost huskily. “Are you sure?”

 

“Charlie did it,” he blurted, face erupting in violent color as he shrugged his shoulder a little too late to stave the woman off. The dog in question lifted his muzzle off of his paws long enough to glance at them, his tail thumping heavily against the floor while Griffin tried to brush off the unaccountable feelings of guilt at having blamed the dog for the misdeed.

 

“Charlie, huh?”

 

He jerked his head once in a nod.

 

“Uh huh,” she nearly purred, her tone taking on a certain level of gloating. “And after I spent all afternoon making that, too . . .”

 

He grimaced since she actually had—pricking her finger about a hundred times while she worked on the string, mostly due to Griffin's attempts to get the pecans away from her at the time. She didn't miss his momentary lapse, either, damn it.

 

“So you'll go shopping with me?” she goaded.

 

He heaved a sigh, knowing deep down that he had been beaten by his own greed . . .

 

. . . Which was exactly why he was standing in the middle of a four foot cubicle reluctantly tugging an uncomfortable sweater over his head so that she could get a better idea of how it would look on her cousin, or so she said.

 

The curt tap on the dressing room door startled him, and he winced as he groped for the knob and jerked it open, stifling a decisive snort at the maroon turtle neck dangling from Isabelle's fingertip. “Forget it,” he stated flatly, tugging at the collar of the sweater she'd insisted he try on, “and if you buy this for your cousin, he'll probably never speak to you again.”

 

She laughed and rolled her eyes, draping the vest over her arm before she stepped forward to adjust the sweater on his shoulders. “You look nice, you know,” she pointed out casually enough. “Really nice.”

 

“Have I told you recently that I think you should get your eyes checked?” he grumbled, unable to staunch the hotness of a flush that flooded his cheeks at her blatant compliment.

 

“Hmm, well, I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.”

 

“What?”

 

She tilted her head to the side, her eyes shifting to indicate a couple of women standing nearby who were staring at him rather unabashedly. Narrowing his gaze on Isabelle, he grunted something unintelligible and pivoted on his heel to return to the sanctuary of the dressing room once more, pausing just long enough to snatch the offensive maroon turtle neck from her slack fingers.

 

He wasn't sure why Isabelle always had to point out whenever someone was staring at him. He knew damn well that people stared at him all the time. What he didn't want or need was for her to make an issue of it especially when he knew—just knew—that the only reason they were staring was because he was a bare minimum short of being considered a monster.

 

`But she doesn't think you are, you know,' his youkai remarked a little too casually.

 

Griffin snorted as he tugged the ungodly hot sweater over his head with a marked grimace. He was a little sore, and he knew it was because he'd been spending far more time in bed than he normally did.

 

`Yeah, and about that,' his youkai went on. `Do you plan on sneaking into her room every night from here on out? Wouldn't it be simpler to move her into your bedroom? I mean, your bed is bigger . . .'

 

`Shut up,' Griffin grumbled, cheeks pinking at his youkai's forward thinking. `It's not my fault that she keeps having bad dreams.'

 

`Oh, so that's your excuse? Really . . . and you realize, I don't recall her making a sound at all the last couple of nights.'

 

`She did,' he insisted, scowling at a white linen shirt that Isabelle had handed to him just before he'd lumbered off to find the dressing room in the first place. `You must be hard of hearing.'

 

`Is it honestly that difficult to admit that you like being around her?'

 

`I don't,' Griffin argued, `but if she starts leaking again, then I'll be in trouble because I didn't get flood insurance on the house.'

 

`And I suppose it didn't really make you feel like smiling when the cubs thought that she was your wife.'

 

Jamming his arm into the sleeve and tugging the shirt up over his shoulders, Griffin snorted again. `That was just gas,' he commented dryly.

 

His youkai heaved a sigh but fell silent at long last, much to Griffin's everlasting relief, and he let his breath out in a long gust as he eyed the turtleneck in abject disgust . . .

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

Avis stumbled through the house as he hurried to answer the door. He didn't stop to turn on any lights though it was the middle of the night. The ruckus was too hard to ignore: the incessant pounding that echoed through his head.

 

His first thought had been that one of his neighbors was in trouble. After all, the woman next door had a young child, and the woman was confined to a wheelchair. Maybe she'd fallen or something. The boy was often knocking on Avis' door, and it had struck him early on that the child was lonely since there weren't really many other children his age in the neighborhood that Avis had seen.

 

But as he neared the doorway, he could feel the malignant force of the youki seeping through the unsealed jamb, and he slowed his step, unable to ignore the cold trepidation that crept up his spine. He knew that youki. He feared it.

 

For a split second, he considered the idea of running away—of escaping out the back door of the small building, but knowing damn well that it would avail him little. No, he just couldn't get away, and he knew it . . .

 

If he showed his fear, though . . .

 

He reached for the door handle, grimacing at the obvious shake in his hands but jerked back when the door crashed open. The hazy light from the yellow streetlights cast the intruder in a garish glow, a macabre presence that exuded a malevolent will. “F-Fellowes,” he murmured, unable to control the slight tremor in his voice.

 

Eaton Fellowes stepped over the threshold—more like glided over it, really—the jagged edges of his youki probing like viscous tentacles invisible to the naked eye, and Avis stepped back in a vain effort to alleviate the rising tension mounting in the air.

 

“Refresh my memory, Avis,” Eaton rumbled, a quiet purr underlying his words. The panther-youkai was enjoying the electric feel of Avis' fear, wasn't he? Feeding off it like a parasite . . . “Did you or did you not tell me that you were certain that Izayoi had the research?”

 

Avis blinked and swallowed hard, adjusting the collar of his pajamas with a shaking hand. “It . . . seemed . . . logical,” he muttered, grimacing inwardly at the feeble sound of his own voice. “H-he's brilliant, they say . . .”

 

“Just because he's brilliant you would assume that he would be given the research?” Fellowes mused, pushing the door closed though it remained open just a crack. “Your reasoning is sorely lacking. Now tell me you know who does have it.”

 

The menace in his tone was palpable. Avis winced as his stomach lurched unpleasantly. He'd tried, hadn't he? He'd tried to find out who had been given the task of finishing the research. The Zelig family was loath to tell him anything of the sort, though, not that he could fault them for that. Still, if he didn't think fast . . . “Give me a little more time,” he blurted, unable to keep the rising hint of hysteria out of his inflection. “I'll find out; I swear I will. A day or two . . . maybe a week . . .”

 

“In a day or a week they might crack it wide open,” Eaton hissed, his eyes narrowing though the flash of his gaze remained unwavering. He stepped toward Avis once more, and once more Avis retreated. “No, my good doctor . . . I think you've had more than enough time, wouldn't you say?”

 

Shrinking away from the pinpoints of light that impaled Avis where he stood, he saw the flash of movement seconds after the unforgiving vice of his hand closed around his throat, bearing him back against the wall with a force so hard that the structure shuddered and groaned.

 

He gasped for breath, clawing weakly at the ever-tightening hand that gripped him, tried in vain to break the hold as the edges of his vision blurred and dimmed; as the sound of dogs barking in the distance faded into the frenzied throb of his blood pumping through his veins.

 

“You have failed me for the last time, Dr. Avis,” the cold, smooth voice said as tendrils of blood ran in rivulets down his neck, soaking into the thin cotton pajamas.

 

The desperation behind his feeble attempts to regain his freedom waned, the stabbing pain lessening by degrees. As his vision faltered, as the coldness of death closed in, there was a strange sort of peace delineating it all. His hands fell slack by his sides, his body releasing the tension that had gripped him only moments before. The last thing Avis saw was the maniacal glowing in Eaton Fellowes' murky eyes . . .

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

Isabelle tapped a tapered claw against her lips as she waited patiently for Griffin to re-emerge from the dressing room. He was taking the shopping venture really well, and while it surprised her, she also had to admit that it made her happy, too. He'd been trying on clothes for the better part of two hours, and despite his grumbling, he didn't actually seem to mind too much. Granted, he hadn't liked the fuchsia silk blouse that he'd just tried on—not surprising since she didn't know many men who would, and that was a damn shame. Griffin had looked absolutely delicious in the thing . . .

 

To be completely honest, she hadn't really needed his help in shopping for Bastian, and her goal had been to see how Griffin looked in some newer, trendier clothing since she had every intention of buying him a few nice things for Christmas. Trouble was he didn't seem to like any of the clothing that she picked out, even the more conservative outfits . . . Well, that was just too bad, in her estimation. Griffin needed to update his wardrobe a little, and she was going to make sure that he did. She certainly had nothing against the nondescript but always neat clothing that Griffin tended to favor, but a man like him could get away with so much, fashion-wise. After all, he was tall, he was big, and he was damn fine looking . . .

 

It never ceased to amuse her, either, the sorts of looks he tended to garner without even trying or realizing. She knew well enough that he seemed to believe that he was akin to a monster—she supposed his scarring made him feel self-conscious—but most of the women, especially young women—certainly didn't think he was even remotely close to that. Not at all, in fact; Isabelle knew damn well that, aside from the beautiful men in her family, that Griffin was something special.

 

She'd grown up around it, hadn't she? She'd seen how girls tended to fall all over themselves around her cousins, and even the older male members of the family drew constant attention for their looks alone. On her father's side, it was the striking silver hair; the piercing golden eyes, with the exceptions being her uncle, Toga and his children, who all had jet black hair—just as devastating when coupled with the amber eyes of the Inutaisho family. Her cousin, Gunnar was easily the prettiest man she'd ever seen—almost too pretty, really. Add to that the inherent Inutaisho arrogance, and, well, there were times aplenty when Isabelle had wanted to scream at Gunnar's aloof attitude. Even then, he'd had girls who followed him around all the time growing up—at least, those who weren't intimidated by his brusque demeanor though she'd often wondered just how many girls would have trailed him around otherwise. Her cousin, Morio had always had girls around. So sweet and devil-may-care, it was impossible not to adore that particular man, and Mikio?

 

She smiled at the thought of her youngest uncle. He tended to be a little shier around women than the rest of the men, likely because of his balance issues. It never had been determined just why Mikio sometimes tended to lose his balance. Isabelle vaguely remembered talk of testing—they'd suspected that he had inner ear problems—but nothing had ever really come of that. She'd heard her parents talking about it before when she was younger; something about InuYasha and Kagome arguing over whether or not to have Mikio tested. Her father had said that InuYasha hadn't wanted to subject Mikio to further scrutiny because, “there ain't a fucking thing wrong with my pup,” but Kagome had wanted to see if there was anything that could be done to help Mikio.

 

Quiet, gentle, absolutely intellectual, Mikio was given to lopsided grins and good-natured teasing. Unlike the rest of the boys, he had never been trained to fight though he had been taught to fire a gun, and Kagome had gone out of her way to teach him archery. It had always been a sore spot with him, though, and once he'd even complained about the fact that Isabelle could probably kick his ass if it ever came down to a real fight. Still, Mikio was a deadeye shot with bow and arrow or gun. Isabelle had always figured that his special training had worked to level the playing field, so to speak.

 

Of course, on her mother's side—the Zelig side—there wasn't a question about the whole `beauty' thing, either. As a child, Isabelle had been enchanted by her own grandfather, Cain. As apple pie as they came, she supposed. Golden bronze hair and sapphire blue eyes—eyes that often seemed to be looking for things that normal people just couldn't see—he was a dreamer, her mother had said. It was that sense of wistfulness in him that had lent him a more approachable air since he should have been as intimidating as Sesshoumaru, in his own right. He was tall—nearly seven feet tall—and he wasn't exactly what anyone would have called `lanky' though he seemed almost that way when standing beside his son, Bastian. Then again, no one was really sure exactly where Bastian had gotten his physique. He'd always been a big guy; bigger than the rest of Isabelle's cousins that were her age. The main difference, though, was that, while Cain tended to look dreamy most of the time, Bastian . . . well, Bastian could be rather intimidating—at least, he might have been if Isabelle didn't know damn well that he was about as gentle as they came. The thoughtful scowl he wore most of the time, though, tended to make him look fiercer than he actually was, though it was also a well known fact that Bastian was indisputably the best fighter in the family from his generation. Last she'd heard, he'd actually fought Uncle Ryomaru in a battle that ended in a draw though he never had been able to best their grandfather, InuYasha.

 

But Griffin . . .

 

True, Griffin wasn't pretty like Gunnar—a good thing, if one asked Isabelle—but he was damn fine looking. His deep brown eyes seemed to glow, adding a warmth to his normally serious expression, and the shaggy, chestnut brown hair that he tried to tame was the kind of hair that women just wanted to run their fingers through. Long bangs that often fell over his eyes looked good on him, diminishing the harsher angles of his high cheekbones; the almost pouty quality of his lips . . .

 

She loved the rugged sort of air that surrounded him; the understated masculinity that defined him. She adored the five o'clock shadow that never really went away; she craved the scent of him—of clean fields of sun-warmed grass; of the smell of the air just before a good rain. In her heart she knew that she'd forever think of him any time she smelled those things, and the warmth of feeling perfectly safe . . . Only three people had ever really given her that feeling of security on that sort of level. Her parents, of course, had always provided that sense of shelter, and now Griffin . . .

 

Oh, surely she felt safe with everyone in her family, but the depth of the emotion was stronger with Griffin; stronger even than the warmth she remembered as a child, of creeping into her parents' bedroom whenever it stormed late at night, waking her from her slumber, and the safest place she knew at the time was in their bed, snuggled between them, so close that she could hear the beating of their hearts that drowned out the crashes of thunder and dimmed the flashes of lightning.

 

Griffin lent her that now; that sense of being completely safe, of knowing that nothing in the world really could hurt her so long as he was there, and while she believed that there really wasn't a more beautiful man on earth, she knew deep down that his real attraction stemmed from deep down, in a soul as gentle as the wind, even if he did try to hide it behind gruff words and clumsy gestures.

 

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Isabelle narrowed her eyes on the closed dressing room door. She was starting to wonder if he was going to come out at all. She knew that aside from teaching, he hated anything that made him the center of attention, and in his mind, trying on clothes undoubtedly fit that bill perfectly. With a marked sigh, she crossed her arms over her stomach and ambled toward the dressing room door.

 

“Are you coming out?” she called, raising her voice enough to be heard through the barrier.

 

She didn't miss Griffin's unmistakable snort. “It depends. Are we finished yet?”

 

Breaking into a smile, she laughed. “Almost . . . I want to see that green pullover.”

 

“I look like a really stupid tree,” he pointed out.

 

“Let me see before you start losing your leaves.”

 

That earned her another snort, but he finally did open the door as Isabelle's smile widened, her eyes taking on an appreciative glow. “You look good in green,” she commented, reaching up to flick the thick fleece on his shoulders.

 

“I feel like a stuffed sausage,” he muttered, cheeks pinking when he caught sight of her open admiration.

 

“I like this,” she went on, her tone almost absent as she walked shuffled around him. “It draws attention to your shoulders.”

 

He grunted something completely unintelligible before craning his neck to see what she was doing. “They're just shoulders,” he grumbled with a shake of his head, “and stop circling me like a shark, will you?”

 

“Well,” she drawled, unable to ignore the open opportunity to tease him just a little, “you do look rather delicious . . .”

 

She laughed outright when his face exploded in a violent shade of red. “Jezebel!” he hissed, turning on his heel to stomp back into the sanctity of the dressing room once more.

 

“Are you finding everything all right?” a small, sleek salesgirl asked, leaning to the side as though she were trying to keep from intruding.

 

“Just fine,” Isabelle assured her then snapped her fingers as sudden inspiration struck her. Reaching out, she grabbed Griffin's arm to stop him and tugged him back. “What do you think?” she asked, nodding her head at Griffin.

 

The salesgirl smiled, her eyes registering her agreement. “Very nice.”

 

Isabelle turned toward Griffin. “See? I'm not the only one who thinks so.”

 

He snorted and pulled his arm away from her. “She's paid to think so,” he muttered low enough that the girl in question wouldn't hear him, and not for the first time, Isabelle noticed that he was holding his head at a rather odd angle. What, exactly, was he doing?

 

Her smile faded slightly. He was hiding his scars, keeping his face turned just enough so that the salesgirl wouldn't see the unmistakable scars that ran the length of his cheek. He'd done it for so long that it was second nature to him, wasn't it? And that, more than anything bugged the hell out of her. He shouldn't have to hide anything about himself, damn it. He should hold his head high and be proud of the fine man he was. His scars didn't make him any less attractive. Why was it that he couldn't understand that?

 

Still she let him go. It wasn't the time or place to start trying to work on his self-esteem, at least not in that way.

 

“Let me know if you need anything,” the girl said, her slight bemusement dissipating when Griffin closed the dressing room door.

 

Isabelle nodded and watched the girl's departure as a thoughtful frown surfaced on her features. No, no matter what Griffin believed, the salesgirl wasn't being paid to look at him like she had, and she wasn't the only one to give him that sort of look. Isabelle saw it all the time, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out why it was that Griffin couldn't see it, himself.

 

`Maybe he doesn't want to see it,' her youkai pointed out.

 

She shook her head, biting her lip as she considered that. `Maybe . . .'

 

`Don't be naïve, Bitty. For every admiring look he gets, he gets a not-so-admiring one, too. You know he does, and no matter what you think, those looks are the ones that are harder to shake off.'

 

Her frown deepened. That might be true, too . . . disparaging looks from people who thought that superficial beauty was everything, those who gaped at people with absolute revulsion and didn't stop to think that the person at whom they were staring could see their distaste in their expressions. What right did anyone have to look at another person like that? Those were the kind of people, in Isabelle's opinion, who were the ugly ones . . .

 

Griffin mumbled something from inside the room, but his voice was muffled by the door so badly that she couldn't really make out his words.

 

“What's that?” she called, pressing her hands against the pressed wood door and leaning in to better discern his words.

 

He muttered something else that she couldn't discern, and she shook her head, reaching for the door knob and turning it before she gave her actions a second thought only to be brought up short by the vision that greeted her. Standing with his back to her, he was obviously struggling to get the pullover off, and when he'd lifted it, his undershirt had ridden up with it, exposing the skin of his back for her perusal.

 

She'd known that he was a big man, of course. Still there was something altogether shocking about seeing him in that state of undress. Somehow he seemed even larger, more magnificent, and she couldn't help the soft gasp as she sucked in a sharp breath, her heart hammering out an erratic rhythm as her knees nearly buckled under her. She wanted to touch him—desperately wanted to touch him. The glow of his skin seemed to beckon her as her pulse sped up, as her breathing increased . . .

 

He was struggling with the pullover, and she frowned as she realized exactly why that was. The skin covering his back, his shoulders, was crisscrossed with thick, puffy, angry scars, some of them still harshly discolored, as though he'd just gotten them. The scars covered his skin, traversing his body in every conceivable direction—jagged tears, heavy wounds like someone had tried to peel the skin right off of him . . . Judging from the width and severity of them, she could only guess that the scar tissue was deep, and having that sort of build up probably did inhibit his mobility—the reason why he was having such difficulty in removing the article of clothing.

 

She grimaced as he finally managed to tug the pullover off, turning slowly, affording her a better look at his torso—his left side a matrix of scar tissue that extended around his back and stomach. Scars that severe . . . how much pain had he been in when he'd received injuries harsh enough to leave the lasting reminders . . .? The very idea of him suffering so badly was almost more than she could stomach . . .

 

“Wh—uh—g-g-get out of here!” he hissed, finally noticing that he had an audience. A thousand emotions flickered over his features, each one gone long before she could have discerned them, but she was staring at his body, unable to repress the absolute horror of the pain he had to have endured and anger that anyone should have to suffer so much. She didn't notice as he strode toward her until he grabbed her arm, shoving her out of the dressing room. She flinched as he shut the door hard, blinking back the suspect rise of moisture that blurred her vision as the ache that gripped her heart tightened, as she asked herself just what he'd been through . . . and why . . .

 

Wincing, wrapping her arms around herself as she fought against the overwhelming desire to go to him, to put her arms around him in a futile effort to alleviate the pain that still followed him despite the healing of the flesh, she sighed. Closing her eyes did nothing to dispel the image of those terrible scars, and as much as she wished it were otherwise, she knew that he'd only push her further away.

 

“What happened to you?” she whispered, letting her forehead fall against the door, squeezing her eyes closed as she balled her hands into tight fists. She'd never felt quite so helpless before in her life, and in the face of his pain—the pain she knew was still very much alive in his mind, there wasn't a damn thing she could do, was there? The comfort and security that he unwittingly offered her . . . the strength of his very essence that she'd come to rely on . . . Did she give him the same things in return? “Griffin . . .”

 

Moments later, he jerked the door open, his clothing back in place, and he seemed surprised for just a moment as he caught her, steadied her, then moved her aside.

 

A million questions tumbled around her mind though she couldn't give voice to any of them. Watching in silence as he strode out of the dressing room area, she didn't have it in her to cause him more discomfort that she already had.

 

But she followed him anyway, not surprised that he was headed for the exit. Quickening her pace to close the distance between them, she muttered an apology to the salesgirl but didn't stop walking until she caught up with him outside. “Griffin?” she said, darting around him and stopping him with a hand on his arm.

 

He scowled down at the unwelcome gesture but stopped, the color in his cheeks darkened to a ruddy hue though whether it stemmed from embarrassment or anger, she didn't know. “Can we just go home?” he rumbled, averting her gaze as he scanned the parking lot over her head.

 

“Sure,” she said quietly as a surge of relief flooded through her. He wasn't angry—at least, he wasn't very angry, and even then, she had the distinct feeling that any irritation he was suffering really didn't have a thing to do with her. Why she felt like that, she wasn't sure. In any case, she knew intrinsically that his reaction really had stemmed more from embarrassment and maybe a bit of self-disgust more than anything else, and in an effort to alleviate the waning tension a little faster, she forced a bright smile and stepped a little closer. “You know, big man, if you want to run around the house without your shirt on, I really wouldn't complain.”

 

He blinked quickly, casting her an incredulous look before snorting loudly as more color rose to his already reddened cheeks, and he shook his head before turning abruptly, veering to the right as he led the way to Isabelle's car, and she sighed though her eyes gave away her lingering amusement and relief that she'd gotten the desired result.

 

`One day . . .' she vowed, lifting her chin as though to defy the rising winter wind. `One day you'll believe me when I tell you that you're the one . . . the only one . . .'

 

 

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Final Thought fromIsabelle:

Eye candy, indeed …

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Avouchment): I do not claim any rights to InuYashaor the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~