"Damn her," spat Inuyasha. A chorus of birds took flight, startled by the volume and venom of his curse, but he was too absorbed in his anger to notice. "Damn her to hell."

The day had started off relatively well. Waking up to the happy surprise of a cool morning—the heat had been absolutely oppressive going on two weeks, now—Kagome had been determined to celebrate by making them a hot breakfast. That was about as far as his luck had stretched. It was a struggle for him to keep his hands off her in the morning; she knew this, and more often than not she encouraged it, but today her focus had been on preparing the food. His efforts had distracted her to the point of irritation, and when she'd finally oswari'd him into submission only to find that the porridge had burnt… well.

Everything had gone downhill from there.

The villagers had grown wise to their moods. This was the only saving grace he could acknowledge. Within minutes of their venturing down from their more isolated home (in absolute silence and with a good four feet between them), word had spread that today was one of "those days." Miroku and Sango had gamely attempted to talk them into better spirits, but with no luck: a snide comment from Inuyasha about Kagome's bad attitude had sparked a screaming match, halted only when one of the twins began to cry in distress. The look she'd thrown him then had made him burn with shame. Not that he'd admit it. She'd started the whole thing, the bitch.

At the end of the day, though, this was all normal. They kicked, they screamed, they spat, they clawed, and they made up. Kagome and Inuyasha, the couple from hell who couldn't stand to be away from each other, not even from the very first. Resolution was something they'd come to assume would happen one way or another; if a verbal apology wasn't forthcoming, then a physical one was imminent. They each knew when they'd screwed up. They each knew whose turn it was to make the first move when dusk's heavy darkness leached the light from the summer sky. In fact, when he thought about it, Inuyasha realized they hadn't gone to bed angry since… well, since she'd come back.

But today was different.

Miroku's warning glance when Suzume began to cry had been his cue. In petulant silence, he'd joined the other men in the fields to help prepare for the coming harvest, leaving the women to soothe the girl in his absence. Fuck it, he thought. The physical labour would help him clear his head and work out his frustrations. Hopefully, working with Kaede throughout the afternoon would have the same effect on his wife, and they could come back together on less rocky ground.

Hours passed. Slowly, as the sun drew to its lowest point before it began to set, the men began retreating home, enlivened by the promise of sitting down to dinner with their families. Inuyasha kept working. The longer he waited, the better, for he knew that the best time to approach his wife after an argument was when she was exhausted after a long day. She would be happy to see him, if maybe still a little irritable. They would eat together in contented silence. And then, well, everything would fall in place from there.

"Inuyasha!"

The hanyou was startled from his reverie at the sound of Miroku's voice. Ears preceding his body, he swiveled to fix his gaze on the approaching monk. "What?"

"Sango's making dinner. Would you like to join us? We weren't certain if Kagome left you any food."

A blink. Something began tickling at the base of Inuyasha's spine, a nervous feeling he got when something kicked his thoughts off-kilter. "What do you mean, left me any food? Where is she?"

It was Miroku's turn to blink. Studying his companion, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as though testing the solidity of the earth beneath his sandals. Something told him this was not going to go over well. "Kagome has already left, my friend. Hours ago. Did she not tell you?"

A growl erupted deep in Inuyasha's chest. "Left? What the fuck do you mean, she—"

Suddenly, her voice rang clear as a bell in his ears, a memory from the night before, forgotten in the heat of today's altercation. I'll be going to the neighbouring village for a couple of days, she'd said. Their children keep coming down with something. They've asked for me.

He'd argued to go with her, he remembered, but she'd assured him she'd be fine. "And the men need you in the fields. I'll be back before you know it." His rebuttals had been silenced with kisses.

Rage boiled up from his gut in a heavy wave. "She left," he snarled, forcing Miroku to take a step back. "She left, and she didn't say shit, the wench!"

"Inuyasha, please—"

But he was already gone.

The monk sighed, rolling his eyes to the sky, and headed back home.

And so, here he was. "Damn her to hell."

Fury boiled in his blood as yet another tree fell to the razor edges of his claws. How dare she. Right though she may have been in her anger, she couldn't just leave without saying a fucking word. He would never do that to her. Okay, maybe he used to, but not anymore, not now that they were married and had a fucking home together. A home that he'd built, mind you. Inexcusable. That was the word: what she'd done was inexcusable.

Sweat glistened on his chest and arms in the low light of sunset. Observing the new clearing he'd created, he huffed and retrieved his suikan and hanjuban from where he'd left them, beyond the line of danger. Bitch thinks she can just avoid me? I'll teach her. Shrugging back into his fire rat, Inuyasha glanced at the sky, figuring he could make it to the village she'd disappeared to within the hour if he ran. Yes. That's what he'd do. If she was determined to go to bed angry after six months of relatively consistent peace, then he'd be damned if he'd give her the last word.

Firelight danced languidly over Kagome's skin as the young priestess disrobed in preparation for bed. The day had been long and frustrating. Besides her domestic troubles, the children of the village she'd come to see appeared to have come down with a particularly virulent strain of pneumonia. She'd done her best with the tools at hand. Visiting every ill child in turn, she'd managed to ease their suffering temporarily, but she knew well that the power to beat such an illness in this era lay within the children themselves. At this point, it was just a waiting game.

Kagome hated waiting games.

A sigh escaped her as she slipped into her thin sleeping yukata. Tending to the children had allowed her a brief escape from thinking of Inuyasha, but now that she was alone in the quarters offered to her by the village headman, she could avoid it no longer. Her stomach hurt at the memory of how she'd left without a word.

"He must be so angry," she murmured aloud. More than angry, she'd venture. Furious. What she'd done was petty, but she hadn't been prepared to squabble over her imminent departure, because that was exactly what they would have done. She could just picture him physically blocking her from leaving until she was forced to activate the spell. At the time, it seemed like a wise idea to just slip away and avoid the scene altogether. Now, though… now, she regretted it. Even their most violent fights were better than this empty silence. Better than this empty bed.

The cot seemed huge despite being laid out for a single individual. Stretching out between the covers, Kagome unconsciously reached out for a hand, an arm, a solid torso that she could snuggle into, but she was met with bitter disappointment when she encountered nothing but cool air.

She missed him so much.

Stop it, she told herself. Just stop it. It's over, it's done, and you'll fix it when you get back. Right now, your concern is helping these children.

Yes. She was being selfish. It was time to rest; the sooner she slept, the sooner another day would pass, and the sooner she could go home. Kagome rolled to face the fire and closed her eyes.

She wasn't sure what it was. It might have been the amber sheen of the fire glowing through her eyelids, or the potency of her loneliness, but she was suddenly overcome by a waking dream. Inuyasha lay beside her in their home, bare from the waist up—as he normally slept—with his body turned toward her. His expression was soft, sleepy, but his eyes were alert and fixated on her face. One of his hands drew a repeating line along her side from shoulder to hip, shoulder to hip, shoulder to hip… It took her a moment to realize that her own hand was mimicking the motion, tracing ever so lightly to imitate the brush of his claws. A soft exhale blew through her nose. Though she knew he wasn't there, this fantasy was soothing.

It began like that, innocently enough. His hand would leave her side to brush their hair from her face before returning. He would smile at her, the tip of one fang hanging devilishly over his bottom lip, a sly smirk of satisfaction. At some point she moved closer, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and shoulder, relishing the feeling of his breath against her ear. Or what she imagined it to be. Drawing from memory, she inhaled deeply, recalling his scent and the absolute comfort she associated with it. Her body relaxed and she fell deeper into her half-sleep.

In retrospect, that must have been the tipping point. Kagome's arm, relaxed and limber, fell from her side but kept up its sleepy stroking until she brushed softly across a half-puckered nipple. Accidental though it was, her imagination took the stimulus in stride, projecting her husband's hand as being the curious intruder. Fantasy-Inuyasha's eyes flashed with a familiar burning lust. Slowly, "his" hand enveloped her breast, massaging it gently, before rolling her nipple between thumb and forefinger.

Kagome moaned softly.

Parting the folds of her yukata, exposing her chest to the night air, she pictured her husband rolling her onto her back and kissing her deeply before gliding down her body to replace his hands with his mouth. Kagome arched her back as though to press more of her breast against his eager tongue. With growing enthusiasm, her fingers mimicked the motions of his tongue and lips over her nipples. Warmth pooled between her thighs as her fantasy grew more vivid; it wasn't long before their combined fingers had drifted down the firm plane of her tummy to dip into her heat, stroking softly at first and then with more power. In her mind, he was now braced above her on one elbow and staring into her eyes, his intentions scaldingly clear.

"Say it," she could hear him say.

"Inuyasha," she pleaded, "please."

"Say it." The demand was harsher this time.

"Inside me! I want you inside me," she nearly sobbed.

Had he been real, and had he given her the smirk he was giving her in her mind's eye, Kagome was willing to bet good money that she would have climaxed right there. But he wasn't real. And even as she kept up with the dream, watching him in rapture as he climbed above her and settled between her parted legs, the moment was over. As much as she might fight against it, reality had delivered her a crushing blow the first time she had tried to pleasure herself in Inuyasha's absence: nothing felt the way it did when he was actually there, slick skin sliding against hers, his lips tasting her everywhere they could reach, the essence of him filling her in a way that her fingers could never achieve.

A tear slipped unbidden from each eye as she opened them.

The fire had burned low in its pit. "I'm sorry," she whispered into the blankets, sniffling. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have left. I love you."

Behind her, she heard the door to her room slide closed with a soft shick.

Kagome bolted upright and around, dragging the blankets across her exposed body, half-hearted apologies and poor explanations already bubbling up to her lips. She had expected to see the headman or his wife, whose home she was sharing, but whom she did see stopped her cold.

Even through the shadows, she could tell he was shaking. The gold of his irises was molten, threatening to burn the coverings right off her body where she sat, and the glow of the dying embers highlighted his bared fangs. Silence stretched between them as they stared at each other, a predator and his prey.

Letting the blankets slip from her grasp, she reached out her arms to him.

Time lost all meaning. It could have taken him a second or an hour to shed his clothing, but all Kagome knew, all Kagome cared about, was that suddenly she could feel his bare skin beneath her hands—real, he was real—the muscles of his back and arms and chest rippling with the effort to keep some semblance of control. She was pinned beneath him as he tore the yukata from her body, the breath likewise torn from her lungs as his lips sealed over hers. Despite the way he was holding her hands above her head, she arched her back to press into him, desperate to close the distance between their bodies.

The sudden, swift absence of Inuyasha's body heat had Kagome crying out in loss, but her agony was short-lived as he flipped her onto her belly. Oh, she thought. Oh—

And then he was there, burying himself in the slick heat of her as he hoisted her onto her knees, a guttural snarl wrenching itself from deep within his chest. Kagome did her damnedest to bury her cry in the blankets, but she was blissfully unconcerned about whether she'd succeeded. "Inuyasha," she moaned, pressing her hips back until she had taken him as deep as she could. "Inuyasha."

A beat of stillness passed in which nothing happened. Then, slowly, she felt her lover lean over her, pressing his chest against the curve of her back, his lips brushing against the soft flesh of her shoulder. She turned her face to him, but he kept his hidden, refusing to look at her.

"You can't leave me like that," he whispered finally. "Don't you ever fucking do that again."

Tears pricked her eyes as she shook her head fervently. "Never," she promised.

Inuyasha's breath spilled over her skin in a sigh, his hands sliding from her hips to the floor on either side of her head. "Never," he repeated. Forgiveness. He placed a single, soft kiss against the nape of her neck, and then he fucked her.

In any other situation, the mewl that escaped Kagome's throat would have been embarrassing, but now, she put no effort into stopping it. The sound fueled her husband as he pistoned into her, the wet slap of skin like music to their ears. The flesh of her ass and lower back rippled with the force of his thrusts. She tried to brace her knees against the floor so she could prevent herself from sliding forward, her hands fisting into the blankets as the heat in her belly threatened to burn her alive, but she was no match against his strength, no match against his need to drive himself as deep into her as possible. Inuyasha slid his arms beneath her to grip her shoulders, keeping her close, needing her close, the muscles of his thighs clenched like corded rock as he held her against him while maintaining the force of his movements.

Kagome's gasps and broken moans could not properly convey the intensity of her pleasure. The emotional and physical blended together in a vortex of heat as she pressed back against him, clenching, whimpering every time he drew back for even a moment too long. Nothing… nothing could match this feeling. His fullness inside her, his heat, his fangs dragging across her back, the tips of his hair tickling her sides. The intimacy of his insistence against her. "I love you," she breathed. "I love you."

A low rumble grew in his chest and vibrated across her skin. Eyes closing in bliss, she turned her face to the side, her hand coming up to interlock her fingers with his against her shoulder. Inuyasha's free hand slid down her chest to cup a breast, the claw of his index finger drawing a harsh line up and down across her nipple. Her breath hitched at this new shock of pleasure, but beneath the haze, she wondered in awe at the control he managed to hold over his youki. As long as it was subdued, the claw tip was blunt, just like a dog's, but in the heat of battle and with his demonic power in full force, it was as sharp as one of Totousai's famous blades.

The combination of her earlier self-stimulation and the feeling of his balls slapping against her clit each time he thrust had her rippling around him in what seemed like no time at all. "Yes," she choked, "yes—"

"No," came Inuyasha's snarled reply. Kagome cried out as he suddenly reared back, pulling her up to bring her back flush against his chest, her knees hitting the floor on either side of his thighs. Instantly her arms came up to wrap around the back of his head, her fingers tangling in his hair, locking just below his ears. She knew the tug on his scalp would likewise pull against the sensitive appendages. She knew, despite his gruff avoidance of the subject, that the feeling drove him crazy.

"Bitch." Now both of his hands were busy on her chest, fondling, pinching, and rolling her nipples until she was shaking. His pace never broke. As much as she wanted release, and as much as she wanted to bring him right down with her, Kagome never wanted this to end. She wanted to love him like this forever.

The feeling was certainly mutual. Inuyasha's face was buried in the crook of her neck, her raven hair tickling his nose. The salty tang of her sweat was sweeter than any flower, and the heady musk of her arousal was hitting him like a drug. This was how he wanted her always, raw and open and willing, completely vulnerable to him. No smart mouth (no matter how much he loved it), just honest, bare desire. All for him.

It was several more minutes before he felt the telltale pressure that signaled the imminent end. Kagome was at her limit, no longer able to keep up, begging him incoherently to finish her. Finally, mercifully, he complied, a clawed hand disappearing between her legs to circle that little bundle of nerves with almost aggressive force. All it took was a few quick strokes before she threw her head back against his shoulder to scream his name in silence.

When she fell limp against him, he slowed, dragging his claws up and down her sides as she'd imagined him doing earlier. His ears twitched at the sound of her ragged breathing, a self-satisfied smile tugging at his lips as he braced her trembling frame against his chest. "Better?"

He chuckled when she gathered the strength to pinch his thigh with her nails.

Slowly, and with great care, he turned her around in his lap without breaking their connection. Something nearly snapped inside him when he saw the hazy, drugged look in Kagome's eyes, as though he were the only one in the world that she could see. "I love you, too," he finally responded.

Kagome's smile was a slow, lazy pull from cheek to cheek. Inuyasha took hold of her elbows to wrap her arms around his neck. Collapsing against him gratefully, Kagome raised her legs so that she sank even farther against him, drawing a hiss from her husband that had her rocking back and forth slowly. Her legs were so weak.

Cupping her ass, the hanyou began to move against his wife in a slow rhythm, closing his eyes as her hitching breaths reached his ears. So close. He was so close. "Look at me," he demanded softly. When she turned her face to his, eyes shining with love, he kissed her until he felt her fingers tangle in his hair again. Their tongues slid gently across each other in a pale but potent imitation of their bodies.

Eventually, they broke for air. Inuyasha could feel the heat pulsing through his groin and dipped his head to suck a nipple into his mouth. Kagome's sharp gasp was the final push into oblivion. Her hands pressed him firmly against her breast to muffle his cry of release as she pressed her lips against the crown of his forehead. Her own gasps of pleasure were muffled by his hair as his hips snapped against her again and again; she rode against him in time, trying to draw him out as he'd done for her. Nearly a minute passed before he finally stilled against her, his muscles twitching beneath the smooth silk of his skin.

"Better?" she countered.

He laughed.

They dozed. Several times throughout the night, one of them would wake up to the feeling of a wandering tongue, a fierce kiss, determined hands. They made love slowly. A series of colourful hickeys lined the soft flesh of Kagome's breasts and inner thighs by sunrise, while Inuyasha could feel the thin welts her fingernails had made along the length of his back. At no point throughout the night did they break contact with each other.

"How much did you see?" Kagome's voice drifted to him in the soft light of dawn. "I've been wondering."

His smile was sly. "Enough."

"That doesn't tell me anything."

"Your fingers were so far inside you I could barely see your hand anymore."

The slap of her palm against his chest rang out in the quiet. "Don't be an ass."

A muscled arm slipped beneath her to pull her atop his chest. Kagome rested her head beneath his chin, closing her eyes in satisfaction. "I wasn't kidding, y'know." His voice was soft. "You can't do that again. You can't just leave without saying anything."

Blue met gold as she raised her head to look at him. "I won't," she soothed. She suddenly knew without asking that he was thinking of their separation on either side of the well, the jewel's final act of vengeance against them. Everything fell together with a silent click. No wonder he'd come after her. "I'm not going anywhere, Inuyasha. Never again."

Knots of tension unfolded at several spots across his body. Inhaling deeply, her scent a balm against his unspoken fears, he nodded and tucked her head back under his chin. "Never again," he murmured.

And so they slept.