Forbidden Love by BelovedStranger

Haunts from the Past

Prompt: 'In for a penny, in for a pound.'

“Thank you for driving me to work,” Kagome murmured when Sesshomaru opened the passenger door for her and helped her out.

Sesshomaru shut the door with a low thud, before lifting her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You’re welcome.” Turning her hand over, he brushed his lips over her inner wrist, felt the fragile pulse beat marginally faster when he prolonged that small kiss.

He watched her, saw how her lips parted, her lids lowering as her eyes heated with interest. There was little doubt that if he wished, Kagome would submit to him if he stepped closer and embraced her, here, now, with little hesitation. However, he did not wish to make her late for her shift and get a reprimand from her superiors. Though he did not want her to work—what need was there with his immense wealth?—he would not deny her something she dearly wanted. And if it made her life happier and gave her some meaning to help others, then who was he to stop her? He was selfish, but not that selfish to tell her she could not make a living, to have a career.

Next, he placed a tender kiss in the bandage on her palm where she had cut herself the night before—an apology, for contributing to the injury, for any discomfort or pain it caused her.

“Try not to overly exert yourself.” Then he released her, but he did not step back and continued to block her path. Instead, he waited expectantly.

Her head cocked in confusion as he continued to stand there, before an amused smirk curved her lips. Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing closer still, and tipped her head back. Now it was her turn to wait, but just as she’d heard his unvoiced question, he could hear hers—knew and understood.

Hands lightly gripping the edge of the top of his car behind her, his body caging her, Sesshomaru leaned down, and she rose to her toes to meet his kiss. At first, it was light. Though tongues pressed together, stroking and rubbing, mouths moving in a synchronized dance, it was more of a tasting than claiming. Until she changed the game and licked the point of one of his fangs, purposefully nicking herself. A drop of blood, a fire flickering to life. The beast within surged forward—or tried to. Sesshomaru kept himself under control, and with a wicked chuckle he leaned back.

“Bad girl.”

She gave him a cheeky grin in return, goading him shamelessly, as he took a step back, allowing her some space. He knew her game, and the same grin she wore mirrored his own.

“Do you think you are safe from punishment now that we are away from our home, Kagome?” he murmured softly.

Kagome laughed, the sound happy as she sashayed around him, her hip bumping against his as she passed. “Is that a promise for later?”

Before she could react, his hand swung. He smacked her rump hard enough to sting, to force her a step forward. She gasped loudly, and turned to face him, while backing up two paces. Comically, her hands were behind her, cupping her offended rear, as her wide eyes stared up at him.

A cocky grin, a lifted brow was his only response to her surprise.

She huffed and stuck her tongue out at him playfully. Smile once more on her face, a real one, he could tell, and she was waving. “Goodbye, Sesshomaru.” As she turned, she continued. “I’ll see you after my shift!” Then she was jogging away, and Sesshomaru took the time to watch her butt in motion, a work of art, and waited for her to safely make it inside the hospital.

Moving around the front of his car, he slid behind the wheel, turned the key and heard the purr of the engine, a beautiful sound to his ears. A shifting of gears, a turn of the wheel, foot to the gas pedal, and he was exiting the hospital’s parking lot, and heading into the city—to hunt. He hadn’t told Kagome his plans, not wishing to bring back the memory of his deplorable actions when she’d witnessed him feeding. No, it couldn’t even be considered that. He’d been angry, upset, emotions causing him to make a poor decision and attack a man in an insane bid to show her what he was—vampire.

It was one thing for her to be gracious enough to look past his deplorable action and to accept his dark nature, and a whole other story to casually inform her when he planned to go out hunting—his next victim, for blood. His gums already ached, his fangs wanting to shoot down and fill his mouth, and saliva pooled on his tongue, making him swallow convulsively.

Minutes later—perhaps he had broken one or two speed limits—and he was parking his car in a secluded lot. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he opened his door, and unfolded his tall frame from his seat. Outside once more, he took a deep breath of the night air, scenting the unpleasing smells of aghast, pollution, and filth, but underlying those disgusting smells was the scent of flesh. His dinner.

He was moving, gliding across streets, closer towards the busy side of town not far from where he’d parked, looking, searching. Halting at the edge of another street, his eyes followed the few passersby—junkies. A grimace curled one side of his mouth. No, he would not be hunting them, for their blood was tainted by the drugs they craved. Disgusting, unappetizing. Without meeting any of their shady glances, he walked confidently forward. He leisurely made his way towards the part of town that held more appetizing prey. No one dared come up to him, to stop him, and instead, they shed away from him. Good, and if any dared approach, he’d capture their minds and make them remove themselves from his presence—or kill them for their impudence for even thinking they could attack him, to overpower and steal from him or murder him.

He took his time. He had eight hours to kill before returning for his precious girl, and a walk would do him good. It prolonged the wait, upped the anticipation when he finally found his prey. The predator in him shifted in eager anticipation, scented the air, hunger not nearly powerful enough to snuff the need to stalk. Soon enough, he’d capture his next meal and gorge on blood. If one could not satisfy his thirst on one mortal, there were plenty more to hunt.

Perhaps forty-five minutes later, he stopped dead in his tracks before he’d even grabbed his first meal. Senses flared out, both natural and preternatural. Someone was following him, dared to stalk him like prey. The beast within snarled at this pest’s audacity. As he began walking again, for the moment abandoning his hunt for blood, moving away from the crowds, he knew it was not a human who watched him, followed him.

He was in an alley with three human males grumbling over a few joints. With a whiplash command, his mind sending the signal to theirs with pitiful ease, he sent them away. They scattered like the rats they were, leaving him alone in the dank, dirty, alley with his invisible stalker.

“Reveal yourself,” he commanded softly, a deadly threat. “Or I will come to you.”

From above, a lithe form jumped from the building on his left, and landed with a small thud several feet in front of him in a crouch. His eyes could easily part the shadows in the alley, and he eyed the vampire who crouched before him, not in servitude or respect, for a lyrical laugh filtered around them—a woman’s. Long, wavy, dark hair hid her face, her shoulders shaking, and even before she stood and revealed her face a second later, he knew who she was.

Eyes as gold as his own stared back at him, and they glowed in the darkness. A smile formed on her mouth, that familiar face, that laugh, her scent. He stiffened, gave nothing away of his inner turmoil on his expression. Not his surprise, the questions swarming in his mind, or the old anger and revulsion.

“Hanako.” It was more of a growl than a greeting.

“Hello, lover,” she purred. “Is that any way to greet your creator?”

His teeth gritted at the word lover and creator. Yes, they had been intimate, limbs intertwined, mouths locked together, bodies moving and thrusting, sweat coating their flesh. A mistake. The last he’d made as a mortal man, for before him was his damnation, grinning at him, mocking him.

“What do you think you are doing here?” Stalking me? he wondered but did not ask.

“I’ve missed you.” A lie. He could see it in her predatory gaze that laughed at him, that cruel smirk. “Haven’t you missed me? My touch, the way I made you shiver and groan when you released inside me?”

“That was a long time ago.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Regain control! he mentally snarled at himself.

Something flashed in her eyes, elation? “So you have missed me, my Sesshomaru? I am sorry. I’ve completely neglected my poor boy.”

“Cease your mockery,” he seethed, his anger on a tight leash. “All I want to hear from you are answers, now why are you here?”

“I already told you,” she replied coyly, her lashes batting in his direction as she advanced.

Like a dancer, a seductress, her movements were flawless, a living work of art, but she was as alive as he, which was not at all. He didn’t move when she circled him, her musky scent cloying as her wispy, black dress brushed against his right side. Hanako was at his back, but he did not give her the pleasure of turning and revealing his uneasiness with her there—out of his sight. Her laughter rang around them, letting him know that she was not fooled by his outward calm. She knew he despised her, hated her for making him what she was.

It wasn’t until he felt a nail scrape along his spine over his shirt that had him whirling around and capturing her small wrist in a tight grip. He held her hand between them, eyes glaring down at her. No fear or even defiance filled her gaze, merely amusement, as if his anger was something humorous instead of to fear.

Wordlessly, he tightened his grip. Bone crunched, breaking under his grasp. A sharp gasp, a wince of pain, but something dark entered her gaze—sexual.

“So you like it rough, do you?” she murmured, a husky quality making her voice throatier than before, disgusting him.

He refused to give her the satisfaction by showing his distaste by releasing her. Instead, his grip only tightened, nails digging in. Blood welled, dark and dead—a vampire’s blood. It killed whoever had a deep enough taste, only to be brought back to life as a creature of the night. But an exchanging of blood was required, first the mortal’s, then the vampire’s. He remembered the taste of death all too clearly. Memory surfaced, reminding him how it had felt, the change. Pure agony. His heart had beaten far too quickly as if it were trying to escape the confines of his chest cavity. A fire in his gut from the blood he’d been forced to drink. Raw agony, nerves flaring, pain wracking every inch of him.

And then the disconcerting feeling of growing numb, unable to feel his fingers or toes, and he’d grown cold, oh so cold. Whereas his heart had beaten frantically like a caged bird not a second ago, it slowed, pumped sluggishly. Frightening, for he knew that he was dying. He had felt it. Death, dragging him down into a dark abyss. The last sight he’d seen with his mortal eyes was Hanako stroking his hair, his head on her lap, and a trail of blood on the corner of her mouth—his blood.

Coming back to himself, stiffening so as not to shudder at the memory, Sesshomaru wasn’t paying enough attention to the woman before him when she plastered herself against his chest.

A throaty moan spilled from parted lips, painted red with lipstick, her free hand clasped his hip. Like a cat, she rubbed her breasts against him. “Hurt me more, Sesshomaru, for I plan to return the favor. Hard and fast. You like that now, don’t you?”

The next instant had her back colliding solidly against the brick wall, his hand wrapped firmly around her neck, squeezing tightly. “Know your place,” he warned.

“Beneath you?” she choked out with what little air he allowed her, before he cut off all air flow to her lungs, not that she needed it to live. Neither did he.

“Fucking you is the last thing on my mind, and well you know it, woman.” His voice was hard, as cruel as his touch. He didn’t care if he hurt her. He wanted to hurt her. No, he wanted to kill her. His hand tightened, crushing her windpipe. “I should kill you now as I have imagined doing countless times over the centuries.”

Something slammed in his chest—her telekinetic powers. At the same time, a force greater than his preternatural strength made him release her as he flew back the few feet to the other wall, slamming into it with a crushing force. Now it was his turn to fight for air, his back protesting the impact, but luckily, no bones had broken under the assault. With a snarl, he extracted himself from the hole in the wall his body had created and stood facing his maker.

Hanako was rubbing her abused neck, while cradling her broken wrist against her ample breasts, the black lace of her dress putting them on display. Her voice was hoarse from his manhandling this time instead of sexual heat.

“That was a very cruel thing to do, Sesshomaru. Is that how you treat your new paramour?”

He stiffened. “Who..?”

She gave him a chiding look. “Really, Sesshomaru? Do you think I am unaware of the mortal you are fucking?” A sultry grin split her lips. “A little young, don’t you think? For this day and age, surely, and what an innocent she is.”

“How long have you been watching me?” How had he not sensed her before now? A disconcerting thought.

She grinned, a secret smile. “How long, I wonder?”

“This isn’t a game,” he said in a hard voice.

“But what other way to endure eternity?” The teasing note was back in her voice, grating on his senses. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you, my dear boy,” she continued almost conversationally, before bringing her mangled wrist to her mouth, licking the drops of blood away.

The sight sickened him, recalling her taste upon his own tongue.

“Why?”

“You don’t know?”

“Enlighten me.”

Another lick, crimson staining her tongue, before another smirk was thrown his way, a heated quality making her eyes smolder.

“It’s your eyes, despite the change in color from mortal to vampire. It’s your very expression, so forlorn, so sad. Your sorrow from your unrequited feelings for your sister is what drew me to you in the first place. Such a lovely face.”

“What?”

“You were a living, breathing work of art, a canvas depicting all the sadness in the world,” she continued as if she hadn’t surprised him, offended him. “I had to have it for myself even for a moment.” Her hand lifted, palm up, as if she were holding something delicate, but there was just air in her palm. “I wanted it to last forever.”

Sesshomaru swallowed thickly, getting a horrific premonition about what she was about to say next. She didn’t disappoint him. “And that’s why I changed you, to bask in your beauty from time to time when people and places bored me. I always came back to you. Years may have passed between each visit, but I was always there, always watching.”

Anger scrunched her features into a snarl, and even that was beautiful, if deadly. Her fingers curled into a fist. “But then I see you smile because of that girl. She’s ruined everything, changed everything I loved about you.”

The love she spoke of was not tender feelings, he knew, understanding her insane tirade. It was obsession over something material. She saw him not as human, not as a person, or even as a vampire, her equal. He was nothing but an object to her, something she found beautiful to gaze upon, and realizing this made him hate her all the more, for he was less in her eyes—insignificant. Always had been and always would be. It didn’t matter. He wanted her dead, for she was a threat to Kagome. Or so he feared.

“If you go anywhere near her, I will kill you,” he promised, pitched low and sinister.

As if she hadn’t just been angry, a laugh erupted from her throat. Already her voice was returning to normal, the damage he’d inflicted upon her healing at an accelerated rate. “She may live,” she said as if she were giving him a bone. She smirked, something like joy radiating off of her. “And as you watch her age and die before your eyes, that sorrow I’ve come to adore so much will return, more devastating than before, I’m sure.”

He glared at her, but it didn’t seem to faze her, for she waved her fingers at him.

“Tata for now, lover.”

And then she was gone, the shadows engulfing her. Sesshomaru didn’t even attempt to follow her, his body covered in a cold sweat, his whole demeanor shaken by her unexpected visit, and the revelations she’d revealed.