Pre-Note: Hopefully you all noted that this was a companion piece, which means that if you haven't read Into the Ocean, you don't really have to, but you might be a little confused. Also, please note that this was placed under the kink tag, and it's there for a reason – the main feature of this is S&M with a side of humiliation kink, but I'm hoping I wrote it tastefully so that nobody gets squicked. If you do end up hating this (it turned out a lot filthier and a little longer than I expected), that's fine, and if you like it, that's even better. Either way, leave a comment if you feel so inclined, and enjoy.
Title comes from "Mad World" by Gary Jules.
Dreams in Which I'm Dying
Tonight, they remember.
Or, more specifically, Sesshomaru remembers, and Kagome wishes she could forget.
Watching her as she kneels on the floor at his feet, he wonders. He wonders if she knows that he knew long before the night he caught her; wonders if she knows that he'd never wanted to hurt her just for the sake of hurting her until that night—that he has wanted to hurt her since and has looked forward to this night with an anticipation that bordered on obsession.
The weight of the riding crop is a small thing, almost insignificant, but he hasn't spent two years leaning about this just to forget how much damage a little thing can do. He swings, and it makes Kagome hiss where crop meets skin. Her shoulder pinkens beautifully, and he aims his next strike just an inch down from the first, and the third an inch down from that.
He goes all the way to her elbow, and as he watches her skin go pink, he wonders what it feels like. He decides not to ask yet, and cracks five swift blows down her opposite, unmarked arm, giving her no time to adjust to one before he delivers the next. By the time he's finishes, she's making small sounds, like she's crying, and even though he wants to soothe her, he wants to hurt her more, so he ignores the noise.
"Tell me," he says as he steps to walk around her, crop brushing at the curve of her lower back, just under where her hands are bound. "Tell me what it feels like."
She doesn't speak for several seconds, and when he steps back into her line of sight, there are tears sliding down her red cheeks. He recognizes the flush for what it is, and even though she made him a cuckold for months, he isn't stupid. "It hurts," she says through her tears, "I-it feels like fire and it hurts...it hurts so bad."
Humming in understanding, he presses the crop under her chin and pushes until her head falls back and her throat is bared, slender and white and beautiful. "You like it, don't you?"
She whimpers, sniffles, shakes her head. "N-no, I don't, please don't...please don't..." But she can't finish the sentence, and he hums again.
"If you really don't like it," he tells her, keeping all evidence of his stirring arousal out of his voice, "then say the word." She bites her lip, and her arms shift. He can imagine what her hands look like—bound with soft rope, wrists scraping red—and he has to swallow against the noise he wants to make. "Well?"
Her throat works as she swallows. "I—I don't want you to...do this, Sesshomaru...Please."
And what she's really begging for, he knows, is for him to continue, and the knowledge lodges itself deep in his chest, twisting something inside of him that cracks like a coconut and floods him with heat. For a brilliant, frightening moment, it's as though every inch of him is coated in desire for Kagome like this, tied up and helpless and ready to hurt at his hands. He can't breathe for the strength of it, and feels like he's dreaming and drowning and dying and coming to life all at once, and when the sensation leaves him, he's left with an overwhelming sense of love for his wife, something all-encompassing that he's never experienced before.
He leans down and kisses her, crop still under her chin, and when she tries to lean into him, he smacks her right breast with the crop. She jerks, squeaks, and then moans when he presses his tongue into her mouth.
It's a sloppy kiss, wet and open and hot, and he spends long moments relishing in the sensation of her mouth against his, of the way she relaxes back onto her legs the longer he lingers. He presses harder and harder, takes more and more until she's whimpering and her mouth is slack more often than it's active—only then, when she's surrendered completely, does he move away.
She whimpers, but he only straightens enough to press his straining cock against her mouth, and the noise she makes ought to be bottled and sold, it's so blatantly obscene. She mouths at him through his trousers, and even through the layers of clothes, he can feel the heat of her tongue and the warmth of her breath and he wants nothing more than to undo his pants and feed her his cock, but he has a plan, and he has to stick to it.
Abruptly, he pulls away, and before she can make the first sounds of protest, he's taking the crop to her once more, landing unerring blows to the same spots on her arms again and again, until she's almost screaming with the pain, tears streaking her pretty face. He stops just short of what he knows will be true agony, and crouches in front of her, slipping the crop between her legs while she shakes her head at him, mouthing nononopleaseno like it's going to stop him.
"Look at you," he whispers, bringing the crop up between them. It glistens with her wetness, and she looks absolutely mortified at the sight of it; he smiles at the renewed flush in her cheeks. "Who knew you were into this type of thing, Ka-Go-Me?" The deliberate pronunciation of her name makes her shiver, and he rests the wet crop gently against her bottom lip. "I wonder what else you like?" he asks, and her mouth snaps closed so quickly it's almost as though he'd pushed it shut himself. He tsks. "Open."
She whimpers and shakes her head, and when she goes so far as to lean away from him, Sesshomaru grasps the back of her head with his other hand and holds her still. "Open now, or I'll make you."
She shivers, and opens, and he hums in satisfaction as the crop slips over her tongue. "Good girl," he purrs, changing the grip he has on her hair into a soft, petting caress. "Suck." This time, she obeys immediately, and he watches her lips close, feels the way her tongue bats against the crop, and wants with an intensity that leaves him breathless.
"I'm going to hurt you so good, little lovely," he tells her softly, watching the way her pupils dilate with the words. "I'm going to hurt you and fuck you until you break, and then I'm going to pick up the pieces and put you back together again."
She whimpers, and he pulls the crop out of her mouth and immediately takes it to her breasts, laying three marks on the outer sides and two quick ones on the sensitive undersides.
Beautifully, his little Kagome arches and cringes and pleads, and by the time he reaches down to pull her to her feet, she's crying again, face red and wet and highly pleasing.
"You already want it, don't you?" One hand cupped at the back of her head, he pulls her up onto her tiptoes and presses two fingers into her gasping mouth. "Come on, suck, show me how badly you want it."
She does a bad job of sealing her lips around his fingers, and he swipes at the drool on her chin when he pulls them away, wrapping his fist more securely in her hair as he reaches between her legs and slides his fingers against her clit.
In that instant, she comes, and it's the most gorgeous thing he's ever seen.
He doesn't let up, and he presses his fingers inside her still spasming folds, groaning at her wetness. "You're so wet, little lovely," he whispers in her ear. "So filthy." She shakes and comes again when he scissors his fingers and grinds the heel of his palm harshly against her, and when she groans it's like the sound comes all the way up from her toes.
He bites her shoulder and yanks her hair. "What would your friends think if they knew you liked this, hmm? If they knew that you liked being tied up and used?"
Her blush is so pronounced that he can feel it flame against his shoulder through his shirt, and he can't help the way he grinds his aching dick into her hip as her pussy clenches around his fingers.
"I bet they'd call you a slut," he continues, pulling away only to turn her around and force her to the bed. She bends over it as though her waist is made of water, and he moves his hand from her hair down between her shoulders, fanning his fingers across her damp skin and leaning over her. "I bet they'd call you dirty and twisted and depraved." She makes a sound, a mixture of embarrassed and turned on that makes him want to fuck her so hard that she forgets everything but him, but instead he wipes his wet fingers on her ass, and then rears back and smacks her.
Instead of squealing like he'd expected, she comes with a wail, and he holds her down on the bed and spanks her until her skin is a vivid red. It won't bruise, he knows that, but he leans down to kiss the reddened skin anyway, running tongue and teeth over her until she's squirming, legs flailing and hands pulling at her ropes.
He makes her come again on his tongue, and while she's still shaking from it, he leans up over her back, one hand working to pull his cock out of his trousers without having to take them off and the other clutching at the back of her neck.
"But I don't care what they think," he says darkly into her ear, loving how she's undulating against his cock, probably wetting his trousers and not caring. "I don't care, because you're mine, do you understand? You belong to me—you're mine to please, and mine to love, and mine to hurt." He tightens his hand on her neck, bites her shoulder hard enough to bruise and then she gives a full body shudder and comes once more, hips restless beneath his.
Seeing her like this, having orgasm after orgasm, helpless and so deep into subspace that she's blindly trusting him to give her what she needs—it's an aphrodisiac of the most potent kind, and Sesshomaru has to lift his hips away from hers lest he come all over her cherry-red ass.
She's talking now, babbling around tears of humiliation and pain and arousal as he presses his teeth to her skin over and over.
"Yes please, hurt me please, sir, I want it, I—ngh!" She comes. "Please please please!"
He has to pull away from her after a moment, and even though he wants nothing more than to sink into her now, while she's no doubt still coming and is sopping wet, he has one more thing he wants to do, so he flips her easily onto her back, pulls her up by her hair, and presents his cock.
Her mouth is wet and warm, and in this state, she remembers the way he likes it—with her lips parted and her tongue still. He fucks into her in slow, steady movements, certain that if he goes any faster he'll come too soon. The idea has its merits, that's certain—she's incredibly filthy while she's in subspace, and she likes to roll his come around in her mouth before swallowing—but he wants to come in her while he's hurting her, wants to feel her come around him while she's so high off of the pain that she can't breathe with it.
The idea nearly sends him over the edge, and he pulls out of her mouth with a wet slide, sweeping down to kiss her while her mouth is still open, tasting his precome on her teeth.
"Turn around," he commands, and she moves instantly, arching her back so that her pert little ass sticks prettily in the air. He smacks her once for it, and then pinches over the marks he'd left on her arms as he unties her hands. "You're going to forget your name tonight, little lovely," he promises, tossing the rope near the clothes hamper and momentarily massaging her chafed wrists.
"Still remember my name now," she mumbles, pliant and sensuous even as he puts her arms above her and closes the cuffs he'd had sitting on the bedside table around her wrists. She flexes her hands and makes a pleased little sound at the cuffs' velvet lining, and then asks, "So does that mean you're losing?"
"Cheeky little minx," he says in response, and then reaches for his flogger.
He takes a few practice swings, getting used to the weight and give of the handle, and then, without warning, he smacks it across her back. She gasps, arches, and then shakes.
"That's it, look at you, you gorgeous, infuriating, filthy little creature. You love this, don't you? You do, you fucking love it and now that I know, maybe I'll keep you tied up and ready for me all the time. Maybe I'll put you on display so that everyone knows what you look like covered in my marks—fuck you're breathtaking."
He hits her three times, and then five and then ten, and on the twelfth swing he positions himself and slams into her.
She comes so hard that he literally can't pull out of her.
"Fuck, that's it, that's exactly what I want, you're exactly what I want." He massages her hip with his free hand, trying so hard not to come that his balls ache with it. "I'm going to make you see stars, little lovely. You'll never want another man after me—you'll want me in your next life, and the one after that, and the one after that, for all of eternity." He lands a simultaneous blow to her ass and back, and she utters a half-scream, half-sob that makes his dick jerk inside of her. He breathes through the urge to come, and keeps talking. "Do you hear me, Kagome? There will never be another after me, do you understand? You said 'no more' two years ago—I'm saying it now."
He doesn't even know if she can hear him, and he finds that he doesn't really care, because she's making little sounds like she can't breathe, and Sesshomaru hits her again and again, hurts her again and again, and she wheezes beneath him, begging when she can get a breath and coming when she can't.
It's glorious.
He loses track of how many times she comes, but soon he can't take it anymore—he knows that he's going to have to toss his trousers, because he can feel that they're soaked, and her back is so flushed, so pretty, that he can't help but touch her. He tosses the flogger onto the bed and briefly flattens his hands to her back, and then wraps one hand in her hair and yanks until she arches.
The position is uncomfortable, he knows it is, but he also knows that he won't need to hold her there for long because he's so close to his climax that he can taste it; reaching around, he twists one pink nipple and growls out "Come now," and the way her body follows his command sends him over the edge.
His orgasm is transcendent.
When he comes back from nirvana, dazed and only partially aware of himself, Kagome is laying limply beneath him, staring dazedly at the headboard.
Gazing down at her, Sesshomaru thanks every god he can think of for her, and then very carefully pulls out of her and lays a soft kiss against her hair.
He undresses fully and climbs into the bed, hauling her to lay beside him. With everything he needs within reach of the bed, he doesn't have to leave her while she comes back into coherency, and he's applying a healing ointment to her back and wrists and ass when she blinks a little less lazily than she had been, humming in the back of her throat.
"Ses'hmru?"
Affectionately, he nuzzles at her temple, kissing her forehead and then her fluttering eyelids. "Yes, little lovely?"
"T'nk you."
"You're welcome, and thank you; the pleasure was mine, and you were marvelous." She hums in abject satisfaction, pupils still blown wide and eyes glazed. He smiles softly, because while he loves her all the time, he can't think of anything he'd rather do than make love to her in a million different ways when she's floating in subspace—to show her in any way he can that she's precious and his and that he's not ever going to let her go. "How do you feel?" he asks instead, because telling her all of that while she's like this is like giving a monologue to a brick wall and expecting the wall to parrot the words right back.
"Ex'cl'nt. On cl'd nin'," she slurs, and she's so incredibly adorable that he has to kiss her.
After tonight, he decides, she's forgiven, and although they'd agreed to end this aspect of their relationship after she stopped feeling so guilty and he stopped feeling so angry, he hopes that two years of learning and practice will be too hard to shake. He likes this, loves it even, and he makes a mental note to ask her about it later.
For now, he massages ointment into her skin and she gifts him with loopy, lazy smiles and cute little giggles, and when he reaches for his phone to take a picture, she blows a kiss at him.
He saves it as his wallpaper, and knows that everything is going to be fine.
::::::::::
End Note: And there's that. Into the Ocean had a really ambiguous ending, and this one sort of does too, but it's vaguely happy, I think, and holds a little hope. What did you all think?
~Aubrey