Chapter 9: The Mark of the Wolf
The water was still hot, but the fever in their blood was hotter. It steamed around them, carrying the scent of pine needles and some sharp, cleansing herb crushed into the pool’s stone basin. Their release clouded the water between them, tendrils of white in the dark.
Koga panted, his forehead resting against Sesshomaru’s shoulder. His whole body felt liquid, wrung out, his insides throbbing with the brutal, perfect stretch of being filled. Sesshomaru’s arms were still around him, a cage of pale, powerful muscle. His own come was slick on their stomachs, mingling with the water.
Sesshomaru’s breath stirred his damp hair. The hand that had been gripping his hip relaxed, fingertips tracing idle, possessive circles on the skin there. The silence was different now. Not hostile. Charged, like the air after a lightning strike.
“You are mine now, wolf.” Sesshomaru’s voice was a low vibration against Koga’s ear, barely above the whisper of the spring. “And I will break you into submission, one night at a time.”
The words should have sparked fury. They curled in Koga’s gut instead, a dark, welcome heat. A promise. He tilted his head, nipping at Sesshomaru’s jaw. “You can try, you cold bastard. See how that works out for you.”
A faint sound, almost a laugh, escaped Sesshomaru. He pulled back, his golden eyes assessing. He looked at Koga—really looked—at the bite mark purpling on his neck, the claw-rakes on his shoulders seeping pink into the water, the dazed, sated heat in his amber eyes. His own composure was a mask hastily reassembled, but it was cracked. Hair plastered to his neck, lips kiss-swollen, a faint tremor in the hand that came up to push the wet strands from Koga’s face.
“You are already broken,” Sesshomaru stated, but there was no triumph in it. It was an observation, stark and simple.
He moved then, turning Koga in the water with unsettling ease. He pushed him toward the submerged ledge that ringed the pool. “Sit.”
Koga went, the smooth stone cool against his backside. The water lapped at his chest. He watched, heart hammering anew, as Sesshomaru retrieved a small, carved jar from a niche in the wall. He returned, settling himself between Koga’s spread thighs, their legs tangling under the surface.
“What’s that?” Koga asked, his voice rough.
Sesshomaru didn’t answer. He dipped his fingers into the jar, scooping out a glossy salve that smelled of crushed orchid and something mineral. He reached beneath the water, his fingers finding the hot, sensitive flesh between Koga’s legs.
Koga jerked. “The fuck—?”
“Be still.” The command was flat. Sesshomaru’s fingers, slick with the cooling salve, probed the swollen, stretched ring of muscle. The touch was clinical at first, applying the salve to the ache. Then it changed. A fingertip pressed, just inside.
A shudder ripped through Koga. His hands flew to Sesshomaru’s wrists, not to push him away, but to hold on. “Don’t.”
“You are sore.” Sesshomaru watched his face, unblinking. His finger slid deeper, a slow, inexorable invasion. “This will heal it.”
It wasn’t healing. It was torture. The salve was cool, but Sesshomaru’s finger was hot. It moved inside him, not with the punishing force of before, but with a deliberate, exploring pressure. It sought out the tender, over-stimulated places and soothed them, even as it made Koga’s breath catch. A second finger joined the first, stretching him again, but gently, working the salve inside.
Koga’s head thumped back against the stone. A broken groan escaped him. His cock, spent and soft, began to stir against Sesshomaru’s stomach. It was obscene. To be tended to, opened up with such detached care by the same creature who had just fucked him raw against a wall. It felt more intimate than anything that had come before.
“Why?” Koga managed to grind out.
Sesshomaru’s fingers stilled, buried deep. He looked up, water beading on his lashes. “A possession must be maintained. It is no good to me damaged beyond use.”
The words were meant to wound, to reassert distance. But his eyes held a different truth. The faint, perplexed frown between his brows. The way his thumb rubbed a slow arc on Koga’s inner thigh.
Koga laughed, a raw, ragged sound. “Liar.” He tightened his grip on Sesshomaru’s wrist, pushed his fingers deeper into himself. “You like it. You like having me like this. Open for you. Needing it.”
Sesshomaru’s mask didn’t break. But his fingers curled, pressing firmly against that devastating spot inside. Koga cried out, his hips jerking up, water sloshing over the edge of the pool.
“I do not like,” Sesshomaru said slowly, as if tasting the word and finding it foreign, “the inconvenient ache your absence would bring.”
He withdrew his fingers. The loss was a physical pain. Before Koga could protest, Sesshomaru shifted forward. He gripped Koga’s thighs, hauling him to the very edge of the stone seat. The water was shallower here. Sesshomaru’s cock, hard again and pressing against Koga’s belly, broke the surface.
“Look at you,” Sesshomaru murmured, his gaze dragging down Koga’s body—the heaving chest, the resurrected erection, the glistening, salve-slicked entrance just visible in the steamy water. “Mouth open. Hole open. Begging for it again. You are insatiable.”
“Fuck you,” Koga breathed, but he was spreading his legs wider, his heels digging into the slick stone beneath him.
Sesshomaru positioned himself. The broad head of his cock nudged against Koga, using the water and salve as slick. He didn’t thrust. He pressed. An inexorable, slow, burning re-entry. Koga’s mouth fell open in a soundless gasp. It was fuller this time, his body hyper-aware, every nerve alight. He felt every inch as it sank into him, stretching the tender flesh, filling the empty ache Sesshomaru’s fingers had left behind.
“See?” Sesshomaru whispered, his breath hot on Koga’s mouth as he leaned in, finally sheathing himself completely. A low moan was torn from both of them. “You needed this. You need to be full of me.”
He began to move. Not the brutal, driving pace of the balcony. This was deep, rolling thrusts that punched the air from Koga’s lungs. Each withdrawal was a sweet agony, each return a claiming. The water surged around them, a heated mirror to their rhythm.
Koga clawed at Sesshomaru’s back, his blunt nails scraping over the markings. He was babbling, filthy, desperate things. “Yes—right there—don’t stop, you fucking—oh, god—” He was already close, his cock trapped between their bodies, leaking and aching.
Sesshomaru captured his mouth, swallowing his cries. The kiss was drowning. His hand slid between them, wrapping around Koga’s cock, his stroke a perfect, tight counterpoint to the deep plunge of his hips.
“Come,” Sesshomaru growled against his lips. It wasn’t permission this time. It was a demand.
Koga shattered. His orgasm ripped through him with no warning, a white-hot detonation that left him blind and shaking. He came over Sesshomaru’s fist, his body clamping down viscously on the cock still pistoning inside him. The pulses seemed to go on forever, wringing him dry.
Sesshomaru followed, his rhythm stuttering. He drove in one last, profound time, his own release flooding Koga’s depths, hotter than the spring water around them. A raw, guttural sound was bitten into Koga’s shoulder.
They slumped together, a tangle of spent limbs in the cooling water. Koga’s senses gradually returned—the drip of water from the ceiling, the fading herbal scent, the solid weight of Sesshomaru atop him, still buried inside.
After a long time, Sesshomaru shifted. He pulled out, the sound obscenely wet in the quiet chamber. He didn’t go far. He simply sank into the water beside Koga, his head resting back against the stone, eyes closed. The steam had lessened. The glowing kanji on the walls seemed brighter in the clearing air.
Koga looked at him. At the elegant, alien lines of his profile, the sweat drying on his temple, the utterly vulnerable exhaustion on a face that had never known how to show it. The ‘duty’ and ‘fire’ etched into the walls seemed to mock them both.
He reached out, his movement clumsy. His fingers brushed a strand of silver hair from Sesshomaru’s cheek. Sesshomaru’s eyes opened. He didn’t pull away. He just watched Koga, his gaze unreadable once more, a fortress rebuilt.
Koga’s voice was hoarse, barely audible. “One night at a time, huh?”
A muscle feathered in Sesshomaru’s jaw. He said nothing. But his hand found Koga’s under the water, their fingers threading together, gripping tight as if caught in a current. An anchor. A chain. It was impossible to tell which.