Dungeons and Snow Leopards

Been down bad for this particular character for over ten years. It's that voice... Hope y'all are doing alright <3

...

The woman performing the ceremony is a withered and ancient rabbit, and she holds my hand during the entirety of it. I'm a little too numb to do much but hold on and squeeze her paw a bit as she sings a mournful version of the song I've heard performed in the village for marriage ceremonies. She squeezes back, and an untellable amount of time later, she stands.

"Your duties are to care for him to the best of your capabilities. Until... the remainder of his days."

Or mine.

I nod at the ground, and feel the warmth of her little body drift away as she trods out of the cell, footsteps echoing condemnation all around me.

One of the guards attending watches her go, and then turns and snorts down at me. "Hell of a lottery. There are countless bridges to throw yourself off of if you start to go mad."

The other one snickers. "Don't give her any ideas." He turns to address the hulking, kneeling mass on my other side. "Congrats, filth. Maybe we'll even give you conjugal as a treat. Be sweet to your new wife, hmm?"

The first one shoves the second and starts walking out. "You just said not to give her any ideas, she'll off herself before the day ends with you talking like that."

The laughter between the two of them hurts my ears, but I'm still just another brick making up the floor, so I sit as still as... him.

The guards swagger down the corridor, and the door seals shut behind them. I figured it'd slam with a final bang, but instead stone grinds against stone as it's pulled closed from the other side.

I stay kneeling for a long while, until my legs fall asleep under me and the adrenaline finally stops tensing my muscles at random. I slide my eyes from one side to the other, taking in the cell.

There's flowers cast around him in a wide circle, big white ones and smaller pink and yellow petals. He's unmoving... of course he's unmoving... with his head bowed and arms absolutely stretched probably past their limit underneath the wide shell on his back, long silver needles sticking out every which way. I hear the occasional draft from the stone floor far below the pillar we're on, and it makes the stones swinging from the end of his chains scrape against the walls.

I continue to sit.

When my legs can no longer take it, I shift as slowly as possible into a cross-legged position, and immediately understand that he's tuned into it. Nothing about him has changed; not a flick of the ear, a twitch of the eyelid. But he can tell.

And I understand then, that this creature has been put into an artificial state of locked-in syndrome. Over a decade down here, conscious, weight-bearing, and unable to scream.

They just married me to him.

...

There's not much interesting about my years there. I soon gained the ability to move around him, to summon the courage to ask if I could bring small things into the cell. I was almost struck for asking, but I did ask.

About twelve hours in and twelve hours out, and no one really knew what to do with me other than that. He did not eat, drink, or produce waste. He barely breathed. I thought at first that he couldn't at all, but soon was able to count his inhales and exhales. Maybe two or three a minute. I wondered a lot if he was able to sleep.

I was a companion, assigned to provide him the comfort of another living soul until my natural death. A last comfort from the masters who raised him. I wondered what went so wrong that a single creature was condemned to a fate worse than death, and learned, through the after-dinner musings of the guards, that it was the result of a single battle in a single day. After a long career as a renowned warrior, he fought someone he couldn't win against. And never should've raised a fist to, considering where he ended up.

When I was out, I kept to my small room, and sometimes made the trek to request to be let into the small courtyard on the top floor. It took about six hours for me to get there, partly because of the distance, and partly because I was stopped and searched by each of the gate guards along the bridge. All thirty-seven of them. They were gruff and brisk, and the one good thing I can say about them is that they only treated me like a bad omen.

I'd make my request, and a few weeks later I'd be notified that I could go on my off time. Six hours up, thirty minutes in the brisk air, surrounded by rock walls on all sides, but the sunlight, the moonlight.... It was worth it. Sometimes I'd get the night sky instead, but never dusk or dawn. Whatever schedule they had us on was irregular.

I'd always be running back down to make it to the cell on time on those days. Although I'm not sure they would've noticed if I didn't go at all. Those thirty-seven checkpoints made no time to pick up my one meal from the kitchen, so I would rush in breathless and spend the next eleven and a half hours with my stomach occasionally grumbling.

I could swear on those days it was like bringing him a bit of the sun. I thought I heard him breathe more, and would sit maybe a foot closer than usual so he could get a bit of the outside air off of my fur and clothes. I hoped it wasn't just tormenting him with what he couldn't have. I wasn't sure.

As the months blurred I became a bit more bold in the guard's disinterest, smuggling in needlework to pass the time.

One day, indistinguishable from the others, one of the checkpoint guards confronts me with a mid-size box as I'm coming out of the cell, and I'm sure I'm about to be found out. I'd brought in charcoal and paper, stolen from one of the tables in the mess hall as I'd been passing through to get my meal.

"You'll start keeping him well-groomed. Something from the crazies at his temple."

I accept the box, and the guard just stares at me.

"Now?"

He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to; I back away, back towards the door. It's reopened, and I step back in and feel the air settle again.

I kneel in front of the box and unlatch it; there are several small, simple items and I can only guess the use of some of them. There's an obvious brush, a miswak stick, a large shallow bowl, and some other small, delicate tools. For his claws?

I pick up the brush; it's more of a rake on one side, with boar bristles on the underside. I remember deshedding my dogs this way.

I look at him, stone still and quiet as always. And I sit beside the tools.

After some time I've worked up the nerve to approach with the brush in hand. There was that initial change to the air, that attentiveness, when I rose and drew nearer. I'm closer to him than I've ever been, and I'm frightened. But this is the one thing I'm here to do, the only variable in my day. And these people in the temple must care for him still. I can honor that.

"I'm... hi. I'm going to just brush today, I think it will take a while. Let me know if it hurts. Or... just rather I'll make sure to be gentle."

My voice was creaky, quiet. And spouting nonsense to a hulking furry prisoner in a magical coma.

I want to start with his neck, like I would with a dog, but I'm still scared he'll suddenly wake up and tear my body in two convenient halves. I make a few passes at a forearm the width of both of mine, ending in a giant clenched fist, but my urge to do things right leads me to push past the matter of living. He hasn't moved for a while. He probably won't move now. Probably.

The fur is coming off in spades as soon as I touch the rake to the high spot just behind his ear. No twitch, no recognition of it. But I resolve to make it enjoyable, even with no feedback. I brush away the tufts as I work my way down, then gather them up to store against my chest, worrying that the mess will gather on the floor with no means to clean it.

His skin flinches when I reach the crook of his neck and shoulder. "Sorry," I whisper automatically, snatching the comb away. Then I step back. That was a movement. He moved.

For reasons I don't understand, I'm still standing there, soon enough returning to my task. I'm ignoring my racing heart as best I can, and soon I'm lulled almost into a state of security by the repetitive, intimate chore. His fur lies smooth and flat after a thorough raking through of the undercoat, and I imagine that it will gleam after I run the brush over it.

I'm calculating in my head how to get to his back when I hear the door begin to creak open, and completely snap out of my trance. I rush to gather the rest of the basket and hurry down the stone path, panting lightly a couple of times and becoming neutral at the dull face of the guard.

"Don't get that mess all over the floors."

I nod, figuring he's referencing the bundle of white fur peeking out of my shirt. He lets me pass, and that's the end of it.

Over the next weeks I become as thorough as possible. It's a task and a half to get a bucket of water into the cell room, and the lifted eyebrows of the guards I pass mean there will be countless jokes at my expense when I hustle through the cafeteria, but I soon gain courage to put what I can reach in order. Hospital rules, an impartial, gentle touch.

For everything.

The only spot I can't reach is the majority of his back, covered as it is by the impossibly large shell and riddled with long, gleaming needles. I leave it be and work around it, occasionally peeking beneath to see if something can be done.

But soon enough, the rest of him is shining, on a strict routine of one whole body cleaning every two weeks, and brushing as needed. A handsome prisoner.

A handsome... I stop being shocked or surprised at my thoughts, and instead judge them based on their truth. He is handsome, strong. Probably. I'll probably never see him mobile, and will most likely die before he does. Down here. Cold, a foreign kind of lonely.

The one thing I'm unable to work myself up to is his teeth. I turn to him many times with the miswak stick in hand, but whenever I reach for his mouth, my hands grow weak. As do my knees. Everything, in fact, doesn't want me to put my hand into the mouth of the dormant equivalent of Death.

So I don't. He doesn't eat, doesn't drink. I'm not sure how it works, and I don't want to. I keep him dusted, brushed, sleek, like a living statue, and his teeth aren't on display, so....

The days continue to pass. Some days the need to escape is stifling, and I don't even want to cross the bridge to that flat, dark stone ground. The guards seem annoyed when I ask to go up to the surface a bit more often, and I do have limits. It takes energy that I don't have to climb up there, energy that's only replenished by one meal a day of mostly grains.

One day, I don't make it back down to the ground floor for an absurd amount of time. The guards on the last nine levels get agitated when I stop to rest after getting checked, and I'm stumbling by the time I get down to the gate to the cell. The guard there pauses for a long time, staring at me.

"He might be a widower soon, huh?"

".... May I go back to my room for today?"

He looks as if he considers it for a moment, then replies wryly. "We all have our orders. You'll sleep more soundly next to your beloved."

I walk numbly over the bridge, the door grating shut behind me. I settle down, and immediately begin to shiver. That's not good.

The hours pass torturously slow, and with little to no thought I curl up as close to him as I can get without my heart spilling out of my chest. And I sleep.

I'm prodded awake, sharply. I grunt, eyes creaking open, and two guards stand a distance away, the blunt handle of a spear in one's hand digging into my side.

"You wanna move your bed in here? It can be arranged."

I struggle to stand, and walking between the two, I resign myself to not making any more trips up to the courtyard until I recover some strength.

I bring in a small bowl of water and brush his teeth a few days after that. And I continue to do it as regularly as I bathe him. I find a balance between my sanity and my need to eat regularly, and request to go upstairs every two weeks. Or what I measure to be every two weeks. And every time I do, I come back and rest in his shadow. My own ritualistic routine after a while, when I become accustomed to the drudgery and obsessed with anything I can do to pass my time.

I never dare to think of where I came from. Because then, I really would die.

...

The shrieking is a lot louder than I thought it'd be. Although it doesn't bother me as much as the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground.

I dreamed he'd eventually get out somehow. I didn't know if I was going to make it out of here alive, but I harbored a mild hope that he would. The solemn sound of boulder-laden chains snapping free of his wrists and rattling to the ground spelled doom for almost everyone in this holding facility. Hopefully not for me. He's no longer bound by a tortuous gravity, free to seek revenge on whoever put him there, deserving or not, and I hope I don't cross his mind at all.

"Wife."

I freeze over my bundle of rations and supplies, still out of breath from my rushed sprint to the kitchen and back. But I didn't hear even the faintest sound of approach from the creature at my door frame who was... is... causing the panicked screams I'm hearing outside.

I shift only my eyes, somewhat aware of the possibility of danger, but honestly curious to see him standing for the first time.

Golden eyes, harsh and equally curious. "Going out the back way?" he asks, the amusement in his tone obvious. His voice is smooth and rolling, no sign of disuse.

And how did he know about the back way? How did he know I knew? I only discovered the air vents a year ago, by accident. The only one I've seen that's passable is at the thirtieth gate.

I stand there silently, flinching when I hear two more guards hit the cobblestone. Maybe he took out one of the bridges or something.

He examines the contents of my bag from where he stands, and I fight the urge to pull it closed. He tsks.

"Warmer clothes than that."

I look down at what I'd pilfered from some of the smaller guards' rooms, wondering if I should take heed of anything he says. A distant crash and rumble makes me look back up, and when I see the empty doorway I know he's the cause of the renewed commotion.

How does he know what I'd need for the weather? He's been comatose in a mountain cavern for at least twenty years. He wouldn't know what season it is. I appear to have a good coat of fur anyway. All valid doubts.

Ten minutes later I tug a wool-lined coat over the one I'm already wearing, the pack on my bag now slightly straining with the additional "warmer" contents. I couldn't find a larger one, and I think I'm running out of time to search any more rooms. And running out of time to escape unscathed.

He's not going to kill me, not right now, but any remaining guards to come across me might detain me, at the very least. And they barely tolerated my presence when I had a use.

The bodies, some groaning, some not, aren't as plentiful as I'd assumed. I imagine them as boulders in my path and skirt around them, feeling some eyes tracking me but not stopped as I crack open and slip through the yawning door at the thirtieth gate.

I can't see anything in the pitch-black, breezy air vent I stumble out through, and while I'm cursing the lack of light at first, I realize after something furry skitters away from beneath my outstretched hand that I probably wouldn't be making such good progress if I could. The tunnel is too big for cobwebs to stretch across it, but I somehow get them across my face all the same. I don't know how long it takes for me to start feeling air from the outside, but my somewhat leisurely escape becomes a hustle when I feel warmth coming from behind me.

It turns into a blind run when I hear a crackle of explosions, when red glowing flashes start lighting up the ragged stone walls stretching before me. Even when they stop, and the only sign of the impending danger is subtle but growing heat against my back, I run whenever my wheezing breath and heavy limbs allow.

I cough at the narrow entrance, surrounded by smoke and unable to see if I'm about to fall to my death or drop into underbrush. The fire's moderately far behind me, roaring and growing with the rich supply of air coming in, but it's less concerning than the burning of my eyes and the smoke in my lungs that I can no longer clear. I pray, and then I pray again, clinging to the stony edge of the tunnel. And I let go.

...

"Ffffffuck," I rasp, stunned and resting alongside the pack that took the brunt of the fall. Along with an instantly tender body, a brief throbbing sensation turns into sharp stinging all along my side and back.

Nothing's broken. At least, not bad enough that I can't attempt to scramble down the path before me. I rise, flinching at the telltale wet, harsh air on my skin. Broken bones, no, but rather a friction rash that's going to be a literal pain in my ass for however long it takes to heal.

I thought this slope would be more unforgiving. This mountain is a prison, after all. I stumble along, grabbing hold of branches that grab me right back, tearing at my hands and sleeves. Well, somebody had to get up here to make the air vents. And maybe they thought the one thousand guards, full body pressure point paralysis, and inescapable dungeon were enough.

I don't know if it's morning or night; it's just gray. Smoke is trailing from the vent entrance behind me, but the fire stops at the edge with nothing but stone for fuel. I hope the things that were dwelling in there before I crashed through also got out.

What about the guards? How far did the fire spread, did it start up top? How many did he kill?

I start taking breaks a lot sooner than I would've four and a half years ago. If my tally marks on the bottom of my bed accounting for my "shifts" had any accuracy to them, at least. Limited access to daily exercise and sufficient food has got me wheezing on this hike, and even after the burning in my lungs from the smoke calms down, I'm faltering down the mountain path.

It is night after all, and after it's too dark to see I yank a thick blanket out of my pack and wrap up my tired body, climbing onto and nestling against a low-slung branch for the night. It's almost touching the ground, and isn't really offering any sort of protection. I'm fairly certain I'll be okay - all that mess probably scared away anything big enough to worry about - and I know there had to be a village nearby that was close enough for the prison to get resources from. I'll see it from here, if it's on this side of the mountain, and head out in the morning.

And if I don't see one, well... gonna hunt and gather my ass across this land until I do.

Mostly because there's no other choice.

...

I wake up slightly chilled and struggle against fabric until I birth myself out of the cocoon I made, almost falling out of the tree. I hiss as the injury along my back moves with me, and further inspection confirms that a long, wide, half-skinned patch is causing the issue. I'm relieved that nothing else, aside from a smoke-raw throat and a run-and-fall-sore body, is seriously wrong.

If directions work the same way as they do back home, then I'm traveling east towards the rising sun. Surprise comes when the morning glare recedes from my eyes and I discover that there are a few locations I could head towards. A few small huts dotted along the landscape and a bigger grouping further in the distance, much like the place I came-to in when I first got here.

That can't be the village I came from, right? When I was chosen we traveled for several days to get here by cart, and I'm pretty sure this place would only take me a couple days' travel by foot. Hopefully they're just as nice as the first one. Well... the first one before the lottery began.

But it's over now, right? News of the escape is bound to travel fast, but I was heralded off as a martyr, as the tribute bride of the monster beneath the mountain. Do I still have that status, or am I some sort of fugitive now? I'm fairly sure I was expected to die there.

Maybe they won't realize who I am. Even though... I'm the only woman coming from the direction of the mountain prison where the tribute bride was sent some years ago.... And am now showing up when my husband has escaped.... What if they think I helped him?

I decide not to think about it for the rest of the journey down.

The last stretch of descent before I reach the running stream I can hear at the base of the mountain, and I see him, perched near the top of a twisted tree with his back against the trunk. He's not looking at me, but I continue walking anyway, wary. I'm only seeing him because he wants me to.

He walks down the trembling branches like a spiral staircase as I pick my way across the stream at the base of his tree, and I stop just after the water's edge. I might die here, and if I do I want to fall back into the water so at least my last moments alive will be relieved of this goddamn road rash.

"You got down in good time," he says.

I nod uncertainly, and as he takes a step forward the adrenaline finally kicks in. I hold myself still, and in my resigned, dark daze, I realize that we're roughly the same height. The stories of a towering giant with a gaping mouth and glowing eyes were pretty out there.

He frowns. "Speak."

"Hello." Any minute now. Maybe my death will send me back to my world... I look forward to it with a morbid curiosity. I at least got to get out of the dungeon and take a nice last walk, if it doesn't work.

His scowl goes darker, and the urge to lean back runs even deeper.

"You look like you're facing a firing squad."

I finally blink. "I'm not?"

He looks slightly put off, which I don't understand, because he's not the one who thought he was about to die.

"Why would I?"

"I... just expected it." I watched you backflip off of the roof of a cave to punt twelve men through a stone wall.

He stares into my eyes until I become uncomfortable enough to readjust the bag on my back. His are bright gold, and open. After so long. I can't look away. "So when I walked up to you just now, you were fully expecting to die?"

I nod, understanding I'm about to be reprimanded by a rogue warrior of legend, and numb to it. As numb as the first day.

He turns toward the line of trees and sighs. "Let's go."

Let's go? He turns back towards me almost instantly, and I realize I've actually taken a step back this time, the ground soft and the water gurgling behind me.

"What?"

"What do you mean 'let's go'?"

His eyes turn sharp. "So you're ready to die without a fight, but holding up your vows is where you draw the line?"

For a split second I feel dumb, until I remember the situation I'm in. "You wanted me to exert myself to put up a fight against someone who just massacred one thousand men twice my size? That's moronic."

His eyebrows go up, and I backtrack. He elected not to kill me yesterday, but today's a new day. I need to be respectful. "Not... moronic. Just futile. And I didn't expect you to care about the marriage at all."

He's quiet for a minute, then turns once more to the shade of the trees. "Let's go," he says again.

...

"Stop staring holes into my back."

"You're right in front of me."

"Look at the ground so you don't trip."

"Okay."

He shuffles the bag on his shoulder and I hold back a sigh, empty-handed. He took over hauling the pack after watching me struggle with it the first week, but ultimately decided to have me carry it every other day so I could "get strong." I'd assumed I was plenty capable before, for a secondhand captive, but held against the standard of someone who's been training in martial arts for over forty years, I guess I'm pretty weak.

And I am staring. After five years of sitting and laying next to an paralyzed monster, it's strange to see him walking, to hear him regularly utter "hurry up" and "this way". To walk behind him like I wasn't watching him rot for five years. Like I wasn't worrying about the utility bill in my studio apartment eight years before that.

"You don't ask enough questions. Blindly following behind me... what if I'm leading you to your death? Although you've already proven you wouldn't do anything about it. Don't know why I'm..."

He stops suddenly, and I crash into his back, stumbling a few steps. My mind somersaults back into this world and body, and I step back from him.

He looks down at me. "Watch where you're going," he says, as if he hadn't just directed me to keep my eyes on the ground.

I stare blankly up at him and bite back another sigh. "Okay."

His eyes narrow. "We're gonna go until we get to the next stretch of the stream, and we'll rest for the night."

I nod, and he turns back around and resumes powering through the trees, expecting me to keep up without breaking into a jog. I'm too on edge to feel tired, but everytime we stop to rest, I sleep heavily through the night, like someone's pushing an off button.

We reach a decent-sized clearing, and he lets the bag slide to the ground before he casually strolls over to a tree at the edge and leaps up into its branches. The first time he did it, I simply assumed I was being abandoned for walking too slow. Now I just start building the fire, stomach growling in anticipation of what he'll bring back. I never paid attention to how much my physiology has changed in this world, but the most notable difference is my affinity for meat. Usually cooked. And now I'm being fed regularly.

I'm eagerly watching the fire when he gets back, a little pile of berries sitting on one of the rough cloths I packed.

He tosses four fat fish down next to it, and I look up at him for the go-ahead before I start stringing them over the fire. Don't have to bother gutting or scaling.

"Where'd you get these?" He plucks one from the pile and sniffs it, gazing around the clearing.

"Couple paces out, I recognized them from what they used to bring into the kitchens."

"You left the clearing?"

"Where do you think the firewood comes from?"

He goes still, and I drop my eyes, again remembering common sense in the face of someone who hunts large animals with their bare hands. "I'm sorry, I'll stay closer."

He mutters something under his breath and storms away back into the trees, only coming back when the scent of cooked fish reaches him. "Only a few paces, huh?"

I try not to look up at him in any sort of bewilderment. I don't understand his intent, and the caustic little rants over things like this are getting increasingly more irritating. But if I finally snap, I might get my neck snapped too, and over the passing days I've become unwilling to test out whether a death in this world would send me back home.

I remain silent, and he just folds himself up in front of the fire, unflinching as he leans over crackling flames to take his barely-seared portion from the sagging pole.

...

"I'm going to the stream, I'll be quick," I speak into the air when I slide out of my bedding in the sharp reveal of sunrise. I learned in the first couple of nights that when I'm awake, he's awake. Any noise I make registers, and it's borderline impossible for him to lose me. In the dark, in the rain, in the snow.

Thank God he wants me alive.

I strip harshly at the riverside, unused to a flat, furred chest and slender hips now that I have the opportunity to examine them thoroughly, without the questioning eyes of villagers or the near darkness of the prison. Everything looks sleek and powerful, and I plunge it all under the water so I don't have to look at it and feel jarringly out-of-body.

It's freezing, of course, but I hold myself under, ears pulling flat to my head in resolute acceptance.

"You haven't asked what I'm going to do with you," I hear as I come up, so cold that the air entering my lungs feels warm in comparison. He's comfortably resting in the crook of a branch, as usual, about ten feet off the ground or so and his tail curving like an umbrella handle underneath him.

"No, I haven't," I agree, crouching in the stream so that the water rushes over my shoulders.

I hear a little growl of annoyance. "Speak freely."

I want to growl back. "How?"

He drops silently to the forest floor, and I feel even colder, watching him straighten up to a cross-armed, frustrated stance.

"Trust that I will not harm you." He starts stepping towards the stream, towards me, and my resolve fails, sending me back into colder, deeper water, my feet... paws... scrabbling on the smooth rocks at the bottom of the stream.

He stops at the water's edge and crouches, watching me shiver and give up on standing to finally tread water.

"You should come out."

"Okay. Go on back, I'll be there in a moment."

He watches me for a few more seconds before rising and slipping back through the trees.

I wonder for a moment if he's still there but I know I'd still feel his eyes searing through me if he was. I numbly grip the rock I'd eased down into the water from and drag myself out of the stream, plopping down wet and miserable in the absence of sunlight. I miss bathing with the others in the village, although I'm probably just a memory to them now.

I shake myself like a dog once the feeling returns to my limbs, and endure the burning of cold fingertips while I pull my wool coverings on. I could be thanking him for recommending thicker clothes; the wool accommodates the moisture from my own fur without becoming soaked through and through.

But I'm a long way off from doing anything of the sort.

I trudge back to camp and he hands me the bag, which I accept with a grunt. The ashes from the fireplace are nowhere to be seen, probably kicked away or buried. So too are the fish bones. I've gotten used to how he hides his presence so thoroughly before leaving each camp, but it makes me wonder who he's running from. Who they sent out to retrieve him. And what they'd do with me if they found him.

The sun doesn't reach its peak for several hours, and by the time it's cast its light over the forest canopy, I'm gasping for breath. The pace is demanding today, almost a moderate jog. His ears keep flicking back when I stumble, although I'm doing my best to keep him from acknowledging me at all.

"Can you climb?" he asks, random and almost under his breath, so that I barely register it.

"Trees?"

He stops and whips around, and a spray of dust and leaf litter puffs up under his feet, then mine from the shortstop.

He grabs my hand and presses into the pad in the middle, and I feel the claws unsheathing before I see them. It makes a shiver wash over me involuntarily, and he looks up at me in interest, pressing more firmly into my palm.

"You can climb," he decides, turning to a wide, low-branching tree that almost certainly was the spark to his current train of thought. The relief floods my system until he drops my hand and starts removing the pack from my shoulders.

"Why are we doing this now?" I ask tentatively, as he swings the bag over his shoulders. He starts absentmindedly placing my hands at specific places on the trunk.

"You can keep up now. Pull yourself up," he monotones, stepping back.

I look back at him, only briefly, and his eyes are focused on my arms and legs. Form, I guess.

I only know how to climb as a human, but he placed my hands directly against the trunk, not a branch. I dig my claws into the furrows of the bark before flexing my feet against the trunk. I'm attached.

It takes a mighty grunt, but I heave myself up a whole... couple of inches. I dare not look behind me. I stretch one hand above me, and then the other, following the subtle prompts in my head. Glad this body came with some instinct.

"Faster."

I look above me, and he's sitting on a branch much higher up, the heavy bag dangling from his fingertips.

I feel the slightest irritation settling into the corner of my mind and stiffly struggle upwards, my limbs starting to tire. My tail is flailing behind me, partly from the climb, and partly from irritation. Maybe if I fall, he'll shut up.

I reach a branch and lower myself to straddle it, trying not to hug the tree too obviously.

"Come up here, without all those stupid thoughts."

He's yards above me again, smirking.

"I can almost see you thinking. It's unnecessary," he elaborates, somewhat amused. "Your body will take over. And if it doesn't for some reason, it's not even that high up."

I hear a slight growl emanating from my own chest and start clumsily climbing the tree to cover it. I haven't looked down once, and I'm not going to.

I feel the bark starting to scrape and tear at my skin after a while, but my blood's running too hot to feel it much. I'm panting when I reach the height he'd called from, and begrudgingly find that he's still there, a tree away.

"Not hard."

I drop any pretense of stoicism and hold tight to the trunk as I wrap my legs around the thick but swaying branch, looking out at the maze of branches, up towards the light filtering in through the canopy, anywhere but at him. Or down.

"We're going down now."

The thought hadn't occurred to me, and my body becomes stone, my eyes settling on his and probably betraying my horror.

He stands, shrugging, and literally walks across the branches between us, as if there's a level floor there. I still can't move.

He pries my body away from the trunk, and I let go before I leave long furrows in the bark. He wraps my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, and just starts hopping down, light puffs in my ear with each landing.

I keep tensing with each short flight through the air, and feel a wide hand on my back for the last few branches. We hit the ground, soundlessly, of course, and before I have a chance to dislodge myself he places my back against the tree trunk, lightly leaning into me to keep me in place as he loosens the hold of my arms and legs. I realize they're locked as he maneuvers them from around his body.

"We'll work on that, and then going branch to branch. Travel's faster that way," he explains, in an audaciously casual manner. He leans away, watching carefully to see that my legs will hold me up.

It registers, after he's handed the pack back to me and has started that blistering pace back up, that he's implied I'll be learning to travel tree to tree.

I want to throw up.

...

"Talk to me."

Another sentence uttered out of the blue, no prompting or occasion I'm externally aware of. I was gazing into the fire after another hunted and foraged dinner, almost as if I was in the clearing alone.

"Okay. Are we crossing the stream tomorrow?"

He gives me a withering look. "Don't bore me with mundane questions. What were you thinking about just now?"

I shrug. "Home."

He nods at this. "Think you'll ever see it again?"

I furrow my eyebrows. Is he asking me just to be funny?

"Not here. Your actual home. That's what you were thinking about."

A chill seeps into my heart and I finally look at him head-on, unsure if I should speak at all.

"What, you don't want to go back?"

I blank. What's he going to do, tell on me? "No, I, I do, I just... how'd you know?"

He sits back. "You act like an actual alien."

Technically what I am, I guess. "Mm." Quiet, for a few long moments. "And we're still married?"

He smiles quietly to himself. "Yes we are."

It's quiet for a piece, and though I'm dozing off I can feel the exact moment another thought crosses his mind.

"You cared for me for a long time."

I nod. "Yes."

"What was that like?"

I look over at him. "Wasn't your experience much worse? Why does it matter?"

He shrugs. "Yes, I'm well aware of my unending death. I'd rather hear about your time, because I'm curious about my partner's thoughts and feelings during her... unlawful imprisonment."

Now I want to ask what it was like for him. But I don't think I ever will, for his sake. "It felt like I was rotting, slowly. And I could tell you were, too, but much slower than I was. I knew I'd die before you, and I felt sorry for whoever would be coming down after me."

He lays on his back. "Yeah?"

"Ah... yes."

"I remember the first time you groomed me. A bit."

His voice is lulling, and I almost relax, half-curled up and reminiscent of sleeping at his feet. "You do?"

"I began keeping track of time according to your little routine." He leans towards the fire, and I watch him simply quell the flame with a short puff of air. I blink, dazedly.

"I was able to start thinking normally again, with that introduction of the passage of time. And... coming back into my body, after spending so long in stasis..."

I'm falling asleep to a horror story.

"I believed I was dreaming when I took my first free breath. I almost remained kneeling."

I lean my head back to look at his expression, and suddenly I'm not so sleepy, looking at the haunting in his eyes as he stares into the darkness.

"What are you going to do now?"

He doesn't blink, but he does register the question, the dreaminess leaving his face. "I'm doing it."

...

I wake up burning. Swaddled in my own sleeping layers and something massive, furry, and hot besides. I only gasp slightly before the mass shifts and sits up, peering down at me as I crack my eyes.

"Frost came last night."

I nod, groggily, and slide damply out of my cocoon. "Thanks."

He rises and yawns, stretching thick arms into the air before collapsing to the ground, legs crossed. "Go bathe."

I stand, wobbly. "Hmm?"

"You need to get used to the cold."

"Okay."

"And you look very disheveled. Like you've been dragged across the ground."

"I-" is out of my mouth, and the rest of the words crash against the inside of my teeth as I close my mouth. "Alright."

He gives a hearty snort, and I trudge along to the stream, the heat from his body wrapped around mine quickly forgotten in the lasting chill of the morning.

I strip and dunk myself in as usual, almost punishing myself for something I'm not yet aware of.

Until he makes his approach heard, rustling coming through the tree branches as he perches himself on a branch so low it's brushing the ground.

"You didn't meditate long."

"I found peace very easily today."

I nod, shiver, duck a bit lower into the water.

"Are you done?" I nod again, and he slides off his branch. "Good. Let's go."

"Go on ahead, I'll meet you there."

"Why?"

It's asked so plainly, so genuinely, that I feel ridiculous for my statement at first. "Because I like to get dressed alone."

"You bathed and dressed me for five years."

The cold is creeping into my stomach now, permeating all of me, and I embrace it. "Yeah. Yes I did. But-"

"Wife," he says in a whispery, low tone, squatting next to the dip in the shoreline that I entered from. "I'd like to see you."

I'm stunned. Literally, just like when I was trapped who knows how far up in the air, clinging to a swaying branch. I don't know how long I stay there, but I'm bone cold when he reaches out a hand, lightly grips my shoulder, and draws me closer until he can pull me out of the water with a casual show of enormous strength.

The water's streaming from me, I know. I almost feel every drop's trajectory, the portion of water that's still against my skin making my hide flinch and twitch before his eyes. My tail refuses to be still, flicking against my ankles before lashing tight against the other side of my hip.

"There." He holds me back from him now, hands holding mine away from my body. "You're lovely."

I don't expect the sheer force of pleasure from those two words, and I'm sure I can't blush in this body, but he looks up at my face and smiles all the same.

"I'll see you back at camp." He strolls away.

I shake most of the water out of my fur, mostly because I'm trying to shake the thoughts out of my head too. Every single one of them.

...

"We couldn't practice further down?"

He hops the small, at least to him, distance between the branch I'm on and the other, sinister-looking one on the next tree.

"If we practiced further down, you wouldn't get it right your first time. Now stand."

I stare blatantly at him for a second or two. Not quite a showdown, but more to see if he'd relent. And of course he doesn't, he never has.

I muscle myself into a four-legged stance, and he nods. "All the way."

A growl from my chest again, this one clearly heard by the way his ears flicker. "I don't care," he asserts. "Show me."

I dig a set of claws into the tree trunk, clinging to the branch with my other for dear life. I could just pretend I'm a few inches off the ground. The other branch isn't that far away. I stand a bit taller, still in a hesitant crouch.

"Jump."

My eyes fly to him, scared enough of the task ahead to forget myself and display some degree of anger. For once he gets the message and shuts up.

He allowed the warning, but he won't allow any more hesitation, I know. I tense, and figure that if I misjudge the jump, one of these branches is going to catch me on the way down.

I extend every claw like my life depends on it, because it does. I connect with unforgiving wood, and attach myself to it. I might still be on the same branch, I don't know.

"You need to do it with your eyes open next time, that was dangerous. And this hurts."

I open my eyes, and look up to see him pressed against the trunk, the claws on my right hand sunken into his leg. I don't immediately feel bad, mostly justified, but I shakily withdraw my hand. "Sorry."

"Lots of improvements to make, but I'm satisfied with the start. This time, try-"

"This time? We're not done?"

He looks down at me, and I feel small, especially crouched looking up at him as I am, but I don't retract my question.

He grins, grabs my arm and pulls me up. "Eyes open, and don't reach with your arms, that's what you do when you need to save yourself. You start on your feet, you land on your feet. All fours for when you're ready to run, which we won't do for...." he starts aligning my limbs for the next jump. "At least a couple days."

I nod, dull panic setting in again. "'Kay. Sure."

He laughs and backs away, and aside from my hand gripping his, I'm mostly balanced atop this branch on two shaking legs.

"Again, to the nearest branch there. Breathe."

I want to snatch my hand out of his for what seems at first like pedantic, sarcastic directions, but I take his advice and breathe for the first time in what might be a full minute.

I jump again, the next branch my salvation, and though I scrabble upon landing, I'm standing.

"There. Much better. Last one, I want it perfect," he murmurs, right beside me again. He probably just hopped alongside me while I was leaping for my life.

"Perfect?"

"Lean into it and you won't have to put so much energy into the legs, they'll just have a natural recoil when you pull them back under yourself. Here."

He demonstrates by casually assuming a slightly squatted stance, and I mirror him as much as possible while keeping one hand sunken into the trunk next to me.

"Now lean." He braces and pushes his upper body into the air, gracefully settling a few feet away and squarely on the target. "Ready?"

I nod and square up. Final jump, for today. Don't think about anything else. I brace, I lean, imagining the sun reaching me through the canopy maybe a mile above. I jump and tuck my legs underneath my body.

I hit the branch hard, mostly with my stomach. My vision blurs wildly and I secure what I can of the branch with my hands, claws digging in and creating long furrows as I slip.

I'm hauled up and set down, wheezing the pain away and panting when I can. "Good form."

I look up at him, finally exasperated, and he nods, sagely. Stupidly. Stupid bastard. "It was more of a running form, which was why you fell, but good form anyway. Try the landing another day. Can you climb do-"

I'm already wrapping my arms around his neck before he can suggest I do another fucking thing. I haul my legs up and tuck my head into his neck, and do nothing else until I'm safely on the ground.

When I hear the rustling of leaf litter underneath his feet, I sigh and loosen my limbs. But he holds me there, a hand still on my back and the other wrapping around a thigh.

"What, no thank you?"

I lift my head, too upset to bite back words. "If you had let me stay on the ground today, sure."

"I like when you talk back," he decides matter-of-factly, after a long pause.

"Let me down, please." I let my weight go dead against him, but he just hoists me higher.

"I could carry you the rest of the day."

"But you won't. Lemme down." I try to shove away from him and he just holds me fast, letting me wriggle like a worm on a string.

I stop when I realize I'm hot, and he's smiling.

I try to stop panting, but it doesn't help. His hold on my leg loosens and tightens rhythmically, the other let down and barely touching the forest floor. One hand strong on my lower back, allowing me to squirm but not back away. It's purposeful, and effective, and I'm trapped and heated against him.

He sighs and drops his head to draw closer to my neck, and I stiffen. "What's wrong, wife? Nervous?"

I don't answer, and just let my gaze drift before I close my eyes, my hands still on his chest, though I can envision them sliding. He's pressing his face against my throat, sighing leisurely into the crook of my neck. I'm besieged by the earnest pressure of his body. I wasn't expecting to be put in this situation today, and I wasn't expecting my response to it.

He stops nuzzling me after a few prolonged moments and I can finally stop practicing deep, calming breaths. As soon as he loosens his grip, I stand on my own two feet, body humming. He reaches a casual hand up to rub one of my sore shoulders as he passes by, graciously not looking back at me as he continues on his way as if he'd done nothing dark and teasing moments before.

I know this isn't the sole reason he's kept me with him. I don't know if I qualify as a particularly attractive creature in this world, and I haven't yet gotten a mirror or even a still enough body of water to gauge it for myself. Not that he's gotta find me attractive in order to...

It feels intimate and calculated whenever he touches me, like he's already thought out when to start, when to stop, how hard to press. Mindful to his last fingertip.

He lets me stew and stumble behind him until night starts to fall, and we reach a good-sized clearing. We resume our usual routine: he goes to catch something, I build the fire and forage what I can in the fading light. I found the cook's muted ramblings tiresome over my years in that dungeon, but they've served useful out here.

I sit by the fire and wonder if he's dead. He was pretty old, and the food was decent and not just slop. But I don't know if that was enough to escape his wrath...

I wake up to the absence of heat, barely an hour or so before the sun rises. So I know he laid with me after I fell asleep.

I nod to him as he stretches for his meditation, wordlessly walking to find the stream before he can say anything.

I come back cold and ready; I've thoroughly scrubbed every inch of fur out of hopes that I'd forget exactly how every adjustment of his hands felt on my body. The thrumming in my system, now that it's started, hasn't stopped since. It gets quiet enough to almost ignore, but never disappears. He greets me almost cheerily.

"Good morning, wife."

I murmur a greeting to him, and he seems to smirk to himself as I fold my bedclothes and strap them to the pack, hauling the whole thing onto my shoulders.

The days are rough, although I learn to travel through the trees quickly. It's only because he pushes me so hard; on my own time, and without the overbearingly smug intimacy between us, I would've never left the ground.

We spend more and more time up in the trees, to the point of my exhaustion and his relenting to carry me back to the ground. I'm too tired to care about touches that last too long, or embraces that feel too tight. At least that's what I tell myself.

The branches don't look so intimidating anymore. Neither does the height. I'm eyeing the ground one day, daringly, and he prods at me from his lazy lean against the branch next to me.

"You going down?"

I don't take my eyes off the ground, feeling that dull panic set in but managing it alongside my constant, buzzing arousal. "Gonna try."

He nods and sits up, apparently ready to save me, but not offering any advice on how to descend.

I start off easy: leaping to a lower branch, not even a meter down. Then a neighboring tree, with a further drop. My stomach steels against the next few drops, claws always digging into whatever I land on, and I try to contain my amazement that I'm actually doing this. In my new, athletic body, with skills I'd never dreamed of. In a place out of my wildest dreams, with...

I fumble on my next landing and drop to a crouch, and he's now a few branches above me, patiently watching. I do what his eyes are demanding and stand, although it feels strange now with him openly on my every move.

You don't realize how high up you are until you have to climb down yourself. I'm about halfway down, and my prior exhaustion is pushing through the adrenaline. We have several hours of hiking - jogging - to do after this. My legs are burning, which I'm used to, but now everything else is as well.

Meters above the ground, and I eye the distance, wondering if I could ever just drop down like he does. There are very few branches, and they won't support my weight. At least, I'm unwilling to test them. The neighboring trees are all the same story, so...

I hug the trunk and resolve to get down with claws and willpower. He watches me, mildly interested, from the forest floor. I get a few feet before I slip, landing in arms that meet me in less than a blink.

"You knew I'd catch you. Probably should've let you hit the ground, made you more careful."

I lay, shaking, in his arms. "I never know if you'll catch me."

He studies me, quiet. "Very brave," he acknowledges, sinking down to the leaves at the base of the tree. I start to gird myself against what's coming, whatever it is. Maybe extreme tiredness will keep me from just opening to him. Does it even matter?

He's cross-legged, cradling my body even though it's spilling out of his arms and lap. His hand comes up to the junction of my shoulder and neck, and I wince, but keep still.

"Pulled this," he says under his breath, maybe to himself. Before his fingers start to knead, accurately and efficiently at the muscle.

I melt. Really and truly, each time he lets up, my body wilts a little more across the surfaces it's draped across. Before long, I'm trying to keep my eyes open, and if whatever I was could purr, that's what I'd be doing.

"Wife."

"Hmm?" I think to sit up, but he lays his hand on my shoulder, keeping me still. He starts rubbing yawning circles into my chest, soothing me. Such an odd sensation to have no breasts there.

"Can you do these things where you come from?"

My eyes were cracked, but now I open them a bit wider. He usually saves these conversations for when we're sitting in front of the fire.

"Not really. We don't have claws... or strength like this."

He's quiet for a few more beats, staring straight ahead into the density of trees ahead of us. "I see."

His hand stops making circles over my chest, and I don't know what to do, so I sit there, feeling something akin to contentment.

"Okay," he sighs, eventually. I open my eyes, unaware that I'd fallen asleep. He stands, arms carrying me up with him, and allows me to stand shortly after.

"Tomorrow, all day up there," he decides, "And we'll get farther every day."

I murmur some sort of assent, and we just keep going.

...

"What's wrong, wife? I sleep next to you every night."

I watch warily as he huddles down around me, wrapping a solid arm around my waist. He's never approached while I'm awake before, and gets up before I do. I try to relax in his hold, but I'm not too sure I'll ever fall asleep.

The heat is welcome against my back as the temperature dips, but I remain awake. And of course, so does he. I feel him lift his head, and then feel slight annoyance as he perches his chin on my arm.

"I'm not going to keep creeping over to you after you're asleep to keep you comfortable. You can sleep now."

I never asked him to?! I wonder what would happen if I said that out loud. The warmth does feel nice...

I wake up in the pitch black to shivering. His arm is still locked around me, but he's turned more towards the ground, grunting and murmuring in strange tones. And though I've never seen one before, my first, stupid thought is a seizure.

I struggle to turn around in my sleeping blankets and his grip, until I can face him head on. He's thrashing, but still asleep. I hesitate before wrestling an arm out of my wrappings, and brush what I think is his shoulder.

I'm pinned to the ground and confronted with a bone-chilling snarl, and I'm physically unable to breathe for several seconds on fear alone. When I can, I whisper, croakily. "You okay?"

"Mm," I hear above me, the weight shifting after a moment of hesitation to a less imposing pressure.

I wait for anything, some word or movement, but he just hovers above me, panting softly. I brace myself and reach out again, this time making contact with his chest. The breathing stutters, and I pull at his fur. "Lay down?"

His body disappears, and I'm left alone.

...

"Faster," he calls, and I huff in disbelief. I'm borderline wheezing already, trying to keep up with his light-footed hops. He didn't take the bag from me when we started climbing up, and I hoped he'd notice his error, but he left it with me, and I wasn't about to say anything. Guess I'm strong enough to hold it.

I've strapped it as tightly to my back as I can manage, and it's an adjustment jumping with it. I misjudged my center of gravity the first fifteen minutes or so until I got it down, and as soon as he saw that, he picked up the pace to a flight through the trees.

We go for a while. Much longer than I've ever been up here before. I don't dare stop, but I start panting wildly, until he stops and looks at me.

I wait for him to say something, but he doesn't.

So I crouch on my current branch, diligently practicing keeping both hands off the trunk, and wait. As casually as I can under searing golden eyes.

I'm breathing a bit more normally when he turns back around and starts up again, and while I silently thank him, I try to close the distance between us.

He notices, I think.

I eventually can't get within a few hundred feet of him, and while I know it was a fruitless pursuit, at least it was fun. Until I hop a few more branches and can't see him.

A purposeful chuckle behind me, and I know the game's been flipped. I start sprinting on the branches, the excitement building until I'm laughing in response, but I never get any farther from him. At least I assume - he won't let me hear where he's at this time, only giving it away with the occasional leaf rustles behind me.

My limbs start to tire, and before I can slow down he drops down in front of me again.

"Having fun?"

I perch again, breath inflating my chest in great gusts. And nod.

The corners of his lips turn up and I feel lighter.

...

I wake up hot.

But since the turn of the weather, he hasn't been sleeping next to me as often. He's stretching now, getting ready to plop down and empty his mind of thoughts, but I watch him for a few unnecessary moments.

Of course, he notices. Turns to me, locks eyes.

I wriggle out of my nest then, just knowing that at any moment he'd come get me. As I roll up my bedding, lash it to my pack, turn away to source the stream that seems to get farther away each time I go, I feel eyes on me, and I can't distinguish between dread and excitement.

The next few days, we run hard, and he doesn't come closer to me than he needs to. I push further so that I'm too exhausted for the heat in my stomach to come back, but it's unrelenting. Every morning is a struggle to tear my eyes away from his flexing body, and nothing helps.

Until one morning, I've dunked my entire head under the stream for an indefinite amount of time, and I feel him appear. He stands there until I come up, and then sits cross-legged at the shore.

"You're taking too long."

I nod. Probably. I've been bathing a bit longer, trying to freeze out the worst of the feelings for the day.

I approach the shoreline, ready to brave the open air and his eyes, when he stands again, eyeing the water.

I go still.

He slips into the water and reaches me before I can recognize the intention in his eyes.

I'm folded up into an embrace, and soon clinging to him, a lot like the early days of coming down from the trees.

Only his hands are running over me, and I'm gasping against his shoulder, urging them on. His fur is gradually bogged down with freezing water, but he's still a furnace against me, fingers stroking along my back and smoothing over my hips and ass. His fingers venture so close, but he only passes by.

"What do you need, wife?"

Fuck. Damnit. I shiver against him and he presses harder, surer, against my skin. Claw tips dragging underneath the fur.

I open my mouth and just huff broken breaths over the gurgling of the water.

"Hm?" He trails a hand up my spine, carefully cupping the back of my neck, and I groan, embarrassment far from my mind. My tail is flipped over my shoulder, a sodden, agitated rope.

"P... lease?" I whisper, through teeth gritted against both the heat and the cold. His stray hand stops stroking my thighs and slips down to hover over me, ready to plunge. I throw my hips back to sit down on his fingers, but he moves them further away.

"No. What do you need?"

I throw my face into his neck and exhale heavily before drawing in another breath. "I need you, please."

Water's streaming from our bodies as he hauls me out of it, everything more visible now as the light starts to return to the sky. He starts walking towards the treeline.

The need is worse out here, without the stun of cold, and I breathe in sharply at the depth of it.

"Oh. Please? Here. I can't wait."

He holds me away from him, giving me a once over with gleaming eyes. He looks terrifying in concentration. I drag my body against him again.

He sets me down and pulls me over by a grappling hand to a flat, unforgiving rock overlaying the stream, presenting and open to the rising sun.

I'm immediately covered by his body, and his hands start raking through my fur. I'm trying to touch him, but he holds himself above me and shackles my wrists with one hand, neatly above my head.

I fight against it, harder than I've fought anything presented to me thus far. Until he sweeps his hand down over my body and slides three fingers right into me.

I'm still bucking against his body, but out of sheer pleasure. He smothers me with his weight and listens to my cries as he plunges his fingers in and out of me, his other hand unyielding and holding my arms down against the rock.

I come almost immediately, breathing through steady strokes and at the top of the next crest before I know it. The second one hurts painfully well, and he rubs consolingly at the nerves above to bring me through the sharp, too-soon pain of the next.

I'm sore before long, but still whining, possibly begging. He lifts his body up to stare at mine, hand still a blur below.

I want him next, now. I will him to look into my eyes and relent, but he just brings me over again, finally snatching his hand out of me to smooth over my hips.

"Wife," he says gravely, staring at the sloppy, foamy mess.

I'm shuddering and panting beneath him, praying for him to drag his pants down over his hips and relieve me.

"I'm going to wait until you're out of this... mood. And then I'll come to you again."

Tears. He laughs at them, tucks his head into my neck, and embraces me one last time before popping his fingers into his mouth as he rises up off of me. I'm in a crouching, pouncing position before I know it, and before he turns away towards the trees, his eyes look wild and sharp.

And daring.

I hold myself there, legs quivering too much to even entertain a chase for someone I couldn't catch on my best day.

I return to the site twice-bathed and clothed, and we don't speak. But he seems pleased.

...

He doesn't stop for me anymore, expecting me to put up bursts of energy to catch up to him. Which I always eventually do, as he lowers his breakneck speed occasionally. We've been traveling for so long, and still all I see are more trees. I don't know what his goal is, and though I could ask during quiet moments in front of the fire, I don't.

He's watching me one morning as I scale the closest tree, and I feel a spark of want igniting. I start the chase slowly, and he dogs my every step, letting me build up to long leaps that barely touch the branches before we're off again. I hear his claws scratching against tree trunks every now and then, so I try it, scrabbling for purchase but maintaining my pace. A rumble of a laugh behind me.

"I'm going to fuck sense back into you," he sneers into my ear, and my heart bounds away with me.

I run as fast as I can, for as long as I can, the sun's rays actually reaching the level we're at. I wonder how far up I've wandered when he calls again.

"Come back down."

He's meters below, and I start down, sometimes jumping, sometimes throwing myself trunk to trunk. Clumsier than he would, but pleased and eager for whatever he's got planned.

Apprehension sets in as I reach the ground. Hanging on the last branch, I let myself drop onto the leaf litter and stand, with him nowhere to be seen.

I wander for a few minutes until I see a clearing through the trees, much like the ones we settle in at night. He's sitting in the middle, cross-legged. I enter the clearing and crouch, a few yards away.

"Come here."

I approach cautiously, suddenly unsure. Maybe he wanted me cooled down so he could inflict pain. Maybe he's going to mock me for wanting to be with him when he never would've considered me worthy.

He pulls me down to the ground and pushes me forward onto my hands, rising behind me to curve his body around mine.

"You're so easily caught, wife," he teases, pulling at my coverings and pulling my hips back to his.

"Ah... hmm," I breathe, settling into the easy strokes of his hands.

Hot flesh is prodding at mines all too soon, and I arch under his hands. He holds my hips in place and bears down on me, the head overwhelming and wide. I groan as it pops through a ready but tense ring of muscle, and he begins to sink in, luxuriously, the head of him pushing my insides to an uncomfortable limit.

"Mmm," he breathes, behind me. He repeats the sound, more gravelly, with more bearing in his chest. The rod pulses inside of me, and he parts the joining of our fur, probably to watch as he pulls back.

He expects me to take the first few thrusts solidly, so I do, widening my stance as he pulls me back down onto him. I feel the whining begin to rise out of my chest and when I open my mouth to take in more air, it erupts as a chuffing growl.

He starts rocking into me after that, sliding one hand down under my belly, the other pressing at my back.

I'm ragged. Braced for his weight and shuddering, crooning to him as he digs into me. All else is quiet, and appreciatively still. Even as he lowers his torso down onto mine, and begins licking at the tensed muscle of my shoulder. Nipping with his teeth, soon grabbing it lightly and pricking the skin in momentary abandon.

Growls are ripping out of his throat, and in an immediate change of pace, he presses one hand to the soil and the other to my back, until my upper body is on the ground.

Slamming into me now, he strokes my back, then hips, never losing the practiced tempo he's settled into. Fingers creep around underneath me and set me off so violently that I crumble beneath him, electrified.

He's still sawing into me, propping my hips up to thrust uninterrupted, and I murmur, absurdly pleased. The sound is vulgar and wet now with my cum, and he uses his fingers to coat my pelvis with it. There are no words at this point; there haven't been for some time. But I feel when he's ready to sink into me for the last time, and I get my legs back under me to try and brace for it.

His hips become a piston behind me, and after one last, sound thrust, he drags himself out and relaxes back in, rolling his hips and groaning into my neck.

...

Things go back to normal, or rather, normal at a higher height. We travel solely through the trees now, coming down every night to eat and rest, but leaping high above, a longer distance every day as my body allows.

But... I don't get a period here. I know next to nothing about the reproductive process of what I am, much less of whatever humanoid snow leopard creature he is. We seem compatible: both mammals, both catlike. But I had no heat. Or...

The desperation a few weeks before he had me in the clearing, that's what that was. I think back to how he had me pinned to the ground just to give me some relief from it. He waited until it was over, then. Maybe he knew he had to, to avoid pregnancy?

Back home, you could get pregnant off of precum, off of ejaculation. In your cycle, out of your cycle. In menopause, whatever. When he was finishing, I actually believed he might've been pulling out, until I realized he very much wasn't. And I certainly didn't have the presence of mind to tell him to, either.

He came in me once, and it was glorious, and if I'm assuming correctly, unproductive. But I don't know how to bring up birth control to a hardened, bloody, warrior of legends. I just hope I'm not growing the continuation of his legacy inside of me at the present time. The weeks pass, and I gradually calm down, certain that I'm fine now, womb empty as always. At least until the next time, when the fruits of our labor might take.

"You seem very far away lately." I think he's doubled-back to drop down next to me like usual, until I realize he might've just let me catch up. I'm really out of it.

"Oh. That's true... sorry. I'll pay attention."

He snuffles at my forehead, and I push my head into his shoulder before I perch lightly, waiting for him to start moving again. He watches me for another moment before leading me onwards.

...

Another day waking up hot. I don't understand. I don't know if it's supposed to happen this often, but I drag myself out of my wrappings, mindfully keeping my eyes off of his limber, bending body. I can control it this time.

When I return, making effort to take no more time than usual, he's standing over my assortment of blankets.

"Morning."

He meanders away towards the trees, and I hustle to pack and climb after him.

The next couple of days are long and hard, and at the end of them it's warm enough that I don't need all my blankets, but I use them anyway. Maybe I put off a smell or something.

Day three, we're prancing along as usual when he suddenly starts back down. I follow without a second thought, and as I straighten up from the final drop I'm pushed against a tree.

"Wait-"

"Nnnooo," he slurs, huffing and panting for the first time I've ever seen. "Sit still."

I'm already dizzy with his touch, and I'm coming out of the tail end of my heat, just barely. He looks like he's being held back by a single thread of restraint.

He's lapping at the fur on my neck, grumbling. "The blankets make it worse. They concentrate your scent. Stop it."

Oh. "Okay."

I wait for him to let me down, but he just holds me there, shuddering. I resolve to wash my bedding when we stop for the night, right before he pushes up and away from me. He looks uncomfortable.

"I'm not... anymore, I don't think." He looks directly at me and I cross my arms against his stare. "We could."

"I'd be fucking you for the scent you're carrying. It's a bad precedent to give in to." He regards me closer. "I'd be breeding you to fill you with cubs."

My eyes can't support the weight of his anymore, and I seek refuge by letting my gaze away from his.

He laughs, achingly, still taking deep breaths of the "fuck-me" blankets on my back. "Let's go, wife. We'll be somewhere safe soon."

For the rest of the day I wonder what that means. What's the safe place, and what are his plans when we get there? Is he holding out to breed me in my heat?

The thought swamps me with trepidation. Living in this world on my own with a convicted murderous felon is one thing, but bringing children into it? How would they be raised? Like him?

I kneel at the stream once again, wondering how to wash my blankets. He didn't say anything when I carried them out of the clearing, before he even left to hunt. I hear a rustle and brace myself for a second round of touching and tension, but raise my eyes to a sleek, fawn-colored cat intensely staring at me from the trees at the other side of the stream.

He stands and walks forward, grinning. A lot bigger than what I first thought.

"Pretty tiger. Would you like some company? I can tell you're aching."

I break out of the stupor of seeing another creature besides myself and my... husband... for a number of months. And stand. "No, thank you."

He stops at the opposite shoreline to look me up and down, and I grow nervous in the quiet but stand my ground.

"Scent says otherwise." He leaps airily and gracefully across the stream, fur catching the fading light of day. "We probably couldn't make cubs anyway, we could just have a nice time. So do consider."

I feel my tail swiping agitatedly behind me, and he smiles again, roguishly. Probably thinks I'm considering, but I'm just nervous that his head will be separated from his body at any moment by a streak of white and black dropping from the trees.

"No, I'm alright. Please leave me be." I remember the strain and barely-held restraint of this afternoon, and am wary of this creature's reaction if he gets any closer. I don't know how to fight.

He shrugs, prettily. "I'll be nearby for a few days if you change your mind. Hope you choose me to help you out." A final wink and he bounds back across the stream, disappearing back into the trees.

I bundle my things up unwashed and break back into the treeline, where my husband is standing with a handful of what looks like skinned rabbits. His pupils are bigger than normal in the coming darkness, and are trained on the opposite shoreline.

"We good?" I shuffle on my feet, but he doesn't look at me.

"Worried, wife?"

I nod, but his eyes don't lose any of their intensity, and are still fixated on a point in the darkness.

He drops the meat to the leaves beneath him and steps forward to run firm hands over me. He grabs the bag and launches it somewhere behind him, so far that I don't hear it land.

His strokes become harder until I'm being pushed down to the ground, clothing being pushed aside for hasty movement. He runs his fingers over my exposed slit and grunts, pleased. That I'm dry? Did he think-

A tongue is stuffed into me.

My breath catches and then releases on a low, questioning moan. He roughly saws his tongue into and out of me, saliva spiraling out of his jaws to slicken the way. My breathing becomes choppy, and when he lets his tongue slither out to start lapping at the surrounding flesh, I hear more rustling cloth.

He buries himself into me without warning, and I grunt and whine until he's fully mounted. He pets the exposed fur along my back where my shirt has ridden up before he starts pumping, powering into me in an blatant, proud claim.

An angry growl rips through his chest and he starts plunging harder, the slick and sucking sounds now louder than my own moans. His hands leave my waist and come down outside of mines, and I watch them clench and furl in the soil and dust.

I expect the bite at the back of my neck, securing me in place as he speeds up. I don't expect to wail when I feel his teeth latch on, his body going rigid in response. He digs into me and seems to relish in my surrender beneath him, waiting for my walls to start sucking at his dick before he pushes heavy, hot lines of his claim as deep as he can get into my stomach.

After a few moments petting my flank he lets me up, only to repeatedly cuff my neck in an almost childish manner and rub his head against mine.

He finally releases me, positively swollen with satisfaction, and bends to collect the rabbits. I just follow him back through the trees. He stoops down and hands me my bag from the forest floor, and when we're back in the clearing, I dump my bedding into the fire.

We eat our dinner raw, and every time I shiver from the sensation of him dripping back out of me, he smiles.

...

We're approaching civilization. He moves us further from the stream, but we still encounter villagers, children, and sometimes soldiers all times of day, walking unknowingly beneath us. There are nights when he doesn't let us camp at all, instead drawing me up against him on a wide, tabletop branch and coaxing me to sleep by tracing his hands up and down my back.

He lets me trail behind him as he hunts, and for the first few days I'm scared that he'll begin going after the sentient animals around us. I don't know if that would qualify as a cannibal or just a predator in this world. I'm not sure how this all works, but luckily he keeps bringing a steady diet of blank-eyed rabbits and other small, non anthropomorphic creatures.

I'm a tiger. That's what that other cat called me. I look down at my arms and legs and wonder at the predominantly black coat. I only see brown or white underneath the blackout of stripes, where there's space at all.

Well. Tiger's got stripes, I'm a tiger.

We're skirting around two very close towns one day, rather than trying to go between them, when he goes very still ahead of me. I draw close to the trunk of the branch I'm on, just in time for a stone to go flying past my ear.

"You saw it, right? The tail?" I hear below me. There's shuffling, and a grunt. "Hey, what are you doing?"

Kids. I feel eyes on me and look at him, high above and staring daggers below us. This won't do. I lean over and peer at two young.... Deer?

"What are you two doing?"

The bigger one of the two gasps and falls off of the low branch he'd been trying in vain to climb up, on sharp dainty hooves. The smaller looks terrified.

"We thought you were a monster! Ma said if we come back with bites taken out of us we'd get in trouble."

"Shhh!" the older brother interrupts, still splayed out on the ground and struggling to rise in the slippery leaf piles. Must've just rained in this area.

Eyes on me from above, more intense than ever. "Well, I don't eat little fawns, so you can stop throwing things at me. Go help your brother up."

The little deer nods dutifully and bends to help his brother, who swats away his hand. I don't know if they look up, but I'm gone long before they do, after a brewing, racing leopard. After we're out of sight of any form of life, and high, high up in the trees, he stops. And looks at me.

I blink at him, quite scared, but relieved at the lack of anger in his face.

"We need to get far from here. They'll be sending out soldiers before night." He stares down at the forest floor, far away for a moment. "Do you like children?"

I tilt my head, the question unexpected. "I... sure?"

The right question would be to ask if I want kids, wouldn't it?

Do I want kids? With him?

"Do you want to have children?"

OH SHIT HE ASKED WHAT THE FUCK-

He snorts at the look on my face, leaps to my branch and watches me steady myself with the renewed swaying. "Not right this moment, wife. But... if you do, it'd considerably change the course of what we do next."

"How?"

"We can't stay here and safely raise a family. If you don't want any... we only have to worry about ourselves."

"Well what do you want? That's important to cons-"

"You."

I snatch my lips closed and feel my gut drop. Why would he say that? What am I supposed to say to that?

I can feel him staring. My eyebrows furrow even harder. "I um... I've always imagined I'd have kids. But I don't n-"

He shakes his head. "It's decided."

I look up to him. "What's decided?"

"We're leaving here."

...

His eyes are trained on me from that moment on.

I know he's sensing whatever's going to happen before I can, and I clear mile after mile, waiting for it to settle over me. He's trailing behind me again, slowing when I slow and picking up when I speed ahead, occasionally sparked with a sudden paranoia of the larger creature behind me.

The sun advances while we do. I finally begin to tire too much to jump properly, and when I scrabble for the second time on a branch with trembling limbs I slow to a crouch. He alights on my branch and peers down at me, and I straighten up, trying to contain my fatigue.

I expect him to back up to give me space but he doesn't, crowding me against the trunk and directing his intense stare over all my features. If I could sweat I would, but I only manage to part my lips and steal extra strains of air, tinged with the warmth of his body and... something else.

"Tired?"

I shake my crowded head and my sore arms, wondering why he's so close. I sift the air across the roof of my mouth again, sure that there's something important there.

He backs up as soon as it hits me. Whatever pungent, sultry scent is clinging to his fur has permeated my exhaustion and set something basic inside of me loose.

"There we go, wife," he grins, backing away further. "Now run."

I stand in bewilderment for a moment. My body isn't any less tired, I'm still an unsteady tigress prancing off the branches just below the canopy of a million-mile forest. But the flight in my body is overwhelming.

He harrumphs at my dilemma, seconds before his kind smile drops from his face.

"Stubborn."

He rushes forward and pins me to the trunk of my tree, sinking teeth into the junction of my shoulder as he did months before when controlling my heats. This time, though, he bites deeper and I feel the pinch of my skin under his teeth.

I cry out, unable to flee at this altitude, the pain magnified on account of being unaccompanied by passion.

He rocks his jaws from side to side ever so slightly. I whine and beat one fist against his chest, and he laughs now, the sensation of teeth tips disappearing and reappearing against my neck.

I'm suddenly alone against the tree trunk, and he's crouching a couple trees ahead. The sun's setting behind him now. And I'm breathing hard, shaken and confused.

His eyes are glinting from the shadow of the trunk and he rumbles again: "Run."

This time I do. His laugh rumbles around me, and the flood of adrenaline to my system has me racing over the branches faster than I ever have. My eyes widen in the dark, catching every detail of my surroundings, and for moment after moment, it's just the bark of countless branches scraping against my body.

He drops down to the left of me, eyes searing through me and chest heaving. I angle right as quickly as I can, and notice the quiet throb of my body beginning. Shoulder stinging and lungs burning, but it's there, and I know it's what he's been waiting for.

Moonlight gradually appears through the trees ahead, and I hear the rushing of a stream. I begin to descend, only noticing the shaky strain of my limbs once I touch down onto soft, springy soil.

There's a building across the trickle of stream before me. Dark and lonely in a sprawling, flowery clearing, and undisturbed but for the blinding beam of moonlight falling over it.

A hand appears on the side of my neck and I jump. He chuckles low and pushes my head to the side, brushing through the fur of my shoulder and stroking over the slight bruise.

"You tire too easily. But you are fast," he purrs, and he drops his hand. I want it back.

I turn to him and just drink him in freely with my eyes, the way his fur plays over the muscles in his chest and arms.

"Bold little tigress," he comments, lunging at me.

I gasp and giggle, ducking and bounding away, knowing that if he wanted me caught, I'd be caught. He chases me halfway up the trunk of a tree at the edge of a clearing and I tuck into a roll as I fling myself off of a low branch. He's right above me as I try to spring up out of it, and I flop back against the grass.

"Ready?"

I nod and smile, giddy and high off of his scent. I start pressing myself to him, bathing in the musk rolling off of him. He presses me down into the ground again and I feel some level of desperation prick at the corner of my mind.

He notices it on my face. "Calm, calm. I want to do this right."

He tugs my clothing off as I squirm to assist him, immediately rubbing my freed limbs against his body as soon as I'm released.

"Wife..." he huffs, pulling at his own. Thick, storm-gray fur, adorned in pitch black ringlets and running under my hands like ground fog. "Lay still."

I let my hands drop obediently, but I flip over underneath him as soon as his last stitch of clothing is off.

"Please?"

He's stroking himself behind me, I can tell. "Please what?"

"Please come inside." I roll back against him, fidgeting until he's nestled at the apex of my legs. I shudder to imagine the power I've splayed myself open to, have turned my back to and spread myself open for. Briefly I feel vulnerability, fear, and I don't recognize the haughty growl easing out of my chest until his hands are on my hips and his teeth are clamping down on the back of my neck.

He sighs, slipping past a copious amount of fluid to seat himself inside of me. My body melts again, at ease, and my eyes fall closed.

Slick, steady thrusts. The moon falls across my lids and creeps into the cracked slits when I dare to open my eyes to the sky, and his fur is practically glowing behind me.

"Good?" he purrs.

"Mm."

He pants through a prolonged chuckle and drives himself into me with a few more degrees of intensity. I yelp and sigh, squeezing around him in appeasement.

"I'm going to fill you up, Wife. We'll make strong cubs. Beautiful cubs. Is that what you want?"

I widen my legs for the fury of throws against me, and though I try to respond, the only thing coming from my throat now are low chuffs and whines.

"There we go, Wife. I knew you were for me when I saw you. Everything on you strong," he heaves. "I almost couldn't see you against the darkness. What a pr... mm. Mm."

His body takes over and I labor underneath it, bracing for his strength partially unbridled. I lay my head against the soft grass and revel in the sensation of being mindlessly reamed, pinned and spread by a creature that could break me in half if he had a mind to.

The sounds behind me change, and I assume the position he favors, my ass as far upwards as I can manage with my chest pressed to the ground. He eases my behind closer to the ground though, and in a chorus of purely bestial grunts and whines, he begins a telltale highspeed sawing that I know the finale of. Whatever rolling, pulsing high I've been on for the past few hours is now mirrored around him, and he stutters and rushes his hips to drive his seed into a welcoming chasm. He keeps me like this for a while, lapping at my skin, at the aching bite marks at my shoulder.

"We have a choice to make, Wife. Something I didn't think about before." He slides off of me and pulls me into his lap, massaging at my chest as he seems happy to do on occasion.

"Hmm?"

"Yes. I've forced your heat, and it will take some time for you to come out of it. We'll continue, of course, but I don't know if leaving here during pregnancy would be harmful."

I roll off of his lap and he rolls onto me immediately. Though I'm sated for now, I'm swarmed with the desire to feel him around me. "That is an issue."

He stretches my arms wide. "No, not an issue. A choice. A child here, or a child there? It will be hard to stop now that we've started, but I'm sure we could manage."

I nuzzle up under his chin and throw my whole body into it, seeing his receptiveness. "Depends. What's the length of time for pregnancy here? It's nine months where I'm from."

He murmurs something and rolls me over him. "Oh. Maybe three, four months?... But a longer pregnancy would give us time to settle."

I wriggle on top of him, and chuckle at the face he makes. "Then I guess I could handle it if it meant more time. What do we do?"

He sighs. "Well, first, I stop touching you."

He stands, and I sit up, not comprehending.

"What? You chose leaving before children."

"I... oh." I did. He offers me his hand, and I take it, mournful but accommodating. I'm fighting the urge to fold into him again as soon as I'm up, and he nods at my expression.

"You'll have to have some discipline. Come."

I follow him into the cabin, and only when I think about it do I realize it looks suspiciously like a building from my world. I try not to dog his every step, but he notices me getting closer and grabs my hand anyway, pulling me forward to stand beside him at the first doorway in the hall. A bed from my world, although the rest of the room looks a bit more traditional.

"We sleep here, we wake up somewhere else. That's how... Wife." I peel myself off of his back and step away, but he pulls me forward again. "No. You'll stand here and control yourself."

That empty, pining feeling is growing stronger, and I clasp my hands together while his scent seemingly permeates the room. He grabs my chin and I blink rapidly at a face full of consternation. I try to keep my eyes trained on his, but as he watches, I feel my mind melting back into whatever he'd broken it into. He's dribbling out of me. My eyes lose focus and trail along his arms. "I'm sorry," I cringe, to his pitying expression.

He sighs and his hold on my face turns into a caress. "We'll manage. Just, keep that in your head. Come lay down."

My resolve fades as soon as I'm next to him and not being touched. I turn to huddle by myself, and I hear his rumbling sigh. "I did not think about the repercussions of... mm."

I'm pulled back into his hold and in the first second of attempting to "have some discipline," I begin to fidget. He sighs, and lifts his arm. After a long moment, I drag myself back to my corner. The bed's not big enough to not feel the heat coming off of him.

He sits up after five minutes of torture. "If we don't sleep, this doesn't work."

I turn over and watch him lean against the headboard. And then I notice this feels suspiciously like a mattress.

And I see a bare arm.

"Uh... no, I think it did." I hold my hands out in front of myself immediately, and there they are. Scarred as hell, but mine. I look up into his face.

Massive, but not as bulky as he'd been. Skin decorated with an assortment of scars, and sun-seared to the point of being shades away from my own.

"Why are we different colors? Should I be more brown?" Hands reach for me, and pause under my armpits before proceeding to pull me up. "Very strange."

It doesn't feel like his strength has diminished at all. He pulls me into his lap, and I wonder at the other-

I flinch a bit as he passes his hands over my chest. He watches me suck in air. "Does this hurt? You couldn't have been with child, why are they so swollen?"

"That's normal, it's just a part of women's bodies here. Oh."

"What?"

I'm very obviously staring, but I let my eyes fall over him just the same. He's beautiful. Eyes the lightest brown possible in reference to the golden gaze he left behind, and an unexpected head full of grays.

A hand passes over my chest again, and I jump. "You seem to be able to concentrate now," he prompts.

I feel my cheeks grow hot with more than a small amount of embarrassment. "Yeah, I don't think the um... we can get pregnant at any time here, so there's no need to go into heat."

"That's why you have teats."

I hold a cool, unfurred hand to my cheek, my body feeling foreign. "Kinda. It's weird."

He's suddenly standing, and my legs are around his waist, clinging while he fights for balance at first. He meanders around the room, and although I'm no longer burdened by my heat, I feel myself growing warmer just the same.

"Can I walk?"

He looks at me and shifts his hands underneath me. "Why?"

I tilt my head. "For... because I'd just like to."

He lets me slide down his body and my foot pats against the floor. Only one, because he's got one of my thighs secure against his waist, and is slowly kneading at the unfamiliar mass of it.

"Ah..." I sway briefly and he draws my body up against his, starting to snuffle and nip at my neck.

"I can breed you now." I flush deeply, aware of the confidence in his palms. Not so much has changed after all.

He leads me back to the bed and I crawl in, plopping down with my back against the sheets but turning to watch him hesitate. Oh.

"Oh. I... sorry." I twist to get myself on my hands and knees, but he stops me and pulls me down with a fascinated expression.

"No, I see. You're accessible from here." He massages over my pussy casually with a few fingers, then again when I squirm. "Oh, this feels... hmm."

He leans over me and gazes into my eyes. This is different. I must look shaken because he starts stroking my sides.

"Wife, how is it done here? You should show me."

I blink as he murmurs to himself, running his hands over various parts of my body. Years doing foreign labors and tasks in a hard, durable world has changed me, but I still must be very soft by his standards. He's swirling his hand in the concave hollow of my stomach, and runs one back and forth over a thigh until it flexes. He grips the muscle and chuckles. "Show me."

"Oh. Well..." I lace my arms around his neck and tug at him, trying to pull his face down to mine, but he stares at me, confused and unyielding. I suddenly feel all sorts of giddy. My big, uncomprehending hulk of a husband.

I sit up halfway underneath him, trying not to smile, and while he stares at me, bewildered as I get closer, I press my mouth to his.

He makes a muffled chirp in his throat and I settle into the contact, pressing my mouth against his for a heavier kiss. His makes no movement under mine, but he leans into it, grasping at my leg again and holding the underside in his hand. Possibly for comfort. Like a teddy bear.

The thought makes me smile into his mouth, and he catches it. He quirks his head, amused and engaged. "What's funny, wife?"

I pull back, feeling adventurous, and run my hand down his hip. "It's strange, I feel as if I'm in a position of power all of a sudden."

His expressions flutter across his face but the sparkle in his eyes never wavers. "Is that so? How powerful can you get?"

I emit a short little laugh out of surprise, and then I pause. He's being serious. I look him up and down and gather my wits, lifting again to push confidently against his shoulder. He gradually moves it back under the guidance of my hand. Torn, scarred, and bulging with muscle, even without fur.

"Lay down." He obliges and I settle over him, my legs splayed over a body I can finally peruse at my leisure. I run my hands over the puffy, sturdy abdomen, spend some time pushing my thumbs into the muscle of his chest. He murmurs at the feeling, and though I want to dwell over everything I haven't had the chance to see, I hook my hands over his shoulders and pull myself down to kiss him again.

Small pecks against his mouth, and he eventually catches on, meeting my lips with the same smug interest he's held since we got here. I dazedly wonder where here is as I slide my right hand down between us, catching his dick with an intake of breath from us both.

I pump idly as I let my mouth leave his and wander over his jaw, down his neck and into the thick column of his throat. His body is easy to worship.

He's holding my hips with a default grip, fingers gripping and releasing in an alternating pattern like a kneading cat. I sigh into his neck and rub my thumb over the top of his dick, now slick with precum.

"Wife," he sighs into the air, seemingly in response.

"Hmm?" I press a more substantial kiss over his lips, and he meets it immediately.

He's silent, and I take it as a note to kick things up further. I pull my head away, and he stares after me as I sweep my tongue over the flat of my hand and return it to his pelvis, gripping a bit harder and roughly stroking down the length. He's ready, am I ready? I shift to straddle him upright. And realize I'm leaking. I grind my hips down on his stomach at the sensation and he grips me tighter, grunting and releasing his breath with another sigh.

I press my left hand into his chest and lean my body forward, tilting his dick up towards me, and with a push off my legs I'm in the air above it. Both our eyes are below then, watching myself take him in. When my lap meets his I'm huffing, overcome by the fullness and trying to remember the next steps.

He runs a hand up my back in my stillness and I press into it, feeling my body clench and roll around him. There it is. I go to work and he grunts under me again, stilted and croaking. It pleases me, immensely.

I ride and roll as well as I know how, and when I have my bearings, I begin to bounce. At some point he becomes an active party, maybe after I begin to shudder with building feelings. He pants lightly as he manipulates my hips with his hands, meeting my drops with eager, purposeful thrusts. I steadily begin to fall apart over him, and I lean over his chest as I succumb to my orgasm. It brings a whole new sensation and I whimper into his neck, but he continues pounding into me as my pussy sucks sweetly at him down below.

I roll decisively to the side, and at first he refuses to let me budge, absorbed in his new task, but I persistently throw myself into the mattress and he eventually lets me go. I lay back and spread my shaking legs wide. "Your turn."

He's on me in a moment, in me in two, and I'm soon moaning in response to his helpless grunts. It feels good to be so lost, and with surprise I accept his lips moving passionately over mine. Nibbling, nipping at my neck. He grabs a firm chunk of skin at my shoulder with flat teeth, and unexpectedly I feel the same visceral satisfaction, whimpering out into the cold air as his hips take on a jerking, pounding movement.

"Good job, wife. I'm going to give you... mmh..." He leans back, hips never slowing, and at the new angle I buck beneath him, suddenly desperate at the hot, grinding feeling.

"Good, good," he chuckles breathily, letting all but my hips jerk and flail. He erupts into me, pumping determinedly and rubbing riling fingers into my clit. My body's sucking at him, clenched so tight that my abdomen spasms under the spread of his thumbs on either side of my waist.

I want to tell him he doesn't need to stay inside me as he settles to my side, but I just push forward into his chest, gruffly happy as his arm winds around me. Just as before, sheltering me from the cold.

...