FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The day begins as it so often does: with you behind your desk, head on one hand as you scratch out thoughts on a spare piece of paper regarding one of your innumerable tasks. Today it is a question of how to improve crop yields in the Beast Kingdom’s farms, rare as they are at present. The beast kingdom never went in heavily for agriculture, one of the things which damaged their prospects of winning a war where feeding an army required massive amounts of consumables as well as combustible shot. Your hope is to give them some chance of turning crop yields which would surpass their local requirements, boosting the local economy by export of wine and cheese, for instance, and in turn increase tax revenue.

Hazel walks into your room unannounced, as is her right, and stands beside your desk in an obvious state of distress. Her tail is waving behind her fit to scatter the delicate piles of paper, and she’s wringing her hands.

“My darling, I have something to confess to you.”

You put down your pen, careful to rest the weighted nib on your pen-holder lest it stain anything. You feel a twinge of uncertainty dispel the quietude of your stomach.

“What is it?”

“First, will you promise not to hold what I am about to tell you against me?”

“I’m afraid I cannot promise that, dearest, until you tell me what it is.”

Hazel sighs.

“On the day when we first met, I asked you about your uniform, do you remember? Well, that is not important. I thought I recognized the insignia on your sleeve, that of your rank in the royal house.”

Here Hazel pauses, and proffers her hands. You take them. They tremble slightly.

“I put it out of my mind, convinced I was mistaken, but during our hunt, many of my sisters-in-arms noticed the patch which you wore then as well and told me they recognized it as well. One of them recently placed where our joint memory lay. I have confessed it to Archbishop Dola, and he has advised me to tell you –”

Hazel pauses again, gathering strength for the plunge.

“Oh, I hate to tell you this on the day on which our happiness is to be made complete -” the long awaited time of Hazel’s ovulation is to begin that night – “but I cannot hide from you that which I now know.

“During the second-to-last year of the war, my advance unit was cut off from our supply lines at a human outpost, a farm. The farm animals had been turned loose or killed before we arrived, and we had nothing.” Vaguely you recall orders being given to that effect, so as to prevent the rapidly advancing beast-man army a chance to outpace their supply lines while not finding any local animals to feed on. “We were so terribly hungry! We were there for weeks, scrounging on rats and squirrels, attempting to carry out our orders. We were to secure a bridge or destroy it, over the L’apitas, to prepare for an offensive there. However, without our cannon we could not proceed, and we feared we had been cut off, and could not retreat. Along came a regiment of human soldiers…” she looks at you, fear replacing self-pity in her eyes as a ringing sensation fills the back of your mind.

“They were led by one who wore a coat such as yours. We ambushed them, overcame them, and to survive, consumed some of them after the old ways and buried some in yours, to prevent their corpses from being defiled by scavengers.”

You slip your hands from Hazel’s and they fall into your lap with a dull thud. Your mind whirls, and you feel as if you have been doused with icy water. Hazel stands, silenced by your reaction, ears flicking with worry, her amber-green eyes aglow with it.

“Are you saying that you…slaughtered and ate my brother, either Pseudonymous or Atrimonyous?”

Hazel hesitates. “I would tell you if either had passed my lips, My Darling, but I simply do not know.”

You bolt from your chair and rush past Hazel, knocking away her reaching hand. You fling open the door and stride to the gardens. The entire way your thoughts return to those men you found, the sinews clinging to the bone, the ragged patches of uniform littering the forest floor, the entrails tossed over logs like unwanted scarves. Their eyes had been sucked out of their sockets, the meat gnawed from their fingers. And all down the gullets of Beast-men, with sharp teeth and monstrous claws and glowing eyes. Your brother, one of the two, down the very mouth which you had stuck your own tongue into – past the very lips which had kissed you more times than the sun had risen in this past month and a half.

You feel dizzy, now in the garden, and hurl up your breakfast into a rosebush. Your brother, fed to your wife. It feels like you walk a night-terror, and you cling to a nearby bench, trembling and weak.

For the rest of the day you avoid Hazel at all costs, refusing lunch and eating supper alone. That night, Hazel appears at your door in a shift with something like casual expectation, which drives you from horror to fury.

“Get out of my sight! How could you think I’d wish to so much as look at you?”

Hazel is completely taken aback, and places a hand to her chest. “But dearest, cannot you see that I only did what needed to be done? Beasts consume the flesh of others, it is the way of life. I am sorry, I am sure, to have spilt the blood of one you held dear, but such things are past now.”

“I – we – mankind, do not eat feeling things. Other men. Beast men. Our pets. It is a rule so obvious that we do not even have a spoken law against it; all men are revolted by it. If you cannot see the sense in that, I do not wish to speak to you. I cannot believe even you would be so insensitive to realize that my brother cannot be so flippantly disregarded mere hours after the revelation you have disclosed!”

“But, Anonymous, you can’t mean to say – I will not be – You promised!” Hazel is tearing up now, as you both stand in the doorframe of your bedchamber.

“I promised my wife that I would give her children. I did not promise to breed the animal that consumed the same flesh that still clings to my bones. I will not dishonor my brother by laying so much as a finger on you. Good night!”

“You cannot mean that!”

“I mean every word of it.” With this, you slam the door in her face, throwing yourself down and lying awake until you hear her slow tread away from the door.

The next few days are tortuous. Hazel grows increasingly desperate as her window of fertility closes, going so far as to pound on your door and threaten to rape your retainer in your place. You quietly warn your retainer to be on his guard, but he reports no misadventure. You lock the door of your bedroom by night and your office by day, becoming a recluse rather than risk contact with your wife.

You also decide to punish Hazel in a way which will make her more miserable than any lashing of hand or tongue. You call for Britta one night, and when the mouse appears, innocent and demure, you tear off her clothes and force yourself onto her in a savage fury.

The mouse, who comes up to your chest on her tiptoes and weighs eighty pounds soaking wet, is gathered under both legs and planted on your cock with a surprised exclamation. You suspend her by your arms with ease, clutching her like some sort of masturbation tool which you use to envelop your shaft with hard, aggressive pumps.

You hope Hazel can hear the wailing screams Britta lets out, especially after you tear her hands away from her mouth to prevent her from muffling them. Britta’s eyes are flowing with tears, but you do not care. You feel her legs sliding across your chest, soft and barely protruding over the level of your shoulders. Her sex is uncomfortably tight, and you need to force each thrust as if Britta is deliberately refusing you entry, which even in the heat of the moment you know is not the case.

You fuck Britta until your rage is spent and then toss her to the bed like a filthy shirt, where she stares at the canopy above with a deliberate stillness, avoiding your eye without turning from your gaze, which makes your stomach twist. But you snuff the lamps and lie in bed without saying a word.

Over the next few weeks, whenever you see Hazel in a corridor you cut her dead, passing by without seeming to see her. The time has come for your portraits to be painted, and you arrange for separate sittings. You do not eat your meals with Hazel anymore, and when she leaves you the prime cuts of her catches from the hunt you send them back to the kitchen untouched. You are angry in a quiet, dignified fury which reminds you of your father, not trifling even to justify it to yourself or consider any recourse. Your mind turns from the subject which sears the back of your mind with rage like a sailing vessel before a gale, unwilling to trespass there until the passion cools. In the meantime, you continue to avoid the target of your wrath, taking malevolent pleasure in the way she slumps to see you pass by without taking heed of her.

On one stormy afternoon, while the peasants rush to gather their crops before the outbreak of the storm and you cannot escape, Hazel catches your sleeve and hangs on, pleading with tears in her voice. You do not look at her face to see them there.

“Please! What must I do to enable you to forgive me?! What can I possibly do to make this right?”

“Bring me your brother on a platter,” you say, “or mine in a casket.” You pull your sleeve from her grip and leave her alone in the room.

His Majesty the King notices, and attempts to broker peace between the two of you, but to no avail. He confesses that in accordance with the old ways he ate parts of two lions in his time, one as the result of a duel to the death, (which he obviously won), and the other in memorial of a longtime friend who died young. His description of the grisly feast nearly sends you reeling for the bushes again, and does little to help you understand the lion perspective on cannibalism. His Royal Highness also notes that it was not considered at all unusual, until the advent of Christian doctrine, to consume the flesh of other species of Beast-men, a wolf might eat a lamb, for instance; though he admitted that lions were almost alone in ceremonial cannibalism.

You find an excuse – it isn’t difficult – to travel the roads, surveying their status and positions for new guard-posts and toll-houses in accordance with one of your personal projects. This allows you to escape the castle and Hazel and focus on your work. You bring along Margarita and order Britta to await your return, feeling that you owe her at least that silent apology of a vacation. She would be put to work elsewhere, but you worry that her usual duties may seem onerous to her after that night, the only one you awoke from to find her sleeping away from you.

Margarita fulfills her role dutifully, packing your bags and helping to dress you in the various inns where you stay on the journey, then joining you in bed or curling at the foot of it depending on your whim. Any place you stay you attract waves of attentive subjects, intrigued by the possibility of seeing the newest member of the royal family. You get the distinct impression that the girls are being hidden from you, which you feel an alarming testament to the power of common gossip.

On the other hand, there are instances when some pretty thing, such as one innkeeper’s daughter, a buxom young coyote with braids, gives you hints as subtle as a brick to the face. This one in particular shows up to your room with a fresh pitcher of water – you already have one – completely naked save the ribbons in her hair.

With an inward shrug you take her into your bed and let her ride you into the small hours, rubbing her overlarge ears after she lies down on your chest with a contented giggle, no doubt thrilled to have bagged a prince. When you awaken, the tawny fur of the girl snoring gently by your side reminds you of Hazel, and your mind snaps between joy and anger, then to a longing perplexity of mind which you sit on the side of your bed to contemplate without deliberate thought. Your mind simply wanders between states: fury and sorrow and love, attempting to rectify itself and bring an end to your own confusion of feeling. By the time the coyote girl wakes and you send her to get your breakfast, your mind has not stilled to a permanent state of equanimity and calm like a pond into which a thimbleful of oil has been poured – rather it has alloyed from a bisected and hateful consciousness into one of grudging half-measures and uncertainties.

When you return to the castle after a month of surveying, Hazel sends a messenger to you immediately, with a written message in her clumsy hand. Lion paws are, even with the extra digits of beast-men, ill suited to writing letters.

In short, it asks you to accompany her on a journey to visit the site where she believes your brother is buried. She had sent her hunting band to the old front lines in your absence to discover the farmhouse and dig up the bones of the dead.

The letter rests in your hand as you read it twice more. She would attempt to deliver your brother to you in a casket.

You sniffle, wiping away the first tears you’ve shed for your brother in two years, since news of his disappearance. Killed and eaten – but what did it matter anyway? You crumple the letter and toss it aside.

You no longer avoid Hazel’s face when the two of you meet for the journey. Hazel is dressed in black, and wears on her muzzle an expression of tired anguish. She seems exhausted generally, sluggish in her movements and without a spark of the perspicacity and joy which previously hummed through her.

When a few days of stony silence in the carriage brings you to a peaceful meadow, she alights with the apt posture of a veteran returning to a battlefield, stiff and uneasy. With the birds singing in the waving fronds of the fallowed sward, the scene cupped by the bowl of the mountain valley is like a pastoral vision of paradise. You can scarcely imagine, and wish your mind would cease in the attempt, the grisly butchery which had been perpetrated by the one standing nearby, ears flat and eyes distant.

“Yes,” she says slowly. “There is the barn we slept inside of.” She points to a structure now overgrowing with weeds. The farmer never returned, it would seem. “I remember, our perimeter was…” her hand traces the treeline before she glances your way.

Your back is sticky with sweat; you are sick of sleeping on the road and your leaden stomach is giving you a grimace. In the distance, a mound of fresh earth rests beside a withered larch tree.

“It matters not,” Hazel finishes. “I will lead you to where – to the burial site. They have found one which they wish you to see.”

Your boots drag in the dirt, delaying by moments your inevitable confrontation with a corpse which could bring no true relief, only a modified torture. The walk to the tree seems to take an hour, with Hazel staring about all the while as if your brother’s band might once again spring from the forest to do battle. She seems as shrunken and miserable as she must have been then; as starved of peace and love now as she was then of sustenance. Either form of deprivation presumably would give her the same pinched face and hunched, weak posture she has now.

The ground under the tree is dappled with the filtered light of autumn; the leaves swelling the sunlight to a golden hue. You think of the coins placed on the eyes of men to pay the ferryman in the afterlife. The ‘old ways’ of men could be as bizarre as those of the beast-men. You glance at Hazel, looking rather green by your side, her hands clenched over her elbows with her arms crossed. Her tail has curled around her own leg, and her ears have drooped down low.

A layer of topsoil has been carefully removed where you stand, leaving a clear patch of dark earth like the floor of a humble country church. Dozens of corpses, shrunk into their tattered, dirty uniforms and lain down as if in a mausoleum, stare at the sky. Their skin is almost completely decayed away; only wisps of hair and flecks of flesh remain on the bones. Many are missing limbs, and by the lack of pant leg or coat, you know those were the skeletons at the feast. Beside the ranged corpses lies a jumbled pile of picked-clean bones. You do not need to inspect them to know they will have been gnawed. You avoid looking at the scuttling insects which canter in the hollows between the morbid objects of the pile.

Hazel stands still, hands clasped in each other, then slowly approaches one marked by a staff pounded into the ground. You follow.

On the ground, bordered from his peers by a branch on each side, lies a skeleton in a uniform more ornate than the others. Brocade spangles the coat and trousers, where it is not stained black by dirt and mold, and the right arm bears the royal insignia, identical to yours.

The skin of the skull has gone, eaten away by termites and ground-pests, and the empty, dark eye sockets stare hollowly at the beauty of the day about you. His hair was brown, you suppose, and mostly gone. The bare skull peers through in most places, making the face impossible to discern. Your brothers had been alike, so while this is one, you will need to discover which.

With trembling fingers you reach down and break the crust of filth around the collar, gulping down revulsion to nudge aside the dangling jaw.

To your fingers comes the sensation: dry bone, cloying grave-soil, a collarbone, the neck with crusted flakes of gore residual, and then a fine trace of cool silk on your fingertip.

Carefully, you withdraw your finger, hooking a thin gold chain. With the chain emerges a crucifix studded with tiny amethysts, hidden by the uniform and overlooked by the starving lionesses who needed nothing more than meat and metal for weapons. You drop the tiny thing back on the gold brocade of your brother’s collar.

“Atrimonyous Solitarium,” you say, quietly. “A sinner.” It is the passphrase for a member of the royal family into the crypt after his death. At first refused by mention of titles and deeds, that simple attribute, declared aloud, would permit the deceased to be buried with all the other sinners to await the day of resurrection and join Jesus Christ in Heaven.

You look sadly at the barrier between Atrimonyous and his fallen comrades, then lift two away to leave only those at head and foot.

Atrimonyous has both his feet. Both his legs. Both sleeves of his uniform coat are there, tattered and weevil-mangled, though his right arm has vanished, probably mixed in with the other bones in the confusion of the mass grave.

You sink to your knees beside the resting corpse, hands resting in your lap. Hazel, hesitant and demure, follows suit beside you.

You are staring into the distance when you hear something which disturbs your reverie.

“Why do you cry?” you ask, not unkindly, but quietly, as if you speak at the transept of a church.

Hazel shakes her head. “I do not wish to say it, for fear I may drive you to hate me all the more. I cry because he is here, and that is sad, but I also cry because he is here, and that means that I did not eat him, and I – I am horribly selfish! All I think is for my own pleasure, that this might cause you to forgive me! We were just – we were so very hungry!” At this point Hazel bursts into racking sobs, covering her face with both hands. She moves to leave, but you take her arm and pull her against you.

“I forgive you, my darling Hazel.” This quiets her. “I see now that there is truly no injury for me to forgive. You slew my brother as I might have you, had we met on the field of battle, and while this devouring of my countrymen is abhorrent to me, I cannot fault you for what desperation only, rather than everyday inclination, drove you to do. I have been abominably cruel to you in recompense for your honest confession, and I pray you might forgive me for it. You have brought me my brother, and he may now join my forefathers in our crypt. For this gift I thank you.”

Hazel takes your hand and kisses the back of it. She huffs great steadying breaths, gaining control of herself before she speaks, husky with tears but noble and clear.

“My Anon; my tomorrow and every day hereafter: by the moon and sky I swear that I shall discover the grave of your unaccounted brother to make my atonement complete. I shall not rest until Pseudonymous too sleeps in the hall of his fathers, no matter how far and wide I must search. My Dearest One, I love you like life itself, and I know you speak now partly out of kindness to me. I spoke in your absence to Chief Emissary Solomon, who explained that in my expectation of easy absolution for my crime I gravely offended you. Man does not regard the corpse as but flesh, this I now comprehend, and regret most profoundly my frivolity regarding this matter. I humbly beg you to find it in your heart to forgive me this as well.”

A breeze blows across the field, trembling the leaves on the trees. Some detach, and flutter their way to the ground; one of those comes to rest over the eye sockets of your brother, a token for the river guardian after all.

“Yes, Hazel. All is forgiven.”

Atrimonyous and the other corpses are to be sent back to your father for burial. It would not be a grand ceremony; that had already been held in his honor when he was declared a casualty of war. Rather, his corpse would be laid to rest in the airtight lead sarcophagus waiting empty in the family crypt during a private ceremony. You consider returning home to see it done, but decide against it. You are able to say your goodbyes well enough as it is.

On the carriage ride back, Hazel rests her head on your lap, sleeping soundly in the middle of the day, her arm wrapped tightly around yours as you stroke the top of her head. She rumbles in her sleep, and the way she nuzzles your leg with an unconscious smile all but breaks your heart. The two of you trade small smiles as you approach home – somehow, Castle Adriane has become home behind your back – and speak genially, as you once did. Hazel describes the campaign which led her to that troubled spot, and you point out in it how the human forces were, from your recollection, running a gambit which would lead to her downfall. The two of you eat your meals together in mounting joviality; Hazel delights to serve your portions from the packages and describe what she selected. When you crack a weak joke, Hazel giggles like a schoolgirl, her face alight with joy. By the time you reach the castle, which nearly has a complete roof, the two of you walk arm in arm away from the carriage. No one grins wider to see the two of you walking thus than His Royal Majesty, when he passes you in the hall.

In keeping with your new resolve to ladle out the milk of human kindness to all and sundry, you call Britta to you and apologize for your treatment of her before you had gone on your surveying sally about the country.

Britta looks at you blankly for a moment before the incident abruptly reappears in her memory.

“Oh! Your Highness is very kind,” she bows low, her hair falling before her face. “Please do not let it trouble Your Highness’s conscience. I regard such incidents as being only one of the less attractive aspects of my position. One of my previous masters, for instance, enjoyed biting my flank to bruise me and thereby have a spotted mouse, so a night when I must put my own needs aside to serve Your Highness best is a small price to pay for the privilege of my position.”

You shift uncomfortably, unsure how to regard this insight into your underling’s past. You regard Britta’s dole of kindness and find it not quite drained. “Regardless, it would ease my conscience if you would allow me to give you some small recompense. Do you have any suggestions?”

Britta rubs her knees together, plainly visible below the hem of her short skirt, and bites her lip as she prepares her next statement. You inwardly sigh, envisioning the steps you will need to follow in order to disrobe and fulfill Britta’s predictable request, but are surprised when it defies your expectations.

“If Your Highness might permit me to become impregnated-”

“Permit?” You shuffle some papers under one hand nervously. “I was not aware such things required permission.”

“Oh, Your Highness does not know?”

You wonder what could possibly have been kept from you this time.

“There were concerns when Your Highness proved more…” Britta’s eyes are suffused with memory, “active than was expected. Margarita and I have been taking a tonic which prevents our impregnation to better serve without interruption. Though – if Your Highness will pardon my ungratefulness – it does go against the custom of our position to grant us the opportunity to earn leave and extra pay by bearing children of the family. I beg your permission to cease taking this medication, which will enable me to gain child by you.”

You cough.

“I was not aware this was something you desired – this stipend must be generous.”

“Please, Your Highness, do not take my words the wrong way. I greatly desire child by you for my own sake – as others might collect pets, you might say, I enjoy the hobby of raising spurious children of nobility.”

You stare at Britta, completely taken aback. The little mouse gazes at you innocently, her fluffy fur puffing out of the collar of her wide neckline.

“And you have some already?”

“Oh yes! My husband-”

“Your husband?” This unwitting cuckoldry of another man is like a wet stone underfoot; it seems as if you might totter off your chair. You look for a wedding band, but remember that Beast-men are not in the habit of wearing wedding rings; Hazel is as yet the only one.

“My husband, Your Highness, he – that is – he has difficulty – it is a delicate subject, I pray you understand. We were unsuccessful in our own attempts, and so I hit upon the notion of work which would enable us to gain some by other means. He now looks after the four, and loves them dearly. I am positive he would be delighted to be responsible for the child of Your Highness.”

Your mind reels with the calculus of who the Hagar might be in this situation, and you can do little more than stammer out your acquiescence in the face of Britta’s innocent, hopeful expression. You feel slightly guilty condemning your future child to life in such a complex household, but Britta seems a decent woman, if air-headed, so you doubt the child will suffer.

“Thank you, Your Highness. When I see my husband next I hope to bear more than the good news!”

A few weeks more pass, but Hazel does not join you in bed. You are puzzled by this, but do not broach the subject at meals, which Hazel once more chooses and helps to procure. However, when the tick on your personal calendar indicates Hazel’s ovulation, there comes a knock on your door past the sinking of dusk into inky night.

When you open the door, Hazel stands framed by it, her luminous eyes downcast. She wears a plain shift, her fur neatly brushed and her hands clasped together before her by her stomach.

“In the days when tribes fought tooth and nail for territory, lionesses and lions were precious few. In the event that one tribe killed the warrior of another, there was a practice to account for the death, if that tribe which slew the warrior were brought to account.” She swallows. “A female of the offending tribe would offer herself to the tribe bereaved, so that she might conceive by them and give unto them a new cub to replace the one lost.”

Hazel kneels down in the doorway, looking up at you solemnly.

“I do not know if you still desire me, but I pray that at least in this respect you will accept me, and bestow upon me the trust to carry forth your lineage and give you a son in place of a brother.”

You crouch down, the satin of your bedclothes trailing on the floor as you bring your face to Hazel’s and kiss her brow.

“I will accept you, for far more than this. You need not have feared; I do not intend to keep to the words I spoke in anger. I still find you as lovely as the first night we truly met, and I hope not for replacement brothers, but hearty sons and daughters as beautiful and kind as their mother. The time has come at last that we try for some.”

Hazel’s purr as she nuzzles your chest would have brought down the building, if not for the fact that your father’s stonemason had, in a panic, added three new pillars and a retaining wall in his first fortnight here.

The two of you walk to the bed, and once lying upon it, begin to kiss. At first you are slow, unsure of yourselves after so long estranged, but soon enough you are working into each other with your hands, pressing your mouths hard enough to make your lips taught. You stroke the side of Hazel’s face, feeling a flush under the light fur which matches your own.

Hazel breaks away to get a moment’s breath, then kisses your neck, your chin, your shoulder. She pauses at each place, huffing in great lungfuls of air which puff back out against your skin and make you chuckle. You are engaged with swirling the fur on Hazel’s back when she begins this, but give it a tap. “Stop that, Hazel. You’re making me laugh.”

“No.” Hazel doesn’t look up, and barely pauses long enough to respond. She sucks at your skin, giving great slobbery kisses which leave wet marks over the surface of your body from your shoulder to your elbows. In between, she forces a word or two out in the space of time it takes for her to move from one spot to the next. “You smell wonderful. You taste wonderful. I adore every part of you, My Anonymous, and I will have every inch.”

She moves down your stomach, kissing the scars which bulge or pucker your skin in various places, each a story of God or indifferent fate doling out favor in your quarter on the battlefield. Hazel seems to regard them as holy relics, tracing them with her fingers and working them with her tongue as if a kiss would make them better.

Finally, she comes to the point where your waistline is concealed by the hem of your thin pants, and plants one paw protectively over your groin, which is fairly bursting at the seams. She crawls up and plants a kiss on your lips, sucking your tongue into her mouth with the force of it and playing chopsticks, teeth to teeth.

“However,” she purrs, “It’s just a few select and noble inches I’m interested in right now.”

You begin to take offense at the adjective ‘few’, but Hazel pulls the knot asunder on your pants and plunges her hand in, driving all thoughts from your mind save those related to the strong grip which envelops your yard. She pulls, and you jerk slightly off the mattress against your will with a grunt.

Slowly, gazing into your eyes, Hazel massages your length, working it free of your clothing. She rumbles, one hand on your chest reverberating the two of you, and you stare back into the eyes which gather and effuse in the dim room like tiny pools of starlight. She releases you, then stoops to a crouch before sliding her mouth over you in one go, enveloping you completely. Your jaw drops to see Hazel doing what she had previously described as ‘prey work’. Your cock almost feels to be floating in the liquid darkness of Hazel’s mouth before she pulls back off with a ‘gluck’ sound, spittle glinting over your length.

“Lubrication,” she says. She crouches over you, one knee resting on either side, then slides herself onto you with a moan. Her sex envelops you, feeling as smooth and taught as the rest of her, a warm sleeve which grips you possessively without resistance or weakness.

She bobs then, leaning back and massaging her own chest as you guide her hips with both hands, casting her head back to hum in satisfaction, eyes closed and mouth slightly agape. She does not pound or grind or boisterously leap on your lap like the other women you have had. Rather, she takes her time, breathing slowly and sliding on your pole with long, effortless movements of thigh and hip. You, by the same token, do not rush her. Inside your chest your heart is pounding wildly, not in a lustful fit, but because every touch of this woman reverberates through your nerves like the sounding of your very core. Love is not a thing which is ordinarily removed from intercourse, and yet for the past two months with you it quite certainly has been. This inversion of the paradigm nearly excites you to the point of eruption, and you momentarily pull Hazel upward after only a few minutes to give yourself a moment.

Hazel looks down, her eyes serene. “Anything the matter, Dearest One?”

“No,” you respond. “I require just a second.”

She smiles. “Don’t be concerned of interrupting my pleasure, darling. We have all night for you to recover yourself.”

You like the sound of that, and allow your mind to drift into a similar fog of pleasure which you assume Hazel is enjoying, living in the sensations emanating from your coupling as Hazel gathers your length into her again. Shortly, you feel your feet beginning to curl, and gasp a warning to Hazel.

She leans forward, nearly bumping her nose to yours as she clamps onto your shoulders, eyes level with your own as she whispers encouragement: “Yes, My Dearest, give me cubs, give me an heir, please!”

Your fingers grapple with her hips, pulling her down to bury your manhood a moment before your seed floods into Hazel, pumping great spurts into her waiting chamber. With a sigh, Hazel wraps her arms around your neck and buries her face between them, smothering you in kisses as the two of you press together through the afterglow.

“I must apologize,” you say. “I could not resist you any longer.”

“Fear not for my sake,” Hazel responds, “I daresay that you will regain your vitality in very little time.”

You quirk your eyebrow at her. “I suppose I ought to be glad to have married so clever a mate. It seems I’ve been doing little apart from training between our wedding night and now.”

Hazel smiles sheepishly. “You might say, Dearest One, that you were killing two birds with one stone.”

“Mmmh.”

You move to rest apart, but Hazel resists, and you breathe quiet breaths of each others’ air as your length softens and Hazel presses her lips to ludicrous points on your shoulders and neck, the suction of her mouth drawing your skin into it in little points of thrilling pain. By the night’s end, you will be a canvas of poppy-colored welts.

In short order, you find yourself indeed ready again, and Hazel does not consult you before resuming her ride the same as before, until after some minutes she shudders to a pause like a piece of seized clockwork machinery, her breath gasping. A shudder courses through her body; you feel the fur rising under your fingers, Hazel bending over you, claws digging into your shoulders as she lets out a loud mewl, her tail straightening like a rod, ears pointed like compass needles, before she collapses on top of you, shivering under the influence of a tide of pleasure.

“I am compelled to remark,” you whisper, “that that was the most adorable climax I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.”

Hazel answers as if fever-deranged, her words slurring together. “You must not tell anyone. I must not have my image of fortitude stained.” She releases your shoulders, then whines to smell the blood beading from the holes she poked in them. She licks the wounds as you slowly heave your enormous cat onto her side and then her back, preparing for another round, at a slightly faster tempo.

The two of you enjoy each other for the next two hours, and do not mind the lamps snuffing themselves as they run out of oil, leaving you with only touch to guide your placement on breast, tail or face. You show Hazel the benefits of a practical education in sexual conduct, leaving her gasping or crying out from behind a clenched fist or into the bedclothes alternately. When you fall asleep, you awaken to find Hazel tightly wrapped around you, and completely unwilling to release you from your fuzzy prison.

In much the same way as that first night the days of that Halcyon autumn week are spent: Hazel scarcely permits you to leave her sight to visit the necessary or attend to crucial matters of business, bleary-eyed and only half-dressed. She herself takes all questions by message, through her maidservants, who also dutifully wash and smooth her fur, ignoring her grumbling as your scent is laundered from her. You watch the process of lion-bathing with interest, having never seen it before; how the sopping wet cloths were wrung out, then rubbed into the fur of each part of her body with the gentle force of a strong caress, followed by a soapy cloth and then clean water, then a rough brush and a fine one. You bathe in your tub, which Hazel eyes with dismay, evidently expecting you to somehow drown yourself. The two of you take your meals in privacy and dress only to walk the grounds, ignoring the knowing smiles of family members and courtiers alike when you stumble on hips which do not seem quite up to the task of ordinary perambulation.

Eventually, however, Hazel and your calendar both indicate that the bimonthly ovulation is reaching its end, and you spend the final night not in a wild caravansary of debauchery but rather with the quiet reflection of a mated pair with years to look forward to. As midnight rings out the new day, you sleepily nuzzle each other, trading one last exchange before sleep takes the both of you.

“I love you, Anonymous.”

“By the light in your eyes, I love you too.”