The Greatest Of These
Story by Thraxeth on SoFurry
A dying man and his wife share one, last, intimate moment.
The sun barely teases the blinds with its morning light ere I awaken.
He rests within my arms, tiny, withered, a shadow of the man I once knew. His skin ripples like paper, his belly hugging the unnatural payload of fluid that has replaced muscle and fat, pale where it has not yellowed. His arms and legs remind me of kindling wood, the tendons and veins standing out in sharp relief against the bone. He smells of death. And yet, as his eyes ease open to stare into mine, I forget it all as chapped and weathered lips creak into a familiar smile.
"Good morning, beautiful," he says, and I resist the urge to help him as he reaches for me with a decrepit hand, wavering and grunting with the effort. It lands behind my pricked wolven ears and he skritches in just the right places to make me hum. I press my lips to his, and the kiss that has but a shadow of that powerful tongue in it wields more power than an hour of frenzied rutting and a brace of orgasms once did.
"Good morning yourself, handsome," I whisper back as our kiss fades. Those icy blue eyes, still sharp with the mind of the man I adore gaze back at me and I can't help but fall into their depths as I have so many times. "Do you want some breakfast, Logan?"
He shakes his head, slowly, and I sigh. The hospice nurse said he wouldn't want to eat, but part of me throbs painfully. He'd always loved my cooking. "Not really hungry, Serena."
I gather him into my arms, letting him sprawl across my lap as I support his head against my shoulder. "Is there anything else, lover? Anything at all?"
He coughs, weakly, as he thinks. "It’s the seventh, isn’t it.” I nod. “T-the kids are coming today, aren't they."
I nod. "Yeah. Justin is flying in. Emily will pick him up and bring the rest of the merry gang. Probably around one o'clock. Why?"
He shivers, slightly, and I bury him in my warm farm, rubbing my cheek upon his forehead. "Serena, I smell, don't I."
I temporize. "Well, all of you monkeys smell-"
He chuckles weakly, but it subsides. "Yes, well..." He trails off. "I could use a bath."
I rise from the bed in one smooth motion, his body barely a weight upon my arms. "I'll make sure you're clean before they get here, Logan."
The bathtub bubbles as I step into it, my beloved clutched in my paws. I sit down into the water, ever so carefully insulating him from it on my lap where he will stay dry. "Not going to dip me?" He says.
I lick the back of his neck. The taste of medicine and mortality is nothing compared to his scent. "Remember that they said you'd get cold and hot easily because all your fat's gone?" I say gently. "My pelt will keep you good and warm, love."
He nods, slowly, as I wet a washcloth and add soap. "Oh, the irony," he says.
I nose his ear. "Not what I was made for, yes," I croon. The paws that can bend steel like butter, tipped with claws that can rend a man's torso with barely a flex, clutch a soapy washcloth. He shivers as I run it down his arm, scrubbing with utmost gentleness-- that papery skin tears all too easily nowadays. I know it's uncomfortable, and I lick his face soothingly as I scour dirt from him, one stroke at a time.
He settles into it with a sigh. "Always like you," he says, fondly. "Always rebelling against what you're told."
I finish washing the one arm and take up the other. "You'd think that, Mister I have perfect grades and did everything right."
He laughs, letting the silence stretch out. "And look where it got me," he says at last. "Assigned to tutor a rebellious, freshly decanted Wolf who would've preferred a spot of chaos with a dash of anarchy. Mrs. Green was an idiot."
I keep licking his face and neck as I start to scrub his chest with the washcloth, replacing the scent of all the things that will take him from me with my own, a brief moment of rebellion against the inevitable. "Brilliant, actually," I shoot back. "You were the only one who could've ever tamed me. If that high school teacher or you had a nose worth a damn you would've known that."
He shrugs. "How was I supposed to know that engineer nerds darken your panties, sweetheart?"
I slowly rinse his chest. "Well, I did hope you would get the message after session after session of you trying to teach me math and science and me trying to teach you wolven body language. I tried literally everything else."
He wheezes with laughter, eyes far away in memory. "What was it you said? 'Either come over here and fuck me or I'm going to stress test your pelvis'?"
I rub my face against his as I soap his legs and feet, then rinse them off. "Can't argue with results. Made me walk funny for a week."
He chuckles. "Yeah..." trailing away into memory, and my heart thrills.
I spare a gaze down, and chuckle low in my throat. "I see someone is happy to see me."
He leans back against me, turning his head up, and I entwine him in a gentle kiss, cradling his head in one paw. His tongue locks with mine and we fence, one thick and unwieldy, one a ribbon of darting speed, before I feel him tire and break free.
He doesn't buck against my paw when I drop the washcloth and it closes around his shaft, but the gasp of "Oh, Serena," brings back so many memories.
"I remember someone who sounded like that a long time ago," I tease him. My paw strokes him and I feel him harden against my fur.
Those beautiful blue eyes catch mine. "I remember someone else who'd been rough and growly and demanding who just melted into a moany little wolfy puddle when she got some man in her." Gods, he still takes my breath away, even as I do the same to him.
"You weren't the only one who melted," I shoot back, cradling him with utmost gentleness. One of the skills I'd never thought I'd have to master was being wife, lover, and lift device all in one, but nonetheless I'd worked hard for that skill and it pays off as it has these last few weeks. I dry him, taking my time, stealing kisses from his lips and his neck and anywhere else my lips can reach as he reciprocates with what little strength he has. I feel the memory of him nonetheless, a strong and virile man wrestling with a woman made to be a soldier and not a lover but recast into one all the same. He answers the begging “please” I whine into his year with a soft “yes” and that’s all the reason I need to cradle his body in one strong arm and guide his manhood into me where it belongs.
Some might say that sex like this must be disappointing, must be a chore. They couldn’t be more wrong. His voice barely moves the air, and yet in his soft pants I hear the groans and gasps and shouts of my husband before his illness, pleasured by my body, and an electric thrill runs down my spine. His arms and hands cradle me only weakly, but with the pressure he puts on my fur comes the memory of strong arms and powerful thrusts rutting me as I scream my desire for him, and I melt against him. He strains to stay erect inside me as I guide him into me with gentle strokes, and yet nothing could drive me to ecstasy more than he.
Time melts into an endless moment as I make love to him and he to me, movements and noises and sensation melding into a rising chorus, until I feel his buttocks tighten in my grip and I drive him inside me to the hilt. He fills me with white-hot essence, and my own climax answers, washing us both away. The universe contracts down to just the two of us as my heart fills and I clasp him tight against me, groaning his name into his ear.
Like all good things, the moment ends, and I sag limply to the bed to curl around him. My ears prick as his eyes catch mine and he whispers. "I love you, Serena."
I bury him in my warm fur. "I love you too, Logan."
The mossy stone under the tree is a simple one.
LOGAN SCOTT MURRAY
April 11, 1997- August 8th, 2044
LOVE NEVER FAILS