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Chapter 6: I'll Make Love to You

Kel waited an hour before he became worried, thinking that perhaps Aliona had been kept by Kilyan. Newborn pups were so needy, after all, and as a result, she'd become very busy sewing new swaddling cloths and washing old ones, bathing and feeding and burping and playing with their pup, aside from also tending her family's sheep. Sometimes her mother helped her, of course, for Xela - Aliona's mother -- had been keeping little Kilyan for them every night just so they could be alone together. New couples were given one week of privacy before the female moved into the male's hut. And then they were down to muffled mating as the child slept in another curtained area of the hut, pretending not to hear for the nest seventeen years. Kel found himself dreading that day. He loved his son, certainly, but he wished Kilyan could stay with his grandmother until he was older. At least that would give them more time alone together. The more he thought about it, the more Kel realized that he'd shared his wife more than he'd been alone with her!

Why, even before the mating seasons (when they were considered pups still and he had lain awake at night, thinking with an erect organ of her) he had never even spoken to Aliona! It wasn't allowed. And now that he could hold her in his arms and talk to her and touch her and kiss her without raised eyebrows, without fear of being whipped blind by his father, he had to do it with his son interrupting with wails for milk for the next several months, with his son listening in the other room for the next seventeen years!

Yes, being alone with Aliona meant everything to Kel, and so it was no small wonder that he put so much importance in this last night that they would share together. He took an extra long time about bathing and rubbed his penis down with oils in the hope that Aliona wouldn't be too tired to sleep with him. He hoped desperately that her breasts would not ache. She hadn't let him touch her breasts in so long . . .

After an hour of waiting, Kel stood in the doorway of his hut, the curtain held to one side, and peered out into the village. What in the world was keeping her? His ears pricked forward and he listened: the village was quiet. The distant sounds of a pup crying, fires crackling, old wolves coughing . . . Kel hurried to Xela's, his mouth set in a grim line, his paws balled into fists. He hated to do it, but he was going to give Aliona a good scolding. He realized she was aching and tired and busy, but he was her husband. He had a right to her intimate parts, had endured a great deal just to obtain them for himself!

Reaching Xela's at last, Kel snatched aside the curtain and barged in, as males often did in the village. Xela was squatting by the fire, cradling his gurgling son, but Aliona was no where in sight. Kel halted in his tracks, stunned.

"Kel?" cried Xela in alarm. Xela was an older version of her daughter: the same dark gray fur, the same bright eyes, only there were streaks of light gray in her fur, and her paws and face were wrinkling in her old age even as her breasts sagged (Aliona had not by any means been her first pup but was her only living child, and thus the reason that Xela was so very old). She rose with some difficulty, and Kel crossed the room to help her. "What in the world is the matter?" she demanded, seeing the young wolf's creased brow.

"Isn't Aliona here with you?" Kel asked, thinking that perhaps his wife was in one of the curtained rooms beyond. If she was, she was in for a sound lecture. But . . . he didn't smell Aliona at all!

"Why, no," said Xela, her alarm growing, "I thought she was with you! She left for your hut with her things an hour ago!"

"Oh, god," Kel moaned, his pupils growing small with terror. "Something has happened to her!"

Kel whipped around and lunged out the door. Xela, calling after him, placed the pup in his cradle and followed, hobbling out into the cold night air.

"Kel, wait! What is going on?"

Kel needn't have answered: a howl had gone up. Tousled-headed wolves peered out from their huts, some cradling infants, some clutching wives. All looked around in alarm, their frantic questions becoming a low roar the more wolves appeared in the streets. The howl (a wolf's signal of alarm) was only given in an emergency: a sudden raid, an abduction, a fire. Kel hurried toward the sound, his heart pounding in his chest as he forced his way through the gathering crowds until he came at last to the village gates.

The chief himself was standing at the gates, a wooden staff in his paw. He was a tall old wolf, dark gray in color, with pale gray eyes and a firm demeanor. Being the father of six daughters, he was also a very weary old male. Many warriors gathered around him bearing their spears, war paint already around their eyes, feather talismans strapped already to their biceps. They talked low among themselves while some squatted, examining the ground. Meanwhile, two males Kel recognized at once as that night's sentries were slumped against the village wall, looking weak and confused, bandages on their heads. So they'd been knocked out. And tied up too, judging by the loose rope nearby.

Kel saw Loryn (dressed as well in war paint and talismans and wearing a small pouch across his chest) make his way toward him. Kel smelled at once that Loryn had been out in the forests. Many of the warriors smelled of the flowers and trees that grew there. So they'd been out searching for Aliona all the time he'd been in his hut waiting for her!

"Why didn't you tell me?" Kel barked at Loryn. "She's my wife!"

Loryn's sympathetic expression hardened. "We thought we might find her before we had to, my brother. Using the basket she left behind, we tried to track her scent. We thought that maybe she'd been dragged into the forest. But it seems as if she vanished on the spot." His expression softened again and he placed a paw on Kel's shoulder, "I'm sorry, Kel."

"Don't be sorry, we can track her," said Zaldon, who'd been crouching, sniffing the tracks in the dirt. He, too, was wearing war paint: a green circle had been drawn around his eye, standing out sharply in his white fur. He stood and joined Kel and Loryn. "The tracks are big. They belong to one of the winter tribe. And if we go there, we already know who to confront. Their vanishing could only have happened with magic."

"A sorcerer," Kel growled, clenching up his fists. How was he to defeat a sorcerer? Even if he challenged this wolf, his Aliona was as good as lost to him now.

"We will help you," said Yzlo, joining the other three. "We've been friends since we were pups, the four of us. How could we not?" He smiled at Kel, who couldn't help but smile in return.

"Thank you," said Kel, and looking at them all, he was suddenly overwhelmed with love and gratitude, "my brothers."

Heading back to his hut to prepare for the journey, Kel couldn't calm the beating of his heart. It had been the first time in many months since he and Zaldon had spoken -- after all, Zaldon had brutally raped him! And before their best friends! He had become cold since the incident, and until his anus healed, he couldn't even meet Zaldon's eye without growling involuntarily under his breath. But the truth was, seeing Zaldon squatting only moments ago in the dirt with his big cock and that sweet-smelling fur . . . Kel had remembered it inside him and had become . . . aroused. It was all he could do standing there among his friends to keep it down. He didn't understand himself. Zaldon had fucked him raw and not only that, but brutally too! Spanking him and pinching him and calling him his bitch! It had all been utterly humiliating, agonizing, emasculating. And yet, being so close to Zaldon again for the first time in the longest while, Kel could not stop thinking about the way Zaldon had sucked him so tenderly and so slowly, his mouth hot and slobbering wet, his grunts vibrating around Kel's cock! And the way he stroked Kel's dick as he fucked him, and the way he licked his neck, and the way his massive cock had rammed away inside Kel, no matter that it hurt, made Kel shiver with pleasure just thinking about it. He hadn't sobbed into the dirt simply because he was ashamed and humiliated. He had sobbed into the dirt because he was ashamed for liking Zaldon's arms around him, for liking Zaldon's hot body pressed against his own, for liking Zaldon's thick, pumping cock in his ass. He hated himself. He shouldn't be thinking of Zaldon! He should be thinking of Aliona and how to get her back! But looking down, Kel saw that he'd become aroused, and giving a little whimper of shame, he knelt on the floor in his darkened hut and worked vigorously at his cock until he spurted and the hard-on went down.

"Stop thinking of Zaldon, for god's sake!" he chided himself. "Think of Aliona in some giant wolf's arms!" The very thought enraged him, and sloshing his thumb violently into his plate of blue clay, he jerked on his war paint and wrenched on his feather talisman, tugged on his traveling pack, then snatched up his spear and left the hut.

Before he met the others at the gates, Kel stopped by Xela's again. He was anxious to find her crying beside the fire, and when he went to her and held her, she sobbed that she had lost her husband, three other daughters, and now her Aliona? She couldn't take it! Kel comforted her, telling her that he would not come back without his wife, that she shouldn't worry and to please take good care of his son. Then he went to the cradle where his son was gurgling softly in his sleep. A milk bladder hung from the corner of the cradle, reminding Kel with a sting that Aliona was gone, no longer here to nurse her son. His brows rushing together, Kel lifted the pup from his cradle and whispered in his ear that he promised to bring his mother back. Then he set his tiny son down carefully, and just in case he didn't return, he pulled off his feathered talisman and left it near his son's head in the cradle. A father was supposed to make a talisman for his son when he became a warrior, and Kel, secretly terrified that he would not come back, left his own for his son. Then, giving Xela a kiss goodbye, he left the hut and joined his friends at the village gates.

Reaching the winter village would take a few days' travel, even more if it snowed on the way. Kel and his friends slept by day and traveled by the night, the better to keep a sharp ear out for the lone wolves who lived as bandits and thieves and outcasts. They took a path through the northern forest where the mating seasons were held annually, following Zaldon's lead, who in turn let the stars guide him. Zaldon was well acquainted with the route to the winter village, for his mother had come from there and had married into Kel's tribe, taking him back there sometimes as a pup to visit with his family. And so, with a knowledgeable guide, it wasn't long before they were halfway there.

During the long nights of foot marching through the forest, Kel thought all the time of Aliona. He wondered what had happened to her, what was happening to her now, if she could have possibly escaped. But he knew it was a futile hope: Aliona had been taken by a sorcerer. There was no escaping their kind.

Yet even while Kel's thoughts dwelled mostly on his wife and rescuing her, his mind couldn't help but drift every now and then to Zaldon. Sometimes he would wind up walking directly behind Zaldon and he would fall to studying the larger male's movements: his shifting buttocks, his lowly gliding tail, his flexing arms and back, even the sounds Zaldon made when he moved brought Kel back to that night several months ago when Zaldon had held him in his arms, when Zaldon had sucked at him so tenderly and passionately, when Zaldon had kissed him on the mouth. Lovers kissed on the mouth, not males who were fighting over a female's pussy, and Loryn's words came back to Kel: "I always suspected that Zaldon was in love with you, my brother!"

But it wasn't true! It couldn't be true! Kel had known Zaldon all his life, and never once had Zaldon shown the slightest desire, shown any hint of attraction or arousal when in Kel's presence. How then had Loryn known but Kel himself had not? Had he really been that oblivious? Or perhaps Zaldon had simply confessed to Loryn.

There was a certain type of male who lived within their village. These males never married or settled down. They lived as warriors as strong and as fierce and as respected as any other, but they liked ass instead of pussy, especially when it was male ass. These males were called tail chasers. They gathered in the forests in the dead of night and fucked each other. Some said it was for want of the mating season: having to wait so long each year when you were single could be agonizing. But Kel knew better: it was for want of other males. And Kel was well aware that Loryn, though he liked pussy as much as Kel, had gone to these meetings out in the woods a few times himself. Had Zaldon maybe confessed his feelings for Kel to Loryn there? It was infuriating suddenly that they were talking about Kel behind his back!

But if Kel never went to the tail chaser meetings, it wasn't because he didn't like cock. Other males aroused him as easily as females if he wasn't careful to conceal it. No, Kel refrained from going because he'd always been afraid of being fucked in the ass. He liked dick as much as he liked pussy: liked sucking it, liked touching it, liked it inside of him now that it had happened. But before Zaldon took him in the forest, Kel had been afraid to have cock inside of him. Had always been afraid. He'd thought that somehow it would make him less of a male, but he had never felt more like a male than the moment when he came in Zaldon's paw.

There had even been an incident when Kel had let Loryn suck him off -- and not because he didn't want Loryn inside of him but because he was afraid of having his ass ripped open. They'd been goofing around at the waterfall down in the forest, splashing each other and eventually wrestling. They'd been pups, about thirteen. And Loryn, holding Kel in a headlock, had seen Kel's sudden arousal. Straightening up, Loryn instantly became aroused himself, and he promised not to tell if Kel would let him fuck him. But Kel, his tail tucking shamefully between his legs, had shaken his head vigorously. Yet he knew that if he didn't do something to alleviate his hard-on, it would become unbearable. So the boys had jerked each other off right there in the shallows, and eventually, Loryn coaxed Kel into letting him suck his cock. Kel had walked home with him, unable to look him the eye. He felt such a coward. But Loryn was nice to him about it and on the way home, licked his cheek.

Present-day Kel didn't understand his feelings then as much as he didn't understand them now. How could he be aroused by both males and females? In a world where things were black and white, he'd always been confused by his feelings. A male was either supposed to like pussy or ass. There didn't seem to be a place in his world for those who liked both. So Kel, still terrified of having cock inside of him, had decided to avoid being labeled as a tail chaser. But no matter what he told himself, he couldn't deny that he had liked Zaldon's mouth on his cock, that he had liked Zaldon's arms around him, Zaldon's big paws stroking him. The pain in his ass had been a bit much, but it'd been worth it in the end just to have Zaldon's big, pumping dick inside of him. If only he had gone to the tail chaser meetings before the mating seasons, if only he'd had the balls, maybe then being with Zaldon would've been more bearable.

He remembered with a little tremble Zaldon's breath on his neck, Zaldon's kisses on his cheek, and the heat of Zaldon, the strength of those big arms and the way his hard body moved against him as he thrusted. God. Kel would kill to know Zaldon again. He felt so ashamed for feeling this way. But somehow, he knew . . . he had always felt this way!

The forest eventually ended at a great rock face riddled with cliffs, little pine trees, and underbrush. Some of the villagers who herded goats were known to lose them up this rock face. For beyond the cliffs was a vast pine forest, stretching endlessly to the horizon, and those who failed to find their goats before they'd climbed the cliff lost them.

Zaldon, still in the lead, set his foot against the rock face and started up. Kel, realizing what was happening, was suddenly alarmed at the prospect of being under Zaldon as they climbed: he would have full view of Zaldon's swinging balls and cock, full view of Zaldon's pink anus under his tail, full view of Zaldon's flexing muscles as he climbed. His private struggle not to get aroused at the mere sight of Zaldon would only intensify.

Sensing his friend's hesitation, Loryn offered to go next, but as if Kel didn't want anyone suspecting his building excitement, he insisted on going. Ignoring Loryn's wise smile, he adjusted the pouch he carried on his hip, slipped his arm through the strap attached to his spear, and started up after Zaldon. If he didn't want the others suspecting his private agonies, he would have to make a show of not avoiding Zaldon. He was an adult now, a fully grown male with a wife and a son. Only pups ran and hid from their fears, only a pup would avoid Zaldon now and humiliate himself once again before his friends. He silently thanked god that Yzlo, at least, didn't know about his secret desires. It was bad enough that Loryn kept watching him: he didn't want Yzlo studying him either.

With the stars twinkling innocently above and crickets chirruping enthusiastically in the underbrush, the party climbed on and on, higher and higher, until they came to a wide enough plateau where they could stop to rest. As it was getting near dawn, they decided to camp there until the next night, when they would set out again. Yzlo got a fire going, and Loryn, the best cook of them all, took out a few hares and started skinning them. He also pulled out potatoes and onions from his wife's (Kira's) personal garden. Yzlo chipped in a bit of stock from his own herds while Zaldon worked away at skinning a fish and Kel pulled out the long carrots Grandmother Xela had bid him take with him.

Seeing the long, un-chopped carrots being handled so lovingly by Kel, Loryn shot his friend a teasing smile, implying that the carrots were being handled like dicks. Kel glowered at Loryn as he sliced the carrots with a slender knife. Thus distracted, he accidentally cut his finger and pulled it away with a curse.

"Shit!" Kel snarled, cradling his paw. He groped at his pouch for bandages, but taking away his paw only made the bleeding worse.

Zaldon, who was sitting next to Kel, set down his own knife and shook his head. "Here, here, let me!" he growled, slapping at Kel's fumbling paw. "If you don't hold your paw over the cut you'll bleed everywhere and I don't fancy your blood in my fish!" So saying, Zaldon rummaged in his own pouch, and producing a bandage, he leaned close to Kel and started wrapping his finger carefully.

Having Zaldon so close to him now, Kel's entire body went stiff. He tried not to breathe in Zaldon's musk, tried not to feel the heat emanating from his body, tried to ignore the gentle touch of Zaldon's fingers. Kel held out long enough that he didn't get hard the entire time Zaldon was wrapping his cut, and when Zaldon finally moved away again with a satisfied grunt, he slumped in relief. Kel was not happy, however, to see Loryn still watching him. He decided this time that he would ignore Loryn, and that's exactly what he did all through dinner.

The four males ate in silence, grunting appreciatively at Loryn's cooked hare, munching on Yzlo's stock and Kel's carrots. As Loryn and Yzlo didn't really care for fish, Zaldon shared it with Kel, tipping a small piece onto his plate with a friendly smile. Kel smiled back and nodded awkwardly, unsure now of how to act. He didn't want to be cold to Zaldon anymore. What was done was done and they'd been friends too long to let "fighting over a female" break them apart. But he was also afraid of being too friendly with Zaldon again: Kel didn't want Zaldon getting any ideas. The last thing he wanted was to be raped brutally before the eyes of his friends again. But on the contrary, Zaldon didn't flirt or make any allusions to that night of several months ago. He acted just as if it had never happened at all and went on acting toward Kel as he always had: as nothing more than his brother and friend. For this, Kel was eternally grateful.

After dinner, as dawn's fingers were reaching over the sky, Zaldon suggested that they needed more firewood. The mornings were dismally frosty up on the cliffs and he knew where some pine trees grew on another cliff just a little higher up. Yzlo, who wasn't quite tired yet, offered to go with Zaldon and the two set off.

"Do you think you're funny?" Kel demanded angrily of Loryn once Zaldon and Yzlo had climbed out of earshot.

Loryn, who was unrolling his sleeping furs from his pack, only smiled over his shoulder at Kel. "No, I think you are," he said. "Trying to ignore your feelings, denying who and what you are when it's so painfully obvious that you want him to fuck you blind."

Kel sputtered angrily, but his friend continued over him, "Kel, you may like pussy but you like cock too. There's nothing wrong with that."

When Kel could think of no retort, Loryn came to him, and cupping his face with one paw, he kissed him on the lips. "Good night, Kel." With that, he went back to his furs, pulled one on top of himself, and went to sleep.

Kel sat beside the dwindling fire, struggling once more with his feelings as he rolled out his own furs. He wouldn't be going to sleep, though: it was his and Zaldon's turn to sit up and watch for lone wolves. God, how was he going to make it sitting here alone with Zaldon for the next couple hours? He knew they were going to wind up talking, and what was he going to say? "Zaldon, ever since that night you fucked me in the forest, I have wanted you badly. Please fuck me now."? And what about Aliona? He loved her! He loved Zaldon as a brother and friend, but that didn't stop him from wanting him sexually.

"Stop thinking of Zaldon!" Kel hissed at himself, hoping desperately that Loryn was too deeply asleep to have heard. But what did it matter? Loryn knew his secrets. Loryn had sucked his dick!

Overcome with shame, Kel rummaged in his traveling pack and pulled out something of Aliona's that he'd brought with him. It was a small wooden brush of hers and smelled heavily of her mane. He pressed it to his nose and breathed in her scent. God, yes, that aroused him at once! How he missed his Aliona: her breasts in his paws, her nipples in his lips, her wet gushing pussy over his cock . . . He missed her smile and laugh, the sound of her voice, her little fingers curling in his fur as they slept . . . Kel started, his ears pricking forward. Small rocks were tumbling down from the higher pass: Zaldon and Yzlo were returning. Glancing up, he saw in the gray dawn that they were still fairly high. He had just enough time to jerk himself off and get his hard-on down before they returned.

"I guess Sleeping Beauty there didn't forget who's pulling watch tonight," chuckled Zaldon, nodding at Loryn's sleeping form. He set down the branches gathered under his arm, as did Yzlo with his, and then the three of them set to work building up the fire.

"That ought to hold us," Yzlo said with a nod. He turned to his own pack and pulled out his furs. "Night, brothers," he said, crawling inside them. "And don't let any bandits sneak down here and fuck me, eh? Not unless they're hot," he added, chuckling at his own joke.

Kel laughed too, knowing that the usually serious Yzlo was giving the rare joke: Yzlo was a strictly pussy-loving male and if he ever took an ass, it belonged to a female.

"I won't let them," promised Zaldon. "I'll probably knock them out with my dick before they touch you."

Yzlo laughed at this joke, then turned over and went to sleep.

Sitting beside Zaldon around the fire was as awkward for Kel as he'd predicted. After having been fucked brutally by a childhood friend, how do you act around him? He'd been cold to Zaldon for several months for his humiliation, but now that Zaldon had volunteered to help Kel, to rush into certain danger to save Aliona, Kel didn't know how to be angry anymore. Besides, his humiliation wasn't Zaldon's fault but his own. If he wasn't so ashamed of liking cock, if he'd just gone to the tail chaser meetings as he'd always wanted to, Zaldon would have already fucked him and wouldn't have pursued him and taken him so brutally before the eyes of horrified females and his best friends.

"You're bleeding, Kel," Zaldon said suddenly, jolting Kel out of his thoughts.

Kel looked at his bandaged paw, and indeed, the bandage had worn loose and his blood was dripping on the earth. He must've jerked himself off with his injured paw without even thinking. After all, it was only a small nip on his finger. He fumbled to bandage it back up, but Zaldon insisted on doing it for him.

"What were you doing with your paw anyway?" Zaldon asked, though it seemed he already knew. He gave Kel a teasing smile.

Kel sat stiff once more, trying with all his might to ignore Zaldon's arousing musk, the heat pulsing from Zaldon's body, the brush of Zaldon's fur against his own as the larger male carefully re-wrapped his bandages. And then Kel, his chest heaving faster and faster, caught the scent of Zaldon's balls and dick (a rugged, overwhelming odor) and suddenly, he couldn't ignore his feelings anymore. He grabbed Zaldon's paw as, finished with the binding, Zaldon was turning away. Zaldon halted, gazing at Kel's heaving chest and helpless expression in wonder.

"Kel!" he cried. He looked down and saw that Kel's cock was standing erect and even glistening with pre-cum.

"I can't pretend anymore," said Kel, swallowing, "that I didn't like when you fucked me. I liked it. I wanted it. I just wish you hadn't humiliated me like that. I just wish you hadn't made it hurt so badly."

Zaldon's face softened. "Oh, Kel," he said apologetically and touched a big paw tenderly to Kel's cheek. "It didn't have to be like that. I wouldn't have fucked you: I would've made love to you -- and with no one watching."

Kel laughed and gazed at Zaldon breathlessly, at this white wolf who was so young and handsome -- that thick neck, that hard chest! "So it's true," said Kel, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. "You're in love with me?"

"Since we were pups," answered Zaldon. He shrugged his powerful shoulders, "But I knew you'd never feel the same. You watched Aliona for years, didn't you, but she never knew. You've wanted her a long time, the same way I've always wanted you."

"I can't help who I love," said Kel quietly, placing his paw on Zaldon's knee and massaging apologetically.

"Neither can I," answered Zaldon, meeting Kel's gaze. "You have no idea the struggle it's been these past years, wanting you and at the same, keeping you from knowing. And when I finally saw my chance to have you, I took you. It hurt when you chose Aliona, Kel. That's why it didn't bother me at the time to hurt you. But why, after all this time, are you suddenly coming to me? I know you're not in love with me. You've never been. Always after Aliona."

"It's not about love. It's about me having deprived myself of cock all my life because I didn't have the balls to go to a tail chaser meeting and get my ass fucked. I had this stupid idea that it would make me less of a male. But then . . . when I came in your paw again and again . . . I realized that it didn't. I felt just as much a male in your arms as I do when I'm with Aliona. Nothing changed at all."

"What are you asking of me, Kel?" Zaldon whispered after a long pause.

They had both sat staring into the fire, listening to it crackle, listening to their own thoughts.

"Are you asking me to make love to you?"

"Do you want to?"

Zaldon's dick throbbed upright in response, and there was a serious fire in his eyes that made a thrill of pleasure run through Kel's body.

"I want you to love me," Zaldon said, cupping Kel's face, "but since I can not have your love, let me make love to you. I've wanted to kiss you longer than you'll ever realize."

Kel looked Zaldon directly in the eye, "Then make love to me, Zaldon."

"Say it again."

Kel moved closer until he was kneeling between Zaldon's knees, and kissing Zaldon warm on the mouth, he whispered against his lips, "Make love to me, Zaldon," his entire body trembling.

Zaldon kissed Kel at once on the mouth, and it was a kiss so deliciously warm and ardent and eager that Kel knew he'd been saving it for years. He felt himself being pressed down by Zaldon's gently coaxing paw, and he was moved by what a gentle a giant Zaldon was -- and always had been, he silently reflected. And he knew when Zaldon looked him deeply in the eyes with that same warm and loving fire that this time would be different.

But Kel wasn't ready for that yet. Trembling as Zaldon's paws searched his body, Kel was only too happy to spread Zaldon's knees, and leaning down, he took Zaldon's thick pink cock in his mouth. He sucked it tenderly and slowly, his spit gushing over Zaldon's cock in his eagerness to please.

Zaldon's head fell back, and he moaned, "God, Kel, that feels good. Don't stop . . . You have no idea how long I've wanted your pretty mouth there . . ."

Kel liked sucking Zaldon's cock more than he ever imagined he would. He liked the sweaty, salty taste; he liked the musky smell; he liked the way Zaldon's cock throbbed and swelled every time he gave a lick or a suck that was particularly pleasing. Most of all, he liked hearing Zaldon's deep, grunting moans of ecstasy. He relished in the fact that he was bringing him pleasure, and knowing that Zaldon was enjoying it so much, Kel felt his own dick throbbing painfully. Soon, he was slobbering all over Zaldon's cock so much that the drool was spilling over, seeping into Zaldon's fur. Zaldon jerked with a little cry, his body going tense, and it seemed to Kel as if he stopped him just as he was about to come.

The serious fire still in his eyes, Zaldon gently coaxed Kel onto his back, then knelt before him, pulling Kel's legs onto his shoulders. He sank his cock in very slowly with a sticky squelch. As Zaldon's cock was now slick with Kel's spit, it felt deliciously smooth pushing inside. He let out a low, long moan, his body quivering as Zaldon, moving his dick slowly in and out, drove himself deeper and deeper still. Giving Kel a loving smile, Zaldon took his cock in his paw and started running it carefully up and down the shaft, squeezing every now and then, caressing the tip.

"Do you like me inside you, Kel?" Zaldon whispered, as nervously as if he was afraid Kel hated being with him.

"I love you inside me," Kel confessed, quivering and red in the face. "When I saw you back at the village, I could think of nothing else," he further confessed, looking sheepish.

Zaldon's eyes softened, as if Kel had just spoken words he had been waiting all his life to hear. With the same loving smile, he leaned down close and kissed Kel warm on the lips. They moved in slow rhythm together, their bodies rolling fluidly, their gasps and cries low. They smiled into each other's eyes and kissed, and Kel never felt so loved as in that moment when Zaldon rubbed his nose against his. God. Behind all the bullshit, Zaldon was just a big sweetheart. And always had been.

"I love you, Kel," Zaldon whispered, giving Kel's cheek a kiss that made him laugh. "I always have. And I won't ask you to love me. Hell, after all these years, I've stopped hoping . . . Just grant me one request."

"What is it?"

"Never," whispered Zaldon in Kel's ear, "let another male have you."

Kel, laying there breathless under Zaldon's hard body, didn't know what to say. He thought of Loryn and how they'd touched each other under the waterfall as pups on the verge of adulthood, but nothing had happened between him and Loryn since, nothing but an innocent lick on the face every now and then when no one was looking. And sometimes when they were alone, Loryn would start kissing Kel on the mouth, and Kel, who'd been horny for male interaction, would kiss him back. But that was the extent of their physical contact. Kel didn't know if he should confess that he and Loryn sometimes did those things, but to his surprise, Zaldon said,

"I know about you and Loryn. Loryn's told me all about you, how you've kept your feelings about males hidden for so long. I don't mind you being with Loryn, Kel. He's my lover too, of course. I've fucked him more times in the forest than you'd believe, all the time pretending he was you.

"No, Loryn doesn't count. Just promise me you won't let another male be close with you like this, and I'll be satisfied. Can you promise me that, Kel?" Zaldon asked.

He looked so anxious, so worried, that Kel kissed his cheek and stroked his mane to calm him. "I promise," he whispered. "I'll never let another male hold me in his arms. I won't let another male kiss me or cuddle me . . ." He laughed. "I wouldn't want anyone else anyway."

When they came and lay cuddling together on Kel's furs, Kel was half ashamed of himself when he snuggled against Zaldon's chest. But he liked Zaldon's big arms around him, he liked Zaldon's rugged musk, he liked Zaldon's kisses in his mane. He liked the closeness of it all, this tender affection that Zaldon had asked Kel should only give to him. And he loved more than anything when Zaldon's big fingers tangled with his own, and lifting Kel's black paw, he kissed it.

"I think I love you now more than I ever have, damn you," said Zaldon helplessly. He held Kel close, kissing him in his thick black mane.

"Why do you love me?" Kel whispered. "I don't understand it."

"How could I not love you? You're strong and fast, a fierce warrior. You have a bashful, caring side that you're always trying to hide. And you're sexy as hell. Every time you walk by it costs me a full night of masturbation."

Kel's ears pricked forward in shock. It was amazing to him that he hadn't discovered Zaldon's feelings much sooner. But then, he'd always been so preoccupied with Aliona. What would she think if she could see him now, lying there so happy in Zaldon's burly arms? He remembered how Aliona had gone after Kira unprovoked and wouldn't have been surprised if she understood that he had urges she couldn't satisfy, just the way she had urges he couldn't satisfy either.

"Zaldon," Kel whispered fearfully after a while, "do you think we'll get her back?"

Zaldon answered, determined and grim, "We'll sure as hell try."