Her lizard brain wanted to drink in that cocktail of primitive pheromones until it was drunk and ass-up.
He could smell her lizard brain. If she could smell his lizard brain, he could smell hers. Males had far superior snouts to females.
Rainer led her off the path into the gently rolling grass.
“Still fine? Do you need to rest?” he asked as she panted going up an incline.
“I’m fine.” The heavy feeling in her chest seemed to throb down to her paws. She tried not to pant, but her heart’s movements felt strange and shallow.
Rainer sat down.
Disgusted with herself, she flopped down and panted. Rainer settled down on his sternum and rested his chin on his forepaws, and closed his eyes, but one ear remained cocked towards her.
It took a few more stops for her to rest when her heart rate got too high before they got to a river. It wasn’t a river like Earth had had rivers, perhaps three meters across, but it wound its way through the biome, originating in some part beyond her sight and ending at some other point.
Rainer looked around, then led her up the rocky shore to some shallows where the water pooled.
“Here?” she asked, bewildered. She plunked her furry butt back down as her heart threatened to not behave properly.
He nuzzled her ear. She shied away and swung her snout at him. He rumbled with amusement and headed to the water. “Wait here.”
She settled down on the shore, arranging herself between bumps of rocks intermingled with grass, and crossed one forepaw over the other.
Rainer waded, slowly, into the shallows. He stared intently at the water for long moments, motionless except for careful movements.
She cocked her head to the side. What was he doing? Even a crow alighted and bounced along the rocks, and watched Rainer with curiosity.
Rainer pounced. Water splashed. His head disappeared under the surface, his soaking wet tail went up, and he yanked back, a little fish clasped in his maw.
The little fish thrashed and flapped. Rainer bounced out of the water, very pleased with himself, and, tail and head up, with the fish still flapping its last desperate flaps, paced over to her.
With grave ceremony he set the now-dead fish before her and kept his head level with hers.
She stared at the dead fish.
Prey? He’d brought her... prey?
Rainer nosed the fish closer and made a low noise deep in his throat.
“Wolves can fish?” she blurted out. “We can eat fish?”
Of course they could eat fish, but she’d never had fish, and she didn’t know wolf form ate fish or could fish. Fish were so valuable nobody ate fish. Maintaining water environments was difficult, and fish took a long time to grow to any useable size. They were a valuable hydroponic fertilizer and useful for fish oil, which was an important supplement. They made useful glue. Even their bladders were useful for wine and beer.
His scent became a swirl of confusion, disappointment, amusement, and yet more confusion.
Her husband had brought her prey. It was a little prey, but a delicacy. The old-world custom spun her brain around. Instinct started to weigh the fish against the many injuries he’d caused her. It was only a little fish, it could not possibly balance the scales between them, but did she reject it? Fling it back at him?
The fish smelled delicious. Something about its scent made her stomach growl. She hadn’t had much of an appetite since coming back from Medical.
Rainer rolled the fish another flop towards her. “It is small.”
Feral instinct drove her. She clamped a paw down over the tail while she tore into the head. She gulped down one large chunk, tearing flesh off the larger bones and skin. Another gulp, and more flesh and organs down her throat. Her blood howled in pleasure and her body sang with happiness.
Rainer watched with his bright gaze, wagging his tail slowly as she gnawed and gulped down the best portions of fish, leaving the fins and skin and larger bones in a wrecked state.
She licked her chops.
Rainer returned to the riverbed. Patiently, he stalked along it, waiting, waiting, until pounce! This time the fish escaped, churning froth along the surface. Rainer tore after it, lunged into the water, and came up with a fish.
Without thinking, she wagged her tail, and gave him a lick across the snout as he laid it in front of her.
“It is also small,” he said.
She devoured that one too. He moved further upstream. She watched him from a distance, feral mind simmering and bathing in the pleasure of watching him hunt for her, displaying his prowess, and the artificial breeze blowing the cocktail of his scent towards her. He brought her two more small fish.
Her belly was full, but she still ate half of one fish, and rolled the fourth back towards him to indicate he should eat it.
He gulped it down in two bites, and spit out a few small bones.
When he settled down next to her, she did not bite him.
He rested his snout across her shoulders, then nuzzled her ears.
Her wolf-brain growled in pleasure, sending a shimmer of pleased scent off her fur, and when she inhaled, his scent was Rainer and sex and domination. He shoved his snout under her neck, lifting her head and exposing her throat, and he twisted his head to clamp his teeth, gently, over her throat. She rolled over, and he moved with her, the two of them twisting back into human form.
He released her throat to kiss her lips, and her tongue moved to meet his.
“Yes,” she whispered from the depths of her primal mind. All that mattered was he was there, his scent domination and control and sex. His dense body moved over hers, his hips sliding between her thighs, and the tip of his thick cock brushing her waiting wetness.
He gripped a handful of her hair and inhaled the scent of it, ran it against his own cheek, pulled his fingers through the tangled strands. He growled to himself, then released her hair and kissed a trail down her throat, between her breasts, down her belly. He kissed her mound before sliding his tongue between her slit and over her clit. She gasped and grabbed at his hair. His tongue moved over her again, teasing her clit before dipping inside her to taste her.
She moaned and arched off the grass, savoring the softness of his touch and the roughness of the grass against her shoulders. She ground her shoulders into the dirt and grass, raking her skin as his tongue gently coaxed waves of pleasure from her. One of his fingers traced the outline of her body, teasing her gently, but not entering her. She snarled and shoved his head away.
His laughter reminded her more of a wolf than human. She growled and kicked him in the calf.
He pushed her onto her side and snaked behind her. His entire body pressed around her. She shuddered and moaned softly. His cock slipped against her ass. He nipped her neck, gently, and one strong, chapped hand gripped her thigh and lifted it back over his hip. His cock slipped between her legs from behind, stroking her soaking wetness and taunting her clit.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head back against his chest. He inhaled the scent rising off her silken hair, rubbed his cheek against it, and growled, softly, “Mine.”
She slid herself along his length. Shocks raced through her body, and hunger howled in her core. She hooked her heel behind his knee, pulling herself harder against him.
He released her thigh and reached between them, pressing his cock against her so she ground herself along it, and using his thumb to stroke her clit. She moaned and writhed. He stroked her like she was a cat, each slow stroke flicking licks of fire across her skin and through her brain.
She gasped and ground herself against him. His breathing rushed against her neck. She reached down between her legs to press his hand firmer against her body or grab his cock, whichever she got to first.
“Mine,” he growled again, shifting his hand to shake her off. Then he chuckled. “Touch something I’m not.”
She scratched at the back of his hand with a growl, but his big hand owned her, so she was left
to play with her breasts, fondling the heavy skin and pinching the nipple, rolling it between her fingers.
“Slowly,” he whispered as he lifted his thumb off her, backing her away from her orgasm. “Not yet.”
“You fucking beast.” She arched against her hand and his and his teeth.
“Not yet, I’m not.”
She panted, dangling in his grip. She tried to flip over, but his grip was too strong, and her AGRS-riddled body too weak. He kissed her shoulder gently in a delicate chain, letting her heartbeat slow before he returned to strumming her body. Once, twice, three times. Then he lifted his hand and grasped his cock to guide it inside her.
The sensation of him filling her melted something inside her. Her body dissolved like salt in water with every inch of his cock.
His hips arched forward, driving deep inside her. His hand brushed over her face and hooked into the corner of her mouth.
She bit down on his fingers. He hissed, and bit her shoulder, stroking deep within her. His fingers pulled at her mouth, raking along the flats of her teeth as she clenched her jaw down, growling and moaning at the same time.
Her orgasm crashed across her in a wave, and her body clenched down around his, strumming his thick length. He hissed and groaned into her neck while she gasped, panting and her body twitching.
His damp fingers traced shock-inducing lines down her throat, between her breasts, and gently caressed between her thighs, and she cried out again, shuddering as he filled her over and over, extending her pleasure like an artist drawing out a note.
She could barely think once his own body seized within hers, and she collapsed onto the warm grass and dirt, panting hard while her damaged heart raced.
He breathed hard against her throat, tucked against her and still within her.
A small rock dug into her hip. The grass had rubbed her skin raw. The wetness between them had started to get sticky. Some bugs buzzed around the corners of her eyes. The sun-lamps from the fake sky baked them, and somewhere birds chirped and a frog croaked.
Rainer shifted.
“Don’t,” she whispered, breathless, and not ready for the time to end.
He moved anyway, slowly, slipping from her in a rush of dampness. He pulled her onto his back and pressed his fingertips against her throat.
“I’m fine,” she said, still breathless, and her heart rate fast, shallow, and stumbling in her chest.
Eventually, her heart rate slowed, and she shifted back into wolf form. Rainer did as well, and they began the slow walk back to the doors. Her feral mind drifted in the moment, not really caring about what had just happened.
Once back at the buildings and herb garden, and in human form, her human mind realized what they’d done.
Nothing was said as they went back to their quarters.
“Sit,” Rainer said once they were inside.
“Don’t start mother-henning me.” She sighed as she sank onto the couch, her body still flushed and slick and shivering with delight at what he’d done to her. Her heart, on the other hand, felt like she’d just sprinted ten miles.
“Wolf form doesn’t always result in the best judgement,” he said as he prepared the lime-tasting solution that Medical insisted she keep drinking. He brought her a cup and a handful of pills.
“I know you didn’t lure me to the Biome looking for sex,” she said, accepting the items. Wolf form didn’t have a lot of human form’s restraint. The senses were so much more intense, instinct ran so much closer to the surface. Their lizard brains got to do exactly what they’d been wanting to do, without the weight of higher thought keeping urges in check.
“You have AGRS.”
“But you just couldn’t resist the scent of your wife accepting your peace offering?”
Something in his expression smoldered. “No.”
Her body flushed again. “To be fair, I couldn’t resist such a display of prowess.”
He watched as she swallowed each pill with gulps of the lime liquid.
Her feral instincts giving themselves to him left her vaguely unsettled. Shouldn’t have been a shock, she’d known her primitive brain wanted to fuck him since the moment she’d met him. It was the higher brain functions that struggled with what all that meant.
She’d never had a sexual partner where it hadn’t been a simple transaction. Rainer hadn’t been simple. Nothing about what had just happened with Rainer had been simple. Something paced inside her soul, but she couldn’t tell if it was regret or fear that Rainer may not be as crazy as he sounded.
Human words would have ruined everything, so they sat in contemplative silence, staring at the Moon painting over the couch.
Rainer's Final Game
Tsu laced his fingers and rested his hands in his lap. “How are they doing in therapy?”
Rainer and Lachesis had had their first three counseling sessions. Time for a progress report. Lachesis had been out of sight for a short time while she recovered from the worst of the AGRS, re-appeared in the wardroom for meals, but he hadn’t seen her the previous evening or that morning. His paternal instincts needled him, and his husband had agreed. Something still wasn’t seem quite right between Rainer and Lachesis. Something seemed off, and her disappearing again might mean another struggle between her and Rainer.
The therapist, Doctor Kells, shrugged a bit. “They’re interesting together. Not the usual relationship parameters.”
“Well, we did anticipate having to pair Rainer with someone who could put up with him,” Tsu admitted for Keenan, although he hadn’t had much to do with it. “Are they a bad match?”
Kells shook her head. “I don’t think so, but they’re not telling me everything. Lachesis is harboring some sort of turmoil, and Rainer is the center of it, but she’s trying to hide it. Rainer knows the problem. Both refuse to discuss it or even acknowledge it to me. There’s a layer of intimacy between them, but there’s also alienation.”
That echoed what he’d detected. “But he knows he’s the source of the problem.”
“The wolf tore apart Medical for her.” Keenan sighed.
“That might be the problem,” Tsu said. Rainer’s personality extremes were frightening. Rainer didn’t do warm or cool. Rainer was either a few degrees within absolute zero, or somewhere around plasma. He’d unintentionally frightened his first wife so badly she’d needed some therapy to get over the experience. He hadn’t been violent, she’d just reported Rainer as “too intense”. She’d compared it to a climbing wall: even with a safety harness, falling was still instinctively terrifying, and you didn’t want to experience it. His second wife had expressed the same opinion. Rainer had also threatened to put his head into a plasma conduit if he had to stay married to her.
If Tsu’s own husband had torn apart Medical to get to him he’d have been flattered but worried about his spouse’s mental state. Ripping through walls wasn’t a go-to response for most people, human or werewolf.
Kells nodded. “Waiting out Lachesis’ silence won’t work. Her personality doesn’t require confidants. She’s capable of carrying things inside her for a long time. That self-reliance was part of the reason she was brought here. It also makes Rainer and Lachesis a unique couple, as they share the exact same trait. They don’t especially want or need emotional intimacy with anyone, so they can afford to be very choosy about who they care about. I’ve never met a couple quite like them.”
“That’s because Crèche doesn’t make couples like them.” Keenan sighed and looked at the ceiling.
Tsu raised a brow. “Too late for regrets, Keenan. You can’t get cold feet now that you’ve realized you’ve made one too many compromises.”
The Crèche Commander sighed impatiently. “Divorce isn’t off the table. They still have to do Supervision.”
“That would only end badly at this point,” Kells said quickly.
“I’m not suggesting we do it now,” Keenan said. “But it has to get done.”
“And it can wait,” Tsu cut the Crèc
he Commander off, “you championed this, Keenan. You got what you wanted. Now you figure out how to make it work.”
“I’m not sure the Commander made a bad match,” Kells interjected delicately. “Things just haven’t been handled very well. It’s no surprise. Nobody has tried to do anything like this before.”
Tsu twisted his lips with annoyance. “What’s Rainer’s position right now? Emotionally.”
“Rainer very much wants to fix things with Lachesis. If we were back on Earth, he’d be bringing her fresh prey every single day trying to please her. And she would fling the rabbit back at him. He’d crawl away and pine over her until he decided it was time to get another rabbit and try again.”
Keenan dragged a palm over her face. “You’re describing him like a love-sick dog.”
“In fact,” Kells told Keenan, “I suspect he’s attempted to do just that. He was in Forest Biome 2 with her yesterday.”
“Ah, perhaps that explains why we didn’t see them the past few meals,” Tsu said. He’d heard Rainer had been attempting to trade the rabbit hunt he’d arranged for months earlier for something more immediate. The Commander had apparently sourced something. “I haven’t seen them. Do you suspect things did not go well?”
“She didn’t turn up in Medical, but she’s in no condition for a hunt. Who knows what Rainer was thinking.” Keenan rubbed her head.
Kells shrugged. “Werewolf males are hard-wired to please their consorts and keep the den harmonious and protected. Rainer’s den is a mess and his consort is unhappy. Every single instinct demands he fix it, and Rainer’s already a fixer by nature. You did make a good match, Keenan: Rainer’s accepted Lachesis as his consort, and it’s flicked all the right switches in his brain. Maybe all those pheromones will flick the right switches in his balls.”
Keenan sighed hugely. “Except Rainer cocked it up, and his wife also isn’t the brightest tube when it comes to this sort of thing. It’s like breeding pandas.”
“You mean those black and white bears that went extinct on Earth because they were too stupid to figure out how to mate?” Kells asked.
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