by Renard, Loki
"You are welcome here as long as you follow our rules,” Falkri says. “You must renounce the world you came from and embrace the wild.”
“What are the rules of the wild?”
Falkri smiles with sharp fangs, his golden eyes gleaming. “Survive.”
“That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.”
“Good. Life is supposed to be a wild struggle. It was never meant to be hemmed in by rules enforced by self-appointed authorities who have no inherent right to make decisions for anyone other than themselves.”
“Talking anarchist cats,” I murmur to myself. “Awesome.”
Skoll is staying quiet. I sense he does not like these beasts. He was a bounty hunter. A man of the law. He was one of the ones who oppressed others, and brought criminals to justice. I doubt he agrees with Falkri’s philosophies.
“We will stay one night, and move on in the morning,” he murmurs in my ear.
Just one night here in this incredible place? I feel an ache in my chest at the idea of leaving. This place feels like a heaven of sorts, real and immediate, and at my fingertips.
“There is an unoccupied hovel above the waterfall,” Falkri says. “You are welcome to use it.”
I am up the waterfall path before I can hear Skoll tell Falkri that we don’t need it, or we don’t want to stay, or anything else which ignores my reaction to this place. These grimalkin may be wild, but there is a peace here I did not sense in the city.
Falkri described the place as a hovel, but it’s far more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. It is surprisingly spacious inside. The way the light travels through the subtle openings makes the place gleam with a cozy golden light.
The floor is set down inside the hill, carved and curved out like a pretty bowl with a bed at the bottom, full of furs. It looks like the most comfortable place to sleep I’ve ever seen, and I know it is good because Mr Tiddles has beaten me to it and is already curled up in the very center of the bed as if he owns it.
Around the outside of the single room space are a number of simple amenities, running water which is not piped but simply conduited through the walls of the mountainside and emerges into a stone bowl, to flow immediately away again. A cynic might call it an eternally leaky sink. I think it is beautiful.
“Why would any of you live in Scratch City when you can live here?” I ask the question as Skoll slips in behind me.
“Because in Scratch City, we have access to the most incredible entertainment and vistas, and…”
“But it’s all fake there!”
“Exactly. There it is all fake. And here it is real. Which means there, you get a scratch, you can get it fixed within minutes. Out here, you get an infection and really die.”
“Are you afraid of the wild, Skoll?”
“Of course not,” he bristles. “I decided to take us into the wild, remember?”
“So, you just don’t like the wild grimalkin?”
“I don’t like they way they look at you.”
“Oh, I get it! You're jealous!”
“I am not jealous, you brat human,” he growls, grabbing me with both paws and tossing me down onto the furs. I only just miss Mr Tiddles, who gives me a dirty look then gets up and leaves, sensing that things are going to get less than comfortable soon.
“Yes, you are. You’re jealous. Because they look at me. And you don’t like that.”
“They look at you as if you’re dinner. We have to be careful, and we have to make our apologies and leave soon. But we can stay tonight. You need shelter, rest, and food. All things I should be providing you. Not these wild cats.”
“You don’t have to take on all the responsibility for everything, Skoll. You never imagined that you’d become a fugitive. And I never imagined I’d end up on an alien planet.”
“I didn’t take you out here so you could fall in with this feral crowd. They have customs you will find barbaric.” He lowers his voice. “They don’t keep their women. Their females are as ferocious as their males. There’s no order based on gender.”
“Sounds like my kind of society.”
“Sounds like chaos you will have no part in,” he replies, his brows dropping down low.
“I like this place. And I think you like this place too.”
“It doesn’t matter what I like. It matters what you need. I want you away from the rest of the grimalkin. I want you all for myself. To myself.”
I love how possessive he is. At least, right now I love it. As with everything, Skoll’s intense possession is a double-edged sword.
“It is time I dealt with you, Kitty. Remember, your punishment still awaits.”
“I remember. I remember that I’ve followed you through the woods and I’m doing everything you tell me. And I also remember that I was almost killed, which hurts more than enough. More than anything you could do to punish me.”
“This,” he says, yanking me close, “Is not about hurting you. This is about teaching you to behave, and reminding you that even here, you are still my chain-kept.”
He pins me down on the bed, his cock emerging from the sheath at the apex of his thighs, a thick, throbbing, almost threatening organ ready to claim the tender parts of me. What I’m not going to tell him is that I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. When I was sick and healing on the mountain, there was so little I could do, and he was so careful with me. We have not been together carnally since he left me vibrating on his machine.
“Spread your legs.”
I do as I am told, looking up into his feral face, seeing the wild expression of desire playing over his animal features. He loves me. I know that. But I also know I am not going to get away with a slap on the hand. Instead, his slap is going to land somewhere entirely different, right across my lower lips.
“Owch!”
“Naughty girl. Naughty chain-kept human pet,” he lectures me. “Did you forget that you are my bounty?”
Another slap lands in the same place, making me sting in that naughty, filthy, dirty way.
“Keep your legs spread,” he demands. “Let me see you getting wetter and redder.”
He is torturing himself more than me. He is making himself wait to claim me, as much as he is making me wait to have him inside me. As the slaps fall and my body writhes, I find myself being taken to a place of such intense desire I no longer feel his punishing slaps as anything other than foreplay, pleasureful stimulation which makes my pussy flower with swollen lips and a tight little hole awaiting his ravaging.
Skoll
God, she is beautiful. I have never felt this kind of desire for anybody before. I have also never felt this intense desire to discipline anybody. Kitty is naughty. She is elementally rebellious. What she did, leaving my mountain home to escape to the city, to try to find her cat, to try to return to the human world was impressive. I was her captor and she tried to escape me.
Everything changed when she was almost killed by the soldiers. That was the moment she stopped being my captive and started being my mate. But she is still my chain-kept. I will do anything for her. But I will also keep her as my own. She's mine. MINE.
She loves this. Her cheeks flush and her legs spread and her back arches to present her willing hips to me. My chain still looks perfect around her neck, and her body has never been more beautiful. Even with the scars from her ordeal with the soldiers, she is stunning to me. Her breasts have grown larger, as has her belly. There is a pleasing softness and roundness to her body which makes my cock throb with the need to be inside her.
This time I want to take her like an animal. This time I want her from behind, so I flip her onto her stomach and haul her up by her hips, my palm landing on her ample ass, reddening those deserving cheeks.
I cover her body with my own, my powerful frame dwarfing her soft, curved form. I hunch over, my cock extending from its sheath and finding her sex unerringly as my teeth meet the back of her neck and sink in. She lets out a low growl of carnal desire as I push mysel
f inside her, feel her gloriously wet cunt gripping my thick cock. My teeth sink in deeper, the very tips finding flesh below skin. I want her to know me this way. I want her to feel my wildness. I want her soft body to be entirely submissive to me as I thrust deep into her and fill her up completely in one rough stroke.
I fuck her like I own her. I fuck her like she is my chain-kept. I ravage her as if she is a feral wildcat in heat. I fill her tight hole over and over again, my cock plunging into the depths of her wet channel with more force than ever before.
Kitty
He’s fucking pounding me. After treating me like I might shatter if he breathes too hard for the last few weeks, Skoll has finally given in to the animal desire which flares between us. There has always been a chemistry, right from the moment he first touched me and I felt my blood boil.
Now my face is pressed against soft furs, my ass high for his punishing palm and my cunt spread by his cock. My cries must be clearly audible outside this simple abode, but he doesn’t care, and nor do I. He is making his claim over me clear to all those in this village. He is letting them know that I am his mate, and that only he owns my pussy.
It’s so fucking hot. So completely overwhelming, so simply animal.
“Such a bad little good pet,” he snarls, pulling his jaws free of my neck for a moment, only to grip again a second later. I am being devoured in every way. His dick is making me stretch so fucking wide that every time he draws out, I can feel the loss of suction from my wet cunt, the lewd sound a giveaway of how wet I am.
“I have missed you, Kitty,” he growls in my ear, licking the place where he bit, then biting again, giving me tender pain with rough pleasure as he holds himself deep inside me, pausing for a moment to let the sting of his ravaging settle and the heat of our connection sink through me.
I have missed him too. I have missed what it feels like to be taken with the full force of his muscular ability, how overwhelming and transcendent it is to become a purely physical being, unfettered by human expectations.
His first orgasm triggers my first climax, but it is not either of our last for the evening. This is the first time in weeks we have been together in a place that feels safe. The cliff on the side of the mountain was always a little too dangerous for my liking. I had perpetual vertigo there. But this place, this is cozy, and our every desire can be expressed.
He takes me from behind, then he lays me on my back and slides back inside me, slower this time, more tenderly. He has to be, because my pussy is already sore from his initial punishing fuck. A grimalkin is not an easy lover, but he is a satisfying one.
Skoll
She wraps herself around me, reaching for me with her arms and her legs, giving me everything she has. I told her I was punishing her for her disobedience which led her into danger, but the truth is, I just wanted to be with her. I wanted to be rough and thorough, and now I want to be soft and tender.
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“I have some idea,” she blushes. She is pink and adorable across her nose and down her throat across her breasts and even down her belly. She is the perfect, squirming, desirable mate and I am more determined than ever to do what it takes to keep her mine.
13 Wild Cats
Kitty
I wake up aching in the best of ways, but there is little time to bask in the carnal afterglow. We are being roused from our bed by Falkri, who is waiting outside.
“Sleep well?” He asks as we come out. Skoll is ready to face the day, but as far as I am concerned the day can fuck off for a few more hours.
“Very,” Skoll says. “Thank you. We must be on our way…”
“There’s somebody I wanted you to meet first.” Falkri gestures to what I can only describe as a beige and mustard grimalkin whose intense expression, and wide-set and perpetually narrowed eyes sets him apart from the others.
“This is Dwight. He is the most proficient hunter in our group. He indicated that he would like to meet you. He has heard of your kind before.”
They’re talking about me, not Skoll. I am a curiosity here, like a two-headed cow, or a lizard with wings.
Dwight looks me up and down. “You are a human, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Very good. Humans are apex predators.”
“That can’t be true, Dwight. Look at her. She has no ability to destroy anything. What are those soft, short, little fingernails she spends all her time biting going to do? And her toenails, they couldn’t disembowel anything no matter how long she held it in her relatively weak forearms and kicked at it,” Falkri replies.
“Humans use other hunting strategies. They are wily. They hunt in packs.”
That announcement makes the rest of the colony look at me with immediate distrust. Quite a few of them have gathered around, trying to look casually disinterested and failing miserably. I am the center of attention because I am something very weird.
“I don’t hunt in anything remotely resembling a pack.”
“You are a female,” Dwight says. “You are a gatherer. Your role is to search the forests for berries and other edibles and talk to other females. Human females were among the first beings to perfect the deadly art of Goh-sup.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard of it, but if there was another human female here, you would feel an irresistible urge to sharpen your skills.”
“That sounds sexist, and wrong, but mostly sexist.”
“Does it? Are you tempted to tell someone how sexist and wrong it is?”
“I am.”
“I bet you are,” he says in a smug, knowing sort of way. “It will be fascinating to study you.”
“Likewise,” I say, not wanting to feel as though he has the upper hand in all things.
“I will introduce you to the females. Come with us.”
I look at Skoll. I don’t know if I should be going with strangers. I know Skoll wants to leave. He believes we will not be safe until we are on our own.
He does, however, allow Falkri and Dwight to lead us down to the heart of the village where a large, round home sits in the very center of it all. It feels like a chieftain’s house or maybe a longhouse. Something like that.
“I need to speak with you,” Falkri says to Skoll. “We need to test your mettle. Your human will be safe with Dwight, and the women.”
“Pardon me if I am not convinced of that.”
“If we are to trust you, you will have to trust us.”
“I do not let her out of my sight,” Skoll says. “And we really must be…”
“You wish to leave,” Falkri says, sounding disappointed. “We are in need of powerful hunters. We had hoped you would stay and join our hunting parties.”
“You had? Skoll sounds surprised. “I am from the city. I am your enemy.”
“The first is true, the second does not appear to be. You are a fugitive from the law of the city. You need a home. We have a home.”
“Oh, he doesn’t want a home. He wants to live in a hole in the ground,” I say. “One that fills with water when it rains, probably.”
“Kitty,” Skoll says warningly. “That’s enough…”
“I’ll probably be picked off by a predator within days,” I say cheerfully. “Mr Tiddles will outlive us all.”
“Kitty,” Skoll growls.
“Women need to be with their own kind,” Falkri says. “Let us take her to Shanti, and we will speak of the matters of males.”
That sounds sexist. But nobody is perfect.
Outside the big house are a few females and a team of small grimalkin running about the place, playing and laughing. It is hard to feel as though I am in danger when I am in the middle of what amounts to a village daycare.
“All the women share a single living space,” Falkri explains. “They leave to mate when they choose, and sometimes they will take a single hovel for themselves, but this is where most of them like to stay. This is where our young are born. This,
more than any other place in our village, is home.”
He leads us through the open door, to an area which is large and spacious, but which nevertheless contains a pleasing amount of cozy clutter. Apparently, that is a trait shared between female humans and grimalkin alike, the desire to make things beautiful.
The females appear to be working on both food and decorative blankets. I assume they're blankets, because I know they're not clothes, because nobody is wearing any. I am very overdressed in a poncho made out of a blanket, a simple piece of clothing which keeps the sun from my skin and gives me a small amount of modesty.
There is a small cluster of female grimalkin around the fire which is throwing smoke up through the center of the large house. They look up as we enter, and all eyes fall directly on me. But not for long. Most of them then quickly drift toward Skoll.
I feel a welling of jealousy as appreciative desire makes itself plain on their faces. Their eyes narrow and their lips widen, and they begin to make noises of mirth, which is also apparently a trait our species share. Then Skoll rests his arm around my shoulder and presses his face to my neck, nuzzling me, marking me gently and tenderly in a caress which holds more power than I realized, and the moment passes. Their interest wanes almost immediately, and quite visibly. There must be something in the way we look together which tells them he is taken. Jealousy is immediately replaced with a welling sense of love which makes me wrap my arms around him and hold him tight.
Falkri has walked ahead and gestured to a woman sitting at the head of the fire. Even sitting cross-legged, she is taller than the others. She sits straighter and when she stands with a natural grace, she moves with an impressive gait, like a supermodel claiming the room for her own. She is only slightly shorter than Falkri and Skoll, though she is much less broad.
“This is Shanti. My mother. Nothing happens in this territory without her permission. No harm comes to anybody in the wilds without her word.”
So that’s why they didn’t kill us on sight. They didn’t have Shanti’s permission. I suppose then, this is the most danger we have yet been in. I press close to Skoll, feeling a very natural rush of fear. This is like being back before the magistrate, but somehow even more intense. I can’t look at her. I can’t feel all these things all at once. I’m tired of being afraid, and then not being afraid, and then being afraid all over again. I just want to be able to relax.
