“What’s gotten into you?” I demanded. My eyebrows arched, lifting questioningly.
“You didn’t answer.” His tan brow lifted, matching mine.
“Tell me what you’re up to and perhaps I will,” I quipped.
“I’d like to show you,” he murmured.
“That sounds ominous.” A frown tugged at my brow. One of his fingers went to smooth it out but this crinkled brow wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Not ominous…” he replied cryptically. “More… something that has to be done.” Clasping one of my icy hands in his, a frown pulled at his face now as he tried to rub some warmth back into my fingertips. His head dipped and he nuzzled his face into my palm.
“I’m not going to like this.” It wasn’t a question.
“Do you trust me?” he asked again, to which I flat out scowled.
“You’re going to leave me.” I was close to something to that when he didn’t argue.
My heart dropped.
Cupping his face, I peppered kisses over his furry mug. “Take me with you. I don’t care.”
“It’s not that simple,” he sputtered. “And we both know you’re safest here. I can’t bring you back.”
I paused at that. Back-back, he was saying, as in, “You’re going back to the village?” My hands slid from his face and my head flopped back. I flat out gaped up at him.
He tried to smile but it was wobbly. “It won’t be forever.” Glancing away, he mumbled, “I knew you’d get upset.”
I blinked, stared. “Why wouldn’t I?” I sputtered.
“Lumi…” he whispered. Groaning, he dropped down, pressing his face into my shoulder to inhale my scent at my nape. He said I carried our mixed scents strongest there. “I don’t really have a choice.” His voice was muffled, a mangled mumble.
“I- I understand,” I said slowly. I didn’t, but I was trying. While I wanted to rally against the idea, get loud or cry, beg him to stay, his mind sounded made up.
I was on the birth control shot and had some time until it wore off, possibly a month or more, maybe two or three, perhaps less... I was horrible at keeping track of the time in here and had all but given up trying to. By my shit calculations, that meant there was time to find a way out of here by myself before I had to worry about possibly spawning a new generation of Krampus babies.
“Tomorrow is the day,” he whispered. When he said the day, I knew he meant The Day, the big C event.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” I responded flatly, resigned to his decision. I wouldn’t keep a male that didn't want to stay.
“After the culling,” he admitted hesitantly.
If my heart dipped any farther it would sink right down into the mountain cave floor. “I- I suppose we should make tonight count then.” I couldn’t meet his gaze. He’d see it and then I’d lose it.
“I love you,” he said, out of all of the things he could have said. Lips pressed to my forehead.
“I know,” I said simply, closing my eyes and tipping my face up to meet his eager mouth.
A groan left him as I put everything I had, every bit of emotion I felt for him into that simple action.
One night. Tonight. That’s all we had left.
I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to make the best of it.
∞∞∞
Nestled in the cubby compartment hidey-hole once more, the same series of disturbing noises issuing from elsewhere in the caves as they had a short couple of months ago, my Elkfen lover stared at the dirt above us, listening. Snuggled in his arms, my ear pressed over his heart, I focused on the steady thump-thump, trying to tune out whatever horrors might be occurring right over our heads.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him when he had to leave, obviously after the Krampus removal services were done culling the herd once more. As many Krampus as they’d taken last time, a quarter of their numbers were already replenished. This Krampus sickness was sounding like some kind of Elkfen pandemic. So many had fallen to this sickness with no known cause?
When I’d jokingly suggested maybe it was because they’d given in to their naughty sides, he’d admitted he’d lied when the big guy had asked him if he knew what Bels had been doing in the archives. Bels had been looking for Krampus information after Tinstel, a fellow Elkfen teammate, had fallen ill, an act that was forbidden. He didn’t doubt Bels had talked Ded into doing something wicked as well. Elkfen were not inherently naughty, so much as naive, from what he was explaining. Well, Shnikel had gotten a crash course on the real world really quick.
He wanted to go back, knowing what he did now… Could he even go back to that now?
Even after the noises above had long ago left, we laid there. I wanted this moment to last forever. “You still haven’t shifted for me yet,” I whispered, placing a kiss between two thick pecs.
“I can’t anymore,” he admitted.
And you want to go back? I wanted to shout at him. I didn’t. I did none of the things I wanted to, hoping to change his mind. If you have to force it, it’s probably shit.
Sitting up, staring down at him, I slid my legs on either side of him. The pelt I was snuggled up in fell off my shoulders, pooling at my hips. Reaching for him, I grasped his shaft. He was at half-mast and quickly thickening as I began to work my hand up and down his length. A soft groan left him and he began to shift restlessly beneath me, even as his hands lifted the pelt and tried to bring it back around my shoulders.
He lost the pelt, a sharp gasp leaving him as I pulled his thick foreskin back, exposing that sucker to the chilly air, lifting up, lining us up, to start to sink down on him, and then let gravity do its thing.
There was a pinch of discomfort with my pleasure riding him like this. It tempered my movements as I began to ride him.
Thick, three fingered hands gripped my hips, kneading them as I ground down into him, swiveling my hips. The action pressed on my clit. My skin broke out in gooseflesh.
Sliding his hands up my back, one staying for the other to grab a handful of ass, he sat up. Dumping me backwards as he shifted in the small space. He was loath to disconnect us but wanted to lead the show. Maneuvering us so he could stand, he pressed my back into the wall. I moaned as my channel clenched around him and his cock jerked.
“Not yet,” he muttered, to smash his mouth into mine and begin pistoning into me hard enough my butt was going to be bruised come morning.
“Harder,” I whispered, egging him on.
“Mine,” he muttered, shoving his face into my nape to bury it in the side of my throat. “Mine-mine-mine.” He muttered his mantra as I came hard on his cock, creaming all over that fat thickness until he burst along with me several punishing thrusts later.
“I love you, too,” I said finally, breathlessly.
I felt him grin against my skin, and then he kissed the mark he’d made on my shoulder when he was a Krampus.
The moment was bittersweet. Though sadness filled me at the thought of losing him, I hugged him to me close and urged him to make love to me again. He said he was leaving tonight, he didn't necessarily say when tonight exactly.
After we’d exhausted ourselves, he set up the fire in our cell again and denned down with me as we did every night. Falling asleep wrapped around each other, I hoped he decided to change his mind.