I licked. I started with his balls. I hardly needed him to curl up his torso to hint I should do his asshole too. I licked and licked. I’d have thought he’d wrung me dry, prodding me with that outsized black of his, but by the time he was more or less clean, hkshihh was practically dripping from my testicles!

In those days, almost everythig Lop did was outrageous. Or I thought so. As I was kneeling over him, he reached down without looking and took my black in his hand. I hadn’t even realized that I was hard. But that’s not the point. No one, not male or female, adolescent or grown up, not even at a wlkatar, had ever taken my cock in their hand. I jumped.

"Wood", he said. "You’re shameless. Wood! What’s this all about?"

Shameless! Me?! He wiped the blob of SkhtuS off the tip of my horn–it made my mane stand up–and licked it off his thumb.

Well, I have to admit that only my mind was troubled by his depravity. My nuts had replaced the khtu before he could swallow what he’d stolen from my cock. Which was as stiff as ever.

"OK, do what comes naturally, Perry", he said in his husky voice. "Fuck me, stud. It’s time you gave me some khtu instead of making me wipe it off your black. Stuff my cunt."

Well, I admit, it was exciting. Weird. The feel of his hand on my sex was unexpected and startling, but it was very beautiful, too. From that second, all I could think about, I admit, was the pressure of a different kind of hand. He didn’t have to say "Link me", he didn’t have to say anything. But somehow, I admit, "Fuck me" was extra exciting.

Gross. Perverted.

Between the foreplay–that’s what my grooming of him amounted to, my nose in his groin and my muzzle soaking in our mingled hkshihh–and the fire he’d built in my belly, and the remains of the bliss, I wasn’t much good. I juiced much sooner than I normally do. But it was incredibly intense. I thought I’d get a cramp in my balls. Drushka and I, we’d never done what Lop described–linking just before a fuck–but if this was anything like that, I could see why they did it.

"There", he said, so sweetly, as I was lying on his chest, panting. He was mussing up my mane. "Don’t you feel better now? You were chewing on my neck like you really meant it. Hey–stud–don’t go–"

His tail was wrapped so tightly around my thigh I couldn’t have pulled my black if I’d wanted to. It was slipping all by itself.

The kits were roughhousing a little, plainly bored. And a little hungry, probably.

"I’ll have to clean you up again", I said, after we’d been lying that way for a long time. Not really looking forward to it.

"Naw", he said. "Clean yourself up. I’ll take care of me. In a little while."

"Bliss?"

He had a glazed expression. "Does a wlko have three hands?" he asked. His voice was warbly with purring. "Yeah. You might say I’m in bliss. You just might. Man, that cock-cream of yours packs a wallop."

While he lay there I set about grooming myself. I didn’t remember anything like this. Rivers of the stuff. And it wasn’t just bestial rupellids. I’d never, or almost never, seen hkshihh literally dripping from my nuts. Except for that one time when Drushka and I went to a wlkatar cold and were linked half to death. The fur on my feet was soaked with the stuff, that time. But the idea that I’d actually see the stuff dripping from my nut-bag after an ordinary link–

Well, it was no ordinary link. Something about this rupellid tough-boy was very stimulating. But it still gave me dreadful feelings just trying to think about what it might be.

A day later we decided to move on. The monux was about eaten up. Lop thought we should take the hide with us for future reference. I pointed out that we had no way to tan it, and it would turn to so much tree-bark in a while and be useless. Meanwhile gagging us with its stench.

Lop agreed.

We hiked north. No big hurry. Caution was more important than speed.

As we set out, Lop bent down and picked up Tim. All strength and tenderness. Picked him up with "C’mon li’l fella"-type noises and put him on his shoulder.

I started to fuss.

"No reason you should carry both of them", he said, pleasantly.

I felt something–"Lop–!"

"Oh, don’t be such a sissy. Who’s going to see us?"

He was walking along very close to me, and he’d wrapped his tail around mine.

Who indeed? Besides, it felt nice. I gave his tail a squeeze.

We made our way in silence for a while. I couldn’t help asking, "Lop, are you limping?" It was so rude. I’d been curious about it, but always managed to stop myself.

"Yeah."

I was expecting him to say more, but he didn’t. Curiosity finally got the better of me.

"OK, I–this–look, why are you limping?"

"I got a little hurt when those hunter guys were trying to tie us up. So stupid. They were going to kill us anyhow."

"You really fought them?"

"I guess so. I think that’s why they were going to kill me last. I hardly understand two words of their lingo, but I guessed they were trying to make it hard for me. If they croaked me last, I could watch while they–"

He slowed down for a second. And then stopped walking. He sort of looked down his body. "Well, anyway, it’s gotten better. It definitely has. I hoped it would heal. But maybe it’s not going to."

Little Lop Green-Eyes.

When we first met, I didn’t know what to make of his lurching and staggering. Pain. He was in pain. And those moans.

We picked our way along in silence again for maybe an hour. "But y’know", he suddenly said, looking at me. "Something more important did heal, I guess."

I’d been busy with my own thoughts and was a little at sea, at first.

He chuckled. "If it was even broken."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, like I told you, I’d never gone cold, before. I knew about stuff like that, of course. Our dads went cold, once, when we were about twelve. But they’d been sick. I always thought that had something to do with it. So when I realized I was cold, I figured I’d been kicked in the nuts once too often."

"What?"

"Yeah. Once they got me all trussed up, they were mean. This one guy was saying something I didn’t understand at all. About concealing myself, or something. I don’t know. It didn’t make sense. And since I was tied up and they were kicking me in the belly at the time, I suppose he had to mean something else."

"Oh. Did you hear a word like ‘hide’?"

"Yeah. That was it. But I had no idea what he was going on about."

"He was saying not to damage your swhas/shi."

Lop was quiet for a second. "Well, that explains something. They were just kicking me. My ribs sometimes, but mostly–mostly, uh, down there. It hurt pretty bad. After I got away, my nuts were this big–" He made a fist. And a big, gnarly fist it was.

"So when I went cold, I naturally wondered if I wasn’t just, well, ruined. Down there. I sure felt ruined. I don’t know what hurt most. Then–" he looked at me with the cutest expression on his face–"it was a gamble, and when I felt that pony starting the hkshihh coming out of my pod, I was one happy cat. But that was nothing"–he lowered his voice "–that was nothing. That was nothing compared to the feel of my nuts snapping SkhtuS into a certain stud-butt. Man, Perry, what you did to me–I swear, at that moment I was the happiest cat on the planet."

I was pleased and flattered. So much so I didn’t have time to feel disgusted at the lewdness of what had actually happened–having my seed driven by a strange male. Uncontrolled. Unprincipled. Grossly promiscuous. Crude.

But poor Lop’s horrible experience–

"They were kicking you?"

"Yeah. In the belly. And nuts. Mostly. Ribs too, I guess. One or another of them would just walk over to me and kick me. Once or twice. They said things to me, too, but like I said I hardly caught a word. I wasn’t real interested in understanding, anyhow. I was too busy hurting." He snickered softly. "I have to laugh. It didn’t seem funny at the time. But when I was trying to cut myself loose, I was so sore I didn’t think I’d be able to reach my own ankles to cut the cords. I had to sort of prop myself up on one arm and push. And even then. I’m OK now, I guess. Well, a cat that can lap the hkshihh off your egg-puddings while he’s up to the hilt in your link-hole has to be pretty limber."

"Lop–yeah–but, sometimes, like last night–when you sort of–I mean, I heard you when you straightened up after grooming Mickey–? That was a pretty serious groan."

And last night, after eating, without any discussion, he’d just leaned down and cleaned up the kit between his haunches, talking softly to him and purring at the same time, Tim’s little-boy fluting purr joining Lop’s. It was cute. That perfect thug being so tender and fatherly. To a totally unrelated and strange youngster, besides. And I welcomed it. Taking care of two very young kits all by yourself is pretty hard work. They’d be grooming themselves before long, but for now it was the parents’ job. Four parents and who knows how many old ones makes bringing up kits as easy as falling in the water. One parent is kept pretty busy. Anyway, then, as Lop straightened up and lay back, he came out with a strange sound. Almost a sob. I teased him about getting old, and he teased back–I’m something like 30 or 40 years older than he is, after all. And you can tell just by looking at us that he’s a lot stronger.

But our little conversation had set me to thinking.

"Lop–there is still something wrong, isn’t there? You still hurt, don’t you?"

"Yeah", he said, carelessly. "It’s no big deal. And it’s getting better all the time."

"Does it hurt to link?"

He looked at me with that look. I still wasn’t used to that gaze.

"Yes. It does. I almost enjoy it, though." A little grin slowly twisted at his scar. "I mean, whether it’s just you, or the extra work to get there, I don’t know. All I know is I’ve never felt anything like that much beauty when my nuts snap. Who knows? Any complaints, stud? Look, if your hole didn’t grab ahold of my black so hard, it’d be easier. But I figure that iron grip of yours means you’re getting some beauty out of it too."

I assured him that my third hand was telling the truth. It was beautiful.

To put it mildly.

It was a lot of things. That ache. The occasional stab of actual pain (not so occasional when the khtu was rising in his black). But mainly it was so very beautiful.

But there was one more thing. Now that we were talking about it.

"Lop–that–scar? By your right eye? Is that from–?"

He had a pale streak of bare skin next to his right eye that reached down his muzzle a ways. And when you looked at him straight on, his face didn’t seem equal on both sides.

He touched his face with his hand. Gently.

"Yeah. It’s still a little sore, but it’s healed, hasn’t it?"

"Totally. But it looks a little, I don’t know, puffy on that side."

"Yeah, well it feels puffy. But it’s better than what it was." He blinked a couple of times, as if he was trying it out, and looked at me warily. "I was sure those murderers would use the blood to track me. A three-year-old could do it. But maybe I was just thinking like a wlko. An animal. I think that’s what they called us."

The sweet lamb. So strong. Physically and in every other way. I never did learn to see the man as he saw himself: some kind of female. For starters, he was the most crudely masculine wlko I’d ever seen. Then, when he wasn’t saying weird things like begging me to slot him, or calling his link-hole a cunt, he was doing all these rugged things. I never did learn how to make fire, for instance. As often as he tried to teach me. What kind of wood to use, and so on. He’d even pick out the pieces of sishemu wood himself. It was ideal for starting fires, he said. I’d rub and rub and get all tuckered out and nothing would happen. He’d take the sticks from me and in 3o seconds have the shavings going up in smoke. Probably it’s just because he was so much stronger than me. He was really strong. Hunh! And him always telling me that I was the masculine one, I was the thunder-balls, I was such a "handsome stud", a "big-black fuckspert". What stuff. So weird. I’m a little taller than him, but even so, I’d bet a morphologist, or even another wlko, who saw us together from a distance would take me for a wlkwy, next to Lop’s brawniness.

Late that day we found a fair-sized grove of sishemu mixed with other kinds of trees, kshana and kishkishmu mostly. Also some fruit-bearing ksehmhhss bushes and some vines. There was a spring in it, too, a little one but much better than the one in the monux grove. Ideal for camping. In fact, after we settled down I actually found a patch of sour-grass, so we could mix their spicy little bulbs with ksehmhhss fruit. Nothing makes ksehmhhss what you’d call delicious, but sour-grass makes a bi-i-ig difference. Lop was impressed. He could make fire faster than you could crap, but he had no idea how to cook. Some Green-Eyes! For the rest of our marriage I did the cooking.

That’s what it was, too. Marriage. We weren’t co-mate bachelors or widowers or partners or whatever.

As time passed, it was clear to me that Lop was the man in the family. No question about it. But I didn’t dare try to change his mind. He wanted to be green-eyed so badly. He wanted to think I was fucking him, slotting him. He so wanted that cock-clasping hole of his under his tail to be a cunt for me. But I knew, finally, that he was fucking me, too. And I mean fucking. I had to admit it. Man-and-wife fucking. Not linking. For us, you see, "cunt" was defined by what was in it, not by what hole it was. It made no difference, as far as I could see, whose cock was responsible for the definition. His made my tail-hole into a cunt, mine made his tail-hole into a cunt. For the best fucks of our lives, too.

Of course, I never once called mine that. Lop had decided that I was "his balls", just the way wlkwim talk, and that was that. As much as I wanted to start his black by licking his nuts, I knew he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me lick his face, after all. I could clean him up after he snapped. (That was something just a little queer he’d learned from his cousin with a name like mine. The one he wanted to link to.) But he’d have had a fit if I’d licked him down there to start his black. He let me handle his nuts, at least. That wasn’t very masculine. And it didn’t really fit that he let me drink his SkhtuS. Not just lapping it up off his fur, I mean, but straight from the source. Out of the hard black, I mean, when his nuts snapped it out of him. While I linked him. Maybe he figured it was sort of like a wlko licking around his wives’ cunts. Or maybe it just didn’t fit in anywhere–snapping your nuts into a wlkwy’s mouth isn’t exactly normal family fare, either. No matter what. And the whole point of a wlkatar is to pump as much SkhtuS as possible into every cunt in the place, in between doing whatever it takes to keep the men red. At least, I’ve never even heard of eating custard in a wlkatar, never mind seeing anyone do such a thing.

It was soon after we were together that I found out about his tits. I don’t remember exactly when. Maybe even that night we spent the first day we set out from the grove where I first met him. My memory is that I was "slotting" him (as the sweet bully would have it). Slotting to the hilt. Slotting! Fui! Nothing like slotting: I was pounding away, his gut’s grip on my black making me feel more and more beautiful as the pulsing changed to a steady grip that got tighter and tighter. Then, halfway through, I started to lick his chest at the same time. He wriggled and purred so, you’d think it was the first time he’d been linked in a year. I’d already noticed his nipples looked funny. Like they’d exploded or something. But they were real sensitive, obviously, and his reaction to my licking was exciting. I had my hands full, stirring him up like that, while trying to keep from moving too fast as my nuts got ready to snap.

After we ate, later, and the kits had passed out, I remembered. I asked him something dumb like were all rupellid nipples like his.

He looked down at his chest.

"No", he said. "And mine weren’t either, until those guys ripped my rings out."

I made some little cry. He looked at me with his tough face.

"Oh, put your ears back up, stud. It wasn’t anything personal." He shrugged. "Once they got us all trussed up, they took all our jewelry. Just ripped it out of our tits. Well, I tell a lie. Most of the ladies had rings in their ears. They left those. But they ripped out their tit-rings and the rings and such in their twats."

"They just–"

"Yeah. They had this, like tool of some sort."

"That must have hurt."

"I suppose so", he said, sounding sleepy. "Except I had a boot in my gut and another between my legs. And every time I took a breath I could feel where I’d been kicked in the ribs. That was what hurt."

Speaking of what’s between your legs, I could feel his hand between mine. Now, that was sort of feminine. But he wasn’t really trying to stir anything up, and besides I’d juiced before we ate. But I had to admit, it felt good. He was cuddling my sheath, sort of milking it, and his wrist was grazing the tits between my legs. Then I felt his arm over my chest. So I knew where both his arms were, but–there was still this pressure–beautiful, solid–between my legs. I raised my head and looked. He’d wrapped his tail around my nuts. Well, two could play at that game.

"Cut that out", he said, sounding very sleepy, as I caught his scrotum in a loop of my tail. But he let me stay. I’d never held a guy’s nuts in my tail before. It was a little weird. And a little wonderful.