There were a lot of things to eat in that little area. We decided to stay put for a few days. I think both Lop and I missed crabs and fish and eel-grass roots and things like that, but there were plenty of little animals that were easy to catch. For me, I mean. Lop was still hurting. He didn’t say a word, but it slowed him down. And made him awkward. It was embarrassing to watch. There were nuts and such in the trees, and there was that sour-grass. And I found some kyusshh tubers, too.

That first evening, after we ate, I came back from relieving myself and found Lop and the boys more or less curled up. We’d groomed them together. They looked so cute. Big balls of thick, velvety pale kit-fur, nestled next to that tough, awesomely male body. Lop wasn’t asleep, though, and looked up as I returned, then carefully detatched himself from the sleeping kits. He motioned me over. He took my buttocks in his paws where I was standing and held me while he licked my nuts.

"Lop!" I hissed. "What are you–the kits! For heaven sake!"

"They’re asleep", he purred, and resumed licking.

It felt wonderful. He was cute, as I looked down at him in the early evening light. I helplessly saw the hkshihh welling out of my sheath, saw it dribbling down. Run down my sheath and into my balls. Into his mouth. Before it even got on his tongue, the scent of it made his whiskers fold back, and his ears dropped. I saw the hkshihh pooling up in the opening of his own sheath, too, between his thighs. And by now my black was like a piece of oiled sishemu wood.

And the moment he got my hkshihh on his tongue, his own black shot out of his body. Just like that. I could see he actually jerked as it got hard. And I heard a little growl through the purring as he showed black. It was hardly clear of the sheath when I could see SkhtuS collecting at the tip of it. Already. It looked huge. I didn’t often have a clear view of his black, and it made me feel beautiful (and afraid) just to look at it.

"Lop", I gurgled. "Don’t. You’ve got to drive me. I’ll go cold."

Our gazes met. He looked puzzled.

"Are you sick?"

"No. I’ve told you. I’m only a man for a couple or three days after you give me a cock."

He looked disappointed.

"Oh. OK. But, well, I was so hot for your black", he sighed. "Here, stud, lie down and uncross your legs. We’ll see what we can do."

I did. Even as I was lying back he covered me. Everything about him was crude–that dirty thing about uncrossing my legs was only the latest. But he was so gentle, to. As well as so strong and so hard, all at the same time. The feel of his body lying on me, our bellies sliding around in our mingled hkshihh–so strong and hard. His body, I mean. Well, also his incredible peg. Our hards made quite the lump between our bellies.

In addition to the beautiful smell of his fur, by now the air was full of the scent of both our hkshihh and SkhtuS. For some reason, those scents and the weight of his chest on mine take me back to our first link–first fuck–there by the dead monux. Every time. When I’m making him a man, it’s different somehow. But when he’s making me–

"Your fur. Thick. S-s-s-sil-l-k-ky-y-y" he murmured in his husky voice, between licks, sliding our bodies together. I was afraid he’d lose his SkhtuS. I hinted, by raising my legs and wrapping my tail around his thigh.

Maybe the hint wasn’t necessary. With a breathy groan that made my mane stand up, I felt him go into me–slowly, for a mercy!–between the strain on my hole and my heated-up mood, for a moment I thought I’d snap my nuts on the spot. He was pretty intense. The two of us were purring our heads off, like newly-opened adolescents. He pulled and humped. I could hardly breathe. It was like taking a monux, except that it felt so beautiful. I could feel my gut holding him, clamping down on his black, and he started to moan as he linked. Fucked me. I was getting fucked. I didn’t exactly know it, I think. I just sensed it. This was fucking.

And I loved it.

He began to raise himself from my body, and curled down to lick around my sheath, even getting his tongue on my purse. It felt so beautiful, but as long as he wasn’t actually lying on me, I was sure my nuts wouldn’t snap. But I knew he was hurting. "Stop, please", I said, taking his head in my hands. I felt him wince. Oh, no, now I’d hurt his–

"Lop, please. Just lie on top of me. Link me slow. Real slow. I mean, fuck me."

He did. I floated for ever, it seemed, in this cloud of beauty, until both our purring sounded like thunder, his movements were slow but so strong. It couldn’t go on for ever that way, of course, and the last few minutes were pretty brutal. Because of what he was doing to me I guess I was really gripping him, and he was pitting his strength against my hand. I felt like I was being torn apart by his prick. It was incredibly beautiful, but frightening, too. Maybe that was part of it. I never completely got over finding Lop sort of formidable, somehow, and never more so than when he was drilling me, especially toward the end when he needed every muscle in his body to hammer against the grip in my gut. There was something extra exciting about being totally in this creature’s power.

It was so beautiful: a husky groan from the young man that seemed to last for ever, as he pulled himself tight and lay still. His heavy breath on my neck. (He was holding me so tight I could hardly breathe!) The bliss from his SkhtuS spreading through my body while he was still black.

Mine wasn’t the only juice that packed a wallop.

We lay like that for a while. Something rupellid, I guessed. We’d never done it like that in my family. My brother or our wives. Lie together with your black still inside. And of course in a wlkatar it’s not good manners to set up light housekeeping in a cunt. Or a tail-hole, for that matter.

"Did you come?" Lop asked me.

"A dozen times", I answered. "But no, my nuts didn’t snap. You’re a very inspiring link. Talking about driving seed! Whoa!" My voice was thready. He’d raised his head a little and was looking at me with a dreamy expression. As he started to lick my muzzle, I saw something horrible.

"Oh, no!" I cried. "Lop! There’s blood on your–I didn’t mean to, Oh no, believe me–"

He looked at me so sweetly. "I know you were chewing on my neck, monux-dick", he said. "I liked it. It was beautiful. Now, you freshly virile stallion, clean me up", and he rolled off my body and spread his thighs.

He looked like a pile of rags, and his voice sounded bubbly though his purring.

Because what I was doing–we were doing–was perverted, licking a male clean after he pegged me, I took to fretting again about the effect it might have on the kittens. But aside from that little detail, it was a curiously beautiful task. Like cleaning oneself up after sex, only twice as much pleasure. The bliss from his SkhtuS was maybe part of it. The fact that I was licking up someone else’s hkshihh (at least mostly) was maybe part of it, too. And what I didn’t really grasp, then, was my fascination with his whole body.

I was supposed to be grooming his sex, but sometimes I got pretty far afield. On purpose. Such as high enough on his front to lick his wrecked nipples. He always reacted to that. Grabbed my mane or moaned or whatever. For all I know, being torn apart like that made them more sensitive or something. Whatever, I could always make him purr and squirm that way. Always. Every time.

And I was a man. (Was I ever!) For a few days. But I did wonder if a link like the one I’d just had might make me a man for a week, like a rupellid. Like Lop. It was so intense. There were a couple of times when my third hand was holding his black so hard I really did think I was going to be disemboweled. Beautiful pain. And I just about passed out from the bliss. For all I know, I would have been a man for a week after one of Lop’s liver-bruising links; but I never came close to finding out, because I had Lop’s black wood in me almost every day. Every day. Like we were ten-year-old twins.

It was most noticeable once we got settled, of course. While we were on the run there were distractions. But I remember one afternoon, soon after we’d found a place to live permanently, Lop started to lick me and stroke my fur and I said something like, "Lop, this is childish! We pegged a few hours ago!" By then his arms were around me and his tongue was all over my face and he said, through his purring, that it was up to me, I didn’t have to raise my legs if I didn’t want to. Well, it was up to me, all right, and someone’s big rupellid black snake sank into someone’s guts all the way up to the stomach a minute later, and that someone was purring "drive my seed" and "drill me" about a thousand times before khtu came out of his nostrils and he nearly passed out with bliss. No, not childish, not really. When we were kits, Drushka and I linked five, seven, ten times a day; but a whole day’s worth of that nut-snapping hardly come up to a single link or–well–fuck with Lop.

It’s pretty shameful, I guess, but I might as well admit it. Anyway, if anybody ever reads this I won’t be around to be embarrassed, and I’ve already admitted to so many shameful things.

"Lop", I murmured, when I’d finished licking him clean and we were lying next to one another again. "This business of cleaning you up. Is that a rupellid thing, or what?"

"No. Not at all." He looked at me with something like amusement. "I wouldn’t dare suggest any such thing to Jess and Carl. It’s something I, uh, picked up from my cousin. I tell you about him?"

"Only to mention his name. And say he was special." (His Wlko name, or nickname, was sort of like mine. I’ll call him Paul.)

"Special. Yeah." He was quiet for a moment, and took a deep breath. "A mean piece of monux shit. Cousin Paul wasn’t exactly a cousin. My moms’ brothers had married the sisters of a couple of girls who married the brothers of the husbands of Paul’s mothers’ sisters. Anyway, we met socially pretty often because they were just two family sites down the shore, not because of any clan business."

He sighed again. "The heart is a monster", he said.

"What?"

"Well, Paul and his twin Clyde weren’t identical. Highly. Clyde was sort of goofy-looking, but a nice guy. Sweet and funny. Got along with everybody. I really liked him. Everybody did. We roughhoused and napped together. He showed me his secret places. It was fun to play with him because he always played fair. And he was so friendly. So friendly. Open, cheerful. And, looking back on it, I’d say he was pretty appealing. Or should have been–rangy, athletic. A kind of strange maleness about him, despite his goofiness. We liked to nap together. I think we could have linked if I’d made the move."

"Lop! That’s awful!"

"I know. I’m just telling you what my balls were telling me. Paul was–well, Paul was beautiful. In my eyes, anyway. I don’t think everyone thought so. But I thought he was gorgeous. My mane stood up like grass the first time I saw him. I should have known I was a pervert then and there. And if I couldn’t tell by myself, Paul was ready to help out." Lop snickered at the memory. "I was hanging around him and trying to make him notice me, kid stuff like that. He kept calling me a nsles-SkhtuS–" Semen-drinker!–"and zizi-htnun." Faggot-boy. Wow.

"I was crushed. I’d never heard anything so vile." (Nor had I! That sort of monux-garbage coming from a cousin!) "So embarrassing. From this guy I worshipped, too.

"I stayed away from him for a while, but sooner or later, on other visits back and forth, my hkshihh gave me away. So to say. I blurted out something about linking. He said something snotty about he’d rather be drilled bloody by a monux than have anything to do with the black of a zizi-nk hS nsles-SkhtuS like me. Pretty vile, huh?"

I agreed it was. I didn’t know about rupellids, but vulcids aren’t much for name-calling in the first place, and I couldn’t even imagine someone saying anything so unbelievably crude.

"But how does saying these awful things–"

"I’m coming to that, stud. Paul had his own little twists. So I found. Evidently, linking to a guy who wasn’t his twin appealed to him. Boyish juiciness? Boyish hunger for forbidden fruit? The itch to do what ‘isn’t done’? No decent young man would even think of doing anything so depraved. I know, Perry. I know, no lectures! And you can just put your ears back up! You already know where this is going, so just stop it!

"Well, Paul and I probably wanted it for different reasons, my cousin and me, but both of us wanted it. I was so thrilled I almost spilled my nuts the moment my tail took his black."

He paused, purring lightly.

"Even though he took me from behind, like a monux. Just one more example of his meanness. When he juiced, he didn’t linger, not like my Uncle Henry or the boys. Pulled out, rolled off my back, spread his thighs, put his paws behind his head and told me I’d have to clean him up. Said he couldn’t have my hkshihh on his coat or on his breath. Couldn’t possibly. Actually he was just being a jerk. Enjoying making me do filthy things. But I believed him. I thought I didn’t have a choice."

Lop looked at me with a smile and a little shake of the head.

"I was pretty upset, too. It wasn’t just the thought of licking another guy’s hkshihh out of the fur on his balls and sheath. It didn’t sit well that he was being sort of bossy. Telling me to go over this or that again, I hadn’t got it all the first time. Telling me to lick his asshole. Several times. Maybe it only seemed that way, but I’d swear it took twice as long to groom him, with him bossing me around, as it did to groom myself."

"What was he enjoying? Bullying you? Or the feel of your tongue?" I had to admit that even before I got over the shock of it, the feel of Lop’s tongue "down there" was beautiful. Hair-raisingly.

"Oh, both." He paused. "That was the first time. I have to admit that later I was getting this weird pleasure out of grooming his belly and groin clean of our juices. I’d peek up at him, lying there, the most beautiful boy in the whole world, in my eyes; paws behind his head. He wasn’t relaxing, exactly. He was holding up his head, his long neck was bent so he could watch me the whole time. Watch me towel him down. It was kind of self-defeating, though."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I got too good at it. By the time I was finished, he’d be leaking hkshihh again. And I’d lick it up. And he’d leak it faster. Then he’d see my own hkshihh dripping off my nuts and he’d call me a come-drinker again and tell me to get my filthy zizi-nk hS nsles-SkhtuS mouth away from his ‘maleness’.

"I’d be heartbroken and embarrassed until the next time I saw him, and there’d be the same stupid hurtful business all over again."

The idea of this young man, who could pull my head right off my neck if he took a mind to do it, talking about "stupid and hurtful business" was hard to comprehend.

"Why were you upset? You are a nsles-SkhtuS, after all." (I couldn’t believe my own ears. Saying such a thing. If I had to name the lowest, most perverted, most depraved thing I could think of a wlko doing, apart from stuff like fucking his own mother, it would be taking a guy’s juice in his mouth. If that didn’t make Lop zizi, I don’t know what would. But I still wasn’t getting it. This guy was the most masculine wlkon I’d ever come across.)

"Yeah. But I didn’t know it then. Besides, it was intended as an insult. It was on purpose. The most wounding thing he could think of saying. And it was good and wounding. He’d probably have called me white-bellied, too, except that was so obviously untrue it would have just been stupid."

"Were Clyde and Paul, uh, perverts themselves?" I asked.

"I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not like me, anyhow. Clyde was so friendly and open. I think he’d have been agreeable to almost any suggestion. Looking back on it, I wish–but–" he sighed and looked pained. "It never occurred to me to start anything. Anyhow, they married and their wives commenced giving them babies. They were definitely both working the ladies’ slots: some of the kits looked like Clyde, some like Paul. We were married by that time ourselves, and had our hands full with our own little ones. Not to mention the wives’ great-great-grandparents. They lived with us. Dear old parties." Pause. "I was really messed up when they died. But it turns out they were the lucky ones."

A crooked grin. Mostly when Lop smiled it was wicked-looking. But very male. A little grin from him looked more threatening than good-natured. When I first met him I thought it was just the way rupellids are. Really, though, it was just that wound on the side of his muzzle. I’ll never know what his smile looked like before he was injured.

I let a decent interval pass.

"So–this business is something you picked up from Paul–?"

"Yeah." He started to lean toward me, and then groaned.

I winced in sympathy. The guy had been so badly hurt. It was a miracle he was able to do anything at all. But I guess they hadn’t actually broken any bones, except maybe cracked a rib or two. And after all he seemed to function pretty well. There was absolutely nothing at all wrong with his eggs, that was clear. There were two of them, I could vouch for that. And they looked normal. Not that being white is normal for a rupellid’s nuts. So he’d recovered totally from being smashed in the nuts. But it was months before he stopped wincing and groaning when he moved. I could tell when he was holding his breath or something to keep himself from making sounds. But he never once complained. Never once.

Well, he was unrealistic about other things, too. Mainly, my supposed masculinity. "Stud", he called me. A stallion. "Red." "Thunder-Balls." "Cunt-Plugger." "Ever-Ready" (normally a sort of teasing nickname for recently-opened boys, at least in my set.) Once in a while even "Monux-dick". (Him and that thing of his?!) This sort of nonsense oftener than plain "Perry". It made me shake my head.

It took me a couple of years but I think I finally figured part of it out. Figured out how I, me, so timid and soft, could be a "stud". In the eyes of someone like Lop, moreover.

Only two things were clear. First, it seemed to be real important to Lop. But second, it didn’t make a lot of sense. I knew what rupellids thought of vulcid males. At least I thought I did. I guess a lot of the things I grew up hearing about rupellids weren’t too accurate. Anyway, the day came when we were napping at our family site, and I woke up and lay there just looking at him, and it suddenly hit me. He thinks I’m so handsome and so desirable and so on because I’m effeminate. That’s right. I was husband and wife at the same time. I’m obviously male. But my build is probably more delicate than most rupellid wlkwim, even. And I’ve already said that anyone seeing us together from a distance would take me for a wife. In fact, it actually happened. More than once. So, in me, Lop had everything he wanted: a male, no question about that; but a male whose feminine physique and personality were somehow exciting to Lop.

Well, I could hardly test that theory. So I never did find out what was really going on when he was praising my masculinity. Stud. Big-black. Iron-hand. Monux-meat. hkshihh-gushing fuckster! Maybe my dick and nuts and link-hole made some kind of contrast to my build. Or when he called me stud he was really referring in some perverted way to my feminine beauty. Feminine by rupellid standards. Maybe all that talk about my masculinity was just hiding the truth from himself. I’ve heard of opened boys coming home from their first wlkatar "practicing" fucking one another as well as the usual linking. (Or trying to. Once that hand gets a grip on your black, it must be pretty hard to resist switching over to regular male cock-whipping.) Part of it seems to be that the one being "fucked" pretends to be a wlkwy. Most parents seem pretty scandalized by it all, at least they sound scandalized when they talk about it. Well, next to Drushka and our other brothers, and especially our dads, I always seemed shy and quiet. Light build, too. Folks commented on it.

But I know I was a better fuck than Drushka. The wives were too civilized to say anything like that in so many words, but they said enough.

We had only one thing I’d call an adventure as we resumed our trip north. For several days in open territory, shifting winds brough whiffs of something I didn’t recognize, which got stronger as we moved on. I asked Lop if he knew what it was. He said he did, but he wouldn’t tell me. It would be a surprise, he promised me.