Episode 160: Mates (Kyori)

There he was, sleek and streamlined and gorgeous. His shoulders hunched as he pounced on some small prey, then fell back as he released it.

She could smell him. Heat and cat and pheromones.

Down low, almost on her belly, she stalked toward him. She wanted him, the ultimate prey.

He lowered himself onto his stomach in a crouch-crawl. Had he smelled her? She pulled back, circled wide and downwind. His smell here…so alluring. She should have stayed upwind and let him suffer.

She ran, south and west, away from him, hoping to get ahead of him on his course and stay fully out of the wind.

She didn’t smell him coming, but she heard the wind as the air adapted itself to his rushing presence, and then he was on her. Literally on her, pinning her to the ground, his muzzle against her ear.

Their hearts pounded together, a symphony that Delaney would have mocked if she’d been there. But Kyori knew how Delaney had smelled after she’d met her mate, and Kyori thought she was doing pretty well in comparison, all things considered.

Except she was purring. Not exactly holding her own after all.

“Kyori,” he purred against her. “I have not lost my mind. Bagels make good trails.”

What?

What did that mean? He talked like they already knew each other. Maybe he was insane. Maybe she was.

Roll with it. Crazy or not, he was her best shot at having cubs like herself. She flipped him, pinned him, licked him. “Said by all confident insane people,” she teased.

He rolled her onto her back, and they flipped again, and then they were a ball and his teeth grazed the skin of her shoulder lightly, tantalizingly. “I’m Onyx, the cat and the mouse.”

Onyx? Like, Delaney’s Onyx?

Oh no. She and Delaney talked about everything. Everything. Even how cat mating worked and whether Kyori would be able to have an orgasm.

She realized she’d stopped moving and he had his eyes on her face as they studied her reaction.

“I am,” he said, and he chuffed. “You’re here?”

“No,” she laughed. Because if she wasn’t here, she wasn’t talking to the guy who had overheard everything. She wondered if she should be offended he’d spied on her.

He rolled off of her and they lay in the meadow, sides aligned, his paw on hers. “My Kyori,” he breathed.

How long had she waited for this moment? She sighed, content and charged at the same time, and licked the side of his face.

“Do you like it here?” he asked her.

“Delaney is here,” she answered, stupidly. “The man with the meat is here.” Man with the meat? Had she lost her mind? “Hunting,” she finished, lamely, because she was lame and that was what lame people did.

“I haven’t met her yet,” he admitted. She liked his voice, gravelly and low. She wondered how hers sounded to him. “I was waiting for you.”

“You’ve known her all her life,” Kyori reminded him, teasy. She needed to get away from him while she could still breathe, or she was going to end up pregnant, and she still hadn’t figured out if she actually liked him or not.

“Just about two years of it,” he pointed out. Right, because Delaney’s familiar hadn’t joined them until she started school.

“What was that?” Kyori asked. She cocked her ears like she was listening to something in the distance. If she could distract him, she could run, breathe in air that didn’t emanate the essence of his scent.

Then she could think, and decide if she liked him or not.

Instead of listening to the world, or being distracted, he got on top of her in a new way.

The world waited, and neither of them took a breath.

She was one move away from not being a virgin anymore. And she wanted it, bad, him, the connection, the electricity in the air.

No. She was a strong, independent catwoman.

She flipped him, with a low growl. “Is that all you think about?” she teased.

He matched her growl with a frustrated one of his own, low and hungry for her. “Only today. I usually have other thoughts.”

She knocked her head back and laughed. “I usually have other thoughts,” she teased. Maybe a little mean, but she didn’t want to be easy. She wanted to be challenging and fun and worth the chase.

So she ran, darting across the meadow and weaving through the trees. She heard his pursuit, lightning-quick and purposeful, and upped her game. Speed, precision, deliberacy. She needed those.

But she was tired. She’d never run so much.

After a minute or two, she let him catch her. They were at the base of the dwarven mountains that bordered this kingdom, and the air smelled different here. Free of Delaney and of people who would know or guess or be able to smell that she’d mated.

“How is your body?” Onyx asked, from on top of her. “You’ve never run this much.”

Hot and sexy were probably not the right answer.

Neither was getting tired.

Better to dodge the question. “Are you calling me fat?”

He laughed. “Thin,” he commented. He pawed her thighs, where a healthy cat would have more muscle. If she were Delaney, she would have blushed. “I was asking if you were sore, just enjoying yourself…if you’d hunted successfully yet.”

“I caught what I needed,” she hedged. Translation: Nell feeds me so I don’t need to hunt to be happy.

He stood over her, looking down at her, and met her eyes. “I never hunted much,” he said. “This is new for me too.”

He knew.

She loved and hated that he could see through her. She licked under his chin, surprised by her affection already. Pheromones; they were evil.

“Where were you?” she asked him, in the softest voice she had ever used. Ever.

“A wild cat rescue, part of a trial,” he answered. The cat-rescue part, she got. The trial meant nothing to her. “I was with someone who is a king here. Small animals came through, but nothing exciting. There are a few other mated pairs, like us.”

Us.

Okay, yeah, she wanted him, this, them. Togetherness, foreverness.

He knew when she was lying. It sent a thrill through her.

“Like us?” she pressed.

He ran his paw over her head, down her neck. It was a very human gesture. “Does that bother you?” he asked.

“Only that you weren’t where I was,” she confessed. All this time waiting for him. Cats matured way younger than people…

He licked her, all over her face. “I thought I had the thinking problem,” he teased her.

Not going down this easy. She was like putty in his hands, like the simplest wiccan spell worked by the most inexperienced child.

“You just have one problem,” she told him. She kept her muscles relaxed, so he wouldn’t be warned.

His face less than an inch from hers, he asked, “What is that?”

She twisted, spun, darted away, in one rapid series of movements.

This time, she was tired enough that she knew he was letting her stay ahead of him, enjoying the chase as much as she did. Cat instincts were weird to humans, but this was fun. What was the point of lying naked in a bed and telling a man to come hither, when you could do this?

He caught her – she knew he would – and when he got on top of her this time, their bodies pressed together, she let him because she wanted it too. She succumbed to everything, let herself feel sensations she hadn’t been sure until this moment that her body was capable of.

And then, they fell together, letting their bodies splay on the ground, with her in the nested curve of his torso. She rested her head just under the line of his jaw.

“How I have longed for you to be near me,” he purred. “I tried telling you both.”

That was only a week ago, he’d tried to show Delaney the spell that made Kyori. “And Delaney closed the book,” she laughed. His whiskers tickled her ears. “It’s possible that she’s evil.”

He laughed, throaty. She was going to get to hear that laugh forever. He was hers, made just for each other, and finally they were together.

“Evil?” he teased. He nuzzled her. “Where are you staying?”

Wherever he was. “Anywhere,” she said.

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