Learning the Ways of the Night from the Wolf - Chapter 22

The man said something she could not parse.

“I will see you safely back to your beast’s side.”

The low, deep resonance settled along the cave walls like a vow. Or perhaps a seduction.

“What do you—”

Tina asked on reflex, but the question died short. The man moved without warning. Silent, decisive, he lowered himself beneath her, down to her legs, to precisely where her ankle had swollen.

“W-wait…”

His gaze skimmed across the reddened skin, and then a warm, damp sensation spread slowly over it.

“Ngh…!”

Tina drew a sharp breath. The tip of his tongue was tracing the swollen flesh achingly slow, agonizingly careful. The stimulus was slight, yet her entire body clenched.

The man was watching her as though swallowing something down. Under that gaze, Tina felt the sensation at her ankle ripple outward through her whole body. Goosebumps rose across her skin.

“Nn… hah…”

She fought to steady her breathing and let out a labored exhale. But the flushed breath escaping her cracked lips only spread, against her will, into an ever-stranger tremor.

What first told her the pain was gone was the feeling of her body settling into the ground beneath her.

Before she knew it, Tina was lying flat on her back. Past the edge of her body she felt rough, warm animal hide.

Her body was flushed, yet strangely at ease. She was no longer in any pain, nor did she feel the cold.

But the man did not advance beyond laying her down, so Tina’s gaze drifted slowly to his face.

The quiet darkness within his eyes called to mind every night that had come before. The hours spent straining toward what she could not reach. The nights she had been forced to wake, always just short of arriving.

Within those nights were things he had given her. She remembered with perfect clarity those moments when body and heart alike had felt as though they might melt.

“Aren’t you… cold?”

Tina managed the question through thinning breaths. At her words, the man went still.

Her thinking at that moment was simple. He was wearing far thinner clothes than she was. He must be cold. The thick fur was draped over her alone.

She wanted him to be as warm as she was.

“I… know how to get warm.”

Tina was worried about his cold body, and the only way she knew to share warmth was that.

So she lifted her foot and traced it carefully along the inside of his thigh. Because he had shown her every dreamlike night how to make the heat rise.

As her foot climbed clumsily along his thigh, the man did not once lower his gaze. His red eyes bored into Tina without a gap, but the calm within them had vanished.

“…This is truly your own doing now.”

His low, rough voice drew nearer, and it felt like the breath of a predator.

“W-wait—!”

In the next instant, Tina could not finish her protest. Her back arched because the man, suddenly a handspan closer, had slipped beneath her skirt.

“That’s— that’s not where I’m hurt.”

The brush of his hair against her inner thighs set every nerve on edge.

“You aren’t hurt here, and yet you’re dripping like this.”

The man let out a low laugh from between her thighs. Even that was stimulating. Goosebumps broke out along her legs in a flash.

“I don’t…”

Tina swallowed the rest, at a loss for an explanation. She didn’t understand, she thought. Maybe she was injured there, too. Maybe the damp heat throbbing below meant something inside her had broken.

“Ah—!”

He licked deep into the hollow below. And when his burning tongue met her swollen peak, Tina felt her nerves flash white behind her eyes. Her hips twisted on their own.

“Mmnh… This is strange…”

Tina breathed out, ragged, at the sensation, more intense than anything she had felt before. Her clenched thighs trembled.

“Hah- mmnh, ngh!”

The man lingered there for a long time. He pressed in relentlessly, his tongue becoming something firm and unyielding as it explored every fold inside her. As though there must be no part of her he did not know.

“We haven’t even started, and you’re already crying like this…”

Only then did Tina realize she had been weeping. The man who had risen above her at some point, licked the tears trailing down her cheek. She was not sad, yet the tears would not stop. Something wrenching, something tender swelled inside her.

“I’ve loosened you, but you are terribly sensitive. The first time will hurt.”

The man lowered himself over her, drawing ever closer. Was it an illusion? In his shadow, Tina thought she glimpsed the silhouette of a beast.