She gave me another slap on my forearm, then went motionless.

“Frost… Hold on. Do you mean frostbite?”

Frostbite. That sounded right.

“Yes,” I growled, squeezing her softness harder, trying to get the tips nearer to the heat. She gave a throaty sort of gasp at that, her back arching oddly against my front. I tried to gentle my touch, terrified I’d hurt her. “If we don’t act quickly,” I explained, thinking perhaps she did not know very much about this frostbite phenomenon, “then the tips of your udders will die and fall off.”

Cherry paused, and then, in a shockingly careless denial of the severity of the situation, she actually laughed.

“There is so much wrong with what you just said I don’t even know where to start,” she groaned between wheezing breaths. “Do you seriously think I have frostbite of the nips just because I was being all whiny about sitting in a bucket of cold water for, like, thirty seconds? And did you just call them udders?”

“You… You do not have frost tooth?”

“I do not have frostbite,” she corrected. “Though I may end up with third degree burns to the titties the way you seem to be intent on roasting me over this fire.”

Empire, no.

I snatched her away from the oven.

“Get back in the water,” I hissed. A rather nonsensical thing to say, because I was already lifting the tub, ready to drench her in the cold water. There was no way she could get back in it now.

“Oh, God, no Silar,” Cherry said, her eyes growing big and round. “I was joking!”

“Joking?” I held the tub aloft, my chest heaving, my heart beating faster than it ever had. Faster even than it had at my trial.

“I don’t have frostbite and you didn’t burn me! The fire is very cozy, thank you. But I don’t need you to aim my, erm, udders at it like that. I’m fine!”

“You’re fine.” I echoed the words brainlessly. Though it felt like an eternity, they finally began to make some sense in my empty head. Keeping an eye on my wife, I slowly lowered the tub to the floor.

“I’m fine,” she repeated stoutly. She held the sides of her shirt against the round parts of her chest, which still looked oddly hard at the tips.

“I…” Poisonous heat flamed through me. “I am sorry I touched your… udders.”

She snorted.

“Sorry,” I said again. “I know they are not called that. But I have not gotten far enough in the book to know the correct term. Zabrian females do not have… those.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks were very pink. It made her eyes look even bluer. Her hair was so dark when wet, glossy and dripping, moisture soaking further into her shirt.

I wanted to grab at the shirt and wring out the fabric into my own mouth. Suck on the soaked ends of her hair. Taste the water on her skin. Touch the things she did not call udders again. Feel the curved weight in my hands when I was not half out of my mind with fear.

My cock strained.

I am a foul excuse for a male.

“So… You are fine,” I said again blankly, trying to swim upon a raging sea of sick desires and claw my way back to the banks of reality. “Why did that part of you get so hard?”

“It is from the cold. But it’s not dangerous,” she added quickly when I tensed. “It’s a sensitive place. They get hard when touched, too.”

“Would you… would you tell me the correct term?”

Her cheeks grew darker. She moved her head up and down.

“The round parts are called breasts,” she said breathily. “The parts that get hard are nipples.” She swallowed, and I longed to feel the contraction of her throat beneath my palm. “Do… Do you want to see?”

My tail squeezed its hook so hard I knew it would be bruised tomorrow.

I did not answer but nor did I leave. Cherry stared at me a long moment. And then carefully, slowly, watching me the entire time, she parted her shirt.

Damp fabric slid over her skin until her chest was bared to me. Two round, heavy globes of flesh moved with each of her shaking breaths. Their tips, which I’d imagined in my fear to be black and frozen, were actually a delicate pinkish-brown, the pointed tips like taut little buds, the skin looking flushed and warm and healthy.

The tub was between us.

I wished I was closer.

I wished I was anywhere but here.

I wanted to touch her and I wanted to run. Run, before she understood just how filthily I wanted her.

I wanted to rut her. To turn her around, bend her over, and drive into her from behind the way I’d seen bulls and shuldu do it. Only, I did not know if that was what humans did or even what Zabrians did and I was utterly, entirely, miserably at a loss.

Cherry still clutched the lower part of her shirt together with one hand, shielding most of her belly and her sex from me. But I could see all of her legs, all of her breasts, all of that pale throat and her face, so foreign and so lovely.

“You can… You can touch me again. If you want. And if you’re gentler this time.”

For the first time I noticed the redness at the sides of her breasts, no doubt from my kneading and squeezing. I groaned and wanted to strangle myself with my own tail.

“I-”

“It’s alright,” she interrupted. “You don’t need to apologize again.” She smiled tentatively. “We’re bound to run into more of these sorts of misunderstandings as we get to know each other. But I figure that if we talk to each other and…” Her voice caught. “And touch each other… We’ll figure it out.”

“Do you want me to touch you?” I hated the thought that she might be standing there and suffering my touch just so that I could get a hands-on human education.

But she dispelled that fear with a single word.

“Yes.”

My wife wanted me to touch her.

I would have to be careful, I told myself sternly as I nearly tipped the tub over in my haste to get back to her. I could not lose control. I would be stoic. Scientific. I would explore her with nothing but the purest, most mindful sort of curiosity. I would not think bad thoughts of tongues on skin or cocks in cunts. The kinds of thoughts I was sure no decent woman would tolerate in her husband.

And Cherry, I was beginning to learn, was far more than just a decent woman. She was warm, caring, not to mention generous, allowing my big, rough hands to close over her breasts once more.

“Oh,” she breathed, tipping her head back against the wall. Thinking I’d been too hard again, I ripped my hands away, only for her to grab them and guide them back to the achingly soft curves of her flesh.

I stifled a groan as I felt the tips, the nipples as she’d called them, stiffen once more. Sensitive, she’d said.

A sensitive part of my own body was stiffening rapidly now, but I paid it little heed, staring down with lurid fascination at the way my hands covered so much of this part of her body.

“If these are not udders,” I rasped, pressing lightly until Cherry gasped, “what are they for?”

She let out a small laugh.

“Your instinct actually wasn’t far off,” she murmured. “They are for milk. For babies.”

“If they are for babies,” I choked out, “then I should not be touching them.”

I should also not be struck with the sudden desire to suck on them, either, but I did not say that horrifying part out loud.

But Cherry did not seem horrified. She shivered under my touch and shyly said, “They can be for husbands, too.”

There was no denying the sudden spurt of seed from the tip of my cock. It was but a small tremor of ecstasy, not a full climax, but it was there all the same, slick and wet.

“For… For milk?” I asked dizzily.

“No, that doesn’t happen until you actually have a baby. But men… Well, human men, anyway, seem to like them.”

Either I was not quite as perverse as I’d thought…

Or human males were even more perverse than I could have imagined.

Whatever the case, Cherry did not seem afraid of the way my touches grew bolder, greedier. All hopes of a cool and sterile exploration of my wife’s body were dead now, killed by my own longing. I swallowed a growl of need, dragging my thumbs across the taut nipples.