I hadn’t been far from him when it had happened. I still remembered the silent swipe of the genka’s paw through the gap, the sharp seize of its claws against Veran’s gut. I’d sprinted to him, my knife out of my boot before I’d even blinked, but the genka had already dragged him halfway to the trees by that point.

With his life pouring out of him, getting further from me every moment as the genka pulled him away, he coughed out a stream of hot blood, fixed his dimming white eyes on mine and told me, “Fix the fence, boy.”

I threw my knife anyway. It hit the genka square in the throat. But by then it was too late.

“And you saw it happen?”

Cherry’s lovely voice dragged me from the past and back into the present. And oh, what a present it was. With my wife’s perfect face turned up towards mine so expectantly and my tail safe in the caress of her caring hands.

I must have been lost in thought for some time. My flesh had already been thoroughly cleaned and layered with ointment. White bandages covered the end of my tail in neat stripes, tied off with wing-like bows.

“I did.”

“Oh, Silar.” A single drop of shimmering liquid, perfect and gem-like, spilled from her eye to her cheek. My heart strained in its cage of bones, and before I could stop myself, before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned forward, cupped her jaw, and pressed my mouth to the moisture.

Cherry gasped. I felt her heartbeat flutter like a trapped animal. Cursing myself for the foolishness of pressing my mouth to my wife’s skin in such a fashion, I made to draw back.

But Cherry threw her arms around my neck and held me there.

And then she crawled into my lap.

She settled her slight body there, the hot meeting of her thighs pressing against me. Cock to cunt.

My eyes grew so white that they began to feel scorched inside their sockets. My lips were still hovering at Cherry’s cheek, wanting so badly to roam over her, but not quite bold enough to do so.

Until she gave a soft moan that was a fiery squeeze to my cock and then turned her face so that her mouth brushed mine.

And not just her mouth.

Her tongue.

My whole body spasmed with the erotic shock of it. The wet slide of her tongue against the parting seam of my lips.

“Is that… Is that alright?” she whispered against my damp mouth.

As I was suddenly even more incapable of speech than usual, I did not answer her with words but instead with the reciprocal dart of my own tongue. She stiffened, and then it was as if she melted, her mouth opening in a sigh against mine.

Any thoughts I’d had of restraint, of control, of keeping my foulest urges away from my wife disappeared like a candle snuffed out in the dark. My hands shot to her waist, palming the gorgeous flare of her hips as my tongue surged into her mouth.

But Cherry didn’t pull back and she didn’t pull away. Instead, she arched her spine, pressing herself even harder against me, as if trying to fuse our fronts together. I grimly congratulated myself on the fact that I did not immediately empty my sack through my cock this time. Though I was very, very close.

The inside of my wife’s mouth was sweeter than anything I could ever remember tasting. Sweeter than any of the fruit I grew on the ranch, sweeter than any delicacy I could recall having eaten in childhood on Zabria. Maybe even sweeter than cherries, though I would not know for sure for some cycles yet.

I slicked my tongue against hers like a starving man. And maybe that’s what I was.

I’d been so empty for so long. Waiting for something without knowing what.

And now she was here.

Cherry dragged her mouth from mine, pressing hot kisses against my cheekbone, my jaw, the side of my neck. There was no reason such a thing should have felt so exquisite. My cock leaped between the crush of our bodies, and Cherry rocked her hips, digging her fingers into my hair.

“You have no idea,” she murmured huskily, “how much I’ve wanted to kiss you again.”

“It is probably good,” I panted hoarsely, “that you have no idea the things I’ve wanted to do to you.”

She grew still.

Oh, well done, Silar. Now you’ve done it.

“What things?” she breathed.

I did not answer, arousal and shame beating through me in equal, toxic measure.

Cherry drew back, her fingers still fluttering through my hair, making my scalp and ears twitch with sensation. She met my gaze steadily. The darkest parts of her eyes were very large, very black. Her skin was flushed, her lips red and swollen, her hair a mussed cascade.

Her beauty was like a blow. It struck me, pained me, made me feel like I was grieving though for what I could not say.

“What things?” she prodded. Brave little Cherry. She did not seem afraid.

She also did not know what she was asking.

“Please, Silar.”

Her eyes were so big. So lovely. I felt like I could fall right into them.

“Please.”

“From the moment I helped you down out of the saddle that first day, I have wanted to rub my hard cock all over your backside.”

Her mouth fell open, her eyes widening, and I knew that I should stop. Stop, and preserve whatever respect my wife still had for me.

But now that I’d started, I could not stop. The words flowed out of me like blood from a wound.

“And not just your backside,” I groaned. “I have dreamed about rubbing myself on your belly, your breasts. Tortured myself with thoughts of what you might look like, smell like, taste like between your legs. I want to suck on your nipples. Put every part of myself inside you that I can. Fingers, tail, cock, tongue. Spill myself into your cunt and even, perversely, outside of your cunt. See what you’d look like dripping with it, absolutely coated in it.”

Cherry drew a shuddering inhale.

“Sorry,” I gritted out. I’d said too much. Gone too far. My fingers tightened on her hips involuntarily, my body already preparing for her flight. “I swear to you that I can control every one of my unnatural urges.”

She cocked her head, her brows puckering.

“Did you just say, ‘unnatural urges?’”

“Yes.” What the blazes else would you call them?

Cherry watched me for a moment, her expression smoothing, then stretching into a grin.

“Oh, my sweet summer Silar,” she sighed.

I frowned. “I was born in winter.”

She chuckled, which confused me, considering I’d just revealed to her how foul the man she married was.

“It’s a human phrase. ‘My sweet summer child.’ It just means somebody is innocent.”

“You think… You think that I am innocent?” I asked, unable to keep the bitter scoff out of my voice. Because there were myriad words to describe me, but innocent was not one of them. Not since my trial, anyway.

But Cherry just jerked her head up and down, undeterred.

“Yup,” she said. “Everything you just said is pretty normal. Those are all basic facets of desire. In fact, as far as humans are concerned, that’s actually pretty tame.” Her grin widened. “You should see some of the sick shit we get up to.”

“Tame,” I echoed, stunned. “Basic.”

“Is it not like that for Zabrians?”

“I do not know.”

“You’ve never been with anyone else, right?”

“No.”

“And have you… Have you had, like, sexual health education? Or anything like that? To learn what sort of things are normal and healthy?”

My stomach twisted at the thought of telling her that I’d left the academy far too early to encounter curriculum like that. Instead, I feebly offered, “I have seen shuldu and bracku mating.”

“Alright,” she whispered. She placed a tender kiss upon my mouth, disentangling her fingers from my hair. Her hands fell to the hem of her shirt.

And then she pulled it off.

I froze, watching my wife make quick work of the rest of her clothing, until she was on her knees between my splayed thighs, utterly and entirely naked.