Heal this, if you can with all your secret boiling power! Morphenkind, what have you done to that boy? Will he survive only to become what you are?
At last, he couldn,t stand these thoughts anymore. The sublime peace of these leafy heights was paling in the heat of his misery. He had to move, and he began to climb from tree to tree, with her arms and legs once more locked to him. They moved on in a great arc through the woods, and slowly back to the edge of the redwood forest. As always, she weighed nothing; she was fragrant and sweet as if he carried bundles of flowers close to him for their luscious scent. His tongue sought out her neck, her cheek, his growls turned to low moans serenading her.
She locked her arms and legs even tighter around him again, and he descended into the warmer closer air of the lower forest.
Her hands felt icy. Even he could feel this, feel the iciness as if it was smoke coming from her hands.
He walked slowly through the great generous gray-barked oaks, carrying her, stopping here and there so they could kiss, so he could move his left paw under her sweater and feel the hot silky naked flesh there, so moist, so bare, so redolent of citrus and blossoms he couldn,t name and the stark searing scent of her living flesh. He lifted her up and suckled her breasts as she sighed.
Once inside the house, he laid her down on the great long dining room table. He held her icy hands between his paws, his warm paws, weren,t they warm? The room was dark. The house creaked and sighed against the pummeling of the ocean wind. Light fell languidly through the alcove from the great room.
For a long moment he looked at her, lying there waiting for him, her hair loose and snagged with bits of aromatic leaf or petal, her eyes large and drowsy yet fixed on him.
Then he gave the match to the oak wood that was built up in the fireplace. The kindling crackled, exploded, and the flames leapt. The eerie light danced on the coffered ceiling. It danced in the high lacquer of the tabletop.
She began to remove her clothes, but he begged her with a quiet gesture to stop. Then he took them off of her, rolling back the sweater and pulling it gently away, and pulling loose the pants and throwing them aside. She kicked off her shoes.
The sight of her naked on the bare table maddened him wondrously. He ran the soft side of his paws under her naked feet. He caressed her naked calves. "Don,t let me hurt you," he whispered in that low voice, so familiar to him now, now so much a part of him. "Tell me if I hurt you."
"You never hurt me," she whispered. "You can,t hurt me."
"Tender throat, tender belly," he growled, licking her with his long tongue, soft under-paws lifting her breasts. Get thee behind me, tragedy. Kneeling over her, he lifted her and impaled her gently on his sex and the room went dim around him, the fire roaring and crackling in his ears, his mind filled with nothing but her, till it was no mind at all.
Afterwards, he picked her up and carried her up the stairs and down the hollow hallway - such a long walk in the secretive dark - to the warmer air of their bedroom. Perfume; candles. It was so very dim here, so very silent.
He laid her down on the bed, a shadow against the pale whiteness of the sheets, and sat beside her. Without fanfare he closed his eyes and brought the change. A little fire burst inside his chest; the air itself seemed to lift the wolf-coat, soften it, dissolve it. The orgasmic waves rocked him violently but quickly. Then the fur began to melt away, his skin drew breath, and he looked down again at his hands, his familiar hands.
"I did a terrible thing tonight," he said.
"What was it?" She clasped his arm and pressed it gently.
"I injured that boy, that boy I was trying to save. I think I passed the Chrism."
She said nothing. Her shadowy face was a picture of understanding and compassion, and what a marvel that was, because he expected neither from anyone. Hoping for something is not the same as expecting it.
"And what if he dies?" he asked with a sigh. "What if I,ve shed innocent blood? Or