The Fire You Lit
The fire in her chest showed no sign of dying.
"A whole day... already..."
Another red mark bloomed across my throat.
The fur that had covered her was gone now. In its place, sunlight caught the sheen of sweat along every curve of her body — a sight that was somehow even more compromising than before.
Not that it made any difference. I had nothing left. Not a scrap of strength, not even the capacity to be driven any further.
She buried her face against my neck and kissed me over and over, and I felt nothing. Just a vague, lukewarm dampness. And still I couldn't stop her. I couldn't so much as twitch a finger. All I wanted was to laugh — a hollow, helpless little laugh at the state of myself.
"...Ah. So it has."
She dragged her tongue slowly across my face, as if the fact genuinely disappointed her, then rose and pulled the curtains shut again. After that she drifted toward the front door and began bustling about with something or other. I was far too exhausted to track any of it. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, the world outside had gone dark.
A strange, foreign sensation crawled through my body. I jerked — and immediately regretted it.
"Ghhhk—"
The sound caught in my throat. Only a thin groan escaped. It felt as though a spike were being driven through every inch of me, and all I could do was lie there and wait for the tearing pain to pass.
Then a warm hand closed around my arm and began to knead — slow, firm, patient strokes. She worked one rigid arm and then the other, and before long she had moved on to my legs, massaging them with the same dedicated care. Bit by bit, the knotted muscles began to loosen.
When the pain finally receded enough for me to unclench my face, I looked up at the person who had been working the ache from my body.
"Heh. Did you sleep well?"
She smiled at me — bright, sweet — and asked as if nothing at all had happened. I wanted to be angry. I really did. But I couldn't. Have I already grown that attached?
Then again, my body still wouldn't move when I asked it to. Maybe that was fear talking.
Mandatory defense.
I'd never imagined two words could be so terrifying. I'd never imagined a day would come when I finally understood what they meant.
But that was that. For now, I owed a thank-you to the woman who had stayed by my side.
A soft peck. I pressed a light kiss to her pale cheek.
Her face didn't so much as twitch. I felt a flicker of uncertainty.
"Um... did you not like that?"
"No, it's just... I think I'll have you after all."
"What?"
The bed lurched again.
"Our kind has something called a Heat Cycle. It comes at regular intervals, and when it does, our emotions become... extremely intense. We're not indiscriminate about it, of course."
She said this with a perfectly straight face, as if she hadn't just reduced me to a wreck. I felt a petty little surge of resentment.
"There's medicine specifically for suppressing it. Without that, how would people without a partner ever keep their chastity — or live with any semblance of propriety in a civilized society?"
She was draped across me as she spoke. She lifted a fingertip and traced a lazy line down my chest.
"But aside from the cycle that comes on its own, we also have something called Beastification. That's the form you saw yesterday, Marcus. More fur. The animal parts of us grow sharper, more sensitive. And naturally... the instinctive parts as well."
The hand stroking my body drifted up to my face. She turned my chin with a light touch, bringing my eyes to hers.
"I'm sorry. If I was too intense."
A faintly pained look crossed her face as she smoothed my hair back from my forehead. On any other day, my heart would have been hammering. Right now, the pain was louder.
Everything below the waist was still throbbing, damn it.
"Isn't it a little shameless to say that after wringing me dry?"
The words came out far rougher than I'd intended. I startled at my own mouth and clapped a hand over it.
"I— I'm sorry. I mean—"
She gave my flustered face a gentle smile and brushed her fingers down my cheek.
"It was my first time as well, so I had no way of gauging your stamina. If I'd been in my right mind, I'm certain I would have stopped."
"If you'd been in your right mind?"
"Yes. If I'd been in my right mind."
"I was overflowing with love for you in that moment. It's true we haven't known each other long — you said so yourself — but you've shown me a kindness and a generosity far beyond anything I deserved. And that isn't all. I pushed myself on you without hiding a single feeling, so aggressively it bordered on rude, and instead of shoving me away or cursing me for it, you received it gently. You tried to understand."
"You let me into your arms so I could fall asleep in comfort, so I could wake every morning to warmth. You've given me everything I wear, everything I eat, everything I enjoy — and you've asked for nothing in return. Not a single thing."
"That's—"
"I haven't finished speaking yet, Marcus. Please."
Her eyes shone.
"Mm. Heh. Heheheh. Ah— honestly. I can't help but love you. I've felt any number of people looking at me over the years, but a gaze this harmless, this warm, filled with nothing but affection and genuine interest... if I set my family aside, I think you might be the only one. What am I supposed to do with that? Really..."
"Ah. That's not the point. More importantly... looking at the state of you, you'll need at least two full days of rest. So I'll hold back, in proportion to the kindness you've shown me. Yes. That's the very least I can do, after receiving so much love and consideration I never earned."
"...Where had we left off? Ahh, that's right. The stage. As you can see, I'm rather strong. Mmm... I remember being unusually strong even among my own kind. So for a rabbit beastkin, I carry quite a bit of muscle, and my shoulders may look a touch broader than most women's."
"Of course, as far as appearances go, you seem to be enjoying yourself and finding me more than satisfactory, which is a tremendous relief. But the work you've asked of me, Marcus, is nothing — truly not even this much — compared to what I used to bear."
She pinched her thumb and forefinger together and waggled the tiny gap in front of my eyes, then brought that same hand back to my face.
"Ah... you're so warm. So warm that I might accidentally—"
"No!"
Her eyes turned dangerous again. She ran that long tongue over lips we had already overlapped dozens of times, and I shouted on pure instinct.
"Really?"
"No. Absolutely not. Have you ever heard of dying in the act?!"
"Ah... dear. Then perhaps this is something you and I can work on together."
"Work on? Is that even something you can work on?"
"Yes. There'll be a bit of a hit to the wallet, of course, but if we get the right ingredients and you offer just a little cooperation, it's more than doable."
She smiled, curled her fingers into a circle, and gave them a little shake in the air.
My body shrank back on its own.
"How do you even know about that?!"
Terrified of being wrung dry all over again, I tried to ease myself away from her. She caught my arm and pulled me straight back into her embrace.
"Nnh. No. Watching you pull away makes me a little sad."
I sank into her. Buried against a body I had already been folded into more times than I could count, I drew a few breaths — and my head went pleasantly fuzzy, the tension bleeding out of me, and somewhere along the way my own arm had started stroking her back.
"Ah, honestly. We can go again, can't we? We can, right?"
A low rumble rolled through her throat, far too deep for anything that was supposed to be a rabbit, as she scratched at her neck and let the sound fill the room.
"...That is genuinely not happening."
I let her have as much as I possibly could. But not this. Not until I'd at least had some rest. After that, maybe.
"Then will you at least 'cooperate'?"
"Cooperate... you mean that thing, right? If it's that, then..."
"You see? This is exactly why I can't help but love you."
"Which part, exactly?!"
She started sliding her face toward my neck again. I caught her cheeks in both hands and pressed her back down against the pillow.
She seemed perfectly happy with even that, stroking my hands as if I'd given her a gift. Hah. Am I losing my mind? She really is painfully adorable.
"You show me endless kindness. Whenever I want to do something, you hear me out first — except for the things you truly can't concede. Every single thing you do for me is soaked in goodwill and attention and love. How am I supposed to endure not loving you?"
She said it with her eyes shining, a confession so sincere I couldn't look at her straight on. I tried to turn my head away from the sheer embarrassment of it — and she caught my face and brought my eyes back to hers.
She just kept smiling at me, bright and unwavering, for so long that I finally managed to get a question out.
"Nnh... is that usually how people fall in love?"
"Then how do they?"
The counter came so fast I had to scratch my head and roll my eyes around the room, piecing together an answer as I went.
"Usually... uh... well. You meet someone, and you talk to each other..."
"We did that."
"And then you try doing the things you like together."
"We can do that going forward. I'd enjoy that, actually — doing the things you like, Marcus."
"Right, so that part hasn't happened yet—"
"Then we start now. What comes next?"
"After that... I don't know. You confirm how you feel about each other, and you think about whether you can keep going together, and whether you can live without tearing each other apart — whether you can actually be considerate of one another..."
"You've already been more than considerate. Now it's my turn, don't you think?"
Every answer I offered, she demolished with affection. I was left completely speechless.
"No, I'm telling you, something about this is weird..."
"There's nothing strange about it at all."
"How?!"
She took my hand and set it over her own heart.
The beat beneath my palm was astonishingly strong.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her heart was racing as if she had just sprinted a mile. And in answer, mine began to pick up speed as well.
And with those words, she stole my lips all over again.