WILLA

Still no cootie noise.

I check myself in the morning just in case, and then I listen to Gren’s heartbeat for a bit as he lies in the lean-to next to me. Even after that nasty snow-trick last night, I still cuddled against him for warmth. A girl’s a little more forgiving when she’s been touched until everything inside her squeezed. But nope, still no cootie noises.

Maybe there’s something in the water in this place that makes a girl crazy with lust. That could be it.

I mean, sex-crazed Willa is not who I am. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly sexual. It could be because of how I grew up, what with Isaiah dying when we were young and then Mama and Uncle Dick turning into two-bit country kingpins, I was more worried about ending up in the news than whether or not I’d get laid. I’m sure there were boys that were interested, but I never had the time. There was Mama and her shenanigans, and Uncle Dick’s people who wanted a quick grope of his teenage niece. I learned that the men that showed up were disgusting, and that put me off sex. Maybe it’s like the movies for some people, but for me it involved older men with grabby hands and leering. No thanks, didn’t want any of that.

But with Gren, everything’s different.

I want to touch him. I wake up and I breathe in his slightly sweaty scent and think it’s just about the best thing since biscuits and gravy. I want to bury my face in his strange fur and kiss those gigantic saber-tooth canines of his and soothe all the worries on his face. I want to explore his body—from the front this time—and see how he reacts if I put my mouth on him. I don’t find him ugly or strange looking anymore. He’s different, but I don’t mind that. There’s fierce protectiveness in his gaze and kindness in his eyes—and dear lord, he’s got great hands—and that makes up for any sort of snout or if he’s a little furrier than some guys. He’s wonderful and to me, those big hands and hulking body are incredibly sexy. There are a million things I want to do with him, and it feels like since we’re alone, we have all the time in the world to do so. It’s exciting, and when I wake up, my pussy feels achy and ready for another round of heavy petting.

Man, screw heavy petting. I want to grab him and ride him like a pony.

So yeah, it’s not really me that does that sort of thing. I keep thinking it might be the cootie and maybe mine’s just real quiet, but Gren’s is silent too, so maybe not. It’s a mystery. Maybe there’s something in the water…or maybe it’s just that for the first time in my life, I’m totally free to do whatever I want.

There’s no Mama, no Uncle Dick, no credit card collectors, no diner wanting me to work an extra shift. I don’t have to worry about anyone judging me or thinking I’m trash. There’s just me and snow and fresh air and Gren.

Seems kinda perfect to me.

I touch my mouth thoughtfully. We should probably kiss at some point, though I wonder how that’s going to work with his big teeth. I don’t want him to feel awkward or uncomfortable, or like he’s lacking. He might not have the world’s prettiest mouth, but the man has magic hands and an enormous dick. I’m pretty sure any guy with a pretty mouth would be jealous of him for those things alone. And he’s mine, all mine. I squeeze my thighs together happily at the thought.

After all, I can’t resonate to someone else when I’m alone with him. And given that there’s only two other single men on the planet other than Gren, and my cootie seems to be silent, resonance isn’t in my future. I’m okay with that, as long as Gren is.

If things are kind of awesome on that front, though, breakfast is a bit lacking. We have cold cat sushi, which makes me want to puke at the thought, but I force myself to eat a few bites anyhow, because if I don’t eat it, Gren won’t either. He watches me to make sure I’m eating before he takes a bite, and I know he needs to eat. So I grab my hunk of kittycat breakfast, crawl into his lap, and snuggle up against him while we have breakfast, just because I want to be near him.

He doesn’t quite know what to do with this, but he doesn’t push me away, either. He nuzzles my hair and holds me close, but there’s no frisky petting.

Darn it.

I look at the skies, but they’re cloudy and gloomy, and the temperature is colder than yesterday. Even as we eat breakfast, snow starts to drift inside of our lean-to. It’s going to be a stay-inside sort of day, I think. I’m both happy and sad about that—I love the thought of staying “in” with Gren all day, but I know for survival, we need a better shelter, and we need to get away from anywhere that the others might be looking for us.

Still, today might not be that day, and it means that we can stay in and get to know each other better. Strange how that small thought fills me with such utter joy. Hang out in a shitty tent and eat frozen raw cat? Why does that sound like such an amazing day? It’s all because of my company, and I beam at Gren.

“Willa,” he says. “Friend.” Then he waits, looking at me.

“We need to learn more words,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. I give it a squeeze and want to sidle closer, but I wonder if he would deem that too pushy. It’s hard to think that after what we’ve been doing together for the last day or so, but I don’t want him to think I’m grabby. I fight back the urge to plaster myself all over him and gesture at the fat, falling flakes. “Today we should skip hunting.”

“Hunt?” he asks, picking up that particular word.

“No hunt,” I correct, then put my hand out to the front of the lean to and catch a few drifting flakes. “Snow.”

Gren mimics me, though the sound is more purr than anything else. He struggles with the sharper consonants, I think, because of his teeth, but I don’t care. We’re talking and that’s all that matters. He reaches one hand out and captures a bit of snow on his fingers. “Rrrss.”

I think that’s snow in his language, but it’s more growls and throat-deep sounds and I struggle to repeat them. I try twice, and when he rumbles with laughter, I can’t help but chuckle, too. “You’re doing better with my language than I am with yours,” I tell him cheerfully.

He bares his teeth, then reaches out and caresses my face, his fingers tracing over my lips.

“Do you want to know the word for ‘smile’? Happy? Lips? Teeth? Talk?” I feel a little intimidated by how much there is to teach one another. How are we possibly going to communicate when there’s a handful of words for every possible gesture? I was never good at languages in school. Actually, I was never good at school, period.

But he just touches my lips, tracing them with the pads of his fingers and sending little skitters of pleasure all through my body. Right. It doesn’t matter how many words we learn, as long as we’re in this together. So I take his hand and guide his fingertips over my closed lips, puckering them. “Lips.” I give him a wide smile to show the difference. “Smile.”

Then I put my hand on his mouth to do the same.

He draws back slightly, startled, and looks uncertain. It’s as if he doesn’t know how to react to me touching his mouth. I wonder at that. Is there something different about his mouth that troubles him? I know he doesn’t look like me, but I don’t care. Appearances don’t count for shit as far as I’m concerned. Mama was a beautiful, beautiful woman and she had a purely rotten heart.

I’d much rather an ugly, honest friend.

I don’t think Gren is ugly, though. Different, yes, but not in a bad way. So I ignore his hesitation and reach for his mouth again. “Lips,” I tell him softly, moving my fingers over the seam of his mouth. Then, “Smile.” And I poke one finger into the corner of his mouth and drag it upward, making the expression for him.

He snorts with laughter and carefully sets one claw at the edge of my mouth to do the same to me. “Shhhmmmile.”

After that, the task of learning each other’s words is no longer so stressful. We touch each other and share words, sticking to the simple stuff first. His language is just as tricky for me to speak as mine is for him. The word for “hair” and “skin” in his language sound surprisingly the same, for example, but there might be inflections that I’m missing entirely that differentiate the two. When I ask about his fangs and his tail, though, he shakes his head, indicating that he has no words for them.

How odd.

We move on to other things, pointing out the shelter, the spear, the food, the leathers I’m destroying by using them as bedding in the cold snow. “We need blankets,” I tell him, and them mime covering myself with the leathers. “No bed.” I hug my arms and pretend to shiver. “Cold.”

Gren grunts, fingering the leather tunic. “Food skin,” he tells me. “Gren food skin Willa.”

“Do you mean you want to hunt something for its fur?” I make a stabbing gesture, then point at the hide, and he nods.

“We need food and furs, yes. We also need fire.” I rub my hands together and pretend to hold them in front of a fire pit. “Fire, food, fur.” I gesture at our terrible little shelter, which even now isn’t doing a great job of keeping the weather out. It flaps hard with the stiff winds and lets in almost as much as it keeps out, and I find myself scooting closer to Gren every few minutes just to partake of his warmth. “This is all right for now, but we need better.”

Gren nods. “Willa shelter.” He pauses, and then puts fingers to his head in an indication of horns. “Willa…shelter?”

I shake my head, not clear what he means.

He gestures at our tent. “Shelter…no. Willa…” He pauses and then puts the horns on his head again. “Shelter. Food. Fire. Gren no. No food. No shelter, no fire.” He makes the horns again. “Yes food. Yes shelter. Yes fire.”

He makes the horns gesture again, and it dawns on me what he means.

We don’t have food here, or shelter, or fire. The others do. He wants to know if I want to go back.

“Do you want to go back? Gren?” I make the horns sign.

My big guy is silent for a long moment. Then, he reaches out and takes my hand. “Gren Willa friend. Gren…Willa.” He gestures at himself, making it clear that whatever I decide, he’s going to follow.

I’m shocked. “I won’t go back to people that tie you down and don’t treat you as human.” I shake my head vehemently and squeeze his big hand in mine. “Willa is Gren’s friend. Not the horned ones. If we need food, we will get our own food. Willa shelter Gren. Willa food Gren. Willa fire Gren.”

I know it’s baby talk in the scheme of things, but it makes him smile, his lips drawing back over his big fangs with obvious pleasure. “Willa.”

“Friend,” I tell him, and press my mouth to his knuckles in a silent promise. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize his safety. I chose him and I don’t plan on changing my mind just because things got hard. “When things get hard, that’s when you show the world who you really are,” I tell him, petting his hand in mine. “After Isaiah died and Daddy left, Mama took the easy way out and sold drugs and let Uncle Dick run the show. It was too hard for her to get a real job because they wouldn’t pay her enough. It didn’t occur to her to get a second job, or to do work on the side. She wanted someone else to just take care of things, and it didn’t matter how wrong they were.” I shake my head. “That’s not who I’m ever going to be. Even if it’s hard, we do the right thing, and we do it together.”

Gren just watches me with intense eyes, and then touches my cheek.

The morning passes pleasantly, and I'm surprised at how quickly the hours fly past. Gren is great company, amusing and clever, and I think he's learning more of my language than I am of his, but he doesn't make me feel guilty about it. Every word we learn is another step closer to being able to have a real conversation, and I do my best to remember every growl and hissed syllable. After a while, the skies clear up and the suns come out, twin dots in the bleary gray sky, and we emerge from our cocoon for a bit to stretch our legs. There's a fresh layer of powdery snow on the ground that's blanketed the world in even more dazzling white, and our footprints from earlier are long gone. In the distance, though, I see a few dark specks in the snow, and when I gesture to Gren that we should check it out, he moves to my side and puts a protective hand on my shoulder, determined to take the lead.

The specks turn out to be shit.

Literally. They're big cakes of shit. I'm disappointed at first because who wants to find frozen crap all over their pristine snowy valley? But then I remember that Harlow was burning them, and I lean in to peer at the crap. Sure enough, it looks like it’s full of regurgitated straw or plants or something along those lines. Huh. I gesture at it to Gren, who looks at me like I'm crazy. "For fire," I tell him, giggling at his disgusted expression.

"Willa food?" he asks, and when I shriek in disgust, that clever smile curves his mouth and I realize he was teasing me. I grab a handful of snow and launch it at him, and his eyes gleam with challenge. Oh dear. I turn and slog away, doing my best to run, but I'm not fast enough (especially not in thigh-deep snow) and a moment later, there's a handful of snow down the back of my tunic. I shriek again, and Gren puts a hand over my mouth, chuckling. "Shhh," he tells me, and then murmurs something in his language that's probably all about how we should be quiet and stealthy.

I don't want to be, though. I love that he's being playful with me. That whatever his past was, he can feel silly joy with me. So I lick his palm, determined to gross him out and continue our teasing game.

He isn't grossed out, though. Gren goes very still, groaning low, and then the lightness goes out of our game. It's no longer about frolicking in the snow. He doesn't move, but I can hear his breath rasping in his throat, and I can feel the hard stab of his erection against my back.

It doesn't take much to turn him on, and I feel like a jerk for licking his hand. Of course he gets aroused at that. Something tells me that he's still new to touching overall, and even the most lighthearted play will become more to him. I'm heady with power at the thought of being able to turn him on so easily, but at the same time, I wonder if we shouldn't pace ourselves. Is he going to think our entire relationship is about sex if I keep making it sexual? I don't know what to do.

I want to kiss him and caress him. Heck, I want to see his reaction to everything. But is that bad? Am I doing a disservice to our “friendship” if we become more than just buddies? How’s he going to feel if I resonate to someone else?

Of course, I’d have to be around someone else for that to happen, but the threat is always on the horizon. I haven’t forgotten that the others are out seeking us. All that needs to happen is for one of them to run across the same trail we’re on and if a cootie fires off, we’re in trouble. Will Gren understand that?

Why wouldn’t he understand that, Willa? He’s not an animal. He’s a person that was raised different than you, no more, no less. Now I feel even worse because I stole Gren away from the others to prove he’s not an animal, and then I’m hesitating because I think he might not understand how a relationship works? I can’t have it both ways.

Unless…what if Gren thinks that I took him away from the others so he could be my sex slave?

This is complicated.

I know that I want him.

I think that he wants me.

Surely it can’t be more difficult than that, can it? Does it have to be? Or do I need to wait before touching him to prove that we can be friends as well as friends with benefits?

As I turn to look at Gren, he drops his hand and lets me go. "Fire," he says flatly, turning away from me. He bends and begins to pick up the poop-cakes, collecting them in his big hands and I feel a twinge of guilt. Should I have responded faster? Did he sense my hesitation?

It's not that I don't want him. I just have to be careful of our relationship. We're both so very new to knowing each other and this planet. We can barely communicate, and it'd be easy to misinterpret things. For all I know, me touching his dick yesterday means that we're married.

Maybe we should have a long talk when we get back to the tent…right after we make fire.