Maren started running hot on a Tuesday and nobody caught it until she set a chair on fire.
Not on purpose.
She sat down at breakfast. She put her hand on the back of the chair. The wood browned under her palm in the shape of four fingers.
She looked at it.
"Huh," Maren said.
"Huh," Dani agreed. She moved her terminal two feet away.
◆◆◆◆
By evening the room was ten degrees warmer than the hallway and Selah had stopped pretending not to notice.
"Your side of the room is a stove."
"I’m regulating."
"You’re radiating."
"Same word."
"It is very much not the same word." Selah put frost on the window ledge and it went straight to water. "That."
Maren’s tail moved once. "That’s the ledge’s problem."
Mona came out from under the desk. She walked to Maren’s corner. She lay down in the heat and made a sound of complete satisfaction.
"See," Maren said. "Somebody appreciates me."
"She’d appreciate a radiator."
"She’d be right."
◆◆◆◆
Soren watched all of it from the desk and ran the dates.
Not the room’s temperature. The rest of it. Her ears had been tracking every door for a week. She had started walking the perimeter path at dusk alone and coming back annoyed with nothing.
He pulled up the bond channel and read her side of it.
Full. Loud. Pressing.
[DING! — Fox-fusion cycle detected. Territorial phase. Advisory: bonded output will not stabilize indoors.]
He read that twice.
Not "will not stabilize." Not indoors.
"Maren."
"Mm."
"Get your boots."
Her ears came up fast.
"Why."
"Because the system just told me your fire does not work in buildings this week. I would rather not test what it does to ours."
Maren was already at the door.
◆◆◆◆
The east perimeter path ran under old trees and the academy’s lights gave up about forty yards in.
She walked ahead of him the whole way which she never did.
"You know where you are going?"
"Yes."
"Care to share?"
"No."
He let it go. The answer was obvious enough. She kept checking that he was still behind her. A fox picking her ground had already picked it days ago and just had not told anybody.
She stopped in a clearing with a fallen trunk in it.
She turned around.
Her eyes were fully gold.
"Okay," Maren said. "Here."
"Here."
"Do not make it weird."
"You brought me to a clearing at night. The weird is structural."
She laughed and the laugh cracked in the middle. That was when he understood how hard she had been holding it all week.
She crossed the distance and put both hands flat on his chest and did not push.
"It is the ground," she said. "It has to be ground. Not a floor. I do not know how to explain that better."
"You do not have to."
"The fox part knows and I do not get a vote."
"Maren?"
"What."
"I said get your boots. Not explain yourself."
Her ears flattened then came forward. She kissed him with her hands still flat on his chest and heat coming off her in a wave that dried the damp out of the air.
The rest of it went fast because she had been holding a week of it.
Jackets went somewhere. Her tail wrapped his forearm and stayed which it did when she wanted something anchored.
He let her have the anchor while she got his shirt off and put her mouth on his throat.
"Ground," she said again against his skin.
"Ground."
He took her down onto the flattened grass with his jacket under her because she had a lot of instincts tonight and none of them were about her own back.
Maren got her legs around him and pulled.
She was soaked already. Her thighs were slick. She made an impatient sound when he checked. Actually checked.
"I am fine, I am past fine. Please."
He pushed in slow anyway and she arched off the ground. Her mouth opened. No sound at all for a second.
Then the sound.
"Oh. There. There. That is it."
Her tail tightened on his arm.
He set the pace and she immediately fought it. Her hips drove up to take more. He pressed her down with one hand flat on her stomach and she went still with a whimper that had nothing to do with pain.
"Slow," Soren said.
"I do not want to be slow."
"You want to claim that it is different. That takes time."
Her eyes went wide and gold in the dark.
"Say that again."
"No."
"Soren."
"Move with me or we stop."
She moved with him.
He thrust deeper.
Her pussy was hot and wet.
It clenched around his cock with every push. Juices coated him and dripped down her thighs. The slick sounds filled the clearing.
"Mhhhh," Maren moaned. Her nails dug into his back. "Ahhhh. Harder. Please."
He gave it to her. His hips snapped forward.
Wet flesh slapped together. Her breasts bounced with every thrust. He leaned down and sucked one hard nipple into his mouth. She cried out.
"Ahhhh! Yes! Like that!"
Her tail wrapped tighter around his arm. Her legs locked behind his back. She was dripping everywhere.
The grass under them grew damp from her arousal.
Soren drove in deep and ground against her clit.
"Mhhhhh. Fuck. Soren. I am so close."
He kept the rhythm steady and deep. Her walls fluttered around him. Heat poured off her body.
The ring of fire appeared around them low along the grass. It burned nothing.
It just marked the ground.
He reached between them and rubbed her clit with his thumb.
"Ahhhh! There! Do not stop!"
She came hard. Her pussy squeezed his cock in strong pulses.
Her whole body shook. The fire ring flared up six feet high then dropped.
She moaned loud and long. "Ahhhhhh!"
He followed right after. He thrust deep and held there.
Thick ropes of cum filled her. Her walls milked every drop. Wet heat mixed between them.
They stayed locked together breathing hard. Her pussy still fluttered around him.
◆◆◆◆
The fire ring went out slow from the edges in.
The clearing got its dark back.
Maren lay half on top of him with her ears down and her breathing evening out.
"Everyone is going to know," she said.
"Nobody is going to know."
"Selah is going to know. Selah takes one look and knows."
"Selah is going to know."
"Great."
"You melted a ledge in front of her Maren. She has known since Tuesday."
Maren made a noise into his collarbone and did not argue.
He watched the trees and waited for her to get sleepy because she got talkative first and sleepy second and the talkative part was usually worth staying awake for.
It took four minutes.
"I picked you first," Maren said.
"Mm."
"Not first like this. Before this. Before Class Z."
Soren’s hand stopped moving on her back.
"How far before?"
Her ears twitched. She was mostly under already. Warm and heavy and slack.
"Ask me when I am awake," she said. "It is a good story. You will be annoyed."
"Maren."
Nothing.
She was out. Tail still wound around his forearm exactly where she had put it.
Soren lay in a burnt-edged clearing under trees the fire had not touched and looked up at the branches and added one more line to the column he was keeping about his own people.
That column was getting long.
He had started it with a wolf. He was going to have to finish it eventually.
Not tonight.
Tonight he had a fox asleep on his chest and a bond channel finally quiet and the count could hold until morning.