I had a dream that I saw myself as a child. I stood at the front porch of a beautiful home, with a luscious garden in the yard. The fields sprawled out with life, magnolia trees and willows standing guard as I descended the staircase to the yard. His arms were outstretched and he ran, oversized fox ears flopping as he bounded toward me for an embrace. He stood small, waist height, and I crouched to scoop him into a hug, standing and spinning him in my arms as he held onto me. I would set him down, and take him by the hand, leading him into our lavish house where the lights were off and the rooms were dusty. The rooms were dusty and cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and I laid him gently on the floor in the den, on the oriental rug in front of the sofa, surrounded by the chairs where men liked to sit when the lights were on.
I pulled blankets from the cupboards and return to him, beginning to wrap him in them, swaddling my second self in spiderwebbed silks and quilts, cocooning him as he closed his eyes and began to rest. I would wrap him in several layers of fabric and brush my fingers through his hair, much shorter and more kempt than mine was. His softer fur, his softer features, the soft smile on the corners of his mouth as he drifted off. He fell to slumber almost immediately, and I would scoop him up into my arms and carry him back outside, where the sun was still shining and the birds were still singing God's praises. I carried him to the garden and laid him in the field of golden flowers, letting his body sink into the colors, splay them out around him. In my hand was a knife.
In my hand was a knife and I rose it above him, above his sleeping body before plunging it into his belly, carving it downward and opening him as he began to flow with milk. White, beautifully white milk poured from him as he laid smiling, soaking the blankets before beginning to pool around him, an impossible amount of milk. I would sink the knife into him again, in his chest, and from his sternum would flow the same striking white, forming a pond around him that began to surround us. He floated on the surface of the pond and the flowers around us began to drink from the pond and they began to grow. They began to grow and rise around him, their roots wrapping around him and taking him from me, wrapping him in green and swallowing him. I found myself sinking into the rising snowy pond, sinking as I was surrounded and smothered in the sources of floral life, the foundation of the marigolds, the honey that floated on top of the surface of the milk into which I was sinking like lead. I found myself falling.
I found myself falling into the endless white, freefalling as I opened my mouth to breathe and found my lungs filled with an inaspirable ichor. I attempted to exhale only to find myself unable, my body weighed down with lungs full of milk as I plummeted into the bottomless void. There was no end to this nightmare, no bottom floor on which I could find the sweet release of death.
I awoke in a terror, my body throwing itself to life as I grabbed my chest and gasped for air, finally finding it in the waking world as King jolted up next to me, his heavy hands grabbing hold of me suddenly as my eyes began to freely flow with tears. My hands gripped at my fur and flesh and began to tug at it, as if to tear it from me, and King would rise and crawl onto me and straddle me, grabbing hold of my hands and forcing them from my own frame, barking at me.
"NICO! Enough of this. You are awake!"
I would stare at him in a wild state for a moment, my teeth bared and my eyelids peeled back and my eyes bugged out, only to slowly come to realize I was unfortunately alive and awake.
"You are awake. You're okay. It was a dream."
My body was sweating cold, and as I began to come down I became suddenly aware of a terrible pain in my shoulder where the deer's antler had stabbed me. King was restraining me with his hands on my arms, and he would point that out as he insisted "you must rest, your shoulder is still healing. He nearly drove his antler straight through you. You are lucky to be alive."
"No, I'm not" I would say as I closed my eyes, swallowing the spit in my mouth and beginning to breathe myself into a relaxed state.
"Nonsense. Your life is forever changed for the better, and I am here with you. I cannot stop admiring you."
I didn't open my eyes, but I quietly asked him "really?"
He opened his mouth and leaned down, dragging that putrid tongue around on my neck.
"Yes. I'm incredibly enamored with you. I never thought I would comprehend what love is, but I truly understand it now. I love you, Nico. I love you."
"I love you too, King" i'd say as I went to move my arms and he would loose them from restraint. I rubbed my eyes and tried to ignore the pain in my shoulder, my hands moving from my eyes down my face as I murmured "I feel awful, though."
"Howso?" he'd ask, his head tilted slightly as it remained hanging above me, breathing that stink in my face.
"Physically. Mentally. Last night was awful, I never want to do something like that again."
"Oh, nonsense, you did marvelously. You are only shaken now because it is unfamiliar to you. Your kind has lost the ability to survive, and finding it again is a terrifying thing. You will adjust."
"Is it the ability to survive, though, King? Or did I just murder something last night?"
"You did murder something, yes, but that is part of the ability to survive. It is what men do in the wild, and in war, and it is necessary in both situations. Those who spend their entire lives in civilization don't understand this, they are not like us."
It was hard to accept, but I felt King did have a point. Killing that deer wasn't that extreme by the standards of reality, it's what hunters do every day. Men have done those sorts of things since the dawn of time, and I had only found it in myself to accept that was something I could do. Still, I didn't feel good about it. I kept thinking about how he looked, and sounded, and what it felt like. It wasn't going to be easy to just accept.
"I want to spoil you more today than I ever have. I cannot keep my eyes off of you, Nico. You are glowing with a different energy, you are so attractive."
He leaned down and lapped at my neck again, and admittedly it did feel wonderful. That muscle was so strong, so heavy, the pressure and the warmth of the spit felt good. King seemed aroused, but his sheath was lacking signs of an emerging tip, as per usual. I guessed he was just in a good mood.
"What're we going to do today?" I would ask as he groomed the fur of my neck, his bare-boned snout pressing against my neck and exhaling into it, mussing the fur with his saliva.
"You are to rest. Your shoulder is badly injured. I will prepare you lunch and I will do something for you of your choosing. Think on it."
"...Is lunch gonna be deer meat?" I asked. He nodded. 
"Yes. You are allowed to get up and wander as you wish but you are not to strain your shoulder today. I would prefer if you stayed close to me, though."
"That's fine. When can I go visit town, though?"
"When your wound is healed. What're you going to do when you go to town?" 
"Probably swing by the house and drop a lot of my stuff off, maybe grab some neat things to show you. I'll say hi to dad, might catch up with him."
"And your ex-lover?"
"Buck? I dunno. That all depends on if he wants to see me or not. Do you not want me to see him?"
King's grooming would intense, his tongue lashing moving from one side of my neck to my chest, then up to the other side.
"I am going to clean your wound now" he would say, and I would feel his tongue travel to it, prodding at it. I hissed in pain, arching my back a bit as I felt his tongue wetting the wound.
"Are you sure that's not gonna get it infected? You don't exactly brush your teeth."
I didn't really have a choice, though, he was already prodding his tongue into the wound and causing me a rather strong amount of pain. I would raise my hands to his chest and push weakly at him, protesting "K-King that--that hurts--"
"It's good for you" he would reply, though I really doubted that. I could feel his tongue opening up the gash and causing it to bleed again, and as I pushed at him he would grab my arms and push them down, pinning them with his hands as he began to suck at the wound, his tongue repeatedly bearing down on it and occasionally hooking up under the skin. The pain was intense, and I asked again for him to let off.
"King, please--"
I could hear his breathing growing heavy, his mouth starting to drip with drool as he sucked at my wound, my body struggling to free itself as I felt something rise in me. Not fear, no, but anger. Anger rising in me. Why? He didn't understand. He was trying to groom me and thought this was what was best. Still, I found my teeth gritting, my eyes narrowing, my hands balling into fists, and I had to fight every part of that as I tried to be patient with him quite literally opening my wound again. I swallowed that rising anger, again and again, and instead begged.
"King, please, you said--you said you were going to spoil me today."
I could hear in his throaty slurps that he paused for a moment, pondering what I said. In that moment, I tried to push further.
"It hurts a lot, King, please...please get off of me."
The pressure on my arms was eased, and he rose up, his meaty tongue lapping around his bloodstained skull as he gave a simple "sorry. I was only trying to help you."
"Thanks, King, but...maybe we should just leave it alone for now."
"Fine." he would say, sinking back for a moment to sit and look at me. He had crawled off of me now, and was on his knees at my side as he sat there, staring at me. My wound was oozing blood and I reached for my backpack, where I pulled out one of my unworn t-shirts and applied pressure to the gash.
"Think about what you want from me today, I will go begin preparing food."
He would rise (as much as he could inside) and leave the shelter, leaving me sitting up and clutching my wound with my shirt. He was acting strange today, and after I got the bleeding to stop, I decided I would go sit with him and try to have a normal conversation. I wanted the mood to be calm today. I needed the mood to be calm today. It took a while but I got the bleeding to stop, and I headed out to where King was preparing food. He'd gathered up some more cooking utensils, it seemed, and had started a fire. He had a haunch of venison skewered over it, and was rotating it over the flame. A frying pan was next to him, and I wondered if he'd intended to fry it before he realized we had nothing in which to fry it.
"King," i'd start as I approached him, and he turned to face me.
"What do you know of the outside world?"
I asked them wondering what he would even want to do if I ever successfully got him too leave the forest for a while.
"I know it is loud, and very busy. There are far too many people, and there are machines everywhere. You buy your food often wrapped in plastic and full of inedible waste. Everywhere has a screen making a lot of noise, including those strange contraptions you call phones. I don't remember the things people used to call phones being like that at all."
"You're right about all that, and yeah, phones changed a lot in the past few years. But there's good things too!"
"I know. The good is drastically outweighed by the bad, though. You all surrender yourselves to misery for the large part of the day to buy silly things in what little time you have to yourself. You are consumed by your desire to have fun and be spoiled and relaxed. Your civilization endures so much self-afflicted suffering just to reward itself with trace amounts of fleeting joy, empty joy."
"Harsh. I was hopin' you'd have something nice to say about it."
"Why? Because you want me to have fond ideas about the world that continues to encroach on our wild land, starving the beasts and destroying the forest?"
"No," I started, my hand reaching close to him to pet his thigh, his ratty fur tangled and knotted. He needed a good brushing.
"Because I wanted to take you to meet my dad, and maybe some of my friends."
King would stop turning the deer's leg at that point, looking directly to me.
"You want to...introduce me to others?"
"Yeah, wouldn't you like that?"
He looked away, and after a moment would continue turning the deer's leg so as not to burn it. 
"I would like that, but I cannot exist in civilization ever again. They will see me as a monster, and they will be afraid."
I couldn't deny that. I'd offered to want to bring King to meet dad and Buck and whatnot, but I did have the unavoidable problem that he was a seven-foot tall beast who stunk of dirt and decay and had a skull for a face. I couldn't exactly just put some pants on him and bring that into town. 
"Maybe we could meet somewhere outside of town, I could drive you to a park or something to meet some of my folks and let you get to know them. They're good people."
"They will hate me."
"No, no they won't. They'll like anyone that makes me happy." 
He had finished roasting the leg, and pulled it from the fire, handing it to me to eat. I thanked him, and tried not to think about the events that had lead to us having this deer to eat as I nipped at the hot meat. King would sit next to me, staring at me.
"I don't want to do that."
I had pulled off a strip far too hot to be chewing and I was currently exhaling and inhaling loudly trying to cool it in my mouth. My hand was at my mouth, fanning at it helplessly, and I'd finally drool enough to swallow it as I asked "why not?"
"Because they will not like me, and it will make you stop liking me as well. I will not do it."
I bristled up a bit at that, cutting my eyes over to him.
"After everything I just did to prove my dedication to you, you still think i'd abandon you?"
I was sitting there holding the leg of the very deer I'd slaughtered to prove my dedication to him, and to the wild, and yet it felt like none of that had happened.
"The world outside the woods doesn't understand what the world is like inside it. They will be confused, and they will be afraid, and they will reject it. You will want to soothe them, as your kind does. They will not want you to come back to the woods after that, and you may come back but you will not want to stay."
My fur was on end. It felt like the deer was all for nothing, and I found myself unable to take another bite as I stood and set the leg down on a rock next to me, snapping "I need to go for a walk."
King would reply "no, you don't", and at that point I lost it. I turned on a heel and leaned forward, pointing at him as I yelled.
"YES, I do, because I can't be around this shit right now. After everything that happened a few nights ago, the nerve you have! The NERVE you have to--"
He would rise and interrupt me, approaching me and pointing back as well. I'd never seen him do that before, even when mad. He must've learned it from me.
"You are going to stay here and eat and regain your strength, and you will relax today. You've got no business wandering in the woods!"
"I'm NOT, i'm going for a walk! Eat the fuckin' deer yourself!"
"Why are you acting like this?" he would ask back, rather loudly. I hated to admit it, but even in my anger he scared me just enough to cooperate. That said, it forced him to deal with the weight of keeping me around in this state: I only got angrier. 
"Because I fucking LOVE YOU, asshole! And I want to take you to meet the OTHER people that I love so that they can love you too! And then, MAYBE we can do some things together besides eat fucking bugs and wander around in the forest all day! Because that's all you do with me! You never show me what there is to admire about the woods, you never teach me new things, we just wander around while you tell me how wonderful things are! Maybe I want to see what's so wonderful! Maybe I want to see that and MAYBE I want to show you some things I think are wonderful too!"
I yelled most of this, unfortunately in such a frenzy that my voice would crack and sound silly at times. With his size and his collected nature standing opposite my short body and clenched-fist petulant yelling, I really did feel instinctively stupid. I wished he was just two feet shorter, anything that didn't make me feel like a child around him. He just stood there, staring at me, lowering his pointed finger slowly until it was at his side.
"I had no idea you were so bothered."
"YES, King, i'm bothered! I want to do things with you! We're in love, aren't we? Are we dating? Or am I just here for you to drain of blood and to kill animals for your entertainment?"
"What is dating?"
"A RELATIONSHIP, King! What are we!? What am I doing all of this for if not for you?"
He stood there staring at me, and the fact that I couldn't see his emotions was only making me more upset. I wanted some sort of response from him, something that reassured me the deer had happened for a reason. I was distraught over it, and every time I tried to rationalize what had happened I found myself asking why I was tolerating any of this. It all surfaced at once, though, and I couldn't calm down.
"Well, I love you, and you love me. Does that mean we are in a relationship?"
"I don't know! Does it?" I barked back.
"I suppose so. We have already mated, which is only supposed to happen after marriage, and yet we are not married. We should at least be in courtship."
I stared at him for a moment before cutting back "then let's go on a DATE. A romantic day together."
"Is that what you want from me tonight?"
"YES. A date. I want you to take me somewhere special in the woods, and I want us to be romantic, and I want you to start showing me things about the woods that are wonderful to you! And, after that, I want to take you somewhere that's wonderful to me, and I want you to meet some of my friends! That's what courtship is."
"And then we will be married?" he asked. I paused with my mouth open, my finger still hanging in the air.
"We..." I paused. God, he moved even quicker than some the other men i'd dated.
"We... will be courting toward that, hopefully." I concluded.
"Fine. If we are to marry, I will let you take me to civilization. Not yet, though. First, we prepare for our date. You will go finish your breakfast, and then you may go for your walk."
I surrendered to that with a frustrated "fine" as I walked past him and snatched up that leg. I was starving, anyway, so sinking my teeth into it once it had cooled wasn't actually that bad. I sat on a rather large rock enjoying myself, the weather pleasantly warm, and my thoughts on things other than that the leg I was eating was from an animal i'd killed. I was still mad, but this felt like progress. We were officially dating, it seemed, though coming to that decision hadn't exactly been the most pleasant. I decided I would officially "ask him out" that night, on our date. 
"King," I called out. He was a fair distance away, looking at our house.
"I want to learn more about the woods. I want to know what makes it so wonderful to you."
He would remain where he was, telling me "come here".
I did so, asking him "are you going to show me the things you love about the wild?"
"You must begin to understand the wild fully to understand how to love it. You do not yet understand that. You are still fearful of it. You are grieving your first kill, and you do not know how to find the wonders of the woods without my help. Those things will change, and it will come to you, but I cannot explain it until you are ready to understand it."
I looked in the direction he was looking, and we stared at the roof of the house for a moment before he looked to me, continuing.
"You will begin to understand after our date tonight. I will spoil you as I know you want, but I will show you some parts of woods that you do not yet understand."
"Alright," I replied, "I look forward to it."
---
There wasn't much to do to "prepare" for the date on my end. I was my usual self, nude and dirty. King had left for the day and told me he'd be back around sunset to take me out, and here it was close to time for the sun to start sinking. I had spent a lot of the day basking in the sunlight by the creek, taking occasional dips in the water to cool off before basking again. I'd grown to love the sunlight and how good it felt on my fur.
I was there, staring up at the sky, when I would hear his heavy footsteps. He stood over me now, and I was greeted first by that heavy sheath and massive orbs hanging between legs before his upper body would look down at me, and I saw his skull haloed by the dimming light of the sky behind him.
"It is time for our date. Are you ready?"
"I guess so. Where are we going?" I'd ask.
"We are going to a wonderful place. Come, let me pick you up."
I allowed him to do so, standing up and as he squatted down on all fours. We were going to run, it seemed, as we had early into our meeting. I loved when we did this. His regular walk was bipedal, with a slight hunch, but when he wanted to make haste he would crouch and run in an almost apelike manner, hands acting as the front legs of a much wilder posture. I would wrap my arms around his back and let him shoulder my weight as he broke into a run, down through the woods. The trees were flying past us, and I felt so alive. It felt like sticking your head out the car window, except much bumpier. I'd never ridden a horse, but I imagined this must've been similar, except so much more freeing. I leaned my head down and hugged him tightly, overcome with an excited surge of affection. I loved when he'd carry me like that.
He ran for what felt like over half an hour, and I knew that we were somewhere farther than we'd ever been before. We'd traveled over hills, well past the creek, and into much deeper woods. The tree coverage was more intense, it was a bit darker, but the sun still managed to peek through just fine. His run slowed to a brisk walk, and he informed me "we are close, Nico" as he carried me a bit farther. We would begin to descend a hill, and I could see running water. It was a creek, but we were so far from the first one that I wondered if they were the same creek. King began to follow it, though, until we reached a ledge, and I would ask "oh, is it a waterfall?"
"More than that, Nico. Come down, witness this."
He squatted and I would slide off his back, standing next to him. The forest was dense, and felt unfamiliar to me. We must've been on some sort of national park land, or private land, or something of that nature because it was entirely too dense and pristine to have been a well-known spot. Maybe it was just so deep in the woods that it was truly undiscovered. It was clean, untouched, extravagently green and lively. The smells of nature were so thick in my nose, it almost seemed as if candles had been lit to accentuate the experience. I had never smelled nature so rich, so alive, so untamed. It was incredible. 
King made his way to the ledge and began to descend, and as I followed him I realized that the stones to the sides of the mountain were rather conveniently dispersed as to make effective stairs. The beauty of the wild's natural design took my breath away, between that and the sight delivered upon descending those stairs. The waterfall poured out into a rather small pond before carrying on as a creek down into the woods, and the stone that made up the face of the the cliffside was large, aged. Stone lay on stone and presented itself smooth in some areas and jagged in others, the upper shelf of stone jutting out farther than the lower and providing a bit of an awning for the forest floor along the perimeter of the ledge. King stood there for a moment letting me admire it.
"There's more to show you, Nico. We can come back to this." he'd say as he patted my back and waved for me to follow him. King would walk toward the sheltered stone and grass under the rock awning to a crack that existed open between the upper shelf of rock and the lower. It was big enough for him to crawl up into, and he would do so. It was much easier for me, being smaller, and I followed behind him up as I crawled up the moist stone onto an open area, a cave. Spaces where the rocks didn't lay flat against each other allowed sunlight to slice into the cave, which was mostly just a large open area with puddling of water in spots. The upper ceiling had a rather large hole between rocks that gave a prominent amount of light, and between that and the other slivers it wasn't too hard to see inside. The sun was nearly set, though, so there wasn't much light left. There were piles of wood in the corner, and an obviously aged off to the side, not far from piles of things I couldn't quite recognize right away. Someone clearly had been living here.
I walked around the perimeter and made my way to the strange pile in the far corner, able to now make clear it was piles of pelts and blankets. Dirty blankets, tattered cloth, and poorly prepared pelts that were definitely not done by any sort of experienced taxidermist. As I picked them up and let them flop down one layer at a time, I could smell King's musk on them. It was stale, but it was still there, and I would look back to him and ask "did you stay here for a while or something?"
"A bit more than a while."
"How long?"
"Somewhere more than 80 years but less than 100. I'm not sure the specifics. This was my home."
I dropped the pelts and fabrics and turned to face him fully now, in a bit of disbelief. It was so barren. A pile of soft materials for what I assumed to be bedding, and a fireplace? That's all he'd had for practically a century?
"You lived here alone, all this time?"
"Yes. It's plain, but it was mine."
"You...never really decorated much, did you?" I asked as I paced around the more well-lit parts of the room. King would approach the middle and use flint lying by the fireplace to start a fire, throwing wood on it to illuminate the cave. I got a better view now, though little changed. It was mostly empty. There was a small alcove in another far corner of the room, and I could see from the light glinting off it that there was another pile of things there. Not pelts or blankets, though, but something else. 
"There was no need to. I had no visitors."
"What did you do to entertain yourself in all that time?"
"Think. Explore. Watch others. I came here mainly for shelter and sleep. Sometimes I would sleep for days, just thinking when I was awake before falling to slumber again."
"For decades, huh..." i mumbled as I paced the room a bit, approaching him to join him at the fire. He'd sat down, and was staring into it.
"Decades, yes. For decades, I have watched the world from a distance but never touched it. You were the first contact i've had with an anthro. I have hunted ferals and felt their bodies, but I have never made any sort of deep connection with another living thing before you."
"Hunted? Why'd you hunt if you don't eat?" 
"I told you when we met. I used to eat, before the curse. It was that hunger that fated me this blight. After that, I lost satisfaction from regular food. The drive to hunt was still there, instinctual, but I found when feeding off the ferals that they did nothing but pass through me. Their blood gave me trace nourishment. They died unwilling, and they provide nothing to me."
"So, you need anthro life fluids to survive? Or willing fluids?"
"I am not sure. Yours was the first anthro sustenance I'd had, and also the first willing. There is no way of telling, especially seeing as no feral would willingly die for me."
"They may not willingly die, but they might willingly, uh, share other fluids with you..."
He nodded. "That's possible. Why bother, though, when I have you, in all your glory?"
I was flattered, but admittedly I wouldn't have minded him having a second food source. It had been a few days, I was sure a feeding was probably coming tomorrow. I tried not to think about that at the time, though. We were on a date, we were having fun.
"So, you never touched an anthro before me?"
"No, though I admit I did desire them. I have admired their bodies, their behaviors. They are so interesting, and sometimes arousing. I liked to watch them, and to learn to act like them. I learned my speech from listening to them, and much of how I behave as well. My kind was much more feral in behavior. Sometimes, I liked to just watch without studying, though."
"Ohh, you're a bit of a voyeur, huh?" I joked with him.
"A voyeur? What is that?"
"Oh. Sorry. I didn't even think about how you probably don't know what that means. A voyeur is, uh, someone who's aroused by watching others do dirty things."
"Dirty things?"
God. I'd opened a can of worms.
"Yeah, like...sex, or just things you do naked. Using the bathroom, or just being nude in general I guess."
"Oh. Yes, I suppose I am a voyeur then. I rather enjoy that."
His cluelessness and honesty could be so cute, and I found myself scooting a little closer to him as we talked. My hand moved from the damp floor to his leg, and he looked down at it. I moved my palm in small circles through the dirty fur, petting him, feeling the shapes of his muscle and bone beneath that slightly tacky fur. His fur, when dry, felt almost like a cheap halloween costume. It felt somewhat fake, very mildly sticky, from small amounts of sap and large amounts of dirt. I liked it, though. When he'd let me wash him in the creek, it would be soft for a few days until it slowly built up this texture again. He needed another rinse. As I pet him, though, I'd look to that alcove again.
"What's all that stuff in the corner?" I asked.
"My treasures" he replied. Of course. Of course he had 'treasures'. I don't know how I could have possibly been surprised that not only did this forest monster have a collection of items in a cave but that he specifically used the word 'treasures' to describe them. I smiled at him.
"That's neat, King. I'd love to see them some time."
"I will show you them today, yes. Tell me more about 'voyeurs', though. I want to know what other sorts of things make someone a voyeur."
"Oh, jeez, King, that was just a joke. I didn't think you'd take it seriously. Yaknow, like I said, voyeurs like watching people do things nude. They like watching people have sex, or just be naked. They like watching people bathe, or like, relieve themselves. They like watching, uh, i don't know, people cooking or cleaning but they're naked. It's a fetish."
"A fetish?"
"Yeah, like, something weird that arouses you. Something that arouses you but is out of the ordinary compared to other things, yaknow?"
He nodded.
"I think I understand," he replied. "Sex is a strange thing. I have yearned for it many times, but now that I have had it I'm so curious about what more there is to it. Your world does it so differently than ours does."
"You guys only do it after marriage, right?"
"Yes, and we only do it to procreate. We do not do it recreationally, and we as males certainly don't do it with other males. You are strange, wanting that."
"Yeah, not the first time i've heard that."
"But I don't mind. I have some strange...fetishes...myself" he said, pausing on that word as if he was trying to recall what he'd just learned. I felt almost perverse, sitting here teaching some huge ancient beast about sex as if I was the elder one here.
"You do? Do you want to...talk about it, or something?" I asked. It seemed like he did. I was hardly in the mood at the moment, but he seemed to be having fun. He nodded again.
"I rather liked watching you mark your territory. You did so like a feral would, but when I watched you do that I felt very...excited. I have never felt that way seeing a feral do it."
"Oh," I'd pause petting him for a moment, instead offering a reassuring pat to his thigh as I told him "well that's fine. A lot of people like that."
"Do they?" he'd ask.
"Yeah, that's not that weird. Definitely not as weird as some of the things I'm into."
King cocked his head to the side asking "like what?", and I chewed on my tongue as I realized I had to put the brakes on this conversation or it was going to devolve into something much more than what it currently was. 
"We'll talk about that eventually." I tried to divert away from where I'd steered the conversation, but King had gotten pushy, as he tended to do when I started talking about things he didn't understand. He would demand me to explain more, and would sometimes get fussy if I didn't have interest in explaining things to him. This had happened a week or so before when I explained shoes to him, and I found him getting progressively pushier wanting to learn more about them after I'd gotten tired of answering questions. He could be so childish sometimes, almost bratty, about wanting to have me elaborate mundane things that were incredibly boring to break down. Most of the time it was cute, but every now and then he'd get under my skin just a bit.
This, though, was different. He turned his head to me and insisted "no, I want to know more. What are all your fetishes?"
"Well, I--King--it's--it's not that simple to explain--"
"Surely it is, you did fine explaining 'voyeur' to me. I liked that. Tell me more. Explain one of your fetishes to me."
My hand had slid off his thigh and my posture was reclining away from him a bit as he leaned more toward me, closing the distance with every inch I retreated. I scooted back a bit more and pressed my palms to the stone floor to attempt to stand up, but he would grab me by the wrist and tug at me a bit as he insisted "no, Nico, sit down. I want to learn more."
"King, christ," I groaned, my patience wearing thin as my lips pulled back and my brow furrowed, "don't grab me like that. I wanna stretch my legs and sightsee. We're supposed to be on a date."
"We are, but I have things I want too. This isn't all about you." 
He hadn't let go of my wrist yet, and was squeezing it rather firmly as if he had no intent of letting go of me. His head was facing me now, and I was visibly perturbed with the situation, but after whispered "goddammit" that he didn't seem to understand was directed at him, I'd sit down with a surrendered "okay, fine."
Truthfully, I had hoped for something romantic and intimate to close out the night after a long day of exploring and sightseeing the new area together, having King show me all the things that he knew about this place he'd called home for decades. But, as I sat on the floor with my wrist still being squeezed, I was coming to terms with how I was going to be sitting here in this dim cave explaining fetishes to him during the rest of the remaining sunlight. As much as I wanted to find it as cute as his other curiosities and desires to learn, I was in a sour mood.
"So," I exhaled slowly, "something in particular that I really like is smells. I like the way men smell, especially if they haven't bathed in a few days or they've been sweating a lot."
I proceeded to explain musk fetish to him, and he would eventually let go of my wrist and take up a position of sitting cross-legged beside me, his hands in his lap as they always were when we got into these conversations. He would ask me questions like "why?" and I would attempt to explain it the best I could, his questions eventually steering from asking about intentions behind fetish and moreso to how they're practiced. It was a little easier to explain, but I could see where this was going. Most other days, I would've loved to have been able to indulge in my sexual desires with him and explain to him what got me off the hardest, but today was supposed to have been different and I couldn't shake that frustration as I continued my explanation.
"So, yes, I would really like sometime if you'd let me sniff on you and show you what I like about it. There's lots I'd like to do with you, but right now I'd like to go exploring again." I said as I moved to stand again, and once again he would grab my wrist and tug on me.
"No, sniff me a little first. We can go outside in a minute, but I want to do this now."
I recoiled a bit and snapped "STOP grabbing my wrist like that, King, or you're gonna make me mad". He must've been able to see it in my eyes as I looked to him, because he would release his grip on my wrist for the time being and reply a short "fine".
"Lay down, with your hands behind your head." I would say as I sat up on my knees. He did so without questioning me at all, which made me think back to all the times I fussed about wanting to know his intentions before I would lie down around him. 
"Promise me we can go exploring after this. I don't wanna have sex right now, I wanna go outside first."
"I promise we can go outside after this", King would reply, and I accepted his answer. I crawled over to him, onto his body and straddled him. The heavy meat of his sheath was laying against the crack of my ass, my tail pushed to the side by it's weight as I pressed my palms to the stone floor on either side of his chest and leaned down. His entire body stunk of those smells to which I'd grown accustomed--soil and decay. It felt baked into him, consistent over the entire body.
My snout nuzzled into his chest first, though, into the tangled, dirty fur of his torso as I sniffed around for where he smelled the strongest. I knew he had the obvious hot spots, but because of his anatomy and his state of being reanimated, I wanted to know if anything stuck out. It was as expected, and my snout would wander from his chest to one of his armpits. The fur under his arm was bushier, wirier, much more coarse. He had body hair just like an anthro would, and as I rooted my snout into the fur I would inhale deeply, closing my eyes.
He reeked of an expected unwashed musk, that onion-y armpit smell that one would imagine to find under a man's arm. His fur was damp, sweaty, oily from his lack of deep hygiene. Creek baths are fine for rinsing off that surface dirt, but I imagined he'd never had a proper bath in his life, certainly not since his curse. To be a forest spirit, he smelled surprisingly mundane past the decay--dirt and malodorous sweat scent. I loved those smells on a man, though, and King's lifestyle exaggerated them to intense levels. I was fully erect, though not deeply aroused.
"See?" I'd ask, sitting upright and gesturing my hands to guide his eyes to my erection standing upright between my legs. 
"Smelling you got me aroused."
"Why?" he'd ask.
"I don't entirely know. I guess 'cause I like men, so I like how men smell, and you smell very manly. Strong, stinky, it's attractive."
"Stinky? I stink?"
"Yeah, you stink somethin' awful. That's okay, though, I like it."
He stared at me for a moment, and I could tell it was one of those moments where he was thinking. It was whenever his boneheaded self would suddenly stop everything he was doing and go motionless. It would look like he'd had his power switched flipped, that's when I knew he was thinking. This time, though, he'd remained still for much longer than I'd expected, and I would finally ask "King?"
No response.
"King? You okay?"
"I stink, but you like it?"
"Yeah. Sorry if that embarrassed you, though. I just wanted to be honest."
"No, rather it made my body feel very electric suddenly, excited. When I think about how you like my smell even though it's a bad smell, it gets me exhilarated in a way I haven't felt before."
I was still annoyed with him, but I couldn't help cracking a smile at that. I liked knowing he was happy. 
"Will you please smell me again? Just a few more times, then we can go outside."
My mouth pulled back in a wry expression, conveying my kneejerk disappointment, but I could see by the way his ears were erect now that he was indeed getting excited by this, and I loved when I could get those responses out of him. Most of the time, even during sex, he was so unmoving. His ears rarely rose unless he was listening for something, and his tail rarely wagged. When I was able to elicit these responses from him, it captivated me. This time, I responded with a bit more accepting "okay" as I scooted backward off him.
"Look away for a moment, though. I don't want you to where I'm going before i'm there." 
He agreed, and tilted his head upward, since he couldn't close his eyes. I thought about that, as he did it, and it lead me to engaging him while I decided where I was going to sniff next.
"How do you sleep at night, if you can't close your eyes?" I asked as I leaned downward and took his sheath in my hands. It was large, my fingers couldn't close entirely around it. His dick was entirely inside, though, unaroused and relaxed at the moment. I rubbed it a bit and brought the hand to my nose, switching to my other hand to palpate it while I sniffed him. He left a scent on my hand after only a moment--spicy, musky, that unmistakeable dick musk, like cooked mushrooms. Despite loving the smell, I winced at it a bit just by how strong his musk was, and leaned downward to sample it more directly. I expected notes of ammonia but found none, and it occured to me that must've been because he didn't urinate. 
"I just see. It's hard to explain. When I had my face, I saw with my eyes, and of course I simply closed them to sleep. Though my eyes are gone now, I still can see, and though my flesh is gone I can still feel the sensation of blinking. My body feels as if it still is blinking and closing my eyes, though there is nothing there to do so. It's a strange feeling. Do I stink strongly down there too?"
"Worse, way worse. I love it. While I'm asking you personal questions, though: can you pee?"
I already knew he could relieve himself in other ways, he'd described it to me in graphic detail during a conversation last week. I rooted my nose in circles around his sheath and used my hand to open the tip a bit, sniffing around inside. Coppery, very coppery, entirely different from the rest of his smells. I reeled back and coughed a few times.
"Yes, though I have no need to. If I drink water, I can pass it through, but I have no need to drink. Did it arouse you when you sniffed me the first night we mated?"
"A lot, yes. You should drink some water some time, though, for me. Indulge me" I said as I scooted back away from him, asking him to roll over and get on his hands and knees. He obliged me without question, crawling into position and staring ahead, continuing to look away from me as he'd been asked to do. He was so obedient, it almost made me want to boss him around a bit more. 
"Is that one of your fetishes?" he asked.
"Yeah, so is this." I said. I would walk forward on my knees and greet him at his backside, grabbing his tail rather roughly and tugging it upward. Truthfully, I didn't even look before I leaned in. Rather, I dove right into it with my eyes closed, and my snout was met with coarse, oily body hair all around my muzzle, somewhat scratchy but more tickly, a little overstimulating at first. My nose would push into the hair, though, until it found the similar sensation of warm flesh, and I ripped a vulgar, loud sniff of it. King's body would react to this in the most dynamic way I'd ever seen him react, his butt abruptly clenching up as his tail flagged downward, his torso bowing in the middle as his upper half went rigid and his shoulders rose, his ass pulled away as he suddenly exclaimed "NICO!"
"What, too much?" I'd ask, his tail still in my hand. The smell had been intense, though not at all grimy in the ways one might expect the underside of an unwashed tail to smell. Rather, it was his same overall musk, that rugged unwashed stink, but with a uniquely sharp, powerful fetor that almost took my breath away at first. It was something mustier, stale, like an attic, like mold. Sitting back and basking in it, my head was swimming with the scent and it almost made me wonder if it was some sort of strange mildew in his fur because I felt quite dazed by it. Nonetheless, I was eager for more.
"I-I am just surprised you would do that," he started. I could see from his hunched shoulders and his stiff posture that he was still a bit startled by it, and as my eyes wandered down his body to his lifted tail I finally got a good view of his ass on display. His hips were boney, but he had nice muscle definition alongside those prominent sharp shapes. His ass was toned, but I would hardly have called it "big". It was still very much flat, his matted black fur thick and tufted on his cheeks from sitting. He needed brushing, desperately.
His tail was fighting against me keeping it lifted, though I held it upright and admired the view as I watched the way the muscles of his butt clenched up. He was so embarrassed, I didn't know he had kind of apprehension in him. It must've been a bit surprising for him too, because he shortly after would inform me "actually, let us pause for now. I want to do something else."
"NOW you wanna stop, after all that fussing you did about wanting to learn more? What, are you embarrassed? I'm just getting excited."
"No," he would rise and take his tail from my hands, his body shivering a bit as his hackled fur fell to rest again, "I just want to go for a walk now."
"What about your treasures in your corner? Can we take a look at those too?" I asked.
"Perhaps. I do have a book I want to show you."
I wondered what he would be doing with a book. I wasn't sure or not if he could even read, but he'd mentioned knowing what books are when we were at the truck a while back. He made his way to that pile in the corner and began to rummage among them. I found myself sitting, sexually frustrated, waiting for his return and a bit sour at how that situation had played out. Nonetheless, I knew King was a strange one and I had probably thrown off his dominant attitude by startling him like that. 
From his pile he did indeed retrieve a book, and as he returned he'd toss it down at my feet before adding a log to the dwindling campfire. The tome would slam against the ground rather heavily and cause dust to plume out from the pages, outward in a cloud that I waved away from my face as I looked down at it. It was leatherbound, with a strap that buckled on the cover, and I unbuckled it to open it, finding it to not be printed in english. It was a strange runic text, and on many of the pages were additional handwritten notes, also in what seemed to be the same characters. Many pages had illustrations amidst them, antiquated illustrations of animals and mythical-looking beasts, some prints from woodcarvings. 
"There is a drawing of me in that book, that is why I kept it." King said as he approached me, squatting and taking the tome, riffling the pages to somewhere around three-quarters of the way through them. He would then begin to flip pages one-at-a-time, finally flipping to a page that did indeed have an illustration of something that looked exactly like him. The page was full of that runic text, but it also had a large amount of additional handwritten notes along the margin, and I stared curiously at them.
"Can you read what it says about me? I cannot read."
"Well, King, I can read but it's not written in my language. It's in some strange text I've never seen before."
I sat there staring at the pages, squinting and inspecting the characters. There was a lot of repetition to symbols, and it almost made me wonder if it would be able to be translated with a little bit of time. All I would need were some pages with something familiar on them to use as a reference, and I could maybe decipher at least a bit of it.
"What a disappointment," he said suddenly, snatching the book and tossing it open across the room, where it slammed against the floor and slid until connecting with the wall. I'd never seen him get angry like that, and it prompted a defensive "what's your problem!?" from me as I recoiled.
"I know that it says something about me, but I know I will never know what that is. It upsets me."
"Well, I was gonna fuckin' say I could probably translate some of it if you gave me a while, but you didn't give me a chance to offer." I cut back, and he rose, turning away from me.
"You should have said that right away, then" he chided. 
"You could learn to not be so reactive. You're always fussing at me for what I could've done differently. Maybe you could try not being so rude and pushy sometimes."
"I have never had to learn social niceties. You are the first of your kind I have ever spoken to, and I am learning how to do so appropriately. Forgive me, I will show you around outside as an apology, and we can bring the book back with us to our shelter for you to read."
"Fine, I'm sorry I wasn't more patient with you" I'd reply, rising to join him as he took my hand in his and headed for the exit of the cave. By this point, it was nightfall.
"Let's go for a walk."