By Touch
Part 2 / 3

The fox takes a few minutes to meander my bedroom, feeling his way about it by touch, and presumably smell, judging by the way his nose keeps twitching.  He doesn’t seem displeased at least, and I’m curious what the world must be like to him.  I’m simple-minded when it comes to my senses, I’ve always taken them for granted.  My hearing’s always been excellent, my nose even better, and as far as I know, my eyes are fine.  Maybe a bit less than fine.  According to Johannes, (and my accuracy with a pistol) I might do better with spectacles, but I refuse to wear them.  I’m no scholar, and I’d rather not look like one.
	But I’m far from blind, and imagining the world as an empty slate is hard for me.  I suppose it’s probably easier when you’re born that way, but I’m honestly not certain what the fox’s situation is.  
	It’s probably not rude to ask.  Right?
	“You don’t need to answer this if you don’t want to,” I say, clearing my throat and adjusting the hem of my vest as I sit on the chair near my work desk.  
	He anticipates me.  “My eyes?”  He guesses.
	I nod, then realize the stupidity of that, and say, “Yeah,” instead.
	He chuckles.  “ ‘Yeah’?  I don’t hear that outside many of the port cities in Carvecia.”
	“I travel a lot,” I smile.  “Pick up a lot of slang.  And profanity.”
	“You are the least Pedigree Pedigree I have ever met.”
	“You wouldn’t be the first to say that,” I smirk.
	“I wasn’t born this way,” he picks up our previous conversation, his ears flicking towards me as he quietly pads across the room, running a hand along the wall, fingertips ghosting over a Cathazra war banner I have hung there.  A trophy from a very bad fight I like to be reminded of, less I underestimate the lizards again in the future.  “They’re cataracts,” he explains, his voice becoming a bit more subdued.  
	“Oh, I’ve heard of that, I think,” I say, scratching idly at my chin.  “I’ve had a man or two who’s suffered them.  Usually just one eye or the other, though.”
	“I got lucky, I guess,” he says flatly.  
	Nice, my mind mocks me.  I droop a little, in more places than one.   “I’m sorry,” I say softly, “I didn’t mean to-“
	“You said nothing wrong,” he reassures me, turning slowly to ‘look’ in my direction.  “I never even would have known the name or cause of my affliction were it not for your Physician.  I slowly lost my sight over the course of my late childhood, and I’ve been blind all of my adulthood.  Until I came here, I never knew why.”
	“Is it treatable?”  I ask.  I can’t remember if the men who suffered the affliction on my crew ever found treatment.
	“It was likely caused by the lean, sparse fair I was raised on as a child,” he says with a sigh.  “The winters in the North Country are hungry times, and my tribe had too many children, too few hunters.  Simply put, I wasn’t fed enough when I was growing.”  He fluffs up his fur a little, and rubs his paws down his belly, which, fluffy fur or no, looks to be a bit soft.  He’s petite enough to pull it off and still look cute, though.  “Diet isn’t a problem for me anymore, obviously,” he snuffs, ears tipped back like he’s a little embarrassed of it.  “My, uhm. . . my other lover. . . he’s always made sure I eat well.  But the damage is done.”
	I give him a sympathetic look I know he can’t see.  “Nothing to be done, then?”
	“There’s surgery,” he says hesitantly.  “But it’s dangerous.  I’m. . . I’m thinking about it.”
	“Fortune favors the bold,” I say unhelpfully.  “I know I’m in no position to give you advice, but if it were my vision, I’d risk it.”
	“Take no offense,” the fox says, “but you strike me as the sort of man who takes life and death risks so often, you might be bored of them by now.”
	I laugh.  “We’ve shared, what, all of four conversations now?  It’s like you’ve known me for years.”
	“One of the benefits of being blind is that you’re never fooled by the masks people wear,” the fox says mysteriously, his fingertips slipping up over the wooden post of my daybed, just a few paces away from my desk.
	“Is that so?”  I reply in a cool tone.  “Have you got a good read on me yet?”
	“Not sure,” the fox replies noncommittally.  “As you said, we’ve only spoken a few times.”
	“You discerned my greatest secret almost from the moment we met,” I point out.
	“You were flirting with me,” the fox chuckles.  “It wasn’t hard.”
	“Okay, so we both sort of mutually figured that one out,” I agree.  “But still.  I assure you, for the most part I’m exactly the sort of man I appear to be.  There’s no need to peer deeper.”
	“It’s not that it’s something I do intentionally,” he shrugs.  “Just, I pick up on a lot of things.  And I have no visual cues to confuse me.  It’s hardly mind-reading, I just consider myself a good judge of character, and excessively difficult to lie to.”
	Now I’m intrigued.  “And?  Have I been lying to you?”
	“I wouldn’t think so,” he says.  “But if you’re like everyone else alive, you put up a front that’s not entirely representational of how you feel inside.  It’s mortal nature.  No one wants the world to know who they really are.”
	“Some men are exactly what they appear to be,” I insist.  “I’m not one of them, I’ve lived a life of lies.  But my second, Johannes – I think you met him - would probably qualify, as well as a few other men and women I know.  Some people just don’t give a damn what people think, and don’t bother to put on airs.”
	The fox gives an amused snuff.  “Trust me, I am well-acquainted with the sort of man who puts up a tough front, and even he has his hidden weaknesses.  And I’m fairly certain your second keeps secrets from you, as well.”
	“And being blind has somehow endowed you with the power to see those weaknesses and secrets?”  I query, amused at the odd direction our foreplay has taken.  I used to talk for hours with Mikhail, the fox was gregarious and amusing and had endless scandalous tales to tell, but the courtesan was not what I’d call an ‘intellectual’.  It was rare, even amongst my peers in the Pedigree courts and amongst my very own Captains that I felt like someone was matching me wit for wit in any conversation, let alone with a language barrier between us.  The fox’s grasp of the Amurescan, and I suppose to him, Carvecian language was beyond most of the natural speakers amongst my men.
	“I don’t believe in ‘powers’ or things that go bump in the night,” the fox murmurs, finally coming up beside me, and hoisting himself up onto the edge of my daybed, his paws dangling a few inches from the floor.  “I make a tidy profit off men that do, though, so don’t tell my customers that.”  He winks at me.  Actually winks.
	I couldn’t grin more if I tried.  “The seer is a charlatan.  Who knew?”
	“Selling fake tonics to the masses and using old mysticism to make a profit is more of an age-old tradition than any religion that still exists, I’d wager,” he snorts.  “I have to make a living somehow.  I’m a legitimate healer, mind you, but most people who come to a shaman don’t have legitimate illnesses.  They have common aches and complaints that come with aging and an unhealthy lifestyle.  If spring water with some bitter herbs in it and a few incantations in a language they can’t understand convince them to stop smoking their pipe, though, who am I to argue with success?  Most people will believe they’re better, or stronger, or more attractive if you give them an excuse to believe it.”
	I stand and settle down beside him on the daybed, the mattress sinking just enough with my weight that his hip presses against mine.  Or maybe that was intentional on his part, it’s hard to tell.  The way his tail flicks up behind us and curls just slightly around my rear certainly wasn’t a mistake, though.
	I’m glad he can’t see my hesitation when my hand gingerly comes to rest on his knee.  Talk about tough facades.  I’ve never been particularly confident when it comes to relations . . . with anyone, really.  I have a lifetime of failure, and even more disastrous failure, in the subject, and it’s one area I’ve simply never gotten over my shyness in.  Even when I’m in an all-but guaranteed situation like this.  I’m always afraid of being rebuked, found out or confronted and hurt, somehow.  I probably always will be, until the day I die.  There’s no ease or happiness for men like me, in this age.
	He doesn’t shy away from my touch, and in fact a moment or so after I’ve sunk my paw into the soft – incredibly soft fur – along his bare thigh, just above his knee, he shifts his whole body up, and boldly moves to sit astride my lap.  
I give a huff of breath when he settles in against my thighs, facing me, and not because he’s at all heavy.  A little extra about the middle or no, the fox is still very slight and probably just a bit more than half my weight.  He’s just so warm, and his sudden, very forward gesture caught me off-guard. 
“You aren’t. . .” I struggle for words for a few seconds, finding my mouth dry, and my hands itching to grab and squeeze at the soft, downy thighs encasing my lap, now that they’re literally atop me.  “. . . aren’t . . . much for idle talk, hm?”
He peers down at me, almost nose to nose now.  This close, it feels like he can almost see me, or he’s just guessing extremely well.  “Well,” he says softly, “we’ve been talking, haven’t we?  I thought,” he idly reaches his small hands up to run over the edges of my waistcoat, and up the central seam of my vest, toying with a button or two, “that I came here to see you . . . to do more than just talk, though.”
“Aye,” I agree, giving in to the urge that’s been growing stronger this whole while, and sliding my palms up through the remaining thick white winter fur along his thighs.  If he’s like many other long-furred men I’ve known, he may never shed all of his winter coat, and scratching your claws up through the dense ruff can feel amazing.
Judging by the half-lidded gaze he gets, and the distinctive way his tail flicks, I guessed right.
The natives of Carvecia wear these minimal garments throughout most seasons, even the winters, they call ‘breechcloths’.  I know the term almost entirely because I’ve seen their canines and vulpines wearing them in my travels, and they have featured in many of my fantasies ever since.  They cover less than small clothes, for God’s sake.  They may as well be nude.
Currently, he’s got his hips pressed into mine, and I’m trying not to stare, my eyes searching for the outline of what I’m feeling against me, barely restrained by the minimal garment.  My paws reach his rear, and I slowly squeeze, tugging him just a bit tighter against me as I do.  He makes a soft, pleading noise beneath his breath, and that about undoes me.
I close the few inches to his small muzzle and growl low in my throat as our noses meet and move to press into one another’s necks.  I take his scent in as I nuzzle my way down the soft fur along his throat.  He smells clean, as well . . . probably cleaner than me, even.  His natural scent is there, though, deep down.  Not like a red fox, but similar.  Milder in some ways, but more complex and exotic.  I hate to get poetic and say he smells like the North Country, but . . . he does.  Arctic animals always smell slightly different.
He also smells aroused, enough so that I can smell it through his leather breechcloth, and that only sets me more afire.  I take small nips at his neck as my thumbs rub in circles up beneath the slip strips of leather that encase his tail and make up the back of his single garment.  He arches his tail very agreeably, and grinds his hips down into mine, taking my breath away.
I gasp and push back, and decide all at once that his culture is superior to my own, if only for their choices in clothing.  I am wearing entirely too much.
I have to remove my hands from his ass to start tugging off my waistcoat, which believe me, is the only reason in the world I’d stop touching him right now.  But a few seconds into my struggle, I look down and find the fox has somehow gotten the buttons of my vest undone faster than I could have, if we’d been racing to find out.
A minute or so later, I am nude mostly thanks to him, and struggling to remove the one garment he’s wearing.  One garment.  And I’m the one who can see.
He chuckles mirthfully and rises up on his knees over me, deftly reaching down to undo the leather thing, and slip it off in a way that was either meant to be alluring, or was so accidentally.  Or maybe everything’s just alluring to me at this point.
“Sorry, it had a strange. . . knot thing . . . in the back,” I attempt to explain with a sigh.  “I’m not coming off as particularly suave tonight.”
“First breechcloth?”  He smiles.  “Don’t be embarrassed.  They’re trickier than they look.”
“I am embarrassed,” I admit.  “I think you’re better at getting me out of my clothing than I am.”
“I’m just glad you don’t wear suspenders,” the fox mutters, then before I can ask why, he’s back in my lap again, and now we’re skin to skin.  Fur to fur.  His pink tip is peaking out of a surprisingly thick little sheath, and my own length is unashamedly hanging heavily against my stomach, nearly out to the knot by now.  
I really need to find distractions for myself more often, so I don’t seem so desperate when I inevitably do.
His paws softly trickle down my chest, feeling my contours by touch, just like he was my bedroom.  His touch is so light it makes a shudder shoot down my spine, sending my every nerve up.  My cock throbs, awaiting that touch to find its way lower.  I lean back on my elbows in bed, just watching him for now, waiting to see what he does.  The little fox doesn’t strike me as the type to try and mount me, but there’s no doubting that he’s leading this encounter tonight, and I’m sort of loving it, honestly.  I envy his confidence.
He clearly knows what he’s doing, so I have a profound pang of disappointment when his hand slips away, just a few inches above my navel.  But then he leans down over me, and his slender muzzle finds its way from my chest ruff down the divet of my abs, and lower.  And if I wasn’t at full mast before, I certainly am now.
My breath hitches as he noses at my tip, and it becomes a full hiss of breath when he opens his muzzle and his small pink tongue darts out to lathe over the bead of precum sliding down it.  It’s only then, for just a moment, that I sense some hesitation from him.  It’s fleeting, but it’s there, and I’m about to say something stupid that could stop this whole thing now, when he seems to get over it on his own.
Then his muzzle is around me, and his small paw comes to grip me by the base, and all I know is that I don’t want him to stop.  The feel of his hot tongue cupping the underside of my cock is matched only by the sight of him somehow, impossibly fitting me into that slender muzzle.  His lover must be sizable as well, I find myself hazily reflecting on, because he manages to take me to the hilt without issue, and swallows around me as he drags his muzzle back up.  
He begins sucking at me in earnest once he’s got a good rhythm set, and the paw that’s not holding my base has found its way further down, his soft paw pads cupping and stroking gently at my balls.
Honestly, he’s too good at this.  I’m not going to last long at this rate, and even though it’s the last thing I want to ask for right now, I really need to slow things down. 
“Puck,” I manage, using the name he once told me to call him by.  My hand finds the soft fur between his ears and strokes at him gently until he lifts his muzzle from my length.
He looks at me uncertainly, his ears tipping back.  “No good?”  He queries quietly.
	I chuckle, breathlessly.  “Too good.  I’d just. . . I’d rather things last longer, is all.”
	His smile returns at that, his tail flicking happily again.  “We have all night,” he assures me.  “And lots more we can do.”
	I look down at the eager fox, and realize I haven’t explained a few key things to him yet.  He might be expecting something that won’t be happening.
	I sigh.  “This is . . .  trust me, hard to explain unless you know a lot more about me . . . but . . . I have rules.”
	One of his ears tips back, and he scrunches up his muzzle, confused.  “Rules?”
	“For myself,” I sigh.  “Based on a lifetime of experience, I know what I can allow myself to do, and . . . what I can’t.  And sex is one of those things I . . . can’t.  Not with someone I know I can’t allow myself to become attached to.”
	“You mean,” the fox pauses, then seems to realize, “oh.  You mean being inside me.”
	“It’s hard to explain,” I sigh.  “And if you think it’s ridiculous, I . . . understand.  But it makes me,” I sniff, glancing down, “emotional.”
	He doesn’t react the way I’d expect.  He doesn’t seem upset, or even confused, after I explain myself.  “Okay,” he says, simply.
	“Okay?”  I parrot back like an idiot.
	“Yes,” he nods.  “I understand.”
	“You’re the first in a while who has,” I say, surprised.
	“I think I feel the same, actually,” he explains, his own pale-eyed gaze dropping down, probably more out of internal shyness than out of any desire to avoid eye contact.  “It’s different.  It’s more.  It’s something you should do with someone you love.”
	“Well, at least it is for me,” I chuckle.  “I know plenty of others who’d disagree.”
	“I’m fine with it, regardless,” he assures me, then gives that clever like fox smile again.  “Besides.  There’s still lots more we can do.”  He says it while softly squeezing his paw along my base and dragging it up to my tip.
	My head falls back into the pillows with a groan.  “Your lover better watch out,” I mutter.  “I’m getting more and more tempted to steal you away, the longer this night goes on.”
	“It might be about time he realized how precarious his position is,” the fox says, with a somewhat defiant air about him. 
	“Oh-ho,” I give a low thrum of a chuckle.  “Is that what this is about?  Am I just some stud you picked out to make it clear to him that you’re a commodity?”
	“I-“ he stammers, “N-no.  I just-“
	My belly laughter interrupts his worrying, and I smirk and shift up, leaning over to him to peck him on the muzzle.  “Never fear,” I smirk.  “I’m a man fond of dastardly plots and machinations myself, so I don’t mind being a part to yours.  I’m hardly getting a bad deal out of it.”
	“He can be a little,” he hesitates, “violent when he gets angry.”
	“Bonus,” I say, more than a little excitedly.  “I haven’t had a good scrap in a while.  It’s bad form for the Admiral to fight with his own men.  And everyone in this whole damned colony who can lift a fist is technically one of my men, so it’s been a long time.”
	The fox snorts.  “You two would probably get along famously if I wasn’t a part of the equation.”
“You made yourself a part of the equation intentionally.”
“Try and act surprised,” he sighs.  “If he comes after you.  I don’t want him knowing I did this just to make him angry.  He thinks I’m a lot more innocent and nice than I am.”  He leans in and nuzzles me again, but this time he licks softly at my muzzle, until I grant him entrance, and then we’re exploring one another’s mouths, tongue slipping over tongue, and his hips are rubbing against mine, the heat of his cock pressing against my own.
	“Mnnnhhh,” I growl into his mouth, my palms squeezing his ass again.  “You are very nice.  I don’t know about innocent.”