My Beloved Monster and Me

"Do or did you have parents with mutations like your own?"

Washing, washing, washing. Layers of dirt, blood and dead skin were removed. She wiped his face briskly so he would be able to speak soon afterward.

She paused, seeing his sharp teeth when he spoke. She dropped the rag, removing her gloves, and peered with interest into his mouth. She lifted his upper lip with two fingers, and pushed her goggles to her forehead.

"Why... that's simply fascinating! You're truly carnivorous, aren't you?" She pulled at his cheek a bit, shining a mini flashlight into his mouth to see his lack of molars or bicuspids. His teeth were almost canine in nature.

She then let go of his mouth and focused on his eyes. She noted the smaller-than-normal irises and dilated pupils with rapt interest. She shone the light into one, watching the pupil contract sluggishly. This caused her to scuttle off to find a notepad and jot furiously her findings.

~~

She had ceased scrubbing at his back and now worked on his chest, which if anything felt even worse. Blood, bruises, stains and the like were far more abundant about his ribs, and they did not leave peacefully.

Strig's arms hung limply at his sides, his clawed hands twitching reflexively with each stinging ministration. For a long time she continued to work in silence whilst he made an effort to keep still, reflecting quietly on the strange turn of events the day had taken. He was well aware of the excessive grooming habits of cats, but this did seem a little... unconventional. That said, she was achieving better results than he had ever managed with just sand and old printer paper to work with.

"Where did you come from?" She asked suddenly, startling him out of his thoughts. "Were you wandering the desert?" She was cleaning his stomach now. It seemed ironic somehow to have her hand so close to, and yet outside, his stomach lining.

"I come from a village, or what used to be a village, about five miles up that way." He pointed behind him. "The surrounding miles I use for hunting mainly, or sometimes I explore further afield."

She nodded three times in rapid succession. Soon she was dabbing more disinfectant on his right arm, which he held outstretched for her.

"Do you know how many years you have been alive?" She asked.

"20 years, give or take." She peered at him for a moment, seemingly trying to confirm this, and then nodded again, moving the rag to his neck. After this she started on his hair. This didn't appear to be a task she was relishing, considering the revulsion she was making a strong effort to conceal.

"Do or did you have parents with mutations like your own?"

"Yhhs, muh..." Strig gave up trying to speak around the cloth that was now assailing his face and waited as the grime was extracted from his pale pate. When she was finished, he started again.

"Yes, my father was exactly like me. I'm not sure how far these mutations go back though. I don't think my mother was like this, my father rarely spoke of her; she died when I was born."

As the last word left his lips, Strig found two fingers being pushed into his upper lip. The next thing he knew the woman was peering at his teeth through her goggles.

BITE

Shut up.

She examined his teeth thoroughly, finding a rather surprising interest in them. Normally they elicited dread and fear in other people, not curiosity. Granted the dread-stricken and afrighted normally found his fangs in their throats, but all the same it was peculiar to have his teeth, his natural weapons, being examined in this fashion.

"Why... that's simply fascinating! You're truly carnivorous, aren't you?" She said lightly.

"Indeed. Though I do eat other things, fruit and the like. Meat is what fuels me though, that's what I'm... built to ingest, I guess."

Next she shone that flashlight of hers straight into his eyes, which was rather painful truth to tell but he decided not to make an issue of it. When this was done she hurried over to where her backpack lay and tore through its pockets until she found a notebook, wherein she began to scribble down, presumably, all she had just learned about him.

Strig had never before been the centre of such attention. The idea that his physiology should be of such interest was more than a little mystifying to him. He was what he was, and what he was always seemed very straightforward to him. Then again, perhaps he was overlooking something. Perhaps there was some wider importance relating his mutations which he could not see. Either way, what harm was there in letting himself be scrubbed and prodded in the name of discovery?

Though he was reluctant to break the smoothly flowing routine that had seemingly come out of nowhere, there was one matter that really did need seeing to.

"My name is Strig." He said simply, extending a hand, his fingers bent back to keep his claws out of the way. "Nice to meet you."

~~

Kura looked up from her notes, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar.

"oh."

She was somewhat surprised that she had forgotten the human custom of introduction in greeting. Embarrassment was not the most understood emotion in her repertoire, but now she blushed lightly... and her cheeks were a candy pink in the early light of sunrise.

"Kuramidi." and she hesitated before extending a thin hand. Strig looked at her hand for a moment before taking it in his and squeezing it lightly. His rough skin made hers tingle, as it caused brief friction. She blushed deeper and pulled back her hand.

She tried to focus on her notes, but was distracted by her sudden accelerated heartbeat. She also felt the ghost of a fever... Was this to do with the next step in her initial inspection of the specimen? Surely not! Such exterior biopsies were common. She had performed them on other specimens... though those were certainly not humanoid...

Nor as finely toned with such sinuous muscle...

She shook her head, pulling off her goggles, fanning herself briefly with her notepad.

"Right... yes... alright, then." she set her notes aside, rising and pulling the specimen to his feet as well.

"Strig, then. I... will be conducting an exterior biopsy. You are a unique sub-species of homo sapiens, and I would like to observe and log as much data as possible about you. Do you concur?"

He nodded, somewhat slowly, and with a creased brow.

Kura donned her surgical gloves once more, and produced a clean rag and a new bottle of disinfectant.

She finished wiping clean his torso, and frowned at his poor, tattered trousers.

She should have been able to conduct her study with her usual scientific ease... but for some reason her pulse was pounding in her ears... and she felt somewhat lightheaded.

Her hands had lost some of their dexterity, she realized, as she removed her surgical gloves. Her breath quickened as she unbuttoned his fly with a little difficulty.

For the first time in her life- she'd been having many firsts this early morning- she had to command herself to maintain control. To concentrate. For some reason, so simple a task was causing a very prominent and very uncontrollable physical reaction. She bit her lip and breathed inward as she tugged the tattered garment downward...

~~

For a second she looked at him as if he'd just asked what 'Tuesday' meant.

"Oh." She said, blushing slightly. Strig could smell the blood in her cheeks, but again it smelt... different. Not like food somehow. It, and all of her, had started to elicit responses from some part of him unconnected with the digestive system. Some part he knew not what exactly.

"Kuramidi." She said, slowly extending her hand towards his. It looked so frail by comparison that Strig momentarily feared snapping it clean off, but when he clasped it, such silly fears gave way as he registered its warmth, its softness, smoothness, the feel of each of her fingertips tracing their way incrementally across the side of his own hand. It took a strong force of effort to release it.

Kuramidi. A name at last to put to the face of the most fascinating and pleasant of creatures that had ever passed by his territory.

Her blush deepened, the smell of blood increased. The smell did not force open his sinuses and set his hunter's senses alight however, as was ever the case before. He wasn't having to fight against himself anymore, what was going on?

Her heartbeat was speeding up again, so for that matter was his. Strig tried to keep still, sat on the ground as he was. He tried to retain his visage of collected nonchalance whilst at the same time trying to figure out what was happening to him. Why his body was reacting in this strange fashion to this woman who had somehow rendered herself immune to his hungers.

To one of his hungers at least.

Oh.

She was continually flicking glances his way, her note taking seemed far less zealous than it had a minute ago. She was distracted, her body temperature was increasing. Soon she abandoned her writing and started to fan herself with the pad. Her goggles she had forsaken.

Just the desert sun. Strig thought, trying to forestall his thought processes and steel himself against the growing excitement.

"Right...yes...alright, then." She dropped the notepad, and then took hold of his wrists, pulling him up with her as she stood. He almost reached out then and there, he wanted to pull her towards him, he wanted to...

"Strig, then. I... will be conducting an exterior biopsy. You are a unique sub-species of homo sapiens, and I would like to observe and log as much data as possible about you. Do you concur?"

Strig nodded slowly. The effort it was taking now to keep still, to remain calm, was almost harder than it had been when his mind screamed at him to eat her. Now his instincts were screaming something else, but it was too soon... he couldn't tell how she...

Taking in two deep breaths, Strig started to mentally repeat to himself choice sentences from a favorite book from the library back in his village. This distraction helped a little as Kuramidi pulled surgical gloves over her hands. To picture what was... what he thought was about to happen would send his mind off in half a hundred unwise directions. He needed to stay focused, stay decent, maintain situational awareness and not lose control.

He forced his mind back to the book as Kuramidi stepped back towards him. The title of the time-worn tome had been all but lost, 'Avaro...' something. Evidently it was the winner of the National Book Award, whatever that was back in its day.

She scrubbed some more at his torso, this action bringing his attempted self-distraction to an abrupt end. Her ministrations were finishing off the more persistent bits of filth and blood. This done, she cast her eyes downwards at his trousers.

Her initial speed and efficiency had waned, her hand slipped past the rag on occasion now, her gloved fingers gliding against his skin. Her heartbeat was still quickened, her temperature still slightly elevated. She removed her gloves with unsteady hands, hands that then set to work unbuttoning his fly.

Exterior biopsy. Strig's brain repeated over and over. Exterior biopsy.

She bit her lip and breathed inward as she tugged the tattered garment downward. Strig stepped out of it, feeling oddly tempted to grab the tattered garment and throw it far away.

The whim passed, and he stood still and completely naked before her.

He was no stranger to nakedness, nor even to quasi-public nudity, but there was something about this time which was so very different. He could feel her eyes on him and he waited, half uncomfortably, half excitedly, seeming to await her analysis, or should that be her conclusion?

~~

She felt such a surge of... she didn't even know what, but it forced her to turn away in girlish embarrassment. Her face felt hot, now. No mere blush this time. She was positively flushed.

Stop it! Get a hold of yourself! Routine exterior biopsy! Separate yourself from your own organic idiosyncrasies!

She realized then that, yes... this man-creature had actually caused a hormonal reaction in her. She gasped to herself in disbelief.

Never.

She cleared her throat, collecting herself, and looked back to the task at hand. That's what it was. A task. She'd just be fooling herself should she allow herself to feel...

... somewhat slick betwixt the thighs...

CONCENTRATE, DAMN YOU!

She found it, however, hard to ignore physical reactions. Like the one he was having at the moment...

He was not as filthy below the belt as he had been everywhere else. Kura had no idea what circumcision was, (Grey's Anatomy and other such medical journals she had read revealed no image to discern between pre-procedure and post) but the male sex looked nothing like it had in textbooks.

It was much thicker, for example... and longer than she had expected.

She set her rag on her knee, splashing some of the gentler disinfectant on the... area... and decided to cleanse without the aid of the rag for the time being. She remembered that such areas were more... sensitive.

Using slow strokes, she smoothed her gloved hand down the length of the phallus, pausing for a moment in fascination as this movement pulled back the foreskin. Fascinating stuff, I tell you. The end was a darker red than the surrounding flesh, and she grazed her finger against it. She giggled when the whole thing jerked in reaction to this simple touch. Like any good scientist, she repeated the experiment to see if it produced the same result, and giggled again when it did.

What in the name of trigonometry are you doing??

She cleared her throat again, continuing the cleansing. She scrubbed gently at his soft, thick brush of pubic hair, gingerly massaged exterior contaminants from the testes... Then, she recovered the rag, splashed his left leg with solution, and resumed her scrubbing.

~~

Reach out, grab, take her, feel, flesh, reach, skin, pale, hers.

It was remarkable how swiftly Strig's inner voice had switched from a dietary prompter to a largely inarticulate and rather questionable sex therapist.

The heat coming from Kuramidi matched his own, this wasn't just the desert's influence, she was far too practical a creature to be caught out by simple dehydration.

Her heat, her heartbeat, her mood, they all matched his own.

Ever since she first started scrubbing away at him, Strig had been trying to fight against the inevitable erection. It seemed the decent thing to do. Trying to fight it away now, however, was an utterly hopeless endeavor. She splashed the strangely cool disinfectant against his groin and, with her gloved hand, rubbed it tentatively about his penis.

He gasped, it was a human sound for once. In his adolescence Strig had found more than his fair share of adult material in the village. Erotic literature at the library, magazines hidden in shoeboxes under the beds of the teenage boys of old. He had looked upon all of these relics and with his right hand did do the things that boys do.

Nothing he had done in those days could compare to what was happening now. His body was starting to shake, he felt excited, and to keep standing still felt abruptly wrong. The fact that his hands were not touching Kuramidi in turn felt... wrong.

There was still a sliver of scientific curiosity in her face. With one probing finger she poked at the abruptly exposed flesh beneath the foreskin. It stung, but his excitement only grew.

It was, he conceded, lucky that it was only him who had clawed hands.

She did it again, and she was giggling. It was a lovely sound, it was... encouraging.

At that point Kuramidi seemed to collect herself somewhat. She cleared her throat, lost her smile and started to work more collectedly on his scrotum, after this she moved to his left leg.

The last of Strig's control crumbled. After what she had just done, he could no longer stand about and let himself be handled in... lesser places. He wanted her, and that impulse, that need, had taken hold.

Almost before he knew what he was doing, he dropped to the floor. Kuramidi looked up just in time to see his face move towards hers.

Strig pressed his forehead against hers, wrapping one hand around her clothed back and burying the other in her smooth, green hair.

He was growling softly, continuously; for all the world like a predator trying to attract a mate. His hands moved gently, claws bent backwards, around the back of her head and torso.

He found the fasteners and straps on her clothing. He could disrobe her, he could keep a hold of her and ensure that she couldn't wriggle free... but he wouldn't, not unless she wanted him too. If she preferred she could drive an ardent knee into his nuts and make a run for it.

He could feel her heartbeat, faster than ever before, with his own chest. For what seemed like hours, though it was in fact barely a question of minutes, the two stood there, him waiting for confirmation or rejection, and she...

~~

... and she squeaked, suddenly unable to breathe.

Her face went a rather deep shade of pink, and she blinked several times in disbelief. Her heart no longer felt human. It was a small rabbit's heart, thrumming with vibration in lieu of it's normal measured cadence. She indeed felt like trapped prey, awaiting death at the teeth of a large cat.

And yet...

She allowed a moment to realize he was not really harming her. His claws were sheathed. His hand was at the back of her head instead of around her delicate neck. She shuddered a breath, trembling madly. Her knees felt as if they must give out at any moment.

And... his... organ... was pressed against her belly. She felt its insistent solidity there... Pressed to the exterior of her very womb. The implications... Great Tesla! The implications!

Thinking about this caused a very cold flush that began in her throat and dropped heavily into her stomach, there birthing a large swarm of butterflies.

Oh, dear God...

I don't believe in you, but oh... dear.... God...

She could feel a trickle of warmth run down her inner thigh. At first she thought she had urinated in terror.... but no.... dear.... God...

She tried to push at his chest, as that's where her gloved hands were pinned... but she had no strength. She couldn't get away.

Of the choices fight, flight or freeze... she was frozen.

And maybe unknowingly hesitant.

~~

Seconds passed and Strig felt no resistance from her, the delicate hands pressed against his chest did not push him away, she did not writhe in his grasp or cry out. She had frozen, not unlike a prey creature in reach of his talons, but unlike a prey creature, he could smell excitement from her, not just fear. He could hear it in her heartbeat, see it in her wide eyes.

He lowered her down on the desert sand, laying himself atop her. Her face was an incessant flurry of ambivalence. One second her eyes were closed, her head straining to turn away, and in the next she was staring at him full on, biting her lip, almost smiling, he thought.

Reluctantly, he pulled his hands away from her. She might run, but he could catch her. He would catch her now if he had to. His instincts could no longer be denied.

She lay shaking on the ground as he hesitantly pulled himself back, admiring her prone form.

Christ, she is beautiful.

He pulled off her boots and stockings, tracing his hands up her pale legs, savouring the feel of her skin. She gasped when one hand snaked its way underneath the black dress she wore, exploring the wet flesh underneath whilst his other hand gently pulled away the straps on her shoulders.

Before he peeled away the garment, he kissed her. It was a deep, passionate hungry action, almost instinctual.

With both hands, Strig pulled Kuramidi upwards slightly and pulled her dress down the length of her body, uncovering her breasts. He could not help but growl approvingly at the sight of them, and leave one hand to feel them as, with the other, he pulled away her hat, gloves and underwear, leaving her utterly naked before him.