by Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach

Sometimes Friedrich liked to take him like that, their bones still humming from the stretch and push of the Change, minds still more wolf than human. The broad hands running up his flanks would wake his skin to a different kind of life, the switch from pain to pleasure screaming over too-raw nerves. The mouth opening, crushing into his own would still taste of their prey for the evening, calling to the wolf even as the sensuous tongue woke the man in him, the two for once caught in perfect, paralysing balance.

Sometimes he hung suspended for long minutes between his two worlds, and sometimes the harmony was more ephemeral, both sides struggling for advantage, pulling his mind apart as the Change did his body, and he felt madness not far away. They would fuck roughly then, against the wall or on a bed of cold leaves and moist earth, smell of panelling or humus filling his nostrils as Friedrich's cock filled him from behind, pounding relentlessly as Gabriel clawed for purchase, limbs barely recalling their shape and direction, the only certain, focussed part of him the one connecting him to Friedrich.

Sometimes it frightened him, not knowing his own body, and Friedrich would sense it, and clamp his teeth into Gabriel's neck and tighten one arm around his waist, claiming him in human and wolf fashion, and the terror would subside. Sometimes, Gabriel simply snarled his defiance, gathering strength to him until he could push back to meet the pounding rhythm in his ass.

Sometimes, Friedrich growled and bit, hard enough to draw bruising or blood, and Gabriel knew he'd wear the marks for days under fur or cotton. Looking at them later, feeling the tingling rawness in his ass, he would wonder if the balance or the wiping away of pain or the claiming or the sex itself was the reason Friedrich grabbed him at these times, but such thoughts never mattered with Friedrich's cock drilling into him, Friedrich's chest hair soft as fur crushed to his back, Friedrich wrapped around and in and through him.

Sometimes Gabriel came, senses overloading and blacking out, and woke loose-boned and drained, too tired to move from Friedrich's embrace. Sometimes he barely hardened, the sensations too much for his flesh to encompass, and he would feel Friedrich stiffen and jerk, pressing into him hard through his own orgasm, then pull out gently and stroke Gabriel with hands and tongue, soothing him like a cub, and they would exchange lazy kisses before drifting to sleep still entwined.

Always, Gabriel was satisfied, wolf and man where they belonged, both content sleeping in his skin, and the shadows they hunted would wait for another night, and the rightness and wrongness of his world were banished back to the depths of his mind.

For a time.