Ivy

Sunday

I didn’t know what woke me. It was still dark outside, and I could feel a gentle breeze through the open window.

I was used to hearing traffic noises all the time, so much that I tuned them out. The woods were different. I could hear leaves rustling but no insects, no birdsong.

Ivy didn’t keep a clock in her loft—why should she?—and I had no idea what time it was. It didn’t matter, it was completely unimportant. Out here the clock meant nothing.

She was snuggled up against my side, her head resting against my shoulder, her horn dangerously close to my cheek. One false move . . . it didn’t matter, I’d be okay with an eyepatch or a jagged scar.

I was used to the harsh orangish or bluish illumination of streetlights and parking lot lights; the woods had their own night color. I thought it was dimmer outside than it had been last night, but I couldn’t be sure. I could see her, I could see the room, and I was content. The covers were pushed down and I thought about reaching down and pulling them up, but that might disturb her.

One side of me—the side not covered by Ivy—was cold, and I considered how much better a second Ivy would be. That was a crazy thought: one Ivy was enough, I could barely keep up with her. Two of them would destroy me.

I could have reached out and touched her, but that might have broken the moment. Might have woken her. Instead, I was content to study her sleeping figure, what I could see anyway. The dim light softened her edges, made her appear more delicate than she was. Made her skin paler and her fur darker, highlighted her areolas—I could feel a faint stirring in my groin as I focused on her bare breast, and I was sure she wouldn’t be mad if I woke her in the middle of the night for sex.

No, it was better to just enjoy the moment, better to savor it.

I felt her tail thump against the mattress and I thought she was awake, but she wasn’t. Her breathing was still slow and steady, washing across my chest. An ear twitched, and then fell still again. Was she dreaming? What did she dream of, anyway? Home? Or had she been here long enough that she dreamed of Earth?

What was her home like? I didn’t really know. What if I was wrong, what if this was more than a weekend that would never be repeated? Would she take me home to meet my parents? Hell, would I take her home to meet my parents? What would they think?

It was beyond my imagination. It was better to focus on the simple things. What happened in time would happen, and there was no sense in dwelling on it. The woods weren’t the place for the long future, the woods were the place for the short future. Like food tomorrow: what did she have, and what would we have to forage? She’d promised eggs and bacon, and I didn’t think that we’d be going out into the woods to find either. It was too late in the year for birds to have eggs in their nests anyway, wasn’t it? Birds hatched in the early summer, didn’t they?

She would know. Ivy was a proper woodsman.

How many things had she been used to back at home, and had to re-learn here on Earth? She was adaptable, she would have learned quickly. I could imagine her with either a guidebook or a grizzled prospector touring her patch of land, learning what she could eat and what she couldn’t. And the animals? Maybe they were mostly the same, or maybe she found a clearing and just sat there, Zen-like, observing.

I thought it might be the latter.

Had she ever spent a night away from her cabin? I thought she must have. Before she built it, I didn’t see her renting a RV and parking it on her land. Maybe a tent—probably a tent, some shelter against rain and biting insects.

What would I have done if she hadn’t had a cabin? If it had just been a tent? Maybe a hole in the ground for a toilet, or maybe not even that. Find a tree, don’t go in that patch of poison ivy.

She was in her element and I wasn’t but maybe I could be. Maybe I could cast off the chains of modern, civilized society and live up in the woods. At least on the weekends.

I suppressed a snicker at the idea of her spending the week working as an accountant in a cubicle farm and living in a townhouse. Who knew how she earned her money?

Did it even matter? I closed my eyes and drifted back off to sleep.

•••

Ivy was up the next time I woke, and all of me was cold. She hadn’t pulled the covers up.

She was on her knees, looking out the window. When she was kneeling her tail covered almost everything, which was a shame—it would have been a great view otherwise.

I jerked at a flash of light. Distant lightning. I started counting the seconds, and I never heard any thunder: the storm was far away.

Was it going to come here? I didn’t know what Ivy had planned, or if she’d be disappointed. If she was looking out the window, judging the storm, she might be.

I had my cell phone and it had a weather app—which did me no good; it had no signal. Another trapping of modern life that was lost in the wilderness.

I was still logy; I’d barely woken up. I wanted to pull the covers over myself; instead, I grabbed them and climbed out of bed and sat beside her. I wrapped us both up in a blanket-cocoon, and watched with her out in the woods.

Was this the false dawn? Or was it the real dawn, muted by the oncoming storm? I could faintly see the tops of the trees swaying in the breeze and then falling still again.

“Rain’s about to start,” Ivy said. “You can always tell.”

I nodded. I could smell it in the air. How much would her plans change if it rained?

Memories of wading through water and picking off leeches flashed back into my mind, and I didn’t think she’d alter her plans in the slightest. Whatever those plans were.

I was feeling bold and took a chance—my arm was around her shoulder, and I let my hand slide down her chest, reaching for a boob, resting my hand on the swell, my fingers almost touching a nipple. Yesterday morning, she’d given me a time limit. Today she might not.

•••

I’d never watched a storm roll in while snuggled up with a girl of any sort, let alone a minotauress. Not that that was surprising; the entire weekend had been full of new experiences and while I was disappointed that today was the last day, we could make the best of it.

By the time the storm hit, I had my hand between her legs, and she’d respond by wrapping her hand around my cock, giving me slow, languid strokes. We weren’t so engrossed that we missed the early light of dawn, the trees whipping into a frenzy, the first splatters of rain almost immediately followed by a downpour. The lightning increasing in frequency, the nearby booming of thunder—and then the rain slowed down to a steady drumbeat, and the thunder and lightning moved on as well.

We could have moved back to the bed, but we were already here. The floor was warmed up where we’d been sitting, I’d brought a blanket . . . I turned and kissed her, our tongues intertwining, and then I broke the kiss and bent down to kiss her breasts, to lick her nipples, and for a time that gave me happiness, especially as she continued to stroke my dick.

“Lie down.” I gave up the blanket—I was going to get chilly, but it was worth it.

She nodded and let go of my dick. Regrettable, but it would be worth it in the end.

As soon as she was on her back, I straddled her, resting my groin against hers, my dick a hot iron pinned between us. Our lips met again, then I started moving down her body, passing between her breasts on my way to the promised land.

I felt her tense as I reached her navel, as I kissed across her stomach and onto her pubic mound. My ass was facing the window and occasionally caught some rain spray through the screen, a small price to pay.

I slowed as I reached her coat, building the tension. I saw her move her hand, first in my direction, and then she changed her mind and started fondling her own breast, a victory.

My tongue knew what to do as it touched her clit, and I buried my face between her thighs and went to work, exploring and teasing her tender flesh. I kept my hands wrapped around her waist, her furry love-handles, pulling myself into her sex as far as I could.

It wasn’t long before she was writing under me, and I thought that the slow build-up had been worth it, that all the fondling as we watched the storm come had put her right on the edge—I’d intended to tease her with my tongue and then mount her, but now I had every intention of giving her an orgasm first.

“Hold on.” Ivy pushed my head back.

“Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to piss. You keep it up down there and you might get more than you bargained for.”

Disappointing, but I had to piss, too. Which was going to be interesting, since my dick had only gotten harder once I’d started eating Ivy out. The chill air and stray raindrops hadn’t done anything to dampen my enthusiasm.

She slid back and sat up. “I’ll be right back, promise.”

“I might as well follow you,” I said. “I’m not going to hold out much longer, either.”

Of all the ways Ivy could have built the house, having an ensuite bathroom would have been great. Of course that meant more plumbing and a drain field and septic tank—there were some advantages of keeping it simple with a hole in the ground.

Just then, as if to mock us, the rain picked up in intensity again.

“Bet it’s times like this you wish you had indoor plumbing. No real disadvantage on my part, I can just stand in the doorway.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “So can I, but it’s not civilized.”

“How?”

“Practice.” She swung her legs over the edge of the loft and was down the ladder before I could think of a witty comeback.

•••

Whether she could or was just bragging was unanswered; she was out the door by the time I’d descended the ladder. I hesitated—I really didn’t want to go out in the rain. On the plus side, my clothes wouldn’t get wet.

Going out in the rain and then waiting in the rain for her to finish was stupid, I decided. When she came back in, then I’d take my turn. So I instead stood in the open doorway, far enough back that I wasn’t directly rained on, my hard-on starting to fade.

It really was tempting to just let it fly; the water would wash it away right away, and the sound of the rain on the leaves and the ground just intensified the need. By the time she was back, I was starting to worry that my bladder might explode.

Surely she wouldn’t mind if I didn’t go all the way to her outhouse, just stopped on the way. I’d marked a couple trees while we’d been hunting and I assumed she had, too.

But she might be watching from the loft. I looked up, I didn’t see her face at the window, but then I couldn’t see anything inside the house. And since I was already in her backyard, I continued the rest of the way to the outhouse which was not only dry, but warmer than outside.

•••

When I came back into the cabin, she was leaning over the loft railing, watching me as I crossed the living room to the foot of the ladder. Like a captain looking over the bridge of her ship.

“Permission to board, captain?”

Ivy snickered, then extended her arm out in invitation. “Permission granted, cart boy.”

I hooked my hands around the ladder and climbed up. It was insulting that she was still calling me that, but there was a warmness in her voice instead of contempt. I still had the better part of a day to prove myself . . . or to completely fuck up.

She stayed leaning over the railing until I got all the way to the top and had my feet firmly on the loft, then she reached down and stroked my now-flaccid dick. That felt weird; I wasn’t used to anybody touching it when it wasn’t hard.

It must not have liked that, either—I could feel stirrings of arousal already. It might not be quick, since I’d just had a boner, but maybe the recovery time was faster if I hadn’t actually come. Either way, I could eat her out until the little soldier stood at attention again.

“Lie down,” she ordered, pointing to the bed. “Get comfortable.”

What did she have planned? I trusted her to not break me, although if she started getting out ropes and handcuffs we’d have to renegotiate.

“Since you like looking up on the ladder so much, and I took that opportunity from you this last time.” She straddled me and lowered herself down, her tail slapping against my belly as she got into position.

Ivy wiggled her hips on the way down which provided a nice jiggle from her chest and a weird flash of pink from her vagina, something I wanted to focus on but my traitorous brain instead decided it needed to pay attention to the tuft of fur on the end of her tail as it slid across my stomach, tickling me.

I couldn’t resist twitching, and I could see the bemused glint in her eyes as she asked me if I was ticklish.

“No?” That was true, more or less—it was more the surprise of it than any ticklishness, or at least that was what I told myself.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been firmer in my denial; Ivy thought she had something, and she was going to take advantage of it.

Which was fine by me. Now I knew it was coming, now I was prepared, and now I was more focused on her jiggling boobs and her inviting pussy just out of reach. I could grab her hips, I could pull her down on my face, or I could just enjoy the view while it lasted.

•••

When she realized she wasn’t getting the reaction she wanted, Ivy finally sat on my face, first keeping her weight on her hooves and then shifting into a kneeling position. There wasn’t anywhere I could go as she leaned forward, sliding her sex against my mouth and nose. Not that I would have wanted to move away.

Even though I’d get no control by doing it, I wrapped my hands around her thighs, clenching her fur, and went back to work, picking up where I’d left off.

I might not have had the same control I did when I was on top, but I had enough to get what I wanted, and I was willing to accept the challenge—made all the harder as she teased my dick with her tail. That was a strange sensation.

I put that to the back of my mind and turned my attention to her sex, hot on my lips. And the view, looking up her torso at the bottom of her breasts.

She could have been looking down at me, but she wasn’t; she had her chin up, one hand planted beside my head for balance while the other was playing with a breast, then it slid down her stomach and I started to wonder if she was going to finger herself while I was eating her out, but instead she ran her hand through my hair.

I’d completely focused on her, on every movement, and it caught me by surprise as she suddenly spoke. “Are you hard yet?”

I actually had to pay attention to something else—there must have been other times in my life where I wasn’t aware that I had an erection, but I couldn’t recall one.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see.” She twisted around, more or less pivoting on my tongue. I could feel her thigh muscles in my temples and my clenched hands, and my mind flashed back to a YouTube video of a girl crushing watermelons between her legs. Could Ivy do that? Probably. How much harder was a skull than a watermelon? Unknown. Would I be upset if that was the way I went? No.

“You stay there,” she instructed, then lifted herself off my face. I could feel drool and her girlcum all over my face and chin, dribbling down to my neck. Would it be gauche to take the opportunity to wipe some of it off with the sheet or a pillow?

I didn’t have a chance to decide; she turned herself around and then pressed back into my face. Now my nose was sitting against her taint, practically against her butthole. Her tail was draped across my forehead, giving me the clearest view ever of the weird triangle of hairless flesh where her tail and ass crack intersected.

That position didn’t last long; she crouched down to my waist and ran her tongue up the length of my cock, slowing as she reached my head.

I was ready for her to wrap her lips around it and start giving me a blowjob, but she didn’t. She licked her way down the underside and across my balls, then returned to the topside to lick at the very base of my cock, her cheek pressing up against my dick.

Ivy let me have a few moments to enjoy what she was doing to me before wiggling her hips as a reminder that I had a job to do, too. One I was only too willing to perform.

Finding a good position for my hands was a challenge. I could reach down enough to tweak her nipples, but it felt more natural to grab her love handles and give me the illusion that I was in control, even though I knew full well that I wasn’t.

I hadn’t noticed before that she tensed her tail when she orgasmed. I’d been on the wrong side or she’d been on her back—with it right against my forehead I couldn’t miss the tensing and the quiver in her tail, the clutch of her thighs, or the way she paused on my dick long enough to take a couple deep breaths before continuing with her blowjob.

Was she frustrated that I’d made her cum before I had? Or had she loosened up her throat enough that she was finally ready to swallow my sword all the way?

Did it matter? Whatever her reasoning, her lips were now wrapped around the very base of my cock, her breasts pressed against my stomach, and my tongue was deep inside her.

She had an unfair advantage: with practice she could deepthroat, but no matter how much I practiced my tongue wouldn’t get any longer. That just meant I needed more skill, and the determination to hold on long enough I got her to orgasm again before she managed to make me cum.

In truth, that was a race I was almost certain to lose. I already knew how intense her blowjobs could be and I didn’t know if she was going to hold back and keep me on the edge or if she was going to go for speed.

•••

After, neither of us had any interest in getting up, or moving, or doing much of anything. The fur on her thighs was matted and soaked with cum, we were both glistening with sweat, and I was certain I’d reached Nirvana and confident that she had, too.

There was no way that I could have been considered pent up, not after how the weekend had gone so far, and yet it felt like I’d come so hard that my balls had probably shriveled down to the size of raisins. She’d only let my dick out of her mouth once it started to go flaccid and then just stayed where she was, her head rested on my thigh, her breathing slowly returning to normal.

I really wanted a cigarette, and I’d never smoked one in my life.

•••

Yesterday when we’d finished, we’d gotten up and she’d made breakfast—what I would have expected in a morning. This time, after we got out of bed, she started taking the sheets off.

“What are you doing?”

“Sheets smell like sex,” Ivy said. “Gonna take them home and wash them.”

“Don’t you want them to? So you can remember the fun times we had?”

Ivy shook her head. “I’d rather keep that memory in my head instead of in my nose.” She bundled them up into a sack, including the pillowcases and duvet cover, then reached over the loft railing and let them fall. “Easier than getting them down the ladder.”

“Too bad you can’t get them up the same way.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you seriously thinking I can’t throw a bundle of sheets up to the loft, or are you just sex-addled enough that you can’t think straight?”

I took a moment to reflect on the fact that she could at the very least Leonidas-kick me off the loft. Nobody knew where I’d gone, and I bet that Ivy had ways of disposing of a body.

“Sex-addled,” I said. “Or maybe sleep-deprived. I’m never my best first thing in the morning.”

“That’s because all the blood’s in your dick.” She poked it with a finger. “Down the ladder, cart boy, and I’ll make us breakfast.”

•••

Only once she had all her ingredients in place did she turn on the stove. “It’s better to cook eggs and bacon over an actual fire,” she said, “but it’s not worth having a fire just for breakfast. Not now. In the wintertime, though. . .

“Christmas vacation is the best when there’s a good snow. Sitting in the living room, watching the flakes drift down, or the wind whipping snow against the windows, seeing the frost creeping on the glass. The little gusts that come in and make the flames dance. I like spending the whole week up here, just enjoying the solitude.”

“Don’t you have a family?”

Ivy shrugged. “We’re not all that close. My dad was against me ever coming to Earth, said it would make me soft.”

“Really.” I thought about her lifting sacks of cement, digging holes, hunting; I thought about the feel of her muscles—even when she was relaxed, there was a constant quiver like an overwound spring. “Did it?”

“Who knows? Not a lot of people can keep up with me, for what that’s worth. You’re doing better than I expected.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’ve got stamina where it matters.” She turned her head and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before returning her attention to the porridge. “And you’re bold, willing to try new things. Not everyone is. Had to have an abscess in my claw fixed a while back, and the hoof doctor was so flustered about it, even after I told him that it was just like a regular bovine hoof.”

You sure he wasn’t just taken by you being you? That was something I knew I shouldn’t say aloud, even if I was sure that had been a factor. Did she wear clothes at home?

“Did a good enough job, though.”

“So your hooves aren’t impervious after all.”

She shook her head. “They’re a lot tougher than feet, but I can step on something that goes through them, and if I can’t dig it out or if it gets infected—that’s rare, the one time I had to call a hoof doctor was the only time I wasn’t able to fix it myself.”

“I never thought about how you might have trouble with human medicine. You’re not exactly the same as other girls.”

“I don’t know any other girls that would be entertaining you in their cabin.”

“Whatever.” I could ignore the barb. “I don’t know many other guys who are good at picking burrs out of fur.”

“Stick around and I’ll make a woodsman out of you.”

Is that an invitation for this to become something more serious, or is she just talking? A few days ago, my imagination hadn’t extended much further than arranging shelves or pushing carts and wishing I was doing something else, although that something else was vague and nebulous. Digging foundations and planting posts and pouring concrete hadn’t been on my radar screen, nor had wandering through the woods naked, hunting and gathering.

She’d lured me in with sex, and I’d been an easy target. Most guys would have been, I thought. Maybe the lower half would have thrown them for a loop, or the ears or the horns. I could easily imagine one of her weekend conquests—surely I wasn’t the first—being unwilling to work, complaining that they didn’t get a cell signal or that she didn’t have a TV in her cabin. I could imagine them recoiling at the idea that they had to hunt for their dinner, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been ones she’d sent marching down the road to hitch a ride.

Or maybe they’d done what I’d done in the hopes of impressing her and it hadn’t been good enough for one reason or another.

What she needed was a proper woodsman who would be up at the ass crack of dawn to hunt in a blind with her, or a proper carpenter who would be of more use when it came to setting posts. Someone more outdoorsy or more handy than I was.

Maybe she’d thought of that, too. Maybe she’d even found ones who had been too full of themselves, too condescending . . . Michelle was the paint manager back at Home Depot, and she constantly complained in the break room about guys who didn’t think she’d know anything about painting since she sported a pair of tits.

Maybe she was looking for someone that looked like a person she could mold into what she wanted, and maybe I fit the bill.

Or maybe it was just an impulse, and after she dropped me off tonight she’d forget I ever existed. Maybe look down at me the next time she came to Home Depot—or not, since I didn’t have a job there any more.

Did it matter? For now, it was better to live in the moment, to watch Ivy cooking our breakfast.

Outside, the light rain splattered off the leaves and fell lightly on the forest floor. Trees were decent shelter from rain, at least, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this breakfast would have been more appealing if it had been cooked outside on an open fire, drops of rain sizzling in the pan.

I’d never been one for roughing it. I’d always preferred the comforts in life. Now I was reconsidering.

Bold of Ivy to fry bacon with her shirt off—with everything off. Stew and porridge hadn’t risked burns, but bacon did. Yet another reason to leave it alone until it was ready, let it simmer and sputter and stay well back, the smell was almost as filling as the meal itself.

She twitched every time hot oil spattered her, and I offered to move in, although that was risky. Hot bacon grease could land on my dick.

“I’ve got this.” She twitched as a bubble popped in the pan, and I could see the arc of the hot fat as it landed on her arm and her stomach. She lifted the pan off the burner and spatulaed the bacon onto the plate, leaving behind a pan of burbling grease.

It would not go to waste; she turned off the burner and dropped in two slices of bread.

I’d read once about high-calorie diets of the Mennonites. It wasn’t a lazy Western diet, full of hollow calories; it was dense and prepared a person for a day’s work. Or helped them recover from a day’s work . . . I’d spent a lot of energy yesterday digging post holes, and then hunting for dinner and there was also the sex. How many calories did sex burn, anyway?

Did guys burn more calories during sex, or did girls? Which of us had sweated more, or breathed harder at the end?

And why was I thinking about that when Ivy was still naked and also there was fresh-cooked bacon, still bubbling on the plate as it cooled?

•••

By the time we were done with breakfast, the rain had intensified again. Now it was sluicing down from the trees; now it was an obstacle. The kind of rain where I might have run to my car, or worn a poncho, or at least ducked my head and been miserable.

The kind of rain where it made no sense to be nude, and yet we were, both of us standing at the front door looking out at it.

Ivy probably wasn’t reconsidering, but I was. The garage—shed—wasn’t that far from her house, but today would have been a good day to stay in bed and sleep late.

“How much do you know about trucks?”

“Not shit,” I admitted. “Or cars. If you’ve been here long enough to get the impression that all guys are car guys, I buck that trend. I don’t even change my own oil, Wal-Mart does that.”

“It’s not hard.” She crossed her arms and glanced back at me. “Drainplug and filter, grease everything, it’s not complicated. You humans don’t know how to take care of your own stuff.”

“I do know how to take care of my own stuff, I take it to a professional.” My Honda was overdue for an oil change, and it was smart enough to remind me every time I started it. I’d been meaning to schedule that. ‘Besides, you—”

You built your own house. That was something I couldn’t do. How had she learned that? If I’d had a father who was more handy in the garage, I might know something about cars; if I’d had a father who was more handy around the house, I might know more about building things. Sometimes it bothered me that I wasn’t as alpha as some other guys.

None of those other guys were up north banging a minotaur, though.

“I what?”

“Nothing, you’ve just got life skills I don’t.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts, briefly giving herself cleavage to die for. “Oh, do I?”

“I might not know much, but I can learn.” Tempting though it was to bury my face in her boobs and motorboat my way to happy oblivion, I resisted the urge. “And I am curious about that truck.”