Proud Bakaneko Begs the Huntress to Stab Him

Moonlight sifted through the high canopy in broken silver, and the mist turned every trunk into a pale column. Xavier moved along a mossed root with the easy balance of a man who had never once doubted his body. At twenty-eight he was a bakaneko in his prime, sleek where a human would have been merely fit, black hair damp at his nape, cat ears pricked, tail cutting slow arcs behind him. His half-laced hunting leathers left chest and flank bare to the cold. He liked being seen.

He had followed the huntress without needing a trail, though she had left one anyway: boot print, snapped bracken, the clean oil of a whetstone. Teresa was twenty-six, human, and infuriatingly exact. Their rivalry had years in it. They crossed the same moonlit grounds, stole each other's kills, spoiled ambushes, and left marks the other was expected to answer. He took pride in outpacing her. She took pride in never quite letting him go.

"You're loud tonight," he called, dropping from a low branch into the clearing. She was already there, not waiting so much as hunting. "I heard you from the ridge."

Teresa did not startle. Dark hair braided tight, leathers scarred at the sleeves, a silver dagger resting in her right hand as if it had grown there. She looked him over the way she looked over a trail: measuring, unimpressed, a little hungry.

"You're early," she said. "And talking. Both mistakes."

"I don't make mistakes." He circled, tail high, ears tipped with an amusement he refused to call fond. "I make you chase. There's a difference, huntress."

She turned with him, blade low. "Pride looks expensive on you. One day it costs."

He laughed, soft and sharp. "You'd have to catch me."

He feinted left. She did not buy it. The dagger rose in a short, precise arc meant to turn him, not open him, and the flat kissed his ribs before the edge grazed the skin just under them. A thin hot line. Enough.

Xavier went still.

Pain arrived bright and clean, a wire drawn through him, and his cock answered before his pride could stop it. Heat flooded his groin. His ears flattened, then snapped up again as if posture could hide what his leathers already confessed. The graze throbbed. He wanted it to throb harder. The want was old and secret and suddenly too large for his mouth.

Teresa's gaze dropped. She saw the strain against worn leather, the flush climbing his throat, the rigid line of his tail. Her lips parted. The dagger stayed, a cool promise on warmed skin.

"Oh," she said, almost wondering. "So that's what you've been hiding on these hunts."

His hips tipped into the sting. "Don't flatter yourself."

"I'm not." Her eyes came back to his, steady and suddenly very clear. "You're hard from a scratch. Say if you want me to stop looking."

He held her stare, ears hot, and did not step back.

"Don't stop," he said, and the words tasted like surrender and challenge at once.

The mist moved between them, and neither sheathed the moment. Teresa's pulse showed at her throat. Xavier hated that he wanted the dagger back on him before the sting had even faded.

"Circle if you need to," she said. "You always do when you're losing."

"I'm not losing." He stepped onto the balls of his feet, and the shift took him the way it did when pride demanded more body than speed. Muscle rolled through his shoulders. His chest broadened. Claws darkened at the tips of still-human hands. Short fur shadowed his arms and the cut of his hips, a claim rather than a pelt. His face stayed a man's face, sharp-boned, fanged just enough for moonlight, ears taller, tail thicker. Half-shifted. Humanoid. Still a man who could be pinned to a tree. The graze pulled, and the pull went straight to his cock.

"Look at you," Teresa said. She had raised the dagger because he wanted her to, and he could see that she knew it. "All that pride, undone by a scratch."

"It isn't undone." He slid back to sleek, lean and quick, the broader mass folding away. The change tugged broken skin. He hissed, and the hiss was not only pain. "I decide what I am."

"Then decide out loud." They began to circle, boots and clawed feet finding the same ring of earth. "You've taunted me for years. Don't get shy now that I can see you."

The sleek form felt too small. He let the half-shift rise again, heavier, mist beading on new muscle, and he did not hide the thick line of his erection.

"I crave it," he said. The words came rough and clear. "Sharp pain. Not a mauling. Your blade, where you put it, because I ask." His ears burned. He kept his chin high. A proud bakaneko did not beg at the dirt. He begged the way he fought. "Stab me, Teresa. I want you to."

She stopped. Color rose in her face. Her thighs pressed once, a tell she would have hated. "You want the point."

"I want you in control of the point." He shifted sleek again so she could see the choice was clear-headed, then half-shifted once more because the want liked the weight of that body. "Shallow if you say shallow. Deeper if I beg and you agree. I know my body. I'm asking."

"My hand doesn't shake." She closed the distance. The silver tip found the hollow under his ribs, not breaking skin, only promising, and drew a cold line down his stomach to the laces. His cock jerked. A sound left him that he would have mocked in any other warrior.

"Again," he said.

"Beg prettier." She held the knife like a question she already meant to answer. Flushed, cool edges gone, she set her free hand on his hip, thumb stroking where fur shaded into skin. "Say please."

"Please." He made it louder, refusing to be small. "Please, Teresa. Stab me. Put it in while you look at me. I want the pain from your hand, and I want you wet for giving it."

Her breath caught. She pressed the tip a fraction harder, and her scent changed: sweat, leather, arousal sharp enough that his half-shifted senses caught it like a match. She was aching. He saw it in her mouth, her restless hips, the shine that was not only triumph.

"You can stop me with a word," she said. "Red, and the blade comes off. More, and I decide the depth. Agreed?"

"Agreed. I'm not confused. I'm a grown man begging you to hurt me the way I want." He pressed her hand, and the tip, more firmly to his skin. "Do it. We're both aching. Stop pretending this hunt was only about the woods."

She laughed once, breathless. "Smug even now."

"Proud," he said, and leaned in until a bright bead of pain answered. "There's a difference."

She moved before he could smirk again. One boot hooked his ankle, her shoulder took him in the chest, and the ancient oak at the clearing's edge caught his back with a thud of bark and breath. His claws sank into the trunk above her head, not into her, and he bared his throat like an offering he refused to call an offering.

"Still proud," she said against his mouth, not quite kissing. "Good. I want you proud while I do this."

"Then do it." His voice shook. "Please."

Teresa set the flat of the silver dagger to the sensitive flank just above his hip, where fur thinned and skin ran hot. She didn't slash. She stabbed the flat into him, a hard blunt drive of metal that shocked the muscle without opening him, then again, and again, rhythmic, controlled, each impact a bright slap of pain that traveled straight to his cock. He moaned. The sound was filthy and loud in the mist. His erection strained the laces until she yanked them open with her free hand and his cock sprang thick and flushed into the cold air, already wet at the tip.

"Harder from that," she said, almost awed, almost cruel in the way he had begged her to be. "You really do want it."

"Yes." He rocked into nothing, shameless, ears flat, tail thrashing against bark. "Chest. Do the chest. Don't you dare go gentle now."

She obliged. The flat struck the heavy muscle of his pectoral, once, twice, a third time that made his nipples draw tight and his cock jump. Then she turned the edge, just enough, and laid a shallow cut along the lower curve of his ribs, controlled, a red line no deeper than a scratch from bramble, burning sweet. Another on the opposite flank, shallow, precise, the silver kissed and withdrawn before it could become harm she had not agreed to give. Blood welled in thin bright threads. Xavier's head knocked the bark. He moaned like the pain was a hand around him.

"Deeper," he begged. "Teresa, please. Deeper thrusts. Put the point in. Not through me. Into me. I can take it. I want the blade fucking the muscle while you fuck me. Please, huntress, stab me deeper."

"Red if it's too much," she reminded him, eyes on his, waiting.

"It's not red. It's more. Give me more."

She nodded once, huntress-sure, and the point entered the thick meat of his flank in a shallow thrust, a finger's breadth, no more, then withdrew, then entered again, a little twist that lit every nerve he owned. He shouted. His cock slapped his stomach, leaking. She did it again, controlled, watching his face the way she watched a trail for the moment it broke. Each shallow stab was a thrust. Each twist was a promise kept. He babbled her name and yes and please and harder, proud mouth ruined.

Her own control frayed in the best way. She shoved her leathers down one-handed, dagger never leaving his skin, and the scent of her cunt hit him so hard his claws scored bark. She was soaked. She caught his cock, stroked once, cruel and perfect, and rose onto her toes to fit him to her.

"Inside," she ordered. "Stand there and take it. You don't get to chase. You get to be ridden."

"Yes. Yes. Stab me while you do it."

She sank onto him in one long, wet slide, standing, back braced by his hands when he dared to hold her hips, her boots planted between his. The oak held them both. She rode hard from the first stroke, grinding down, taking him to the root, thighs tight around his waist when she jumped and locked her ankles behind him, then dropping to stand and slam again. Every descent punched a moan out of him. Every time she rose, the dagger found him: flat striking his chest, edge laying another shallow burning line under his pectoral, point thrusting into the meat of his flank in time with her hips. Pain and pleasure braided until he could not tell which one was making him fuck up into her.

"Look at you," she panted, dominant and flushed and wrecked in her own right. "Proud bakaneko, begging for a knife in his side while his cock fills a huntress. Say it. Tell me what you are."

"Yours to hurt," he gasped, and the admission scorched and thrilled. "Your rival. Your prey tonight. Please, deeper, Teresa, twist it, I'm going to—"

"Not yet." She clenched around him, riding faster, the wet sound of it obscene under the trees. The dagger's point sank a fraction more into the flank, a controlled depth she felt with her fingers on the hilt, and twisted. Xavier howled, a man's sound with a cat's edge, and his cock swelled inside her. She came like that, sudden and shaking, cunt gripping him in pulses, forehead to his, the knife steady even while her body broke. He held still because she had said not yet, shaking apart on the edge, proud of lasting, ruined by it.

When she could breathe, she pulled off him with a wet sound that made them both curse. "Turn."

He turned. Bark against his chest now, cheek to the ancient tree, tail lifted because he knew what she meant and he wanted it. Half-shifted still, muscular, human in the shape that could take her, claws dug in, ass bare where she shoved the leathers lower. She stepped in behind him. One hand spread him. Two fingers, slick from her own cunt, pressed at his hole and pushed in without teasing past the first bright resistance. He bore down and took her, moaning into the wood.

"This is me taking you," she said at his ear. "From behind. You begged to be used. You get the knife and you get my hand. Color?"

"More," he sobbed, proud even in the sob. "Green. More. Stab me. Fuck me. Don't stop."

She fucked him with her fingers, deep, curling, the stretch a sweeter pain beside the sharper one. Her other hand brought the dagger back to his flank and chest, reaching around, stabbing shallow, twisting just enough to white out his vision with ecstatic hurt. The flat slapped sensitive skin between cuts. The point thrust in time with her fingers, never deeper than she had judged he could heal, always enough to make his cock drip onto the roots. He begged without shame now. Please. Harder. Twist it. Another. He was a proud warrior reduced to pleading, and the pleading was the point, and she gave him exactly the control he had asked her to keep.

"Come," she ordered, fingers driving, knife twisting in a shallow burning spiral at his flank. "Come from it. Let me feel you break."

He broke. The orgasm tore up from the pain and the fullness and the sound of her voice, violent and bright, seed striping the bark and his own stomach in hard pulses while he moaned like the forest should hear who owned this moment. She kept the shallow thrusts going through the last shudder, then eased the point free while he whimpered and pushed back for more. She came again grinding against his ass, crying out into his shoulder, their shared climax ringing through the mist.

After, the mist felt cooler. Teresa turned him with a hand on his jaw, still sure. She drew the dagger from the bark and brought the silver to his mouth.

"Open."

He opened. She cleaned the blade across his tongue, slow, steel and faint salt and night. He licked it clean, devoted, eyes on hers, tail curling her calf. When she lowered the knife he dropped to the moss and lapped at her the same way, long strokes through the slick of her cunt, grateful and thorough, drinking the afterglow like a prize won by yielding. She sighed and let him, fingers in his hair between the ears.

"Proud of that?"

"Yes." He rose, mouth shining, chin high despite the cuts cooling on chest and flank. "You gave me exactly the pleasure I begged for. I won't pretend I don't want it again. I'll seek you on the next hunt."

They parted at the clearing's edge, heated glances thrown back into the moonlit woods.

Xavier did not look away until her braid vanished into the mist. The plan sat hot behind his teeth, already complete. He would not chase her trail this time. He would make her come to him. Three nights from now, the old stone ford at moonrise, he would wait half-laced in the shallows, unmarked flank turned to her path, and taunt her until the dagger came out. He already knew the words he would beg with, proud and loud, until she stabbed him again under the same moon.