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When Nurses Fuck Their Patients Blind

or

"Yeah. I'm good. Tits."

Yalara was walking through the corridors of the hospital in what might be described as a bad mood. From the moment she had woken that morning, she had been feeling irritable, somewhat sore, and flushed with what felt like fever.

On reporting for work at the Chakri Imperial Battle Fleet Veteran's Memorial Hospital, she had attempted to beg off nursing duty and simply work on administration from her home, but a quick scan of her vital statistics had revealed that she was not ill - although two of her fellow nurses were, so there was no help for her condition but to have her keep working.

After several hours of examining the patients who were her charges, she had spent the day taking temperatures, blood samples, and administering the kind gestures which were the hallmark of her profession - adjusting the bedding, checking the medication, and inquiring as to the lives of those in her care.

The morning had seen only one new patient, an elderly Chakri veteran of the Emperor's Guards who had been living independently but had become the victim of arthritic joints.

That aside, the day had been one of routine.

And, as had become so common, the moment that Yalara had contemplated how the day had become one of routine, the communicator at her ear had begun to beep urgently. It was beeping in a code which was meant to summon her to the triage area.

I hope that there has not been an incident, she thought. In the Capitol an incident could injure many at once.

On reaching the triage area of the hospital, Yalara was greeted by a sight that relieved her fears only somewhat. In the waiting room of the patient intake area, four figures were sitting in various states of minor injury, and a fifth was standing under the support of a field medic.

And the fifth was not a Chakri.

Too professional to give this oddity more than a passing thought, she immediately headed over to where the four Chakri - all youths, and all male - were sitting, and began to give them a cursory inspection for their injuries.

For two of them, they were apparently the victims of sprained ankle ligaments, and for the other two, they had lacerated their forearms, wrists, and elbows to varying degrees. These Yalara sent off to the appropriate doctors for the rapid treatment of their injuries and further assessments.

The fifth, still very clearly not a Chakri, was apparently uninjured, except for the application of a cold pack to its scalp.

Now that she was close enough to make out some detail in the stranger's face and body structure, it was clear that it was not a Chakri, nor a related species, even. Approximately her own height, but somewhat more heavily and powerfully built, it seemed to have a pelt which was the color of a summer sunset, crossed with black stripes in a manner similar to that of a Te-Chakri. From its chin to the collar of its plain, white shirt, its fur appeared to be a color more like fine white sand.

It has to be completely alien, Yalara thought to herself, or it is clearly from the Earth Confederation. The latter had been known to produce a small number of genetically-engineered lifeforms, of which this might be an example.

No matter, she thought. "Are you all right?" she asked, in Chakri.

The stranger's eyes widened somewhat at her voice, and looked in her direction, but without apparently seeing her only a pace away. "What?"

"He appears to speak Terran English," the medic volunteered.

"Ah," she surmised. "How are you feeling?" she asked, switching to this language with relative ease, and noting that this person was male after all.

Again, the sightless eyes turned toward her. "Well, my head hurts a bit," he replied, heatedly, "but that's not what's bothering me -- it's that I can't _fucking_see!"

She took a moment to digest this, first having to translate it into the appropriate gutter word in Chakri. "Did you strike your head?" she asked.

"Yeah," he replied, "in the same accident that injured all five of us." His eyes darted to where his four companions had been sitting. "They're all okay?"

"They appear to have only minor injuries," she explained. "Perhaps we should have you seated, and we can determine the best way to help you."

"You're the doctor," the stranger said, shrugging his shoulders. She noted how he had good muscle tone in his upper body, and where his right arm was supporting the cold pack against his head, a large bicep flexed slightly. She was also aware, for the first time, that he seemed to have a strange orange-and-black protrusion of fur which rose through the rear of his breeches and described a lazy back-and-forth serpentine motion in midair. Ah, she surmised. A spinal extension for balance and communication. Of course, Chakri no longer have tails, she thought. Is this what we might resemble if we had retained our tails through the course of evolution?

"In point of fact," she replied, taking the stranger by his left upper arm and nodding pleasantly to the field medic, who gave her the slight bow nominal to their professional relationship and then turned to leave the triage area for the resumption of his duties, "I am not a doctor. I am a nurse."

"Well, shit," he replied, "that's disappointing." His brow creased in what might have been annoyance. "Here I am, in the company of a lady who sounds like she's attractive, and I can't see her."

Yalara slowed in her steps to get the stranger into a transport chair, of which the triage area had several, and regarded the stranger coolly. Of course, as he could not apparently see her, her gesture was in vain, but he seemed unabashed about having made some kind of pass at her.

"May I have your name?" she asked him.

"Dimitri," he replied. "Dimitri Donahue."

"An interesting name," she noted, as she assisted him into a transport chair. He slumped back gratefully, gazing at the middle distance forward and beneath his seat. "Dimitri is a name from Earth, is it not?"

"Yeah," he replied. "The name is from Eastern Europe."

She began pushing him in his chair toward a nearby computer terminal. "My name is Yalara," she said, conversationally, "and the name is not traditional among Chakri women."

"Really?" he asked. "I keep running into ladies around here who are called Shalri or Liarah, but you're right - I haven't met anyone named Yalara yet."

"That would not be unusual," she explained, sitting at the terminal and beginning to enter some information on his behalf. "Shalri and Liarah are the names of goddesses. Shalri would be like your ..." She had to think for a moment, although having been educated in Terran medicine she had been exposed to her share of Greek and Latin. "Like your goddess Hera, and Liarah would be like your goddess Aphrodite."

"Wow," he remarked. "'You learn something new every day." He shifted slightly in his chair and gestured helplessly with his free hand. "While that's fascinating, Miss Yalara, I'm a little more concerned about how I still can't see!"

While pretending to take some interest in his peculiar form of humor, she asked for, and received, the exact spelling for his full name. She quickly made some entries in the medical database for Dimitri's patient profile and turned her attention back to him. "If you prefer, you may call me Miss Tadjak," she offered.

He was silent for a moment. "Your family name?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"Huh," he remarked. He shifted the cold pack against his scalp, allowing some of the long, brown hair spilling from his scalp to fall forward, obscuring part of his face. "So ... does that mean that you're from the nobility?"

"I ..." she began, pausing in her work at the computer. "I think of myself as only as noble as I act." She leaned forward and took hold of the cold pack against his head, easing it off, and then beginning a slow, gentle combing of her fingers through his hair and fur to examine his scalp. "The idea of nobility by birth is foolish."

"But your father is supposed to be in the government, or something?"

"Yes," she replied, taking note of what appeared to be a huge swelling against his skull and just under his scalp, where there was an accompanying abrasion. "This was the injury which brought you here?"

"Yeah," he replied. "It was the damnedest thing. 'Some asshole had left a wheeled cart full of goods unattended. 'Just started rolling down the sidewalk. I had stopped to ask those four other guys for directions, and we only just noticed in time to jump out of the way."

"Were you struck by the cart?" she asked, prodding at the swelling gently.

He sucked in a faint hissing breath, but continued. "No," he replied, "I think I hit my head on the ground, or something. I can remember feeling a little dizzy, but I could still see for a while afterward. Then everything became blurry and dark."

"I see," she remarked, retreating back to the computer to enter her findings and Dimitri's account of the incident.

As if he had been carefully watching the proceedings, whether from on high, or through some secret surveillance programme, Doctor Korav chose that moment to walk nearby and peer at Dimitri.

"Welcome to Chakron," Korav said, brightly, in English. "I must apologize for your experience in visiting the Capitol, but I hope that you know that you are in the best of hands." He gently reached down and took Dimitri's free hand. "I am Dr. Korav. Nurse Tadjak is one of my best."

"Glad to hear it, Doctor," Dimitri mumbled.

"Suspected swelling of the brain," Yalara remarked, in Chakri. "Contusion and hematoma of the scalp. Unconfirmed blindness."

Korav grunted in agreement. "So, Mr. Donahue, the next step will be to perform an imaging scan of your head, so we can ensure that your brain has not been injured. It will also give us an idea of the possible causes for your blindness."

"I sure hope so," Dimitri indicated. "But if you tell me I'm in good hands, Doctor, then I feel a lot better."

"Excellent," Korav noted. "Nurse Tadjak will be more than able to direct your care henceforth, but I or another doctor will be available immediately, should you need."

"Thanks, Doctor," Dimitri said, albeit with a forced expression of happiness, as his lips creased into a thin parody of the mirth-smile used on Earth.

"Please," Korav reassured him, "it is nothing." Out of habit, the old doctor made the courteous slight bow of farewell that Dimitri was unable to see, and silently padded away to examine another part of the triage area.

"He sounds like a nice guy to work for," Dimitri remarked, rolling the cold pack against his head to a more comfortable position.

Yalara's ears shifted a fraction higher. "Yes," she agreed, "Dr. Korav is the best doctor in the Empire. It is a considerable privilege to work with him."

"He sounds like he's not the youngest guy in the place," Dimitri remarked.

Yalara's ears flattened abruptly. She was silent a moment, but she heard the desk at which she was sitting creak faintly, so tightly she gripped the edge. "Listen to me ..." she fairly hissed at him, "if you were dying, you would be lucky to have Dr. Korav caring for you."

Dimitri's eyes widened, and his fur bristled slightly. "I'm sorry ..." he started, and then moistened his lips. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just that he sounded ... a little old."

"On Chakron, we respect our elders!" she growled at him. She turned back to the computer and stabbed at some buttons with impatience. "From the youngest to the oldest," she muttered.

As she worked, he was curiously silent, with a slightly crestfallen expression on his face, as his sightless eyes stared rather uncomfortably into the distance.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, lowering the cold pack and gently setting it on the desk. "You sound like you're having a hard day."

She paused, and then finished entering Dimitri's information into his file more calmly, before she sat back in her chair. "This from a man -" She nearly bit off her tongue at having potentially insulted him, but pressed on regardless. " - who is undoubtedly having a more distressing day than I." She put a hand to her forehead. "I apologize," she said, attempting to massage some of the soreness out. "Perhaps I am having a day where I would prefer to be at home."

"Me too," Dimitri replied, his lips parting slightly to reveal polished teeth. "Although I know for a fact there aren't any doctors or nurses at my house."

Yalara chittered a short laugh of heartfelt relief, and then sobered somewhat. "It may be that nothing but time will heal your injury," she explained. "However, we will gain much insight from a high-definition scan of your brain, and from there we can plan your treatment."

"Awesome," he replied, gently arching his eyebrows in a minimal show of enthusiasm, but folding his hands in his lap.

She stood, and made her way to the rear of Dimitri's transport chair before giving it a gentle push toward the interior of the hospital. "May I ask what brought you to Chakron? We see very few visitors from Earth or elsewhere in the Confederation."

"I'm vacationing, actually," he explained, as they passed into one of the hospital's white-painted corridors. "It was summer in California, so I figured I'd take a few days to visit and see what you guys have to offer."

"I see," she replied, even though she didn't fully comprehend. They turned a corner, heading for the hospital's diagnostic imaging department. "Do you conduct business from California?"

"Some," he explained. "I sell organic food and other products produced in North America, and I thought I might see what the markets were like here." He paused. "That," he added, lowering his voice, "and I heard that the women were pretty." He chuckled to himself. "Ironic, eh?"

She slowed in her trek up the corridor. "I beg your pardon?"

"Ironic," he repeated. "Ironic that I came here to do business and see the girls, and I can't do either."

She considered this for a moment, and then resumed her steady pace. "I believe you may mean, 'poetic,' Mr. Donahue."

"Sorry," he replied, "it's been a while since I've been in a classroom. And please - call me Dimitri."

"As you wish," she replied. "We maintain an informal atmosphere here, even though most of our patients are veterans. You may call me Yalara, if you wish." They continued along the corridor toward a large door, marked in large letters in both the Chakri and Roman alphabets, the latter proclaiming "Diagnostic Imaging." As the foot of the transport chair touched the doors, Yalara added, "but perhaps only when we are in private company."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," he said.

* * *

For Dimitri, the time spent since he'd been injured earlier that day had been some of the longest minutes and hours of his life. He could remember times when his view of things had filled him with peace, and with hope.

Rock-climbing at Joshua Tree near Palm Springs, where he could set up a shelter suspended against a sheer rock face and watch the sun go down over the Pacific, until the lights of Los Angeles began to sparkle in the night.

Kayaking down the Colorado - at times violent, with the white water and spray flashing in the noonday sun, and at times peaceful, watching the play of the sun on the canyon walls as he drifted past. Floating lazily on the river's surface until it gently released him and his boat into the Gulf of California, and he found himself drifting down to San Felipe to catch a transport back north again.

And now, he thought, all I have are the fleeting mental images of what I remember. Flashes of color and the phantom images of old scenery were all that he could see, and these only when he concentrated hard. Otherwise, all he saw was blackness.

He could still hear and feel, on the other hand, far more than his blunted senses could smell or taste. It was times like this - when he couldn't see anything worth a damn - when he found he longed to be able to use his sense of smell like the tiger stock that his engineered DNA had been derived from. Compromises, he thought. They kept the low-light vision, which - again - doesn't matter a damn right now.

He sighed, and shifted in the transport chair where Nurse Yalara Tadjak had left him. As his scalp was slowly warming back up to the temperature of his blood, the ache where his skull had slammed into - well, into whatever-it-was he'd hit as he'd dove for cover - had begun to return.

His ears perked slightly at the sound of Yalara's claws gently clicking on the polished floor nearby. "We are now ready to begin the general scan of your body, followed by a close scan of your skull and brain. Let me help you up and over to the platform here ..."

A pair of delicate, yet strong hands made contact with his, and slid fingers under his to draw him very slowly to his feet. Despite being unable to see, he found his balance easily, from years and years of vigorous exercise and a very toned body core.

"Are you steady on your feet?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, "I'm good."

"Is this the current fashion for Earth, in warmer months?" she asked.

He was taken off-guard by this latest question, that he hesitated even before he could consider what he'd decided to wear that morning. "Uh ..." he started. "Well, sort of," he explained. "This is a little more conservative than I'd wear on Earth, in a warm climate."

Intellectually, he knew that all he was wearing was a lightweight shortsleeved cotton shirt, and a pair of grey drawstring cotton shorts, which reached down to his knees in loose cuffs. The airflow was quite nice, outdoors, but the interior of the hospital was full of cool and adequately dry air.

He could hear Yalara swallow, faintly. "We normally have patients disrobe for the scan, where possible. It is unlikely that your clothing would interfere with the scan, but ..." Her voice trailed off.

"Oh, that's alright," he reassured her, attempting to recover some of the charm and swagger he was known for amongst his friends on Earth. "I'm a little more plush than some of you, so I won't actually be naked."

As sightless as he was, he was more than able to find the buttons at the front of his shirt and undo them, shrugging his shoulders and arms out of the garment before catching it on a clawtip. After that, he untied his shorts and unbuttoned the small loop over his tail so that they slipped easily from his waist, to his hips, and finally to a heap around his ankles. It was a relatively simple matter to step one foot out of his shorts, grip the fabric between his first and second toes, and perform a slow, hacky-sack motion in front of his opposite thigh to collect up the remainder of his clothes.

He stood, motionless, with his clothes in front of his crotch, listening to Yalara's calm breathing, until he was aware of her hands slowly cupping his. She had warm pawpads, which slid around his knuckles and paused there, for a moment which his senses found lasted for an eternity, before her hands withdrew and took his clothing with them.

"Let me put these aside for you," she said finally, in a quiet voice, and left him standing in the dark, formless void that his world had been reduced to. As sorry as he felt for himself, though, the recent memory of her touch was slow to fade from his consciousness.

"There," she said, brightly, after he heard her take a deep breath. Her grip on his left hand reappeared. "Turn to your right, and I will guide you forward less than a pace."

He made what he estimated was a square turn to his three-o'clock, and then shuffled forward until he felt his outstretched right hand bump into something solid, at about waist-height. It felt, on inspection, to be a very smooth metallic surface, practically vertical.

"Good ..." Yalara continued, and the grip she held on his hand slackened as there was the faint sound of metallic creaking from in front of him, the metallic surface sliding almost frictionlessly across his pawpads a few centimeters to his left. "Excellent," she repeated, "and if you will slowly turn to face the opposite way ..." He complied, as quickly as he could manage without losing his balance. As she shifted her grip from his hand to his shoulder, there was more metallic creaking.

"There," she confirmed. "Now, with your hands at your sides, you should feel two handles." As he searched around in the space at his sides, his fingers collided with two solid metal rods at about the same time his elbows found the metallic surface at his back.

"You seem ..." she started, and then fell silent again. "I do not believe the foot supports will be necessary," she explained. "Simply grip the handles, and I will warn you when the surface is about to tilt."

"Uh ..." he started. "Uh, 'tilt?'"

"Yes," she confirmed. "The surface will tilt so that you ... er, will feel as though you are falling backward."

Great ... he thought. Blindness, a head injury, and the possibility of another head injury. "Okay ..." he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Whenever you're ready."

He gripped the two handles as tightly as he could, and willed his heart to beat a little more slowly as the surface against which he as standing began to fall backward, as though it were a felled tree. The force he felt inside of his clenched fists, against the ball and web of each of his thumbs, slackened rapidly until he felt himself laying flat, with the relative chill of the platform against his shoulders and buttocks.

"In a moment," Yalara continued, "the platform will elevate slightly, and you will be moved into the scanner. Please do not be alarmed - I am told the process is slow and very gentle."

"Well ..." he considered, relaxing his grip on the handles. "All things considered, I would prefer 'slow and gentle' to 'fast and rough' so I don't fall off this thing."

"If it would reassure you," she said, "I have been in this very scanner myself."

"That's nice," he mused. He was about to add, "but I bet when you were in it, you weren't blind," when the sound of motorized machinery swelled from a faint hum to a more strident noise, and the surface underneath him lifted before swaying indeterminably in one direction, and then another, before it stopped.

"So what's this supposed to feel like?" he asked.

"You will not be able to feel the scanner as it works," she explained, "and it would be best if you remain as still as you are able, but you may breathe normally." There were the sounds of Yalara's hands on computer controls, as it chimed and beeped its way through confirmation of the tasks she was assigning it. "Each scan will only take perhaps ... ten seconds," she clarified, "and will be preceded and accompanied by this sound."

A benign, fairly high-pitched tone filled the air, at an easily-recognizable but not uncomfortable volume.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"Sure," he replied. "Go ahead."

There were a few moments of uncertain length as he tried to regulate his breathing in anticipation of the warning tone he'd heard, but all he heard were the subtle electromechanical operations of something that seemed to be in the distance above him.

At last, after he was about to heave a frustrated sigh and ask her when the scan would start, he heard the warning tone, and had enough time to hold his breath.

The scan took approximately as long as his personal count of ten seconds lasted, and he found that he was not at all short of breath when the scan ended. "Good," Yalara's voice reassured him. "Two more, for a close examination of your brain."

He took a moment to catch his breath, after which he waited patiently through two more iterations of the scan before he heard Yalara murmuring quietly and otherwise wordlessly over what he assumed were his scan results.

"So ..." he ventured. "Good news or bad?"

"Neither," she said, quietly. "I should clarify, however," she added, regaining some of her poise, "that you do not appear to have any other injuries aside from what I suspect is a concussion. No intra-cranial hemorrhage. However ... what I find odd is that your brain does not appear to have any regions of swelling - even near where your skull was struck."

"Uh ... is that unusual?" he asked.

"Somewhat," she replied. "With no swelling of your brain, and no depression of your skull ..." He heard the idle click-click! of her claws against what he guessed was a desk console. "I would like to have Dr. Korav review these scan results," she said, "but I cannot see any cause for your blindness."

He was silent for a moment. Part of him wanted to curse and lash out at receiving useless news, but after a few seconds of smoldering resentment let him consider for a moment, he realized he could only curse at Yalara, and she'd been nothing but nice to him. And, he thought to himself, let's be fair about this - if I want to try hitting something I'm probably going to fall off this thing. God knows how far up in the air I am ...

_ _

"Okay," he said, after he'd had a chance to digest her last statement. "So ... what's next?"

* * *

After receiving some medication to help with his headache, and after she helped him orient himself to the washroom, Dimitri seemed to be in better spirits and was settling into the room he had been assigned. Thankfully, the ward to which Dimitri was assigned was essentially empty, there being no other patients or residents requiring assistance for visual impairment.

By the time Dimitri was settled in his bed, it was time for his evening meal, which Yalara was happy to bring to him, if only to provide the end of her day with some variety. In truth,_she thought, _he is not unpleasant to have as company. Not boorish, but perhaps merely unused to our ways. Or ... merely unused to being dependent on another.

He lay, dressed once again in his shirt and breeches, on the simple bed that was typical of Chakri hospital care, and described a placidly, comfortably stretched-out form with his broad hands folded across his stomach. Since his height was not terribly much more than hers, the bed held his frame easily. On the side opposite from where she was standing, his tail emerged from under his body at his thigh and was lazily draped across his legs.

"Dimitri," she said quietly, from the doorway.

"Hm?" came his brief reply, as his ears rotated to find the source of the greeting, but his eyes remained closed in light repose.

"Yalara," she indicated, beginning a slow walk into the room and past the row of empty beds to where he was resting.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, opening his eyes - to no apparent effect - and sitting up partly to face in her direction.

"Be still," she urged him gently. "I am merely bringing your meal."

"Thanks," he replied. "Are we alone?" he asked, brightly. "'Cos otherwise I figure I'd have turned into my creator."

"Your creator?" she asked, setting the tray containing his meal on his bedside table. "Will you have changed into some kind of god? And do I suppose that your notion of an afterlife involves only you and I, sole inhabitants of the Happy Hunting Grounds?"

His ears lifted, and his lips parted so that he could utter a short chuckle. "No, no," he explained, "nothing of the sort. I meant that instead of calling me Dimitri, you'd be calling me Mr. Donahue." He gestured with his hands in order to elaborate. "Mr. John Patrick Donahue was a scientist of the 22nd century on Earth who specialized in genetic engineering. He was the one who successfully spliced human DNA with that of the Bengal tiger." He waved vaguely across the room. "Well, among others."

"I see," she replied. "You are correct, however. We are alone in this room, so I am confident that we may dispense with propriety without being overheard, if you wish."

"'Just as well," he quipped. "It's not like I'll be able to use silverware."

Quirking part of her brow at his surprising good humor, she carefully retrieved the broad, shallow bowl from his tray and lightly set it on his chest. He lightly braced the bowl with his left hand as he explored it with his right, eventually coming up with a cube of warmed Dr'Etei meat.

"Mmm ..." he considered, sniffing at the morsel. "Very lean meat," he commented, "is it local?"

"Yes," she advised, "not unlike beef. Although we have a very simple seasoning in the form of a powder, which would give it a more smoked flavor. Would you like some?"

For answer, he popped the small piece into his mouth and maneuvered it around his carnassial teeth for a few seconds, carving it into progressively smaller bits. "Mhmm ..." he murmured, enthusiastically. "It's got a really nice dark-meat dimension to it. I could see myself selling this to some of my clients on Earth." He swallowed, almost with an air of regret, and licked his lips appreciatively. "Yeah, if you've got some of that seasoning handy ..."

She had already begun shaking a small dose of the powder over his bowl, from the dispenser which accompanied the tray's more varied contents. His nose twitched as the smell began to permeate the air near his face, and he snatched up another piece of meat to pop into his mouth. "It smells a little like hickory ..." he remarked, although his eyes closed halfway and his vacant irises appeared to slide almost up into his skull, as his comment trailed off amidst the sound of wet, sloppy masticating.

He made what could only be described as a guttural, nearly insensate sound in the depths of his larynx which resembled a deep-pitched sort of purring noise - the kind that might be made by a Terran feline of approximately his size - if such felines could purr at all.

It was also eerily similar to the wordless sound made by an adult male Chakri, after his voice had dropped to its eventual adult pitch, and more particularly just after such a Chakri had enjoyed a strong sexual climax.

Of a sudden, Yalara's vague feeling of uncomfortable warmth seemed to intensify, filling the soft-furred membranes of her ears, the shapely curve of her cheeks, and every ounce of soft flesh from the tip of her nose to either corner of her generous lips. Along with this, she was acutely aware that she had begun to salivate so intensely that she had perhaps a second or two before she would begin to drool over Dimitri's supper.

Her jaw closed with a hollow _clop!_and she turned her head away for a moment, even though he was unable to see her reaction.

"Oh ... Lord," Dimitri was heard to mutter, "this is so good ..." There were a few seconds more of unaccompanied chewing before he resumed his commentary. "How in the hell have I not eaten this before now?"

She gathered up a measure of control over her mouth, first swallowing some of the copious saliva which was threatening to float her tongue like a barge, and then flexing her jaw a few times. "Raw Dr'Etei, especially that of the young animals, is a very tender and flavorful meat. Although, I must confess that we do not serve it here for reasons of flavor. Rather, it is purely for economy."

"Well," he mumbled, past a mouthful of his supper, "I know at least one thing I'll be taking back to Earth with me." Upon swallowing, he seemed to sober slightly, and his expression took on a somber aspect. "Do you suppose I could find a seeing-eye dog here?"

She blinked. "I beg your pardon?" she asked, unoffended.

He shook his head, gently. "Nevermind," he said quietly, pursing his lips into a pleasant expression which Yalara could tell was feigned. "At least I'll have fun keeping my strength up," he added, hunting around for another bite of meat from his bowl. "Did Dr. Korav have anything to add to what you'd said earlier about my scan results?"

She looked down, involuntarily. "He examined the results twice," she explained, "but he was at a loss to identify a specific cause for your blindness." She plucked a fist-sized container from the tray and pulled on a small protrusion to extend what revealed itself to be a drinking straw. "I thought that you might like this," she said, gently taking hold of his free hand and wrapping his fingers around the thing. "Drink," she urged.

He took a moment to find the drinking straw, when he raised the container to his lips, but on taking a sip of the beverage within the shatterproof, spillproof container, he gave a muted grunt of approval and quickly swallowed. "How did you sneak me a beer in -"

"Hush!" she whispered. "Unless you wish to have me disciplined, let that remain between us." On impulse, she reached out and stroked gently at the spot where the curiously thin and straight hair emerged from his forehead. "I thought you might like something to help you relax, before such time as you need any sleep medication." She withdrew her hand, and gently cleared her throat. "That," she clarified, "and I wished to bear a gift along with bad news."

His expression softened. "Well, I appreciate it," he said. He raised the drink in a modest salute. "I'll keep it between us," he assured her, "and I'm sure this will all blow over in a day or two."

She bowed slightly in his direction, and stood. "I shall return in the morning. Until then -- my hopes for a night filled with sleep and pleasant dreams."

"Thanks," he replied.

As she backed out of the room, he seemed so attentive to her leaving that he only turned his attention back to his meal as she moved through the doorway and the sight of him reclining on his bed was lost.

She turned and began walking for the nurse's lounge, taking a deep breath once she felt she was comfortably out of earshot, and idly rubbed at her nose, which was itching slightly.

The faint scent of Dimitri's hair on her palm brought a fresh flush to her ears. Perhaps I should arrive at work early tomorrow, she thought. I may need to perform a few tests, and not of the usual kind.

* * *

After a night of fitful sleep, an early morning of more vague aches and feverish sensations than the day before, and a trip to work with more idle time to ponder her situation than perhaps was healthy, Yalara found herself in the hospital's laboratory.

The previous day had given her nothing but confusion - her vague symptoms of mild illness, her unusual feelings of physical attraction to Dimitri Donahue, and her unusual impulsive behavior in obtaining for him an ale with his evening meal.

The morning, after the analysis of a small phial of her urine, and an even smaller phial of her blood, gave her the explanation for most of what was confusing her. Moreover, to alleviate the remainder of her confusion, all she needed to consult was a calendar.

Tahrak save me, she muttered inwardly, of all the times for this to happen.

As a Chakri woman she had learned early the name for this phenomenon. Ra'hran, the cyclical period of five days in every ninety, was a fact of life for every Chakri woman of mature age, and was as predictable as the rising of the sun. In parts large or small, Chakri society was structured to make allowance for this time when both fertility and sexual drive reached their peak.

Rai'ra'hran, for reasons only nature could explain, came and went like clouds in front of the sun - unpredictably, without any warning, and without any clue as to its strength or duration. Well,_she thought, _not completely unpredictably. Stress and overcrowding were thought to be factors.

She cursed inwardly. Intellectually, she knew that this instance of rai'ra'hran, something which was named false heat but was damnably real in how it felt, would only last perhaps two or three days.

She also knew that her options were scant.

Standing as she was, in the unoccupied analytical area of the laboratory, with most of the lights turned off and with a comfortable fifteen minutes before the start of her shift, she nonetheless angrily snatched the small phials of her various bodily fluids from the automated analyzer tray and cast them into the medical waste receptacle.

She slid the pads of her palms down her forehead until she could feel the cool of the two of them over her eyelids. If yesterday had been unpleasant, today was almost torturous. She was feeling equally as irritable, the vague ache which had been plaguing her was now focused maddeningly in only her nether regions, and the feverish sensation just under her skin was only momentarily and locally soothed by idly stroking the fur there.

Where her thighs would occasionally brush past each other, it was almost more than she could bear. Attempting to walk past the sleeping patients and occasional fellow staff member had been a choice between two equally unpalatable alternatives - she could stride normally and feel as though her genitals were being caressed alternately by fire and cool, or she could walk like a recently splayed whore and be the subject of laughter and gossip.

She knew what Dr. Korav would say. He would regard her from over his graying muzzle, with the slightly rheumy and tired eyes of his elderly age, and ask her what she wished to do. Dr. Korav - kind and understanding, completely male and elderly enough to be immune to wheedling by sympathy or pheromones.

She was not legitimately ill. Not really. She was merely uncomfortable. Her two co-workers who were absent _were_legitimately ill.

If she opted to go home, she would rapidly find herself on the receiving end of ire from her fellow nurses.

She could, she mused, take a suppressive drug and mute the effects of a false heat. There were, as far as she could see, at least two problems with that approach: First, the drug would take perhaps a half-day or more to reach full effect, by which time her symptoms might have abated; and second, it was as likely as not that when the drug's effects ceased, her body might undergo a second false heat of a few days' duration, in addition to a radical disruption of her cycle for at least the remainder of the year.

She lightly ground the pads of her palms into her eyes until she could see the sparkle and bursting of false colors through her field of vision. Awful, she thought. This is awful, but there is no help for it.

She lightly scrubbed her palms and the pads of her fingers across her face to alleviate some of her discomfort, and then lowered her hands to her waist as she took a few deep breaths to relax herself.

Almost mechanically, she went through her usual morning routine - signing in for her duty shift, delicately wiggling her communicator into place so that it sat comfortably in her right ear, and occasionally straightening the folds of her gown so that she appeared presentable to her co-workers and patients.

It was perhaps an hour or so, before she found an excuse to take Dimitri's breakfast to him. It was not dissimilar from his supper of the day before, with warmed, raw meat and seasoning, but also with some scrambled fowl's eggs, and some milk, besides.

She found Dimitri essentially where he she had left him - in his bed, with his hands neatly folded over his stomach, and stretched from end to end as peacefully as a newborn babe. His breeches were rumpled, and the fur of his shins was disheveled as though he had been idly and slowly kicking his feet along the bedclothes. The only sign of life from him was the gentle rising and falling of his chest, as he breathed in a slow, steady rhythm.

As was the practice with patients who were suddenly and unusually blinded, she was careful to place his breakfast tray down quietly, and to stand well away from him as she quietly cleared her throat.

"Dimitri?" she whispered.

He began to stir slowly, breathing more deeply, and stretching out the sinews in his legs. To appearances, he was waking pleasantly from a long and restful sleep. At the moment that she saw his eyelids flicker and begin to open, however, she whispered his name again, somewhat more loudly.

Both his eyes and his ears moved to face toward her, but as he began to blink more rapidly and his expression changed from one of mild curiosity to one of consternation, she spoke more rapidly. "Shhh ..." she soothed. "Nurse Yalara Tadjak," she elaborated for him. "You are still in hospital."

He looked disappointed, and his eyes closed tight as he fell back onto the mattress beneath him, putting his palms to his face and taking a deep breath noisily through his nostrils.

It was a long moment before he answered her. "I was dreaming," he said, almost wistfully. He lowered his hands so that he appeared to be describing a scene which existed in the distance beyond his fingertips. "I was dreaming of the first time I'd seen one of my girlfriends naked."

He licked his lips a moment before continuing. "She was human, actually," he explained. "And I don't know what it was about her, but she was a natural for being a tease when she undressed for me." He let his hands fall heavily to his chest, and continued with a more muted tone. "I'd never seen naked skin before. There was ... there was a window in her room that let some evening sunlight in, and the way the light caught her -"

He gritted his teeth so hard that she saw the bunching of muscles at the angle of his jaw and at his temple, where the fur there was shorter, and below where his hair began.

"Would you like something to eat?" she asked.

"I was hoping that a good night's sleep would at least start to heal whatever it is ..." he said, after a long moment. His voice trailed off.

"Part of our plans for today," she supplied, after waiting for him to continue, "will be to scan your brain again. It is possible that we may find a solution in the scan results."

"Do you think so?" he asked.

"It is certainly possible," she affirmed. "Although if the scan is inconclusive, Dr. Korav has other therapies which he may prescribe." She slowly reached over to his tray, picked up the bowl of meat, and then picked up the seasoning dispenser to sprinkle some over its contents. "You should eat," she insisted, picking up one of his hands by the wrist and settling his palm against the bowl's side. "You may need your strength today, or the nutrition to heal properly."

He sighed, but braced his opposite hand against the bowl as well, neatly trapping hers against its cool surface. After a moment, where his expression brightened for an instant, he took the bowl from her and balanced it on his stomach. "Good points," he agreed. "You know ..." he continued, casually closing those fingers which had touched hers together in what vaguely resembled a fist, "you have very warm hands. 'Must be an advantage in a job like yours."

Her fingers were still tingling where he'd touched hers, although at this latest remark from him, she felt her ears grow warmer, if such a thing were possible. Looking at him now, as she was, she was aware of how he resembled a Te-Chakri, even though his coloration was more black-on-red than black-on-white. He had a handsome dimension to him, as she watched his eyes gazing placidly at nothing in particular.

"Please excuse me," she said, hurriedly, smoothing the hem of her robe and standing. "There is something I must attend to. There is more of your breakfast at your table."

"Uh -" he said, uncertainly, and as she whirled and made for the doorway, his voice faded rapidly into the distance. "Okay ..."

She hurried, as fast as her feet and tingling thighs would allow her, and darted into the nearest single-occupant washroom. She engaged the lock with a clack! that surely must have echoed down the corridor and back, and then stood for a long moment, with her back braced against the door.

After a moment, having felt the pull of incompatible urges intensify, she had to be satisfied taking a deep breath, holding it for a moment, releasing it in a huff! and then firmly resting her palms on the front of her thighs - half on the fabric of her gown, half on the fur of her knees, which felt as though they were crackling with the static of a vigorous grooming.

She turned, as innocently and as nonchalantly as she could manage, perhaps attempting to convince only herself -which stands to reason, she thought, without trying to think about it too much - as I am the only one in the room. Curving her fingers under the hem of her gown and slowly lifting it to her waist, she bent at her knees and sat lightly on the toilet, just as she felt her sudden urge to urinate was becoming unbearable.

She cursed silently - she cursed her body's biology, she cursed her gender, and especially and angrily cursed the opposite gender - males of all kinds, from the unkind classmates she had met at an early childhood age to the instructors and mentors in her adulthood who had failed to take her seriously.

Eventually, after she sank her face into her palms, she relaxed enough to get on with the business of relieving herself. As her thoughts of gender-specific loathing slowly ebbed, she began to think of more practical matters.

For example, how she was going to go about wiping herself without inflaming her loins.

* * *

Dimitri had managed, with minimal difficulty and with considerable enthusiasm, to finish off his bowl of warmed Dr'etei meat. He'd been relieved that his nose hadn't been fooling him, on finding the scrambled eggs in another bowl on his breakfast tray. Without some salt and a little black pepper, he thought, it's not quite the same, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

He gave his glass a fractional tilt, taking in some of what he assumed was cold, creamy Dr'etei milk, and patted his stomach. Nice of these guys to give me the red-carpet treatment, he thought, 'specially when I haven't paid into the Chakri health care system.

The faint sound of claws on floor tile gradually became louder as he sensed someone enter the room. He quickly downed the last few mouthfuls of milk and idly gripped the glass in both hands, turning his face toward where he estimated the doorway to be.

"Hello?" he asked, in the hope that whoever was nearby spoke English.

"Yalara," her voice indicated.

Oh thank god, he thought. "I'm sorry," he said, "I hope it wasn't something I said ..."

"Oh, nothing of the sort," she assured him. "I really did have a small task to attend to," she explained, "but I also wished to give you a chance to eat in peace."

He ran his tongue around the teeth in his upper jaw and moistened his lips. "Delicious!" he proclaimed. "I can't remember when I had a breakfast like that."

"I am glad that you enjoyed yourself," she said, apparently drawing closer to where he was laying partway twisted on his side. "If you wish," she offered, "I can arrange to take you to the baths or the showers before we attempt to image your brain again."

He considered for a moment. I could almost go for a relaxing bath, he thought, and who knows? Maybe Yalara with her warm hands would be the one in command of the sponge ...

"Well," he said, rolling the idea around in his head, "while a bath sounds like a good idea for today, if it's all the same to you, I think we should go ahead and scan my brain again first - hoping that there's a clue there."

"Very well," she replied. "Permit me to help you up, and we shall reach the imaging room in only a few moments."

As he reached out toward her, she took his hands, and pulled as he came up onto his feet from the edge of the bed. As he tried to find his balance, between having no visual referents and with his legs having been largely inactive over the last day, he stumbled, and ended up on his knees with his hands gripping what he guessed were the opposing sides of Yalara's slender waist. His nose, leading the way forward, ended up buried in the cleft between her breasts, as she was barely able to keep a grip on his upper arms, with most of his weight behind his fall.

"Oh," was all he could manage, in the sort of voice a child would use when confronted with something unanswerable.

She didn't respond immediately, although could swear that he could hear her breath quicken as she stood silent. At length, she gave his upper arms a gentle squeeze, where his triceps muscles met his deltoids. "I apologize," she murmured. "You are perhaps built more solidly than you ... ah, appear to be."

He gently rocked backward at the waist, settling back on his haunches and withdrawing his noise from the softness of her bosom. "I'm the one who should be apologizing," he corrected her. "I'm used to getting around on my own." There was something vaguely tickling his nose - some scent which might've been gracing her fur - which he couldn't immediately identify. He slowly rose to his feet, after which he noticed that she was still holding on to his arms.

"Uh ..." he started. Warm hands, he thought to himself. Damned if she doesn't feel feverish. "Sorry," he continued, "I don't think I can lead the two of us out of this room, much less down the hall."

"Mm?" she queried. "Oh! Of course," she exclaimed, releasing him and guiding his hand to her upper arm. "I ... I seem to be having an interesting morning," she explained.

"You're not getting sick, are you?" he asked, casually. She inched a little closer to him as, presumably, she led him through the door to his room. The side of her breast was soft against his fingers. "I usually get a little space-y when I start getting sick."

"No," she explained, patiently. "I am not ill." They walked for a short time, in their slow manner, before she elaborated. "I am not feeling quite like myself today, however."

"That's too bad," he said, sympathetically. "You seem like you're ..." He tried to sound as though he wasn't overly interested. "I dunno ... maybe a little warm."

"A ... a personal matter," she indicated. "Nothing serious."

"Oh," he replied. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.

"I am afraid not," she replied.

Something in her tone of voice told him that she was merely being polite. He didn't press the matter.

* * *

As they passed through the door to the Diagnostic Imaging department's scan room, and only for the second time, Dimitri seemed to be getting nimble on his feet despite still being unable to see.

Yalara led him over to the computer console, nearby which the scanner's mobile platform was hanging from its track and sitting idle.

"How do you feel?" she asked him, attempting to sound very professional in tone. "Aside from your understandable bruises from yesterday, do you feel well?"

"Bruises never bothered me," he said, with the slightly toothy grin of a crafty individual. "When I'm bored," he explained, "I climb rocks." He shrugged. "I think this is the clue I've been waiting for - maybe I should wear a helmet or something." He shook his head sadly, with humor, at first, but then a grim look seemed to settle about his face, as his lips drew together in a tight line.

She reached over, to where his fingers were fastened gently around her upper arm, and touched his hand. "Let us see what the scan reveals," she suggested, reassuringly.

"You're the boss," he said, nodding. He eased his grip on her arm, and thrust his thumbs into the waistbands of his breeches. "Same drill as yesterday?"

"I beg your pardon?" she asked.

He said nothing in reply, but turned his fingertips to unfastening his shorts. As his shorts began to fall, he started the business of unbuttoning his shirt, eventually ending up in the same state of complete undress as he had been the day before, although he stood with his shirt hanging from his right fist, and made no movement to retrieve his breeches.

Although she had no reason to do so, she felt her feet carrying her lightly around to where she could get a good look at him from his front. As much as she wanted to continue with getting him scanned and then safely back in bed, she was also unable to tear her eyes away from him.

He had not been lying when he had described his fur as 'plush,' and the cream-colored fur which covered him from his chin to this groin glittered faintly under the bright lighting in the scan room. Plush as it was, however, it followed the contours of his musculature - impressive for a non-Chakri - closely and honestly, all the way from his collarbone, down past his toned stomach, and down to an anomalous little protrusion ...

She blinked. I'd forgotten what I was supposed to expect, she thought. Years and years of seeing - far too often in a clinical context - the genitals of Chakri and human males in repose, had conditioned her to expect a small, dangling bit of flesh nestled atop two suspended orbs. Terran anthropomorphs were so rare that their individual anatomies were not studied in detail.

Dimitri had gonads - this was obvious, she considered, caressing his rather generous endowments with her eyes - but whatever maleness he normally kept concealed from the light of day was hidden inside of a white-furred sheath, just above where his pubic bone would be.

As she found herself gently bending forward at the waist, slowly decreasing the distance between her nose and what promised to be a pleasant surprise - whatever was hiding inside his sheath - she realized that she was more than merely a little mesmerized.

She had been in her profession long enough to know that occasions like this were what got nurses in trouble.

She shifted, and dipped to the floor just long enough to grab hold of his breeches, and then straightened. "Let me put your clothes aside for you," she said, in a voice which she hoped was steady and neutral.

"Sure," he replied, holding out his shirt for her to take.

Taking a deep breath to restore some of her calm, she took his clothes and set them lightly on the edge of the computer console. From this vantage point, she could see him from his backside, and this merely gave her more things to look at which made her feel unsettled. He was being honest when he mentioned that he climbed rocks for leisure, she thought. He has the legs of a weightlifter. After years and years of seeing the legs of Chakri, which were athletic and toned, but not necessarily solid or bulky, Dimitri appeared to have legs which could carry him anywhere.

Carry ... lift ... climb ... propel ...

His tail described a lazy arc in the space behind his shoulder blades, its tip crooking in the universal gesture on both Earth and Chakron for 'come hither.'

She felt herself salivating again.

Drive ... lunge ... thrust ...

She clenched her left fist so hard that she felt the sting of her claws, retracted as they were, starting to prick the flesh under the pad of her palm.

I need this false heat to be over and done with, she thought. If this does not abate by evening, I will have to consider my options.

She engaged the computer controls which brought the scanner's platform down to the floor. As before, it took only a moment to guide him to where he was standing with his back to the platform's polished surface, and where he could grip the platform's bracing handles until she had maneuvered the platform to where it was horizontal and inserted into the scanner aperture - a massive, toroidal shape suspended from the ceiling.

Her fingers danced lightly over the controls which would perform the same pair of scans of his brain and sound the warning tone when he ought to lie still. Years of performing this same routine gave the procedure almost a dreamlike aspect, where she almost let her body and mind relax as she waited for the scan to finish.

The appropriate chirp from the computer brought her back to reality, and she quickly entered the appropriate sequence to bring Dimitri back down to approximately waist-height from the floor.

"So what's the verdict?" Dimitri asked, sounding as jovial as he might, under the circumstances.

"Allow me to have the computer perform a comparison," she advised, "between these scans and the previous set." She punched the appropriate keys on the computer and set the scan analysis to running. "Any changes over the last day should be detected easily."

Despite her assurances, the computer ran for a stretch of ten, twenty, and even thirty seconds, but was unable to find any symptom of brain injury or neurological disruption which might explain Dimitri's persistent blindness.

Nor could she.

After carefully saving the scan results for Dr. Korav to examine later, she stepped over to the platform, where Dimitri was laying patiently, idly scratching his claws through the fur of his chest.

"So ..." he said, almost brightly, "any change?"

She started to shake her head, but her heart felt as though it sank slightly as she realized it was to no avail. "None," she said. "I cannot find an explanation for your blindness, much as I might wish to."

His claws stopped in mid-scratch across his chest, and as his sightless eyes closed tight in apparent frustration, he put his other hand to his forehead. When he did speak, the anguish in his voice was evident. "I was hoping that there'd be some ... some reason for this, but ..." He took his hand away from his eyes and slammed a clenched fist into the platform beneath him. "What am I gonna do?"

"It has only been two days," she insisted, grabbing hold of his fist with both hands.

"Is this gonna be how my life turned out?" he asked. "Dimitri Donahue, native of California, purveyor of organic goods, knocked out and blinded while on vacation," he continued, bitterly. His free hand was describing a scene which he alone could see. "Now spends his days in Las Vegas, going from strip club to strip club, getting cheap lap dances and trying to remember what tits look like."

She was unsure precisely what he was talking about, as most of what he was saying consisted of jargon, but she kept her grip on his fist.

"Hush," she reassured him, drawing as close to the platform as she dared. At this point, she considered, close proximity to him was the last thing she ought to be doing, but it was certainly within her duties as a nurse. "I am confident that after Dr. Korav reviews these results, he will find a treatment for you."

He was silent for a moment, and then murmured something almost to himself, which she was unable to hear. "Forgive me?" she asked, leaning in to listen more carefully to him.

He let out a sigh in a great huff!_and slowly rolled his head back and forth in dismissal. "No," he said, reaching over and putting his opposing hand on hers. "Forgive _me," he insisted. "I'm being an ass and a burden."

At his touch, she could feel her skin tingle. Oh, no ... And, at that close proximity, she could clearly tell what she hadn't known before - he had very active and fragrant scent glands ... in his upper lip, she guessed, near where a light scattering of whiskers was visible.

No ... she thought.

"I just wish," he continued, as Yalara felt her will weakening just as surely as her thighs had begun twitching of their own volition, "that there was some way I could see everything I've taken for granted. Everything I miss." He closed his eyes again. "Sunrise over the Pacific ... green hills ... tits ..."

Her breathing had quickened to the point where she was certain he could hear her. Curse it all, she thought, unless he is scent-blind he can also smell me. Her loins ached.

She whirled and made for the computer console, hunching partway over it as she stabbed at the button which locked the entrance to the scan room, and lit up the access panel outside with the indicator, "In use - confidentiality warning." She carefully extricated the communicator from her ear, set it to Confidentiality mode, and neatly stowed it into one of her pockets.

"Are you alright?" came Dimitri's voice.

"Yes," she called out. "One moment," she assured him, as she hunted around in a storage drawer beneath the console. After a few seconds, she came up with her prize - a small, sealed packet of metallicized plastic.

By mutual agreement of all the staff, and owing to the notion that Chakri females could find themselves in an uncomfortably tense situation on very, very brief notice - an impromptu lunch with their husbands, for example, whether planned well in advance or arranged in a considerable hurry - the hospital was liberally seeded with both suppressive drugs for false heat, and with prophylactics for safer intercourse.

Owing to the choice she had arrived at only seconds before, she was holding one of the latter.

She closed the storage drawer, and took a moment to hit the console command button for, "Patient support - retract." There was a slight whirring sound as a servomotor retracted the metal supports Dimitri had been gripping earlier, leaving them flush with the platform's surface. At the push of another button, marked, "Platform level - floor," she heard the mechanical drive for the platform engage and gently lower Dimitri to the level of the floor. A quick adjustment of the master controls for the console ensured that nothing would happen while she and he were otherwise engaged.

"Dimitri ..." she called, in a low, husking tone.

"Yeah?" came his uncertain reply.

"I had a thought ..." she began.

As she started a slow walk back to where Dimitri was laying, she began unfastening her gown, starting with the clasps at her neck and working her way to the clasps near her knees. As she finished with the last, she took hold of the garment near her neck and pulled one fold of it aside, revealing fur the color of spun gold, and the full, swinging breasts of her youthful adulthood - nipples erect and swollen.

She wanted to cup them and ease some of the ache she felt, but more than this she wanted to put them to good use for Dimitri's benefit. His broad, strong hands looked as though they might please both him and her ...

"I was prepared to suggest something in the way of treatment," she explained. "I must confess," she continued, further parting her gown to reveal her toned, flat stomach, and the slightly engorged flesh cushioning her pubic mound. " - this will not restore your sight, but I think it might serve to make you feel much, much better."

His tail, emerging from beneath him at the level of his waist, tapped uncertainly against his right thigh. "Um ..." he began.

"So first of all," she advised, putting the pads of her left foot delicately in the space just to one side of his right ear. "I would like you to raise your arms in front of your chest, so that they are directly above your shoulders."

"... Uh, okay," he indicated, after a moment's hesitation. In spite of whatever doubts he harbored, he raised his arms.

She pivoted on her left foot a short distance, planting her right foot on the opposite side of Dimitri's head. As she slowly flexed the muscles of her calves, testing her weight and balance, she slipped the top of her gown from atop her shoulders and down to her elbows. Reaching behind her to grasp his hands by the wrists, she lowered herself down in an elegant squat and brought his hands around to her front.

"Can you imagine what _these_would look like?"

The breath he sucked in at the instant his hands were cupped beneath her breasts was quick enough to tickle her folds, swaying as they were, only a handspan from his nose.

"Your sense of sight is not the only way you can enjoy the finer things in life," she said, rolling her head back as his fingers twitched faintly around her nipples. She was sure that he could pull his hands away against the gentle hold she had on him, cupping his hands with hers - if he wished to. Where his hands touched her body, however, the feverish quality of her skin was so deliciously soothed that she wished he had been gifted with two extra arms.

"You have not seen my body, but you need not see it," she assured him. "I wish to give it to you all the same."

"Holy ..." he breathed, exhaling in a way that made the walls of her sex tighten in an involuntary spasm.

"Hush," she whispered. She gave his hands a squeeze, which set her nipples to tingling and eased the ache in her breasts. Her lips parted in what she feared looked like an expression of the most wanton kind of lust. "Also, this is far from holy," she opined. "If I still attended regular services, my priestess would say this was much closer to sin."

He had no reply for this. Just as well, she thought. If he breathes much harder than he is at this moment ... She bent forward a fraction, and looking down through the valley of her cleavage, and past the tuft of fur which marked the beginning of her cleft, she could see his eyes as wide as saucers, staring at nothing but amazed nonetheless.

Slowly, despite the fact that he had no words to express what he was experiencing, his broad fingertips began to stroke from one side to the other, teasing her nipples to a new height of stiffness and sensitivity.

"Mmmh ..." she rumbled at him. "Clearly your sense of touch is still as keen as ever." She flexed the walls of her passage gently, teasing what she felt was some of her copious wetness into a slick pool at her entrance. "Tell me ..." she instructed him, " ... what does that nose of yours tell you?"

He drew in a soft, barely-audible sniff!, and then she heard him quietly licking his lips once or twice. "Oh wow ..." he managed. "You're ...?"

"In a manner of speaking," she explained. "This is only the merest taste of what a Chakri female would experience in a true cycle of what we call ra'hran." She squirmed gently in his grasp as he became more bold in his attentions. "And speaking of taste ..." she commented, folding up her legs as compactly as she could ...

He gave a short sputter of surprise as her womanhood met his nose and very nearly engulfed it. "Ahh ..." she exclaimed, as at the touch of his nose she felt a cool sensation spread from her inner lips through her clitoris and into the very depths of her nervous system. The added jolt through her inflamed loins as he gave a small growl of pleasure was precisely what she had been longing for since the morning of his arrival.

Without any coaxing, he tilted his head back and slipped his tongue between his lips to tease at her folds. Her eyes closed partway, and at the rush of sensations that threatened to overwhelm her, she sagged down by a fraction, sliding the swollen, tender flesh of her outer lips past his whiskers and grinding her clitoris into his nose.

He responded with vigor, beginning a rapid lap-lap-lapping of her sex and slipped a hand from her breast to stroke the fur over her stomach.

At this, however, she sagged even further and arched her back as she felt herself rising toward an inevitable release. A rising moan was caught in her throat as she went from her toes to her knees, slipping her feet down and under his shoulders as she knelt to slip her claws and fingertips through the silky locks at his forehead and around his scalp.

It was a joyous sensation, she thought, to be pleasured by this young male. He was more than merely exotic ... Dimitri ... she thought. It must be the name of a virile young god. The impious part of her laughed inwardly. Did not the gods and goddesses make their way among mortals in the guise of other creatures of flesh and blood? At her touch through his hair, he calmed somewhat, but then he gripped her a little more tightly and began to lavish more of his tongue's cool attention on her sensitive nub, working at a steady but unhurried pace.

She felt herself reaching the point at which her body would surrender to its own impulses. Her hips began to jerk uncontrollably, and the tightening of her stomach bent her at the waist until she was almost in danger of tipping over and pressing her forehead against the cool of the floor.

She had no idea how she kept herself from falling. Whether it was Dimitri's careful support of her torso, or the arching of her back as she climaxed, she bucked and shuddered against his face an uncountable number of times as her senses crested in the most pleasurable white light.

There was nothing she could sense except the pulsing, throbbing ecstasy throughout her body, centered in her loins and bursting into her brain. She could scarcely believe that time was passing, so long did the pleasure take to begin to ebb.

When she next became aware of her surroundings, she was not merely kneeling over Dimitri's face, but _sagging_against his supporting grip and resting her remaining weight on his head and neck.

As she let her head drop forward, and gazed down at his admittedly handsome face, she noted that she was probably uncomfortably tugging on his hair through her fingers and wrists, and probably also on the verge of suffocating him with her folds. The sound of quickened, wordless breathing from him was reassuring that he was still alive and sound, although the sensation of his feverish breath against her clitoris was making it hard for her to care as much about his own well-being. She wasn't able to see much below his eyes, for example, but she reasoned that his muzzle and lips could take care of themselves well enough.

She blinked down at him with half-closed eyes, and eased herself up so that she was able to feel, with her over-sensitive genitalia, the sensation of his tongue parting from her folds in the wettest of kisses.

"Are you all right?" she asked, lifting a thumb to brush a stray lock of hair back from his eyes.

There came a hesitant _slrrrp_as, unseen, he politely licked something from his lips and then swallowed before he answered her. "Fine," he replied. "I ... I haven't been in this situation before, though."

"Shhh ..." she soothed at him, stroking his forehead in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. "The more we might talk about how foolish this is, the less likely I am to wish to continue." She took a moment to delve around with her opposing hand in the pocket of her gown, coming up with the synthetic condom she had secreted earlier. She lightly rolled her thumb across the surface of its packet, filling the air with a faint crackling sound and causing his ears to twitch from side to side faintly.

She carefully flexed one knee and extracted a foot from under his shoulder, and then dismounted to one side of him, before delicately lowering her head to rest her muzzle against his temple. His scent, only somewhat strong but purely masculine, filled her nose and very nearly set her mind to spinning. "I have been burning for you since yesterday, Dimitri ... and I cannot wait any longer." A faint snarl crept into the lower timbre of her speech, so strong was her desire. "I want you inside of me ..." she whispered.

"Oh fuck ..." he groaned, closing his eyes and rolling his head faintly to one side. "Just hurry and put it on ..." he said, in obvious distress.

Taking a quick moment to slip her arms out of her gown and finally disrobe herself to nakedness, she flung the garment as far as she could from the two of them, and tried to still the faint quivering of her hands long enough to tear the condom's packet open and remove what lay within.

Freed from the concealing folds of her gown and now towering over the expanse of his abdominal muscles, his organ was as solid and as sizeable as any she had seen, but ... pink? she thought. A pink war-spear? What on Chakron ...? She stilled these thoughts as she remembered that many humans had pink or earth-colored flesh, unlike the dark flesh of her own species.

Forgetting her surprise, however, and focusing on the anticipatory delight brought on by the sight of his rigid, faintly twitching phallus, she brought the condom to his flesh and quickly rolled it down his length, at which his hips lifted slightly but all he made in the way of a vocalization was a faint hiss of breath through his teeth.

She carefully put a foot on each side of his thighs, and then settled herself on her knees as she straddled him. From this angle, the view of his young, athletic and solidly-built body was quite exciting, and she deftly slid her fingertips up and over the plush, cream-colored fur of his belly and chest as she leaned forward to lay along him, nose-to-nose and breathing as he was - not without some element of excitement and hurry.

She carefully threaded her fingers through the fur at his temples and his hair, parting her lips and laving her tongue generously around his lips, and his gums, and his fangs, as if she could drink of his scent and his flavor forever. When she felt she could bear the tension no longer, she straightened, and wiped some of their mingled saliva from her chin with the back of her hand, and then rested her clawtips lightly on his pectorals.

"I hope that your sense of hearing is acute," she said, reaching gingerly between her legs and taking a grasp of his shaft. "I want you to have some warning before I climax, because I may be somewhat rough on you ..."

Before he had a chance to form a protest or ask anything approximating a question, she had slid the tip of his length up and between her swollen, waiting folds, and canted her pelvis so that she could do nothing except sink down onto his shaft in a slow, delicious motion that seemed to take whole minutes.

In her limited experience, she had only rarely taken a male when she had been in genuine or false heat, and even then it had been an event filled with its share of apprehension. With Dimitri, however, there was none of the usual stress of rutting with a Chakri male. None of the stress of having to worry about bearing a whelp to one of the local fools, she thought. None of the stress of having to worry about Dimitri carrying any of the local diseases, even.

She felt his maleness parting his way through her most sensitive regions and sliding past parts of her which had been begging for attention for months. Gods ... she thought. If at any other time I were merely hungry for male flesh ... She let out a faint, unseemly grunt as one of his more prominent ridges or veins shouldered its way past her Grafenberg spot. Mmm ... at this time I would be ravenous_._

Down ... and down ... and further down she slid, gently shifting her posture and flexing the quivering muscles of her pelvic floor to better accommodate him. In her condition, her swollen passage and well-lubricated surfaces could only let him enter all the faster. But before long she was able to feel his cocktip nudge against the entrance to her womb, and apply a sinfully wonderful pressure against the very core of her loins, settling into place like fingers into a glove.

At length - his length, but not a length of time she was able to measure - she felt the ring of fur at the base of his shaft, the prepuce of his sheath, meeting and tickling her outer lips. At this, he let out a sort of whimper and strained to meet her still-descending flesh as she firmly pressed him against the scanning platform with all her weight and strength. She, in turn, threw back her head and closed her eyes, stifling a guttural groaning sound behind her teeth and grinding her body against his.

"Gods ..." she muttered through her teeth. "You may not believe that you have a bright future without your sight," she mused, "but I can think of several of us who would keep you both occupied and pampered for the rest of your days ..." She hissed as she clenched down with all her inner strength on his prick, and made ready to rise up again.

He whimpered again, quietly, as her claws came out and scored him in two handsful of places. As she rose, she could feel every vein, every ridge, and every minute protrusion on the surface of his organ, and every variation produced the most marvelous twinge of pleasure in almost every part of her it touched. The effect was ... well, it was like being gently pulled through a warm, sunny sea of sparkling, effervescent water - the currents enveloping her limbs and tugging every way possible at her fur ... except that wherever her body was touched by warmth or light, her very being sang with pleasure.

And at just the point where his stiffness might have slipped free of her folds and sprung back to its rest position over his belly, she slowed ... stopped ... and let gravity take hold of her and start the work of impaling her on his shaft all over again.

His hands came to rest on the fur of her thighs, adding another dimension of sensation which thrilled through her body. And yet, instead of gripping her roughly, Dimitri merely allowed his hands to slide up and around her hips to rest on the space between her waist and her buttocks, on either side of the most sensitive part of her back, at the base of her spine.

"Ooooh ..." she exclaimed, wriggling slightly under his touch. "You must be careful, Dimitri ..." She relaxed, sending his length coursing up through her and giving her innards the kind of blow that made her body sing from one end to the other. "Oh!"

She tensed her fingers again, breaking his skin as lightly as she could manage, and brought herself up off his pelvis to drive back down again. This is when I will cease being his nurse and protector, she thought. For all her training and skill, she was powerless to resist this most basic of biological urges.

Which, at that moment, was to pummel herself with Dimitri's prick until she had stopped convulsing in the grip of a climax.

Again, she felt herself rising on the crest of a wave of pleasure which she was powerless to resist and powerless to stop. What she could feel of his body tensing against hers, she could scarcely be bothered to register as she rode the wave she had unleashed.

When, at last, her orgasm had begun to ebb, and she felt herself relax and sag into place atop Dimitri's tense form, she could only lament to herself that false heat was something akin to ... What was the Terran expression? she thought. A double edged ... sword_... yes._ True, with how sensitive her body was to stimulation, it was comparably easy to reach climax. However, the opposing edge of that blade was how hungry her body was for release - and for how much time she would feel sated before her hunger returned.

Her body had returned to a state of merely humming anticipation and quivering sensitivity, she found, but she knew that it would only take a pair of strokes on his phallus to bring her to a peak again.

Up.

Down.

Up; and ...

Again, the wave.

She lost count of how many times she was able to bring herself to climax and back down again, even as her thighs began to tremble and her arms began to ache with the exertion she was feeling. Time itself was something which took on a new and strange dimension when her hormone-addled brain was trying to cope with the demands of physical satisfaction. The things which seemed to be able to intrude into one's consciousness were ... well, fatigue, and discomfort, and those two alone.

She found herself panting with breath nearly as hot as steam, and with a tongue almost parched. Her lungs burned, and she was very close to developing a cramp in her left thigh. As she fought to catch her breath and keep her posture erect, she was faintly aware that Dimitri was stifling a series of groans and still twitching his hips toward her as his claws gripped her by the buttocks. The young male seemed to be concentrating heavily - eyes firmly closed, and brow furrowed. His tail was now draped against her left thigh, quivering as though under far less control than the rest of him.

She good-naturedly bared her teeth as she sucked after breath, her chest heaving. Well, she thought, he_has _been quite obliging this morning. For all the discomfort I feel now ... and may feel later ... surely he deserves the simplest of reciprocation, does he not?

She quickly ran her left hand through the disheveled fur at her scalp, and gave his left forearm a reassuring squeeze. "Forgive me for being selfish," she managed. "Let me rectify that ..."

She fell forward onto him as gently as she could manage, and slid her arms around his neck before hauling him bodily upright against her, so that he was sitting. At this change in the angle his body formed with hers, he very nearly cried out - whether in pain or in ecstasy, she was not sure - but he began to respond very favorably to how she bobbed herself quickly up and down on his shaft, with her passage relaxed and her buttocks sliding to and fro in his lap.

It took no more than seconds before he bit back another half-formed utterance and his claws tightened painfully on her rear. At this, she merely clamped down on his maleness, raked her clawtips clear from his shoulders to his buttocks, and buried her nose in the fur of his cheek as she lightly bit him on his neck.

His back arched in a surprisingly contorted shape as she felt his erection questing for the furthest depths of her body, and then start to pulse as he found his release. For a moment, his whole body was tensed like a steel cable drawn taut, and she could feel him slightly trembling from one end to the other.

And then, a fraction of a second after the trembling of his body stopped, he fell backward as though he were a tree being felled by an axe.

Exhausted as she was, she was unable to make a grab at him as he fell clear of her arms and the minute grip that her fangs might have had on his throat, and he appeared to collapse backward onto the scan platform with the rear of his skull leading.

She cringed at the dull _thud!_the impact made, and hurriedly leaned forward to examine his face. "No ..." she exclaimed, half to herself. "Dimitri!"

"Huh ..." he breathed, still attempting to catch his breath but otherwise laying limp and quiescent. "Fuck ..." He grimaced, but only half-heartedly, as he lifted a hand to cup the back of his head. "That ... uhhh ... Yalara, that felt amazing ..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Ow ..." he muttered, rubbing at the spot. "This, on the other hand, this hurts like a sonofabitch."

He opened his eyes. "Not that I'm ungrateful," he assured her, propping himself up on his elbows. She saw him blink, and then his expression changed from one of wry humor to one of curiosity. He blinked again, and then she saw that his pupils were darting lightly from side to side, but apparently locked on hers for the first time since she had met him. His jaw dropped.

"Dimitri ... ?" she ventured, creeping a fraction closer to him, as his prick slipped from her depths in a final echo of pleasure.

Gone was the vacant stare of yesterday and this morning. He blinked again, and his gaze rapidly darted all over her body before he appeared able to gather up his jaw. "Wow ..." he breathed. "You're ... you're gorgeous."

She gripped him by the shoulders. Her lack of clothing, her burning loins, and her carefree disregard for the simplest of professional ethics seemed paltry concerns at the moment. "Dimitri," she said, firmly. "Are you certain you are all right?"

He regarded her with a soft, grateful gaze for a moment, before his eyes darted down to her breasts. "Yeah," he replied. "I'm good." The corners of his mouth quirked up in his version of a smile, as if he had discovered something for the first time and was immensely pleased with himself. "Tits."