Secrets of the Forest

Secrets of the Forest

"The hunt is on! The hunt is on!" Rose blinked wearily at the sound of the loud cries and ringing bell, and she looked around her room. She'd slept in till at least noon, and the springtime sun had already filled the room with a gentle light. The ring of the bell continued, but she decided she didn't mind, and she rolled over, pulling the blankets above her head. Until she heard a very annoying, very noisy knock at her door, of course.

"Rose! Rosie!" called a soft voice from beyond her door. Annoyed, the woman squeezed the blankets once more, then pulled herself out of bed, rushing towards her wardrobe. "Rose?" called the voice again.

"Just a minute!" replied Rose in a frustrated tone, her voice soft as a riverbed, but holding the fury of ten men. She did not enjoy being disturbed.

Rose looked around her wardrobe. She entertained wearing her nice dresses, but a hunt meant getting her feet muddy, and she wouldn't like to get caught in the rain. So a cowl it was, brown and grey, accompanied by a sensible undershirt and well-tailored trousers. She laced up her boots and placed a small, red brooch into her hair before opening the door with a scowl.

"What?" she questioned to her younger sister who stood outside the door.

"The hunt! The wolves are back, Rose." Her sister held a sign featuring a quite unflattering drawing of a wolf. There was no way their fangs would be that big, either, and Rose was sure wolves couldn't grin like that. She crossed her arms and tapped one foot against another. "And what do you want me to do? I'm no fighter." Daisy stamped her feet angrily.

"Neither am I! But they said they wanted every able-bodied person in the town. So... I'd rather have you with me than go alone."

Rose nodded. She stepped up towards her sister, and embraced her gently. "I'll go, okay? But don't wake me up again." Daisy nodded, but her face carried a loud pout. The two made their way towards the square, deciding to pick up weapons and leave town with the others. Daisy anxiously held Rose's hand, and Rose's other hand tried to make something out of Daisy's messy, red hair.

They shared that colour, but Rose's was slightly deeper, and she wore her hair short. Rose's hair was long at the front, but cut slightly short at the sides. Daisy's hair was usually well-kept, long, and quite wavy, but she seemed to have been in too much of a hurry to sort it out, so Rose took care of it as they stood in line, braiding the back of her hair so it would stay out of her face.

"Thanks, Rosie." Rose nodded happily, but as they approached the blacksmith's table she put the hood of her cowl up. She wasn't one for formalities, and she disliked any function the Crown saw fit to involve its grubby hands in. So she gave each man piercing looks. "A dagger and bow for me." Daisy chimed in, and she pointed to a longsword. Rose wasn't sure if Daisy was more or less confident in her fighting skills than she was, and she supposed there was no point in asking.

After Daisy laced the scabbard into her doublet and Rose slipped the quiver onto her back, the two set off towards the section of woods they'd been told to take care of. The sun still stood high in the sky, and the two merrily spoke as they surveyed the woods. Rose seemed to be more chipper now, and the sultry lass spoke happily of this and that.

They were both used to this. The Crown called wolf, and the villagers hunted. Rarely did they ever find anything, and it wasn't as if these two had ever caught anything, themselves. But the hunts continued. Whether it was a way to set the peasants to work, or to recruit the most able of them to the knights, neither of them knew. But today would be different. As Daisy entered a glade before Rose, she heard something dash along the edge of a small hill.

"Shh." she cautioned Rose.

"A squirrel?" Rose questioned in a husky whisper.

"Too big." whispered the taller one, and she crept quietly closer to the brush. Soon, the two saw it dash away, far from the hill, towards the trees. They could barely make out anything but its shape, fast as it was.

Daisy spoke up.

"Let's tail it, Rose. But you have to go that way." She pointed towards another clearing in the trees, to the right of where the wolf dashed towards.

"Why?"

"If we both chase it in a straight line, we won't get anywhere."

"We won't catch it anyway, you know." She sighed nonchalantly.

"But if we do, we'll be rewarded, right? No sense in not trying." Daisy patted her sister on the shoulder encouragingly.

"Fine." Rose said in a slightly annoyed tone, walking towards the clearing. "Be careful, Daisy. I'll see you later." Daisy nodded.

"You too, Rosie."

Walking around the forest without Daisy turned out to be a lot less fun than with her. She tried to take her mind off the wildlife all around her as her boots crushed leaves and branches underfoot, and tried to focus on catching the wolf, keeping eyes on each clearing, and checking each bush with her bow drawn. She continued through the forest, being as silent as she could, though she was keenly aware she wasn't very good at it. Her arms ached from drawing her bow preemptively, and she'd grown jealous of Daisy's longsword already.

Rose's guard had started to drop, and as she stepped onto an underhill path, she heard a rustling in the bushes above her. She gasped, turned on a dime, but it was all for naught- a shape quickly pounced on top of her. Her arms were quickly pinned, and her bow clattered to the forest floor, discarded.

"Hey!" Rose tried to cry out, but she was quickly silenced by a hand over her mouth. "You're no hunter." a confident voice said, with a small, irritated growl The voice was deep and sultry, but had an unmistakably feminine drawl to it. Wolves could speak now, could they?

That's something Rose might have thought of if she wasn't struggling against her captor. However, the wolf was much stronger, and she soon found herself fully pinned against the forest floor. "Hey. Stay still and listen. I'm not here to hurt you." The wolf took a deep sniff of her, and her nose brushed against Rose's neck, and Rose relented, staying limp. It wasn't as if she had much of a choice anyway. "I don't hurt humans. That's not why you're after me anyway, is it now? You townsfolk are after me because you want to expand your lands, so..."

"You don't smell of steel, either. Not a warrior nor a hunter. Just some peasant girl sent to a distant neck of the woods to slay a beast she has no hope of defeating." Rose thought about protesting, but she nodded her head instead. "I'm going to let your mouth go. Will you scream?" Rose shook her head quickly, and the wolf did as she said. Rose drew in deep, greedy breaths of air, though she remained pinned by the overpoweringly strong wolf on top of her.

"Can you... can you let me go?" Rose said with a small whimper.

"Aye, I could." The wolf's long, gray hair tickled Rose's cheeks as she leaned in to whisper into her ear. "Small one, tell me. How many of you are in this area? I need to know where to hide." Rose nodded. She could understand that, she supposed. "Just the two, I think. Me and my sister came up here."

Rose was starting to relax a little more, now. She couldn't sense that the wolf wanted to hurt her, even if she could have ripped her apart in seconds. So she started to speak more calmly. "But she took another trail. It's just me over here."

The wolf nodded gratefully. "Thank you, human." she whispered again.

Rose cleared her throat. She wanted to go. But there was something interesting about speaking to a wolf, at the same time. Maybe this was some delirium-induced vision, but if this was reality, she couldn't make heads or tails of it. She especially couldn't comprehend the way she felt when the wolf's gentle voice trailed down her neck and ear, so she hid her face close to the forest floor.

The wolf smelled like a wolf and a not-wolf, at the same time. She'd clearly been running around for hours, but Rose smelled a mix of scents on her, a musky blend of animal and human sweat. Rose tilted her head to look back at the wolf, and surprised herself to see a human face. Long, gray hair decorated the wolf's head, and a long, deep scar made its way across the left side of her face, to the right, across her nose, and down to her chin.

She tried to stay composed, but Rose gasped in surprise. She quickly turned her head back down and hoped the wolf hadn't noticed. Rose didn't know what she expected to see, what with the fact that the wolf was speaking to her, but she certainly didn't expect to see the rugged beauty that she did witness. There was something about her, the tangled, grey hair, the deep, gentle eyes... Rose shook her head. She couldn't possibly be thinking about her like this.

"Surprised, human?" the wolf said, lifting herself off of Rose. She let go of her arms. "I'd heard the stories. But I thought they were just stories."

"Mm." the wolf hummed.

"Are you a real wolf?"

"What is real, to you? I stay with the wolves, hunt and travel with them. In such a way, I am more wolf than I am human." Rose turned to face the wolf, watching her as she stood on all fours. She sat up, a worried expression on her face. "Are you going to hurt me?" Rose said meekly. The wolf snorted.

"No. You're no hunter. Neither are the rest of the human-children that hunt us."

Rose nodded thoughtfully. "Okay." She gingerly inched closer to the wolf. The sun hung low in the sky now, and it wasn't likely she'd be able to make it back on her own. "So... do you have a name?" Rose inquired. The wolf tilted her head. "There is no need for names among wolves."

"Oh." Rose said, looking a little disappointed. The wolf smiled at her slightly.

"But I had a human name once." Rose perked up, looking into the wolf's gentle eyes, her emerald irises as deep as any sea.

"I was called... Scarlet, was it? Yes, Scarlet."

"Scarlet." Rose took a breath and nodded, and Scarlet looked at her curiously.

"I'm surprised you haven't left already. I don't smell fire, so I don't think anyone's coming. So why don't you leave?"

"I'm not sure I can make it home in the dark. And besides, you're friendly, Scarlet." Scarlet sat up across from Rose, leaning back on her hands.

"Friendly, hm. It's been long since I spoke with a human, as well. I cannot help you get home, not until the sun sets."

"That's okay." Rose turned her eyes to the horizon, watching the orange blaze of the distant, setting sun, and Scarlet followed her gaze.

"Usually, humans are afraid of me. They run at first sight." Rose sighed.

"We're taught to fear the wolves." Scarlet's ears perked up.

"And wolves are taught to fear you. To fear your fire and steel." Scarlet stroked a hand down her shoulder, smoothing out her fur. Her skin was adorned with long, soft patches of hair, and in some places it was frizzy and stuck up with mud, and in others, it was smooth and clean as the hair on her head.

"I'm not afraid of you."

"And I'm not afraid of you, human."

"My name... My name is Rose." Their eyes met, and Rose's heart skipped a beat as she looked at Scarlet by the sunset. Scarlet sniffed her curiously, and she'd inched close enough to where Rose could smell her alluring scent, and take in her muscular, rugged figure. It wasn't surprising that she'd only heard of wolf-men in storybooks, because for her, Scarlet could have jumped straight out of a dream.

"Rose. I think, no, know... I could know a Rose." Rose smiled, though her voice came out meek. "Is that so? Would you tell the other wolves about me?" Scarlet laughed loudly, her raspy voice like music to Rose's ears.

"Hah! Yes, human. Maybe not in so many words, however." Her smile was as gentle as her green eyes, and Rose felt her voice get stuck in her throat. She stammered, and she couldn't quite comprehend what she was feeling, until Scarlet gently placed a hand on her cheek.

Rose flushed a bright red, but she didn't avert her gaze from the sunset. She wouldn't be able to bear observing Scarlet now, as flustered as she was, but it seemed she didn't need to. Scarlet hesitated for just a moment, but she spoke. "Rose, you're shy. I'm not used to speaking for this long, anyway. So speak with me however you want, okay?" That raspy voice only made Rose's longing stronger, and her wants were soon turning into needs. Her heart beat faster, and she grew short of breath. Rose nodded understandingly.

She turned towards Scarlet and kissed her firmly. Scarlet gripped her cheek tighter, and she wrapped her other arm around her back, embracing the other woman. Rose's lips were curious, exploring, but Scarlet's soon became ferocious, and she dotted Rose's face in wet kisses, holding the woman tightly as she sloppily kissed her lips. Rose pushed her tongue into Scarlet's mouth, and she growled contentedly, obliging the smaller woman, pressing her tongue against hers. Scarlet's tongue was larger, and she playfully wrestled with Rose, knowing she could pin hers down in an instant.

Rose was squirming in Scarlet's arms, and Scarlet broke the kiss briefly and sat up, picking her up and placing her on her lap, a gesture that seemed well-received, as Rose shuddered in her arms. She tilted Rose's head up with her hand, and she whispered in her ear. "Is this okay?" Rose had never nodded faster. Not in her wildest dreams had she imagined this, and she'd never in her life felt so turned on. It was all she could do not to tear her cowl off then and there and beg Scarlet to take her as her own.

Scarlet smiled, a pleased expression on her face, and she dragged her tongue down Rose's throat, holding onto her as she quietly whimpered in her embrace. She covered her throat in kisses, dragging her tongue around her neck gently but firmly, observing how she squirmed with pleasure in her arms. Rose's arms clutched her, and her eyes were shut tight as she pleased her. Scarlet took her greedily, suckling on her neck like a woman possessed, letting out scratchy moans.

Scarlet pulled back for a moment, taking in Rose's rapturous expression. She could tell Rose was getting exactly what she wanted, and she wanted to give her even more of it. "Rose." she said with a labored pant; "I want more. But not here. If you wish, I can take you to my home?" The girl shivered as her voice washed over her, like a wind over her soaked face and neck. "P-please."

"Hold on."

Scarlet dropped to all fours and effortlessly threw the girl onto her back, and she made sure she was ready before she set off through the woods. The sun had set, and the winds carried nothing but the cool air of the forest, so Scarlet felt safe to stay on the overland path, hurrying to her den. Rose held on to her bushy spots of fur as she dashed, trying her best to catch her breath as the wind struck her. It didn't help that Scarlet was fast as lightning, and it made the cool winds turn chill against her skin. But Rose was practically dressed, even if her clothes felt tight against her skin.

Scarlet turned a corner and slowed her pace, walking slowly into her den. She stopped to let Rose get off of her back, and she took a deep breath. She was used to running, but such a dash still exerted her. But she'd been far too impatient to take a leisurely stroll through the woods, considering what awaited her. "Are you alright?" she questioned, as she opened a knapsack and sprawled out her linen bedding onto the cave floor.

Rose panted softly, catching her breath. The hasty sprint Scarlet took off on was mighty impressive, especially with the extra weight. Perhaps she was used to carrying others of her pack? She didn't know what her duties involved. But she nodded to Scarlet. "I am. Thank you for carrying me, I..." She wobbled slightly. "I'm not sure I'm in a state to walk. You might need to take care of me." she said with a small, impish smile.

"Hm. I can certainly do that." Scarlet's face spread into a grin, and she placed a hand on Rose's hip, bracing herself as she scooped her up, placing her arm under her knees. Rose gasped, and wrapped her soft arms around Scarlet's neck, smiling happily. "Gosh, you're strong..." Scarlet snorted happily and kissed her softly. She sat down on her bedding, still carrying Rose in her arms.

She took her time with Rose this time, exchanging gentle kisses with her. She covered her chin in kisses, pressing her nose against her cheek, and they grinned at each other as Rose returned the favor. "Mm..." Rose let out a happy sigh, and Scarlet giggled contentedly. "Are you used to this, Rose?"

Rose stopped for a moment, and shook her head slowly.

"Not really. I'm a bit of a recluse, back home." Scarlet snorted once again, dragging her hand gently down her back. "A pretty girl like you? Alone?" Rose shook her head and giggled shyly. "It's true. I'm not used to... things like this. Having good company. Like you." she said quietly, and Scarlet smiled and kissed her. "Shall I show you what it's like, then?" she whispered with a knowing leer. "Please, Scarlet. I... I want that, badly." Scarlet nodded.

"Me too, Rose. I need you." She didn't hesitate this time, and she dove back at those soft, red lips, covering them in a flurry of gentle kisses.

Their tongues danced as Scarlet's hand struggled with the button of Rose's cowl, and Rose helped her slip it off. She could feel her legs getting weaker as Scarlet's kisses got more intense- she was intensely aroused by the other woman. She held Scarlet tightly, and soon Scarlet put her down on the bedding, kissing her way down her neck. Scarlet loomed over her, placing a hand on each side of her, and dropped to her knees above her.

Working together, the two managed to peel Rose's top off, and Scarlet hungrily dove in. Her lips found their way to Rose's delectably soft breasts, and she eagerly kissed them, dragging her tongue gently across Rose's nipples. Rose shivered, and she wrapped her arms around Scarlet, holding onto her. She couldn't help but grip her tightly as she was kissed and doted on, and her soft noises made a sharp contrast to the quiet woods outside.

Scarlet was too good at this, Rose thought. It almost wasn't fair. She found herself unable to do much but whimper and whine with each touch and lick that found its way onto her, and Scarlet's firm touches made her shiver, mad with need. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she felt Scarlet's warm body, pressed against hers. Her trousers were growing far too tight for her, and soon she motioned downwards, trying to get Scarlet's help. She seemed only too happy to oblige, and soon she'd discarded them beside the two.

"Thanks- ahhh!" She clutched Scarlet tighter as her lover pressed a hand against her undergarments, and she nodded eagerly to her. "Yesss..." She whispered, urging Scarlet to keep going. There was already a sizeable wet patch on her garments, and they bulged with the size of Rose's cock, soaked and hard with her need. She gasped loudly as Scarlet's hand pressed firmly against her length, and Rose held on tightly while that hand grasped her through her underwear, making loud noises of pleasure.

She heard Scarlet growl encouragingly, and she hooked her thumb into the band of her garment, pulling it down slightly. Scarlet seemed happy to oblige her, and soon Rose was fully bare to her. She grinned down at her as she gripped her hard, needy cock in her hands and started to gently stroke her, which made Rose scream with pleasure. "Ah! Yes! I need that, Scarlet, please!" and Scarlet dove in closer to her, whispering in her ear.

"Like this?" her raspy voice whispered, and Rose needn't reply, as her cries spoke every word she might ever need. She was incredibly sensitive, and she held on tightly as Scarlet stroked her slick cock. Scarlet would grow slightly more insistent, and the woman's labored breaths soon turned into moans of her own as she observed and pleasured her partner. "Rose..." she whispered softly. "Ahhh! Scarlet!" the woman cried.