Never trust the weather forecast. I had made that mistake many times in my life, and yet somehow always failed to learn my lesson. It was one of the middle days of winter when the city was expecting a mild dusting of snow—and I woke up to find two feet of powder outside my house. Among bitter reflections of my blind faith in our local meteorologist, I brewed a cup of coffee and shuffled over to the patio windows. Sure enough, the snow was still coming down, and despite the early hour my phone was already abuzz with notifications that the entire city was grinding to a halt. At least I wasn't going to work. Instead I had the entire day to spend with Khojin, which hadn't happened in a while.
My thoughts lingered on my girlfriend for a bit, until I came startling realization: this was the first heavy snowfall of the winter—and that meant I was about to confront Khojin's seasonal heat. We started dating at the end of spring, so I had never experienced one of her heats before, but I remembered her warning me that it began in accordance with the first snow of the season. Something along the lines of it being the perfect time for her ancestors to coop up in their dens for breeding. I hadn't given it too much thought before that moment, but now I was going to be confronting the situation head-on while sealed inside my house.
What made it so nerve-wracking was how little I knew about the specifics of her heat and its effects. Though Khojin was gentle with me to a fault, our sex life had always been me struggling to match her appetites and endurance—which isn't really a surprise when your girlfriend is seven feet tall and built like an Amazonian warrior. For all my fretting though, there wasn't much I could do except wait and see how everything panned out. I had risen early in the morning expecting to go to work, so Khojin was still asleep, but I didn't know how long that would last.
"Hey," her tender voice murmured in my ear.
I started so hard I almost dropped my coffee mug. "Oh! Um—Khojin! G-Good morning."
"Good morning to you too," she chuckled softly, wrapping her arms around my waist and embracing me from behind. "Did I catch you deep in thought?"
"Something like that, yeah," I sighed, leaning back and resting my head on her collarbone. "You're just so light-footed, and the carpet doesn't help. What's got you up this early?"
Khojin tilted her head down to plant a kiss on the top of my scalp. "I wasn't sleeping very soundly to begin with. And when I reached across the bed to find you—"
"—to smack me square in the ribs, you mean."
"To locate your incredibly delicate self," Khojin continued in a bemused voice, giving my waist a playful squeeze. "You weren't there. So I came out here to find you."
"Well, I'm certainly not going anywhere." I gestured with my mug towards the still-rising snowdrifts out the window. "Work's already been called off. This freak snowstorm's got the whole city tied up."
"Oh, good. Then you can come back to bed with me."
I tried to turn around and think up some sort of excuse to buy some time, but it was already too late. Khojin's arms moved from resting across my waist to scooping me up in a princess carry with their typical amount of frightening dexterity. Somehow I managed to avoid spilling any of my coffee yet again, holding the mug close to my chest and looking up to meet Khojin's arresting stare. Lurking beneath those crystal-blue eyes and shaded lashes was something special—an unmistakable glint of passionate, playful energy that drew a reflexive smile out of me.
"Sure, why not," I replied. "I could use a warm blanket right about now."
And so we did exactly that, with Khojin not letting me down from her arms until were at the foot of the bed. As emasculating as it was to be carried like that sometimes, she enjoyed it far too much for me to ever consider spoiling her fun with complaints. My coffee cup found a stable resting place at last on the bedside table, and Khojin returned to the mattress with a heavy thump. She was quick to get comfortable though, pulling back the sheets and blankets to create a snug resting place on the bed—one with a distinct void in it that was about my size. I shot her a knowing look, and in return received a closed-lipped smile on the bleeding edge of smug. All it took was a glance at her tail batting back and forth behind her to tell me she was feeling especially frisky. Khojin then rolled onto her side, and patted the open space next to her with a beckoning hand.
"What am I, a trained dog?" I scoffed humorously.
"Always so sour," Khojin chuckled, still smiling. "Come here, you grumpy puppy!"
With a dramatic sigh and some theatrical grumbling, I accepted her invitation and flopped down onto the bed. In no time at all she had me drawn into a tight spooning position; one arm across my ribs and the other across my abdomen to press my back flush against her front side.
She leaned in to give my neck a pressure-heavy kiss, and caressed my cheek with the breadth of her tongue. "See? Not so bad."
"Not bad at all," I agreed, leaning back into her body.
Being cuddled by Khojin was always a treat thanks to the patches of thick, spotted fur that covered her forearms and thighs—a lot like being the little spoon for a big and affectionate living blanket. With her usual rumbling purr of delight, Khojin's hands began to wander,