Kiera loved this spot and kept all her haircare and bodywash products near the roots of the tree. As soon as she got seated with the wolf beside her, she got a healthy amount of shampoo and began working on his dense fur.
“Just to make sure you’re all nice and clean before we go to bed tonight,” she said to him, as she scrubbed. She had to lean over him to get to his other side and his coarse fur rubbed against her nipples, making them hard. However, Kiera barely noticed–she was too busy making sure the last of the silvery—purple algae was gone.
The wolf allowed her to wash him without making any fuss–he really was the best behaved pet she’d ever seen, Kiera thought. Whoever had taken him in that spaceship and then abandoned him must have spent hours and hours training him first.
As she washed him she talked, keeping up a steady stream of conversation, even though she knew he probably only understood one word in twenty–if that.
“So if you’re going to stay with me–and you are–I need to think of a name for you,” she told him. “I can’t just keep calling you ‘boy.’ So let me think–what should I call you?”
She pondered as she scrubbed his ruff and his tall, pointed ears. The wolf closed his eyes blissfully as she worked on him. He seemed to love to be touched, which was nice. Some animals were touch—shy, especially if they’d had bad owners in the past. Kiera was glad to see her new pet didn’t have that problem.
“Hmm…let’s see,” she murmured. “Wolf names…dog names…how about Max?”
The wolf opened his eyes and made a soft growling sound. It wasn’t threatening at all, but it was pretty clearly negative.
“Okay, not Max then. What about Chopper?” Kiera asked.
Another negative growl.
“All right, not Chopper either. What about Charlie? Buddy? Rocky? Bear?”
The wolf didn’t seem to like any of those names.
“Well, who knew you’d be so picky?” Kiera sighed. “All right, let’s get literary–what about White Fang–he’s the wolf—dog in this really famous novel back on Earth. You even kind of look like him.”
But the wolf growled again.
“Well what about Buck?” Kiera asked, beginning to feel exasperated. “He’s in another novel by the same guy–The Call of the Wild. He–”
But she was interrupted by a volley of short, excited barks. The wolf nodded his head up and down so enthusiastically that soapy foam flew from his ears.
“Oh my goodness! Okay, then!” Kiera laughed. “Buck it is from now on. Just don’t go feral on me and run off, like the dog in the book,” she added and turned her attention to rinsing him clean. “All right, that takes care of the top half of you–now let’s deal with your belly,” she added. “Can you stand up for me?”
As she spoke, she put a hand under his belly to show him what she meant.
The wolf–no, Buck–he’s Buck now, she reminded herself–finally stood on the ledge beside her.
“Good boy!” Kiera praised him. “What a good boy you…”
But the words died on her lips as she saw the furry pouch between his legs.
“Wait…is that normal?” she muttered, looking closer.
Of course, all wolves kept their equipment in a penile sheath—dogs did too. But Kiera had never seen one so large before. She couldn’t see Buck’s actual shaft because it wasn’t out at the moment, but judging from the size of his sheath, he must be hung like a horse!
He also had a very impressive set of testicles hanging between his hind legs as well. None of this area was dirty or had any algae–it must have come off when she was spraying him earlier–so Kiera didn’t mess with it. But she had to wonder if having such large equipment was normal for his kind of wolf.
“But are you really a wolf?” she said, half speaking to Buck and half to herself as she scrubbed his belly. “I mean, you look like a wolf–except for your size, of course–but you were found on a spaceship. So who knows? Okay–I’m done scrubbing. You can jump in and rinse off,” she added, nodding at the water.
The wolf looked at her in confusion for a moment, then made his low chuffing sound and jumped from the ledge into the water, making a huge splash that drenched her all over again.
“Hey!” Kiera gasped, laughing. “Well, I need to wash my hair anyway.”
She reached between the roots of the overhanging tree and grabbed a bottle of shampoo that Iyanna had given to her. It was a Monstrum product that just happened to be perfect for cleaning her long box braids.
She poured a generous amount of gooey green liquid into her hand, releasing the scent of fresh lemons and vanilla bean and some alien scent she couldn’t quite name that tied them both together. Taking her time, she massaged it into her scalp and then carefully smoothed it down her long braids, being careful not to get them tangled.
The alien shampoo cleaned the algae from her braids without damaging them and even left a moisturizing layer behind once it was rinsed off, which she did by swimming over to the mini waterfall which was located on the other end of the pool.
