Page 30 of A Soul to Touch

So here he was, holding her thighs to the point his hands were completely wrapped around them. Mayumi was careful not to press on the injured, cracked side of his skull since he’d asked her not to. She didn’t need to steady herself; Faunus kept a nice firm grip on her.

The task they were completing together was her cleaning out the wooden gutters of her cottage. The leaves had collected inside and clogged them during autumn.

Although that wasn’t a problem now, she said it would be when the snow started melting or the rain started falling in spring.

Not a single complaint was uttered by him, especially since he couldn’t stop himself from licking at his snout.

The smell of pumpkin, sleep, and the constant stain of leather infiltrated his senses so completely that he found it difficult to swallow the copious amount of drool that collected in his mouth. Her thighs were moulded around his neck and the bottom of his jaw like they were a comfortable, warm pillow. He tilted his head slightly to the side and sniffed.

He caught a delicious whiff of her scent. Unfortunately, she also had this strange, lingering smell he only ever found on thosewho were wobbly on their feet – a scent he wasn’t particularly fond of.

Mayumi, who had been straining and wiggling, paused. She looked down, causing him to look up through the valley of her body to meet her gaze.

“Did you just sniff my thigh?”

“No?” he lied.

She huffed at him, so he huffed back to mimic her. She continued her task.

“Could you step to the side again?” Faunus took a wide step to the left so she could dig into the copious amount of snow to get to the gutter beneath it. “You know, this is much easier than doing it on my own.”

Snow fell on the tip of his snout when she pushed it out. He had to huff through his nose to rid himself of most of it, but then he accidentally inhaled a small amount and had to bite back his choke.

“How else were you planning on doing it?”

Mayumi had been leaning forward slightly, and she bounced back to sit firmly across his shoulders. It seemed she was deep in thought for a few moments before she started scraping leaves out again. One mouldy and decaying leaf fell through his glowing orb to cover an empty eye socket. He left it there as it wasn’t bothering him.

He barely felt her weight resting on him, and her thighs were crushing the back of his thick neck as it didn’t quite fit between them. At least... not in the position they were in. He was sure Mayumi could spread her thighs further if he tried to make them.

Faunus licked at the outside of his snout in interest at the wicked mental image that assaulted him.

“Well... my family usually used a step ladder that we have in the shed, but then I would’ve needed to constantly step downand move it over to reach a different section. You being able to move without me needing to stop makes this a lot faster.”

“Would you have even been able to reach?”

In answer to his question, a large number of leaves and snow fell on his face. He looked up just in time for more to fall to the point it created a mound on top of his face, and he could no longer see.

Instead of wiping it away with a hand, he shook his head.

“Eeep!” she squealed when she swayed side-to-side before she steadied herself by placing one of her hands on his snout.

Faunus internally cringed when she accidentally shoved two fingers inside his nose hole knuckle deep. He could feel his wet breaths around them.

“Ew! Gross!” She pulled her fingers out, looked at the mucus on them, then wiped her hand on her pant leg. “I didn’t expect it to be wet inside your, uh... nose?”

“Shove your fingers into my nose hole again, and I’ll return the favour by shoving my own into any holes you have,” he warned with a growl.

Despite his aggressive rumble, his threat had been laced with a hidden undertone of a tease. There was one hole currently pressed to the back of his neck that Faunus wasverycurious about.

Expecting Mayumi to be horrified or at least disgusted, he looked up. She was biting at her bottom lip again and appeared to be stifling the urge to speak a retort. Her eyes were bowed in a way that made her gaze appear inviting.

The wind picked up for a fraction of a second, blowing a leaf down to slap against the side of his snout before falling wet and heavy to the ground. It broke the strange moment they shared, reminding them both of her task.

Mayumi dug into the gutter again, careful not to cause anything else to fall on his face before she eventually sighed.

“There’s another way I could have done this. I could have climbed through the attic door and crawled on top of the roof, but that would’ve been really unsafe with this much fresh snow. There’s a chance I could have slipped off and broken my neck.”

“Then don’t do that,” he quickly said. “You humans don’t survive an injury such as that.”

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