Scent Marked

My worries were eased somewhat when Elias turned to me and pulled me close after catching his breath. In the pitch blackness he found my lips and gave me a long, deep kiss, mixing the tastes of both of our bodies in my mouth. When we started to get cold, he pulled the top of my sleeping bag over us both and zipped us in. I turned my back to him for spooning, and he circled his arms around me and held me tight. Within seconds his breathing changed and he was soon lightly snoring in my ear.

"You are one bad girl," Taz whispered to me, almost making me jump out of my skin.

"Fucking bollocks!" I cringed. "How much did you hear?" I whispered back in the pitch blackness.

"Enough. Tomorrow I want to hear every detail. EVERY detail. Understood?"

"Yes, Taz," I said sarcastically.

"Good, now go to sleep already! I know you must be tired."

"Bloody right," I said, and listened to her drift back off to sleep. I wasn't long behind her.

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Chapter 7

The following morning sleep was reluctant to release me. In a half asleep and half awake daze, I wondered if it had been all a dream. The ache in my jaw and the strong warm still wrapped around me quickly let me know otherwise.

"I should be furious with you," he whispered in my ear as he held me close, making me shiver.

"Whatever for?" I whispered sleepily, playing innocent.

"All this time you've been fucking with me," he said, putting all the pieces together. "You can't imagine how tortured my nights have been this past week."

"Aww, have you had trouble sleeping?" I tried to suppress a giggle. "The ground is pretty hard, I'm sure a far cry from the comfy mattresses you're used to."

"I'm fucking serious! It's like you put some kind of spell on me." There was no holding back my giggle after that.

"Well, you certainly have an interesting way of showing it. I can't remember the last time someone expressed their anger with me so well."

"I don't know how you got me so worked up."

"Yes you do, but I don't think you want to admit it."

I sensed he had more to say but we heard Greg's snoring cease as he began to stir, so reluctantly Elias released me from his intimate hold and scrambled back into his own sleeping bag. I was thankful for the discretion but I immediately missed his warmth. Taz woke up shortly thereafter. She couldn't resist giving me cheek.

"Good morning, Priya," she said while yawning and stretching out her limbs. "You sleep ok?"

"Just fine, Taz, and you?"

"Oh, I feared you were having some sort of awful nightmare, all the sounds I heard coming from your side. I guess you were just snoring," she concluded, winking at me. I playfully punched her in the stomach. Elias was still feigning sleep but I felt his torso shaking next to me as he silently chuckled.

"It's too early for horseplay," Greg groaned.

"You can sleep in a bit," I said, checking my watch. "Breakfast isn't for another hour."

"I would but I have to use it," he groaned, rolling over onto his back and draping his arm over his eyes to block out the morning light.

"Aw man, don't tell us you need us to go out and give you privacy already," I whined snuggling further into my sleeping bag, still missing Elias's warmth. The wind was howling outside, and our tent had grown chillier than usual. "I'm not ready to face the cold just yet."

"It's just my bladder, I should be quick, though," he said.

"Dood, just whip that thing out and go already," Taz told him. "Nobody's watching."

"For real, bro" Elias chimed in while yawning. "We're way past modesty by now." Taz looked at me and smiled, picking up on his double meaning.

This is an area where the guys had an advantage over us. They didn't have to expose themselves to pee the way we did. Taz and I always demanded they leave when one of us needed to pee, but the guys could simply turn their backs and preserve their modesty. While Greg peed we sat in awkward silence and let the sound of his release filling up the bottle echo throughout the tent.

"For Christ's sakes don't just lay there and listen!" Greg complained, feeling self-conscious. "Keep talking amongst yourselves."

"No way, dood, we're timing you," Taz teased, looking at her watch as if she was really doing so.

"Suit yourself. I got plenty," he warned. And true to his word, his flow seemed endless. Those bottles hold a good 36 ounces of water and he damn near filled it.

"That has to be the biggest human bladder on record," I mentioned after he had been peeing for over a minute. I guess the sound of it must have inspired Elias, because before Greg could finish he was relieving himself as well.

When the guys were done, we joked around for a few minutes more before making them leave so Taz and I could empty our bladders. It took them a minute to dress for the morning cold, but no sooner than they left the tent Taz began her inquisition.

"Ok, spill it! Every slutty detail. No omissions!"

I slapped her playfully on the shoulder and tried to laugh it off, but she was having none of it.

"I heard you two going at it hot and heavy, so don't try to lie to me, Priyanka," she said, mocking the manner in which Elias would use my full name.

"Just what is it that you think you heard?" I asked, still playing coy.

"I know the sound of bumping uglies when I hear them."

'Oh bloody hell,' I thought to myself. If she only knew just where they were bumping...

"Well, we weren't doing all that," I said, trying to maintain some decorum. Taz looked at me skeptically. I sighed heavily and released the tension I'd been holding in my shoulders. There was just no escaping her.

"I don't know where to begin, really," I stalled.

"You can start from the beginning, every detail," she insisted, a knowing smirk on her face.

"Well, sidelined from the action out there, I've been running my own little experiment in here about the ability of pheromones to attract a mate. Let's just say that my theory proved a little too successful last night." Taz tried to suppress a squeal of delight and gave me a tight hug, then pressed me for more details. I gave her a highly edited version, leaving out any mention of her or Jannell's undies. I did convey to her the passion with which Elias tasted my body, though without going into too many graphic details.

True to our friendship, she gave a small clap and seemed genuinely happy for me. I was worried because I knew Elias was also flirting with her when our trip first started and I didn't want to set off any rivalry between us. I needn't have worried, though - Taz is my rock.

After filling her in we dressed and made our way over for breakfast in the large tent with me limping and using her shoulder for support. The first emergence from the tent in the morning is always a shock to the system when that first blast of frosty air hits you, but it was particularly frigid that morning. Taz and I reached the larger tent just as Sonam was issuing warnings about the conditions for the climb that day. There was a storm passing to the south of us that would likely bring us some snow flurries to go along with the drop in temperature we had already experienced.

This meant that for the teams trying to get out in front of our leopards and hopefully getting some live video that their climb would be all the more difficult. In fact, Sonam warned, if conditions worsened they might have to turn back.

The snow storms of the Himalayas are the nemeses of all climbers who try to tame its peaks. Air currents draw moisture up from the south as it passes over the sub-Indian continent. But the mountains are too tall for most storms to pass north so they stall along the southern face. As a consequence, the lands to the south of the mountains are a lush green tropical forest. The lands to the north toward China are desert.

This also means there is much more snow and ice on the southern side of the mountains as compared to the north. Ironically, this means that jagged rocky slopes on the northern side are actually more difficult to climb, while one can make more easily climbable trails through the snow and ice on the southern side. We basically trade an easier and less dangerous climb at the cost of having to dodge more snow storms. With the colder temperatures expected, Sonam instructed everyone to don their ski masks.

We were all instructed to bring ski masks - the kind with openings for the eyes only - for days when the wind chill temperatures were particularly low. However, after a full day of breathing through the material, they can become wet and crusty with frost from all the moisture in our breath. So they have to be aired out nightly.

The teams set out with both nerves and excitement for the day they had ahead of them. They were facing a particularly grueling day of hiking - both needing to retrieve the memory cards from our remote sensor cameras and also try to get out in front of our leopards and find a good vantage point from which to film. I was left to my own devices but there was no mischief to get up to, only reviewing the footage from the previous day's remote camera intake.

My ankle was getting better but it was still difficult to hobble back and forth between tents. I tried to keep it elevated during the day, holding the laptop on my chest as I worked. The wind was really picking up outside, howling against our tent and shaking it periodically. I peeked outside every so often to check on our other tents, though there wasn't much I could have done if they were blowing away. I did see that the snow was piling up, however, so I quickly got back under my pile of sleeping bags to reclaim my warmth.

We captured more scent marking footage of our leopards, for which I was elated. Cross-checking the geo position of the cameras, they were still headed in the direction of where our camera teams were hoping to catch them. Everything was working out according to my plan. I thought back to how depressed I was after my fall and how close I came to missing all of our success had I let the rescue team come fetch me. I was laying there injured, yet I felt more successful than ever.

With work finished, my mind drifted back to the events of the previous night. Every frame of our lusty encounter replayed in my mind, and I was brought back to the uneasy feeling I had upon taking my first full whiff of Elias's musk - its uncanny familiarity and the intense cravings it produced in me. On a hunch, I opened up the files of the secret videos I'd recorded the previous nights, to study the footage anew. I was in store for quite a shock.

There's a famous psych experiment where the researcher shows her subject a video and asks the subject to count the number of times the person on the screen bounces a basketball. The subject diligently tries to keep an accurate count and then at the conclusion of the video the researcher asks if the subject saw the gorilla walk by. Nearly every subject reports that there was no such thing. The researcher then replays the video and there plain is day is a person in a gorilla outfit walking through the frame. No subject ever notices the gorilla the first time because, given a task of what to look for, our mind focuses our perception to that one thing, blocking out all other sensory data.

This is a common, yet rarely spoken of, pitfall for any researcher. We tend to find what we are looking for in our data - often whether warranted or not - with blinders on toward any other relevant information. In my case, with my attention so focused on Elias's reaction to the pheromonal stimuli placed about him, I had completely neglected my own reactions to the events playing out next to me while I slept. Yet there it was, as clear as the gorilla walking across the screen. Every time Elias began to masturbate I turned toward him in my sleep, picking up his scent once he'd pulled his trousers down to free up his shaft. While my scent was invading his subconscious and hypnotizing him, his musk was doing the same to me. The realization hit me like a bomb.

The shrill ring of the satellite phone scared the shit out of me, taking me out of my reverie. I scrambled to reach it and answered nervously.

"Priya, are you ok?" It was Sonam's voice, shouting over the howling wind.

"I'm fine, what's wrong?" I asked, knowing that something had to be if he was calling.

"I got a weather update that says we will catch the tail end of a blizzard that will pass right over camp."

"Yes, I can hear it outside," I confirmed.

"The snow is likely going to close you in, so don't try and go out in it," he warned. "We are headed back to camp now for our safety. We will dig you out when we get there."

"OK, I guess I'll stay put and forego my afternoon walk," I joked, trying to cover for the nervous anxiety that had just twisted my stomach into knots.

It was only 3:20 in the afternoon, so for them to be headed back already meant that things were going to get pretty bad outside. I eased the zipper on the tent down an inch and took another peek outside to see that there was already a foot of snow on the ground. Our teams were going to have a hellish evening digging all our tents out.

Another three hours passed before they arrived back at camp, then it took another hour to dig trenches around each tent and a pathway for us to walk between each one. When we all finally sat down for supper, both teams were exhausted and deflated. Trying to make eyes with Elias, he could barely manage to smile. I didn't have to ask if they managed to have any success before packing up and heading back to camp. The looks on their faces said it all.

We had five days left of food supply. Three days-worth of those rations we'd need to hike back down the mountain and reach the Yeti Lodge. That meant we only had two more days to catch some live footage of our leopards. The good news was that, since we were only catching the tail end of the blizzard, the next day was expected to be bright and sunny. It would still be well below freezing cold, but at least the blizzard would be gone.

We had a decision to make for the next day, however. Had our leopards sheltered in place during the storm or had they remained on the move? If we guessed incorrectly, we'd miss them and our window of opportunity would close. We ultimately decided to hedge our bets, and send one team back to the same area as we'd aimed for that morning, and the other team to a second area further along the trajectory, just in case.

At least, I consoled myself, Elias and I could get some nice snuggle time in. Earlier I clandestinely arranged our sleeping bags to zip together. I was taking a big risk as I knew that it was gateway behaviour leading toward full-on fornication, which I had no intention of letting happen in that tent with Greg and Taz sleeping next to us. But I wanted to feel his warmth, his arms around me, and maybe a nice skilled hand on my chest and between my legs as we kissed for a little while.

So much for well-laid plans. Elias winked at me and smiled devilishly when he discovered my little arrangement but he was comatose the moment he got horizontal. With all the sleep of which I'd deprived him, I couldn't be upset. Yet still I felt cheated. The least he could have done was waited until the light was out to kiss me goodnight.

It left me feeling insecure. Perhaps I was being silly, but I did not want to be just another conquest to him. I needed sure signs that I meant more. As I lay there listening to Taz and Greg finish brushing their teeth, I spotted a mischievous solution to my little insecurity hanging right over my head. As soon as the lights went out I reached up and grabbed Elias's ski mask, hanging in a row with Taz's and Greg's so that they could dry out. Instead of drying by air, his would have the warmth from my inner thighs and the fragrant heat emanating from my sex.

Laying next to him with his arms folded around me, smelling his scent, thinking about our tryst from the previous night, kept me in a constant state of light arousal. However, I made sure that the face of his ski mask was turned inside-out and positioned to soak up the evidence. For the entire day he'd smell nothing but me. I woke up early to hang it back up before anyone could see, but it marinated fragrant warmth between my thighs the entire night.

It was a fateful day. Sonam's team came back first looking tired and dejected. With so much snow on the paths, the hiking was particularly strenuous and I could tell from their faces that they'd been unsuccessful in spotting any leopards. Taz and Vihaan used self-deprecating humor to cope with the disappointment, and I noticed that there was a different energy between them - sitting closer together, smiling more at each other, light touches from time to time as they helped prepare our supper.

About an hour later Ganesh's team returned. They were abuzz with energy, and we heard their laughter rising over the hills a few minutes before they actually came to within sight. We didn't have to ask - they came into the large tent cheering and giving everyone hugs. There was much more to the hug Elias gave me, though.

He'd returned to camp with a raging hard-on, one that he'd apparently been trying to hide all day. He pressed it rudely into me as he hugged me, causing an immediate flood from my delta.

"Happy to see me?" I teased, rubbing my tummy against his wood.

"I need to fuck you," he whispered, bypassing all formalities as if it were an urgent matter of life and death. "My god, I need to be inside you, fucking you deep!" he growled in my ear, taking a slight nibble on the lobe dangling in front of his lips. The sensation sent shivers down my body, making me break out in goose bumps.

"Mmmm," I purred, enjoying his need. "That's no way to greet a lady."

"Good thing you're not one," he chuckled. I gasped, feigning offense. It took all my strength to push him away, before the duration of our embrace began to look awkward.

"No, you're a little minx who left a naughty gift for me in my mask this morning," he continued, his eyes burning into me with his lustful thoughts.

"Did you enjoy my little keepsake?" I giggled. "I just wanted you to have something to remind you of me."

"I'm gonna make you pay for torturing me like this," he smiled devilishly at me, eyes raking over my body. I looked down and saw the tent he'd pitched in his trousers. It was throbbing with need, aimed directly at my womb.

"Put that away and save it for later," I whispered, licking my lips mischievously. He growled as he adjusted himself to hide his arousal. He wasn't the only one. There was a river running out of me by that point, and I feared that, in the close confines of the tent, someone might actually smell me through my clothes.

"Is that a growl of humble defeat?" Vanessa interrupted us, coming over to give me a hug.

"Yes, in his own way Elias was congratulating me for my scientific acumen when it comes to feline scent marking," I smiled.

"I admit it, she's brilliant," Elias smirked.

"Damn right she is," Vanessa insisted, filling me with pride. "We're about to call David and tell him the good news. He'll want to speak to you personally," she continued, casually using Sir Attenborough's name as if he were just some dude from the gym.

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Chapter 8

Later that night, we were all too giddy to sleep right away, and we stayed up talking as we watched the real time footage the team had captured over and over, dissecting every frame. Miraculously, things had all come together at the last minute. The large male we'd been tracking had successfully caught up to the female whose scent he'd been following. Our cameras were there to film their courtship as they met. Their actual coupling was rough, but they were surprisingly tender afterward. I could relate.