Tau was less concerned with how Morgaine smelled than he was with having fun. His growling returned - though it was mixed with the very unusual cougar ability of purring, indicating that he wasn\'t angry, just occupied (and could be angry if the whim took him) - as he began rolling his captive bodily around on the floor.
He stopped licking and pulled his head back to get a look at her, then opened his broad, strong jaws and began nipping at her arms and body - mostly just holding her arm in his mouth, gnawing a little and then letting go, but chasing her hands if they moved before his face (ears perked curiously) and batting at them while he attempted to bite. His claws were sheathed but his hits, when they landed, weren\'t soft. In addition to keeping her upper body under his control, he kicked at her legs with both of his back ones (somewhat like a rabbit) in a rapid attack that wasn\'t too terrible to him, but which would likely leave bruises on her hips and thighs later, simply because he was more powerful than he understood, in comparison to the slight female.
After a while, he would begin to let her go so that Morgaine might think she could escape him, only to have him pounce on her anew but even that would grow stale and eventually he sat up suddenly, four legs poised under him, tail flicking, ears flattened and looking around the apartment in agitation. The domestic, human side of him could only stand to be pandered to for so long in cat form, before he needed to immerse himself in the wilderness; to travel and hunt. He\'d had enough of wrestling tamely (well, tamely for him) and now sought the freedom of the forest so that he could stretch his claws, mark some territory and investigate all that smelled ripe.
Of course, this was also the moment that triggered the change in him; when something inside him reasoned that if he left as a cougar, he wouldn\'t return and he was committed to living as a human for a while longer (at least). He therefore needed to change back, or flee.
Tau\'s back legs slid out from under him and he thumped back down onto his side (almost as if he\'d been pushed). The only motion visible from him for a few moments was his ribs rising and falling in rapid pants as his body gathered itself together for the change, then the cracking bones and movement beneath the furry skin began to pick up pace. His back legs began to elongate as his tail was sucked up into his body as if by a straw. This time, the noise wasn\'t nearly so loud, for the process of small bones turner into longer, stronger ones was quieter. The fur upon his body seemed to draw into his skin all at once (it was quite a bizarre sight, to see tawny fur one moment, then smooth, humanly-haired skin the next) and be the catalyst for the extra length to be pushed into arms (his fingers had already formed), muscles to be stretched over much wider shoulders... even the length of his penis to be extended so it was thicker and lolled along his thigh, sprouted from an inscrutable patch of hair.
With a few blinks, Tau leaned up onto his right elbow, tilting his head to the right and rolling his shoulders like he was trying out his new body. His left leg arched up, making him look distinctly like a sveltely-muscled clothes model (sans clothes) sprawled across the cover of some elite magazine, but what he was really doing was waiting for his internals to finish putting themselves back into position - a silent but necessary process. His brain, also, didn\'t immediately spring back to human size and give him something to chat about; his vocal cords needed to reassert themselves and then human thoughts needed to travel the synapses in his brain, rather then the animal impulses that had just been dominating it.
It took about two minutes for Tau the human to become aware of himself, clearing his throat to get a feel for speech once more and looking around as he recalled that he\'d changed for the benefit of his guests. He was still a very sleek heavily-muscled package as a man, but the shift had aged him very subtly; there was now a tinge of salt mixed in with the pepper of his hair - at his sideburns, stretching up to his temples - and the lines of his face were ever so slightly deeper. He looked to be older in the face too, his bright blue eyes seeming to shine out from the face of a man approaching forty, rather than just cresting thirty, but his body was as toned and angular as ever and he wore the new age with grace.
Recalling what he\'d done as a cougar was much like remembering an instant where he\'d woken from a deep slumber on a long road trip - like he\'d sat up at one point and watched the scenery blurring by but couldn\'t recall exactly what he\'d seen because he\'d dropped back to sleep almost immediately. He only vaguely remembered wrestling with Morgaine, but it was enough to spur him to sit up and look in her direction in startlement. "I did not hurt you, did I?" he asked worriedly, registering that he was on the rug in the lounge area and that his pants were close by but he was more interested in checking that the fight hadn\'t injured his guest. He believed he\'d been gentle, but what he believed and what was actually true was very rarely the same, when it came to women.
