by Alison Tyler
“Pretty kitty,” she says, her voice a low purr. She dangles two red-tipped fingers inside the cage. “Come here, pretty kitty.”
I don’t want to obey—I’ve never had a girl master—but I don’t want to be in this cage anymore either. Maybe she’ll take me home, put a collar back on me. Maybe this hard-looking girl is better than another night in this cage. Better than another night alone.
I lean my head forward, just enough that she can stroke my hair. “Good girl,” she says, pressing her thumb to my cheek. A shiver runs down my spine, and I feel a surprising surge of desire.
She takes her fingers out of my hair and flips up the tag on the front of my cage to read it.
“Callie, long-haired female,” she reads. “Housebroken, that’s good. Playful, loves lap time. Not good with dogs.”
“Oh,” she says. “It says you don’t play well with other pussies either.” Her eyes are back on me, that intense green, and I wonder if she’s the other cat and not the master after all. “That’s too bad…” She hesitates a second, as though I might correct her. But I don’t. I can’t. It’s true. And besides, I may be a stray, I may be uncollared at the moment, but I’m not about to break rules and speak.
And then she’s gone, down the row, to look at the other kitties, kitties who play well with others. I want to say something, to call her back to me, to rub up against her fingers and lick her palm. To let her know that maybe I could be okay with other pussies, to ask her to reconsider. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Not even a kitten-squeak. Just silence, and the reminder that my throat aches with the kind of lonely pain that not even this green-eyed girl can fill.
I hear her talking down the row, but I can’t see her from where I sit. And, before long, I have to watch while she leads another kitty, a short-haired blonde, down the aisle. They both turn to look at me, and I close my eyes.
I’m curled up on the shelter blanket, wrapped in dreams of my last master, when I hear the voices outside my cage.
“Came in last night,” says a voice that I recognize. It’s the woman who checked me into the shelter. “I’m surprised someone hasn’t snapped her up.” She lowers her voice until it’s a whisper. “Someone just dumped her on our doorstep, this gorgeous girl. Can you believe it?”
“That is hard to believe,” says a voice. Very male. Somehow very in control. The sound alone sends a shiver through me.
I crack one eye open, to see who’s talking. All I can see are a broad pair of shoulders and a wide chest, wrapped up in a white button-down. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, showing off muscled forearms and wrists. No jewelry. He talks with his hands, fluid and confident dips and rolls.
“What’s wrong with her?” the hands ask.
“Nothing as far as I can see,” the woman says, her voice getting lower with each word until I can hardly hear her. “Her former master wanted another kitty in the house, it seems.”
“Imagine that,” he says. “I find a pussy does best if it’s given undivided attention.” My own pussy twitches when he says it. His fingers play along the bars of the cage, but don’t enter.
I wonder if he can see me. I always thought I was pretty—my last master reassured me of that in so many ways—but now I’m not certain. Still, I want to show off my best parts, so I stretch out on the blanket, curve my hips and ass up and out. I rest my head on my hands and open my eyes, so he can see them if he looks in—I’ve got Siamese eyes, that blue-blue.
“Does she come when she’s called?”
“Most kitties don’t,” she says.
“I knew there was a reason I preferred dogs.” But his laugh says he doesn’t mean it.
The man leans down to peer into my cage. I try to pretend I’m not looking, that I don’t care, but I catch a glimpse of salt-and-pepper hair, dark brown eyes framed by tortoiseshell glasses. A little scruff around his face, but it’s nice, and thin lips. He looks nothing like my last master, which makes me both excited and nervous.
His fingers come through the bars, wiggle in the air at me.
“Hey there, sweet girl,” he says, like he’s known me all his life. I sniff his fingers; they smell like cedar and sweet cream.
“Come here,” he whispers. I think about his question of whether kitties come when they’re called. I always do—did—for my last master. I like that feeling of doing what I’m told. So when he calls a second time, with “Here, kittykittykitty,” I move close enough so that he can reach me through the bars. When he buries his fingers in my hair, it’s just hard enough. I rub myself against him, loving the pressure of his strong fingers against the back of my neck.
“Oh, yes, you’re such a good girl,” he says. “Aren’t you?”
I’m getting wet just listening to him talk. When he stops moving his fingers, I butt up against him with my head until he starts again.
The woman clears her throat. “We do have private playrooms where kitties and their potential owners can get acquainted,” she says. “Would you like to take her there and see if the two of you are a good fit?”
I hold my breath as he rubs my head with a little less pressure. Will he say yes? Or will he, too, decide he doesn’t want me and move on to another kitty?
“What do you think, sweet girl?” he asks. I rub against his fingers, trying to convince him to say yes.
He pinches my earlobe between his fingernails and I let out a little yowl of surprise.
“Maybe later,” he says. I look up at him, surprised and hurt, but he’s already taken his fingers away and is moving down the row.
After that, I don’t know what to do. No master’s going to take me home. I’ll be stuck here forever. I’ll grow old watching other masters come and pick out cute kitties. I lie down on my blanket and close my eyes, trying not to cry. Every time I swallow, I feel exposed. I want to go home.
A couple of hours later, the nice woman who rescued me opens my cage.
“C’mon little one,” she says. “Let’s go.” She holds out a collar that says AFRS on the side. That’s where I am, the rescue shelter. If I put that collar on, does it mean the shelter owns me? Does it mean they’ve given up hope that I’ll ever be rescued? I cower against the back bars.
“It’s okay,” she says, her voice soothing me. “It’s just temporary.”
She clicks it around my neck. I’m ashamed to wear this collar and to be on the end of her leash—the AFRS printed on both basically tell the world, “Dumped kitty walking here.” But I follow her down the aisle.
Outside a door, she leans down to take the collar off.
“Go on in,” she says, holding the door open for me.
I go through it, and it’s him. The man from before. He’s bigger than I thought, tall, and his shoulders are wide. In front of him, he’s laid out a blanket. I can tell it’s his, because it doesn’t say AFRS on it, and because when I step on it, it’s way softer than the one in my cage. There are two bowls, empty, that look too clean to belong to the shelter. And on the table beside him, a black bag. But the thing that catches my eye is the leash and collar set in front of it. Dark purple. Brand new, and set with little silver slivers. I can already feel it against my skin. My throat has never felt so naked, so vulnerable. My heart too. Maybe he’ll take me after all.
“Come here, sweet girl,” he says. “Sorry to make you wait, but I needed to get a few things.”
I crawl up to him and wonder what to do now. My old master always wanted me to rub my head against his shins, but I don’t know if this is what he wants. So I wait to be told.
Without saying anything, he steps to the side of me. He just looks. Quiet, and for a long time. I arch my back for him, and drop down onto my forearms. And then he steps beside me and does the same thing. My pussy feels him watching and it wants to hide, but I force myself to stay still and let him look.
He runs a hand over my head and down my back. When he gets to my ass, he squeezes it and then gives it a little smack. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s loud. I don’t even
jump.
“I don’t know,” he says. “You seem awfully well behaved. I wonder what you could have done to end up here?”
This is a trick, I know. To see if I’ll act out, or give him an answer. I stay totally still, on my knees and forearms, waiting to see what he’ll do.
He squats down behind me and runs his fingers down my thighs on the outside. Just his fingertips, with enough pressure that I wonder if my skin turns even whiter beneath his touch. He strokes the back of my thighs, moving closer and closer to my center.
“Pretty pussy,” he says and I think he means me, but also he means the part of me that he’s almost touching. That I so badly want him to touch. He’s so close I can feel his breath against my skin.
I lean back into his fingers, asking for it. Please.
“Oh no,” he says. His fingers go away, and he stands. I can’t hear anything from behind me, and I don’t dare look. I worry that I’ve ruined it, that he’s going to take me back to that cage.
Footsteps, and then he’s in front of me. Without looking at me, he picks the black bag off the table, and disappears again. I hear the clasp of the bag, the paper and something soft all rubbing together. The sounds excite me, even though I don’t know what they are.
He touches his fingers to the bottom of my pussy, not on my clit, but close. And then he shows me how wet I am by sliding two fingers inside me. I clench around his fingers, to try and keep them there, but he just laughs and pulls them out.
“My, you are a greedy girl,” he says. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been a stray for a long time.”
I smell the lube before I feel it, and my body responds. My nipples tighten against the blanket, and my pussy starts a slow pound that I wonder if he can see.
Then I feel it—he’s lubed a dildo, and he’s twisting it into me like a corkscrew. I’m so wet that I doubt he needed lube, but I like the sound it makes, the kind of slow squish as it enters me. When the dildo’s all the way in, he taps the end of it. I’m so full I feel that little tap all the way down inside me.
He presses something small and hard against my ass, and I raise my head in surprise. I nearly look back at him over my shoulder, but I stop myself.
Still, he sees.
“You can look,” he says. “All good kitties need a tail, don’t you think?”
I look over my shoulder. He holds a small black butt plug with a long kitty tail attached. The color matches my hair. I’d never had one before, and I can’t wait to see how it looks. I arch my butt in the air, to tell him that it’s perfect.
I watch him as he slides it inside me. Even lubed up, it’s big, bigger than I’m used to, and he goes slow, letting my body open up to the pressure. I feel it filling me up, until I’m not sure I can take any more. And then it’s all the way in. It gives me a perfect tail, long and sleek. I twitch my ass, which makes the tail bat back and forth and wiggles the butt plug and the dildo inside me.
He laughs. “I’m glad you like it.” With both hands, he strokes my tail. The butt plug hits all my pressure points, and I’m afraid I’m going to come. I make a long, low sound, half squeak, half meow, and turn back to the front. I can’t watch anymore.
He walks around to the front of me, his hand trailing over my ass and up my back as he goes. He unzips his jeans so slowly I can hear each of the teeth as they come apart.
“Most kitties I know love cream,” he says. I try not to feel my heart stutter when he says that. Does he know a lot of kitties? I don’t want the answer.
He slides his jeans and underwear down. God, he’s gorgeous there too. Slim hips and muscular thighs. And then his cock. It sticks out from under his button-down, long and wide, and I want to lick it. I want to see what he tastes like, to know what it would be like to have him fill my mouth the way I’m filled everywhere else.
He puts his hands in my hair again, that just-right pressure until I’m practically purring against him.
“How about you, sweet girl?” he asks. He makes a ring around his cock with his fingers, offers it to me.
I touch my tongue to my top lip. Yes please.
“Go ahead,” he says. I lean forward and touch my tongue to the base of his cock. He tastes of clean salt and wood, something fragrant. Pine or cedar. I lap at it while he holds himself out to me, following the veins that snake just beneath the skin. It’s so hard I can feel the skin stretching around it.
I take just the tip between my lips and run my tongue over the smooth bulb there. He moans, and the sound makes me clench around all the things he’s put inside me.
He pushes all the way into my mouth, and I take as much of him as I can. It feels so good to feel him pulsing on my tongue. I suck him, hard and then soft, taking little nibbles sometimes, until his breath gets harsh and ragged. Precum coats my tongue and I lap it up, playing the tip of my tongue around his hole. I suck on the shirttails that hang on either side of his cock, letting my tongue feel the rough fabric. With the fabric on my tongue, I lick him again, just to see if he likes the way it feels, like a wet kitty tongue. He hisses between his teeth and his cock jumps.
When I take all of him inside my mouth again, he puts his hands around my throat. Not hard, but like a temporary collar. Like a way to claim me for now. The thought makes me so wet I can feel the dildo start to slide out of me.
“Don’t let it,” he says. And I clench my pussy hard to keep it in. I know it won’t stay for long, so I’m grateful when he moans and arches against me. “Don’t stop,” he says. “I want to give you my cream. I want you to lick it all up.”
His cock pulses in my mouth and then he floods me. He tastes salty, but sweet, and I wonder if he ate something just for me, to make it taste like that. I swallow it all, and then lick every drop from him. I nestle my tongue in his balls, and lick him until he’s clean.
He pulls up his pants, and sits in the chair in front of me. “You’re such a good, good, pussy,” he says. “Do you want to come home with me?”
Before I can answer, he dangles the collar in the air, and I swipe at it, but miss, which makes him laugh.
“Do you think you want this?” he asks.
He holds it out in front of me, a hand on each end, so it’s flat. All I’d have to do is put my neck on that strip of leather and I would be his.
“Don’t say yes unless you’re sure,” he says. “I don’t have any other pussies. You’ll be my only one, but I’m not always as nice a master as I was today.”
I’m counting on that. I stretch my neck out until I can feel the leather collar against the bottom of my neck. He wraps the leather around my skin. The buckle makes a small metallic sound as he fastens it. When I swallow, I feel the smooth weight of the leather against my throat.
“Now you’re mine for a long time, sweet girl,” he says.
I sure hope so.
PARTS OF HEAVEN
THOMAS S. ROCHE
KATE LEFT ME NOT SO LONG AGO—a year, two years, I forget. It was lonely until I found Angel. Kate still calls sometimes, leaves friendly little messages about mutual acquaintances on my voice mail at work. I rarely return them.
Angel’s got curves that stretch from Heaven to Hell by way of Purgatory. You can lose yourself in those curves, slide your body against them and feel it giving way. Her whispers of invitation draw you in and twist your mind until there’s nothing left but devotion. That’s why I love her so. She’s got shiny chrome running from front to back, a tight little rear end that holds its own even when you’re riding it hotter and harder and faster than seems possible. She’s got a bright little tailpipe that gives off a low rumble, and buffed-leather kisses against your ass.
She talks to me as I ride her. She whispers rosaries of devotion under her breath. She burns somewhere, deep under those seductive curves. I can disappear inside her, vanish into her fine softness like I never existed in the first place. I love to run my hands over her surfaces, feeling how she responds to my touch. I love to explore her like a patient on my table;
I love to race her uphill, downhill, hearing her moan low in her throat, pushing her harder, harder, until she can’t take any more and then pushing her just a little farther.
She moves like a phantom, a goddess—an angel.
In my professional life I am a priest, the high priest of surgical transfiguration. It’s not a job, or at least I don’t think of it that way, any more than I think of Angel as a mode of transportation. More appropriately, it’s a calling, perhaps even a religion. I sometimes think I was given the opportunity to become something not quite human, something so much more—to aspire to godhood, or perhaps merely to be a priest at the temple of modern medicine. I work the miracles of the gods; I take people apart and put them back together again in accordance with their wishes. Day by day by day people come to me broken, twisted, destroyed. I create them anew.
My skills at the surgeon’s table have increased since I fell for Angel. She has much to teach me about the structure of the body. Often as my fingers work deftly inside the body of a patient, as I intently restructure the patient to better fit her or his needs, I meditate on the beauty of Angel and all she has to offer me. Surgery has treated me well, given me the money to indulge in such lovers as Angel. But Angel has made me a better surgeon than I could ever have been without her.
I take her apart on the weekends, reverently placing her insides on silken white cloths arranged as on an altar across the driveway of my four-bedroom house. I reach inside her and touch all the surfaces of her engine, experience her perfection. I run my hands along her driveshaft; I stroke her pistons, caress her block. I explore the intricacies of her fuel assembly, delicately massage her oil filter. My neighbors sometimes wonder why I take her apart every weekend; the CPA across the street asked me, one Saturday, if Angel was British or something. British. What a quaint thought. “She is Italian,” I told him with a sneer.