The Pet Shop

by K D Grace

  Just when she was certain she wouldn’t survive the trip to Portland, he shifted his embrace and pulled her on top of him, nearly toppling them both onto the floor in the process. ‘I’ll make you come now, Stella.’ His voice was raspy at the back of his throat. ‘Vincent will make you come.’

  Perhaps it was some magic formula, she didn’t know, but with the gentle rocking of his hips like waves on a calm sea, and the stroking of his thumb against her clit, she came in whimpers and sobs. A few more thrusts and she felt him clench beneath her, and his cock spasmed inside her.

  ‘Where are you taking me,’ she asked. The streetlights indicated that they were in the suburbs of Portland.

  Still naked, he knelt on the floor of the limo, wiping the wet folds of her vulva with his handkerchief. ‘The airport.’

  She pushed his hand away. ‘I don’t have a ticket, and look at me, I’m a mess.’ To her irritation, she was suddenly fighting back tears.

  He rose on his haunches and kissed her, cupping her cheek and pushing the hair away from her face. ‘I think you look exquisite. Now hold still. I’m not finished with your pussy yet, and I’m enjoying the view.’

  She felt as though she would burst as the first signs for the airport came into view. She had gone to Lincoln City for answers, but she had gotten only more questions. ‘There’s so much I want to ask you, Vincent.’

  ‘Don’t. Because I won’t answer, and I don’t want to ruin what we’ve just shared.’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  He forced a smile. ‘You weren’t supposed to see me in the first place.’

  Panic suddenly rose in her chest. ‘Will I see Tino?’

  ‘That’s up to the Pet Shop.’

  The limo pulled to a stop, and the driver opened the door and helped her out. To her surprise, they weren’t at the departures drop-off point, with its manic coming and going of cars, disgorging people with too much luggage and too little time. Instead they were on a darkened runway. For a second, panic rose in Stella’s chest. Perhaps Vincent was schizo after all. Perhaps his intentions were more sinister than a flight back to London.

  But before the thought was fully formed, he nodded above the roof of the limo. ‘The plane’s there.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Beyond the car was a sleek private jet, smartly dressed staff standing at the ready near the foot of the stairs leading to the open door.

  ‘Come on.’ He slid an arm around her. ‘Your bags are already onboard, and your rental car has been returned. You’ll have time to freshen up. Pilot expects a smooth flight into London.’

  Then everything happened so fast. At the bottom of the stairs, he gave her a kiss that nearly sent her pussy into meltdown again. Then he turned her over to the smiling attendant, and by the time she was at the top of the stairs, the limo was already pulling away.

  Chapter Eleven

  O’KELLY PUNCHED THE KEYPAD of her mobile so hard it hurt her finger then she jammed the phone to her ear and paced back and forth across the carpeted floor of her bedroom.

  The Boss answered after three rings. ‘O’Kelly? What’s wrong?’ He actually sounded as though she might have woken him up. That had never happened before. It was as though the man never slept. He’d always been that way. The sound of him so vulnerable made a knot clench low in her stomach. ‘Why are you calling at this hour?’

  ‘Have you talked to Stella today?’

  ‘No. Should I have?’ She could imagine him wiping the sleep from his eyes and checking the digital read-out on the alarm clock at the side of his bed. The thought made her pulse quicken, and she was instantly wet, which miffed her considerably, since she was angry at him. She forced herself to listen as he continued. ‘I did get the message that she had rearranged her schedule to stay on another day.’ There was a long pause. ‘O’Kelly? What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Jesus it was hard to be angry at him when his voice practically dripped sexy, delicious concern. She straightened her shoulders then plopped down on the edge of her bed with a huff. ‘Our Stella is convinced that Tino is Vincent Evanston.’

  ‘Really? Hmm.’

  O’Kelly ground her teeth and ignored the amusement that nearly oozed from his voice. ‘In fact, I’d be willing to bet she took that extra day in Oregon to pursue Evanston. He was supposed to be at some opening ceremony for a nature reserve.’

  Before he could ask, she continued. ‘I checked the local paper online. I was shocked to find an actual photo of Vincent Evanston, and though it’s not a great photo, I think she might be right, and I figured you would know.’

  ‘Wow. What’s the world coming to, Vincent Evanston seen in public making nicey-nice.’

  ‘Just answer me straight. Is Tino Vincent Evanston?’ She hated that she was always the angry one and that he always sounded like the voice of calm and reason. But in truth, he usually provoked her.

  There was a long pause, so she pressed forward. ‘I can’t personally understand why someone like Vincent Evanston would want to be a Pet. I mean, he’s such a recluse.’

  ‘Come on, O’Kelly. You know your basic psychology. Vincent may be a recluse, but that doesn’t mean Tino has to be. You’ve been working with the Pet Shop long enough to know exactly why it might be the outlet someone like Vincent would crave. Think about yourself, think about both of us, always in control, always in charge. Don’t you sometimes wish someone would tell you what to do so you wouldn’t always have to be the responsible one? Don’t you ever wish you were a Pet, so you could be pampered and adored and kept safe? I do. It only makes sense that Vincent would have those same needs, and where better for a recluse to get those needs met than the Pet Shop?’

  She realised she’d been holding her breath. Little droplets of perspiration slid between her breasts. Her heart bounced against her ribcage. Her voice was suddenly much less forceful, much more breathless. ‘That would certainly explain why you let Tino come into the Pet Shop without going through the proper channels.’

  ‘O’Kelly, whether or not Tino is Vincent Evanston had nothing to do with why I took him on as a Pet.’

  ‘Why then?’ The words came out before she could stop them. She had always wondered, and had never gotten a satisfactory answer.

  He offered a sigh of resignation, and she heard him shift between what, no doubt, were very expensive sheets. She couldn’t keep from imagining him all sleep-mussed and drowsy, sprawled across the bed with the phone to his ear. She couldn’t keep from imagining herself there with him between those sheets. She pulled her attention back to the conversation. ‘Well?’

  There was a slow release of breath on the other end of the phone, breath that might have been ever so slightly shaky. ‘We had sex.’

  Of all the answers she might have guessed this wasn’t one of them, and she found herself truly speechless.

  ‘O’Kelly? Did you hear me?’

  She nodded, and then remembered he couldn’t see her. ‘I heard you.’ She gulped air, suddenly feeling the need for a lot more oxygen than what seemed to be in the room. Then she calmed herself, gripping the phone hard so her hand wouldn’t shake. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ...’ She nodded again and tried to breathe. She felt like she’d just been gut punched. ‘I mean when we were together back in uni and we ... we had sex ... Well, you seemed to like it just fine.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not gay. I’d never been with a man before Tino, and I haven’t been since.’

  ‘You could have told me,’ she breathed. ‘I would have been all right with it.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what to say. Vincent was my best friend all through high school. I was the weird foreign kid forced to go to a strange school in a strange place because of my father’s work. Vincent was the socially awkward rich kid, always a disappointment to his father because he’d rather be out in the woods. We were both loners, and we just clicked.

  ‘I swear to you, O’Kelly, nothing, nothing even remotely sexually ever happened between us. Oh we
talked about sex like all adolescent boys do. But nothing beyond that. Then when he approached me as Tino, he broadsided me. Mind you, I hadn’t seen Vincent myself in several years, and Vincent had never had anything to do with the Pet Shop. Even when we made the original bet at his birthday party, he wanted nothing to do with it. It was my idea that the money should go to Strigida. It was always my idea and he always left it to me, so you can imagine the shock. It was like he wasn’t Vincent at all. Like he was someone I couldn’t resist. Someone no one could have resisted. Since you’d never actually met Vincent, nor were you likely to, in the end it was easier just not to say anything, and honestly, the two are so different, it’s still hard for me to believe they could be the same person.’

  She let out her breath slowly. ‘But they are.’

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  ‘Then Tino seduced you?’

  There was a long silence followed by soft laughter. ‘I guess you could call it that.’ His voice had that quality people’s voices have when they discuss their fondest memories.

  ‘I told him I’d hire him as a Pet if he could convincingly be my Pet for a weekend. Of course I didn’t think he could. You know how much training we put our Pets through. And I told him right up front I didn’t want him for sex. I just wanted to put him through his paces, you know, to show him how tough it really was.’

  ‘But you had sex anyway.’

  Another little huff of laughter. ‘What I failed to figure into the equation was that I wasn’t spending the weekend with my old friend, I was spending the weekend with Tino. You know Tino. Before the weekend was over, there was nothing I wanted more in the whole world than sex with him. Of course I should have known better. I mean he was my Pet, and I had to treat him like a Pet, take off his clothes, feed him, bathe him, give him permission to relieve his needs. It was my fault really. He only did what he was told.’

  ‘How was it?’ God, she sounded like an adolescent waiting to hear the juicy details after someone had been felt up. In spite of her best efforts to maintain decorum, her hand found its way up under the edge of her skirt.

  The resulting laugh sounded loud, awkward, unlike the Boss. ‘O’Kelly, are you looking for me to give you good wank material?’

  She sputtered and fought for air. The room felt suddenly hot.

  ‘Because I’m happy to help you out. Get out of your clothes.’

  ‘What?’ The word came out more like a gasp.

  ‘We used to be pretty damn good at phone sex, as I recall, and if you’re gonna make me talk dirty to you about Tino, the least you can do is undress and scoot down beneath the sheets, which is where most of us are at this hour anyway. Where you should be, and you shouldn’t be there alone, I might add.’

  ‘Sir, I ... Really I shouldn’t have–’

  ‘Undress, O’Kelly. That’s an order.’

  ‘You can’t order me,’ she breathed, but she was already halfway out of her blouse, fumbling with the phone, which she put on speaker.

  He made no response, but she thought she could hear a change in his breathing. ‘You’ve undressed Tino. You know what that’s like, how he’s always horny, how he always behaves like he’s just been so terribly naughty, and yet he’s so completely innocent. That’s what makes him so damned irresistible.’

  Her own breathing accelerated. She nodded, not caring that he couldn’t see her. She stepped out of her skirt then started to take off her underwear, but thought better of it for the moment. She slid in between the sheets.

  ‘I’m amazed that you’ve never had him, O’Kelly, but then I’ve always said your fortitude is astounding. And your sense of self-preservation.’

  ‘Oh I’ve wanted him, sir. More than once.’

  ‘And you’ve fantasised about him.’

  ‘Countless times.’

  ‘Not surprising. The way he nuzzles and sniffs when he’s getting to know you. And even when he already knows you, he seems to like nothing better than to have his face in your crotch or your arse. I made him sleep on the floor the first night he was with me. I let him masturbate to take the edge off.’ He grunted. ‘Took the edge off for him. Didn’t do a damn thing to make me less horny. And I never thought I would be, you know, horny for a man. But then Tino’s not just any man.

  ‘My resolve was well on its way to being gone by breakfast, so when he nuzzled his way into my bathrobe ... Stupid of me, really, wearing a bathrobe with nothing under it, like I actually wanted him to see my cock, you know, like I was the one showing off.’ There was silence on the other end of the receiver, but she could hear him breathing. She figured he was remembering it all, thinking about what it was like to have sex with Tino. At last he spoke. ‘Well, I let him have what he wanted.’

  ‘He sucked you off?’ O’Kelly felt everything low in her belly grip. She was already flooding the crotch of her knickers. How many times had she fantasised about Tino? And when she wasn’t fantasising about Tino, she was fantasising about the Boss. The two of them together? My God, what a heatwave!

  ‘Tino’s a big man. His mouth is deep, and I’m not small, as you know. I’ve never had anyone who could take me in like he did. All of me. That’s how it started. Next thing I know, I’m on the floor rolling all over with him, then he’s offering me his arse, his sweet, tight gripping arse, and I swear to God, O’Kelly, there was no way in hell I could refuse.’

  ‘And it was good?’ Her fingers were now well buried in the slippery slide of her pout, legs splayed wide beneath the sheets.

  The groan on the other end of the phone sounded almost painful. ‘Good doesn’t begin to describe it. It was then I realised I had the chance to do all those secret things men think about doing with other men but never have the courage to try.’

  ‘And you did them all?’

  ‘With Tino, yes. Everything I could think to do. And he was so willing, so obliging, and always ready. He was so completely Tino. There was no way I could consider him anyone else, not even the man who’s been my friend most of my life.’

  ‘How did you know that he would be equally good with women? I mean, you didn’t send him for me to test.’ Try though she might, she couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice.

  ‘I knew because I didn’t want to send him to you, O’Kelly. I didn’t want him invading your thoughts the way he did mine. You’re always the clear-headed one of us. I wanted you to stay that way. Plus,’ his voice got suddenly softer. ‘I guess I was a little jealous.’

  ‘What? Of sharing him with me?’

  His laugh rushed through the phone. ‘Don’t be daft, O’Kelly, that’s not what I mean, and you know it.’

  In spite of the warmth his words made in her chest, she pressed on. ‘But you sent him to poor unsuspecting Stella.’

  ‘Stella’s not you, and I think you don’t give the girl enough credit. Now, tell me. What do you want to know about Tino and me? You’ve made me hard, so we’ll have to deal with it, won’t we?’

  In spite of herself a little sigh made its way between her lips, and she could barely find her voice. But she was brave tonight, braver than she would have ever thought possible. ‘You’ve been hard before when we’ve talked on the phone, and you didn’t involve me.’

  She heard the shifting of the sheets again. ‘O’Kelly, you know as well as I do why I never involve you, so don’t play coy with me. And tonight, you involved me, so I expect you to finish what you started. Are you naked?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She peeked down under the duvet as though she had forgotten what she’d left on. ‘I’m still in my underwear and hold-ups. Black lace, the lot.’

  He tisk-tisked. ‘A little much for daywear, don’t you think?’

  ‘As you just reminded me, it’s not day. And anyway, just because I have to look professional on the outside doesn’t mean I can’t feel sexy underneath, does it?’

  His lazy whisper of a laugh dripped sex. ‘Oh my dear O’Kelly, if I had to work in the same office with you day in day out, I’m afra
id I’d have a hard-on all the time. Why do you think I spend so much time away? And you still give me a hard-on.’

  Surprisingly she felt his words in her chest rather than her cunt, like he’d wrapped his fingers around her heart and squeezed.

  ‘What about you, O’Kelly? Do you ever come when we’re talking business?’

  ‘No, sir,’ she stammered. ‘I mean, I get wet, really wet and I want to ... But it’s business, and I feel like ...’

  ‘Like somebody has to maintain decorum. I know. You told me when you took the job.’

  It was her turn to smile.

  ‘Well here we are at last, not in the office, neither one of us, and you brought it up, so I’m not letting you get away with it tonight. O’Kelly, if you don’t have a hand in your knickers, you should get one there as quickly as possible. You are wet, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very.’

  ‘Do you think we can dispense with the “sir” bit? You made your point with that a long time ago.’

  ‘I’d rather not, actually. It makes me hot, calling you sir.’

  ‘Didn’t know you felt that way or I’d have been enjoying it a lot more. Tell me about your nipples, O’Kelly’.

  ‘Erect, sir, and my areolae too. All stippled and aching.’

  ‘Good, good. And now you want me to tell you what Tino did to me.’

  ‘No, sir. I want you to tell me what you would do to me. If you were here.’ Her face burnt with shame even as she said it. That was their professional relationship right out the window after all these years, after all the effort to maintain neutrality. And now she was talking dirty to him on the phone just like they were back in uni again. She couldn’t see any good coming from this. But before she had time to backtrack his voice filled the room. ‘If I were there, O’Kelly, the very first thing I would want is to see you. All of you, so whatever underwear you’ve got on, hold-ups, knickers, I don’t care, take them off, take them all off, then push back the sheets so nothing can interfere with my view.’