The Pet Shop

by K D Grace

  She scrambled to do as he said, finding her fingers awkward against hooks and lace in ways they hadn’t since she was a groping adolescent. ‘And you?’ She forced the words up past her stammering heart.

  ‘I’m already naked, O’Kelly, duvet thrown back, cock in my hand. Wishing it were your hand, or your mouth ... or your cunt. God I remember that tight cunt of yours. You have no idea how often I’ve had a wank to the thought of your pussy.’ He spoke the words into the phone in such a way that she could almost feel the heat of his breath. ‘I can’t count the number of times my conversations with you have ended up with my cock in my hand. You’re a cruel woman, O’Kelly, reducing me to this.’

  A little whimper escaped her lips as her thumb pressed hard against her clit.

  He continued. ‘But you’ve had more restraint than I have, haven’t you? You’ve always waited until ... Until when, O’Kelly, until at night alone in your bed, like now? Or maybe you exorcise all of that pent-up heat on a Pet? Are you thinking of my cock when Liam or Dan is sucking your full nipples or burying their tools to the hilt in your scalding pussy? Jesus, I hope so, O’Kelly. I hope so.’ His voice felt like heavy syrup dripping down against her senses causing wet-hot need to ignite all over her body. She squirmed and thrust her hips.

  ‘What I hate about the phone is that I can’t smell your arousal,’ he said.

  A skitter of muscle memory beneath her belly recalled how excellent his sense of smell was.

  ‘If I were there with you in the office I would always know when your pussy was hot. I would smell your sweetness. You know that I would. Even after all this time, I could never forget what your cunt smells like when it needs a cock. And if I were there in the office more often, I would always know when you were wet and swollen. I would always know when you needed my cock. And I would take such advantage that you wouldn’t be able to walk straight, woman. I would have you on your desk, up against the wall, in the copy room. I would eat up all that sweetness until my balls were about to burst, until your pussy was raw and ready and sticky like toffee. Then I would push into you as deep as I could, feeling how soft and warm and wet you are, feeling how tight your cunny grips my cock. Would you wrap your legs around me, O’Kelly, climb me like a tree, clench me until I couldn’t breathe?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Like a tree.’ She could barely find the breath to speak. ‘Just like a tree.’ She arched off the bed wriggling and straining, feeling as though there wasn’t enough room in the hot tingle of her skin for the swell of her. It took her a while to sort out the sounds of them. Her breathless keening cries harmonized with the deep-chested grunts and huffs coming through the Boss’s end of the phone. ‘O’Kelly,’ he gasped, ‘I’m hard, so hard I feel like I’ll shatter if I don’t come soon. Jesus, I want to be inside you.’

  ‘I want that too, Alan. I want that so badly,’ she rasped just before orgasm raged over her, and the cry that forced its way through her lips left her throat raw and aching as she flooded herself and shook as though she would never stop. But only half the cry was hers. The deeper part, the part that she felt low in the base of her belly was his, like a drum beat pulsing into her until she collapsed onto the bed trembling, weak, feeling as though she were of no more substance than her sheer stockings.

  ‘You haven’t called me Alan in a long time.’ His breath poured into her bed like a wind storm and she pressed the phone to her, held it close between her damp breasts, just clutching it there until at last he had the breath to speak again.

  ‘And now, Annie, if I were there, I would kiss you, every inch of you, take into myself the taste and the scent of you well-pleasured, then I would pull you close to me and just hold you.’

  ‘I’d like that, Alan.’ She still clutched the phone to her breasts as she drifted off.

  When she awoke, pale dawn was seeping through the curtains and the phone connection had been broken.

  There was a text message.

  Cancel Stella’s weekend with Tino. Have rethought situ. It’s time 2 bring her in. Make arrangements.

  Chapter Twelve

  ANNE SAT CURLED ON the end of Stella’s sofa watching her pace. ‘I can’t believe you cancelled your flight and went chasing after some tree-hugging tycoon.’ She handed her a tissue mid stride and Stella wiped her swollen eyes and blew her nose. ‘OK, that I can believe. I can’t believe he sent you back home on his private jet.’

  Stella shot her a caustic look, and then she nodded toward her laptop open on the coffee table. ‘Yeah, lucky me. I get home to discover my weekend with Tino has been cancelled. No explanations, no excuses, nothing, just cancelled. He’s already been rescheduled with someone else, and he doesn’t have another opening for months. I have no way of getting in touch with him. I’m sure Vincent had something to do with it, but I haven’t heard from him either.’

  ‘Did you really expect to? I mean you said he’s a recluse.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought maybe that wouldn’t apply to me, I mean after ... everything.’

  Anne poured herself a glass of wine and sipped while Stella paced. ‘Well, you really can’t expect him to be Tino for you now after what you know. It would never be the same. I did try to warn you.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me, all right? I get it. I don’t need you to tell me what a fool I am.’ Stella plopped down on the couch. ‘And I don’t care. I still have to see him again, Anne. I just have to.’ Her eyes misted, and the empty space inside her felt vast.

  ‘Bloody hell, Stella, be sensible. You don’t even know him – whoever he is. Tino’s a glorified hooker, and Vincent’s a bored rich bloke who got a good shag out of you.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Make that several good shags. And OK, maybe it was good for you too, but still. It is what it is. God, if I’d known it would cause you this much grief, I’d have told the Boss to go fuck himself when he suggested it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you didn’t, did you? You brought Tino to my door as bold as anything and left me with him, so don’t be telling me to get a grip.’ She mangled the tissue she had wadded in her hand. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice you certainly seem to know an awful lot about the Pet Shop.’

  Anne huffed a frustrated breath. ‘I told you, I brought Tino to you under orders, all right? I didn’t want to do it in the first place.’

  ‘Yes, but you did. You brought him to me, and I’m assuming since there was no handler, you must have got him from somewhere. And you certainly knew all the ins and outs of taking care of Pets. You knew that he might be having a wank on my carpet if we left him alone too long. You knew that the Pet Shop kept its Pets horny. And you were quite expert at taking his clothes off, like you’d done it before, like you knew exactly what you were doing. I think you know more than you’re letting on. A lot more.’

  Anne toyed with her wineglass, avoiding Stella’s gaze. ‘You can think what you want, but it doesn’t change anything, does it?’ Then she tisk-tisked as Stella teared up again. ‘Oh come on, Stel, this just isn’t healthy. You need to let it go.’

  ‘Please, Anne. I have to see him one more time. I just have to know. And I think you can arrange it for me.’

  For a long moment, Anne held her in a gaze that would have penetrated iron then she shook her head and blew out a harsh breath. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She raised a hand. ‘Before you get too excited, I said I’ll see. That means I’ll see.’ She held her friend’s gaze. ‘I might know a way to get you to Tino, but it may not be quite the way you had in mind. Are you OK with that?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Stella wiped her eyes on the mangled tissue and blew her nose. ‘Anything.’

  Anne studied her for a long moment then frowned. ‘It’s against my better judgment, way against my better judgment, but I’ll see what I can do.’

  Stella closed her eyes and collapsed onto the couch in a wrung-out heap. ‘Oh God, Annie, thank you so much.’ She caught her breath and shifted to face her friend. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Just wait. That’s all. Just wait.’<
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  As soon as Anne left Stella pulled the computer onto her lap, entered the Pet Shop web address, and waited impatiently until a password was requested. She typed it in and found herself once again scrolling down through the bios and descriptions of Pets until she came to Tino’s. Her heart somersaulted as she recalled the shy man she’d first met, the man who was unable to meet her gaze without encouragement. How could he be Vincent? How could Vincent be him? The body was the same, she would have bet money on it, but they were so different. Even the way they made love was completely different.

  She clicked on Tino’s diary hoping against hope that there might have been some mistake and that she would find herself slotted in next to Tino’s name for this weekend. But nothing had changed. He had already been rescheduled for this weekend and for all the weekends to come for the next six months. She felt an empty ache beneath her breastbone. He should have been here with her, in her arms, in her bed. Six months was an eternity.

  She Googled Vincent Evanston for the hundredth time.

  He was 36 years old. He’d inherited his wealth from his father’s shipping business, doubled its value in a few short years then turned everything over to his employees and disappeared, donating massive amounts of money to environmental and wildlife causes. He was nicknamed “the Birdman”, and sometimes called “the Invisible Man”. He was very seldom seen. In fact there was the odd rumour, from time to time, that he had been murdered, that the dubious past of the Port of Portland and its shipping industry was alive and well, and Vincent Evanston was the victim, dead and buried in a shallow grave somewhere. Nevertheless, his money was always hard at work.

  Nothing she didn’t already know. She poured herself another glass of wine and paced the floor some more. Then she pulled up the Pet Shop website again. She was about to scroll to Tino’s bio when her BlackBerry buzzed an incoming message. She pulled it up absently thinking it was some last-minute assignment the Boss wanted her to take care of. But when she looked at it, her hands froze and her pulse accelerated. It was a “ps” link from an unnamed Strigida email address.

  With her heart in her throat, she pulled up the link and found herself back on the Pet Shop website, but in a part she had never seen before. It was entitled, So you want to be a Pet.

  What the hell was this? She didn’t want to be a Pet. She wanted to be with a Pet. A specific Pet. It was then that she noticed the letter below, which was printed in stylised copperplate. It read:

  Dear Stella,

  It has been brought to our attention that you may have the attributes and the interest required to become a Pet. If so, please click the Yes tab below.

  ‘Oh you have got to be joking,’ she spoke out loud into the silence. She barely gave Anne a chance to answer the phone before she launched in. ‘What the hell is this? Are you having a laugh? Why would you think I wanted to be a Pet? Why? Do I seem like a, like a, like a ...’

  ‘No you don’t seem like a prostitute,’ Anne filled in the blanks. ‘But you said you wanted to see Tino. I told you up front my methods wouldn’t be through the front door, that they might not be the way you had in mind, and you said go for it, so stop yelling at me, damn it! And who the hell are you anyway? It’s good enough for Tino, it’s OK for him to be a prostitute, but not OK for you, is that it?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look I’m sorry, all right.’ Stella paced the floor looking at the webpage as though it were a problem to be solved. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s not that I’m too good, it’s just that, well, I didn’t expect this.’

  ‘Look, how bad do you want to see Tino? That’s what it boils down to. I’ve already told you to let it go, but if you aren’t willing to do that then, as far as I can tell, this is your only choice, unless you want to wait six months for Tino’s schedule to free up.’

  ‘But to become a Pet. I don’t know what that means, Anne. I don’t know what I’ll have to do. And I don’t know if I could ... be a Pet.’

  ‘I don’t either, Stel. If you want to see Tino, you’ll have to take a chance. That’s all I can tell you.’

  For a long time, Stella sat and stared at the webpage after she spoke with Anne. This was so not what she’d had in mind. But neither did she want to wait for six months to see Tino again. She didn’t think she could wait six months. And she had no way of getting in touch with Vincent. Everything she had read about him convinced her it was nothing short of a miracle that she had seen him at all, let alone twice.

  She refreshed the page and stared at it until her eyes would no longer focus on the very elegant letters of what looked like a proper invitation to some very posh event. No one would have ever expected it was an invite to be a prostitute.

  A Pet, she reminded herself. And a Pet was so different from a prostitute. For a long moment she tried to picture herself arriving at someone’s door with a handler at her side holding the rucksack with the few things she would need for the weekend. Strangely, it wasn’t as difficult as she had expected. She could imagine herself shifting from foot to foot and rubbing her legs together to create delicious friction against her weighty pout while the handler gave instructions before he left her, all horny and needy, with a total stranger. She wondered what the Pet Shop actually did to its Pets before it sent them out so that they would always arrive horny. But that was another fantasy for another time.

  Absently her hand strayed under the edge of her skirt and she slouched and opened her knees to her touch. She imagined how it would feel to sit quietly on the floor, passively, while someone she’d never seen before in her life tenderly, carefully removed her clothes, maybe taking time to stroke and touch and admire her as he did so. Or maybe it wouldn’t be a he at all. Maybe her keeper would be a woman. But in her mind’s eye, it was a man. Then she imagined that faceless someone sitting open-legged in a comfortable chair, just like the instruction manual suggested, while she sniffed and licked and nuzzled him all over. No doubt she would make him as uncomfortable as Tino had made her in his initial efforts to get acquainted.

  His cock would be pressing hard against his trousers, and she would rub her face against it, maybe even rake her teeth along it. And he would have to slap her hands away from her naked cunt, which would be slippery and open and obscenely swollen. Maybe she would misbehave so badly with her desperate need to come that he’d have to bend her over and spank her bottom until it was pink and stinging. And that would only make her pout heavier and more uncomfortable.

  Then she would be so repentant, such a sorry little Pet. She’d nuzzle up next to him, sitting on the floor on her stinging bottom, with her legs splayed wide, hiding nothing from him. Then she’d place her head on his thigh as close to his cock as she could manage without getting herself in trouble again.

  And then, when he felt they were well enough acquainted, when he felt his own discomfort was almost unbearable, he’d open his trousers and free himself right there in the chair, all heavy and jutting and proud of what he had to offer her. And he would see the hungry interest in her eyes, would know by her moans and grunts that she could hardly contain herself. Then he would pull her onto his lap, pausing to spread her slippery folds with nervous fingers before settling her onto him and giving a little push to slide her right down onto his cock. And she would be so hot and horny that she would grip him hard and whimper and moan with the urgency of her heat, while he fondled her tits and spoke little endearments in her ear. What a nice Pet she was, what a lovely little pussy she had, so slick, so heavy. How uncomfortable she must be, how in need of some relief. All the while his voice would get tighter, more breathless, and his shifting and grunting would become more urgent until at last he would lose control and fill her in steamy gushes.

  Stella caught her breath in a little sob and shuddered against her fingers, which had pinched and stroked her to orgasm on the sofa with the laptop still balancing precariously on her thigh. When the second wave of tremors took her over, and the room was flooded with her briny sweet scent, she wiped her trembling fingers on her knic
kers and tapped the Yes tab at the bottom of the message.

  It must always be remembered that Pets live in the moment. They are completely present to their physical needs and the needs of their keepers. They will seek out pleasure at every opportunity, and they delight most in the sharing of that pleasure with their keeper. They are prone to misbehave when they are not kept stimulated. But keep them well occupied and they will be the source of endless delight to their keepers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ANNE WAS WAITING FOR her outside her office. She fell into step next to Stella. ‘Well? Did you talk to him?’

  ‘I talked to him, yes.’

  ‘Any problems?’

  ‘No.’ Stella replied. ‘He seemed fine with it. He said I’d earned a week holiday. Even offered me the company cottage in the Lake District.’ She looked over her shoulder as though the Boss might have transferred himself through the speaker phone and be stood behind them listening in. ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what I can expect?’

  Anne shrugged. ‘How the hell would I know? I just got lucky with figuring out how to get you in as a perspective Pet. No idea what happens next. Surely they must have told you something.’

  Stella didn’t believe Anne for a minute, but since the woman was her only connection to Tino, she wouldn’t argue. ‘I got an email.’

  ‘An email?’ Anne said. ‘That’s not very interesting, is it?’

  ‘Well, what did you expect, dancing girls and confetti? It was just an email.’

  Anne nodded, enthusiastically. ‘Tell me, what did it say then?’

  ‘It said wait at home after work Friday night. It said the Pet Shop would send someone for me. It said I should pack no bags. Bring nothing, the email said. Not even my mobile. That’s all.’