by Unknown
“Anyway, welcome home.” Katie look flustered, leaning over to give me a kiss as I put my backpack full of books on the floor and she led me into our little living room. She shooed a cat off a chair for me, and I sat in a thick pile of white hair. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Do we have any Coke?” I asked as the white cat I’d rescued leapt back up into my lap, her blue eyes checking me out as she turned around and flicked her tail past my nose. I wanted to push her off, but I knew Katie wouldn’t like it, so I tolerated the paws kneading against my thigh. “Why in the hell did you let that asshole in the house?”
“I bought some Coke just for you.” She stood in front of the open refrigerator on one bare foot, the other tucked behind her ankle. I could see her through the doorway.
“Don’t let him in the house anymore, okay Katie?” I winced as the cat’s claws dug into my leg. Katie handed me a can of Coke and sat across from me on the sofa with a glass of wine. That surprised me. Katie didn’t drink.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized again, looking toward the door. “He just kind of pushed his way in…”
I popped the lid and sucked off the foam. The cat perked up at the noise and then wiggled her nose against the can.
“He’s always been an ass like that.” She sighed, holding her wine glass against the side of her neck.
“That’s obvious.” I frowned, leaning back away from the cat in my lap and discovering another one draped over the back of my chair. “But I don’t like him in our apartment.”
“I don’t either, Sebastian.” She took a big swig of wine. I watched her slim throat working as she swallowed. She let out a soft burp, smiling apologetically. “I told you—he just pushed his way in.”
“Well next time call me,” I snapped as the black cat lying behind me starting making his way across my shoulder. “Or call the fucking cops.”
“Okay, okay!” She sighed and held up her hands in a warding off gesture as the white cat dug her back claws into my leg when she jumped off. I winced but didn’t make a sound. Katie made a soft noise in her throat at the cat striding toward her, and she picked her up and cuddled her against her cheek. The cat looked like it was tolerating it rather than enjoying it.
“What did he want, anyway?”
“Believe it or not, baseball cards. He says they got mixed into my stuff. They’re supposed to be very valuable.” She shrugged. “I think he wants to sell them.”
“So… what’s for dinner?” I changed the subject, watching Katie kiss the cat’s pink nose before dropping her to the floor.
“Lasagna. Oh! The garlic bread!” She jumped up and rushed through the doorway into the kitchen.
From where I sat, I could see her bending over to look into the oven. She wasn’t wearing her boy shorts, which I loved on her—too bad—but the cutoffs she had on rode up her thighs quite nicely. I liked the way her red t-shirt pulled up a little when she stretched to get plates out of the cupboard, and the way she had pulled her long hair up into some sort of pony tail configuration on the back of her head, all loose and droopy, like it could fall out at any minute.
I shrugged the cat off my shoulder and stood. “Want some help?”
“Sure!” She was plucking pieces of hot garlic bread from a cookie sheet and tossing them into a towel-lined basket, blowing on her fingers between each one.
I opened a drawer and pulled out a spatula. “Here.” I slipped the utensil under the rest of the bread and up-ended it into the basket.
“Thanks.” God, that smile. It reminded me once again why I put up with the fifteen cats, the menacing spectre of her ex-boyfriend and Katie’s endless bouts of frigidness. I just couldn’t help smiling back at her, even though it felt goofy to be standing there in our kitchen just smiling at each other. “You’re sweet, you know that?”
I shrugged, looking down to see what was rubbing against my feet, and Katie moved around me to grab the plates. It was the huge orange cat, fatter than any television Morris or Garfield. He always muscled out the rest of them at dinner time. I opened the drawer back up that I’d just closed and grabbed two forks.
Katie retrieved our drinks from the living room, shooing two cats out of the way as she went who were trying to make figure-8’s around her ankles. I got napkins from the counter and put the basket of garlic bread on the table.
“Wow!” My eyes widened, my mouth already watering as she pulled the lasagna out of the oven. “You went all out, baby! That’s not even Stouffer’s!”
She laughed, using the spatula to cut a huge corner chunk and plopping it on my plate. The fat orange cat was sitting at my feet, looking up at me and blinking like he was bored, but his tail swished and his gaze was on my plate. The lasagna was too hot to eat so I munched on garlic bread while I watched Katie serve herself about half my portion.
“So how was work?” I asked, although most of the time I didn’t. Katie was majoring in veterinary medicine and her internship often involved disgusting medical procedures she liked to discuss in gory detail.
“You don’t want to talk about that.” She smiled, tucking her foot under her as she sat. I looked at the pink instep and found myself wanting to kiss it.
“How did you guess?” I grinned, watching a grey cat appear from around the corner and jump up into her lap. She adjusted as it settled in.
“How was the after-party last night?” She blew on a piece of lasagna hanging off her fork. Her mouth made a little ‘o’ when she did that and it enthralled me.
“Not bad. Wish you could have stayed.” I took another bite of garlic bread and followed it with a swig of soda. Katie had begged off, complaining of a headache. “But Theo was all depressed and being kind of a dick to everyone. You know how bitchy he can get.”
“What do you expect?” She tested the pasta with her lips and found it cool enough to slide into her mouth. “I think you may be the only one in the entire performance who isn’t gay.”
“Just because I sing opera doesn’t mean I’m gay.” I tried out my lasagna. It was still way too hot. I knew I was flushing. I could feel the heat creeping up my neck. “Quit teasing me, Katie.”
“I like teasing you.” She reached for her glass of wine, smiling. She knew I was sensitive about it. Singing opera didn’t exactly make me a chick magnet—quite the opposite, since girls seemed to find it about as masculine as a guy sporting a tutu.
“Besides, I know it’s not true.” She licked a bead of wine from her lip. “Believe me, I know. I’ve always thought it was sexy. Italian, German, French… you sing in all the romance languages.”
She knew just how to twist me around her little finger. “You know, most opera singers don’t know the languages they sing in. They just learn the words… but you do.”
She smiled at me with those dark blue eyes. The cat in her lap had nearly identical ones, and they were both staring at me, blinking. “Fluent in seven languages and conversational in twelve.”
“Almost as many languages as we have cats,” I joked. “You really find that sexy?”
“Uh-huh.” She shooed the cat off her lap and I blinked in disbelief as she crawled across the kitchen floor, nuzzling my crotch under the table.
“Katie?” I said her name as if to check—who was this girl and what had she done with my girlfriend? The one who had to have sex in the dark with most of her clothes still on, the one who barely made a sound, even when I knew she was having an orgasm? Who was this Katie?
“Mmmm, I think it’s time for that hero’s blowjob,” she murmured, working on the zipper of my jeans.
I stared at her, wondering if it was the wine gone to her head. I didn’t want to even entertain that it might have been the visit from the ex that had precipitated her change of sexual mood. It had to be the wine.
“Oh god, Katie.” I moaned and she sucked and we forgot all about dinner and school and Malcolm’s unwelcome interruption. We forgot about everything but each other for a long, delicious while, and I decided that night, w
ith Katie asleep in my arms, that I didn’t care if it would make her an alcoholic, I was going to make sure she had alcohol in her system as often as I could!
* * * *
I was lying on the sofa, balancing a bowl of Trix cereal on my chest. Deciding I was mostly done, I let one of the cat drinks out of the bowl. He lapped around the little fruity circles, his tongue soaking up the sweetened milk.
“That’s not good for them.” Katie didn’t even look at me from her perch in the chair. She was peering out the window. Since the surprise kitchen-table blowjob, things had been cooler than ever. I didn’t get it. I’d tried everything—including lots more alcohol, which just ended up with me holding her hair while she puked in the bathroom—but she went back to the quiet, frigid Katie I’d come to know. And after getting a taste of sexy-Katie, going backwards was particularly painful.
“He likes it.” I tipped the bowl so he could get more. He sneezed when some milk got up his nose.
She snorted, tilting her head as she watched a bird move skyward. “Just because we like something, doesn’t mean it’s good for us.”
“Tell me about it.” I pushed the cat off my stomach and sat up, setting the bowl on the end table. “The new director is a complete fuck-up. He emails line changes every night we’re supposed to learn the same day. I swear he sent me that virus. Hey, did you pick up my laptop from the computer shop?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot,” she murmured, absent-minded. She’d forgotten a lot of things lately.
“I’ll get it before rehearsal tomorrow.” I just shrugged. “Anyway, he wants me to sing baritone, and he refuses to put Anne in the lead. Although, I don’t know why she’d want to dress up as a cat anyway.”
“A cat?” Katie’s nose wrinkled and she did look at me then. She was sprawled across the chair by the window on her belly, her hands draped over the edge so she could look outside. Fall had finally come, and we’d been blessed with some cooler weather.
“The English Cat.” I snorted. “That’s our next production. He wanted us to do The Fairy Queen—nude. Like a Midsummer Night’s Dream version of Hair. The dean shot that down in a hurry. Now we’re stuck with this—what are you doing?”
Katie had rolled over and was leaning her head back over the arm and batting at the white filmy curtains. “Nothing,” she said, not stopping.
“I almost didn’t get the lead either,” I said, noticing how her sweater rode up when she was arched backwards like that, showing her navel. God, I missed summer, just for the sight of her tank tees. “New director nearly gave it to a freshman, and I found out later, it’s his cousin. Holy nepotism, Batman.”
I noticed that the cat had settled back in front of my bowl of cereal milk and was lapping away. The white cat, Sassy, was sitting below Katie’s chair and batting at her long dark hair hanging off the side.
“But you got the lead right?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, leaning back on the sofa. “But this freshman kid is the new bane of my existence. Now he stalks me all over campus. I think he’s the one who’s been going all Hannibal on me and leaving dead animals in my car.”
Katie looked over at me, eyes wide. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope.” I watched her stand up, taking the bowl of milk away from the cat and shooing him off the table. I smiled, noticing that she was wearing the necklace I’d made for her out of the cat statue I took from Theo. I’d had a friend drill a small hole through the ears and had strung it on a soft leather tie. “I’m just so glad it’s my last year.”
“Then what?” She walked the bowl toward the kitchen.
“Sing or teach singing, I guess.” I put my feet up on the arm of the sofa so I could watch her. “Nothing else I’m qualified to do.”
“I’m thinking about changing my major.” She was standing at the sink, her back to me.
“What?” I sat up, stepping on Sassy’s tail as I stood. She hissed and bolted down the hallway. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not kidding,” she replied. “I quit my job last week.”
“Why?” I leaned against the doorway, staring at her back.
“The dogs.” She turned toward me, still holding the bowl of milk.
“The—dogs?” I shook my head at her and we both jumped at a crashing sound from down the hall.
“Damn cat,” I said. “I’ll get it.”
I went to investigate, finding Sassy sitting on the bathroom counter, her tail swishing as she looked down over the edge—there was water everywhere.
“Stupid animal,” I muttered, heading back toward the kitchen for a broom. I turned the corner to the kitchen doorway. “Sassy knocked a glass off the—”
Katie was on her hands and knees on the kitchen table with my cereal bowl in front of her. Her eyes were closed, and I stood, transfixed, watching her tongue dipping into the bowl and then pulling back into her mouth as she lapped at the milk. I’d seen enough cats drinking to know what it looked like.
“Katie?” I whispered, still not quite believing what I was seeing. Her bottom was way up in the air, waving a little, and her hands were flat on the table as she leaned in to the bowl. When her eyes opened and she looked up at me, they were a huge, luminescent green and I noticed she had milk dribbling off her chin.
The pounding at the door made us both jump. Katie leapt off the table, eyes wide.
“Yeah?” I opened the door, still too stunned by Katie’s behavior to react. It was Malcolm. He didn’t say anything to me. It was like I wasn’t even there. Katie was standing in the doorway to the kitchen as he just barged in, stalking over to her.
“Where’s my stuff?” He leaned his hand above her head against the door frame. “I need my stuff, Katie!”
“I can’t find it.” Katie’s voice was small, and her hand was at her throat, fingering the cat statue there like it could protect her.
“Dude, I suggest you get the hell out of my house, before I call the cops.” It took everything I had to stay still and not make a move on the guy, no matter how big he was.
“Fuck you, Debbie Boone.” Malcolm snarled in my direction.
“Get out.” I opened the front door.
He laughed, looking back at Katie, and then stopped. When he turned back to me, his eyes were dark. “Listen, fairy boy,” he said, stepping toward me. I didn’t move back an inch. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“This is my house. Get out of it.”
He snarled at me, and pushed me hard in the middle of the chest, slamming me against the door as he went out.
“This isn’t over! I want my stuff!” he yelled as I shut the door and hooked the chain. I hadn’t expected that to go so well. In fact, I’d expected to end up in the hospital. My heart was hammering in my chest.
“Baby, are you okay?”
She was collapsed on the floor, curled around herself, and I knelt beside her.
“Katie? Katie-did?” I used my nickname for her, trying to call her back from wherever she seemed to have gone. It wasn’t working. I tried to get her to stand, but she just went limp again, eyes blank. I listened for sounds of Malcolm coming back but didn’t hear anything.
I was no He-Man, but I got her propped over my shoulder and did a fireman’s carry to our bedroom, laying her on the bed. She curled up around herself like that again, her hand clutching the necklace I’d given her, and I just slid in beside her and curled myself around her too.
I held her like that, stroking her hair, waiting, half-listening for Malcolm to come back, wondering if I should call the cops. Or maybe an ambulance. Because Katie seemed almost catatonic.
“I’m sorry.” Those were the first words she said, and they startled me.
“For what?” My voice was thick and I realized that my hand had found its way up under her sweater and was resting flat against her bare belly. I started to withdraw it, but she tucked her hand over mine, pressing it there and then sliding it further upward.
“Oh, Katie.” I sighed. “No. Not like this.�
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“Yes.” She slid my hand up over her bra and wiggled back against me. “Just like this.”
Turning in my arms, she wrapped herself around me as her mouth found mine. This was no chaste Katie-kiss—her tongue probed deep and her hands grabbed at my t-shirt, pulling it out of my jeans, seeking skin.
“Katie…” I groaned when her thigh moved between mine, rubbing there. I knew I should stop her, that I should call the cops about Malcolm, that we needed to talk, but the more she rubbed her soft body against me, the harder she kissed me, her mouth eagerly sucking and licking at mine, the further that part of my brain seemed to get.
She shoved my t-shirt up over my head and I let her as she nuzzled my neck, biting there, her teeth sharp, making me wince. She was sitting up on me then, looking down with greedy eyes in the half-light, pulling off her sweater, unhooking her bra. Her body was incredible. The necklace I’d given her swung between her high, pink-tipped breasts above her smooth, flat belly.
Part of me was still listening for Malcolm coming back, but that part of me was losing focus too. She grabbed my hands and put them on her breasts, leaning over to kiss me, grinding her hips into mine, denim against denim. God, the feel of her flesh under my hands, the way she moaned against my mouth when I squeezed her nipples, making her pelvis rock—I couldn’t resist.
I kissed her back, sucking her tongue into my mouth. Her belly undulated against mine, and I rolled over onto her, unsnapping and unzipping her jeans. My cock strained against the material as she rubbed her hand between my legs, scratching her nails there.
“Hurry,” she murmured as I tugged her jeans off. She was wearing a pair of pink panties, her pubic hair a dark patch underneath the pale material, and I remembered my comment in the laundry room about the neighbor’s pink panties. I wondered if Katie had gone out and purchased them just for me—but I didn’t have time to finish the thought before she was peeling them off, exposing her soft, glistening triangle.
