Fearless

by Maren Smith

  Glancing at him from out beneath her lashes, she gauged him entirely too believable for her mouth and stomach to want to risk. She dropped her toast so she wouldn’t be tempted to keep picking at it.

  “You aren’t answering the question,” he sang, which made it easier for her to laugh even as rattled as she was.

  “Because it’s how you know someone really likes you,” she finally blurted, then covered her face with both hands, moaning. “Please don’t read me the riot act about how abused people come to expect abuse, blah blah blah. I already regret saying it.”

  “Why?” he asked, still smiling but not in a way that made her feel mocked. She didn’t know how he did that, but she appreciated not feeling laughed at.

  “It’s hard enough to explain our lifestyle to someone not in it without them looking at you like you’re crazy. But then try being me, explaining to someone who is in the lifestyle, how it’s not what a dom says or does that means anything in a relationship. It’s how he hits that matters.”

  Noah studied her, unmoving, his smile seeming more fixed in place than genuine. “Is that how you knew Ethen loved you?”

  “It’s how I knew he didn’t,” Kitty confessed. “Because spanking is gentle and intimate, and it takes time and effort on the dom’s part. If he doesn’t care, he won’t bother; he’ll do other things. But if he loves you, he’ll take the time to do it every time.”

  Noah nodded. “I don’t spank for punishment because too many submissives enjoy it. When you reward bad behavior, pretty soon bad behavior is all you get. But—” He held up a staying finger, the corner of his mouth curling. “—how about this: I will never spank for punishment, but I will always spank for closure. Do you think those actions might reassure a subbie how much she’s still loved?”

  Her bottom was tingling; her face felt hot. Afraid he’d read her too closely, Kitty tried to look away, but her guilty gaze kept creeping back, stealing greedy glimpses of him—his hands, his arms, his face. She could hardly control her breathing and she dared not speak at all, for fear her voice might crack. Hiding behind a shaky smile, she nodded.

  Holding up his coffee cup as if it were wine, Noah said, “To always feeling loved and never sitting comfortably again.”

  Kitty couldn’t help it, she laughed. She also picked up her mug and they both drank.

  Setting his cup back on the table, Noah gestured to her plate. “You’ve had enough to fortify a small bird. I’d like to see you finish the sausage and at least half your second slice of bread. You’ve someone else to think of now. I need you to start eating like it.”

  Hoping he never knew how much she liked it when he got bossy like this, Kitty used her fork to scrape together her shredded toast.

  “My turn to ask a question,” Noah said, as she polished off her last bite. “What’s Kitty short for? Vicky? Victoria? Katherine?”

  And so, they leapt from one awkward round of questions straight into another.

  Pausing, Kitty took a moment to swallow, giving herself as much time as possible before answering. It didn’t change the truth, and though she was tempted, she couldn’t bring herself to lie. “It’s, um… It’s not my real name.”

  “What is your name, then?”

  She poked and re-poked the sausage.

  “It’s dead,” he joked. His smile hadn’t dimmed, but his gaze sharpened. It was on her again, once more reading her in that frightening way that saw way more than she wanted him to. “Come on. I’m not going to laugh at you. What’s your real name?”

  She rolled her lips, then cleared her throat, steeling herself for the harder questions that were sure to follow. “Portia.”

  “Very pretty. What’s your last name, Portia?”

  “Raine.”

  “Middle name?”

  “Louise.”

  “Portia Louise Raine.” Noah let it roll off his tongue. “Very nice. I like it.”

  In the pause that followed, she knew she should say something, so she thanked him. But, she could already hear it coming.

  “So.” He sopped his egg with his toast, his gaze firmly on her. “Why Kitty?”

  And there it was. She almost hung her head.

  “Is that something he chose, or did you get a say?”

  “No, no.” She tried to wave it off, laugh it off. Anything to avoid the question. “It wasn’t like that. It…”

  “Quid pro quo,” Noah reminded. “Rule Number Ten, either of us can call a Q&A, but while it’s in force, any question asked must be openly and honestly answered. We both agreed to that and there’s still ten full minutes left in this session.”

  She didn’t quite groan, but she did sigh. Under the table, her leg jiggled.

  “It was a mutual thing,” she said, hoping that might be an end to it.

  It wasn’t.

  “How so?”

  He was going to laugh at her. She dropped her fork on her plate and clasped her hands tight in her lap. God, she didn’t want him to laugh at her.

  “How so?” he gently repeated.

  She wished she could smile as easily as he did. Then he might think she was joking, or that it didn’t matter as deeply as it honestly did, or maybe he’d see that it did matter, but let her gloss over it so they could go on to a different question.

  “Do you need to bend over your bed while I fetch the strap?” he asked gently, as if he hadn’t just threatened to spank her.

  “It was what I did,” she finally choked out.

  “When?”

  “The very first time he saw me playing.” She stared back at him, waiting for that twist of a smile of his to broaden into a grin, or a chuckle, or even an outright laugh. He didn’t, he only waited. “At Black Light,” she made herself specify, and when he still didn’t laugh, “I used to be a kitten. Before I even knew what it was, I was doing it. But once I discovered Black Light, it was almost all I did.”

  His brow quirked. “Used to be? You’re not anymore?”

  She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her chest began to hurt. She shook her head, but it came out more like a shrug and she couldn’t even convince herself that she was being completely open or honest about any part of this.

  Now it was his turn to shift, swiveling to face her directly. “Sausage,” he reminded her, giving himself time to think.

  She ate, with time slowly ticking its way down to the end of this game, just not fast enough.

  “Granted, here we are coming perilously close to ‘there’s more than one way to do things and always someone willing to say you’re doing it wrong.’” Noah paused, holding up both hands. “Far be it for me to pass that judgment on anyone, much less you, love, but how does that happen? I mean, I’ve met my share of kittens in the lifestyle. Not only kittens, puppies, foxes, bears…” He thought about it. “Littles, too, for that matter. I don’t think I’ve ever met a reformed one. Wait.” He held up his hands again. “Let me backtrack. I’ve met some who tried the kink to see if they liked it, only to decide they didn’t. I’ve even met a few who played at it because it gave their partner a thrill. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met someone who actually identified as being a kitten and then just…” His facial expression did his shrugging for him. “…stopped.”

  “That’s what I meant,” she hedged. “I tried it and…”

  But, the lie refused to come out, and it was while she was still struggling with it that Noah began connecting the dots. “That’s what you were doing when I saw you crawling through the house. And that day you got in trouble, when you hid under the kitchen table. You triggered, didn’t you? You were being a kitten?”

  Embarrassed as she was, she wanted to lie, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. And through it all, Noah sat there, with that tic of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth again.

  “Did you have kitty ears?”

  Pink ones. Soft as real fur. Ethen had them somewhere. He’d taken them from her the night he’d presented he
r with her harness and that stiff, leather mask that eventually she had come to hate. Kitty nodded.

  “Tail?”

  “It was a set.” She missed them.

  “The kind you string on your belt, or the kind you insert?”

  She squirmed again. “Both. Eventually.”

  “You started with the one,” he guessed, “and progressed to the other. Was that your choice or… someone else’s?”

  “I didn’t have a partner at first,” she confessed. “It was just me.” He still wasn’t laughing and that helped her find the courage to add, “I had the paws too.”

  “And you played like that, all by yourself, but not anymore?”

  It wasn’t safe anymore. It hadn’t been for a long time.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.” She pushed her breakfast plate away. “How much time do we have left?”

  “Enough for you to answer, and no. I don’t know why. I could make assumptions, but chances are good I’ll make the wrong ones. What’s the point in doing this if I’m only going to assume the wrong thing?”

  “He wouldn’t—” Perilously close to snapping, Kitty stopped herself. She rolled her lips and tried not to sound annoyed when she finished, “He wouldn’t let me.”

  “See, that’s the part I don’t understand,” Noah said, refusing to let it go. “Don’t I remember Ethen had you in a kitten outfit? And you just said he named you Kitty, and he continued to call you that because you were a kitten.”

  “That was his kitten.” She caught herself, rolling her lips tight again because that really had come out abrupt and angry enough to be considered snapping. Good submissives didn’t snap at their doms. Not without getting their faces slapped. Ethen would have been out of his chair already, but Noah sat watching her and waiting.

  “I take it there’s a difference then,” he asked, “between his kind of kitty and yours?”

  Jesus, these were the longest ten minutes of her life. She dragged a calming breath. “His Kitty is only for show. She’s quiet, and still, and looks pretty. She doesn’t get to play unless he allows it.”

  He tapped the edge of his forgotten breakfast plate with his finger. “I take it, that doesn’t happen very often.”

  Kitty shook her head. “It’s not dignified. Mostly he uses it to humiliate and punish.”

  She expected Noah to keep pushing for details, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Time’s up.” Getting up from the table, he ruffled her hair. “Finish your toast.”

  It was probably her imagination that turned that casual caress as his hand slid off her head into a parting rub behind the ears. Kitty rolled her shoulders while he walked away. Trying to ignore how her skin prickled with wanting, she finished the last few bites on her plate.

  Somewhere in the loft above his work shop, he had a plastic tub of pelts. Years ago, someone had given them to him in exchange for a matching set of boots, belt and a hat, all made out of crocodile hide. He’d done the work himself; it had taken weeks and he was supposed to have received cash for it. Unfortunately, when he presented his part of the agreement, a brand-new baby and a broke-down truck meant there was no cash for the other man to pay him. The hides hadn’t even come close to equaling what Noah estimated his stuff was worth, but after watching the embarrassment with which the younger man struggled to fulfill his end of the deal, Noah had graciously accepted the hides. He’d also spent the rest of that afternoon, under that old truck’s hood to get the beast running again, and the minute he’d got home, the hides had gone into the loft.

  Noah hadn’t thought of them in years. Now, as he tore through a storehouse worth of stacked up boxes, old tax records, and half a century’s worth of outdated kitchenware and bric-a-brac, not to mention his grandmother’s massive collection of crafting supplies, he prayed he hadn’t thrown them out.

  He never threw anything out, God damn it. So why couldn’t he find them?

  Slinging aside a box of quilting scraps, Noah stood up. Hands on his hips, he swept an annoyed eye over the clutter of plastic totes, wooden crates, and old suitcases stacked knee and hip high in places all around him. A flash of white cardboard with the letters H-I-D in black-felt marker, stashed behind a roll of old carpet and his mother’s old dress mannequin, jumped out at him. Wading and shoving his way to it, he pulled the mannequin back to reveal two more letters: E-S.

  “Ha!” he crowed. Unfolding the top flaps, he dug through the layers of individually-wrapped plastic bags. It was almost entirely red-fox hides, an invasive species early colonial settlers had released into the Australian wild for the sake of sport hunting. Unfortunately, the foxes not only thrived, but more than a hundred years later, they were the reason more than ten native species had gone extinct.

  Noah had absolutely no love for foxes. The furs were soft though, and at the very bottom, he found several that had been dyed. The one at the very bottom was jet black with a stark white tip on the very end of the tail.

  That was his baby. Noah pulled the hide from its bag and tipped it into the light shining through the loft’s only window. Dust danced on the beams as he examined the edges and fur for imperfections, but it was the tail that made his decision. This would work. This would absolutely work. Not that he’d ever made a kitten costume in his life, but then, he’d never had a kitten before, either. So…

  “Here’s to trying new things.” Smiling, Noah stuffed the hide back into its protective plastic, put the box back where he found it, and headed back down the ladder to his work space.

  He spent more time online looking up how to do it, and then digging back through his grandmother’s crafting supplies for enough wire mesh, than it did for him to make the ears. But when he was done, he was satisfied not even Hollywood could have crafted a better pair. Using pictures of a bobcat as his model, he put them on a wire headband meant to be completely hidden by her hair. He was especially proud of the wisps of tufting hair. Not only did they add realism to the overall effect, but the time it took to trim and glue, trim and glue, was well worth it. Those ears were strikingly feminine.

  The kitten gloves were little more than fingerless mittens, with soft pads added to the undersides to make them look more like kitten paws. He doubted they’d last very long. No matter how often she used them or how careful she was, what he ended up making weren’t hardy enough for crawling around on floors. Within months, they’d be scruffy and bedraggled, if not outright falling apart, but that would give him the time and practice he’d need to make something sturdier. Out of faux fur, preferably. That way, she could wash them without fear they’d fall apart.

  He only had to convince her to stick around that long…

  Banishing that thought, Noah turned his attention to the last puzzle in his masterpiece: the tail. Since he needed to do nothing to make it a, well, tail, this last piece in his kitten’s costume required both the least amount of work and the most. How did he want Kitty to wear it? Attached to the back of her belt so she could sashay through the house, swinging her little bottom and feeling the soft brush of fur caressing her ass and the backs of her knees? Or, should he attach a butt plug and have her wear it properly, with its invading presence inside her as a constant reminder that she was owned?

  He could well imagine her holding this tail in her hands, rolling her lips as she nerved herself up to wear it, knowing the whole time she eased the plug part inside her that he’d not only made it for her, but that he’d chosen which anal plug to use, the material, the size, everything. He wondered if she’d blush. Probably. He wondered if she’d muffled another of her tiny, breathless mews as the widest part finally worked its full way in. Almost certainly.

  Forget the belt. He even knew which anal plug he wanted to use—metal for easy cleaning, long and weighted so she’d never forget what pressed inside her, a wide base so she’d always experience that bit of a pinch, just for him, and a narrow neck, so she could romp, play and even pounce without fear it might come out before it should.

  B
efore he said it could.

  If he was even still around.

  Stop thinking about it.

  Start to finish, it took him more than six hours of fixing, fussing, cutting, sewing, gluing and adjusting, and in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking every minute he spent working on them, he might well be wasting for nothing.

  No, not for nothing. For Kitty, the best reason he could think of.

  All he had to do now was figure out how to give them to her.

  Chapter 13

  Dinner was pork chops and potatoes. Or at least, it looked like it might be pork chops. It was hard to tell. Like all the other packages stacked neatly in his freezer, it had been hand-wrapped in white freezer-paper and it wasn’t marked. Mentally, every dinner she made for him started off as Mystery Meat and vegetables. Tonight’s mystery meat looked like pork, so that was what she called it, although a slight gamey texture and flavor suggested she might be wrong. Kitty didn’t ask for clarification. If it wasn’t pig, she didn’t want to know, and in that way she worked very hard to keep the conversation pleasantly benign.

  They talked about work: How she used to be a teacher before Ethen got her fired; what he did every time the phone rang, summoning him out sometimes even in the middle of the night.

  “I was going to guess drug dealer,” she said when he told her, which made him choke on his coffee, he laughed so hard.

  “Do you want to come with me?” he countered, once he could breathe again.

  “No, thanks.” Kitty wasn’t much of a boat person. To be honest, she’d never been on a boat, but she knew she couldn’t swim and she wasn’t particularly keen to watch him go fishing for gigantic reptiles. But she did listen while he described how he caught them, bound their jaws so they couldn’t bite, and she absolutely believed it when he assured her that he’d been doing this for a very long time and knew how to keep her safe. Still, no way was she going to put herself in that kind of situation. Australia had been trying to kill her since she got here. She wasn’t about to get in a small boat with a prehistorical carnivore that had clawed its way to the top of the food chain back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.