by Gabi Moore
She smiled.
“Am I making Daddy happy?” she purred, and fuck if it didn’t make me want to tear her out of the cage right then and there.
“Very happy. You’re going to get a big reward later on.”
She slinked over the bars, lacing her long arms in and out of the “branches”.
“I am?”
“First I’m going to put you over my knee for taunting all these nice people here, and then I’m going to take you home and fuck you so hard and so good you’ll be begging me for mercy,” I hissed through the bars.
She smiled a devious little smile, then inched closer. I came close too, my lips only a breath away from hers. In an instant, she had swiftly snatched the key from my neck and darted to the back of the cage, holding it up like a prize. I heard a few lighthearted cheers from the crowd.
“But Daddy, I’m not ready to come out yet,” she teased, and waggled her ass at me. I laughed and looked at her sidelong. She placed the key over her own neck.
“That’s very naughty,” I said. She indicated the three letters on her chest, one after the after. Y, E and S.
“You’re going to pay dearly for that little indiscretion,” I said, and again she framed that giant, black word on her chest. YES. She was a naughty cherry blossom, blooming before my eyes, a little tropical fish in a strange aquarium, a fairy, my little fuck toy. The woman I loved.
By the time we packed up for the evening, she really was exhausted. The crowds trickled out and the organizers came to talk with me about doing another stall at an event later that month. The men wheeled out the goods and we eventually took apart the stand piece by piece. I had easily taken more than five times the orders I usually do for such an event. And it was all because of her.
She waited inside her cage till the last moment, then unceremoniously let herself out, fetched her coat, and readied herself to go home. We didn’t speak a word to each other. I offered her a drink of water and a snack, but she turned it down. She still had that strange glassy glaze in her eyes. I knew she’d need a little time to come down. I’d be ready for her when she did.
It was well past midnight by the time we were back in the truck and ready to pull out. Wordlessly, she slumped down in the long seats and rested her head on my lap as I started the ignition. She fell asleep almost instantly, the lapel of her coat falling open just enough to give a glimpse of her white breast in the darkness. I drove on in silence, hand resting protectively over her. I lost myself fin my thoughts.
I meant every single threat and promise I had whispered to her while she was inside that beautiful cage. I fully intended to punish her, thoroughly, with everything I had. Images of her floated in my mind. Her pink ass, raw from the abuse I’d give it. Her little hands clutching uselessly at my chest as I curled my hips into hers and delivered blow after blow of what she needed. Those glassy eyes. The way she sometimes blushed scarlet just at the moment her little body clenched all round mine and she orgasmed… Oh, I’d fuck her all right. But later.
For now, the sweetest thing in the world was to let her sleep softly against me.
Chapter Nineteen – Kat
None of it made any sense, I know. I was a card carrying feminist, financially independent since the age of eighteen, had two degrees, a child I had raised almost entirely on my own, and a personal deadlift record of 215 pounds.
So why was I getting off on being put into cages? Or put over a man’s knee and spanked? Or, for that matter, why did I get desperately wet at the thought of being gagged and made to wait on him, hand and foot? Why was I lingering outside that tattoo shop for just that fraction of a second longer than usual, imagining myself making the marks on my thighs and sides more …permanent?
It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t understand it, and so I stopped trying to. I just went with it. Just like I let go and trusted Mark to do with me what he wanted, I let go and let life tumble me along, wherever it wanted to.
And now, less than six months after I had stood, a husk in expensive bridal couture while my stranger-fiancée made me cocoa I didn’t want, I was here, ferociously free …and still running.
I was walking briskly down a street I’d never been down before, brand new shoes clacking on the sidewalk and my thoughts light and quick. I had just viewed a new apartment for Nicky and I. We needed something smaller, closer to her school, easier to take care of. My savings would float us for a long while, but I had been meaning to downgrade my big, clumsy life for a long time now anyway.
It was a cozy little place, but perhaps not quite right. It ‘ticked all the boxes’, but I had already learnt a hard, expensive lesson about checklists. Instead, I consulted my intuition. I thought about the quality of the light streaming into the living room.
Give me a sign, I thought as I clacked down the sidewalk, and lo, there was one. A crumpled piece of newspaper bungled by and got snagged on my foot. The letter N stood out distinctively for a moment before it rolled away again. Fine. It was a no then. I walked on. Why not play with things a little?
I asked for another sign, then watched the trees and clouds around me, looking for evidence of the invisible trickster god that suddenly seemed to have hold of my life. When I bumped into him, it was so hard it nearly sent me skidding into the street.
“Watch where you’re,” said and angry voice. I looked up. It was him. Anthony had rounded the corner, groceries in his arms like her was carrying a baby, face flustered.
“Kat, it’s you.” He froze to look at me. I stared at him, gobsmacked.
“Oh, hi,” I mumbled eventually.
The air suddenly took on a painful quality. He looked embarrassed, but since we both seemed to be glued to the spot until someone could think of the right mix of small talk that would release us, I decided to smile.
“Hey Anthony, I just wanted to say …I’m so sorry about how everything happened…” I said. His smile was an angry one.
“Huh, passive construction, interesting.”
“I’m sorry?”
“How everything happened? It didn’t just happen, Kat. You made it happen. You did it,” he said with razors in his voice.
It was weird seeing him again. He had felt like a stranger all the time I knew him. And now he really felt like a stranger. I thought of how many quiet men at the kink festivals and expos looked just like him. Like dads. Dry, tired-looking, but with a nasty sting just below the surface. He looked like he was ready to lay into me.
“I know. Anthony, I know you’re angry. And I’m sorry. But we weren’t right for each other… you can see that, right? It would have been a disaster, you and I… I missed you, of course…” I said.
“Well, I didn’t miss you.”
“Fair enough.”
“I mean, I didn’t even know you, so there was nothing to miss.” He stared at me with those hard, ice-blue eyes, like the color of the sky on a winter day that surprises you with how cold it really is. “You deceived me from the start. It was no loss. I never had you to start with, so …”
“Anthony, come on, I never deceived you.”
He scoffed out loud at me.
“Even for the little while we knew each other, that was always clear about you, Kat. You only like to play at being miss morals, only pretend that you’re some enlightened being who has her shit together. You’re more of a mess than anyone.”
I scowled at him and tried to brush past and carry on walking. I wasn’t going to stand here and listen to any of this.
‘See? You’re called out on your bullshit and you just disappear,” he said with a bitter laugh.
“God,” I spat, “what do you want from me, Anthony? It was a stupid idea, us ever even meeting. I’m so sorry, but I never deceived you.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“I hear you’ve found someone else.”
“And?”
“I hear a lot of stories.”
“I’m sure I don’t care.”
“And that’s it right th
ere. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s fine that you don’t give a shit about hurting my feelings, I’m grown, I can take it. But you drop all the other people in your life? And your child?”
“What are you talking about?” I said. He looked me up and down with a bitter look on his face.
“You’ve gained weight,” he said simply, then pushed past me and carried on walking.
I was stunned. I quickly turned on my heel and marched away from him as fast as my feet would carry me. But nothing could shake the feeling he’d left with me.
I went home that afternoon and busied myself with a million little things, but the memory of his twisted, angry face stuck with me, burnt into my mind and there every time I closed my eyes. Then it creeped up on me slowly. Two hours later, a little while before I was meant to meet Mark for a romantic dinner, it was already full blown: guilt.
A nauseous, tight, ugly feeling that clutched at me in the center of my chest. What if he was right?
No, he wasn’t right godammit. I was allowed to date and see whoever the hell I wanted to. I was allowed to quit my job, to move houses, to do whatever else I wanted. And Jesus, wasn’t I allowed to gain a little weight? I fumed. Fuck him. If people were threatened by a woman doing something that truly fulfilled her, if they were threatened by …but what if he wasn’t threatened? What if he was right?
When I met up with Mark that evening, I still hadn’t shaken the sour feeling. He had arrived before me and when I walked in, he was sitting looking with amusement at the menu with that scruffy, eternally casual look of his. That man could wear a three-piece suit and a gold watch and still look like a handsome hobo.
“Hey, gorgeous. Maybe you can tell me what the hell jus is. Is it like juice? Like meat juice?” he said and leaned up to give me a full kiss before sitting back down with a goofy smile on his face.
“Don’t be such a fool, you know exactly what it means,” I said and sat down.
“What’s eating you?” he said, giving me the side eye.
“House hunting. It’s hell. I think I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake giving the old place.”
He put down his menu and frowned at me.
“Where’s this all coming from, Kat? You were thrilled about everything this morning…”
“Yes, well, people change,” I snapped. “I’m sorry, I just…”
I looked at his confused face. His gorgeous, perfect, confused face. How often I had stared at that same faultless configuration of eyes and nose and lips before? How often I had babbled incoherently, had begged him for mercy …or for more. I had to be honest with him.
“I bumped into Anthony,” I said miserably.
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Mark, I think it’s time you and Nicky met already.”
He looked at me, stunned.
“Okaaay …that seems a bit out of left field,” he said and smiled warmly.
“Can you just take this seriously, please?” I said. He held up both his hands.
“Kat, woah, can you just calm down? I’d love to meet Nicky, you know that. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Well, we wanted to be sure, remember? It’s a big deal to--”
“Do you want to or don’t you?” I interrupted. His smile dropped.
“Kat, is this about Anthony? Did he say something…?”
“He didn’t say anything, but maybe he made me think. Maybe I need to actually just cool it a bit with the mid-life crisising and take stock for a second.”
He looked down at the tablecloth.
“I’m sorry, that sounded harsh. It’s just …it’s time now, isn’t it?”
“When you’re ready, Kat. We don’t have to rush though. I’m having so much fun with you…”
“Yeah, but is that all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you only like the ‘fun’ parts of me? At some point we have to be serious about--”
“Do we? Do we really have to be serious?” he said and gave me a naughty smile. I don’t know why, but it irritated the hell out of me.
“Yes. We do, actually. I have a kid. That’s just the reality, right? You wouldn’t …you wouldn’t come to a restaurant and eat there and then claim you don’t want to take things too seriously just as soon as the bill comes along, right?”
“Kat, what on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about commitment. I have responsibilities…”
He frowned and leaned back in his chair.
“Are you even listening to me?” I said. I hadn’t shaken the feeling at all. In fact, it was like Anthony had left a dark shadow over me and I could run out from under it.
“Damnit, Kat, what do you want me to say?” He was rubbing the back of his neck, looking around with irritation. “I said I’d meet Nicky, didn’t I?”
My cheeks burnt.
“Is it really such a chore? Is it such a compromise?”
“I told you already, I haven’t been with a woman with a child before, so this is kind of new for me, I don’t know how it’s supposed to go, can you cut me some fucking slack here?”
I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
In the end I was just a middle aged divorcee with a young child and now, let’s be honest, I was unemployed and moving into a smaller apartment. I didn’t blame him for balking. It was easy for him; he didn’t have a tiny human being that depended on him for everything. He could work whenever the hell he wanted, living it up and stupid expos and whatever…I suddenly felt like an idiot. What had I expected? That I would stupidly in love with some bad boy character and then, what, he’d drop everything to have a boring life with me and my daughter? My head was a mess.
“I think I’m just going to go home,” I said, and stood up.
“What? Kat we had a date.” He quickly rose with me.
He looked so handsome, even with his eyebrows knotted like that. Even now, even with this weird shadow over me, he still looked like the handsomest man I had laid eyes on. Though I felt like I wanted to cry, there was still some part of me that ached just to look at him, like every cell of my body remembered instantly who he was, and the delicious things we had done to one another…
“Kat don’t go.”
But I had to. I didn’t like any of this. I had to think. I had to plan. And just like that, the crushing weight of my old life came thundering back, catching up with me all at once.
Chapter Twenty – Mark
Calling up an ex for relationship advice probably wasn’t the wisest choice, but I fully admit it: I had no idea what I was doing. Not with Kat, not with any of it.
I was in over my head and for some reason, Valerie popped into my mind. She’d know. She did already know what an idiot I was. I could chat to her honestly about failing Kat since, well, I’d kind of failed her in the same way.
Some people call it ‘commitment phobia’ but that doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s not that I’m afraid of commitment. I’ve just never seen a convincing argument for it …or even heard anyone explain exactly what it’s supposed to mean. The promise to keep on pretending you love someone, even after you don’t anymore? A legal contract? A vow you make that nothing will ever change?
I think I’m right to be suspicious. In any case, it was kind of funny that she pitched up at the studio that night eagerly babbling about her upcoming wedding. The woman I’d never expect to get hitched and settle into married life was now showing me pictures on her phone of her bridesmaid’s dresses. She wanted to coordinate the color with the new turquoise flower tattoo she had on her collarbone. It was crazy.
I laughed and we got to work on our beers. I knew she was going about the wedding partly for the distraction. For my sake.
“Looks like we’ve lost another victim to the wedding industrial complex,” I said. She laughed and shrugged me off.
“Yeah, more or less. Anyway …what’s up with you? I’ve been thinking about yo
u lately, wondering if you were doing OK,” she said at last, and put away her phone.
It was easy to talk to Valerie.
So I did. I launched into a story about Kat and I, about asshole Anthony, about her wanting me to meet her daughter, about the fight we’d had at the restaurant …and she listened quietly to it all.
“So what’s the problem?” she asked when I was done and took a sip of my beer as a kind of full stop.
“Well, she’s going on and on about commitment and stuff… it just freaks me out. I’m not sure what she even wants from me. Everything was so great. We were having so much fun. Now she’s pushing this thing with her daughter, getting all serious on me.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So commit to her then,” she said and smiled.
I laughed.
“It’s not that simple. I don’t know if we’re …if we’re there yet. If we’re ready. Why mess with a good thing, you know?”
“Mess with it?”
“Yeah, well, why suddenly add all these expectations and obligations onto everything? I thought that’s what she liked about me, that I didn’t do any of that crap, you know?”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Hey, Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
I laughed.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, think about this, what do you want from her?”
I thought about it for a moment.
“I just want to enjoy her company. I want us to have fun. I want her to trust me and to …just enjoy each other. That’s it.”
“That’s it? Dude, think about what that actually costs her, to do all that with you. You told me she’s coming to expos with you now, that she quit her job, that she even called off her engagement for you. And you accepted all of that gladly. You encouraged her even, and now you’re telling me you don’t know if you’re ‘there yet’? That you don’t know if you can budge out of your comfort zone even a little and try and meet her half way?”
“Yeah, but she chose to do all those things…”
“Man, she’s already committed to you. Lucky you! For some reason she thinks you’re awesome and can’t get enough of your oblivious ass.”
