Of course, Noah would have his own toys. It only made sense that he would keep them in his spare room. This wasn’t some unspoken threat. He wasn’t Ethen, leaving such things as a silent promise that her behaviors had not gone unnoticed any more than they would go uncorrected.
Shivers danced up her back as, with equal parts trepidation and helpless fascination, Kitty reached far enough into the closet to touch the nearest strap. The aged leather was deceptively soft. Snatching her hand back again, she tucked both beneath her chin, trying to banish how her fingertips tingled and now so too did the backs of both her thighs and her naked, cringing bottom.
She was being silly. Tearing her eyes from the collection of belts and straps, she picked up her fallen clothes and hung them up, some two to a hanger. Laying her duffel on the stack of boxes, she quickly shut the closet door and hurried back to bed. Clicking off the lamp, she tossed onto her side again to face the wall, hands clasped tight against her lips and burrowed so far under the quilt that it practically covered her head. Sleeplessly, she lay there, still feeling every bit the traitor as before, only now it was different. Better somehow, the way misbehaviors always felt both dreadful and better while she lay caught in that purgatory of waiting for correction.
This was how it used to feel, back before Ethen. Back when BDSM was all fun and games, and she still went by the name her parents had given her. She remembered a moment almost like this with the very first dom she’d ever had. He’d liked roleplaying games. In particular, he’d liked disapproving Daddy-themed games and his favorite was when he got letters sent ‘home from school.’
She’d loved getting spanked back then. She’d loved the fun, exciting playfulness of it. But then, none of those ‘punishments’ had been real. Oh the spankings had been, but the offenses were nothing but make-believe. There was a big difference between being sent to her room to await ‘Daddy’s’ displeasure and the icy terror that twisted in her guts every time Ethen locked her in one of his death stares. Like he would do if she was more than three minutes late getting home from work or she failed to get dinner on the table in time, or if he found a cobweb during a house inspection or like when the belt on the vacuum broke and Puppy could only vacuum half the carpets. They’d all grabbed brooms—Puppy, Kitty even Pony had swept until her arms hurt—but the floors had not passed Ethen’s standards of cleanliness and they’d all been punished.
But that had happened around Christmas time. It had been months since last Kitty had been punished for anything. Months since she’d been rewarded, too. Simply months, without the thing that once upon a time she’d thought her world could never have revolved without. Not impact play, per se, although once upon a time she used to love it. Crave it. So hungrily that she used to write those silly letters from ‘school’ at least once or twice a week to help provide Daddy with fun reasons to spank her.
Yes, she missed impact, but more than that, she missed being allowed to submit. She missed being bent to another’s will. Not forced so much as seduced into it. And God, could she be seduced. She’d fallen for Ethen’s seduction so completely that here she was, even after all he’d done, pining for him.
No, not him. It. The routines and rituals. Showing her respect and appreciation for another by keeping his house, cooking his meals, bending her body to his desires… warming his bed. Being the canvas upon which he exorcised his sadistic impulses because in turn it sated all of her own masochistic hungers.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the belts. Closing her eyes, Kitty saw them, hanging in the closet, ready for use when and if required, and a low thump of heated arousal pulsed between her legs. Heady and unexpected, something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Trying to ignore it, she rolled onto her stomach, but from there it was such a short and seductive impulse to rise up onto her knees. Head down, ass up, hands clasped above her head to keep her from reaching under and between her splayed thighs to touch where she knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t even pretend this was a come-to-Jesus moment. A real punishment would never be initiated with her hiding under a blanket.
Cool whole-house air conditioning moved over her as she slipped the patchwork quilt off her. Hoping the squeak of the hinges weren’t as loud as they seemed with her head lying on the mattress, she adjusted herself to the center of the bed. Spreading her knees wider apart, she bowed her back and arched her hips, making herself properly submissive… to no one.
This was ridiculous. Burying her face in the sheet, she bit the inside of her cheek until the stinging rush of tears was forced back. She shouldn’t want this. No person who’d truly, legitimately gone through the hell Ethen had put her through would want any part of this again; she could already hear people saying that, whispering it behind her back. It was why she hadn’t gone to the police when Garreth had tried to convince her to, because no one who didn’t want this to happen would have put themselves in the position she had. And they wouldn’t cry themselves to sleep at night because they were so empty without it, so desperate to run right back into it all over again.
Pushing herself up onto her knees, Kitty stared at the darkness of her shadowy bed. She needed punishment. She wanted it; at least then she might be able to sleep afterward. A real punishment wouldn’t have been given like this, though. Not with her in this position and not with a sink full of dirty dishes.
The muffled rumble of a man’s steady breathing told her Noah was probably asleep, but that was almost a secondary concern. She crawled out of bed on all fours and crept to the door. Her heart was in her throat; her stomach was nothing but knots, but though she paused at the closet, she could not make herself open it. Couldn’t make herself face those straps, not even long enough to snag a nightshirt that would only itch at her for putting it on.
The rules here were different than the ones Ethen enforced, but still clothing shouldn’t be allowed. Not for traitorous submissives who, above all, needed reminding of their place.
Knowing she risked being seen, she left her bedroom. Any inadvertent sound could bring Noah out into the hall. She was terrified of that, but the hunger was awake in her now. Her flesh vibrated with every hand and knee step she crawled down the hall to the kitchen.
She hadn’t been Kitty-girl since she left Ethen. Living with Hadlee and Garreth had made that impossible, not when any sight or sign of Kitty-girl might reopen Piggy-girl’s wounds. She didn’t even have her mask anymore. Hadlee had snatched it from her hands and thrown it as far as it would go. She hadn’t even allowed it in the car the night she and Garreth had rescued her, and Kitty never told her how it had made her feel to watch that mask go flying off into the snowy dark. It had hurt. Like seeing a piece of her unloved self being cast away, it had physically hurt like hell.
That was okay. She told herself she didn’t need the mask. She had been Kitty before Ethen; she could be Kitty without that mask.
One could tell one’s self that all day long, but standing in front of Noah’s sink on two legs instead of four, without the mask it was harder to keep her Kitty-self in mind. It took all of two minutes to wash the dishes, dry them thoroughly, and search the cupboards for (hopefully) each item’s proper place. She wiped down all the surfaces and when she was done, the whole house was silent and she could almost pretend that she was the only person here. Or that she was back in Ethen’s house, going about her daily chores—her normal routine—and that once more she was back in her place as the most favored of his Menagerie.
She hadn’t felt the security of this in so long, she didn’t even try to fight the urge. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled back to her bedroom.
She hesitated—bad Kitty—but in the end, she left the door open, because her body was not hers and never had been. She had no need for privacy. She was to be open and available to her owner in all places and at all times, even when she did not want to be—even when the consequences might include Noah wandering out of his room, something that truly, deeply terrified her. Still, she left the door open and continued on hands and knees all the way to the foot of the bed.
She knelt there, a position of penance with her knees wide apart, hands behind her head, waiting for someone who would not come. Aching for the discipline she didn’t deserve and hadn’t earned, but which she wanted so desperately that, when her time of reflection was done, she rose up to bend over the foot rail. Feet spread apart, she put herself into position for either whipping or fucking, the choice was not and should not ever be hers.
Except this wasn’t right. This wasn’t realistic. Bad kitties were always sent to await their punishment with an implement, even if one might not be used.
She didn’t want to, but then it shouldn’t ever be about the things she wanted. Sometimes, it should only be about following what she knew was expected of her. She got back down on the floor and crawled to the closet. With her bedroom door now open and the dull light of the mostly closed bathroom door seeping into her room, the straps in the back of her closet looked less like snakes and yet far more formidable than before. She selected the first one she touched, her hand erupting into the same prickles of dread now dancing across her flanks. Carrying it in her mouth, she crawled back to bed.
Back into position she went, this time careful to balance the strap so it lay across her back, above her hips. The weight of it there was both heaven and hell, familiar and comforting and painful because no matter what, she had lost all right to have this. She’d run away from the one dom who had understood her. And yes, he’d been an ass, but wasn’t everybody at some point? And yes, that last night he had hurt her terribly, but it wasn’t really all his fault. Didn’t she deserve some of the blame? Had he really been so bad that she needed to run away?
The important thing here was, she had lost all access to the discipline she loved the most because of her actions, not his. It was gone and she would never get it back again. Because everyone who knew her also knew Garreth, so eventually, sooner or later everyone was going to know what had happened between her and Ethen. They were going to know she was a submissive who couldn’t be trusted. That she had failed and betrayed her dom in the most subversive way. Betrayed his trust by revealing to both Hadlee and Garreth how she’d gotten all those welts the night they’d rescued her from that freezing cold telephone booth.
Nobody needed to know about the other thing, the rape. If rape it could even be called, because really, if it had been rape, then why was she doing this—bending over in naked remembrance of all the things Ethen would do to her if she were with him right now? Why was her heart hurting, her legs spreading wider and her hips pushing back to make her even more available for nobody’s use?
It had been so long since last she’d been used in that way she so deeply craved. Broken with need, her hand moved down, covering her achingly empty pussy. Such touches were forbidden; a submissive’s pleasure was never for herself. She tried to make her hand feel like someone else’s as she pressed. She didn’t dare rub, no matter how much she wished just once to feel the caress of fingertips circling her waking clit. But she held, knowing even this much would have been enough to bring the strap laying across her back into extensive and painful use.
Kitty buried her face in the mattress. She tried to remember. When she’d been a little girl, everyone used to say she had a great imagination, but she must have lost that skill. Try as she might, she couldn’t summon a single lashing memory sufficient enough to bring those echoing lines of real pain snapping and stinging and burning across her ass and thighs. She felt only pulsing, the slow, languid throb of her own needs coming to life beneath her hand.
Just one rub. Who would know, or care?
