Page 31 of Imperfect Gifts
He didn’t know what kind of owl Genie turned into, but she was strong and without mercy, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to see her shift into a great horned owl.
When it was finally crammed all the way in, Ezra was gasping for air and trying not to look as out of sorts as he felt.
“That can’t have been easy,” Genie told him, and she caressed his balls. “How much of a masochist are you? Could you enjoy it if I squeezed your balls in my fist? If I flick them with my finger?”
“My enjoyment isn’t important, ma’am. Yours is.”
She let go of his balls and sat back on her heels. “I don’t consider myself a masochist, though there are some specific hurts that can get me off under the right circumstances. I’m mostly submissive in bed, usually, but I like the idea of being submissive to Dev but dominant to the two of you. For some things, like eating me out, it’ll absolutely be about my enjoyment and not yours, but when it comes to CBT, I need to know what you like and what you hate. I mean, it might please me to do what you hate at times, but mostly, I think I’ll probably enjoy knowing I can make you feel good.”
She lifted her hand and brought it down hard on his balls. Ezra jerked and shuddered in his bondage, unable to escape the pain or protect against more strikes.
Genie leaned forward a few inches and breathed in his scent. “You don’t especially like that, but it isn’t the first time someone’s hit your balls. Probably won’t be the last.” She flicked them a few times and then popped them again, though not quite as hard this time, but the pain traveled from his balls up his torso, radiating.
Genie rested a hand on his balls, the heat soaking in. It was both a comfort and a threat, and she told him, “I think, especially if I ask you about something you hate, you’re probably going to want to answer me, rather than force me to see for myself.”
Ezra got the message — she was going to keep hitting his balls until he answered her question. “I’m not a fan of ball torture when it comes to hitting them. A few times, I’ve been able to enjoy having them squeezed, but most of the time I hate that, too. I much prefer to have my cock abused, rather than my balls, ma’am.”
She met his gaze, and he wanted to fall into her honey-colored eyes. How had he not noticed how striking they were, before? She moved and her breasts jiggled a little under the red sweater, and he remembered.
“I’m either Miss, or Miss Genie,” she told him. “I don’t think I especially like ma’am, and I don’t care at all for Mistress. Not sure what else there is.”
“My Ladycould work. I think Brooke might not like it if we called you our Queen, thoughPrincesscould work, or perhapsDuchess.”
“Signora,” Elijah said from behind him. “I want to call youSignoraas a term of respect, Miss Genie.”
Ezra smiled. “Yes, I like that. With your permission, of course, Lady Genie.”
“Of those, I think either Miss Genie, Lady, Lady Genie, or Signora, because you sound so damned sexy when you say it. Take your pick, and change it up if you’d like.”
“Thank you, Signora,” Ezra told her, using the same Italian inflection his brother had. “Is there something I can do to pleasure you?”
“You can answer my questions. Supposedly, pumas have spines on their penis, but they aren’t as large as the spines of most other cats. Do they come out in human form, or just in cat form?”
“They aren’t sharp like a lion’s,” he told her. “More of an irritant than a pain, from what others have told us. Usually, we can control whether we have them or not.”
She ran her hand up and down his cock, and he closed his eyes at her grip.Heaven.
“We have to decide when we’re getting hard, or rather, just before we get hard,” he told her. “I couldn’t add them now.”
“Later, then. I’m curious. I’d like to see them.”
“If Brooke and Dev will allow it, I will devote myself to you, my Lady Genie. You saved my brother’s life, but it’s more than that. When you came to check on me, yousawme. I wasn’t a slave of value who had to be kept in good working order, I was a man who…” he shook his head. “We weren’t nice to you, the first time we saw you. We saw huge tits and not the person, but you saw the person, while I laid in that bed. I don’t own myself, so I can’t give myself to you, but I would, if I could.”
If he could’ve spoken to her in Italian, it would’ve sounded so much better, but he could do well enough in English. It wasn’t as musical, but he could make it work.
“With most apex predators, I know whether I’m talking to the human or the animal. With you, it feels as if the cat and human are both present. I’m always talking to you both.” She frowned. “Or almost always.”
“That’s true, my Lady. Our cats are rarely all the way in the background. When I’m in cat form, the human isn’t that much farther in the background than…” he didn’t like talking about this, but it felt important. “I’m not really two beings, especially not when I’m in human form. The cat kept us alive in both our forms when we were little, I think. No one ever really convinced either of our cats to back off. We aren’t feral anymore, but sometimes we probably don’t give society’s rules the respect we should.”
“Sometimes?” Dev asked.
Genie looked up and told Dev, “It’s good you know their history, but I don’t think expecting them to repeat history is a good idea. I expect them to do better here. They have an opportunity they’ve never had before, right? They won’t be the same naughty boys they were in Italy. Cats like independence, and you say you’re providing a road map to independence, right? They’ll want to follow that road map if for no other reason than it will let them make their own map once they’ve proven themselves.”
Ezra had understood all of the things Dev had said on a logical level, but Genie’s words struck home in a way Dev’s hadn’t. If they followed the path Dev was laying out for them, the twins and their cats could walk away and not look back, if they wanted to. Be their own people, with no one watching over them. He’d been afraid of it, before, but how cool would it be to wake up in a beach house with just his brother and no one else? Breakfast, swimming, video games, with no one there to tell them what to do.
Of course, they’d have to figure out how to buy the beach house, the breakfast, and the video games, and that made everything scary again, but Ezra met Genie’s gaze and told her, “Thank you. You’restillseeing me, even when I’m not sure I’m really seeing myself.”
“Do you think,maybe, we could stop talking and fuck?” Elijah asked.
