Page 37 of Fearless
“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 her 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.”
