Page 38 of Fearless
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 Now, as he tore through a storehouse worth of stacked up boxes, old tax records, and half a century’s worth of outdated kitchenware and bric-a-brac, not to mention his grandmother’s massive collection of crafting supplies, he prayed he hadn’t thrown them out.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.
Before 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.
“I promise.” Noah tried again, “I won’t shoot them unless I have to. To be honest, most of the ones I have to remove end up going to the croc farms, but I don’t even like to remove them. Ninety percent of my job is catching, tagging and identifying potential troublemakers that might need relocating, and showing people how to live safely alongside them. People like to live near water. Waking up with a salty in your swimming pool or sunning in the driveway is a good reminder that crocs like it too.”
