Page 40 of Fearless
That thought stuck into her needle-sharp and piercing. God, she was so tired of being afraid. And this? This side of herself that she had once been so proud of, it was another part of herself she’d let Ethen steal away. She thought about the red dot and Noah, waiting in the living room for her to emerge. Maybe with his laser pointer still in his hand. Maybe once more reading his paper, relaxing for the night.
If she didn’t put this on for him now, Kitty realized, she wasn’t ever going to. If she let herself lose her nerve, that would make it all the easier for her find the mental excuses she needed never again to find it. And then her kitten self really would be lost. All because of Ethen.
Kitty stripped. She didn’t have to, but she had always been nude whenever she let her kitten out, even before Ethen made it mandatory. Clothes were binding; Kitten was free, unencumbered and natural in both her body and her reactions. Kitty needed to find that again.
She slipped into her kneepads, the collar with the jingling bells that tinkled so beautiful when she moved, and then her paws. Pulling her long dark hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of her face, she slipped the wire headband on and, this first time, didn’t bother trying to hide it. Without a mirror to check herself, she did her best to adjust her ears so she wore them straight. But, the tail…
Her heart in her throat, she picked up her tail in her mouth and, on hands and knees, nudged her bedroom door open and crawled to the living room. Noah waited on the sofa, a soccer game playing softly on the TV. His attention wasn’t on it though. The moment she came around the end of the couch, his eyes were on her. Her heart was still in her throat, but it didn’t stay there long. When his smile softened, every uncertainty inside her seemed to melt back into the shadows. A rolling warmth flooded through her. She loved his smile. It was gentle and accepting. He wasn’t asking her to be anything other than who she was.
“Kitty, kitty,” he sang, making kissing noises as he tapped his fingers to his knee.
She went, dropping her head as she neared and losing herself in the scintillating allure of simply being. She rubbed against him, breathing in the wonderful masculinity of his scent as she let his knee caress its way down her body. His fingers followed suit, but he didn’t force it, and because he didn’t, it all came flooding back to her. She blinked against the tears as she crawled back to him, climbing straight up his legs to straddle his lap.
Because Kitty was bold like that. She never had to wonder if she’d be hurt or rejected.
His hands settled warm on her hips. She let hers rest on his shoulders while she stared into his eyes. Every place he touched her tingled. It was at once the most natural of things, and the most erotic, and Kitty never used to like sex play when she was in her kitten mode. This was supposed to be free time. But apart from touching her, Noah made no move to take it further.
“Is this for me?” he asked, reaching for her tail.
Kitty let him take it from her mouth, then bent to touch her forehead to his. Kittens didn’t cry, she wouldn’t either. But she did offer a fragile thrumming purr before hopping back off the couch and presenting herself to him. She dropped her head to her hands, keeping her bottom well up.
He patted her rump once, then stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
Kittens didn’t like to be alone. She followed him, hesitantly at first, but quickening her step when he didn’t censure her. He led the way back down the hall to his bedroom. She paused at the door. Rule Number Four meant she couldn’t go in. She mewed, half expecting him to close the door, but he didn’t. He kept it open so she could watch while he dug lubricating gel out of his top dresser drawer.
When he started toward her again, she presented once more right there in the doorway. He stepped around her and kept going, blowing smoochy noises to draw her back to the living room. She scampered after him, diverting only long enough to give brief but furious chase to the red dot that suddenly re-appeared on the area rug, pouncing and pouncing again until it vanished. By then, Noah was once more sitting at his end of the couch and her attention immediately realigned itself. She came to him without needing to be called. Turning, she presented one last time.
“Good girl,” he said as she heard the plastic top of the gel tube snap open. “Deep breath… and hold it.”
There was no discomfort at all, just a brief moment of both liquid and metal cold, and then the plug was inside her. Kitty closed her eyes. Soft fur nestled up against her buttocks and the caress of the long tail brushed the backs of her legs.
She was whole again. For the first time in over a year, she was free. Free to cover her face and cry without fear that her tears would be used against her. Free to crawl up on the couch to straddle Noah’s lap again, and press her forehead to his and feel nothing but peace and security as his hand settled on the back of her head, gently rubbing and stroking and accepting her.
He didn’t one time tell her not to cry. He didn’t say anything at all, he simply held her while she curled up against his chest and wished she could go back and do things differently. She wished she’d walked away from Ethen the very first day they’d met. She wished she hadn’t been so damned eager to have a dom—any dom—in her life that she took the first option to present itself. She wished she’d waited for someone like Noah.
She wished she’d waited for Noah.
Curling up tight against him, she buried her face in the side of his neck. If only she were a little braver, she wanted so much to thank him. Or even to tell him she liked him too, but he was right. Thirty days wasn’t going to be enough time, and just because two people liked one another, that didn’t change the facts. She couldn’t stay where she didn’t belong, in a country where she wasn’t legal and couldn’t hold a job. She couldn’t hide here for the rest of her life, with a man who, one subtle day at a time, was stealing away all the broken pieces of her heart. She certainly couldn’t have a baby here—how would that even work immigration-wise? How long could she say she was on vacation before someone called her an illegal immigrant and could they, would they, arrest her for it? Take her baby from her once it was born? She didn’t know, but it scared her.
She couldn’t stay here. At some point, Kitty realized, she had to stop running. She had to clean up her life, get a job, find her independence and be responsible again, and she simply couldn’t do any of that from here.
Kitty had to go home.
Preferably before it hurt too much to leave.
Chapter 14
Noah got called out to work at four in the morning. The only reason Kitty knew that was because she was sleeping in bed right alongside him when the phone rang.
Well… sleeping was probably not the right word. She’d done very little sleeping, despite his efforts to exhaust her in the most pleasant of possible ways. Most of the night had been spent wide-eyed and staring at the ceiling, trying to think of how she might make staying here work. Sometime around two a.m., she got up and for almost an hour sat on the toilet with the light off, reading up on Australian immigration laws. Except that with every passage she read, inside she knew she was only taking running away to a whole new level. Two weeks ago, Noah hadn’t even known who she was. What, did she think he was going to marry her? With someone else’s baby in her stomach? Things like that only happened in Hollywood movies.
She went back to bed and lay there, wide awake and scared. At some point, Noah rolled over, hooked an arm around her waist and drew her in to spoon with him. His chin rested on top of her head where his slow, even breaths proceeded to rustle her hair, and the heat of his hard body cradled hers. Afraid she might wake him, she couldn’t help but touch his forearm. Just to touch him and burn into her memory how very good this moment felt, for all the long nights ahead of her when she no longer had it.
Then his phone rang and Kitty, who’d been awake for hours, snapped her eyes shut and pretended to be asleep so he wouldn’t know. He took the phone into the bathroom with him, so as not to wake her, but she still heard half of what he said, enough here and there to figure out he was being summoned to work. When he came out of the bathroom, he paused at her bedside to brush her hair back from her face. He didn’t wake her though, and she didn’t let on that he didn’t have to.
It would be better this way.
Before he left, he scrawled a quick note and left it on her bedside table. She waited until she heard the front door close and then the truck chugged off into the night. Sitting up only after he was gone, by the flashlight of her cellphone she read the note: Gone to work. Croc under police dispatcher’s car. Gonna relocate it. No need to make brekkie. I’ll be taking you out when I get back. Ta.
