Page 37 of Brave
“Don’t do that here?” Pony hissed. “You shouldn’t do it at all where he might see you!”
Bowing her head, Puppy kept writing. Ethen wasn’t her Master anymore, and anyway, it wasn’t like he was watching her through the security cameras.
Shifting in her seat, growing visibly more agitated the closer time drew to that magical moment when the guards would let them back into the visiting area, Pony snapped, “Put it away, Puppy. If he sees that, he’ll know you’ve been seeing someone else.”
As if she wasn’t going to tell him herself the second Ethen let her sit down next to him.
Still, Puppy kept her mouth shut. She wrote all the way up until the buzzer rang and the guards opened the door leading from the waiting area to the visiting room. Tucking her pen into the notebook to keep her place, she slipped it back into her backpack. Shouldering the strap, she waited until Pony deemed it time to rush to the head of the line. Following reluctantly, they headed back together, down the sterile corridor toward the visiting room.
This time, Ethen wasn’t already waiting for them. They found a table in the back, the same one he had preferred the last time they’d visited. Pony stood, the proper little submissive, waiting for him to come and grant permission to sit. Puppy didn’t bother. She already knew he was going to leave her standing again. And besides, she fidgeted with the straps of her backpack as she worked up the courage, he wasn’t her dom anymore. She didn’t need his permission.
“Don’t!” Pony hissed when Puppy edged up to one of the seats.
She sat down anyway. Her leg began to jiggle. She rubbed her damp palms against her pants, her chest tightening in on breaths that were coming a little too quick and shallow. She needed her notebook. Pulling it out of her pack, she took up her pen and tried to lose herself in the calm of writing lines.
“Stop it!” Pony spat, her voice breaking. Lunging at her, she clutched her fists to keep from grabbing. Good menagerie girls were model submissives at all times, in all places. They didn’t run, they didn’t lunge, and they certainly never grabbed.
Circling her notebook with a protective arm, Puppy watched Pony wrestle with propriety.
“He’ll see. Put it away!”
“He’s not my master anymore.”
Tightly pressed lips clamping off an angry squeak, Pony snatched at the notebook. Puppy grabbed back, latching on just in time to keep her from ripping it out of her hands. She yanked back, hugging it protectively to her chest, but Pony kept yanking, grabbing, and finally ripped away both her pen and a partial sheet full of lines.
“That’s mine!” The torn page angering her almost as much as her stolen pen, she jumped up from her seat. “Give it back,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice even and low so as not to attract attention from the guards assigned to monitor the room.
Wadding the torn paper, Pony turned and threw both it and the pen as far across the room as she could lob them. A shrill whistle said clearly that had not gone unnoticed, but the submissives glared at one another, neither willing to back down.
“You’re being mean,” Puppy said evenly, feeling both stupid and childish because she couldn’t think of anything better.
“Traitor,” Pony spat back, her blue eyes shining with stubbornly withheld tears.
Stung, Puppy broke the stare first. Hugging her notebook, she walked the few feet it took to grab the crumpled wad of paper off the floor. She tried to smooth out her notes and cast Pony a dark look as she did it. Pony’s fists were clenched, but her bottom lip was shaking. She looked close to tears, but Pony was Ethen’s right hand. She hadn’t been his favorite, not in a long time. But for as long as Puppy had been part of the menagerie, Pony was the submissive in charge. She was the one who kept them in line. She had never apologized. Judging by the flash of her eyes and the set of her jaw, she wasn’t about to start now, either.
Casting her mutinous glare to the floor, Puppy searched for her pen. She had to get down on hands and knees, but she finally found it under the soda vending machine. She barely managed to get her fingers under far enough to fish it back out again. Pushing back up off her knees, she stood, turned, and nearly bumped straight into Ethen.
“When the rooster’s away, it seems the hens become bitches,” he noted, giving both her and Pony the same reproving frown.
He might not be her dom anymore, but her stomach still dropped, sparking shots of anxiety that shivered all the way through her. The brittle strain in her face became all she could feel as that old familiar mask snapped into place. She tried to step back, but her feet refused to move. The only part of her that did move were her hands as she tightened her grip on her notebook, accidentally dropping both her pen and the wad of paper Pony had ripped up and thrown.
Ethen picked them up. The pen he handed back to her, the wad of paper he kept. Censuring her with little more than a look when she tried to take it back from him, he unfurled the crinkles and immediately lost his composure to a dry laugh as he read. “What is this?” he demanded.
Her chest hurt. So did her stomach. Sick all the way into the pit of it, she snatched the paper away. That she would dare such a thing shocked all three of them, but it shocked her worse of all. Paper, notebook and pen all clutched tight, she held her ground for all of the two seconds it took for anger to replace his surprise. Menagerie girls didn’t run. She tried to walk away, but he grabbed her arm, swinging her violently back toward the table where Pony stood, her blue eyes wide and worried.
Another shrill whistle was promptly followed by the boom of a guard’s sharp order, “No contact.”
But he was all the way across the room and Ethen was standing right in front of her. And old fears like old habits died hard.
She needed to leave, but her legs were shaking hard and she couldn’t make herself move.
“I see your stubborn willful streak is still running strong,” Ethen breathed, gradually regaining control of his temper. His tone remained mild, but she knew that stony glare. He might be behind bars, but the viperous part of him that liked to hurt was still as active and vicious as ever. “There was a reason I made you the bitch.”
“There’s a reason you’re in prison, too,” she shakily replied.
His stare became glacial. “You are due a reminder, Puppy. When I get out, you will get it.”
“Not from you.” Where she got the strength to wrench her arm out of his, she didn’t know. Ducking both him and Pony, who cut off her own squeak of protest when she hurried away, Puppy stumbled blindly for the exit. Her head was pounding. Heated panic flooded her, blurring out everything but the door she was trying to get to.
