He missed, but it still brought a smile to my lips. He really was trying, even though his cheeks were flushed red and I could see the embarrassment flooding over him.
Good.
I wanted him to be embarrassed, but I wanted him to do it anyway.
Again I dangled the string in front of him; again, he pawed at it, even trying to bring it to his mouth when he got hold of it. I chuckled and let him grab it, watching his face as he chewed on it. One day I’d have to put something else at the end of it — maybe a snack for him, like gummy bears or something else as a treat.
We played for half an hour, until I could see him getting tired of the game. His efforts became half-hearted at best, and he’d gotten slow.
I finally relented and drew the stick back, letting the string slip between his fingertips and wrapping it back around. “Good,” I said again. “You were so good for me.”
Something in his shoulders eased, and he relaxed a little. “I did okay?” he asked, a certain fragility to his words.
I tossed the toy back into the box and crouched down, cupping his face in my hands. “You did better than okay,” Ireassured him. I leaned in and kissed his forehead, only barely stopping myself from kissing his lips again.
Then I thought… Why was I stopping myself?
He belonged to me, after all.
I kissed his lips then, and at first, he didn’t kiss me back.
When my hand moved to cup the back of his head instead, tangling in his hair, he seemed to understand what I wanted.
I didn’t have to force him this time. He took the hint and kissed me back, tentative but yielding to me all the same. I let out a pleased moan, releasing him reluctantly. He was behaving. I didn’t want to push him too hard, not when he was obviously trying…
That wasn’t entirely true, though. I did want to push him, and I wanted to push him hard. But I couldn’t. I had to go slow no matter what I wanted to do.
Because if I really let myself go, I’d be buried inside of him instead of that plug in moments.
I stood up after a light scratch behind his ears, gazing down at my property. He never stopped being beautiful, no matter how many times I looked at him. It was always like something new, like I was getting a glimpse of him for the first time.
Except this was better, because he wasn’t some feral creature spitting out curses and vitriol. This time, he was submitting, getting used to the idea that he was mine no matter what.
Soon. I just had to wait a little longer. He was warming up to me, no matter how slowly it was happening, and I had to have faith that he’d continue to do so.
“Let’s get food,” I told him, forcing my breathing under control again. Having him there was hell on my self control,and the more he submitted, the harder it got — fuck, the harderIgot.
I didn’t have anything special planned, but I didn’t need anything special. I’d made him drink his milk out of his doggy bowl before. I’d use the same bowls to make it easier on him; a big cat needed a big bowl, after all. It would be different with the cat thing in my mind, though, seeing him paw at the feather on the string like he really was playing with me.
I had to give him actual food, and I didn’t want to just feed him cereal… But tuna fish sounded like something that would give him sustenance and satisfy the urge within me to see him humiliated.
Because I knew that no matter how much he submitted, there was still a large part of him that was balking at everything I did.
The fact that he did it anyway was part of why it was so intoxicating to me.
I gestured to him, and he followed me out of the bedroom and to the kitchen. “You can still use the doggy bed,” I told him. “Get comfortable while I cook.”
And maybe I’d give him some actual food to go along with his tuna and milk — maybe.
9
RYDER
The next time he put tuna and milk in front of me for lunch, I was going to scream.
The past few weeks — weeks, not days — had been full of the same meal, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to deter me from wanting to be a kitten. He had another thing coming, though, because cereal and milk wouldn’t have been a whole lot better.
But the smell was starting to get to me, and the two didn’t taste the best together. I wanted to point out that real cats didn’t get to eat this stuff on a regular basis, but I was sort of scared he’d use something like that as an excuse to try one of those fresh pet diets. They had those things that were supposedly what you’d feed your family, and I had no desire to find out if they tasted good.
