“So I guess you got some issues,” his Boss said.
Seung mumbled into her neck.
“You okay, Dance? Good. And thanks. I’m gonna take this guy home now, cool him off.” She gripped Seung’s hair, tugged at him. “Manners, my man.”
Seung took a deep breath. “Thank you, Younger Brother.”
Dance was standing on the gangplank near them, giving Drin a hand to help him climb out too. He looked over at Seung with his tail shifting in agitation. “I am sorry, I understand the urge–”
“Is my problem,” Seung said, feeling Keisha’s hand gripping the nape of his neck.
“All right,” Keisha said. “You guys both okay? All right. Seung, it’s time for you to get a bath, my man, and then we’ll have a little talk about when to use fatal force or not.”
Seung felt himself sag a little into her, and she scruffed him just as she might have done Peach. “Up,” she said firmly, and pushed him along naked, not even bothering to pick up the clothes he left behind at the rail. “I ain’t ashamed of you,” she said when he jibbed; “I ain’t ashamed of your tail or your ass or your pouch, and I sure as hell ain’t shamed to have people see you with me. You got that?”
“Bosslady,” Seung mumbled, and felt the heat pounding in his head, in his ears.
“You ashamed of walking with me in front of people? You ashamed of people seeing you hug Peach?”
“No,” Seung said. “No.”
“All right then.”
“Ashamed I get mad. So quick, so– losing it. Fucking whore, that Mike–”
“Then you can apologize to your brother and everybody else, for hurting their ears.” Keisha pushed him into the rail of their own houseboat. “Later. And do a good thoughtful job of it, too. Now stand here, while I get the hose and rinse off some of that muck.”
“Ahh,” Seung flinched. The tapwater from the hose was colder than the pond was, chilling the sensitive tip of his tail.
“All right, bath,” Keisha said. “And don’t you go tryin’ to do that dog thing with me. Don’t you lick my hand, I ain’t a dog person, not interested in happy dog spit and runnin’ away from talking about shit. It was remembering burying those girls, wasn’t it?”
Seung curled his tail into the bathtub, swearing in three languages, while bosslady sluiced hot water and soap over his back and his hair and his tail. She’d done a lot of washing off his tail and his ass and shampooing his hair for him when his spine hurt, over the last month, and he was suddenly conscious of how well her hands knew him. His cloaca gaped wide for her, and she washed down in the soft pocket of it, making sure it was all soaped clean, rinsed it. She was upset with him, but her hands were careful in there.
“Not killing Mike is wrong,” Seung said, reaching out blindly, hands open.
She turned the water down, let the tub fill around him. Sitting down on the edge of it, she gripped his hands as hard as her new scars let her. He lowered his head onto her knee. “I got no answers for you, my man,” she said, and slid her hands loose, stroking soapy water up onto his ribs, along his hip. “I just know what you tell me. You gotta talk.”
“I talk lots, not words,” Seung said then, turning his head into her hand, kissing her palm. More urgently, up her arm, into the soft skin inside her elbow, and he groaned. There was the little click first, up in the roof of his mouth. Then that thump in his head. “Boss, boss,” he said, urgently, squinching his eyes shut.
“Your fangs think I need a booster shot?” Keisha said, calm and steady and not even surprised.
“Not hurt you,” he said thickly, with the fangs getting in the way, making him sound funny.
“Where?” she said.
His hands scrabbled at her shorts, pawed at her, got his head away from her legs. “Butt,” he said, keeping his eyes shut. If he saw her moving, he might strike out, and hit her in a place that hurt too much, bruised too easily. Dance warned him about that. He waited, he let her give him the right body part. That way he let it happen without twisting or jerking at her.
Keisha sighed. “All right.” She moved away, clothes rustled. The flat slap of her shorts hitting the floor was one of the sexiest sounds in the world to Seung. He couldn’t help the little moan of need that came out of him. “Easy, baby, I know. Deep breaths.”
It was a command. He took deep breaths, waiting.
Then cloth touched his face; her panties dragging over his nose, along his cheeks. He took a deep grateful breath, got a lungful of her scent, and then he was halfway to coming right there in the bathtub, hips twitching in place. “Ahh,” he snorted again.
“Better?”
“Yes,” Seung said, the most heartfelt yes of his life.
“Lick it,” she said.
His tail came up, slid along the side of the tub, wrapped around her leg, and he licked at her underwear with his tongue.
“You got a good taste of it?” she said.
“Yes,” Seung said. He was feeling a little light-headed, but a whole lot calmer.
“Bringing it to you,” Keisha said, and brought up both his hands, cupped them around her hips, and pushed one buttock into his face. The click and thump of his fangs flipping forward and striking seemed easy, relaxed, mellow. Loving. She was still as rock, not moving, not breathing at all. Seung felt the double strike, her skin warm against his stretched lips, and then the fangs came loose of her skin, and hinged back in place in the roof of his mouth. He drew in a deep breath, tonguing his way across her buttocks to the abrupt cleft between them. He sighed, and licked her, and leaned his head into her skin.
“So brave,” Seung whispered, and kissed her hip, up onto her loin, and then her back, as she sat down on the rim of the tub.
“Oh hell no,” Keisha chuckled, and pulled his arms forward around her. “It feels weird, yeah, but then it’s like a high. Wow. You got a bite on you, man, worth a million bucks.”
“Only for you,” Seung murmured, with his hands stroking her belly and breasts and down between those strong thighs.
She leaned back into his support, moving his hands where she wanted them. While his hands kept busy, he kissed her neck, along her traps, down her shoulder blades, nipping a little bit, pushing his cheekbone into her tight back muscles, licking her. “It tingles a little,” she said.
“I lick you wherever you like it, ” Seung said.
“No, stop,” she said then, and took his hands away. “You know Dance was mad too, but he didn’t go chasing off after Mike, he stopped you doing dumb shit. You owe him for that.”
Seung mumbled into her shoulder.
“I heard you thank him. Did you apologize?”
Seung shook his head.
“We’ll talk about that later. Stand up, and we’ll get these suds rinsed off you. Good. Towel off.”
“Please, I need you–need Peach–”
“I can see that,” she said, still in that dry tone. “But I got this problem. You got all mad and you didn’t hear me. How can I trust you with Peach if you don’t hear me? She could seriously bite down and claw you and hurt you, and if you don’t hear me, how am I gonna keep both of you safe?”
“I not hurt you. Not hurt Peach.”
“If she gets frightened of something and rakes you down to the ribs? If she bites? Look at those teeth, Seung. She can take your wrist off.”
Seung looked up, miserable, and saw Peach was equally miserable. She was right there, and tears were running down her face. “Not cry, Peach,” he said, reaching out.
“Put your hand down,” Keisha said, harshly. “Get dried off and go sit on the bed and think about what you can do better on this. Peach and I got some thinking to do.” When Peach would have said something, Keisha lifted a finger, rested it right across Peach’s nose and mouth, and warned her quiet. Peach looked at her solemnly, blinking down tears.
Worry and terror and misery ought to be incompatible with a raging hard-on, but Seung found, to his further misery, that they were not. They seemed to make it worse for him. He was desperately trying to think of anything but the warm smell of the rumpled bed behind him, and the bubbly smell of Peach’s soap and shampoo as the two women bathed together at length in the little room. It was both reassuring and a torment that at last Peach started singing again, slow, sleepy little lullaby-like kid’s songs and not just the outright silly ones, as Keisha brushed her fur out in there. He listened to them talking gently, where Keisha was asking Peach to sing out all the words for her, expanding Peach’s ability to speak English clearly.
When they came out, Peach went off to work on cleaning the kitchen and putting away dishes. Keisha picked up the phone, spoke briefly to Emma about sending over Peach to help clean up their kitchen as well, and give her a couple of hours to turn her attention completely to Seung. From the sound of it, Emma was very grateful for the help.
Then Keisha sat in the chair furthest from the bed, hands drooping as if they hurt from all the brushing she did for Peach. She seemed to be listening to Peach in the other room. They both listened for awhile.
Peach had nipped or scratched him now and then, but he never thought of asking Peach to do any of the things that Keisha might try on him. The idea that Peach could seriously injure him hadn’t crossed his mind. When Peach was in bed with them was the time to explore the softer things, find out what she liked him to do, for her to laugh at what licking his cloaca lips could do to him. It was Keisha who gave him everything else; the strong sensations, commanding his entire focus, pushing his pain tolerances.
“Sit,” she said. Seung would have liked to rest against her legs, but at her gesture he sank onto the rug in the middle of the little room. Keisha rarely made him sit quiet. He watched her profile anxiously, waiting for her to tell him what she wanted.
Keisha turned her head and looked at him. “If you don’t need us, you can get up right now and walk out and go anywhere you like.”
Seung lowered his head.
“You always could, you know.”
“Not could.” Seung shifted into a kneel. He linked his hands and rested them on his neck.
“Is that a position they made you take when they had you in chains?” Keisha said softly.
He didn’t answer for a long time. She let the silence stretch.
It came out a whisper. “Yes,” Seung said.
“That was about walling it off? Shutting it out?”
“Go away in my head,” Seung whispered. “Just fall away on pain. It’s like… swim in pond.” He struggled a moment, found the word. “Float.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, softly.
“When I kickboxed, got hurt, it felt that way. I knew it. But I just…not care about pain. Not act normal, other fighter get confused.”
“I bet,” Keisha said. “But that’s not the same as getting so crazy-mad you can’t hear me, is it?”
“No,” Seung whispered.
Keisha looked at him silently. He could tell she was thinking over questions, things to say, commands, and deciding none of them would work. Finally, sounding tired, she said, “We got to fix this, Seung. If you stay with us, we got to.”
Seung felt the pit of his stomach drop away, hollow and empty and dizzy. He closed his eyes, hung on tighter to his own neck. Slowly, trying to say the words right, he told her, “Keisha, I need stay. I need you. I need Peach. Please let us stay. Please let me apologize.”
“Can you apologize to Dance?”
“Yes,” he said, and opened his eyes, blinking at her in surprise.
“Mm,” Keisha said. “Okay, you’re on probation for now. We’ll talk about it some more, and I better not get any sulks about it. You were good on talking about it now. Go get the lube and the harnesses. I got some work to do on your prostate, remind you why you like bending over for me. Remind you why maybe you need to show Dance a little more respect too.”
He gave a little mumble of a groan. She was always just rough enough to remind him of it later, whenever he sat down. She’d also laid down a rule that he couldn’t ask for it more than once a week. Dance had warned her that it was very difficult, during a heat, to remember to pace themselves on any kind of rough penetrative sex. He remembered how she stared at Dance’s dignified face when he was saying these outrageous things.
When Peach had gone, singing her way out the front door, then Keisha turned to him. “What else you want? I’m gonna put a cockring on you and make you wait for it, you gotta earn it today. The switch, or the flogger?”
“Yes. Yes, please. Boss.” He knew what would please her. He said, “Please fuck me with the harness. Flogger, please. Please hit me hard,” Seung whispered, eyes shutting again. And then her skin was right there, and he was licking it. He licked his way up the knobs of her spine and down again, down onto the flare of those glorious hips, the softer slopes of her buttocks. Whenever she used the cock ring, she only released him to climax while she was penetrating him with a dildo or exploring his pouch with her fingers. He knew he was begging to be tormented for a very long time, begging to feel it later, to able to remember exactly how she’d taken as much as he could give her, how she’d penetrated him, how she’d pounded his skin with the flogger and stung it into painless, numbed silence. He’d needed it. In the last month, the endorphins from the different pain of a good thrashing had helped him live through the pain of his tail growing so rapidly. He moaned. “Boss, make me come lots.”
Which she did, exhausting both of them. That afternoon he learned all over again how strange his prostate and his cloaca really were. She worked on it, explored it, tried to figure out how the nerves ran in there. It was so much, so much sensation, that it made him scream like a cat in heat each time, at least four times, and they both knew none of that could possibly be normal. All she had to do was bring his nose up to her pubic hair, and he was up hard again. So long as he kept hardening, she kept putting the cock ring back on him. She brought him up hard three times in servicing her to orgasm, pleasuring her with his tongue and his hands and his tail, without allowing him to enter her at all.
He had learned earlier that month how much it pleasured him to be taken from behind, or to lie on his back with his knees spread. They were both too tired to use the full array of her equipment, most of it things she’d made herself or got from Hal, but she still managed to reduce him to a quivering pulp spread out on his belly underneath her weight, panting hard. In his ear, she whispered, “You think Dance likes that?”
He gasped a laugh. He respected Dance, who knew what he liked in bed and spoke bluntly to Seung about what the growth of his tail had done to all of them. “Oh, yes. I think he likes giving it, too.”
She grinned, and bit him lightly on the ear. “So do I.” Instead of smacking him or clenching her hands on his butt, the way she said she really preferred to do, she’d grabbed his ass with her teeth, and she’d left bruises.
He sighed, and helped her get the more complicated bits of harness off him. She left hers on; she wasn’t done with him.
Between bouts of sexual exercises that turned him inside out, there were intervals of thumping the meat on his bones with the soft suede tails of the flogger that Hal had made for them. She made him stand, stretched out, so she could hit him with the dull thump of the flogger until his back and legs throbbed without boundaries, no single distinct areas of pain, just a broad expanse of noise that did not let him think any more. It just all shouted together, as one, and the knots in his lower back, where the weight of the tail dragged on his spine, just gave up and released. He cried quite a lot, and thanked her for all the hard work. Gripping the flogger handle made her hands hurt badly, he knew that.
It amazed him, afterward, that she had the strength to cover him with a light blanket, afterward, to keep him warm as the sweat cooled. He floated in a calm, placid sea of trust.
“Seung, don’t go to sleep yet,” Keisha said. She picked up the phone again, spoke, chuckled, and said, “Yeah, sure, send our kitty girl on home, glad she did such a great job over there.” Then she unlocked the front door, and flopped on bed next to him, sprawled on her back with her head next to his on the pillows.
“Boss,” he said, drifting away.
“Talk to me.”
Seung blinked up at the ceiling. He could hear Peach singing, in the distance. “Drin told us Tee Pom is being brave man to drive Mike around.”
“Yeah, he’s probably takin’ his life in his hands doing that. I hear there’s quite a lot of folks not happy with Mike,” Keisha agreed.
“Drin say I must not hurt Tee Pom here, or people hunt us, you and Peach never find safe place,” Seung said, rolling over to her, and hugging his arms around her hips.
“Mmm, maybe it’d make things harder, yeah,” she murmured, in that dropping tone which meant she maybe didn’t like it, and maybe she didn’t appreciate somebody else messin’ in her business with Seung, but maybe Drin was right anyway.
“Temper run faster than brains,” Seung said.
“Yeah,” Keisha said dryly.
The front door opened, and Peach came in purring, mumbling a tune in her throat.
“Back here, baby, come talk to us,” Keisha said. “I hear you did a great job for Emma.”
“She sent over cinnamon! You smell?”
“Smells good,” Seung said.
Peach hummed for a bit in the kitchen, and bounced in the bedroom smelling happily of soap, shedding her clothes. She rubbed herself happily against them both, licking them. “Oooh, you two were busy!” She leaned down and kissed Seung. “You feel better now?”
“Much better,” Seung said.
“Mmm, make you all better,” Peach said, and licked his face, making him smile.
“You can smell that on him, that he feels better?” Keisha said.
Peach nodded, and curled up next to Keisha, licking her chest and up her neck, with a sigh. “Everybody work hard, Seung all tired out.”
“Yeah, but I’m not,” Keisha growled into Peach’s neck, making her giggle. “You done with the kitchen? You in the mood for cuddles and love?”
Seung just smiled at them. He was incredibly happy to lick his way up and down Peach at leisure, bringing her several times, until she was eager to wrap her thighs around his hips. “Keisha,” Seung said, sprawled on his belly, limp, with his head on Peach’s shoulder, and his hand on her little plump furry breast. “I want make you both happy.”
“My man, I think you’re pretty tired out.”
“You don’t want me take you?”
“Well, I’m pretty tired too, but it’d still feel good.”
Peach bounced up. “You put cock in Keisha, lick me.”
He smiled. “I like that. Is that okay for you, Peach?”
Peach wiggled. “Fun licking Keisha too.”
Keisha sighed. It was certainly a lot easier on her, which was why it seemed to Seung that it was a good idea all round. “All right, that’s good. That’ll take it a little easier on Seung’s butt. Wouldn’t want to wear that out.”
“I like wearing it out when you fuck me,” Seung said, lifting his nose out of Peach’s crotch, and blinking at Keisha.
When she locked a cockring on him with Peach in bed too, then he didn’t get the release he needed until he’d licked Peach to climax first, and then he would get to take off Keisha’s harness and replace her double-ended tool with his own more modest phallus. Bringing Keisha to climax was easy then. Those were spectacular. It made his balls ache, waiting for it that long, but she’d made it into the cherished pinnacle of his sex life. He got a hardon when she just pulled that ring out of the bag and fondled it, looking at him.
Well, he got hardons just from looking at them walking around the kitchen. Or the bedroom. And the stiff ones that he got when they were outside in public were impossible.
Keisha rolled around on the much-abused pillows, and handed him a new condom. “All right, gimma some kisses, my man.” She was very ready. It didn’t take long before she grabbed his back, grabbed his ass, and told him where she wanted him. He groaned as he sank in, and groaned again when she got her fingers up there under his tail and pushed inward, probing.
“Going, I’m going–” he gasped into Peach’s cunt, licking frantically where Peach lay next to Keisha, while the two women were kissing. Keisha’s fingers hit that live-wire spot inside his ass, and he convulsed, and he felt her start moving too, belly clenching, body muscles stuttering madly, while Peach crowed in triumph and laughed.
They were sprawled out across the bed with only their shoulders touching, allowing the passes of the one small fan to cool them, when Seung said, “What words should you want me to say to Dance?”
“I said apologizing, and doing a good job of it,” Keisha reminded him. “Tonight.”
“You still mad,” Seung said.
“You know why?”
“Not hear you calling.”
“Good as your hearing is, how come? What was going on, you didn’t hear me?”
“Mad,” Seung muttered bitterly. “So fucking pissed off.”
“How can I count on you if you don’t hear me when you’re mad?”
Seung pushed his face into her warm, strong belly. “I don’t know.”
“How do we fix that? How do I know if we got it fixed? You’re a big powerful guy, and if we’re in some scramble with bug troops and you’re not paying attention to what Peach and me need from you, it could get pretty bad.”
“I know,” Seung said.
“You’re a free man, you’re not a bug, you can ignore me when I’m yelling, that’s a good thing to know,” Keisha said then, unexpectedly.
“Not think of that,” Seung said in surprise
“Yeah. You ever see what happens when Drin calls to Dance and it surprises him?”
“Head jerk.”
“Like he’s got Dance dialed up on some private channel, right? You think Drin got some mojo there, or you think Dance just listens for it?”
Seung frowned “I ask him.”
“Good.”
Seung turned his head then, listening.
“What is it?”
“Emma and Dance and Tee Pom walk by, talk,” Seung said. Then he sat up sharply with a grunt, staring at the wall.
“What?” Keisha demanded.
“Emma say best bodyguard for taking Mike back to Fozzie would be me. Put me on my honor. Have us three sit guard on Mike, Tee Pom drive us. Tee Pom laugh a lot.”
Keisha’s eyes opened wide, staring up at him. Then she started to laugh. “Good God damn it, it’s perfect. And we end up goin’ to see if my auntie is the one running Fozzie’s place, too. I been wanting to get up that way, just waiting on your back to heal. If it is my auntie, oh boy, Mike has got some fun ahead of him.”
Seung blinked at her. “Tee Pom not be nice kind man at all.”
“No, my man, I think maybe he’s not.” Keisha smiled, gestured, and Seung rolled around and rested against her, put his head down on her shoulder. Peach was already half-asleep on her other shoulder, purring in little rusty fits and starts. Keisha’s hand came up and stroked through his damp hair, closed on the base of his head, gripped his neck lightly, as if she might scruff him again. “You think you can do something like that? You think you can stick with me and listen?”
The vast quiet in Seung’s body let the question drop through him as if he was a big cave. Nothing echoed back. He lay still, breathing slowly, resting against her, and there was no noise, no anger, only quiet. “Yes,” Seung said. “I remember.” Then he took a deep breath, and sighed. “You test, okay?”
Keisha nodded, and he felt the pull of her neck muscles under his cheek. “I will.”
Seung was asleep by the end of the words.