Slave by Cheryl Brooks Page B

I was getting tired. We’d spent a whole day on Orpheseus Prime, flown to Statzeel, and were going through another day without sleep. Well, Cat had been unconscious for a while, but I certainly hadn’t, and I was wearing out.
    Being chained together was more exhausting than I would have thought, too, for anytime Cat gestured with his left hand, I got jerked in the neck with the collar. It
required standing very close at all times, and, needless to say, Cat’s erection never wavered. I wondered if it hurt him, but I’ll have to admit that I never asked since I didn’t want to draw any more attention to it than was absolutely necessary. Besides, as sore as my neck was getting, a little pain in the dick was something I figured he had coming to him. It was late in the afternoon when, exhausted and extremely hungry, we closed up shop along with everyone else, and after taking everything back to the ship, went out for dinner to see what information we could obtain in that way.
    The food wasn’t too bad—I’d eaten a lot worse, believe me!—but if you’ve never tried to eat a meal across the table from someone who has hold of your leash, let me tell you, it can be a bit awkward! Cat did his best not to choke me to death while I was eating, but just having a chain across the table made for some close calls. Cat seemed to like to drink from a glass using his left hand, and I usually used my right. As a result, my drink got bobbled by the chain several times before finally spilling all over the table. The waitress was very prompt in mopping it up, but after that, I switched to drinking with my left hand, moving my glass out of the line of fire.
    Interestingly enough, the waitress said the same thing to me that the other woman in the marketplace had while she was cleaning up the spilled wine. “He needs two,”
    she whispered.
    Finally I got brave enough to ask. “Two of what?”
    She looked at me as though I were the town fool.
    “Leads!” she whispered back. “He needs two leads!”
She departed quickly, leaving me as mystified as ever.
    “You know, I must be really stupid,” I said to Cat.
    “I’ve had two women tell me today that you need two of something, but I still don’t know what they mean.”
    Cat replied without hesitation. “I do,” he said. “A man remarked to me earlier that he was surprised to see me with only one woman.” His lips curled into a sly grin. “I believe they mean that I could satisfy two.”
    I rolled my eyes. “You haven’t even satisfied one yet, so don’t get cocky, Kittycat!”
    He chuckled softly. “I like it when you call me that,”
    he said. “I have found several ways to make you say it.
    Perhaps when we mate, you will say that as well.”
    “What? You like being called Kittycat?” I asked in surprise. “I didn’t exactly mean it as a term of endearment, you know.” I was beginning to wonder about Cat, and I’m sure my expression reflected that feeling. “I mean, it sounds sorta kinky to me. Besides, you say that like our getting together is an inevitability.”
    He looked at me blankly.
    “Okay, which part didn’t you understand?” I was going to have to stick to straight Stantongue and leave out the euphemisms and slang or he was gonna drive me frickin’ nuts!
    “Most of it,” he replied. “What is kinky?”
    “That’s a hard one,” I said, spearing my fingers through the hair at my temple before I remembered I was probably messing up my spikes. “It means a sexual preference that is abnormal or deviant in some way, like enjoying tying someone up and beating them, or only liking women
dressed in leather underwear or—oh, I don’t know!—
    there are a million different things that could be considered kinky. Does that make it any clearer?”
    “And liking it when you call me Kittycat is kinky?”
    he asked. He appeared to consider this for a moment before stating firmly, “I would not call it that, myself. I think it is a…term of endearment.”