Pets 2: Pani's Story (6 page)

That’s all she was now: a bad baby. On earth she’d been an author, she had two published books, one of which had struck gold by sheer accident, landing on the New York Times Best Seller (to everyone’s surprise, including her own) for eleven weeks straight. Here, all that was gone. Here, all that she was, was his bad, bad baby.

Scolding finished, Tak’buh scooped her from his lap and deposited her into the tub directly under the spray of the shower. Her head ducked reflexively and she sniffled once, but she didn’t protest this either. Not even to shy away when he climbed into the shower alongside her and quietly shut the door.

He talked to her, softly, the growl of his strange words peppered with her ‘name’.

“Judy,” she whispered once.

He picked up a wash cloth, soaped it until it lathered in rich, white suds and then lowered himself to one knee before her. “Pani,” he replied, and gently washed her face.

He soaped her shoulders, her arms, the fingers of both hands, her breasts and her belly. Then he rinsed the cloth and soaped it again. When he motioned with one finger, she silently obeyed, turning to face the tile wall while he washed her back, lightly scrubbing her skin in circular motions that started at her shoulders and moved lower to her bright red, burning buttocks. The warm water cascading off her bowed head and down her back, felt scalding when it crossed her bottom, as if it were a good twenty degrees hotter than it seemed to be everywhere else the flowing streams washed over her.

Wincing, she pressed her hands to the wet tiles, arching up onto tiptoes as the cloth—which had felt so soft only seconds ago—suddenly turned to sandpaper against her skin. He washed her bottom gently, and she withstood it, wincing expressively and bouncing a little on her toes as he parted her bottom cheeks to wash up between, but she didn’t twist away. Eventually, even that torment ceased, and he rinsed the cloth to soap it up again.

Again his hand dipped into her field of vision, one finger twirling a circle in the air, and Judy turned around. With the shower spray striking her back once more, she waited as still as stone while he washed her legs all the way down to her feet which he picked up one at a time, forcing her to catch his shoulders for balance as he washed between her toes.

Finished, he sat back on his heels to look at her, at first seemingly satisfied with her level of cleanliness. Gradually, however, a studious inquisitiveness crept over his dark features. His head angled to one side a half second before he reached down, combing his fingers through the neatly-trimmed thatch of red curls that crowned the top of her sex. He lightly tugged at one damp lock, and though she did try to hold still, it was sheer instinct to grab at his hand and it 25

push away.

His eyes met hers and he spoke, gently but firmly, her name and a single word, which she was starting to recognize through sheer frequent repetition.

“No, Pani,” she dutifully repeated, wilting as her hands dropped back to her sides.

At least until he soaped that cloth and slipped his hand between her thighs again. She came right back up onto her tiptoes then, lashing out with both hands to catch his shoulders for stability again even as one foot tried to slip out from under her in the tub’s soapy bottom. His free hand caught her waist, but his other continued to wipe between her legs, fondling her through the suds-soaked cloth.

Her breath caught, but Judy promptly lost it again when the caress of the washcloth found her clit. Turning sharply, she tried to get out of the shower entirely.

A sharp, “No, Pani,” stopped her again. Tak’buh took hold of her arm, pulling her in under the warm spray.

“No, Pani,” she whimpered, her legs beginning to tremble even before he slipped his hand between her thighs again. His touch was oddly impersonal, his cock remaining completely unaroused despite the intimacy of his touch. He made a non-committal humming sound, and then stood to lift down the shower head. He washed the soap from all her cracks and crevices and then shut the water off.

Wrapping her in a soft, blue towel, he left her standing in the tub while he stepped out to dry himself first. With only a towel wrapped around his waist and although she would not have minded remaining forgotten, he turned his attention back to her. From head to toe, he caressed her through a drying towel. He spent a very long time patting and rubbing at her hair, following the long copper strands from the top of her head down to her waist. Peek-a-boo, as it turned out, was a universal game, but she only stared at him when he tried it with her, flashing her quick glimpses of his face and a smile before her lack of enthusiasm stole a shade of his. He stopped, his hands falling into his lap while he studied her.

Setting the towel aside, he rose to dress, a simple ensemble consisting of black pants and a white shirt, before wrapping her in that now damp blue towel long enough to carry her back to the bedroom. He diapered her without difficulty and dressed her. Green used to be her favorite color, but no longer. The baby-doll dress he put her in was green. So were the ribbons that he used on the twin braids that he wove into her hair. He slipped ruffled, yellow panties up over her diaper, and crowned the entire outfit with white knee-length socks and shiny, black single-buckle shoes. She felt ridiculous; she looked like a doll. A very pretty, very ridiculous grown-woman doll who stood looking at herself in the mirror Tak’buh showed to her. She could see her future in that mirror, a whole lifetime of baby-doll dresses stretching out all the remaining years of her life.

“Just kill me now,” she told him bluntly, and she meant it. But he only dropped a kiss upon her brow, tweaked the tip of one neat braid and picked her up again. She didn’t fight him, but simply let her arm fall across his shoulders and held herself as stiffly away from him as possible while he carried her downstairs to the kitchen.

“I’m not going to eat,” she promised him. Hungry was a slow and miserable way to die, but it surely had to beat growing old in a place like this. “I’m going to be no end of trouble for you.

26

Kill me now while you can.”

But he didn’t. He simply placed a soft pillow on the highchair in consideration of her tender bottom and then strapped her into it, securely buckling down both her arms and ankles while he vanished into the adjoining kitchen, from the sounds of it, to cook breakfast. Her self-imposed hunger strike got easier to adhere to when she saw the plateful of ‘food’ Tak’buh brought back to the table. Dr. Seuss’s age-old story ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ came immediately to mind, and Judy knew, hungry or not, she’d never be able to swallow it. Any of it. Ever.

When he brought that first bite of spoiled-looking egg to her mouth, Judy dodged the fork and quickly turned her face away. Her stomach turned threateningly when the smell reached her nose, and she rolled her lips under, pressing them tightly together. It was as blunt a refusal as she knew how to make, twisting her head as far from the fork as she could move even as it insistently chased her mouth. She gasped once and then held her breath before the smell could make her sick.

Doggedly determined to make her swallow it, he made a playful, whistling noise while he teased her lips with that nauseating bite of egg. She quickly wrenched her head as far as she could in the opposite direction, her mouth beginning to water, albeit not in a good way.

Frowning, Tak’buh set the fork down on her plate and leaned back in his chair. He studied her in silence before, again picking up her fork, he fed himself, making a great production out of exaggerated yummy noises, ecstatic expressions of sheer gastric delight and circular tummy pats. Then he brought another fresh bite of greenish egg back to her mouth, his eyes narrowing with ill-disguised frustration as she ducked her head, twisting her face as far in the other direction as her neck would let her turn, that portion of spoiled food chasing her every inch of the way.

With a discouraged grunt, Tak’buh dropped the fork back on the plate and set the plate on the table. Big hands balanced on his knees, he sat back in his chair and watched her, eyes narrowed and calculating. Her stomach growled, and his gaze narrowed just a little bit more. Shrugging a you-asked-for-this motion, he stood up and took the plates back into the kitchen.

Strapped to the highchair, Judy craned her neck to see beyond the empty doorway. She could hear the rattle of utensils, the squeak of cabinet hinges swiveling open and closed again, and it took several long minutes before it suddenly struck her that she could have been out of this highchair and out the front door by now, if only she stopped wasting precious time.

Bending over the highchair tray, she twisted her right arm in its bonds in an attempt to reach the buckle with her fingernails. She picked until the leather strap came loose enough to pry her wrist free. With one hand now free, the other quickly followed and she quickly reached under the tray for the clasps. Judy cringed as it clicked free and carefully, silently, watching the empty kitchen doorway all the while, set it on the table.

So far, so good. And still no sight of Tak’buh, although she could still hear him puttering around in the next room.

Ducking, Judy quickly worked the straps loose around her right ankle. It was while she was fighting to get the left free that Tak’buh finally re-emerged into the dining room.

Damn it.

Judy flung herself back in her highchair, arms folded across her chest and fiercely glaring, 27

first him and then at the baby bottle in his hand. The liquid inside was every bit as green as the eggs had been.

“Ugh! No way!” Judy clapped both hands over her mouth, but this time the fight was lost from the moment he reclaimed his chair, setting the bottle on the table and removing that last strap from her leg.

As desperate as she had been to break free of this chair just seconds ago, when he reached for her, she latched onto it with both arms and legs. That was a lost fight, too. He lifted her out of the highchair and, without preamble, lay her face down across his lap.

“Wait!” Judy wailed, scrambling to get her hands back, palms upturned and fingers splayed wide apart in defense of her diaper-clad rump.

She may not have understood exactly what Tak’buh was saying, as he calmly caught hold of each wrist in turn and pinned them firmly into the grip of the hand pressing down upon the small of her back, but she knew a scolding when she heard it.

“I’ll eat! I’ll eat!” Her voice broke into a sob, and Judy could no more stop that from happening than she could stop him from hooking the back of her frilly yellow panties and skinning them down to the backs of her knees. The diaper followed the very same path, the snug elastic lightly scraping the sides of her legs as he bared her backside for punishment. “Stop, please! Please!” Her mind raced, snapping onto those few words of his language that she thought she knew. She babbled them frantically back at him, a mangled conglomeration of Pani’s, Tak’buh’s, and something she sincerely hoped might be ‘no’.

Tak’buh spanked her anyway.

Never in her life would Judy ever have thought a grown woman would be this afraid of something as childish and innocuous as a spanking. And yet no matter how adult she might be, no matter how grown, how fiercely independent she had always thought herself to be, having already tasted Tak’buh’s special brand of discipline twice now, Judy completely lost it when the flat of his hand sharply met her naked backside.

As large as he was, his hand covered the entire surface within the first two slaps. As tender as she was having already been spanked once this morning, had he stopped there, she’d have sat in that highchair and willingly opened her mouth for the bottle. Green or not, she was a hundred and ten percent willing to suck down every gag-inducing drop, if only he’d just stop.

But he didn’t. Again and again his hand clapped her bottom, deftly rekindling that fiery heat which he had so thoroughly branded her with in the bathroom. Depth and magnitude were added to the already unbelievable pain.

Maybe she could have shortened the experience if only she could have held herself still for it. Perhaps even hanging her head, or crying softly, sincerely, as if she knew her behavior had brought her to this and as if she agreed with him that she deserved it. But she was only five swats into what already felt like a blistering eternity, and there was just no holding still for this.

She bucked, rolling her bottom from side to side in a desperate attempt to evade the next blow, but his hand never missed its target. Over and over again, without pause or even difficulty, he roasted her bottom until she was arching wildly, throwing back her head and shrieking, high-pitched and frantic for him to stop, stop! Please, just stop! And above it all—the sharp, staccato slaps, her bucking kicks, and pleading sobs—the steady drone of his scolding 28

continued.

In some distant, abstract part of her mind, Judy knew she probably hadn’t received more than twenty or so very sound smacks before his hand came to a resting stop, but however many it was, it had been enough. When he lifted her off his knees and set her on the floor, all Judy could feel when she grabbed her bottom with both hands—stamping her feet and bouncing in place from the unadulterated pain of it—was fire. Unbelievable, blazing, scalding red fire. It flared under the minute pressure of her fingers as she rubbed, frantic to soothe away the burn, unable even just to look at Tak’buh for the expression she saw there in his face.

The humiliating ‘Bad Baby’ look had returned, and was now lurking there in his unblinking stare, practically daring her to misbehave some more. Go on. Right now, while he watched through half-closed and knowing eyes.

Worn out, her frenzied dance of pain leaving her both physically and emotionally spent, Judy hung her head and just cried. Forlorn, hopeless, wordless sobs that shook her shoulders so hard that it hurt.

Relenting somewhat, Tak’buh reached for her arm and pulled her to him. Stilted and stiff, hurting with every step, she went. He lifted her up to straddle his lap, and grudgingly she sat, hiccupping miserably, sniffling constantly to keep her nose from running, while he enfolded her in his arms, rocking her and stroking her hair, pulling her in so close that she had no choice but to lay her head against his broad chest. He whispered in her ear, but Tak’buh was the only word she understood and, burning bottom or not, she didn’t want any part of that. Not when he soothingly caressed her back. Not when he laid soft kisses to her forehead and cheek.