The Get-Along Shirt

Being a rather slightly built coyote, on the shorter side and lean as a chicken bone, Mia had an impressively strong grip. It was a grip she employed liberally, and it did not seem to suffer one little bit from the exertion of pushing a grown-ass man away one handed. The man was a fox, true, and also built like a noodle, but he held her curly auburn hair in his jaws and would not let the fuck go. And so Mia deathgripped his muzzle, which made releasing her hair even less practical, thus perpetuating the cycle of grabbing things.

The fox, Dane, sensed they’d arrived at an impasse. Mia’s non-grabbing hand had his shirt collar in a big, twisted wad, and there was a better than zero chance that she intended to choke him out with it in perhaps the least efficient way possible. He noticed some drool pooling out the side of his mouth and dripping onto her shoulder through the hair gag, which was hard to manage menacingly. The impulse to apologize mid-fight was real.

If both of them sat on the same free weight bar, they might prove challenging to bench. Might. But lest anyone suspect otherwise on the basis of their slender arms, these wiry little canids could scrap like hell. They could swear even better, and each did profusely under a whole lot of growling. 

An overturned coffee table covered the seeping stain of a MonsterFucker energy drink, the green of its Centaur Blast flavor saturating an otherwise desert brown carpet. There would be no salvaging the lampshade either. Not after Dane put his foot right through it and someone’s ass–it was impossible to say whose–bent the whole frame in. Nothing was on fire yet, but it was far from implausible that something might soon be.

Desperate for an advantage, Mia leaned into her feral side. It wasn’t buried very deep anyway; an average camping trip was plenty to have her naked and chewing on trees to mark her territory. It still felt good to let that dark and yappy side of her take over. She released Dane’s muzzle, wiping the slobber from her hand onto his face, and searched blindly for a weapon. Anything would do. In movies there was always a rock or a brick or a fire ax lying around. Why the lack of fire axes? She grasped at everything and for nothing in particular until, at last, her fingertips brushed the handle of… something.

Something was good enough. And so it was that, in a fit of murderous anger, Mia whapped Dane on the head with the Roku remote. Its squishy glow in the dark jelly case lessened the impact somewhat. But it sure did make Dane let go of her hair. Unclear as to who had the initiative here, or what having the initiative actually entails, combatants one and two scooted away from each other. Each stared the other down, teeth bared, until Dane reached up to wipe the blood from his brow. He was disappointed to find no blood at all; indeed, no damage of any discernible kind beyond a faint throbbing. Blood would have been so cool.

“You… you fucking hit me with a remote.” Dane whined, feeling for a bump. “Who does that?”

“It was self defense, you little shit. I wish it had been the big remote!” The one that didn’t seem to go to anything anymore, but which nobody took it on themselves to toss out. It would have made a fearsome thwapper. 

Dane narrowed his eyes. “And I wish you weren’t shithouse bat crazy. So I guess neither of us is getting what we want today, huh?”

“Come here and say that to my face, foxy fuckboy.”

“I am literally right here. I am talking to your face.” Dane couldn’t think of a good zinger, so he affixed a halfhearted “Idiot…” to the end.

Nobody liked how that exchange went. Nobody moved, either, particularly not toward the other’s face. For all the hostility crackling between them, all the simmering fury, the actual combat wasn’t happening. Actual combat hurt and felt unpredictable, and also weirdly sticky. Hurling vitriol didn’t hurt except in the feelings and wasn’t sticky, which they tacitly agreed to be an improvement all around.

A couple more threats of ass kicking followed. No ass kicking was forthcoming, though, and so the threats were lobbed back and forth like a water balloon filled with pee. That is, unpleasant, awkward, and increasingly cool. Dane’s face lit up as if he;d thought of something truly cutting to say, but the world was forever deprived of his wit when the sky fell.

The falling sky sounded like shouting. Particularly, it sounded like, “What the actual- what happened here?!” Catrin was home. Her tone wasn’t angry, just frantic, at least initially. “Mia? Dane? Did we get robbed?”

Brown fox eyes met hazel coyote eyes, and for the most optimistic of moments, they seriously considered going with that explanation. Honesty was, however, the best policy, assuming one was already caught and had no plausible lies to whip out. Rather, honesty was the best fallback.

Catrin was tall for a rat. Tall, with CrossFit arms and great big eyes that expressed emotion at 130% its normal intensity. Right now they were expressing mostly shock, into which an ever more prominent tinge of anger seeped. Not the explosive kind, oh no. The quiet kind preferred by absolutely no one. For while the explosive variety might be soothed with the right approach, quiet anger had a unique capacity for endurance and a jagged, poisoned edge.

“Care to explain what the flying fuck all this is, little ones?”

They did not, but saying so felt like a mistake, so they waited in silence for the other to begin answering. When that didn’t happen, the silence too felt like a mistake, so they cleared their throats at more or less the same time, which also did not fix the problem.

Catlin sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. It was easy to forget sometimes that these were two adults with college degrees and debt and all. Luckily, some tricks remained forever effective. “Three…”

The countdown. The countdown had begun. That sent brains scrambling for words and lithe figures scrambling for a respectable posture. By the time “Two…” rolled around, Mia knelt with her arms tucked behind her back, legs slightly parted and chin up. Dane knelt also, but opted to place his hands on the back of his head and keep his eyes downcast. They’d shared Catlins household for just a little over a year, but the training ran so deep that it joined with reflex. They whimpered, neither wishing to speak first for terror-dry mouths and tight throats.

Catlin leaned forward, one hand on her hip, for the added weight. Her voice went deep; it would have been in the sultry range if it weren’t for the acidic undercurrent of anger. She dragged that last syllable out like she was scraping it off her heel. “Ooooooooone…”

From whining, tuck-tailed Mia came an answer exhaled on a single breath. “I was sitting there watching my favorite show when Dane snuck up behind me like a creeper and poured water on my head because he’s an unbelievable dipshit and he has nothing better to do.”

Dane’s halting response sputtered out at precisely the same time. “I was walking by with my water because you told me to stay hydrated and that’s why I drink so much water now and I accidentally spilled like five tiny drops on Mia and she flipped out and elbowed me in the balls.”

Having started and stopped together, the two proceeded to gasp together, utter an exasperated “Wuh?!” together, and glare together while rebuttals percolated. Catlin sighed. Spying scant progress on the horizon, she gave her darling gremlins each a soft pop on the cheek with her fingertips. They understood this to be the open command, and no matter how they wished to jockey for the next word, hesitation didn’t even occur to them. They obediently opened their mouths wide, tongues stuck out as if for inspection.

“Good boy. Good girl. Calm yourselves.” Catlin slipped two fingers into each warm, narrow maw, hooking them into a J shape behind the upper rows of sharpnopes. She wasn’t feeling overly calm herself at the moment and needed their silence as much as they needed to be silent. Anything they said could and would be taken out of their hides.

Dane preferred to close his eyes and make an adorable range of cooing sounds when he sucked on fingers. His fuzzy, black tipped ears bobbed and splayed, coming to rest flat against his head. Mia, conversely, opened her shimmering eyes wide when her mouth was in use. Watching intently, waiting patiently, sucking forcefully. Neither indicated that they noticed the other. Their nanometer-broad attention lasers were properly focused.

Catlin pulled them close by their fangs, hooked like fish. “I will hear from Dane first. Mia, you will be silent or you will have major regrets. Understood?” Two eager nods. The motherly rat pulled her fingers from Dane’s mouth and wiped them on the back of her jeans. “Boy, go.”

Dane licked the roof of his mouth. The fox he was, he was all too aware of the monster of a pants tent he was rocking. “I was telling the truth. Well, wait, no. But I was!” He glanced over to see if Mia was shooting him one of her wicked glares. Her eyes remained fixed on her Domme with unshakeable zeal. “I accidentally spilled the water. And I was watching over her shoulder for just a second, I swear. By the way, your favorite show is Santa Clarita Diet?”

“You’re speaking only to me,” said Catlin, tipping his muzzle to a more pleasing point. “Eyes on mine.”

“Yes Mommy, sorry Mommy.” Dane didn’t break out the M word often. It came out when he was very horny, very scared, or both. “I was watching, and I started to walk away, and I accidentally spilled a teensy amount on her. Like, such a small amount it was barely anything.” Too long a pause followed, spurring Catlin to clear her throat. That got him going again. “And that’s when she elbowed me right in the balls. And it really hurt, like, a shitton. And if I can’t cum later because-mmnnnfff?” He gagged for a mere moment on her fingers. That was, evidently, the end of his deposition.

“Cute that you assume I’ll let you cum any time soon.”

“Mmj-whmmphg?!”

“Girl, go.” Catlin’s voice was terse and short, but not mean. Not really. She expected obedience promptly and completely, and these expectations were vindicated. Her air of authority rested on a good whatever-air-rests-on, presumably denser air. Why, then, should she speak otherwise?

Mia broke position only long enough to pull a hair out of her mouth. One of her own. “I didn’t elbow him on purpose. I got startled, because come on, he poured water on me, and I spun around. And I guess my elbow sort of hit him in the… waist area. If he’d let me say sorry, I would have, but then he just poured more.”

Catlin allowed them to speak in rounds, just so, for some time. Each round chipped away at the encasement of self-serving bias and made a small allowance for good faith. Begrudging, yes, but meaningful as a whole. It didn’t take long for a clear version of events to emerge. In a nutshell, Dane laughed while in Mia’s personal space, which always annoyed her, spilling a small amount as claimed. Mia inadvertently elbowed him in the balls in her surprise, but had no intention of apologizing. Instead she cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West. Dane, furious, responded by intentionally dumping more water on her, and someone threw either a punch or a shove. They sincerely couldn’t recall who; both conceded that it could have been them, and that it could have been another accident. By the time they managed to settle on the material facts of this incident, no one felt good about it. The moral high ground was not in play.

“I’m sorry…” whimpered Mia and Dane in near-unison. “No, I am. No, I-”

“You know,” interjected Catlin right in the path of another bicker spiral, “I can’t help but feel left out of this tender moment.” She swept her arm around in an arc, indicating all the this and this and that nonsense right there. “I’m happy you two are less pissy with each other, truly, I am, but look at what you did to my whole-ass motherfucking living room.”

Somehow, the innate badness of being caught scuffling like a kit and a pup, respectively, overshadowed the equivalent badness of going all shithouse on a shared space. The scrappers noticed the state of that lampshade for the first time, and they gasped in mutual horror at the sight of reactor-meltdown-green energy drink seeping into carpet fibers. The situation suddenly seemed more nuanced, which was a word they both liked when skirting the edge of serious trouble. Nuance dispersed and obfuscated blame, just as clusterfuck aggregated and concentrated it. Nuance was the anti-clusterfuck.

Preempting the inevitable series of frantic apologies, Catlin raised her hand, its bare and pink rat palm commanding silence. “We aren’t going to bother establishing blame here. We aren’t going to litigate this, you hear me? Both of you?” Once she had their timid nods, “Good. You’re both cleaning this up, and you’re going to clean it like your phone and orgasm privileges for the nearish future depend on it.” Once more, timid nods. “And one more thing. You’re going to do it wearing the shirt.”

Damn it. The dreaded get-along shirt. If either of them even thought that was a possibility, they might have listened to their better angels and chose peace. Probably not, but in theory, they might have.

“Yesmommy.” - “Yesmistress.”

The get-along shirt started life as an 8XL tee shirt with a badly stretched neck. Its previous owner must have been horned, gigantic, or both. Mia guessed rhino, Dane guessed bison, and Catlin didn’t care much. It was taller than sweet little Mia stood and only a naked inch shorter than Dane, so some hemming was necessary. But it was still the size of a parachute on either of them, with a neck hole big enough for both at once.

And therein lay the advantage. When sentenced to the get-along shirt, a naughty fox boy and feisty ‘yote girl squeezed into the garment together, having no choice but to share a space that couldn’t have gotten much more confined without powerful adhesives or insertion. Both heads through the same hole, one brat took an arm each. The end result was essentially a bag of frustrated wiggling with four legs, two arms, two heads and an impulse control problem. Worst of all, they were invariably naked underneath. Actually no, worst of all was that the faded text on the reverse said “___rg__o’s An__al Fun Run”. But the nudity thing was a close second. 

Mia and Dane emphatically refused to look at each other waiting for their wardrobe change. Catlin made them strip and sent them to the corner to wait; that is, a single shared corner with their noses practically smooshed together, not two separate corners. The rat girl, if one was a girl in her late thirties, allowed them to stew for a while. It really distracted from the fact that she couldn’t find the damn shirt at first. Who hung it up with the Renaissance fair garb? The sky blue wonder was sandwiched between an ornately patterned gambeson and a hangerok the color of marigolds. Wrinkled, a bit dusty, bot no worse off.

Catlin returned to a sight that could only exist in her household. A wayward boy and girl, nude as they day(s) they were born, growling at each other. Just standing there, growling. She sighed again. This was going to be a long evening.

— ABOUT — TWO — HOURS — LATER —

There was not, and never had been, and likely never would be anything better on TV as entertaining as the sight Catlin now enjoyed. She sat cross-legged, an impressive feat in denim, and sipped a tall cup of smokey lapsang souchong. Despite their sweet and sociable nature, rats sometimes struggled to look serene. Maybe it was the high, sloping cheekbones, keen eyes, and perpetually twitching nose. Smug, however, was very well within their expressive range.

Though they found it difficult to maneuver, or indeed to stand up normally, her little ones had successfully steam cleaned the carpet. That meant lugging the bigass old steamer up from its basement netherworld. It meant emptying the grody brown sludge from the tank, which nobody remembered being full, and cleaning it out while gagging theatrically. It didn’t actually smell bad, it was just gross.

Filling the tank with bath water, spilling the bath water, toweling up the spilled bath water, refilling the tank, forgetting soap was needed, arguing about soap, adding too much soap… there were a lot of steps to this superficially simple task. It took entirely too long, but there was no way in hell Catlin was going to offer assistance. This was their mess and their cleanup. It wasn’t her fault that doing it all in the most awkward piece of clothing yet conjured into being was a pain.

The lampshade was not fixable. This was no mere speculation; Dane insisted he could fix it and actually did as good a job as could be hoped. But no amount of wire frame bending could uncrush it, and he did not pose a compelling solution to the problem of that big gaping hole. Catlin found it cute that he tried. Mia even helped, and the two worked together smooth as a lubed marble. Their natural state, she believed in her heart, was cooperation.

Carpet pristine, lampshade written off, lamp checked, bulb replaced to be on the safe side, coffee table buffed and oiled, the scene was uncharacteristically serene. The two were visibly glad it was over. The one whose opinion on such things mattered, though, was under no such impression.

“Fetch the lickin’ stick.” Catlin issued the order so casually, with such a relaxed cadence, that it barely sounded like a command. 

Mia flicked her finely tapered canine ears. “I… huh?” Her eyes flashed shock on the border of comprehension.

Dane had heard just fine. He whimpered, and at the mere name of that awful tool, he seemed to shrink into himself. It was that reaction, rather than any other element of context, which clued Mia in. She then whimpered too.

“Which of us, Mistress?” asked Mia.

“Well that seems like a moot point now, doesn’t it? It isn’t like one of you can stay behind.”

Oh, the sounds a fearful coyote can make! “You mean we have to stay in the shirt too?”

Catlin buffed her claws on the front of her shirt. She never minded reminding them how sharp her touch could be, or how fierce her bite. Keeping two natural predators in line necessitated a certain level of ferocity. “I didn’t tell you to take it off.”

That was it. The conversation took a wrong turn early on and ran headlong into a dead end. A dead end with a cartoon-style brick wall and such. There once was a time when one or both of the shirt-dwellers might have argued with their Domme, but that habit didn’t last long. Catlin was uniquely gifted in the art of shutting that shit down for good.

Mia and Dane stumblefumbled in silence to Catlin’s bedroom, where she kept the toy chest. Touching the toy chest was strictly forbidden without specific, explicit, and clear authorization. They both learned the hard way that Catlin had some trick or suite of tricks by which she could detect tampering. She’d never reveal how it worked, though theories abounded. These were discussed with caution or not at all.

It wound up being easier to scoot up the stairs on their butts. As undignified as it looked, they each took solace in the perception that the other looked dumber. They were both right, and they were both wrong. Touching the toy chest felt like disturbing a sacred artifact. It was one thing to break into an ancient temple and loot its cursed idols; those crusty old dead priests weren’t going to come ruin your day, week, or month. Dane held his breath, transported to a memory of standing on the kitchen chair to steal a sip of stale margarita mix long ago. For Mia, it was the time she slipped condoms onto both an old flame’s hands while he slept, put spray cheese on the condoms, and ever so slightly tickled his nose.

As much as they liked the idea of rooting around in the chest like feral hogs, they grew squeamish at the sights, smells, and textures they encountered there. Smooth purple heartwood. Oiled and braided leather. Chains that clanked and brushes that clacked. Silk blindfolds that shimmered in the room’s light, rope cuffs that raised their fur with static cling, Mommy’s Belt™. Exploration got old real quick; they snagged the requested toy, closed the chest, and skeedaddled out of there.

Without looking up from her phone, its screen aglow with literary minotaur smut, Catlin pointed to the couch. “Place it there and clear the coffee table.” She really wanted to finish this page, but found herself playing with the row of small piercings on her ear fringe in a way that made her chew her lip, so she deemed it best to wait. She had no doubt they’d found The Evil Item.

The lickin’ stick was not Catlin’s idea, much as she’d have liked to claim credit. She learned it from the Domme at whose hooves she learned the trade, her mentor mare, the dappled Tennessee Walker whose red wine voice via Discord still sent shivers down her spine. And she hated the fucking stick, which was of course why she loved it. It was a long, narrow pecan wood paddle not so different from a yardstick but for its devilish weight and paracord handle. It was about one frightened whistle thick, one anguished squirm wide, and as long as a sadist’s memory.

In fact, the lickin’ stick was rarely employed because Catlin wished to preserve its mystique. But rather than let the finest blade rust in its sheath, so to speak, she figured it was time for a reminder. Her little ones rushed to obey, removing the roll of paper towels and polish rag which were the only things placed on the table since its overturning. They waited with looks of anxious pseudo-patience and looked utterly, beautifully ridiculous. When Catlin took up the stick, she wielded it with a queen’s dignity and a demigoddess’ presence.

“I will see a boy butt presented for my use. The sooner, the better.” The rat rapped her stick against her own palm, then winced and regretted it. It bore reiterating that she hated the thing with a passion, which she took to be a mark in its favor.

Dane moved to comply. That is, he meant to, but wasn’t sure how such a thing might be accomplished. “Uh… how?”

Mia too wondered what the plan was, ergonomically speaking, as the get-along shirt made it hard to picture a workable pose. She fancied herself more flexible than Dane but couldn’t work her head around this puzzle in a way that didn’t put someone’s knee in someone’s groin.

Catlin, apparently, had thought it through already. She posed them like one would an artist’s anatomical doll, or like any budding kinkster positions her Barbies after first stripping them nude and scolding them. She’d been a weird kid.

Mia and Dane faced each other. Mia’s sensitive B-cups pressed against Dane’s gym-toned chest, and they didn’t know whether to grumble or just stand there and blush. They worked it so that they stuck their arms through both holes; Mia was wearing the shirt normally and Dane wore it backwards. rgo’s Anal Fun Run indeed.

With plenty of Catlin’s close, hands-on direction, Mia laid flat on her back atop the table. She held her legs out straight while Dane’s straddled them. If she raised her arms, he could support his weight on his elbows and forearms. This, of course, meant nothing could be done about the proximity of their faces. They knew on an instinctive level that it was all part of the punishment. Mia became fixated on her breathing and concerned about its volume. Dane worried about the distinct possibility of being a crybaby. They were each wholly convinced that they were the center of attention and much too focused on this dreadful exposure to pay the other any mind.

“Dane, arch your back more. No, more. More… you know, I’m not sure I’m making myself clear. Here.” Nobody who knew Catlin well accused her of lacking directness. She reached down to grip and squeeze Dane’s dick, using it as a handle with which to position the rest of her fox. He yipped in alarm, she slapped his ass, and so he found his eagerness to cooperate. “Aaaaand there. Just right. You’ll want to hold that pose. It would not be fun if we had to start over.”

The get-along shirt slipped up Dane’s back until its hem was bunched just below his shoulders. His pert, fit little ass with its broad white markings framed by fiery red was as far up as his spine allowed. No arguing with spines. His brain hadn’t quite turned back on yet after the unexpectedly arresting sensation of being handled by the junk. It came online pretty fast, though, the instant he felt the lickin’ stick settle against him.

“Mommy, I just wanted to say, uh, I just wanted to AAAHfuck!” 

Catlin slashed that hellbringer of a plank across his rear. As she so often did, being born with a few extra thorns on her rose, she followed through with her shoulder and left the stick resting where it fell. Both rat and coyote waited for a squeal that never arrived. Was Dane finally starting to tough up?

Heh. Nope. The next swat caught him squarely over the backs of both thighs, and he tossed his head back in a skyward yelp of pain. Mia winced with her whole body. She didn’t want to watch, didn’t want to listen, but had no choice in the matter. It was considered bad form to break out singing mid-session.

“Oh you poor boy… tsk tsk. Keep that tail raised for me. No free reminders in my house.” Catlin waited for Dane to swallow the lump in his throat and resume his place before lining up the next in what she expected to be a lengthy set. She didn’t like coming in with a number in mind; it drew her away, she felt, from the intimacy of watching and gauging. With that bushy vulpine tail out of the way and an exquisite view of his hanging white-furred balls, Catlin fought back the urge to stare. Worse, to snap a surreptitious picture. Instead, she laid three licks precisely one atop the other atop the other where his ass was bounciest.

Dane’s reactions were difficult to predict. One swat of that wooden devil’s cock-barb made him squeal, whine, and wiggle his hips like his fur was lit on fire. The next brought out nothing but a labored hiss and a tightly clenched jaw. Even in this state, he fretted over crying out in Mia’s ear. They twitched so hard that one tickled his chin. An unwelcome reminder that he was the farthest thing from alone.

For her own part, Catlin searched for a rhythm, only to depart from it the moment she sensed Dane caught on. She preferred psychological torment, truth be told, but when forced to lean on impact she was a force of nature. She knew that Mia and Dane alike came into the relationship questioning a rat’s force of arm, much less her force of will. These misgivings evaporated under the bitter lash of rattan and the harsh, thuddy bite of a paddle, as did Mia’s smoking habit and Dane’s lackadaisical porn viewing.

The number of strokes climbed steadily, and Catlin didn’t bother tracking them. Mia, shocked into silence and stillness, stopped counting at twenty. Dane estimated it to be in the low millions but had cause to doubt his perception at the moment. The stick didn’t land as much as it collided, leaving bright pink bands about two digits wide on the skin beneath his fur.

Mia yapped. Catlin wondered if she’d accidentally struck the girl and paused. “What seems to-”

“Dammit, stop poking me with your… your… fucking wood!” Mia’s wriggling seemed aimed at getting away from that persistent prod.

“Oh, how do you propose I do that, huh?” Dane raised his shoulders, in turn lifting Mia off the table, to illustrate the problem.

Little miss coyote scoffed. Legitimately scoffed, like a Victorian lady of high society whose servant stuck a dirty thumb in her tea to check its temperature. Naturally, she had no better idea than he did but chalked it up to a Dane problem anyway. “I don’t know, I just know that one of us is getting pricked with a prick and the other one isn’t.”

Cooing softly, Catlin ran a lone fingertip up and down Dane’s shaft. Hard as wrought iron. She’d just as soon he not pop a bone from being punished, but the body does what the body will. She’d just as soon not have an awkward orgasm at the OBGYN either, and yet bodies were dumb like that. “He can’t help it, Mia. This isn’t fun for him either.”

His muffled thankyou was interrupted by an especially harsh fall of pecan wood. That one was a yelper, and Mia snarled in turn. Her poor, sensitive ears. What Catlin didn’t see was Mia’s revenge. She took him between her thighs and squeezed. When she was way too young, she saw a spy movie in which some KGB cutie crushed a guy to death with her thighs alone. Life goals. This effort wouldn’t have cracked any ribs, but its effect was unmistakable. Rising to present like a good boy forced Dane to tug. Jerking forward in a vain attempt to escape the bonfire burn of each swat, then, left him little option but to grind. It was a proper Morton’s fork, or more aptly, a Morton’s fuck.

Catlin was careful not to put too much into her swings. She was aware of her strength, almost to the point of vanity. Tiptoeing toward forty and she still made Popeye look like a frail bitch when she flexed. So she tempered her blows with caution and care; it wasn’t like she had anything to prove.

Her technique suffered not one bit for it. The lickin’ stick had mechanical leverage behind it, which in sophisticated engineering terms meant it hit like a tank two thirds of the way down its length and more akin to a meteor at its end.

There, soon, Catlin had it. One quivering and chastised boy, his backside a deepening red, his resistance squashed. Also squashed were his shaft and flared head. Mia held them while rolling her thighs, her ankles crossed for superior control. Her own trepidation wasn’t so overwhelming when she got to channel some of it into cruelty. She found that she could tuck her tail enough to brush him in tender places with its fur.

“You tell me right now, Dane,” Catlin grumbled. “Are you going to be a good boy for me, or do I need to keep whipping sense into you until you can’t sit comfortably ‘til Sunday?” She wrapped her long digits around his muzzle and pulled his gaze toward hers. No tears, but that wasn’t unusual. The threat of crying loomed in the corners of his soulful blue eyes, unrealized but undeniably there.

“Fffff… you have no idea. Yes. Yes, yes. I’m gonna be such a good boy. You don’t even know.” he was prepared to carry on in that vein for some time before his darling Domme cut him off with a kiss. Lips on lips, heated, long, and old-fashioned foot popper.

“That’s what I thought.”

Mia felt a fleeting pang of jealousy. It wasn’t much like her. She was normally a paragon of compersion, a polyamorous zen master bringing smiles and something her yoga teacher called mudita into the dynamic. She didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it, though.

“Aaaaaye-oop!” Catlin grunted in the process of flipping them over like a big pancake. 

“Wait! Wait, wait. Please no? No no no nononononono!” Mia enjoyed not a bit of help from her shirtmate. Was it a bad idea to tease Dane when her own turn was surely on the way? Maybe. Nothing to be done about it now.

The fox’s bruising ass burned terribly from being pressed against the table. All the same, he sported a proud grin. The sight of Mia’s faltering composure was a special kind of cathartic. Instead of just lifting his arms as she’d done, he reached for the table’s edge and grabbed it. He felt her struggle against him. He felt her panic, smelled her nervousness. Oh yeah, Dane felt alright.

When Mia took Catlin’s collar, she’d been an experienced and capable brat yet a total greenhorn when it came to accepting consequences. She’d balked at the idea of a spanking that lasted more than ten smacks and didn’t automatically end in sex. That seemed like a long time ago now. She was disciplined, attentive, mostly obedient. Moreover, she was just the right amount of scared at the prospect of being caught out of line. It should have made this easier on her, or at least comfortingly familiar.

It did not.

Catlin believed wholeheartedly in equality. This philosophical throughline extended to her role as disciplinarian, and she refused to entertain the thought of treating her sweeties differently on the basis of sex, species, size, experience, even how well they could use their tongues. It was her commitment to equality that brought the lickin’ stick sailing and snapping down across Mia’s perfect lil’ posterior. 

There was always a moment in which Mia allowed herself to believe she’d won. That it didn’t really suck and wasn’t anything to fret over. Time after time it was nothing but a delayed response, some brain lag that put a discernible moment between stimulus and reaction. The pain snuck up on her fast this time and she wailed. She loathed making coyote sounds. Not out of any internalized latransiphobia, mind, but because she disliked how endlessly imitable they were. The yips and yowls of her ancestors had a way of coming out no matter how she tried to suppress them.

Dane enjoyed mocking her ‘yodeldog’ vocalizations. He was distracted, however, by the way her useless attempts at squirming away afforded her nowhere to go but down. Specifically, rubbing the soft, pale fur of her belly against him. When a terrible stroke of the stick drew a pink streak where she couldn’t help but sit, she vibrated, bouncing so hard that her tomboyish breasts flashed into view. All of this took the fun right out of mockery and helped Dane’s swelling situation not at all.

“Howl all you want, girl. You’re getting your ass worn out until I’m satisfied, and you can bet what little of it will remain unmarked that I’m nowhere close.”

In Dane’s case, the space between pops of the lickin’ stick was dominated by thick, weighty quiet. Not so for Mia, who whined a high-pitched drone all the way through. Puncutated as it was by the odd “AH!” and heartfelt squeak, it must have been the song of her people. Catlin took fine advantage of the stick’s length to vary the intensity of her strikes, hindered only by the challenge of a moving target. It was remarkable what a range of motion Mia retained in the shirt.

“If you make me work for it, little ‘yote, I’m just going to have to aim better.” Mistress rat demonstrated why this was undesirable, applying a smack so pristinely atop its predecessor that the edges overlapped to within a claw’s width.

Mia’s smart mouth couldn’t keep up with the deluge. “Fuck. Ing. Fuck. Ing. Fufuuuuufffffffffuck!” Repetitive, sure, but an apt summary. She balled her hands into fists and pounded them against the table. The atrocious sting of that oh so flammable toy just kept on rising. Compounding, as refreshed pain does. Stripped of her defiance, she trembled like a pup. Crying was probably inevitable. If she was lucky, bawling wasn’t. Spinning in her thoughts, she jerked in surprise when a tender kiss met her cheek.

She opened her eyes and only then realized they’d been closed. There was Dane’s smile. Not his self-satisfied smirk, but his wholesome one. He kissed her cheek again, and while he kissed her the stick wrenched a cry from her lips that turned to hyperventilation. She turned her head to kiss him back. Their lips were locked for no more than a couple of seconds before the next slap of wood on thin-furred flesh echoed off the walls. 

“Mmmmnngg.” Mia moaned or perhaps yelped into the kiss.

Catlin wondered if she ought to put a stop to this. But honestly, how the hell could she? She was witnessing love, a far cry from the literal fistfight her homecoming interrupted. An endorphin-fueled haze of reconciliation and affection and all that was good between souls. Best to let them make up.

Each time the stick clapped against Mia’s perfect peach of a posterior, she shook, cried out, and eased back into her cozy corner of subspace. It was the ratio that changed. The shaking and bucking took a backseat to the easing. The cries mellowed somewhat, complete with a murmur at the tail end. Unprompted, Mia stuck her ass out extra far to welcome the next WHAP in sequence. She even wiggled it like the horrid tease she was if a swat took too long in arriving.

It hurts. I hate it. Don’t stop. More. It HURTS. I HATE it. Don’t stop. More.

 Mia pouted, and Dane grunted playful disappointment, when Catlin drew the session to an end. “What about you, Mia? Are you going to be a good girl for me?” Both the shirtmates could hear the smile in her voice.

Mia considered her options. After a long hesitation, she took a gamble. “...no? No, Mistress?”

“Pffffft. Liar.” Now it was Catlin’s turn to drink in the sweetness and warmth of Mia’s kiss. Twice, actually, and greedily. Mia nibbled on her ratty-rat-a-tat’s lip in the way she only did after fending off jealousy. Catlin took the cue, clear as a neon sign, and gave her more to slake whatever unmet need still simmered.

Catlin leaned in and got lost. Her heart raced. She teetered on Domme drop, her long and bare-skinned tail twisting around her leg. Their warmth helped tip her in the right direction. Setting the lickin’ stick aside to cool, she wiped an unexpected happy tear from her eye and bounced up onto her heels. Emotions ran wonky after the rollercoaster. It dawned on her that she hadn’t even unloaded the car yet. “I forgot to bring water. Hold on, sweetlings. Do we need a crying towel?” She checked for herself rather than waiting for an answer. “Hmmm. Better grab one to be sure.”

When Catlin exited the room, she was sure not to play it off as nothing. She was wobbly and still might cry. She was also horny and tired, and she wanted pizza. She wasn’t herself, but she was okay, really okay. And so, wearing that emotion plainly on her sleeve, she strolled off kitchenward in the company of her thoughts.

Mia spoke over the ensuing silence, though it didn’t take much more than a whisper. “I really am sorry… that you keep poking me with your cock.”

Dane laughed, sputtered, coughed, pulled it together, and stuck the landing on that laugh after all. “And I’m sorry too. That you got is in trouble. My ass kills and it’s your fault.”

When Mia had Bad Girl Thoughts, she tended to hide them behind half-lidded eyes, a gambler playing her cards meticulously close to the chest. “That’s not my fault, dumbshit fox.” She carefully lowered her hips so that the flare of his vulpine tip, slick and glistening with precum, was near enough to feel the heat off her sex. “Now this might be. Maybe. But not your ass. That’s on you. Little. Dumb. Shit. Fox.”

“I kicked your tail earlier and I can do it again. Fucking… nnn… f’kin’ noodle-armed yodeldog.” Dane tried his best to slip it in her, but she had a +1 Bazillion to dexterity and evaded him easily. Worse, she did it through superior flexibility, arching her back to lift herself juuuuust out of reach. Further proof that coyotes were basically loud cats.

“You’re an idiot. I mean it. An irreparable idiot.” It was hard for Mia to get the words out between the pecks she scattered on his lips. He helpfully proved her point by lifting his hips up after her, as far as they’d go. She had him now. With knowledge of his full range, down to the slightest twitch, she sank down onto him. Just the tip and nothing more, not one merciful sliver of an inch.

Dane groaned. He didn’t breathe for a few seconds, though he sure did work his core. He tried desperately to go deeper. No dice, no prize but the gleam of her grin. “You, ah, ah, AH, you dirty stray. You’re lucky *hff* you’re *hff* cute.”

“D’aaaawwww… you think I’m cute, huh? That’s precious.” A nicer girl would have slid down his shaft to ride him like a show pony. Mia wasn’t a nice girl. Instead, she just squeezed. Tense, short release, short tense, release. The look on his face accompanying a soundless bay was a dead ringer for the one he wore when the lickin’ stick first tagged his naked hindquarters. She liked it then, and she liked it now.

“Come on, please? Please, Idunno, sit. Whatever. Just, shit, please.” The pitch and volume of Dane’s voice rose together. If he didn’t want to be teased, he was going about it poorly. If he didn’t want it.

“Don’t tell me to sit, you floppy furry fleshlight. I’m not your dog.” Those exercises were paying off in droves. Mia was elated to learn that she could literally clench him speechless. It wasn’t even hard, unlike him. Poor boy just might pop.

“Not. Uhn. A dog. Uhn. Dogs listen. You can uuuhhhn train dogs.” The bluster and confidence slipped in and out of Dane’s voice, like a bad connection. “You’re a… just a… my…”

“Bitch,” she trilled into his rapidly flicking ear. “Is that what you’re trying to say? That I’m a…” She trailed off. She didn’t want to draw his attention away from her glacially slow shimmy all the way down to his throbbing balls. “Bitch.”

Catlin returned with an aftercare try, levelheaded and refreshed. Calm for the first time since coming home that day. Three bottles of water, one damp chamois cloth, a plate of hasty, petite sandwiches cut down to finger size, and a small jar of aloe that smelled like a grandma but felt amazing. She was just about to announce her return, too, when she caught her miscreants fighting again.

Ope. Well, no, not fighting. Growling some, but, wow, just look at the way Mia’s blushing ass cheeks rose and fell.

Another win for peace, order, and the get-along shirt. Catlin quietly deposited the tray on the floor and excused herself. She’d be back soon to check on them; it would be just like Dane to knot, and it would be just like Mia to let him. This close to dinner, too.

Her blood still running high, the rat slumped down onto the edge of her bed for a breather. She thumbed her phone to life and, looking to kill a good twenty minutes or so, fired up DuoLingo. That occupied her from then until she closed the app a few seconds later. The smut called to her. Something, she had no doubt, about the powerful thumping sounds from just downstairs. 

Catlin unconsciously stroked the piercings in her ears. Visions of minotaur lovin’ flashed into her mind, but they didn’t stack up well against competing visions from closer to home. She heard a loud crack and a thud, finally settling the question of whether a coffee table was a suitable dicking surface. Raised voices, maybe angry. She was prepared to intervene until a distinctive WHUMP-thunk-thunk put her mind at ease. Good ol’ wallbanging.

New… coffee… table. She added the note to her grocery list. All day long, in her quiet office with a stifling nobody-fuck-eachother policy, she felt so damned jittery she could hardly think straight. The chaos was calming, a psychic Ritalin permeating the air. If she was quick, she could rub one out before they were done. Maybe two. Goodness knows she didn’t have to worry about being quiet.

How some people lived with tranquility, she would never understand. Give her a house full of fires to put out and monsters to tame. It kept her own bratty instincts at bay. It elevated her, made her spirit as strong as, well, the rest of her. Where had she learned that?

In another house of chaos and flying fur, not so very long ago and none too far away. Before she could resume smutting properly, she pulled up her messages and pressed the image of an achingly elegant mare, sunlight filtering through a thick Walker mane.

[So…]

[???]
[What’s up, little skintail?]

[Awww! <3]
[Nuthin much]
[Just]

[Don’t be mysterious, my dear.]

[The fucking lickin’ stick!!!]

[What about it?]
[Also, mind your language, girl. I CAN be there in two hours. :P]

[*meep*]
[Sorry, maam]
[***Ma’am!]

[Uh huh. Anyway, the lickin’ stick?]

[I think I love that thing. >.>]

[Heh. Told ya.]

[And the shirt…….]

[Oh! The get-along shirt? I still have that, you know.]

[Works like a charm, every time]
[I shouldn’t be surprised :/]

A picture came through on the mare’s end. A slightly younger rat with a punky long undercut dyed purple, pouting in a shirt the size of a parachute alongside an equally pouty pig in–what else?--pigtails. They looked back at the camera over their shoulders; the pig’s backside showed a great mass of fresh switch marks. So did the rat’s, of course. They just weren’t quite as visible. Catlin’s flesh prickled beneath her fur, only in part because of the blush.

			[Told ya!]