Mommy's Little Kitten - Ch. 01

The front door closed. The deadbolt turned. Diana's heels clicked down the porch steps, fading into the garage, and then the Mercedes purred to life, reversed down the driveway, and was gone.

Amy lay still. Flat on her back, sheets bunched at her waist, staring at the ceiling fan. She counted. Breaths. In and out, in and out, until the silence in the house thickened into something solid. Something she could press her fingers into. The refrigerator hummed downstairs. A mockingbird screamed outside her window. Nothing else.

The house was empty.

She'd been planning this for three days. The low, constant thrum beneath her ribs that started every time she came home from campus and saw Diana sitting in the recliner with her reading glasses on and her silk robe hanging open to the sternum. Three days of squeezing her thighs together under the dinner table. Three days of excusing herself to her room early. Three days of lying in this exact position, staring at this exact ceiling fan, and thinking about the box.

The box.

Amy rolled onto her side and hung her head over the edge of the mattress. Dust motes drifted in the slant of morning light that cut across the hardwood. She reached under the bed frame, past a forgotten sandal and a dog-eared copy of The Price of Salt. Her fingers found the plastic storage container. She pulled it out. The combination lock was small, brass, warm from the heating vent. Three numbers. Her mother's birthday. She'd never let herself think about why she'd chosen those numbers. She thought about it now, thumb rolling the digits into place. Her stomach did something complicated.

Click.

She lifted the lid. Tissue paper, white and whispering. Beneath it, arranged with ritualistic care. The ears. The tail. The collar. Two small steel bowls with KITTEN stamped into the metal.

Amy sat on the edge of the bed and held the ears in her lap. White faux fur on a slim headband, soft and ridiculously innocent looking. She rubbed her thumb across one pointed tip. Her heart was going. She could feel her pulse in her throat, in her wrists, between her legs. Already. Before anything had started.

Clothes first. She stood and pulled her sleep shirt over her head. No bra underneath. Her breasts settled, the cool air raising goosebumps across her skin, tightening her pale pink nipples into stiff points. She pushed her cotton shorts down, then her underwear, and kicked both toward the closet. Naked. She folded the shirt, placed it on the bed, folded the shorts, placed them beside it. The underwear too. Everything neat. Everything ordered. The one part of this that she could control.

She turned to the full-length mirror on the back of her door. Amy Walsh. Twenty years old. Platinum blonde hair past her shoulders, messy from sleep. Big blue eyes with the dark circles she'd earned from three consecutive nights of fantasies that kept her hand between her thighs until two in the morning. Freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks and the tops of her breasts. She was short. Soft in places she used to hate. Her belly curved. Her thighs touched. Her hips flared wider than she wanted.

She looked at herself the way she imagined Diana would look at her.

She stopped hating any of it.

The ears went on first. Headband sliding into her hair, white fur nestling against the platinum strands. She adjusted them. Tilted her head left, right, forward. They sat just behind her temples, perky and alert. Her reflection blinked back at her. Something shifted behind her eyes. A softening. A surrender. The girl in the mirror was already less Amy and more something else. Something that purred.

The tail next. She retrieved the small bottle of lubricant from the box and sat on the edge of the bed again, knees apart. The plug was polished stainless steel. Modest, really. A tapered tip swelling to maybe an inch and a half at its widest before narrowing to the neck and the flared base, from which a long plume of white faux fur cascaded. She'd ordered it from an Etsy shop run by a woman in Portland who made pet play accessories. The confirmation email was still in her inbox. She didn't know it had already been found.

Lube on her fingers, slick and cool. She reached behind herself, found her own tight ring of muscle, and rubbed in slow circles. Relaxing. Breathing. She pressed the tip of the plug against herself and pushed, gentle, steady, letting her body open around the widest point with a stretch that made her gasp and clench and then release. The plug slid home with a satisfying fullness. She stood. The weight of the tail pulled gently between her cheeks, the fur brushing the backs of her thighs. She turned in the mirror and swished her hips. The tail swayed. Left, right, a pendulum of white fluff.

Something in her chest started vibrating.

The collar. Pink leather, supple, a half-inch wide with a small brass buckle and a tiny brass bell dangling from the D-ring at the front. She lifted it to her throat and fastened it. Snug enough that she could feel it with every swallow, every breath, a constant ring of pressure that said you belong to someone.

The bell chimed. Bright and small, like a single note from a music box.

Amy dropped to all fours.

The hardwood was cool under her palms, smooth under her kneecaps. She found her position. Knees spread to hip width. Back dipping into a natural curve, the kind that pushed her ass up and her chest down. Head lifted, chin forward. She'd practiced this. God, she'd practiced this so many times. In her dorm room at ASU with the door locked and her roommate at class, crawling back and forth across the thin carpet until her knees were red and her hands ached and the purr in her chest was a physical thing she could feel in her teeth.

The purr started now. Low. A rolling, continuous vibration that began somewhere behind her sternum and traveled up through her throat. She'd taught herself. Hours in the shower with the water running to cover the sound, lips together, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth, pushing air through the vibration of her soft palate until the sound was involuntary. Until it happened on its own, rising and falling with her breath like a second heartbeat.

She crawled out of her bedroom and into the hallway.

The house opened around her. From this angle, everything was different. The hallway baseboard had a scuff mark she'd never noticed. The table in the entryway had carved legs she could smell the wood polish on. The living room carpet gave way to kitchen tile and her palms went from warm hardwood to cool stone and back again. She was low. Animal low. The world was surfaces and textures and the swing of her tail and the jingle of her bell.

Sunlight poured through the living room windows in thick golden bars. December in Phoenix. The air outside was crisp but the house was warm. The heating system clicked and sighed. Amy crawled through a patch of sun and her skin bloomed with warmth, her back going gold, the white of her tail catching the light.

She pressed her nose to the floor. Her mind was quiet and full of warm, blank, gorgeous nothing. She was a kitten in the sun. That was all she was.

In the kitchen she nosed one of the steel bowls across the tile to the sink cabinet. She'd filled it from the tap before she'd started getting dressed, the water still cool. She lowered her face to it and lapped. Small, quick movements of her tongue, the way she'd watched cats drink in slow-motion videos. Water dripped from her chin, ran down her throat, collected in the hollow of her collarbone. She didn't wipe it away. Kittens don't use napkins.

Her second bowl sat empty. She'd put dry cereal in it before, Cheerios, eaten one at a time, nudging them around the bowl with her nose. Today the bowl was clean. Today she wasn't hungry for food.

Back to the living room. She found a ball of yarn she'd stashed behind the sofa cushion and batted it across the floor, chasing it on hands and knees, her breasts swaying with each lunge, the bell on her collar ringing in bright little bursts. The yarn rolled under the coffee table and she went after it, belly low, shoulder blades shifting. She fished it out with one hand and batted it again. The tail swished against her thighs.

Her pussy was wet. Had been since the ears went on. Slick. She could feel it when she moved, the slide of her inner thighs, the way the air hit the moisture and made her clit pulse. Every time she shifted her weight, the plug moved inside her. A reminder of fullness, of being filled, of something in her that she hadn't put there herself in her fantasy. In her fantasy, Mommy put it there. Mommy chose the tail. Mommy lubed the plug and pressed it in slowly while Amy mewled and arched and spread her knees wider.

She abandoned the yarn and crawled to Diana's recliner.

The leather was worn soft, the color of dark honey. Diana sat here every evening. Wine in one hand, case files in the other, reading glasses perched on her nose, legs crossed, silk robe fallen open to reveal the deep valley between her breasts and the smooth plane of her sternum. Amy would sit on the opposite couch and pretend to study and sneak glances. The way Diana's throat moved when she swallowed her wine. The way she licked her thumb before turning a page. The way she stretched, arms overhead, back arching, the robe parting to show the dark pink edges of her nipples.

Amy pressed her face into the seat cushion.

Diana's perfume lived in the leather. Black Orchid. Tom Ford. Dark and warm and complicated, a scent that Amy associated with safety and want in equal, devastating measure. She inhaled until her lungs ached. Her hips rolled. The plug shifted. She whimpered, a small, broken sound that became a moan that became a purr so deep it rattled her teeth.

Good kittens wait for permission.

That was the rule. Her rule. The one she'd written in a journal she kept locked in her desk drawer, along with a dozen others. Good kittens don't touch themselves without permission. Good kittens present when told. Good kittens drink from their bowl. Good kittens sleep where Mommy puts them. A whole architecture of surrender that she'd built in the privacy of her own longing, every rule a love letter addressed to a woman who would never read them.

She ground her hips against nothing and bit the leather and whined.

Stop it. Be good. Be patient. Wait.

She pulled her face from the chair and crawled back to the sun patch. She curled up, legs tucked beneath her, arms folded, cheek resting on the warm hardwood. Her tail curved over her hip. The bell on her collar lay against the floor, silent for once. Her purr settled into something low and steady, a frequency she could feel in her bones.

Time dissolved. That was the point of kitten space. The beautiful, terrifying erasure of clock time, of obligation time, of adult time. She existed in a warm present tense. Sun on skin. Floor under cheek. Plug inside her. Collar at her throat. Tail against her thigh. Purring.

She chased another sunbeam. It had moved, the angle of the light shifting through the window as the morning aged. She followed it across the living room floor on her hands and knees. Her breasts hung beneath her, moving with her rhythm, the pink nipples tight and flushed. The bell jingled. Her tail swayed. The sunbeam hit the far wall and climbed and she sat back on her heels and batted at the bright patch of light with her hand, fingers spread, toes curled. She made a sound that was half laugh, half mew.

She didn't hear the front door open.

She didn't hear the heels on the porch. Or the key in the lock. Or the door swinging wide and clicking shut. The central heating masked it. Her own purring masked it. The blood singing in her ears masked it. She was deep. So deep. The deepest she'd ever been, here in Diana's house, surrounded by Diana's things, wearing a collar that she pretended Diana had fastened around her throat.

"Amy?"

The voice cut through kitten space like a razor through silk.

Amy froze. Hands on the floor. Knees apart. Spine curved. Tail up. Bell silent because she'd stopped breathing.

Diana stood in the archway between the foyer and the living room.

Charcoal pencil skirt that ended just above her knees, the fabric following the curve of her hips so faithfully it might have been painted on. Cream silk blouse tucked in at the waist, the top two buttons undone, the swell of her breasts visible at the open collar. Dark hair falling over her shoulders in the loose waves she wore when she hadn't had time to pin it up. Her green eyes were moving. Slow. Deliberate. From the white cat ears perched in Amy's platinum hair, down to the pink leather collar with its small brass bell, across the bare expanse of Amy's back, over the dip of her waist, to the round swell of her ass raised in the air, to the fluffy white tail nestled between her cheeks, to the wet shine on her inner thighs.

Diana's eyes stopped there. On the wet.

The yarn ball, which Amy had knocked earlier, rolled lazily across the hardwood and came to rest against the toe of Diana's black patent heel.

"I... I can explain." Amy's voice cracked. Brittle. Human. The purr was gone, replaced by a heart rate that could have powered a generator. "This isn't... I was just..."

Diana didn't speak. She bent, picked up the yarn ball, turned it over in her long fingers. Her nails were painted a dark wine color. Her wedding ring was gone, had been for eight years, but the finger was still elegant, still commanding. She set the yarn ball on the hall table next to her handbag.

Then she walked across the living room.

Her pace was measured. The pace of a woman who had decided something and was in no hurry to undo it. Her heels were measured on the hardwood. Click. Click. Click. She lowered herself onto the sofa, directly in front of Amy, and crossed her legs. The pencil skirt rode up her thighs, dark stockings catching the light, the lace tops visible for one deliberate second before the fabric settled. She placed her hands in her lap. She looked down at her youngest daughter, naked and collared and trembling on the floor.

"How long have you been doing this, baby?"

Quiet. Warm. Diana's voice like the first sip of wine on a Friday night, smooth and dark and designed to make you tell the truth.

Amy's throat worked. She was still frozen in her pose, on all fours, because some part of her brain, the kitten part, the deep part, refused to let her stand up. Refused to let her cover herself or run or pretend this was a yoga routine or a weird art project or anything other than exactly what it was.

"Two years." Her voice was small. "Since I was eighteen. I only... I only do it when you're at work. When the house is empty. I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm so sorry. I'll throw everything out. I'll get rid of the box, I'll..."

"Don't."

One word. Soft enough to be a breath. Firm enough to stop Amy mid-sentence, her mouth still open, a word dying on her tongue.

Diana uncrossed her legs. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her green eyes were level with Amy's blue ones. This close, Amy could see the fine lines at the corners of Diana's eyes, the ones that appeared when she smiled, the ones that Amy wanted to trace with her fingertip, with her tongue. She could see the tiny mole beneath Diana's left ear. She could smell her. Black Orchid, warm skin, the faintest trace of the coffee she'd been drinking before her meeting got canceled and she'd turned the Mercedes around and come home.

"How long have you been thinking about Mommy while you do this?"

Amy's lungs seized.

"And don't lie to me, kitten." Diana's eyes dropped. Down Amy's throat, past the collar, over her collarbones, to her breasts, to the stiff pink nipples, to her belly, to the space between her spread knees where Amy knew, knew, the evidence was obscene. "I can see how wet you are from here."

The word kitten landed somewhere beneath Amy's sternum and detonated. A key. Turning in a lock she didn't know she had.

She couldn't lie on her knees. With this woman's eyes on her body. With two years of fantasy pressing against the backs of her teeth like a confession at the end of a very long penance.

"Since I left for college." The words fell out of her in a rush, tumbling over each other, breathless and terrified and relieved. "Since I was away from you and I started thinking about you and I couldn't stop. I tried. I swear I tried, Mommy. But every time I put the ears on, every time I buckled the collar, I thought about... I thought about you finding me. Coming home and finding me like this. And I..."

She pressed her forehead to the floor between her own hands. Her back shook. The tail quivered.

"I wanted you to catch me. I think I've always wanted you to catch me."

Silence. The refrigerator hummed. The mockingbird screamed outside. Amy's pulse was a war drum in her ears.

"Look at me."

Amy raised her head.

Diana was smiling. This smile was slow. Private. Dangerous. It moved across her face the way light moves across water, revealing everything beneath the surface.

"My sweet, filthy little girl." Diana's voice dropped half an octave. "Two years. Two years you've been crawling around Mommy's house in those pretty ears, dripping on Mommy's hardwood floors, pressing your face into Mommy's chair where it smells like Mommy's perfume. Two years of playing with yourself in Mommy's house and wishing Mommy would walk through that door."

She paused. Reached forward. Hooked one finger under the D-ring of Amy's collar and pulled, just enough to make the bell chime, just enough to make Amy slide forward on her knees until her face was inches from Diana's crossed leg.

"And here I am, kitten. Mommy's home."

Amy's vision blurred. Tears or arousal or both, she couldn't tell, couldn't separate them, couldn't find the line between relief and desire because there wasn't one.

"You're... disgusted?"

Diana laughed. Low, throaty, the laugh she used on the phone late at night with the women she dated, the younger women, the ones Amy heard through the wall and ground her pillow between her thighs imagining she was.

"Disgusted." Diana repeated the word like it was funny. "Baby. Look at Mommy's face. Really look. Do I look disgusted to you?"

Amy looked. Diana's cheeks were flushed. Her pupils were wide, the green of her irises narrowed to thin rings. Her lips were parted, her breathing visible in the rise and fall of her chest. When Amy's eyes dropped to the open collar of Diana's blouse, she could see the flush spreading down her mother's throat, disappearing beneath the cream silk.

"I look like a woman who just walked into her own living room and found her youngest daughter naked on all fours wearing kitten ears and a tail plug, soaking wet, purring." Diana's thumb stroked the leather of Amy's collar, back and forth, back and forth. "And baby, I have been waiting for something like this for longer than you know."

"What... what do you mean?"

"I mean I knew, Amy." The smile changed. Softer. "Anna found the Etsy receipt at Thanksgiving and told me. But I knew about the rest. The way you stared at me when you thought I wasn't looking. The way you blushed when I wore certain things around the house. The sounds you made through the wall at night when you thought I couldn't hear you."

Amy's face went scarlet. Full body. Cheeks, throat, chest, even the tops of her thighs flushed pink.

"I heard you whisper my name once." Diana's voice was barely audible. "Through the wall. You were touching yourself. And you said Mommy the way you just said it. Desperate. Broken. Like a prayer."

Amy squeezed her eyes shut.

"And I went back to my room and I lay in my bed and I thought about my pretty little girl on the other side of that wall with her hand between her legs whispering my name, and baby..." Diana leaned close enough that her breath was warm on Amy's cheek. "I came so hard I had to bite my pillow."

Amy whimpered. The sound escaped her before she could catch it, high and thin and wrecked. Diana's hand moved from the collar to the side of Amy's face, cupping her cheek, her thumb wiping the tear that had spilled.

"Come here, kitten."

Two words. Spoken with the same calm authority Diana used to command courtrooms, but layered underneath with something molten, something that liquefied the last of Amy's resistance.

She crawled forward.

Hands and knees across the hardwood, the bell chiming with each movement, her breasts swaying, the tail swishing between her thighs. Six feet. It took her six feet to reach Diana's legs, and every inch of that distance was the longest and shortest distance she had ever crossed. She settled between Diana's parted knees. Her face was level with the hem of the charcoal skirt. Her hands came up, tentative, and rested on Diana's stocking-covered thighs. The nylon was warm. She could feel the muscle beneath it, toned from the Pilates classes Diana took every Saturday, strong and solid and real.

Diana's hand settled on the crown of Amy's head. Her fingers threaded through platinum hair, found the base of one kitten ear, and scratched. Gently. The way you scratch a cat.

Amy's entire body responded. She tipped her head sideways, pressing her cheek into Diana's palm, her eyes falling half-shut, her lips parting. The purr came back. This was deeper. Rougher. Uncontrolled. It rose from somewhere primal, somewhere beyond technique, a resonance that shook through her chest and throat and vibrated against Diana's hand.

"There she is." Diana's fingers moved behind Amy's ear, scratching in slow circles. Amy pressed into the touch the way a starving person presses toward bread. "Listen to that purr. That's real. That's your body telling Mommy what you are."

"Purr." The word came out wrapped in the sound itself, vibrating, layered. "Always been yours, Mommy. Purrrr. Always. Your kitten."

Diana's hand moved from Amy's head down the back of her neck. Slow. A long, deliberate stroke that followed the line of Amy's spine. Amy's back arched into it, curving upward to meet her mother's palm the way a cat pushes into a caress. Diana's hand traveled lower, over the swell of Amy's hip, down to her bare outer thigh. Goosebumps erupted in the wake of her fingers. Amy's skin prickled and flushed and she could feel every whorl of Diana's fingerprints against her.

Diana's hand changed direction. Moved to Amy's inner thigh. Amy's breath hitched. Her knees tried to spread wider and her body swayed and the bell jingled and Diana's fingers traced a line upward through the slick that had gathered on Amy's skin. Slowly. Deliberately. Two fingers dragging through wet heat, collecting it, gathering the evidence of everything Amy had been feeling for two hours. For two years.

Diana raised her hand. Her index and middle fingers glistened, a string of Amy's arousal stretching between them, catching the sunlight. She held them up, studying them, turning her wrist so the light played through the translucent slick.

"Look at this, baby." Diana's voice was conversational. Almost casual. "Look at what Mommy's kitten has been doing to Mommy's floors. You've been dripping everywhere. All morning. Crawling around Mommy's house on your hands and knees with this sweet little cunt making a mess on everything."

Amy's stomach clenched. The word cunt in Diana's voice. In her mother's voice. Spoken with that precise, lawyerly diction, every consonant sharp, every vowel warm. It was the filthiest, most beautiful sound Amy had ever heard.

"Do you know what that makes you?"

Amy's mouth moved. Nothing came out.

Diana brought her wet fingers to Amy's lips. Pressed them there. Resting. Waiting.

"A... a messy kitten?" Amy whispered against Diana's fingertips.

Diana's mouth curved. "A slutty kitten. Say it for Mommy, baby. I want to hear my pretty girl tell me what she is."

Amy parted her lips. Diana's fingers slid into her mouth. Amy tasted herself. Tangy. Salt and musk and something sweet beneath it, the flavor of her own arousal on her mother's skin. She closed her lips around Diana's knuckles and licked. Small, quick laps of her tongue, kittenish, the way she'd learned from watching slow-motion videos of cats drinking. Her tongue curled around Diana's fingers and she sucked, gently. The purr that hummed through her mouth vibrated against Diana's hand and Diana's breath caught. An audible sound. A stutter in that perfect composure.

Amy pulled back. A strand of saliva connected her lower lip to Diana's fingertip, thin and shining. Amy watched it stretch and break.

"Purr... I'm a slutty kitten, Mommy." Her voice was wrecked. Breathy and small and layered with purring. "I'm your slutty little kitten."

Diana wiped her wet fingers across Amy's cheek. A streak of saliva and arousal gleaming on Amy's flushed skin. Then she cupped Amy's face with her dry hand and stroked her thumb across Amy's cheekbone, over the freckles there. Amy leaned into the touch and the tears came properly now. From the sheer crushing weight of having a thing she'd wanted for so long she'd forgotten what life was like before she wanted it.

"That's right, baby. You're Mommy's slutty kitten. And Mommy is going to take such good care of you. Every part of you. Every pretty, dripping, desperate inch."

Diana traced Amy's lower lip. Her eyes were dark, the green almost swallowed by pupil.

"But first, I need to inspect my new pet. Turn around, kitten. Show Mommy your tail."

Amy turned on her knees. The motion was fluid, practiced, muscle memory from a hundred rehearsals in front of her bedroom mirror. She presented. Back arched, the deepest curve she could manage, shoulders down, face near the floor, arms stretched forward. Her ass rose high, the white fluffy tail fanning across her lower back and cascading between her thighs. Her knees were wide. She knew what Diana could see. Everything. The plug seated between her cheeks. The tail. The pink, swollen folds of her pussy, glistening, the arousal that coated her thighs and caught the afternoon light.

She was exposed in a way she'd never been exposed before. Opened. Offered. A kitten displaying for its owner. The vulnerability of it made her cunt clench around nothing and fresh slick slide down the inside of her thigh.

Diana's hand settled on Amy's left ass cheek. Broad palm, long fingers, warm. Proprietary. She smoothed her hand across Amy's skin in slow circles, kneading the soft flesh. Amy's hips pushed back into the touch. Diana's hand drifted inward, down the crease where thigh met buttock. Her fingers found the base of the tail plug, the flared steel disc nestled between Amy's cheeks.

She circled it with one fingertip. Slow. Tracing the rim where metal met skin.

Amy's forehead dropped to the hardwood. Her fingers splayed against the floor.

Diana pressed. A small, precise pressure on the base of the plug, pushing it deeper by a fraction of an inch. Amy's whole body tightened around it. Her gasp was sharp. Raw. Her hips rocked backward, chasing the pressure. Diana pressed again, and again, a slow, rhythmic pulse that made the plug shift inside Amy in tiny movements that sent sparks racing up her spine.

"This plug is too small for Mommy's kitten." Diana's voice was clinical now. Appraising. The way she might assess a piece of evidence in court. "I'm going to get you a proper one. Something thicker. Something that fills you up the way you need to be filled when you crawl." She pressed harder and Amy's moan was guttural, animal, ripped from her belly. "Something you really, really feel every time you move. But for now..."

She withdrew her hand. Patted Amy's ass once. Affectionate. Dismissive. The way you pat a well-behaved pet.

"Turn back around."

Amy turned. Faced her mother. Kneeling, naked, collared, tailed, flushed from her forehead to her navel, the wetness on her thighs obscene in the direct light. Between Diana's stocking-clad legs, the dark nylon framing her like a portrait. She looked up.

Diana leaned down. Close. Closer. She cupped Amy's chin and tilted her face up and their eyes met. Green into blue. The space between their mouths was inches. Less. Amy could see the fine texture of Diana's lipstick. The tiny chip in her front tooth from a champagne flute at New Year's three years ago. The way Diana's pulse beat in her throat, quick and hard, betraying everything that measured voice worked so carefully to conceal.

"From this moment," Diana whispered. "When we're alone in this house, you are mine. My kitten. You crawl. You do walk. You purr when you're happy. You come when Mommy calls. You eat when I feed you. You sleep where I put you."

Her thumb pressed into the soft flesh beneath Amy's chin.

"And you do everything I tell you, Amy. Everything."

Amy's eyes stung. Her chest felt like it was being cracked open, ribs spreading, heart exposed. Instead of cold she felt warmth. A rush of it, golden and devastating, filling the cavity where all her shame used to live.

"Everything, Mommy." Her voice broke on the second word. From the relief of putting down something she'd been carrying for so long her arms had gone numb. "Purr. Everything. Your kitten. I'm your kitten."

Diana kissed her.

Diana's mouth found Amy's and took it. Full. Deep. Her lips were soft and painted and they tasted of coffee and the berry tint of her lipstick and underneath both, something that Amy would spend the rest of her life unable to name and unable to stop craving. Diana's tongue slid against the seam of Amy's lips and Amy opened for her, opened the way she'd been opening all morning, all year, all her life. Diana's tongue was inside her mouth and Amy moaned.

The purr vibrated between them. Amy could feel it in her own chest, in Diana's lips, in the press of Diana's hand against her jaw. She gripped Diana's thighs. Her fingers dug into the nylon, the muscle beneath. Diana made a sound. Low. Quiet. A sound of confirmation. Of satisfaction. Of yes, this is what I wanted.

Diana pulled back. A thin bridge of saliva between their mouths, glinting, breaking. She traced Amy's lower lip with her thumb, smearing the lipstick that had transferred there, red on pink, mother's mark on daughter's mouth.

"Good kitten." Diana's voice was thick. "Up on the couch. In Mommy's lap. We have the whole afternoon, baby, and Mommy has so many things to teach her new pet."

She patted the cushion beside her. Amy rose on trembling legs. She crawled up onto the sofa. Diana arranged her. Firm, specific movements. A hand on her hip guiding her sideways. A tug on her shoulder pulling her down. Until Amy was curled against Diana's body, her head on Diana's thigh, her knees tucked to her chest, her tail draped over the armrest, the white fur bright against the dark upholstery. Diana's hand settled on Amy's head and began to move. Fingers through her hair, slow circles on her scalp, scratching behind the base of each kitten ear, down the nape of her neck, up again.

Amy purred. The deepest sound she'd made. Continuous, rolling, a sound that filled the room, that filled her body, that vibrated against Diana's thigh and made Diana's hand pause for one second before resuming its circuit.

"Anna and Jessica know, baby."

Amy's purr stuttered.

"They've known for months. Anna found your Etsy order confirmation at Thanksgiving. The tail. The ears. She told Jessica. Jessica found your browser history. The pet play forums. The kitten space guides. The stories you bookmarked about..." Diana's fingers scratched behind Amy's ear and the purr resumed despite the flood of adrenaline. "... about daughters and mothers."

Amy's eyes flew open. She stared at the far wall.

"They told Mommy, Amy. They sat me down in this living room and they told me everything. And do you want to know what I did?"

Amy couldn't move. Her fingers clutched the hem of Diana's skirt.

"I sent them home. I locked my bedroom door. I opened my laptop and I read every single story you had bookmarked. Every single one. Daughters kneeling for their mothers. Collars and leashes and pet bowls and kitten ears. Good girls crawling on all fours and purring while Mommy strokes them."

Diana's hand moved from Amy's hair to her bare shoulder, down her arm, back up.

"I read them all, baby. And I touched myself to every single one. Three hours. My hand between my legs, reading about girls like you, imagining my Amy, my youngest, my pretty little kitten, on her knees at the foot of my bed with that collar on and that tail in and those blue eyes looking up at me."

Amy's cunt was throbbing. A rhythmic, aching pulse that matched her heartbeat. She pressed her thighs together and the pressure was sweet and nowhere near enough and she whimpered against Diana's leg.

"They know?" Her voice was a thread.

"They know, baby. And they can't wait." Diana bent down and pressed her lips to the crown of Amy's head, between the kitten ears. Her mouth lingered there, warm breath in Amy's hair. "They're coming for dinner on Friday. All three of Mommy's girls under one roof. And Mommy has plans for her kitten that involve all of us."

Amy's cunt clenched. Hard. A spasm that she felt in her belly, in her thighs, in the plug that shifted inside her.

"Would you like that, baby? Would my kitten like to be good for Mommy? For your big sisters?"

Her brain was static. White noise and want. She opened her mouth and the purr poured out, thick and ragged. Beneath it, around it, through it, the words she'd been writing in journals and whispering into pillows and biting into her own wrist at two in the morning for two years.

"Purr purr... yes, Mommy. Yes. Your kitten wants that. Your kitten wants to be good. Purr... for you. For them. For everyone. Please, Mommy. Purr purr purr... please."

Diana's fingers found Amy's nipple. Brushed across it. A featherlight pass that made Amy's spine curl and her toes flex and the purr catch in her throat like a gear slipping.

"Good girl." Diana's voice was velvet and smoke. "Mommy's perfect, slutty, obedient little kitten. Now close your eyes. Rest. Mommy's going to sit here and pet you for a while."

Amy's eyes closed. Diana's hand moved. From her nipple to her ribs, tracing each one, to the soft curve of her belly where Amy always flinched, but Diana's touch lingered there, appreciating, claiming. Amy didn't flinch. Down to her hip. The outer line of her thigh. Back up, over her waist, between her shoulder blades. Each pass mapped a new territory of Amy's body and planted a flag in it. Mine. Mine. This is mine now.

"And then, when you wake up," Diana murmured, "Mommy is going to teach you how a kitten uses her tongue."

Amy's cunt clenched again. She heard herself moan, distantly, muffled against the warm nylon of Diana's thigh. She pressed her face into the fabric and breathed in and Diana's scent was everywhere, Black Orchid and skin and something sweet beneath it, something biological, something Diana. Amy purred and purred and purred.

The afternoon sun moved across the floor. It tracked from the east windows to the south, painting gold rectangles that stretched and narrowed and shifted. The mockingbird stopped screaming. The refrigerator cycled off and on. Diana's hand never stopped moving. From Amy's hair to her shoulder to her back to her hip to her thigh and back to her hair. Each circuit the same. Each circuit different. Each one pushing Amy deeper into a warm, soft place where nothing hurt and nothing was wrong and she was exactly what she was supposed to be.

She fell asleep in her mother's lap. Naked. Collared. The tail plug full and warm inside her. The kitten ears nestled in her platinum hair. Her cheek pressed to Diana's thigh, lips parted, breathing slow, the purr continuing even in sleep, a low, rolling vibration that Diana felt against her own skin.

Diana sat in the quiet living room with her youngest daughter curled in her lap like a pet and she stroked her hair and she did not stop smiling.

Amy slept. And for the first time in her life, she was pretending to be something she was.