Pets: Bach's Story (3 page)

As Bach let go of her hand, she lethargically tipped up her head and her eyes peeled open a crack. She rolled them to look at him. Behind him, Bach heard Ralhan announcing, “As soon as you’re ready, Sir, we’ll go back to my office and complete the licensing paperwork.

Congratulations! You own a pet!”

Her brows quirked together again, arching upward as she fought to keep her eyes open and focused on him.

He stroked her cheek, and she hummed at him. A sweet reaction, he thought, for what he was sure would no doubt be a very sweet, female pet.

Chapter Two

His daughters would have grown up, but Pani—as he’d come to name his coppery-maned pet—would always be the size she was now: small, with the top of her head just coming up to his chest. She would never grow up and move away; he would never again feel as though he were rattling around in an empty house. An ideal situation, to his way of thinking.

Too bad Pani hated him.

She had stuffed herself into the farthest possible corner, her arms thrown out against both walls, squatting with her legs drawn all the way up to her chest. Her grey eyes were so wide, they all but dominated her pale, spotted face.

At least she wasn’t making that high-pitched screaming sound anymore.

Bach reclined in his chair by the fireplace, reading his book, How To Raise A Well-Behaved Human. He had flipped to the index in the back and looked up the section that entailed excessive screaming. The chapter heading was Judging the Mood of Your Pet. Well, he already knew her mood. It was scared half to death. To be honest, he really couldn’t blame her, either. He was many times her size, at least three times her weight, and she was a wild creature who was suddenly confronted with forced domestication. Unfortunately, the book didn’t have a section that detailed what to do if your very appearance terrified your pet half out of her mind.

He sighed. And while his attention was focused on the book, skimming the chapter for something relevant to his situation, she made a desperate dash for the door. Grabbing the knob with both hands, she vigorously shook the door, rattling it in its frame four or five times. She flung herself into another corner and stared at him again, those slate grey eyes of her wide and unblinking.

He was careful not to move. There wasn’t any need. The lock for the door was higher than she could reach, and he’d closed all the windows. All the breakables had been removed to safer locations, he’d put paper down on the floor until he got her housebroken, and every exit out of the living room had been sealed off. Whether she wanted to be or not, she was stuck here until he had a chance to socialize with her. If it continued on like this, they’d probably still be sitting here, with her ducking from corner to corner, until midnight.

He sighed again and flipped back to the index. Ah, here we go. Page fifteen. Your Human and You: The First Introduction. Number one, the page read, don’t scare it.

Damn.

Bach frowned and flipped back to the index to see if there was a section on what he could do to correct an accidental scaring. There wasn’t one.

Double damn.

Pani dashed towards the window, grabbed the bottom sill and yanked frantically to get it up. When that failed, she flattened herself back against the glass and stared at him again, as if reassuring herself that he still hadn’t moved. Then she surprised the hell out of him. When she turned back to the window, she stretched her hand up for the locking mechanism, jumping in an attempt to reach it. The first time, her fingers missed it by bare inches. But on the second jump, her fingertips skimmed the bottom, causing the latch to turn, albeit barely, towards unlocking.

Bach quickly stood up. Although fairly confident that he could catch her again if she did get outside, he didn’t want to risk it. She was scared enough of him as it was. He didn’t even want to think how far back on the Trust Meter it would push him to have to chase her down on the lawn.

Struggling to jump high enough to unlock the window latch, she must not have realized how close he was until he grabbed her. Little, slender, and frail though she might appear, she still fought him like fury: bucking, kicking, twisting, screaming and tossing her head wildly. As he pulled her close to his body and sat down with her on the floor, she latched onto his hand with both of hers and sank her teeth into his thumb.

He’d already read the section on biting. Pretend it doesn’t hurt and you won’t create a habitual biter, the book had said. The pain shot out through his thumb and he grit his teeth, trying hard to make no sound. Blood trickled down his hand as her sharp teeth broke his skin.

Pretend it doesn’t hurt, like hell, he thought and barely resisted the urge to thump her on the nose.

With two gasped out whimpers, she abruptly gave up on biting and went back to fighting his hold, and Bach almost sighed with relief. He looked at his bloody thumb, then simply wrapped her in both arms and held her in his lap until she struggled herself into exhaustion.

He crooned to her non-stop. “You’re all right, Pani. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.

Settle down, Pani.”

Eventually, she slumped into his embrace as limp as a wet rag.

“There’s a good girl,” he murmured. He tentatively stroked her mess of a braided mane, and she cringed from his touch, turning her face away. But that was as much as she moved and he viewed it as an encouraging sign. Maybe she was coming to accept him.

He held her for a good twenty minutes, constantly murmuring platitudes in her ear while caressing every part of her body from her face to her toes so she’d grow accustomed to his touch.

Those pert little breasts of hers, with their rosy red tips, were just like a real woman’s breasts cupped in his hands. Her body tensed abruptly when he did that, but though her nipples stiffened when the pads of his thumbs rasped the tips, she still didn’t move.

He stroked her shoulders and down her arms to her fingertips. Her waist was a trim as a doll’s, and she felt very warm between her thighs. Her breathing quickened and she made a soft whimpering sound when he cupped the mound of her femininity. It was easy to see why they were so popular for recreation, although it was a little repulsive trying to imagine fitting himself inside her small body.

“There, you see. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, sliding his hands down her legs to her tiny feet. Five toes, he noticed. How odd.

She was trembling, staring straight ahead at nothing at all.

That was enough socializing for now, he decided.

Bach picked her up and carried her down the hall, past the kitchen, up the stairs to the second floor and past the master bedroom. While one day he did hope she’d be tame enough to sleep in his bed with him, he doubted if either one of them was up for that kind of battle tonight.

So he carried her down the hall to the smallest of the three upstairs bedrooms.

When his daughters were very young, this had been their nursery. It was within hearing range of the master bedroom and easily accessible in the middle of the night. The windows were also higher than in the living room, so there would be no jumping to reach the latches.

He’d spent the entire weekend getting this room ready for Pani. He’d bought a crib and all the necessities the book had claimed were needed in order to be a proper care provider for a helpless human animal. There were blankets, clothes, and a basket-full of toys (brightly colored, multi-textured, and even some electrical gadgets designed to keep an intellectual pet mentally stimulated for hours) nestled up to the wall between the diaper hamper and crib.

He set Pani down in her new bed, and she sat there, the perfect little angel, for the short time that he stood watching her. But when he turned to get a diaper from the changing table, she scrambled up to swing her leg over the top of the rail. He caught her before she shimmied down to the floor and rolled her back into the crib. That started a whole new argument, especially when he worked the diaper under her hips.

“Be a good girl, Pani,” he told her as she simultaneously fought to roll over and kick his hands away. “Hold still.”

But she was having no part of that diaper. He won because he was bigger and because she wore herself out, but he could remember diapering his own daughters and trying to put one on Pani was almost an athletic event in comparison.

Shaking his head, he covered her with a blanket. Immediately she tried to crawl out from under it, but he pulled her back into the center of the mattress, rolled her onto her back, and covered her with the blanket again. He dropped two toys into bed next to her.

“You need a nap,” he told her. Turning around, he headed for the door.

Sitting up, she picked up one of the toys and looked at it—a round, clear plastic maze with three silver beads trapped in separate dead-end bends inside. Then she looked at him, at the bed, around the room, and then back at the object in her hand. As Bach walked out of the room, the toy hit the wall near his head and ricocheted back at her.

My, but she was turning into such a naughty and disagreeable thing.

Bach closed the door anyway. He’d let her get away with it this once, because she was new and because all this was strange and had to be very unsettling for her. But many more tantrums like that and he was going to skip ahead two chapters in that book and go straight to chapter four: How to Discipline Your Pet.

He stopped in the bathroom to wash and bandage his injured thumb, then headed downstairs to the kitchen to make dinner. It was the first time in two years that he wouldn’t be eating alone. So, even though he knew she wouldn’t appreciate it, he fixed a special meal of all his favorite foods. Two hours later, when he was ready to set the table, there were more than eight steaming platters surrounding his place. He only set out one plate, but moved her baby-styled highchair closer to his seat so he could feed her himself.

Since he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of using either Gema’s or Kali’s highchairs—

both of which were still carefully stored up in the attic—he’d bought Pani her own and had it modified as the book suggested, with padded wrist and ankle restraints. When everything was finally ready, he went back upstairs for Pani.

He got his second pet-induced surprise of the day when he opened the door to find the diaper lying unused in the middle of the floor and Pani not in it. Instead, she had pushed the crib across the room and quite ingeniously used it as a stepping stool to reach the window latch. Of her, all he could see were two white-knuckled hands tightly gripped around the thick branch of the ancient, drooping willow tree, which grew just outside the window.

As he stood there in shock, her soft but nervous grunts floating back in through the window to his ears, Bach suddenly realized her hands were beginning to slip from the branch.

She was at least thirty feet off the ground!

He ran back downstairs, barely making it outside and around the corner of his house in time to catch her as she fell.

It was debatable whether or not she realized the mistake of her actions, but for all of three seconds after she’d dropped into his arms, Pani grabbed onto his shoulders and hugged herself to him, trembling as she clung. For those three perfect seconds, she was the sweet and darling pet he’d thought her to be at Exotics, Incorporated.

Then she pulled her head back and she looked at him. And the wild animal in her suddenly returned full fury. She erupted in his arms. Her limbs becoming a windmill of hitting fists and kicking feet.

He dropped to the ground, shifting her in his embrace and pinning her arms to her body so she wouldn’t hurt either of them, accidentally or otherwise. He gave her a single sharp swat, his hand covering the entire surface of her bare bottom. That jolted her into sudden motionlessness.

Her whole body stiffened. She put a hand back as far as she could reach to touch her bottom and stared at him, her expressive lips rounding in a look of shock.

“Enough,” he told her sternly. “I’m all done tolerating these displays of bad temper. Any more of this and I’m going to give you a real spanking.”

He knew she couldn’t understand him, but she stared at him as though she did. Whether because of that smack or because she knew she was caught, she didn’t renew her struggles against him.

Picking her up, Bach carried her back into his house and to the kitchen. It was too much to hope that one swat would make her permanently pliant. She took one look at the highchair and became her bucking and writhing old self again.

He put her in it anyway, but she made him work at getting the straps around her arms and legs. She twisted, bucked, and grunted, tugged futilely on her captured arm while he gently buckled it down, and glared furiously at him with grey eyes that all but crackled with ire as he did the second. He had to hand it to her. If nothing else, she did have a very, very expressive little face.

Once she was secure, he sat down to fill his plate from the assorted platters of food.

“Here,” he said, spooning up a small bite of vegetable casserole. He had to roll the spoon, winding the gooey strands of cheese around the utensil until they broke. “Try some of this.”

He blew on it once to cool it before extending the food to her mouth. She turned her head away.

“Are you sure you don’t want it?” he asked, chasing her mouth with the spoon.

Clamping her lips tightly together, she twisted her head back the other way.

“Suit yourself.” He ate it instead.

Bach offered her a different taste to try every few bites, but she was as stubborn as she was wild and refused everything. He wasn’t really surprised, although it wasn’t until he’d cleaned up the kitchen and wiped down the table that he remembered what Nil Ralhan had said about her tender stomach. Well, if she still wasn’t eating by tomorrow, then he’d consult a vet. In the meantime…

He went into the living room to get his book, then sat back down at the table and turned Pani’s highchair to face him. Opening back up to page fifteen, he briefly skimmed the section on introductions.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pani lean slightly sideways as she looked at the book’s front cover. Thinking maybe she liked the colors of the picture, he held the book up so she could see the two collared humans smiling back at her. She stared at them for a long time, then her eyes flicked up at him.