When Gregory opened the door to his apartment, at 5: 40 p.m. on a Friday evening, he was struck by the smells of bodywash, of aerosol hair products, of a perfume he thinks he gave her one Valentine's.
And his heart sank.
Whenever Rachel was getting ready to leave the house, especially with her gaggle of girl friends, this is how their apartment always smelled. Normally, this gave him a sense of homey affection, like his wife's beauty had saturated the air, strong enough for him to breathe in and taste her on the back of his tongue (and now, standing in the doorway, he reflexively breathed in deeply to do just that). Now, the twist of anxiety he'd been feeling all day twisted deeper.
Sharp words last night, and no conclusion. Gregory hadn't brought himself to ask her, again, if she was abandoning their plans for a night out with the girls, as if showing he was so concerned about the caged status of his cock would have her clam up or decide definitively against staying home with him. So he worked, shut his brain off to everything but smoothing out some bugs in someone else's bad code, tried not to think about how habitual it had become to sit down on the toilet to piss cleanly through his cage, eventually stopped checking his phone, and then made absolutely certain he would beat the Friday night peak hour traffic to make it home on time.
But it seemed like Rachel had made her decisions. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The lights from the bedroom were still on, so she was home, and he considered calling out -- but rules as unwritten, he wasn't meant to address her at all. If he followed expected protocol, he would go to the bedroom, strip off his casual Friday clothes, and puppy up.
Well, she hadn't instructed him otherwise.
With an odd sense of defiance, Gregory kicked off his shoes and dropped his things by the door and moved for the bedroom. Rachel was stood at the vanity, tipped forward to see to her makeup -- and he ignored her against the natural impulse to look or say hi, and went to collect his things from the drawer. His back to her, he unceremoniously stripped, air comfortably warm against his naked skin until he was only wearing the clasping metal around his cock made small and meek in its cage.
He dressed up again in smooth and practiced motions. His harness around the waist and butt, the one around his chest and shoulders. The head and face harness with its perky dog ears. Knee braces next, socks, and then his collar, wherein the sensation of clasping it closed always sent a spark of warmth through his bloodstream. Lastly, his mittens, and as he held them indecisively, he heard a soft sound in the otherwise tensely quiet bedroom.
Turning to look, he saw Rachel half turned from the vanity. Her blonde hair was in a clean and elegant up-do, her makeup deceptively minimal unless you knew what she looked like without the contouring and highlights that brought out her haughty cheekbones and narrow nose, her blue eyes rimmed in eyeliner and accented with green-bronze eyeshadow. Her dress was sexier than he'd have anticipated for a night of margaritas with the girls, small and black and sleeveless, hugging her diminutive frame, legs in nude hose and feet in shining heels.
She was already pivoting back to the mirror, but he looked down to the source of the noise. She must have lightly thrown it into the centre of the bed -- a silver butt plug, subtly curved to aggravate the wearer, and attached, a plush furry tail of reddish-brown. Picking it up, he could feel that a wire run through it made the tip curl up rather than limply hang. It was a little brighter than his natural hair colour, but close enough that it felt deliberate. The fur itself had a realistic coarseness as opposed to the cheap fluff you might expect, but still soft enough to the touch. He wondered where she got it.
Rachel was dabbing glue onto her false eyelashes and blowing on them to dry it, her expression neutral from what he could see of it in the mirror.
Gregory crawled onto the bed. Lube in reach, slicking up his fingers, laying on his back as he rubbed around his hole, hyper-aware of the way his trapped cock was tucked against his wrist and forearm, at the choked way blood tried to thicken out his flesh as he prepared his ass. He could tip his head up and watch as she carefully affixed a row of thick lashes, nudging them straight.
Working the plug into his hole took some effort, some latent tension seizing him up, and by the time he finally slipped its widest part past that resistant ring of muscle, he felt and heard Rachel wander out of the room.
His body felt flush with stupid anticipation. Like it didn't get the memo that his dick was trapped, that he hadn't gotten to cum all week, like his wife wasn't obviously prepared to leave him alone. He felt the familiar thrill he got once he trapped his hands in his mitts and got off the bed. The tail behind him bounced a little from his plug, the fur of it teasing the backs of his thighs, and his collar jangled as he balanced on all fours, each movement tugging at his harnesses.
With no promise of what tonight would bring, he crawled out of the bedroom on all fours.
***
Dinner was plain rice and, as a change, freshly cooked ground beef -- unseasoned, of course, but the new flavour and warmth of the meat had Gregory greedily eating, face deep in the bowl under the harsh light of the kitchen. The sounds of his own eating seemed to amplify within the curves of the bowl, his short heavy breaths, but over the sound of it, he could hear Rachel talking on her phone.
"Do we have a table booked? Because otherwise we're gonna be stuck at the bar for an hour, if we even make it that far."
He lifted his head, directing his attention to the upside down water bottle, drinking deeply and not minding when he let it go and a little water dribbled down his chin and chest, before returning to his dinner. The sounds of clicking heels behind him accompanied the smell of perfume, the louder ring of her voice.
"Look, she normally forgets that kind of thing! And we always get relegated to those high tables with the stools when we don't book. My butt bones can't take it."
Gregory felt a hand at his back, fingernails scratching affectionately down his spine.
"Oh, Greg? He said he'll be at the office. They work him like a dog, I swear."
That hand patted his ass once, before the click of heels drew away.
Finishing his dinner, at that point, was a maddening chore. His skin tingled where she'd touched him, and lapping up the last of his food with his tongue felt as brightly humiliating as the first time he'd done this. The only thing that felt like a saving grace was that the tail, connected to a toy lodged in his asshole, at least partially veiled from view his straining genitals -- the bar was low when it came to dignity.
