My Little Itten

"She calls me Kitten." I said. I wasn't going to talk to her about this, any of this, but I had to. I had no one else to tell. I wasn't going to see her again. It seemed like a reasonable way to wrap up our relationship.

Dr. Madrigal was forced on me years ago. I hadn't wanted to go. I threw a tantrum, going so far as to scream at my father in his car in the parking garage outside of her office. He won the battle of wills by sitting there with the car turned off as the temperature rose. I told him I was going to call CPS. He just sat and glared at me. He could do that. He was stubborn.

Most of our sessions were fairly mundane with me complaining about those things that seem so important to a teenager and her telling me to grow up. I would, on occasion act out, throwing my best petulant teen act at her and getting nothing but her patient smile and the same admonishment. "Grow up." Sometimes I would ask a question. Not so obvious as, "My friend has a problem..." but not too much more clever than that really. She answered questions with questions, asked me what I had considered the consequences might be and left it to me to see the foolishness of whatever scheme or plot I had in mind.

The Thursday after my eighteenth birthday was different. We sat for a good long time not saying much of anything. I passed many of our sessions doodling, sketching her face. I had at least forty pictures of her. It was interesting to me if for no other reason than to measure the development of my skills as an artist. I would never be great but I wasn't bad. Even she had said so. I was adding detail to her face. I was working to add the small lines around her eyes without making her look 100 years old when she decided to point out I was now an adult. Not that she had been sharing much of what we talked about with my parents but at this point, unless I confided in her I was going to commit a crime, she was obligated to keep it between her and me.

I cried for the rest of the session. I did not want to be a grown up. I was not prepared for it. I didn't know how to be an adult. I confessed to her it pained me to pretend I was as insipid as my friends and I wept at my inability to be as smart as my parents asked me to be.

"Then don't be either," she said. "You are remarkable. You will be exceptional just being you. Don't ruin what you are."

I struggled to focus through tear soaked eyes until I could make her out, that smile of hers looking across at me. If asked, I would describe her as pretty but older. For just a moment I thought of her as something entirely different. If she found me to be exceptional, I found her to be exquisite. I left, regained my composure, and drove home imagining I was in love with her.

During our last five sessions I had kept my new lover a secret. I imagined her disapproval of having seduced an older woman and allowing it to develop into something more. I reflected at the horror that would grip her if I admitted to her the affairs incestuous nature. I feared disappointing her. Worst of all, I had created in my mind a bond that was far deeper than that of patient and doctor. I imagined a time that she could be more than a mentor and a confidant. I think it was the depth of this feeling I held out for her that finally caused me to confess. I had something to ask her and I couldn't ask her without her knowing.

"Kitten?" the Doctor asked for clarification.

"Yeah, Kitten. God I hated it. Isn't that silly? It was just a pet name. God, and it was so appropriate. The first time she used it, we were lying in bed. We had just, well, we had done it."

"Done it?" she interrupted. She did this. She was forever trying to make sure I spoke in the same terms I thought in and, at least with her, stopped pretending to speak the way my friends did.

"We had just made love. We were lying in her bed and I was resting my head on her chest. She is so soft. I was curled up, no different than Mr. Kitty, ya know? She was petting me. She was just running her hand over my back. She meant to be sweet. 'That was really wonderful, Kitten,' she whispered. God. I am so stupid."

"Why do you think you are stupid?"

"You won't believe what I did."

"What did you do?" She hated it when I got side tracked. She had been really good for my writing.

'I scratched her."

"Scratched her?"

"Yes! Right here. It was a long scratch, kinda deep too. It drew blood. Not a lot, but little drops of blood."

"Natalie!"

"I know!"

"Why would you do that?"

"She called me kitten. Like I was a little baby cat. Why didn't she call me Lynx? Why did I have to be a kitten? I don't want to be a kitten."

"This woman. She is older?"

"Yes?"

"Much older?"

"I don't know. Kinda?"

"Precision." She scolded.

"Twenty? Twenty-two maybe?" My therapist relaxed. I felt surprised it didn't bother her and then thought about my answer again. "Twenty years older. Not... you know... Twenty years old total."

"Natalie."

"I know."

"And you two are intimate?" she asked as if I had been overly vague.

"Yes."

"And where did she come on to you? Does she work at your school?"

"It wasn't like that."

"No?"

"God, not at all?" I stared at her. It was harder than I thought. "I came on to her."

"Natalie!"

"Doc. Stop. I'm not... I'm not a virgin. We've talked about that. I'm not concerned, you know, with conventional boundaries. She was beautiful. I've known her for, god, forever. I just found myself looking at her and wanting her, so I took her."

"She never should have let that happen."

"She was drunk."

"Natalie!"

"What? I wasn't drunk. I mean, I had a drink or two but nothing crazy. She was drunk. She's allowed. She is, god, like forty. I didn't plan for anything to happen, I just found her there and you know, I did what we - like - do."

"What exactly did you do?"

I walked her through the first night. I told her about the "move." That is what we call it. We made it up together. We experimented and got better at it. I don't want you to think that all volleyball players are lesbian or anything but some are. I guess that's obvious. I stammered a bit as I got through the part of the story where Elle - Ellie, Aunt Ellen, I call her Elle - did what she did to me. We didn't do that, the team, we had "the move." I told her how I lost control when it happened. By the time I was done Doc Maddie had set her little notebook aside and had inched forward in her chair. She now sat leaning towards me, her elbows rested on her knees.

"She introduced you to cunnilingus?"

"Yeah. Oral sex. She went down on me. You know, I mean, I've told you. Stasia, Kirstyn, Sydney, we mess around. We kiss. We - um- finger? But none of us ever - cunnilingus. That is what she did. Damn!"

"And your Mother and Father, they walked in on you? I would have thought that's the sort of thing your father would have mentioned to me."

"He doesn't talk about it. He doesn't even talk to Ellie anymore."

"Your mother? What was her reaction?"

"Oh god. Don't get me started."

"She has been rough on you?"

"She just wants to talk about it all the time. She likes to take me to lunch and ask about it."

"The affair?"

"Oh, fuck no. She only knows the one night."

"But its been going on for a while?"

"Yeah - Kind of."

"Frequently?"

"What's frequently?"

"Once a week? More?" Her voice, always measured and smooth, seemed different. I thought for a moment the doctor sounded excited but I didn't think much of it. She did this. When I started talking she matched my pace. I called it banter.

"Daily?" I had to think about it. "Not every day. Saturdays are tricky. Fridays I tend to have like, date-dates. I guess that's a lot, isn't it?"

"It's considerable."

"Yeah. She wanted, you know, to slow down. She'd mentioned it a couple times. But you know, if she didn't want me there all the time she wouldn't have shown me... you know."

"Shown you what?"

"How to do it."

"Precision." She coached me again.

"I don't want to sound vulgar." I said, I didn't mean to fuck with her but I guess, considering what happened, I was playing coy.

"I am concerned about what this woman has done to you. You are young, you are impressionable."

"Doc, please. Its not like she ties me down?"

"I would hope not."

"But I'd like her to."

"Natalie!"

"You're the one that asked!" I wasn't sure what she wanted. She sounded offended but kept asking me to be specific. I think I had an idea what I was about to do but it hadn't completely coalesced into a plan yet. I find myself doing this sort of thing a lot. I just kind of poke around, bullshitting with someone waiting for something to catch. I hadn't really done it with Doc much because, frankly, she was better at it than I was. I felt this going differently though and I ran with it. "I'm sure you are like everyone else and think its horrible that I am as open as I am when it comes to sex but you know, eighteen, its only young here. In Europe, in Asia, I would be behind the curve." I was justifying myself and I was loosing her. "I'm sure you already know. I mean, I hope you do, but I had no idea what it was like to have a tongue on me. I have had a finger, I have had lots of fingers. I know what a penis feels like. You know, do you have think that maybe that was all just designed wrong? A dick sort of just misses the best spots. A tongue though, god, when she gets her tongue in the right place. Sometimes she had her hands on my breasts while she does it and she gets her tongue just right there. That first time I screamed. Is that weird. Does it make you scream?" Very briefly I thought about touching myself. Talking about it was a turn on. I wanted to. I just figured it might be too much. She didn't respond, not with words. She just looked at me. She wasn't smiling though. Something was going on.

I paused a good long time. I had been talking too much. I hadn't been listening and you miss a lot when you are the one doing all of the talking. She had taught me that. I had missed her relaxing back in her chair. I had missed the way she had pressed her legs together, not casually crossed them, but twisted them almost, hooking her right foot behind her left calf. Her notebook was long gone and she chewed at the blue cap on her pen.

"I don't like this. I feel as though this woman is taking advantage of you." She was the one to break the long pause. Doc had told me about watching to see who broke the pause in a conversation and I had realized it was the secret to my fathers having always won our battles of will.

Someday I will learn better than to fuck with people just because I can. Some day I will learn better to weight he consequences of my actions. Someday. Today I was a cat that had moved silently up behind my prey and had it now, a single pounce from capture.

"So I guess, you know, I knew how to use my fingers the way a man uses his penis but she really showed me the art of it, how to really do it." I started again. I watched her adjust her weight. She was in a long Rose-colored dress. It was the exact kind of dress my mother or Ellie would wear to a party. I watched how the dress swayed over her. I felt not just the excitement of the game but the physical response to the way I described intimate sexual details. As I went on I found myself skipping details and moving in broad strokes. I painted the story of our affair in short vignettes of sexual adventure. I tried not to smile. I furrowed my brows. I was being serious.

"She likes to have her breasts pinched... Hard." The doctor sat forward again.

"I guess hard is okay but too hard isn't." Her eyes closed for a moment. "not for me. I like to feel her mouth on me, I like when she teases them. She runs her thumb just over the tip." I laid my hand over my breast demonstrating.

"I only got to spend one night. I guess that is what I hate most. I always have to go home. It sucked because I went to the trouble to sneak a bottle of wine out of my parents' house and I met her. I was all ready for her. I waited in her bed. I have a key. I had practiced my pose." I moved to the floor. I had to, I couldn't assume the pose I had performed in the bed in the leather chair. I arched my back, rolling one leg underneath me, extending the other leg out to the side. "Except that I was, well, naked. I waited and I wanted to share the wine with her, not drink it all before she got there but she wouldn't let me. I mean, she knows I drink, with friends, but I'm not allowed to drink with her. I think it's mostly because I always have to drive home. That night, because you know, we had all night, we pretty quickly covered all of our favorite things and then we kind of did them again and it was only, you know, because what else were we going to do, that we got a little experimental."

"What did you do?" she whispered.

I described in detail the position. I told her how it felt to be beneath my lover and how she tasted and how she teased me with her mouth and lips. I told her how it felt to feel the weight of Elle pressed down on top me and how I struggled to properly please her while distracted by how she pleased me. I slowed down as I described how it happened and how I now craved it and it was just when I saw that she had sat up, leaning forward that I stopped my description, my story and my seduction dead in their tracks and rather than giving her the climax she was expecting suddenly out of no where took a deep breath and started afresh leaving her to linger on an unfinished fantasy. "Isn't our time about up?" I teased her.

"Natalie."

I grinned at her. I rolled forward. It meant giving up my alluring Maxim Magazine pose but it inched me closer to her. I was looking up at her from only inches away from her knees. This time I was the one with the shit eating-I know better than you so fuck you, back off grin and she was the one begging for an answer that wouldn't come. "So Doc. This is like our last session."

She parted her legs to better see me and nodded. She couldn't speak. I smiled.

"This has been a lot to deal with, the whole affair, and wondering if I am a lesbian even though I still like guys, and she is older and it is usually you I come to when I need to ask a question and I just couldn't. I just wouldn't let myself." I paused long enough to build tension and then just before she began to speak I went on. "But I have a question and its been on my mind ever since, well, since the moment I found myself attracted to her. I guess this is about it for our sessions so I can just ask it and if the answer is really awful we, you know, we won't have to see each other again.

She straightened up. She was a taller woman I think than I ever realized. I can't really recall ever being this close to her. She had broader hips and fuller breasts than I imagined. "Natalie, you are being dramatic. What is your question?" It was a typical statement from her but her tone was anything but typical, her voice cracked just a little on the word question.

"Do you think I am attracted to her because she is a mature woman? An authority figure?" I had a decision to make. If I really wanted an answer I needed to back away from her. If I was more interested in the little game I was playing, quite unexpected playing I have to add, I needed to move closer.

"Doc, do you think maybe I came on to her..." I moved my body between her legs, my hands moved slowly from where they had been supporting me on the floor to beneath her calves under her dress "because I really want to have you?" I had moved until I was only inches from her lips.

"Do you think maybe my attraction for her comes out of... well... out of what I feel for... well... you?" I pressed my lips to hers. They were welcoming, soft, slippery. My hands were on her thighs now. They were meaty thighs, so much stronger than Elle's. They were athlete's thighs. I say that having some experience with athlete's thighs.

"Natalie, stop." She whispered.

"That's funny." I whispered back. She had slid forward. I presume it was intentional but I found my hands all the way to that point where her thighs curved into her hips and rather than be delicate about it I gripped her firmly.

"Natalie. Please."

"Honestly. It is almost word for word."

"I can lose my license."

"I'm not your patient anymore."

"That doesn't matter."

"You don't like me!" I protested in my best kitten voice. I pulled my hands off her legs and out of her dress. I was close but it was tenuous, I had been winning. I was up by 8 in the third game but she had a strong defense and was mounting a rally.

"No, young lady," she said flatly. Side out, Doc.

"You think me being with another woman is wrong. Just like mom and dad." I was stretching it. I had to move quickly. My hands slid up her legs, over her dress, over her arms and onto her chest where they were filled with much larger breasts than I had ever held before. They were soft, there were no nipples to take advantage of. The lead was shrinking.

"Oh Natalie. There is nothing wrong with that." She moved, sitting up. She looked down at me. I was going to lose. I curled myself into a ball in her lap, my head resting against her thigh and her belly. "There is nothing wrong with you."

I sniffled. It was fake and cheesy and almost always worked.

"You will be a great and strong woman. It has been my great pleasure to have gotten to sleep with you."

She said it. She really did. She didn't mean to. She said it though and I heard it.

"Work with you, I mean. Sorry," she corrected herself but that wasn't what I heard. What I heard was "Grow up." She was not the type to bullshit or be bullshitted and I had been bullshitting her.

I pushed myself back away from her. I wiped the imaginary tear from my cheek and stood to my full height towering over her where she sat.

"You said it." I wanted to say to her but didn't. I smiled down at her. I walked first to the front office door and then the back twisting the lock on each. Imperiously I then walked to the center of the room and again found myself standing in front of her.

She smiled up at me, her professional smile. I slid off first one sandal and then the other. She looked down and watched each foot. Wordlessly I moved on. My T-shirt, a little clingy one, slipped quickly over my head. I shook my hair loose letting it splay out over my bare shoulders.

She hadn't said a word yet. She had just sat back in her chair. I locked eyes with her and we competed, our smiles each seeking to prove it was the more confident one. I flipped loose a button on my shorts, then tugged and the zipper slipped down such that I could slip them off my hips and down my legs. When I watched her eyes trail the white shorts down my tan thighs I felt the official call it out. "Match point." I teased her slipping the tips of my fingers inside the waistband of my panties. Her eyes fixed on them.

I had bought the little matching bra and panty set not long ago at the mall with Elle. I had wanted something demure, something mature. "You will age fast enough," she warned me, "Don't rush it." She selected the cotton flowers and lace. Wearing nothing but the underthings my lover had bought for me I climbed into my therepist's lap.

Doc was both bigger and thinner than she appeared. I don't know how that makes any sense but it was true. I could at the same time straddle her legs comfortably in the chair but sit, my long legs folded, without extending beyond her knees. She was somewhat slumped and when I moved to kiss her I was forced to bend my body to reach her.

"Natalie."

I kissed her.

"Natalie, we really mustn't"

I kissed her again, "I love when you speak archaically."

"You are the one with the Ivy League vocabulary, dear." She mothered me.

I kissed her again, this time I touched my tongue to her lips and although her body remained frozen as stone her tongue met mine. The kiss drug on, she was good at it. When we finally parted I whispered to her. "Would you like to see my breasts, Doctor, Madrigal?"