It was mid-summer, and Wallace was in the middle of doing what he always did at this time of year: slipping out of one city in order to make his way to the next one. The young rat had planned to make the trip much sooner, but the early summer was unusually hot, which meant that he had gotten ample opportunities to fish. Needless to say, he felt compelled to press his luck a bit farther than he probably should have. In all honesty, it had not been worth having to dodge the Watch.
Wallace was many things, or at least he claimed to be many things. He called himself a "fisherman," though he had never caught a fish (he used a pole, rope and hook to pull valuables out of open windows). He called himself a "trimmer," though he had never used his shears on a single person's headfur (he used them to clip the edges off of gold coins, selling the shavings off to unscrupulous whitesmiths). On occasion, he even called himself a "troubadour," even though he could barely sing and had only enough knowledge of a lute to vaguely mimic holding it properly (he seduced his way into the homes of lonely men and women, often married, and plied their favor for a warm place to sleep and some food. He would also usually walk out of said home with more than he was given). None of these jobs ever made him rich, and what little money he managed to get his paws on wound up either down his gullet or between his legs. Despite all of that, he was a creature of enviable success, and it was only a matter of time before the locals had cause to protest. And so, like the gracious creature he was, he would make it a point to leave before the people's jealousy grew too great, and people of ill intent could find him.
Fortunately for him, the kingdom had no shortage of cities, and they all had relatively short memories. So long as he was willing to endure a few days of walking and sleeping outside, he could easily find his way to a new one, one that either never met him, or had long since forgotten his brilliance. Thus far, he had made this pilgrimage every summer since he turned eighteen. At first, he had considered it tiresome and stressful. He would spend the entire trip kicking himself for every little mistake, every spat of greed and every unnecessary risk. Now? Now, Wallace relished the chance to see a new set of keep walls, to meet an entirely new crop of people to visit his singular charms upon. If there was any true inconvenience to the whole affair, it was that he, being a creature of comfort, could never truly acclimate to the concept of sleeping without a roof over his head.
Fortunately for him, this particular trip happened to pass through a unique part of the country. A middle-aged stoat of Wallace's acquaintance had told him about the old ancestral home of some lord or other, squatting in the middle of the woods, completely abandoned and unattended. The stoat had told Wallace a lot of things: the old fool was as sweet a man as Wallace had ever fallen into bed with, but his idea of pillow talk skewed towards quantity over quality. Regardless, Wallace had found the concept of squatting in a home reserved for his betters to be a very amusing prospect, so much so that he planned his escape route to include a stopover in the village of Chuleigh. Certainly, there would be nothing there for a humble fisherman and troubadour to "earn." Almost certainly there would not even be a soft place to lay down. Even so, opportunities to honestly say that he had slept in a Duke's palace were rare, even for a creature of enviable success such as he. He would have been a fool to pass up the opportunity.
It was late at night, when Wallace found the village. This suited him, just fine. Small town folk had a tendency to be sharper-eyed and more distrustful, and it was impossible to hide among the crowds when the crowds could be counted in dozens and everyone knew everyone else. So, instead, he stuck to the edges, circling around until he found the old dirt path leading from the monestary into the deep woods. Here things became incredibly dark, to the point where even night-acclimated Wallace was forced to skulk his way forward with probing feet and twitching whiskers. Eventually, the treeline broke, and he found himself in a moon-bathed clearing with his objective clearly in sight.
At first, he had not been sure he was even looking at a house. Peeking between the ivy-choked bars of a tall iron fence, the building's silhouette seemed less that of a home and more one of a titanic slumbering beast. The coating of leaves and vines atop it gave it a shaggy hide and rounded the corners of its rectangular form into a vaguely ovoid blob. The only thing that broke the illusion was the fact that, if this creature slept, it did so with its many, many eyes open. The light of the moon glinted from countless windows, untouched by the invading nature around it. It was, as far as structures went, both impressive and underwhelming. Wallace had no confidence that a stay in a building like that would be anything resembling comfortable. There was every chance it would not even be safe.
Unfortunately, by this point Wallace had all but committed to putting the feather in his cap, and he would not be deterred by less than luxurious surroundings.
Climbing the fence was no challenge. Chuleigh seemed to have an affinity for ivy, and the myriad vines were as easy to mount as the ratlines of a sailing ship. It helped that he was an experienced climber (a job he would happily claim, were he able to find a suitable euphemism for it), pulling his light, lanky body up the ropes with careful, but confident strides. The railing at the top was spiked, but the ravages of time had knocked a few of the offending things off, giving him plenty of spaces wide enough for one of his footpaws. With a hop and a grunt, he was over, landing in tall and soft grass on the other side. Dusting himself off, he crossed the shrubby courtyard to his place of lodgings, unhurried and unbothered.
Approaching the front door, he unslung his bag and prepared to produce a set of lockpicks ("Locksmith" was, as you might expect, one of his many job titles). However, on a whim, he set the bag down for a moment and simply tried the door handle. It gave under his hand and opened, completely unlocked.
Concern crinkled his brow, and he paused. It had, just at that moment, occurred to him that he might have been walking into danger. He was not so vain as to think he would be the only one to think of squatting in an abandoned home, especially one as large and palatial as a Duke's manor. The fact that somebody had already unlocked the place might have suggested a lot of things. Most likely, it suggested thieves who had come to pick at the empty shell of the building, possibly even years ago. Perhaps local youths who had turned the building into a secret base. It might also have suggested another squatter, one who may or may not have opinions about intruders. The thought of upsetting an armed stranger was enough to slow him down. Not enough to stop him, mind. However, after acknowledging that a miniscule amount of caution might serve him well, he opened his bag, shucked his travelling boots, tossed them in, and entered the manor on his bare paw-pads.
He helped himself to a tour of the premesis, slowly and silently poking his snout into every room he came across. He found nothing here that he did not expect. No signs of squatters, or at least no obvious signs. No discarded papers, no errant clothing piles or makeshift larders. Certainly he did not find a strange creature, armed and enraged to see him. If he were a bit sharper of eye, he might have noticed the subtle signs of movement around the house. Disturbed dust on the floor, doors not quite closed properly, the tiny sheds of blonde fur pooled together in corners where drafts had pushed them together. Unfortunately, it was dark, and such minute details were beyond Wallace. Besides, "marksman" was one of the few jobs he could not claim. Thus, by the time he had finished his tour of the servants quarters, the kitchens and the downstairs sitting room, he was almost prepared to declare himself totally alone, in this house.
However, just as his fingers closed around the handle of the door that led to the downstairs bathroom, the faintest of noises pulled one ear, and then his head, upwards towards the ceiling. Of course. There was a second floor to this home. And, from the sounds of things, there was at least one person walking around up there. Curiosity won out over trepidation; he turned and immediately made for the stairs.
Despite his firm conviction that he had heard something, for a while he failed to find anyone. What he found were oddities. He found a large portion of the top floor was taken up by a frankly massive room, whose function Wallace could not begin to divine. Floor to ceiling windows, massive skylights, the whole room positively awash in moonlight... and nothing inside to merit such a large space. His imagination immediately went to massive balls, the kind that handsome princes and princesses attended, but he did not have the luxury to indulge his fantasies about rich, attractive people dancing. Across the hall from that was a less spacious, but still excessive library, taking up the rest of the back wall. Aside from the large windows on the outside, every wall here was taken up with large shelves, overstuffed with books. An impressive find, and it would have been moreso if Wallace knew how to read. He made a note to himself to find the most expensive looking ones and pack them away before he made his exit from this place, whenever that was liable to be. He found a small room with an empty bath in it. That one was not nearly as unusual, in retrospect, except for how it compared to all the other places on the second floor. Finally, he had his hand on the fourth and the final doorknob on this floor. He had not encountered a soul, so far, and by process of elimination... he pushed the door open as slowly as he could, ear straining for even the faintest complaint from the hinges. He stuck his snout inside, as gingerly as if he expected it to be snatched from his face.
In retrospect, there had been warning signs. The room was one of the only ones that did not carry the faint smell of dust and age, and it was fully furnished. A roaring fire blazed in the fireplace, illuminating a pair of plush chairs, an ornate rug, and a lavishly appointed four-post bed with purple curtains and bedsheets. In a home otherwise forgotten to time, overgrown with plants and picked clean of all but a collection of books, here it felt for all the world as if its original owner had never left, that Wallace had somehow stepped back in time for the express purpose of burgling Duke Maiselle himself. That, in and of itself, was the most unusual thing he had seen all night. It should have given him pause. It should have clued him in that there was a danger afoot, one beyond his simple reckoning.
Unfortunately, those thoughts were quashed before they could start, when he caught the first glimpse of the naked woman tied down on the bed.
She was a short little thing, mostly in her limbs, and on the oversized bed she took up a comically small portion. The bobcat was lashed down on her back, the white stripe visible from her neck all the way down between her legs. Of the rest of her speckled yellow-black pelt almost all was visible, with not a stitch of anything covering her that could be reasonably considered clothing. Which isn't to say there was no cloth on her body, but it was limited to only four meager strips Two, obviously, were part of a long sash of purple fabric that bound her wrists to the posts at the head of the bed. One was wrapped around her eyes, blinding her. One was balled into a knot and forced into her mouth, tied behind her head so tightly that her mouth was forced open. Four meager strips, and none of them came close to preserving her modesty. Even from the doorway Wallace could clearly see the swell of her fuzzy, perfectly palm-sized breasts as her chest heaved with excited purrs, could see the tantalizing little strip of white on her inner thighs that lay right next to her sex as her legs squirmed and fidgeted.
Wallace was as quiet as he had been the whole time, as he padded his way into the room. However, as it turned out, there were few things in this world sharper-eared than a tied up, horny bobcat waiting for somebody to come in. Whether she heard his pawsteps or his heart beating, immediately she began to writhe with greater animation. Biting down on her gag, she let out pleading noises halfway between a whine and a purr. Her legs spread out, lewdly offering herself to Wallace. He finally got a good look between her legs, as he slipped silently around to the front of the bed. The poor girl was red, swollen. The fur beneath her sex was positively sodden, a dark patch having long since formed on the sheets beneath her.
Wallace, of course, was a gentleman. The sight of a beautiful creature like this, splayed out and begging for him, heated his blood and forced his trousers to sprout a tent almost immediately, but such things were not where his thoughts lay. No, clearly what he felt at that moment was a deep and abiding sympathy for the girl. Judging by the state of her, she had been left to wallow in her heat for hours. He had no idea who it was had left her in such a pitiful state but, forgetting that he had not actually checked the whole estate, he was now convinced that whoever had done so was long gone. Content to let their lover stew, no doubt, while they performed some errand or other. Possibly, even, they had no plans to come back, as come cruel prank on the woman. Regardless, with such clear and obvious suffering in front of him, what was a kind and noble soul like Wallace to do? It was his duty as a man of honor to climb onto the bed, truly.
He did not say a word, made no sound that would give away who he was. The bobcat did not seem to care, one way or the other. As soon as she felt the matress shift, underneath her, her whines took on a tone of plaintive desperation. She almost sobbed, as she felt a pair of slim hands underneath her thighs, holding her down and keeping her spread. Wallace stretched out prone on the bed, and began to pepper her inner thigh with soft, gentle, almost reverent kisses. His nose twitched, the scent of desire causing his trapped member to leak and his hips to press down on the matress on their own accord. When he could take no more teasing, he put his snout directly into the junction and descended.
The young rat had a gift with his tongue. At least, that was how he described it. The life of a multi-professional was feast or famine, at the best of times. It relied on the favor of the people around him, the invisible hands of fate and fortune, and people being willing to leave their windows open. However, when push came to shove, he could always rely on that first point, the favor of people around him. And if there was one way Wallace knew how to guarantee good will with strangers, it was on his knees. He lapped at the bobcat's folds with relish, savoring every drag of his long tongue as saliva mixed with nectar. He did not go for the button, immediately. He knew from long experience that some women found such attention overwhelming. And besides, the teasing passes he made with nose and whisker, just hard enough to be felt and not an iota more, brought sobs of desperation from his lover that, being a gentleman, he took no especial pleasure from.
Eventually, he would risk it. Sealing his lips over the thing, he began to lash her with slow, deliberate and decisive strikes of his tongue. The bobcat sang, above him, a veritable opera of pleasure and encouragement in words beyond language. It took no time at all before even those were lost as, clamping down on her gag with full force of jaw, she began to shudder and tremble. The nub of flesh in his mouth flexed and flexed and flexed, kicking against his tongue as if trying in vain to escape. Wallace felt the warm spatter against his chin, as she spat at him in ecstacy. His lips curled up in victory, savoring the sounds and smells he had inspired, before he finally rose up to his knees and took in a noseful of clear air.
In telling this story to friends he made at the tavern, Wallace would swear on his honor that the night would have ended there. Having done a kindness to an unfortunate soul, he would have considered himself to be an unmitigated wretch if he were to then force himself upon her, especially since he had taken such pains to hide his identity up until now. However, if it could be believed, it was she who insisted. Sure, Wallace could not make coherent words out of the bobcat, barred as she was from speaking and seemingly unable to form words in the first place. It was more a feeling the rat had in his soul, a connection she had shared with her. She was clearly smitten with him, indebted beyond words for being taken to the gates of paradise so thoroughly and expertly. Offering her body as a way of returning that favor was the least she could do, as she said to him through her moans and gasps and purrs. Truly, Wallace's paws were tied. He did not want to rut this woman, but to deny such an earnest and heart-felt request would, in his estimation, have been a greater dishonor to her than he could ever perform by helping her engage in infidelity.
In truth, he savored this. He took the time to strip down, entirely, defying whoever bound the bobcat to come and see him in all his glory. He was an unimpressive specimen, taller than many of his kind and possessed of only a pittance of wiry muscle, as if a rat had been stretched on the rack for a time. Nonetheless, he kept his fur in good condition, mostly white with a grey-black stripe alone his back. Many was the horny tavern-goer who mistook him for a maiden, in their drunken stupor. Had this bobcat's minder come back at that moment, and seen Wallace draped over the top of the bobcat, they might have thought the scene positively sapphic. At least, they would until they looked between the rat's legs, and saw the long, thin triangle of twitching red flesh that threatened their woman's flower. Wallace held himself back for a moment longer, listening for the sound of anyone approaching, almost praying for it to happen. But when it did not, he held himself back no longer.
He never got tired of that first kiss, the first taste of twitching flesh on twitching flesh. As primed as she was by her trials thus far, the bobcat was beyond prepared for him to enter her. Slick, clamping, hot as a blacksmith's furnace. He lived for this. Of course, the greatest challenge in rutting this woman was keeping the pleasure out of his voice. Even the sound of his breath might give away that he was not who she might have thought he was. He tried to cover for this by giving his lover more to focus on. Instead of using his mouth to moan, he used it to nibble at the fur of her shoulder, the little bit of loose flesh at the scruff of her neck, the hidden nipples at the end of her shaking breasts. The distraction worked a treat. Either that, or she was too far lost in pleasure to care. She practically sobbed up to him, drunk on the sensation of being filled and taken and greedy for more. Her footpaws pressed against his ass, pushing him closer, forbidding him from even thinking about leaving. And, with a demand like that ringing in his soul, what could he have done except fuck her to completion?
Soon, he was hunched in, throwing his hips harder and faster as the peak began to approach. He put his head against the headboard, now openly panting into the bobcat's face. She, sensing the change and knowing what was to come, pleaded and begged in the most unambiguous non-words she could manage. And then, with one final hilting, it happened. Wallace groaned and unloaded, pumping into the bobcat over and over, spattering her insides with a quickly spreading font of hot seed that she could feel, deep inside of her. She shook, again. She twitched and clamped, milking her intruder for every drop he was willing to offer. Wallace was willing to offer a lot.
It was there, looming over a twice-orgasmed nude woman, that Wallace felt his favorite emotion: sheer, irrational invincibility. He offered one last bit of tenderness before he rolled off of her, a moment to smooth the fur of his bite marks with his tongue and plant a few more gentle kisses in that soft pelt. Once his footpaws were on the floor, however, he could not help speaking. "Well, now," he said, "this was certainly fun. No need to thank me, Madam. I was more than happy to be of service to you." As he turned to collect his things, there were noises he expected to hear. Confusion, questioning, the grim understanding as the bobcat realized she had just laid with a complete stranger, a panicked call for whoever had the power to put her in this position. He wanted nothing more than to hear those noises, as he scrambled into his pants and prepared to make his getaway. However, instead of all of that, he heard two things he had not expected. The first was a rumble of clear, un-gagged, lusty laughter, clearly feminine in origin. The second was the bobcat's first true spoken words:
"Oh," she purred, "do not worry, mortal. Your service to me is far from completed."
"Whuh...?" Wallace spun around.
The room was suddenly dark, and smelled of dust and age. The bobcat was gone, as was the matress, the curtains and the sashes. Wallace stared down at an empty bed-frame, untouched for years. His eyes widened. He did not understand what he was witnessing, and like anyone who made their living in dangerous circumstances that lack of understanding quickly boiled over into fear. He turned to his bag and prepared to bolt.
At that moment, he realized his clothes were gone.
He scrambled, questing around on all fours to find where he had tossed them, but they were not in the room, at all. Desperate, he opened his bag, thinking to cover himself with anything and abandon his lost items. The bag was empty. Empty, at least, of clothing. Every stitch he had brought with him was gone, nothing remaining but his rations and his tools. His mind raced. Then, he threw the bag over his shoulders and prepared to bolt, anyway. It would not be the first time he would be forced to flee, naked, from the scene of his exploits. Goddess willing, it would not be the last.
Scrambling out into the hall, he thought he heard a noise. In truth, it might just have been the settling of the house or the wind against the walls. Wallace was not about to take chances, however. Quickly, he ducked into the nearest other room, the large library. There, a sudden flash of light caused him almost to cry out in alarm, as invisible candles lighted all at once and bathed the room in their warm glow. He cursed to himself, sharply and repeatedly. The creaking noise had been nearby, and now there was no chance they did not know where he was. He needed to hide. He needed somewhere, anywhere to hide.
His eyes fell upon the large, floor-to-ceiling purple drapes that covered the windows.
Next Chapter →