The Invitation
"Nnngh..."
I woke to the familiar protest of sore muscles. No. This was worse. So much worse I couldn't even push myself upright. My lower back, in particular, refused to obey me — it felt as though one of my vertebrae had simply vacated the premises.
I whimpered and strained, then gave up and sank back onto the bed. Lying down didn't make the pain vanish, but it dulled it enough to breathe. There was something else, though. A throb that had been pulsing since the moment I opened my eyes.
My ass is okay... right?
My buttocks stung the way they used to after a caning from my tutor, and my hole burned as if it had torn a little. Well. After the pounding I'd taken, that was hardly a surprise. The real miracle was that I hadn't bled during the act itself.
The restless ache that had been gnawing at my lower belly was gone, vanished as if it had never existed. My body felt like lead from the muscle pain, and yet at the same time I was strangely, almost indecently, unburdened. A bizarre combination.
Ah, well. Good enough was good enough. I wrote the day off as a total loss and closed my eyes again.
The burning in my ass finally settled on the fourth day. Without the ointment Veronica had given me, I would have been groaning for another week at least. Even so, I didn't want to thank her. She was the one who'd wrecked my hole in the first place.
...Granted, I was the one who'd gone into heat and come wagging my tail.
Ah, hell. Maybe I really should thank her.
"A tea party invitation arrived."
The words cut through the tangle of my thoughts. Across the table, Veronica sliced into her steak without looking up.
A tea party invitation?
"For me?"
"For both of us, to be precise."
A tea party invitation. I had never received anything of the kind in my life. Tea parties were the exclusive province of women, after all. No one had ever had reason to send one to a man. So who on earth had invited me? There wasn't a single noble in this region who should have known Katrina existed.
"You look as though you haven't the faintest idea who invited you."
"Ah... yes."
"Don't you remember the girl we met last time?"
She tossed me the hint while I sat there wearing my confusion like a signboard. The girl from last time...
Ah.
"I-it's difficult right now, but if you invite me later, I'll come!"
"You mean that? You have to come, all right?"
...I had made that promise. Past me, what the hell were you thinking.
"The tea party is tomorrow, by the way."
"T-tomorrow?!"
"Adela doesn't know the first thing about noble etiquette. She wouldn't have meant any harm by it."
Veronica shrugged as she said it, the gesture of someone who had weathered this particular storm more than once. But still — tomorrow?
"I don't know anything about tea party etiquette..."
"It's all right. Adela's tea parties exist for gossip, nothing more."
I turned the problem over as hard as I could, but no plausible excuse for bowing out presented itself. Besides, I had already given my word. Backing out now would be unforgivably rude.
Fine. I would go.
But was Veronica all right with this? I was certain I had heard she'd turned down Adela's invitations more than once. She wasn't forcing herself on my account, was she?
"What's that look for?"
"No, it's nothing... I just wondered if you were being made to attend because of me."
"Don't worry. That's not it."
"Then...?"
"I haven't shown my face in a long while. It was about time I made an appearance."
She didn't seem angry. I let out a quiet breath of relief.
"If it weren't for you, I would have put it off a little longer."
"I... pardon?"
"It's nothing, really."
I swallowed the sigh right back down. I nearly spat out the bread I was chewing.
"Just grant me one small favor, would you?"
"What... kind of favor?"
"You'll find out tomorrow morning."
Veronica set down her fork and dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin. Then she rose from her chair with unhurried grace.
"I'm busy, so I'll take my leave first."
"Yes... I'll see you later."
It was the same feeling I used to get as a child whenever Mother said, We'll talk when we get home. What kind of favor was she planning to ask? Anxiety burned a hole in my stomach. The only thing I could do was keep tipping back a water glass that had already hit bottom.
"What the fuck... what is this."
The next morning, Katrina discovered exactly what her request had been. A pink dildo lay on the vanity. Beside it, a slip of stationery.
A gift.
There was no mistaking what it meant. She wanted him to go to the tea party with this inside him.
Katrina hesitated. It was not the will that even fit variety of hesitation — he had already taken larger. The problem was memory.
If I put that in and go into heat the way I did last time...
The option of simply not inserting it had already vanished from his mind. He only lingered because the past had risen up to meet him. He had no desire to make a spectacle of himself in front of strangers he would never see again.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Lady Katrina, you will need to depart in two hours."
After a long, unhappy silence, he reached out and slowly closed his fingers around the dildo. Defying his owner's orders over people he would meet once and forget was a fool's errand.
Veronica's gift had a sleek, almost elegant silhouette — less a realistic dildo than a purpose-built toy. Katrina stripped off the negligee he would have had to remove anyway, sat in the chair, and hooked both legs up onto the vanity.
The mirror caught him in the act of preparing to take it. Thanks to the height difference between the chair and the table, the more shameful parts of him stayed out of view. But perhaps because his cock was hidden, the reflection looked for all the world like a woman settling in to touch herself. The face in the glass flushed a deep, betraying red.
Katrina lifted his hips a fraction, eager to get it over with. Humiliating as the position was, it was also the most practical one for the task. The dildo slid into his hole without the slightest resistance, so smoothly he found himself worrying, Is it really all right that it goes in this easily?
Once it was seated, however, a smaller problem presented itself. Unlike a plug, a dildo was designed to go in and out. Which meant the one currently inside him could slip free at any moment. If it fell out on the walk to the tea party — or worse, the instant he stood at the end of it—
His face went white at the thought. Keeping one hand pressed to the base to hold it in place, he opened the wardrobe and carefully stepped into the smallest pair of panties he owned.
"Nngh...♡"
The fabric cinched against the toy and drove it deeper. A sweet, helpless little breath slipped from his lips. The panties stretched taut — strained in front by his cock, in back by the dildo. It wobbled when he walked, but it no longer felt as though it would fall out.
With the toy seated inside him, Katrina began, slowly, to put on his dress.
"Did you put in the gift I gave you?"
"...Yes."
"Then let's go."
I boarded the carriage on Veronica's arm. The moment we settled into our seats, a horse whinnied and the wheels lurched into motion.
"Nnh... hah♡"
Every jolt of the carriage drove the dildo against my insides. Over the rougher stretches of road it felt as though someone had taken hold of it and was thrusting it by hand.
"You're getting quite sensitive back there now, aren't you?"
Veronica teased me with wicked amusement, but I hadn't the presence of mind to answer. Heat was climbing through my body. Blood was rushing straight to my cock. I shut my eyes and tried reciting the imperial anthem. It did nothing. A small, unmistakable bulge rose against the front of my dress.
"Pfft—"
A soft scoff drifted from the seat across from me. In the end I had to ride the rest of the way to Adela's estate half-standing, unable to set my ass fully down. Veronica watched the ridiculous display in silence, her fingers idly toying with a small switch hidden in her bodice.
"We have arrived, my lady."
"Thank you. Shall we step down? Katrina."
"Hah... nngh... yes..."
We had only just reached our destination and I was already spent. I climbed out of the carriage in an awkward, hovering crouch, like a dog desperate to relieve itself. My legs trembled violently from holding a squat the entire ride. Adela hadn't done a single thing wrong, and yet I found myself resenting her all the same.
I was stretching the pins and needles from my legs when I caught sight of her in the distance — Adela, beaming, running straight toward us.
"You actually came! Welcome, welcome! I'm so, so glad you're here!"
"We received an invitation. Of course we would come."
"That's rich, coming from the woman who tossed every invitation I ever sent."
"That is hardly language befitting a nobl—"
"Oh my gosh, Katrina came too?! It's been forever, hasn't it?"
"Ah... yes. It's good to see you..."
Adela seized both of my hands and shook them with abandon, whether from genuine delight or simple excess of spirit I couldn't tell. Whatever energy I had left felt as though it were being wrung out of me on the spot. She had even cut Veronica off mid-sentence. This went well beyond a gap in noble etiquette. The girl simply had no sense of social boundaries whatsoever.
"By the way, why do you look like that? Anyone would think you'd walked the whole way here."
"Haha... I didn't sleep well last night."
"Were you that excited for the tea party?"
"Well... let's go with that..."
Adela nodded, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. I knew she'd buy that. Then she set off at a bright, bouncing clip and led us toward the tea party.