There Are No Bad Dogs in This World (4)
Back in the present, I was barking my heart out in front of Karen Florence.
The more I barked, the deeper what little pride and self-worth I had left sank into the floor.
Apparently satisfied with the sight I made, Rihardt asked Karen in a tone that was almost gentle.
"What do you think, Karen? Such a clever little puppy—she listens so well, doesn't she?"
"...Uh, yeah."
Karen Florence looked down at me with an expression that couldn't decide what to say. In its own way, that reaction hurt more than cruelty would have. If she had only sneered at me, perhaps some small part of this wretched feeling would have quieted down.
"Lucy, lift your hips."
"Hah... hah..."
Bent at the waist with my rear thrust high, I panted like a dog. Rihardt's chilling hand stroked my buttocks once, then seized a full handful. When a man who could casually crack an apple in his bare grip squeezed in earnest, the pain that followed was beyond anything I'd imagined.
"Ughk—nnh."
What now? What the hell is it this time?
I turned my head to look back at him.
"You have to wag your tail too. You are a puppy, after all."
The damned man wanted for nothing, did he? Wiping the tears that kept leaking out against my forearm, I rocked my hips from side to side, and the tail strapped to my tailbone wavered back and forth. Seen on its own, it might have been a real puppy wagging its tail—had you looked at nothing below it, that is.
Rihardt beamed down at the shameful spectacle I made.
"Good girl."
"Woof! Woof!"
Unlike the cold dirt floor, my body blazed like a bonfire. My belly, my chest, my head—everything burned. I was so ashamed I thought I might burst out of my own skin.
"As your reward for being so obedient, I'll let you lick Karen. She'll love it too."
At those words, both I and Karen—who had been quietly observing this grotesque performance—flinched. Lick Karen? Which part, exactly? He hadn't specified, and that somehow made it all the more frightening.
"What!? I-I never asked for anything like that!"
Rihardt parried her protest with a sly little smile.
"Didn't you enjoy it last time, when Lucy licked you?"
"No, that's not—I..."
Rihardt turned away from her stammering and fixed his eyes on me instead.
"Why aren't you moving, Lucy? I gave you your reward. Don't tell me you don't want it?"
"Woof."
I had a record of defying him once already. I knew that pushing back further would only send his retaliation circling back in a form I could bear even less. On knees and palms, I crawled toward Karen, inch by inch.
Her red eyes found me and began, inevitably, to tremble. Why was it that even the faintest glimmer of pity seemed to have taken root in them? Was my state really that far gone?
You're hardly in any position to pity me, though.
Karen was naked. Rihardt had shown no interest in her torn habit, so it had been stripped away. I stared at the small swell of her breasts, the nipped-in waist, the hips that were broad in their own right. Where on that body was I supposed to start licking? Where was I supposed to suck?
First, I bowed my head and said to her, almost in a whisper:
"I'm sorry, Karen."
Come to think of it, I had apologized to Sean and Bianca before, but never once to Karen—even though she, unlike them, was someone I had driven into the abyss with my own two hands. I really was a selfish creature.
At my apology, Karen Florence's pupils widened. She looked like someone who had never once imagined such words would leave my mouth.
"...Lucy, you..."
It occurred to me, distantly, that it would have been nice if my courage had come even a little sooner. If I hadn't been afraid—if I had told Karen the truth back then—would things have gone differently? Could Karen Florence have saved Bianca, and Sean too? A pointless thing to wonder.
I bowed my head to lick Karen Florence's body.
Thwack.
A sound like hide splitting rang out, from impossibly close. It was the sound of a stomach being kicked in.
By whom?
Rihardt.
Against whom?
Me.
"Kehk—khk—ughk."
Clutching my battered stomach with both hands, I retched out coughs. Breathing was impossible. It felt as though my diaphragm had gone into spasm; I couldn't draw a single breath.
"Lucy."
A frigid voice wormed into my ear.
"Since when do puppies speak human words?"
I had only whispered it, and yet he'd heard even that. His hearing was uselessly sharp.
Thwack.
Lightning flashed before my eyes. Not even a cough would come out this time.
"Uuughk... nghk."
Curling in on myself with a groan, I felt dizziness well up from the heavy, blunt blows. He had kicked me again. Apparently my little apology to Karen had displeased Rihardt considerably.
"Puppies don't cough the way people do. Isn't that right?"
"Khk—hnn—whiii."
Forcibly converting my convulsing coughs into a puppy's whimpers was a torture of its own kind.
At the same time, a vicious urge to urinate came over me. Of course, it had been there all along—I had drunk far too much water before being brought down to the basement. But Rihardt's blows had tipped it past all bearing.
"Lucy. Have you still not learned your place?"
Rihardt's booted foot pressed down hard on my lower belly, again and again. An act I might just have endured under other circumstances drove my bladder half-mad—like two hands seizing a balloon swollen to its limit and twisting it. And what happens when you do that to a balloon whose mouth was never tied shut? All the air inside escapes. So it was with my bladder. Blow followed blow, and I had no talent for holding out.
Ssssssss.
They say it's harder for a woman to hold her water than a man. It really was true. Not that I ever wanted to learn it this way, with my own body as the lesson. My crotch grew warm along with a strange, awful sense of release—and when I even caught sight of steam rising, my shame blew clean past its breaking point.
"You really are a bad puppy, Lucy—soaking your thighs like this even while I punish you."
Rihardt, who had been taunting me as I lay there, turned his gaze on Karen.
"Karen, if you don't want to give Lucy her reward, then so be it. I'll give her a reward of my own."
Perhaps those words sounded ominous enough. Karen asked before she could stop herself.
"...What kind of reward?"
"I was thinking of fastening a pretty little accessory on her."
Lying there, listening, I felt the question climb straight up my throat. An accessory? From him? It went without saying that he didn't mean any ordinary necklace or ring. The leather collar and puppy tail I was wearing at that very moment told anyone as much.
Rihardt's finger made a small gesture, as though piercing through something. Karen seemed to guess his meaning too; her eyes narrowed to slits.
"'Fasten it on her'? Where, exactly?"
At her question, Rihardt came over to me and folded down into a crouch.
"Somewhere like here, for instance."
And then his index finger jabbed the tip of my right nipple. My body had been made so unnervingly sensitive that I shrank in on myself before I could help it. His finger lingered there a moment, then slid down along the underside of my breast—over my ribs, across my abdomen, down toward my groin—until it stopped at one particular spot. When Rihardt's fingertip brushed that place no one would willingly bare to another, gooseflesh broke out over my entire body.
"Or perhaps I'll pierce this pretty little bud of flesh."
Where his finger rested was the round nub at the top of the neat, closed seam. My clitoris. My heart hammered without pause. Because I had already guessed what kind of "accessory" Rihardt meant. A piercing. Punching a hole through the skin to hang a piece of metal on it.
My hollow eyes turned up to Rihardt. He met my gaze with a soft, almost considerate smile.
"Silver would match Lucy's hair best, don't you think?"
Instinctive loathing and refusal surged up in me at the same instant. I had never, not once in my life, had a piercing done. Without thinking, I scrambled backward and swallowed hard. The unknown had always been like this—a thing that dealt out the most acute terror a person could feel.
"I'll give Lucy her reward!"
The voice I wrung out came from the very bottom of me. It sounded that desperate. That frantic.
Rihardt glanced at Karen as if this surprised him, then turned his eyes back to me.
"Is that so? Well then. Good girl, Lucy."
He gave my cheek a couple of light pats and rose to his feet. Then he stepped back to where he had been and simply watched us—like a man telling us to stop dragging our feet and get on with it.
I stared at Karen with a blank face. She had stepped in for me when there had been no need at all. Even knowing it meant something unpleasant would be done to her in my place.
She didn't have to save me. Not for a second.
Without a word of protest, she quietly spread her legs. Her small, pretty sex came into view. He had never said where I was to lick—but she had clearly understood that this was where he would choose to torment her.
I gathered my breath and moved toward her.
"...Woof."
"Stop that. Don't make a face like you've been done some great kindness. It just puts me in a bad mood."
Reading my cowed expression, Karen Florence answered with a guess. And because I truly was drowning in a wretched debt to her, the words landed all the heavier.
"So? Are you going to do it or not?"
I buried my head between her thighs. A sweetness like ripe peaches stung my nose.
"Uh... nh."
The moment I put out my tongue and licked her clitoris from the outside, Karen gave a jolt. I set about caressing Karen's pussy with all the care I could muster. Somewhere in the middle of it, I felt something strange at my own groin. Something was feeling its way over my most private place, and my tongue stopped.
"Don't stop."
Rihardt's voice came from directly behind me. The thing groping between my legs was his hand.
Wide open.
I could feel his fingers drawing my sex apart; a cold, stinging sensation bloomed between my thighs.
Rihardt spoke, laughter threaded through his voice.
"A virgin, aren't you?"