Chapter Sixteen
Ellery bit back a smile. His newly acquired kitten looked thoroughly fascinated by his new surroundings—the vanilla bits and pieces as much as the hints of leather dotted around the house.
But, as Kefir stood in the middle of the playroom, there wasn’t any vanilla for him to rest his eyes on. It was all leather in there. All kink.
As Kefir ran his eyes over the rack of toys on the far wall, Ellery leaned against the doorframe and admired the picture the little lion created, sweet and clueless in the middle of it all.
Kefir’s curiosity might as well have been a flashing red light above his head.
“If you have a question, ask it,” Ellery ordered.
“You knew what was going to happen tonight, sir?” Kefir asked, as he looked over his shoulder toward the rest of the house.
There were a lot of questions he expected Kefir to put to him. He even had answers mentally prepared for some of the more important ones, but that query hadn’t even made his list of possibilities.
“Meaning?” Ellery prompted, as he moved to lean against the workbench that ran down one side of the room, making himself comfortable for a conversation that might not be brief.
Kefir glanced through the door to the rest of the house. “You made a space for me out there, sir.”
Ellery didn’t try to deny it. A good master didn’t lie to his sub, not about the important things. “Yes, I knew I wanted you here,” he acknowledged. “But, no, I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”
He might not have had his chance to invite the boy into his life the way he’d planned.
And he might have found himself in unfamiliar and perhaps slightly uncomfortable position of merely accepting someone else’s offer rather than making his own.
But Ellery couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.
Kefir was in his home. Details weren’t important. Collaring ceremonies could wait.
The space that Ellery had made in his life would have still been there waiting for Kefir, no matter how long it had taken.
It hadn’t even occurred to Ellery to doubt that in what felt like forever.
The timing might have been feline, but Ellery’s need to have him there eventually, and his desire to be ready for that day when it came, was undeniably human.
“But not in here, sir?” Kefir asked, his voice softer than ever.
Ellery looked around the room. There weren’t any cleared shelves, that much was true.
But a space he been made for him. Mostly by cancelling any upcoming scenes he’d had planned with other men and making it clear that he wouldn’t be available to play in the future.
Perhaps Kefir didn’t need to know all about that in that particular moment.
“A dom doesn’t necessarily need to make room for their sub’s toys—they can make room for their new sub to join them in playing with those toys they already own instead,” Ellery suggested.
Kefir’s eyes ran over the room again, and Ellery knew he was fitting himself into the picture, imagining his wrists in the cuffs, his eyes behind the blindfolds, his skin under the paddles. Without saying a word, Kefir turned and walked across the room toward him.
Kneeling at Ellery’s feet, Kefir looked up at him, eyes very serious as he seemed to wait for Ellery to reach out and pet him.
“Tell me what you want,” Ellery ordered, his thumbs still hooked into the loops on his jeans as he ignored his own inclination to rush to touch.
Kefir shook his head, a slow determined motion, never once breaking eye contact.
Ellery raised an eyebrow.
“You said I wasn’t allowed to ask for that, sir,” Kefir reminded him. “You said that was my master’s decision.”
Ellery smiled as he gave in and ran his hand through the little kitten’s hair in quiet praise for such determined obedience. As the seconds ticked passed, Ellery’s slid his hand down to Kefir’s collar.
Kefir was already a good sub—with a little bit of training, he could be fantastic.
“This will never come off now,” he reminded Kefir, mostly just for the joy of hearing the words said aloud.
Kefir hesitated for a moment. “Never, sir?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Kefir thought about it. Part of Ellery tensed at the very idea he should need to think about it, but he forced himself to wait while Kefir worked out what he wanted to say before he reacted.
“A lion’s neck is bigger than a human’s, sir.”
Ellery ran his fingers inside the collar as he pictured Kefir’s feline form. As much as the more possessive part of him hated to admit it, the boy had a point. Reaching into his pocket, Ellery took out a key and unlocked the padlock to let the collar lie open around Kefir’s neck.
He nodded to Kefir, and he had no doubt that he understood the silent order, but Kefir still didn’t shift forms immediately.
“My clothes, sir?”
Ellery nodded again, allowing him permission to take them off, but even when Kefir stood naked in the middle of the playroom, it seemed to take him a few minutes to build up the courage to shift in front of Ellery again. When it finally began, the process was seamless.
Within seconds, an honest-to-God lion looked up at Ellery, big brown eyes wearing the same serious expression Kefir was so fond of. Reaching out, Ellery scratched the rather large lion behind the ear, just as he would any other kitten.
Kefir came cautiously closer and rubbed his side against Ellery’s leg, just like a tabby—albeit one who was almost strong enough to accidentally knock his master over.
Crouching down, Ellery ran his hands over the lion’s fur, examining him carefully.
A huge, rough tongue caressed his hand when it came in range of his mouth.
Kefir nuzzled against him every chance he got, rubbing his forehead against Ellery’s body as he looked for reassurance and comfort, no different in his feline form than the human.
As he ran his fingers over Kefir’s head and down to his neck, Ellery found Kefir’s collar nestled amongst the longer fur where his mane was just starting to grow in, and he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
If Kefir had tried to shift when the collar had been locked, he’d have either choked himself or broken his collar.
Neither outcome was acceptable. Frowning slightly to himself as he turned his complete attention to the problem, Ellery rose to his feet, collar in hand.
He took a step forward. Kefir did the same.
“No. Stay.”
Probably an order more suited to a dog than a cat, but as Ellery walked away, Kefir stayed where he was, so it was good enough.
The lion mewed a little, as if he didn’t like being left behind, much less left behind without his collar, but Ellery resolutely ignored the summons back to the kitten’s side.
It really wouldn’t do to let a sub, even one with as sweet a temper as Kefir’s was, to think he could be manipulated quite that easily.
On the other side of the playroom, Ellery took out an extra length of chain.
A little bit of rummaging around in his toolbox and a few appropriate fixings were found and easily fastened in place.
Carrying them back to Kefir, Ellery crouched down in front of him and silently fixed the collar around his neck.
Never a man to find himself short of an order under normal circumstances, he found himself unsure of the appropriate command for the moment.
“Show your master the other side of you, kitten,” he settled on.
Kefir obeyed.
Ellery’s attention remained on the collar as the more familiar version of Kefir appeared before him.
The extra length of chain hung down around his neck like a fancy necklace.
A circular loop was now fastened to one end of the chain and two bars to the other.
Pulling more of the chain through the loop, Ellery doubled the links around Kefir’s neck, until they reached around to the loop again and could be fixed in place there by the thinnest of the two bars.
When Ellery clicked the padlock back on to the chain, it was really more decoration than anything else.
Ellery weighed the lump of metal in his palm.
The extra weight would remind Kefir of the collar’s presence; it added a bit of extra psychological weight to the collar, too. He left it where it was.
Kefir looked up at him, blinking his eyes as he seemed to struggle to regain his focus through entirely human eyes. “Sir?” he finally managed, his voice more like a purr than ever.
Ellery caressed the hair just behind Kefir’s ear again, in exactly the same way as he had when he was a lion. That made Kefir smile as he slowly reached up and touched his collar.
“If you forget to alter the catch before you shift, the bar doubling it up will give way easily enough, but the thicker bar will hold strong. It won’t fall off completely.
” He joined Kefir in running his fingers over it again.
“You didn’t think that you changing shapes would stop your master letting the whole world know who you belong to, did you? ”
A lick to his hand from a dainty, human-sized tongue was the only answer he received.
“A few minutes ago, you were going to tell your master what you want,” Ellery reminded him. “You’re allowed to answer me if I ask you.”
Kefir parted his lips, but he didn’t seem to be able to find the right words. Ellery let him struggle against his innocence, curious to see what he’d come up with.
“I want…you, sir,” Kefir finally whispered. “I want you to…to tie me up, or screw me, or spank me, to do whatever you want with me.” He thought a little bit more. ”Be my master, sir?”
Ellery smiled down at him. It still wasn’t quite the collaring ceremony he had planned. He was still the one doing the accepting rather than the asking, but there was no way he could do anything other than nod his complete approval.
Wrapping his hand around Kefir’s wrist, he held onto him tightly as he looked around the room and considered his options. So many toys, so many bindings he could choose, and not just in the playroom.