A Short Leash Read online

  A Short Leash

  By

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2014 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2014 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Renard, Loki

  A Short Leash

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by Dreamstime/Sergei Butorin, Bigstock/Valio84sl, Bigstock/GoodOlga, and Bigstock/Eraxion

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Chapter One

  “Ow!”

  Blood flowered in the neat shape of Sierra’s teeth upon the arm of a citizen who had made the grievous error of trying to control her. Crouched ready for further aggression, Sierra watched as her so-called owner cursed and danced, clutching at his hand and calling for the sanitizing spray.

  “What’s going on?” A pinch-faced woman leaned out of the window to scowl at the cursing citizen. She had the great misfortune of being the citizen’s wife, a fact she often lamented loudly for all to hear.

  “She bit me again!” The citizen pointed an electrified rod at Sierra, the use of which had prompted the meeting of teeth with flesh.

  “I told you not to take her out of the cage,” his wife said, glaring at Sierra. “She’s too dangerous. You don’t need a pet anyway, you never hunt. Send her to the pound.”

  “I paid fifty thousand credits for her! I’m not going to give her to the pound!”

  “You paid fifty thousand credits for something that bites you every chance it gets,” his wife said. “Get rid of her already.”

  They both spoke as though Sierra had no ability to understand them. She’d never exchanged a word with either of them, so they didn’t know she could speak quite well and understand every stupid word they said.

  She smiled but it was more a snarl, and licked her teeth in a way she knew the wife would find off-putting. They were both scared of her, though the citizen would never admit it. He’d purchased her with the idea of becoming a hunter, but their single trip to the wilds more than a year earlier had come to a short end within half an hour when the good citizen panicked at the sight of a stoat and rushed for the safety of city walls.

  Sierra had not been permitted anywhere outside the relatively small compound since then. Her days were boring and lonely. The only interesting thing she ever got to do was bite the hand that underfed her. Usually being cooped up without the opportunity to exercise would have resulted in weight gain, but she had been fed so little that she was in far worse condition than she had been captured in. Her hair was unkempt and knotted, her skin was sallow and out of tone, and she was not nearly as clean as she would have liked to have been.

  The citizens did not seem to notice her poor condition. They seemed to think that she was supposed to be a pathetic animal, scrabbling about in their stone-walled yard. All that had kept Sierra sane was her determination to survive and the occasional joy of biting the citizen who claimed to own her. He was her primary source of animal protein.

  The citizen and his wife retired indoors to clean his wound and fight about her. Sierra could hear their voices raised through the walls as the woman berated her husband for being so stupid as to keep a vicious beast in the courtyard.

  All of a sudden, things became silent. Then there was a rumbling. Sierra knew that sound. It was the sound of the impenetrable small prison she had been transported in several times before being rolled out to the courtyard. The cage, they called it. It wasn’t a cage, really. There were no bars; it was a big metal box with myriad small holes drilled in the top for ventilation. The entrance was a thick steel door that the citizen opened from behind the cage itself. Sierra read anger in his expression, mixed with something like loathing. The feeling was mutual.

  “Get in!” He shouted the order. He was always shouting things.

  When Sierra didn’t immediately rush into the cage, he leaned over and threw a piece of bread into the back. Without any further hesitation, Sierra scampered after it. She knew she was being trapped, but better to be trapped than hungry. The door slammed shut behind her and she was left gnawing on the stale crust. She didn’t care when the crate started moving, not until she realized that it had left the courtyard and was being pushed into a larger pod for transport. The world went dark.

  The journey from there to here, wherever here was, took an hour. There was a great deal of rumbling and bumping of a kind she had not felt since she was captured. Wherever she was being taken, it was far, far away. The thought that perhaps she might be turned loose back into the wilds gave her a brief spark of hope, but she had been captive too long to hold onto that thought.

  When the motion stopped and light once more was allowed to filter into her crate, she could sense that they were no longer in the city. There was fresh air coming through the little holes, real air, complete with the life-sustaining radiation citizens could not stand for more than an hour or so at a time.

  “I’m looking for Master Kade.” She heard the citizen’s voice outside her crate. Sierra perked up as she picked up a new scent, masculine but different from the citizen. It was a stronger scent, cleaner and somehow more powerful.

  “I am Master Kade,” a deep voice rumbled in response. “What is this?”

  “This is a pet,” the citizen said. “In the, er, in the crate here. She… we… my wife doesn’t want me to keep her anymore. She’s difficult. She bites. She’s vicious, really. Dangerous.”

  “Dangerous and vicious, you say,” Master Kade drawled in dry tones that indicated he doubted the citizen’s story.

  “Yes,” the citizen replied. “I’ve had her for a year and not been able to do a thing with her. She bites me every time I get close. Frankly, I think there’s something wrong with her. I was told you were able to deal with difficult pets and thought you might want her. She might be good for bringing down large prey.”

  “Is she particularly large?”

  “She’s not particularly large,” the citizen said. “But what she lacks in size, she makes up for in aggression.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “No,” the citizen said. “She hasn’t earned a name.”

  In darkness Sierra lifted the corner of her lip in a snarl, wishing she could bite the citizen again.

  “Let’s see her then.”

  There was a little bit of clanging as the top latch was undone, then the top lifted and light streamed in, temporarily blinding Sierra with its brilliance. When her eyes adjusted, she found herself looking into the most singularly colored blue-green eyes, the color of a deep lake or still ocean on a hot day. Master Kade. His face was not that of a citizen. It bore too many scars and was far too pronounced in its masculinity. She recognized him instantly as a carrier of the same wild genes she possessed.

  Caught by surprise and stung by sudden fear of this unknown man, she withdrew from him, cowering in the back of the cage. She could not take her eyes off him, however; he was like fall personified, a great hulking season of a man with thick blond hair tinged ever so slightly red. He kept it tied back at the nape of his neck, leaving the hard line of his jaw and the planes of his face free. His nose had obviously been broken on several occasions and there were light scars tracing much of his skin. A thicker, darker one almost reached his right eye, but stopped short.

  Sierr
a saw her wildness reflected back at her and it frightened her terribly. Her fear was elevated by the expression on his face, which changed from curious to fearsome the longer he looked at her. She did not know what about her inspired his fury, but she shrank from it as his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched.

  “Tell me,” Master Kade said, looking from her to her owner. “In between bouts of unexplained aggression, did you ever think to feed her?”

  “Of course we fed her,” the citizen said. “That’s just… she’s just…”

  “Leave her. Leave the crate,” Master Kade growled. “Don’t say another word and don’t show your face here again or I will have you arrested.”

  “But… She cost fifty thou…”

  “Leave.”

  The word was a snarled threat so potent that even the loss of fifty thousand credits couldn’t keep the citizen in Kade’s presence. Sierra peeked out through the holes and watched as her erstwhile owner backed away several steps, then turned and fled to the safety of his transport, which sat outside a large gate. A little giggle rose to her lips as she watched him run, unwieldy in the suit designed to protect him from the elements his tender complexion could not stand. The laughter died as Kade turned back to her.

  “Don’t be afraid, my pet,” he said in infinitely softer tones. “You have no reason to be. No harm will come to you here.”

  Sierra did not believe him, but she was intrigued by her surroundings. The citizen’s house had been small and confined in all aspects. Even the very limited outdoor space had been closely hemmed in by tall walls. Master Kade’s place was also surrounded by tall walls, but it was larger by several orders of magnitude and full of plants and bushes. Sierra had not seen a live plant in what seemed like forever. She was entranced by the way the leaves moved in a breeze which she had also been removed from for longer than she could care to admit.

  “Are we outside?”

  “Not in the way you might think,” Master Kade said. “This is my compound. We adjoin both the city and the wilds here. The air is unfiltered. I have a natural resistance to the radiation, and of course, you do too.”

  Sierra let her distrustful gaze run over him again. He was dressed oddly. His pants were wild in design, made of leather animal skin that conformed to powerful thighs in a way that left very little to the imagination. His shirt was thick white cloth with a collar and cuffs and buttons running up the middle. In her experience, citizens wore flowing robes of bright colors, always outdoing one another with the color and splendor of their garments. Master Kade’s dress was much more simple, much more functional, and much more masculine than any she had seen a citizen wear. He was even more intriguing than the surroundings.

  “Would you like to come out of the box?”

  “No.” Sierra was quite clear on that. She had not wanted to get in the box, but now that the top was off, it gave her some measure of security. Although he seemed to be kindly, Master Kade was much larger and much scarier than any man she had ever seen. She shrank down a little further, lurking as hard as humanly possible.

  Kade smiled down at her comfortingly. “I know you’re scared,” he said. “But I’m going to look after you. You’re going to feel a lot better very soon, I promise you that. Tell me. What is your name? I know you have one.”

  Sierra sat against the back wall of her crate with her knees up to her chest, looking at Kade with mistrust. Her name had been the only thing of her own since her capture. The notion of sharing it with Master Kade worried her.

  “Quiet little pet, aren’t you,” he observed. “That’s alright. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’ll come up with a name so you will know when I am speaking to you. How does Melodiferious Vundersquish sound?”

  Sierra giggled. The name was ridiculous. “No,” she said. “Not that name.”

  “No? Hmmm…” He put his thumb and forefinger to his chin. “Hildegarde Slumberciddle?”

  “No!” Sierra laughed. It had been such a long time since she felt any true amusement, aside from the limited entertainment she had gotten out of seeing the citizen and his wife bicker. It felt good to laugh again, as though she was opening up a part of herself that had long been closed. “My name is Sierra,” she said.

  “Sierra,” Kade nodded. “A pretty name for a pretty pet. Now, are you sure you will not come out of the box?”

  She shook her head hurriedly, not ready to forgo the security of what had become her little steel fortress.

  “I’ll wait,” he said, walking to sit on a bench a few yards away.

  Sierra watched him carefully over the side of the box. He stretched out his legs in front of him and sat with a relaxed posture, allowing her to take full measure of his considerable bulk from a distance. The citizen had never taken any time to simply be near her in peace. He had poked and prodded her and shouted and used his damnable shocking stick. Master Kade was different. Very different.

  “That collar of yours looks tight,” he said after some time. “Come over here and I’ll take it off.”

  Her collar was uncomfortable, but she had gotten used to it. She had been wearing it for so long that it was like a part of her, the thick fabric webbing tight against her throat.

  “That collar links you to your owner,” he further explained. “If you are found with that on, you may be returned to him.”

  That was motivation for Sierra to leave her box. She climbed up and over the edge, setting foot on the grass. It was heaven to feel the soft green blades beneath her feet, but once she realized she was now without any kind of protection, she lost her nerve and pressed herself against the side of the crate.

  “Come here,” Kade said, pointing to his feet.

  Sierra stayed where she was, eying him suspiciously.

  “So you haven’t been trained at all,” he observed. “I suppose I should not be surprised.” He stood up and began to move toward her. Sierra was not pleased by his movement. She leaped back into the crate and made a growling sound as he approached, warning him of her inherent fierceness.

  “You can cut that out,” he said. “I don’t tolerate aggression from my pets. You save that for the hunt.”

  Sierra growled louder, a feral snarl emerging from her throat as he stood over her crate, his hands on his hips.

  “You came to have it removed, so I’m going to take that collar off,” he said, withdrawing a knife from his belt. It looked sharp enough to cut the sun and did not make Sierra feel any safer. “Make sure you stay still,” he said. “We don’t want you getting hurt.”

  He made a motion toward her. She shoved herself into the very back of the crate and snapped at him, flashing her teeth.

  “Now you know better than that, don’t you?” There was no anger or fear in his response, just a relaxed tone. He was not impressed by her. He was not afraid of her either. Sierra was used to citizens treating her as if she were dangerous. The citizen who owned her had trembled every time he came into her presence. She sensed no such tremors in Master Kade.

  “Put your head down and let me take this collar off you,” he instructed.

  Sierra did not put her head down. She would not take her eyes off him; doing so went against every instinct she had.

  She watched him and he watched her. For long moments they sized one another up, trying to work out what would happen next.

  “You’re going to have to come on out of there,” he said. “I know you’re scared, but there’s really nothing to fear here.”

  “I’m not scared. You should be scared,” Sierra spat back at him.

  “Mm-hmm. Now you’re starting to misbehave. I don’t tolerate misbehavior. Come on out of there, Sierra. You’re not an animal and you don’t need to act like one.”

  “Not an animal? That is all I am.”

  “Animals don’t string together sentences the way you do. Come on out now, girl.”

  He was seeing her as she had not been seen since before being trapped, looking at her with eyes that saw her not as a commodity,
but as a person. Strange. Very strange. Sierra was very confused by this man.

  “I’m going to help you out,” he said. “Don’t do anything silly.”

  He reached into the crate. Before he could make contact with her she bit him, her teeth sinking into the fleshy part of his hand.

  Nothing happened. He stared down at her, those iridescent eyes drawing her in as she sank her teeth into his flesh just shy of hard enough to draw blood. She was being cautious. He was completely unmoved; it was as if he didn’t even feel the grip of her jaw.

  “So you think biting works, do you? Not here, my girl. Not here. Let go. Now.”

  Sierra didn’t let go. She’d committed to the bite and usually she never let go until the citizen screamed and ran away. Master Kade didn’t seem inclined to scream and he hadn’t moved an inch. He hadn’t even moved his hand away. He was just letting her have it, demanding that she control herself. She could see the powerful set of his shoulders, the thick brawn of his arms. He could have beaten her into next week, but he didn’t seem inclined to violence.

  “You have three seconds to let go,” he said. “Before your hide pays the price for this.”

  She did not let go. This was the testing point. This was the defining moment that would shape their relationship. If she let go, she would be acknowledging that he controlled her. If he broke first, then she would be back to the antagonistic relationship she’d had with the citizen who claimed to own her.

  “Three… two… one…”

  He reached down with his other hand, clamped it around the back of her neck, and pulled her up from her hiding place with her teeth still on his hand. Sierra could not resist his grip; her muscles moved at his urging as he eased her up and out of the crate.

  Master Kade did not speak again as he drew her across open ground to the bench where he had sat before, one hand on the back of her neck, the other still firmly lodged in her mouth. Neither one of them was prepared to give any quarter, it seemed. Kicking, squirming, and squealing through her teeth, Sierra did not know what his intention was, she just knew she wanted him to give way first.