I opened my eyes and let my tears fall away with the rest of the water. I looked at her, and to my surprise, she seemed softer than before, the hardened resignation gone from her face. I felt like our positions should have been swapped. Her ordeal had been my fault.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, reading my mind, apparently.
“If you hadn’t come—”
“I’d have never realized that I love you,” Miriam said.
I fell into her, and she caught me. The water pattered against us, and for a long while, we held each other in the safety of the shower. She kissed me, and I kissed her back.
“The question is,” she said, pulling away for a moment, “what are we going to do about this?”
“We?” I said.
Miriam had a look of determination in her eyes. She said, “Your mother’s dogs raped you, too. The woman I love. As much as I want to run away, I can’t leave you here alone with them. And I don’t know if anyone, even your mother, would come up with a blackmail scheme this convoluted. But you believe it, so that’s good enough for me. You have a plan to find the bugs, if they exist, but have you thought about what you’ll do when you have them?”
“Erase the data?” I said.
Miriam shook her head. “That’s only half the job, Dee,” she said.
“You mean Mother.”
“Yeah,” Miriam said. “How are you going to stop her from doing this to you or anyone else again?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but we have a couple days until she comes back. First things first.”
We spent more time in the shower, holding each other and caressing until the water ran cold. When at last we could stay in the safety of the glass cell no longer, we stepped out and dried off. I went to my dresser to pull out some clothes, but Arthur blocked my way.
“Really?” I said, irritated. It wasn’t cold, or anything, but I wasn’t in the habit of walking around naked. Neither was Miriam, who grumbled irritably when Max stopped her from retrieving her clothes. “Come on. Can’t we have some dignity?”
I tried reaching for the drawer, but Arthur nudged my hand away with his big cannonball of a head. He didn’t growl or show his teeth, but the message was clear.
“Fine,” I said, feeling my body tremble from the indignity. “Fine.”
“What now?” Miriam asked. I heard pain in her voice as she tried to hide her fear and humiliation.
As sick as I felt about what the dogs had done to me and were almost certain to do again, I knew they had been trained for this purpose, and I couldn’t really blame them. After all, they were just animals following what they knew. As mad as I was, it would be unfair of me to starve them. Moreover, it would be unsafe.
“You guys want some food?” I announced. Max and Arthur perked up. “Good. Let’s go, then.”
“They get dinner after what they did?” Miriam said.
“I’d rather not imagine what would happen to us if they get hungry enough,” I said.
Miriam’s eyes swept over the dogs in terrified realization, and she nodded in agreement.
Max led the way as we went back downstairs, outside, and around the side of the house. The walk gave us time to talk, and I spent some time looking for anything that had been moved or misplaced in the last couple weeks. I noted a few things to check up on when I had more freedom, but I knew I was going to really need to scour every inch of every room to find all the bugs.
I poured food into each of the dog bowls, but Max and Arthur just stood looking up at me. “What?” I said.
Arthur took a few paces back toward the house. When he turned his head and looked back at us, Miriam said, “Seriously? How are these dogs this smart?”
“I don’t know,” I said, picking up the bowls and following Arthur. “But we need to figure out how to get more freedom. I think I might know where a couple of the bugs are.”
Back inside, I put the bowls in the kitchen, next to the door to the dining room, but still the dogs wouldn’t eat. I put down a big bowl of water, too, but still nothing. Arthur looked back and forth between me and the food bowl, as if unclear on the concept, but when his focus eventually settled on me, I realized that I was the one who didn’t understand.
Arthur approached and without grace or warning stuck his snout between my legs. The force backed me up against the island, and when I had no more room to maneuver, the Rottweiler began lapping at my pussy in long powerful strokes.
“Oh, not again,” I groaned. But my body shuddered and I felt a warm wetness loosen me up from the inside. As reluctant as I was, Arthur’s lapping felt incredibly good, and I parted my legs a little to allow him more access. It paid off. His long tongue licked the whole way from my butthole to my clit, and I found myself becoming aroused, and not just physically. I was beginning to enjoy it.
Miriam gave me a look of disappointment. “What are you doing?”
“You know…” I had trouble focusing on my words. “Mmm… You know they’re just going to take what they want, anyway. Fighting it’s no… unh god… fighting it doesn’t do anyone any good.”
Miriam sighed. She sounded irritated more than scared or humiliated, which I guess was good, sort of. “Fine,” she said. She leaned forward on the island, folding her arms under her chest and sticking out her butt with her legs spread. “Let’s get this over with.”
I couldn’t see Max from where I was, but I knew he had made contact when Miriam sucked in a little breath. “Fuck,” she whispered.
Arthur continued his assault on my increasingly wet and aching pussy. Every four or five licks, his long tongue would dart into me, sliding against my clit on its way out. The longer this went on, the looser I felt. I put more of my weight on the island and spread my legs wider so he had full access.
It was clear that Miriam was no longer afraid, but I could tell that she was holding back. “What is it?” I asked.
For a second, it looked like she was going to ignore me, but then she looked back over her shoulder and said, “It should be you down there.”
“I… hmm… I wish it was,” I said, remembering the silkiness of her sex against my tongue. “When this is all over, we’ll have all the time in the world.”
“Uhnn…” she moaned. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
She leaned in and kissed me, and suddenly the future did seem brighter. I knew I could make it through this ordeal in one piece.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready. What about you?”
Miriam nodded. I could see in her eyes that there was still doubt, but I think that she was mostly questioning her sanity. It was one thing to be forced and have the excuse that you had no say in the matter, and quite another thing to offer your body to a dog. We both knew that this was a well-defined line in the sand, and while I was ready because my focus was on the future, Miriam was still in the moment.
I took the lead and gently pushed Arthur’s head away. He growled, but stopped as I lowered myself to my hands and knees. He sniffed at me for a second and then cocked his head to the side.
“Well?” I said. “What are you waiting for?”
Miriam laughed out loud, and I looked up at her to see her covering an amused grin with her hand. “I guess you surprised him,” she said. Slowly, she too pushed Max away and lowered herself next to me on the kitchen floor.