Into the Dog House Ch. 04

It was still cool, this early. The sound of sneakers slapping pavement in time together was the only immediate sound beneath the distant hum of lazy Sunday morning traffic. Rachel ran ahead of him, maintaining an easy pace; Gregory, behind.

This was a normal Sunday routine. They'd run several blocks, get a smoothie or a breakfast muffin, read the paper or chat, and then either head home or part ways, depending--but always the run, first. Gregory was starting to see marriage just like this--a series of patterns, of traditions, of rituals. Of the fine line that separated them out between familiar comfort and dull monotony.

Well, today was different, and he felt it on every stride.

Beneath his shorts, the cage that encased his cock and balls tugged with bouncing gravity, and he could feel it swing and hit the fabric of his pants at each stride. It was uncomfortable and maddeningly distracting, and pretty much all he could think about as he ran at Rachel's heels. The only other thing on his mind was watching her, the bounce of her blonde ponytail--and he had a flash of memory, the odd texture of her hair between his teeth while fucking her from behind--and her ass clad in form-fitting leggings.

Last night had not lasted much longer than the sweaty pile they'd both made. A bottle of wine, shared between them. He'd made himself a sandwich to make up for his lack of dinner, showered after her and left his collar by the sink, and then followed quiet reading on their phones in bed. The last thing he'd done was think twice against requesting the key to his cock cage from his wife, who had turned over to sleep.

And then that morning, she was all shrugs, smiles, urging him into his running things before it got too warm. Don't worry about that, never mind, she'll do it later.

When he'd clicked his cage closed yesterday afternoon, he'd never pictured it still being locked shut well into the morning the next day, never mind leaving the house with it on. As they slowed to a stop outside the juice and breakfast bar that was their usual spot, Gregory rested his hands on his knees in the appearance of getting his breath back, but also out of the real desire for blood flow to quit trying to surge for his cock.

"What's this?" Rachel said, turning to him. Breathing hard, too, but flushed and at ease with her exertion. She rubbed his shoulder, mock-soothing. "Maybe we should trade out runs for walkies."

"Ha-ha," Gregory said, straightening up. "I'm never living last night down, am I?"

Rachel slipped her hand from his shoulder, peering up at him. After all the time he spent on his knees last night, it was nice to have his height advantage back -- a decent foot of difference between them. And while Gregory liked that contrast, liked being able to tuck her head beneath his chin in a hug or sweep her off her feet, Rachel always had a way of looking at him as though she were entirely unconscious of any physical disadvantage on her part. A Chihuahua staring down a Great Dane.

And all the while smiling--a small, mysterious twist of a smile. "I don't see why you should have to," she said, and in his baffled silence, she tipped her head for the café. "Come on, let's sit. Breakfast's on me."

From this vantage point, Gregory was also treated to a view of the key she was still wearing from her neck, catching his attention just as she turned away.

Their usual table was always available at this hour -- a nice little window seat towards the corner. Rachel directed him to go sit while she handled their orders, so he did, still so hyper-conscious of the oddness of the cage he was wearing. It was no more public than the fact that everyone is naked under their clothes, but something about wearing steel around his dick made him paranoid that anyone would be able to tell with a glance.

Looking down at his lap, he felt like it seemed normal, despite being able to tell which bulge and fold of fabric was hiding him. He shifted in his seat, trying to ignore the unyielding steel thing that settled between his thighs, and watched as Rachel came back carrying two green smoothies. Liquid breakfast, today.

"You should stop squirming so much," she suggested, setting them down, sitting. "I bet you could just forget it was there, if you relaxed."

There was no one sitting nearby, but Gregory still felt a twinge of unease at this particular conversation, happening here. "That's easy for you to say. I just ran four blocks wearing it."

"Did it hurt?" she asked, and it seemed like a real question, stabbing her straw into the top of her smoothie. She reached over to do the same to his, when he failed to get to it fast enough.

"I mean, not really," Gregory said, drawing his smoothie in towards himself. "But it probably will if I wear it much longer."

"I don't think so. Most people report that there's a little soreness behind the scrotum--"

"Jeez."

"--and you get used to it. How was peeing this morning?"

Gregory felt his skin flush red, up the back of his neck and rising, and didn't answer.

Rachel sipped from her straw, and then said, "Because you splashed a little. I assume you were trying to do it while standing up?" When Gregory continued to say nothing, she shrugged. "Sitting's probably easier. I mean, your aim is kind of bad even under the best of conditions--"

"Rachel."

"Gregory."

"Stop."

"Stop?" A new smile was forming on her face, a subtle curl of tension at the corners of her mouth. The common parlance would be to say that a second smile might be found warm in the eyes of the smiler, but here, looking across at him in her purple patterned lycra and kicky ponytail, it brought a chill to her eyes instead, a cool appraisal across the juice bar table. She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "Sure, I can stop."

She wrapped her mouth back around the straw, that chill vanished in favour of jokey innocence as she sucked up a mouthful of green smoothie.

It was a cliché: the itch he couldn't scratch, and she was teasing it. Maybe starting with the run itself, normal routine though it was, but also choosing to wear her skin-tight spandex instead of some joggers and a T-shirt. It was flaunting the silver key to his cock dangling off her neck. It was asking him about how he pissed that morning, taunting him in public. It was her mouth on the straw, her direct eye contact.

Or he was just going slightly crazy. He shifted in his seat again, as if there was some minor alteration he could make that would stop him thinking about his cock.

"Why this?" he asked, keeping his voice quiet. It was the question that had been most present when finding the cage in her underwear drawer, intended for him. "Why did you want this?"

The sharp humour in her expression softened, glancing down at the table between them. "A lot of reasons," she said. "But it wasn't an impulse. I've been thinking about it for a while. Read about it. I was tempted to give you it--the cage--on your birthday, actually, but it seemed like kind of a shitty gift. 'Happy birthday, baby, you're not cumming tonight'."

"That wouldn't have gone down great, no."

"So, I figured it could be a present for me. I wanted to see if I liked it. If you liked it."

"I liked getting out of it," Gregory said, putting a laugh into his voice, but it sounded forced even to his own ears. Rachel's expression didn't crack, either. "That part was fun."

"Mmhm," she said. "But there was a lot to like about last night. A lot to learn. Not just chastity for its own sake, right? It's the key to something more."

Gregory felt his nerves prickle, a cool sweep of uncertainty that had him shift in his seat again. "Speaking of keys," he said. "I could probably use one. I don't really wanna run back in this thing."

Rachel, once again, seemed to frost over. She sat back in her chair, where Gregory hadn't really noticed that she'd started leaning forward, and crossed an arm across her chest. The key glittered against her skin, half slipped into the hem of her lycra top. "Oh?"

"Come on, Rach," Gregory said, letting exasperation enter his voice. The fuzzy permissive warmth he'd felt when she had snuggled into his arms after forcing the cage on had finally dispelled, especially now, as she gave him her best ice queen impression. "I'm saying the party's over."

She tipped her head, staring at him across the table. His untouched smoothie, his fidgeting. Gregory found himself going still as if not to give anything away under inspection. She remained silent for a few more uncomfortable seconds, which was the time it took for a couple of women to sit at the table behind her, chairs scraping, their conversation contributing to the ambiance.

Rachel then spoke up with, "Why don't we try it for a little while longer instead? What I've read suggests that the fullness of the chastity experience can't be done overnight--"

"No," Gregory said, quickly, urgently quiet, glancing past Rachel at the two women nearby. They didn't seem to pay any mind. He kept his voice low anyway. "No, it's over. I'm glad you had fun, but--okay, look, we can do it again sometime, special occasions. We can keep it and play with it whenever. But I don't want it on any longer than an evening. Overnight's pushing it."

The scraping of Rachel's chair was sudden and loud, Gregory leaning backwards in his seat as she flowed to her feet.

"I have some errands," she said, without concern for the volume of her voice, her tone an imperious clip. "And I think you should go home and think about what I've said instead of dismissing it completely."

"Hey," Gregory said, leaning forwards so that he could take her hand across the table. Rachel allowed it, but it was cool and limp between his fingers. "I wasn't dismissing it, okay? But we should have this conversation later, and not while I'm... you know. Just let me out, and we can discuss it some more. I wanna understand, I promise."

Rachel slipped her hand out from his, picking up her smoothie. "Negotiating," she observed. "That's a step down from demanding, at least. But it's never gonna be as effective as begging."

Gregory felt his mouth go dry, and that insidious pulse of warmth flood through the steel bars of his little prison. It must have read on his face, because Rachel smiled, and shook her head. "I really gotta do everything around here sometimes," she said. She stepped around the table to get in better reach of him, and slid her fingers into his hair.

It was a little intimate for a public venue, but not completely out of place. An affectionate, passing touch between a married couple, where one is about to say goodbye to the other, but the simple sensation of it--her nails scratching his scalp, the gentle tug at his hair, the way he had to look up at her--brought back a flood of sense memory that only inflamed his arousal.

She squeezed her hand closed, a momentarily more painful clutch at his hair, before it relaxed. "There you are," she murmured, at whatever it is she saw in his eyes. "My good boy."

Rachel leaned down, and kissed his forehead. "I'll see you at home," she said, a little louder, hand slipping free as she collected her smoothie. "Think about it like I said, okay? And then we can talk."

She was out the door a moment later, ponytail swaying.

Gregory sat in place, trying to get a handle of his breathing, his bodily responses. It wasn't just a small annoying itch of arousal, now--he was aching, consumed by the obscene sensation of his cock struggling to get hard against its steel trap, of the tug to his balls as flesh thickened with blood to its limited potential. It was the kind of heightened feeling he'd only really experienced in a bedroom--leaving out some minor embarrassing moments in his adolescence--and to be burning with it here, in this venue, kept him trapped in his chair.

And she was gone. The key, gone. The cage wasn't coming off until she was done with her errands and had come home. And even then, was that even true?

What had she meant, when she said it was the key?

Slowly calming, painfully slow, Gregory glanced towards the other table. The woman facing him had been watching him, and quickly looked to her friend when they made eye contact. Quiet, muffled giggles left that table, and he felt a blush scorch up the back of his neck again.

He stood up, trying to ignore the tug of weight between his legs. He could feel the way his arousal had pushed his cock and balls further up and forwards, and rationally, he knew it would only be detected if someone was looking for it, and how would anyone even know? Still, he felt exposed, his skin sensitive to the cool air from the way he was over-warm and his pulse throbbing in his cock while he struggled with the irrational urge to cover himself in some way.

And besides, maybe those two girls had heard enough to know to look.

Grabbing his smoothie, he quickly left the juice bar without looking at them. Outside, he flung the completely full cup into the nearest garbage can, and began walking (not running) home.

***

Gregory took a shower when he got home. A light run hardly justified it, having already cleaned up earlier that morning, but after a cursory amount of warmth to scrub some of the sweat off of his body, he ran the water cool, and then cold, shivering beneath the constant icy stream.

Something he'd done before, when Rachel hadn't been interested in sex but his mood refused to unfocus from the prospect. He felt a familiar, bitter clench of annoyance as he flipped off the water, and looked down at his body. A steady stream of water caught in the bundle of his caged cock and balls continued to leak and drip. Shaking it off, he stepped out into the bathroom, grabbing a towel.

Next to the sink, he spied something out of place--the leather collar he'd worn last night, had tiredly taken off before stepping into the shower. He hadn't even thought about it again.

Picking it up, Gregory ran the leather through his fingers, and turned the nametag over in his hand. It was subtle, but immediate, the small prickle of physical interest he felt, the foreign impulse to slip it back around his neck in pursuit of heightening that feeling, and he closed his hand in a fist around it. How strange, to find out at age thirty-three that something was deeply wrong with you. Deeply wrong with the things you wanted.

He dropped the collar into the little wastebasket next to the sink, and carefully set about drying himself with the objective not to stir any further arousal.

Of course, he would normally just be able to jerk off about it.

Changing into some casual clothes--there were things he could do on his Sunday outside of the apartment, but he couldn't tolerate the idea of trying to do so in his current predicament--Gregory stepped into the living room, and looked at the next alien bulk that was left over from last night. The dog cage, nestled against the couch. If it too twinged something in him, he ignored it as he moved towards it.

It hadn't taken too much time to set up, and hopefully it would take even less to break down.

By the time he was done, he could feel sweat collecting as a sheen on his skin under his clothes again. Mostly from exertion, but even this activity couldn't quite drive him off of distraction. He fit the cage into its box, leaving the blankets he'd softened it with on the arm of the couch, and dragged it back to his office where he'd stored and hidden it originally.

He settled at his computer, looking up the pet supplies site he'd gotten it from, reading their refund policies. A generous thirty day limit, so long as the goods could be returned in unused condition.

Did eating his wife's pussy out through the bars count as used?

Gregory permitted himself a chuckle at the thought, and then sharply kept his mind from straying towards those memories as he started filling out the refund form, sending it through for a return slip and courier confirmation. He glanced at the time in the corner of his screen. It had taken him a decent while to walk home, to shower, to disassemble the cage and then go through the form, that he'd have expected Rachel to be home by now.

He checked his phone. No messages.

As he made himself some food in the kitchen, and read the news on his phone, and answered some work emails, Rachel still made no sign of her imminent return. She was making him wait, he decided. The same woman who had been tickled to lock him up yesterday while she went out for brunch was back, extracting enjoyment from his impatience, the suffering it caused.

And the fact that he hadn't asked for it, had directly requested to be released from it--

Well, intellectually, Gregory knew he should be angry. And he was. Sort of. It was an odd kind of angry, confused, indignant, irritated, but he had the sense he should be angrier. That he should be feeling something more potent than merely frustrated. He had been denied access to an important part of himself, had been humiliated about it in public, and was now waiting at home helplessly until Rachel decided to free him, but all he could summon was this petty, sullen mood that merely wished his dick was released so he could get off.

Think about what she had said, was what Rachel wanted him to do. Well, at the very least, he was under no obligation to do so.

Switching his console and the TV on, taking a beer out of the fridge, Gregory settled on the couch, comfortable in sweatpants and T-shirt, sitting with his legs at a loose cross on the cushions. The subtle weight of the cage was ever-present, but as he booted up a particularly noisy, colourful, distracting game, he began to properly ignore its presence in a way he hadn't since Rachel had closed it back around his cock last night.

He glanced at his phone, now and then. Still nothing.

Eventually, at the height of the hot afternoon outside, he heard the front door open, glancing to see Rachel step inside. She was still trimly dressed in her athleisure, and carrying a few shopping bags of different kinds, but he looked back to the screen at the sound of pattering gunshots, quickly responding with controller in hand.

"Hey," he said, distractedly. He heard her set her things down, but say nothing.

Reluctantly, he glanced over again, expecting her to be displeased with him in some mysterious way--instead, she was looking around the room.

"What's up?" he asked.

"The cage," she said.

"Is still on me, yeah." He looked back to the screen.

"No," she snapped, a flicker of what sounded like real irritation in her voice that snagged back his focus. "The big cage, the dog cage. Where did you put it?"

Gregory hesitated, and then paused out of the game. "I packed it back up," he said, tentatively. "And ordered a refund. The courier will pick it up tomorrow, probably. I'm working from home, so I should be around to--"

"Why did you do that?" Rachel said, folding her arms.

He stared at her, baffled. There was something like hurt in her expression, beneath the building anger. "Um," he said. "It was just for the scene, but it's not a cheap piece of equipment. I was going to resell it if they didn't accept refunds, but--"

"It was my present," she said, snippily.

Now, Gregory was compelled to look down at the bags she'd brought in. One of them was a bright red plastic bag, and he recognised the slightly distorted logo of the same pet supplies warehouse he'd bought the cage from. He felt his stomach clench, and he took up the controller to close out of the game completely, shutting down the console.

"I don't know what you think it is we're doing here," he said, now standing up to face her. "But all last night was was some fun. We don't have a lot of fun anymore, you and me, and I figured I'd stand half a chance of you liking it if it was outrageous enough to get any response out of you at all. But it's over, okay? I want you to give me the key, and we can talk about this like adults."