Chapter 7: Public Puppy Play
The leash was a black, braided weight in Barnaby’s hand. The padded handle was already damp with his sweat. Each click of the heavy clasp against the D-ring of Ram’s collar was a tiny, metallic heartbeat that echoed in his skull.
Sunlight dappled the path through the park. It was too nice a day, Barnaby thought desperately. Too many people. Children shrieked on the swings. An old man fed pigeons. A young couple lounged on a blanket, sharing headphones. And then there was them.
Ram didn’t just walk. She prowled. She’d insisted, almost immediately after leaving his apartment, that the proper way to walk a mutt was on all fours. Now she moved ahead of him, her powerful shoulders and haunches working in a slow, rolling gait. Her palms and boots scuffed the pavement. The denim cutoffs strained across her backside, which swayed in a wide, hypnotic arc with every step. The ‘MUTT’ collar was clearly visible to anyone who looked.
And people looked.
A woman pushing a stroller did a double-take, her mouth a perfect ‘o’ of shock before she hurriedly turned away. The old man with the pigeons stopped scattering crumbs, his eyes wide and unblinking. Barnaby felt their gazes like physical blows—pity, confusion, disgust, a lurid curiosity. He wanted to sink into the earth. He held the leash, the symbol of his complicity, and tried to make his face a blank page.
“Keep up, twig-boy,” Ram called over her shoulder, her voice a cheerful growl. “Don’t let the lead go slack. Shows bad ownership.”
He swallowed, giving the leash a slight, trembling tug. She responded with a deeper, more pronounced sway of her hips, a laugh rumbling in her chest. They were approaching a more secluded, grassy area bordered by rhododendron bushes. The children’s laughter was distant here.
Ram stopped. She sniffed the air, then circled once, twice, on the grass, like a dog preparing to bed down. But she wasn’t lying down.
“Gotta take a dump,” she announced, her voice carrying. No attempt to lower it.
“Ram,” Barnaby hissed, his entire body flushing with heat. “You can’t—not here—”
“Why the fuck not? It’s a park. Dogs do it all the time.” She looked back at him, her green eyes glinting with pure, mischievous challenge. “You got a baggie? Responsible owner cleans up after his pet.”
He stood frozen, the leash a taut line between his shame and her defiance. He didn’t have a bag. He had nothing but this unbearable, tightening coil of humiliation in his gut.
She didn’t wait for him. With a low, grunting effort, she hunched her shoulders. The denim fabric tightened. A rough, tearing sound escaped her, followed by a deeper, wetter release. The smell hit him a second later—musky, organic, profoundly animal. It wasn’t just the act, it was the sheer, unashamed publicness of it. She did it on the green grass in the dappled sunlight, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Finished, she rocked back on her haunches and looked at him. Her expression was one of profound, smug satisfaction. She didn’t get up. She stayed there, on all fours, the evidence of her transgression steaming gently behind her.
“Oops,” she said, her voice a low purr. “I’m such a bad mutt.” She crawled forward a few steps, away from the mess, then looked back at it, then at him. The command in her eyes was absolute. “Came right out on the grass. No control. You gotta correct that behavior, owner. Can’t have a disobedient bitch.”
She paused, letting the word hang in the fragrant air between the blooming flowers and her own crude stink.
“Spank me, twigboy,” she said, her voice dropping, roughening with intent. “Right here. Make me fucking bark.”
Barnaby’s vision swam. The park, the trees, the distant people, all blurred into a watercolor of panic. His hand, the one not holding the leash, trembled violently. He could hear his own blood roaring in his ears. This was the line, the final, irrevocable step into her world. Not the private acts in his apartment, but this public theater of degradation.
He took a shaky step forward. The grass was soft under his shoes. He stopped beside her, looking down at the powerful curve of her back, the worn denim stretched to its limit. He raised his hand. It felt like lifting a piece of lead.
The first slap was a timid tap, a whisper against the dense fabric.
“Pathetic,” she snarled, craning her neck to glare at him. “You swing like my granny. Do it. Mean it.”
He shut his eyes. He thought of the gawking faces, the stifled laughs, the complete and total annihilation of Barnaby Finch, the quiet librarian. He opened them. He brought his hand down again, harder. The thwack was flat, solid. She jolted forward, a pleased grunt escaping her.
“Again.”
He did. Thwack. This time his palm stung.
A low “huh” noise came from her. He hit her again. Thwack. And again. Thwack. His fear began to morph, burning away into something else—a frantic, focused energy. Each slap was a release of the tension coiling inside him. Each one was for the neighbors, for the shame, for the sheer, overwhelming reality of her.
On the fifth strike, sharper than the rest, she let out a short, sharp yelp. It wasn’t a cry of pain. It was a crisp, canine yip. She barked. Just once.
He stopped, panting, his hand on fire.
She looked back at him, her muzzle split in a wide, panting grin. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, glazed with pleasure. “There you go,” she breathed, her voice thick. “Now you’re gettin’ it.”
She pushed herself up to her knees, then to her feet, towering over him again. She didn’t even glance at the mess on the grass. She leaned in close, her muzzle brushing his ear, her smell—sweat, fur, beer, and now the sharp, barnyard note of her defiance—engulfing him.
“That was a good start,” she murmured, her clawed hand coming up to cup the back of his sweaty neck, possessive and tight. “But the walk’s over. We’re going home.” Her grip tightened. “And the moment we get back, you’re eating my ass so hard you’ll taste what I had for breakfast last week. You understand me, owner?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned, snatched the leash from his limp hand, and wrapped it around her own fist. She began to stride back the way they came, leading him now, a furious, majestic, filthy creature dragging her mortified keeper behind her. The nylon leash pulled taut, a burning line of connection, as Barnaby stumbled after her, the sting in his palm a brand and a promise.