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Liam Foxburger. It was an unfortunate name to be saddled with, what with being a Red Fox and all. His mother, who Liam resembled and from whom he had taken his vulpinity, had made the mistake of falling in love with a non-Fox whose name would haunt them both.

'Oh that's so funny because you're a...' urgh!

Anyway. Liam didn't see much of his parents anymore. A year had passed since he left, at the age of twenty-two, the sleepy provincial town of his birth and relocated 800 miles to the city of Metropole; the city on the coast, home to twelve million souls and one of souls was his.

The move was the result of a bout of ridiculous good fortune. After college, Liam snagged a job as a data administrator in the regional offices of a big-shot finance company, and for a few years his job was to input data into his database, respond to inquiries, compile reports, and to do whatever else anyone wanted from him. It was pretty good job, and it was regular, formalized employment, a boon nobody above a certain age ever seemed to appreciate.

Then one day, out of the blue, his branch was informed that they would be ceasing operation at the end of the next month. Apparently it was all part of a plan of 'rationalization, or 'streamlining', or something, Liam hadn't read the email too closely. Oh well, he had thought. But then a week later he'd been summoned by his boss to his office's conference room, where a tinny phone-voice informed him that head office wanted to keep him. The voice, emanating from a perforated dull-plastic blister, told him they were bringing the databank he administrated 'in-house', meaning it would be operated from the head office. The voice asked him if he would be interested in relocating to Metropole. Liam, dazzled at the opportunity, had been on the cusp of accepting when the phone-voice had added that, since it was a lot to ask, they would also be offering him an increase in pay _over_what was appropriate for a city with a high cost of living, as well as a promotion to 'senior administrator' though his actual role would remain unchanged. Liam felt like he had won the lottery, and it had taken every ounce of tact and restraint to tell the phone-voice that he would need time to think about it. When they spoke next he was offered $3,000 to cover moving costs and for several days afterward he had thought that he was living in a dream.

He giddily informed his friends and family, and then went online and rented a modern, fully furnished forty-fourth floor apartment Metropole's heart. The apartment was walking-distance from his office and while the rent was excessive he was intent on living modestly. He disembarked his train in Metropole's cathedral-like central station carrying a duffel bag full of clothes (Liam didn't drive), and took a taxi to his apartment building, and like that he had moved in.

Liam regretted his decision at first. Flushed with money, he had overlooked the fact that he was afraid of heights, and now, a year after moving in, he still had not ventured out onto his balcony. But he had soon made himself at home. His job was the same, only his office was a great deal fancier. His boss and co-workers liked him instantly, because he knew the work, and because he could perform basic tasks reliably which in their eyes made him akin to a saint or a magician. Beyond work there was a bodega near his apartment where he bought his groceries, and across the street was the massive flag-ship branch of Alpha Gym, which he joined.

He had not made friends, however, and he was lonely. He shared an office with four middle-aged women who never spoke to him unless it was about work, and his boss, despite being only a few years older, unironically viewed himself as a character from 'The Wolf of Wall Street', only without the charisma, hard drug use or financial acumen. Liam could tolerate working alongside the man but being his friend was utterly unimaginable.

There were compensations. He purchased gigantic, ultra-high-definition wall-mounted TV and a top-tier games system, and with these he killed time in the evenings and weekends. He talked with family and friends from back home on social media, and so he was not completely isolated. But nonetheless his social life was essentially non-existent. He often wondered how people made friends outside of work or school. He had hobbies; game-playing, movie-watching, music-listening; running and swimming at the gym; and as he was preparing all of his meals himself he was becoming creative with his food choices (trying different meals was a source of variety in an otherwise repetitive life) and he was getting to be a pretty good chef. There were a dozen topics he would love to discuss with someone, activities he would love to share. But how did you meet people? How did you start? And where? Bars and clubs, he guessed, but he didn't have the nerve to go out like that alone.

So he settled into a cozy and somewhat insular routine. He would work, then he would come home to his apartment and cook his dinner, and then he might play games or watch movies on his big TV, or use his laptop to chat with his friends and see what they were doing. And on the weekends he would explore the city, he hit all the tourist spots like the museums and the harbor, and sometimes he rode the subway and hopped off at a random stop with no intent other than to find out what was there. And on Friday evenings he would visit the gym across the street. He preferred Fridays because the gym tended to be quiet then, and because exercise was the ideal antidote to a week spent sitting at a desk. He would run on the machines while listening to his music, and swim lengths in the floodlit, glass canopy covered pool.

And he masturbated like a champion. Liberated from the tyranny of parents and roommates he was free to do with himself as he pleased. He had even performed the unthinkable and purchased pornography, subscribing to several of the big name websites whose content he streamed through his building's ultra-high-speed internet connection onto his living room TV. And despite an entire side of his apartment consisting of a huge window he enjoyed privacy, as his apartment was not overlooked, and thus he was able to sit naked on his the cream leather of his living room couch with porn playing on his TV and the volume turned up to an audible level, beating off to his heart's content. He'd even bought toys (thank God for discrete delivery!), and had amassed a small library of adult playthings.

And that was the life of Liam Foxburger.

***

One Friday there was a fuck-up at work. Late in the day he was told by another department that there had been an error in a datasheet they had sent him that morning, and the stats he'd added to the system needed to be removed, and the correct stats needed to be applied before the weekend or else the consequences would be severe. So Liam stayed on past his usual five o'clock home-time, correcting the department's mistake. He received effusive praise. His boss and the other department chief told him he was superstar, a miracle-worker, and they would be passing his name on to upper-management. Liam was a little embarrassed by the praise, as he was merely performing his regular, not-very-difficult job for a few extra hours, and it wasn't like he had plans to disrupt.

It was past eight o'clock by the time Liam pushed through the revolving doors of his office's cavernous foyer and stepped out into the rainy, windswept autumn night. The street was packed with cars and the keening of their horns came from nearby as well as away in the distance. The sidewalk was washed with sodden scraps of newspapers and magazines, and the rotted leaves that had fallen from the street's decorative trees. Liam went barefoot the same as everybody else, he didn't notice the dirty puddles that splashed beneath the leathery-padded soles of his feet or the rain that whipped around his red-furred ankles each time the wind gusted.

Liam cut an innocuous figure in the raincoat that he wore over a fleece, which in turn covered a white shirt and dark tie, carrying his skinny laptop bag over one shoulder, and with his bushy white-tipped tail protruding from the rear of his black work pants. His stature was unremarkable, at 5'5" he was average for a Fox but small by the standards of the general population, and he was regularly dwarfed by Equines, Ursines, Bovines and other larger types. And he was neither broad nor muscular.

He stopped at a Mediterranean themed deli/fast food joint for a late dinner, it was the place Liam always visited when he didn't want to cook. He ordered a roasted tomato salad and ate at the counter before completing the walk back to his building. He rode the elevator up to the forty-fourth floor and used his keycard to enter his apartment. He dumped his laptop inside the door and changed out of his work things, putting on a vest top and shorts. Liam decided to keep his routine of hitting the gym after work on Fridays, despite it being far later in the day than usual. He took his drawstring bag with his gym stuff, kept his keycard and phone while leaving his wallet, and headed back out.

An enclosed pedestrian walkway took him over the busy six-lane street and into the massive Alpha Gym complex. The color scheme was entirely red and black, the _Alpha Gym_colors. There were flashy TV screens everywhere and pounding bass music was piped in. There were relatively few people around, and most of them were weight-lifting. He stowed his things in a locker and climbed the stairs to the floor with the running machines.

He picked a machine by the window, placed his favorite rainbow sweatband around his brow, placed his earbuds inside his sharp Foxy ears and brought up his all-Madonna workout playlist on his phone. He set the playlist to shuffle and clipped the phone to his hip, and jogged for almost an hour.

Sweaty and sick of jogging, he headed to the pool. Having retrieved his gym bag he entered a booth by the pool and changed into his swimming cap, goggles and speedo, all in matching luminous yellow, and after a rinse in the poolside shower he began swimming lengths under the glass canopy. He had the Olympic-sized pool entirely to himself. There was no lifeguard on duty.

When he eventually glanced at the clock above the pool he noticed that it was almost eleven. He was gripped by a sudden fright; he remembered alarmingly that the gym shut at eleven. Oh crap! Liam had forgotten entirely that he had arrived much later than usual.

In a mild panic he hauled himself out of the water and rushed to one of the poolside showers. He jabbed the button, and nothing happened. He tried several different showerheads and found them equally unresponsive. Somebody must have switched them off for the night, or else they had shut off automatically. Not showering was not an option. He needed to rinse the caustic pool chemicals out of his fur before they dried and damaged his fur. There were showers in the big locker room upstairs, but he was reluctant to go all the way up there.

"Did they close already?" Liam whimpered aloud. There was nobody around to answer him.

***

For an achingly long time Liam had assumed that he was gay. He'd always been attracted to boys, and when he first discovered pornography he had drifted immediately toward the gay sections of the 'tube' sites. And in his last year of high school, while attending his first ever house party, after two and a half horrible-tasting light beers, he'd experienced his first kiss with a boy in the mysterious shadows of a suburban backyard. The boy in question had been Ram, he had a thick white fleece that he sheered twice a year and a black face framed by a heavy set of curly horns. He was on the wrestling team and he was quite buff, and by his nature rather butch. The next morning the young Ram, whose name was Kyle, had texted Liam and together they had embarked upon an awkward relationship. The pairing was more exploratory than romantic, and from start to end it remained a secret; Kyle feared, probably rightly, that his shithead teammates would shun or mock him if they learned he was queer. They had both stayed in the closet throughout.

That relationship had ended when Kyle was awarded a sports scholarship and went to college in a distant state. They were still 'friends' on social media but were no longer meaningfully in touch. Apparently Kyle was out of the closet and doing alright. He had given up wrestling, he did MMA now, and he was literally covered in tattoos.

Once he was in college himself, Liam had agonized over whether or not he should 'come out'. His college had an LGBT society that he vaguely wished to join, and he was convinced his friends and parents would be supportive. But he hadn't felt particularly repressed, and he had been reluctant to roll that dice when it wasn't completely necessary. In the end the question was settled for him, and in an unexpected manner. Completely by accident, he managed to get himself a girlfriend.

It had been at another party, and this time he had been sober. With an early class scheduled for the next morning he had planned on ducking out early, yet before he could take his leave she had cornered him. She had been drunk. She had questioned him insistently about his penis.

A rumor was circulating that Liam was very impressively endowed, most likely fueled by how, in appearance, Liam was probably the last_person anybody would have expected to be secretly toting an almighty dong. He was slight of stature and meek of character, and, well, _a Fox. His kind weren't exactly known for being well-hung. But the rumor had been just plausible enough for it to potentially be true while also being improbable enough for it to still be lurid, and it captured the zeitgeist of a bunch of gossipy teens still in the process of discovering the sexual aspect of their social lives and so it had spread like wildfire

There was, in fact, a grain of truth in the tale. Granted, Liam wasn't giving any Equines cause to blush, but for a Fox he was quite adequately equipped.

Anyway. A drunk girl had cornered him at a party. She was a Hare with a speckled brown coat that lightened on her front. She was short, and broad at the hip and shoulder. Her physique appeared to be doughy and plump, however in actuality she was on the college's women's rugby team and was exceptionally strong and fit, she could run literal rings around almost anyone. Her bulk was for adding impact to her tackles. She was had been dressed in a black top and tight ripped jeans. Her voice was deep and her demeanor was not traditionally feminine, and her boobs were enormous. Her name was Becky and she'd had a red party cup in her hand.

Impatient to learn the truth she had become frustrated at Liam's denial, and eventually she had taken him by a wrist and dragged him out of common room where the party was being held, and upstairs to her dormitory. She was rough with him. She shoved him into her narrow single bed, tugged off his pants and underwear and then drunkenly groped his sheath until he grew erect. She appraised his dick and wasn't impressed. She'd expected more. But after a moment's contemplation she had shrugged and said 'fuck it, close enough', and pulled her black top over her head, stepped out of her jeans and pants, and climbed onto Liam while wearing only a massive sports-bra. She had fucked him aggressively, riding him, pinning his shoulders, and halfway through she had said to him in a firm and almost threatening voice: 'don't you dare cum before me'.

And Liam had been extremely alright with it. In fact, he had loved it. He didn't expect anyone to understand, since he didn't really understand it himself. And Becky had liked it too, she had texted him the next morning and their hook-up developed into a full-blown relationship.

Astonishingly, considering its origin, his relationship with Becky lasted for three lasted years. They shared common interests and they had great sex. That first night wasn't the last time she threw him down on the bed, pinned his arms and rode him 'til she came. In the second year of college Becky discovered pegging, Liam had surrendered his ass-virginity years before to Kyle and he was more than up to the challenge. Then after college they moved into an apartment together. Becky was the dude of the relationship, which suited them both fine.

And that was how he came out of the closet. He told his friends that he had a girlfriend, and changed his social media to state: 'in a relationship with...' followed by a girl's name. The response was unanimous. Everyone had thought he was gay, including his parents. And Liam had responded by sheepishly admitting he had always thought that he was gay too. And so that was it, he was out. But as bi rather than gay. Though he never did join the LGBT society, even after they reached out to him. He wasn't sure why he never joined, he just didn't.

Becky broke up with Liam when she got bored with him. It had hurt but it hadn't killed him.

After Becky left, Liam revised his feelings about his sexuality. Before, he had thought he was gay. That went out the window. Then he was bi for a while, but that concept fell by the wayside too. He had realized that gender was not a factor in his attraction. What turned him on, what he wanted to partner with, was not a man or a woman, but a masculine figure of some type. Men tended to be manlier so he tended to prefer them, but he was also attracted to muscle-girls, tomboys and sporty-butch girls like Becky too.

He assumed there must be a word for it. There were words for every type of desire. He tried looking online but soon gave up. It was depressing searching the web for the word to describe himself. There was nobody he could talk to, he had no gay friends. And while Metropole had a massive LGBT community he couldn't summon the nerve to visit the clubs with the rainbow awnings, or post in their forums online, or even browse their forums. He wasn't 'online', and he wasn't outgoing.

There was something missing in his sexuality. He knew what he liked, what he was interested in and what he was attracted to, but an issue persisted. Something was making his heart sink every time he thought of love. It was an error in his system, somewhere, something made him uneasy within himself. If only he had just one gay friend that he could talk to...

It was a problem that he was not confronting at all. Whenever he thought about it he busied himself in his work, or fired up a videogame or a movie, or a porno, and distracted himself until those nagging thoughts disappeared from the forefront his mind. Incapable of identifying the problem, the solution was utterly beyond his mind's grasp. He hoped it would not last forever, but he wasn't doing anything to change it.

***

Liam clutched his drawstring gym bag to his reedy, white-furred chest, as he padded hastily up the stairs of the Alpha Gym. His body was soaking with pool water, he dripped on the gym's spongy red and black acrylic carpet. The place seemed abandoned. The TVs had been turned off and so had the pounding bass music, and the lights had been turned off in some areas. He didn't see anyone.

He crossed the deserted weight-lifting area heading for the main locker room and the showers there. He still needed to wash the chemicals from his fur. Swinging around a corner he ran into a pair of dudes, a Cheetah and an Oryx whose corkscrew horns were two feet long. He recognized them as instructors. The two men had changed out of their 'INSTRUCTOR' vests and were wearing Alpha Gym brand hoodies and tapered-fit sweatpants.

"Oh, shit" the Cheetah exclaimed upon seeing Liam, in a typically friendly 'bro' voice. "Sorry buddy, didn't realize you were still here."

"You need to hit the shower?" the Oryx inquired in the same tone.

"Yeah..." said Liam, the Red Fox smiled awkwardly up at the larger men. "I lost track of time, I guess, and, um..."

"Don't sweat it boss" said the Cheetah. "We'll tell the security guy to let you out."

"Oh, OK, uh, thanks" said Liam.

"No worries bro" said the Oryx.

"Yeah, later dude" the Cheetah added. They wandered off while Liam hurried through to the locker room.

Inside there were benches, one wall consisted of lockers while another was a single massive mirror, and there was a wide archway leading to the shower room, all brightly lit by recessed lighting. There was a towel and some clothes spread out on one of the benches, and the soft patter of a million bursting water droplets was echoing from the shower.

Ordinarily Liam rinsed under a poolside shower and put his sweaty shorts and vest on over his speedo, since to go home he needed only to cross the street. He was unsure if he should wash properly or if the rinse would be fine, or if it would be weird if he went into the shower in his speedo, or if he might be interrupting the instructor if he went in now. He was painfully conscious of these non-issues.

And while he dithered he noticed something very queer amongst the items of the instructor. Laying atop his towel, beside his gym bag, sweatpants and hoodie, there was a chalky white, equine-style dildo. And what was perhaps even queerer was that it was clearly floppy and limp, it was curled over on its self. Liam pondered: what on earth did anyone need a flaccid dildo for?

The hiss of the shower suddenly ceased, and a moment later a figure emerged in a shroud of steam. He was a pure black Stallion, six feet tall, with a wavy black mane and tail. Physically he was more race horse than draft horse; fit and trim, and with muscles that were light and extremely well-defined. He could have easily passed for a professional soccer player, and his trim look was aided by the sheerness of his coat. He seemed almost hairless. He wore a towel wrapped low around his waist, his hips and the beginning of his groin showed above the fibrous white material, and he was using a second towel to scrub and dry his head and curly black mane.

He didn't notice Liam, and believing he was alone he went to the mirror that dominated one wall. He scrubbed his head and his chest, and under his arms, and then tossed the towel away in the direction of the bench with his things, and, still thinking he was alone and unobserved, whipped away the towel at his waist.

Besotted, Liam was very much staring at the buff and handsome Stallion. He couldn't restrain his gaze. The Stallion had his back turned and Liam was looking at his reflection in the mirror, which despite a light coating of condensation offered him a frontal view. What he saw astonished him.

In the space ordinarily reserved for a penile sheath and a set of smooth, velvety-skinned nuts, the Stallion had what very much looked to be a vagina. No, Liam revised his observation, not a vagina, a big fat Mare-pussy with a plump black-skinned labia and a thumb-like bulge of a clitoral-hood poking out from the top. The Stallion (?) continued to dry himself (???), sweeping his second towel over his athletic thighs and dabbing at his horse-tail. Liam had no idea how he should react, he was incapable of looking away.

The Stallion-Mare dried himself and preened his mane with his fingers in the mirror, and after maybe half a minute he suddenly became supernaturally cognizant of Liam's presence. He raised his equine head, and his ears swiveled like radar dishes. He turned sharply and saw Liam staring at him. The Stallion-Mare quickly wrapped his towel around his waist, once more obscuring his unusual groin, then he looked up again and frowned over in Liam's direction.

Liam was terrified. He assumed he had stumbled in on a very private thing and would now be chastised. The Stallion-Mare ran his darkly handsome eyes critically over Liam's soaking wet, almost-naked form. And after an appraisal he seemed to arrive at a decision. He approached, clopping over to where Liam was standing.

Oh crap! Growing up gay Liam had always kind of expected to get beaten up sooner or later, though he hadn't anticipated it coming at the hands of a dude with a pussy, or that he'd be soaking wet and wearing a speedo at the time. The Equine came in close, breathing through his partly flared, tunnel-like nostrils. His lean body towered above Liam.

"Give me your phone number" he said.

In his panicked state Liam misunderstood the request. With trembling hands he fumbled with his gym bag, and retrieved the plastic rectangle of his touchscreen phone. He held it out. He thought it was a mugging. Living in the city, he had always kind of expected to get mugged...

"Not your phone, your phone number" he restated. Liam noticed he was no longer frowning. The Stallion-Mare's expression was blank, bored, imperiously neutral, and his voice was calm.

"Oh! Oh..." said Liam, and he blurted out the sequence of numbers that let people to contact him at will.

The Horse grunted throatily in the way they do, and turned and went to the bench containing his stuff, where he picked up his own phone, brought up contacts and inputted Liam's number. Then he tossed his phone in his bag, put on a pair of grey cotton briefs and stuffed the flaccid dildo in the front (ah! so that was what that was for...) and dressed in his own pair of tapered-fit sweats, training shirt and hoodie, gathered his towels, tossed his gym bag over his solid shoulders, and exited. At no point after receiving Liam's number did he acknowledge the petrified, wide-eyed Fox's presence.

Liam gradually comprehended that he wasn't going to get beaten up after all. And once his heart and his stomach had stopped swapping places he glanced down and noticed he had acquired a raging hard-on. The clingy, luminous yellow material was punched sharply out from the inside. Liam had gone numb from the fright, he couldn't feel his legs let alone his dick. He wondered when it had arrived.

Had he seen...? Oh God, this was so humiliating.

He still needed to shower. He stumbled queasily through to the shower room with its rows of showerheads, and thumbed the button that sent hot water crashing over his head and shoulders. He steadied himself by placing his hands against the tiled wall, locking his elbows and hanging his head. The water cascaded over him and spouted from his sharp, whiskered vulpine muzzle.

After a minute Liam regained some of his composure. He adjusted his speedo and allowed his erection to pop from his sheath, kept it inside his swimwear and redirected it towards his hip where it was more comfortable and less visible. Once he had flushed the pool chemicals from his fluffy fur he returned to the changing room, dried on his rainbow towel and put on the sweat-dampened shorts and vest he had arrived in, collected the rest of his stuff, and hurried out.

The night watchman was waiting in the foyer. Liam increased his pace when he saw the older man, a Rhino dressed in a pseudo-policeman's cap, black tie and white shirt. Flashing an apologetic smile Liam ducked out into the cold, bright city night. He jogged across the pedestrian footbridge to his apartment. His semi-concealed erection bounced in his shorts as he ran.

***

Cuntboy.

That was the word Liam learned from the internet on that first night, or C-boy if you preferred to be brief. Alarmingly, every forum and message board he checked claimed cuntboys weren't real, that they were an urban legend. The images that 'c-boy believers' offered as proof were transgender folk, individuals born with female bodies who had undergone surgery and treatment to pass as male, which apparently wasn't the same, and the rest of the images offered were fairly blatant photoshops. The forums were a dead-end, but there Liam discovered the word 'intersex', which was the correct medical term, and equipped with that term he was able to search medical websites. He learned that people had been born with all kinds of genital arrangements; girls with dicks, boys with pussies, both with both, either with neither. He reiterated to himself some facts that he had known since college, such as how physical sex and gender-identity were separate concepts, and how both concepts were often nebulous, negotiable, and were really arguably quite specious. He also learned that the flaccid dildo was called a 'packer', they were worn by some transfolk who wanted to pass as male.

Liam masturbated to completion twice that first night and five more times the next day. He couldn't stop recalling what he had seen, and every time he did he got an erection. The guy had been so sexy. (Liam had decided on male pronouns as the Stallion-Mare had been in the men's locker room, though he was of course open to changing if he was asked to). He was obliged to stop beating off on Sunday; his dick had become too raw, he found it difficult maintain an erection and his effusions had been diminished to paltry dribbles.

It wasn't until late Sunday evening that Liam remembered he had given the intersex Equine his phone number. He'd blocked that bit of the experience out. That worried him. He was still afraid he would be beaten up, somehow, at some point. And yet he obsessively kept his phone charged, and checked repeatedly that it wasn't set to silent.

On Monday he went to work, the same as always. The week passed by and nothing happened. No calls, no texts. He skipped his traditional visit to the gym. He came home on Friday, ate his dinner and put on his gym clothes... and chickened out at the last second and stayed in. To distract himself he purchased a new videogame from the online store and gamed until two o'clock in the morning.

All next week he thought about canceling his membership to Alpha Gym and joining the other, smaller gym down the street. On Friday, exactly two weeks after the incident, while Liam was sitting at his desk finishing off his work for the week that his phone rang. The sound of Lucky Star snapped him out of his work-stupor. He wasn't alarmed, sometimes other departments contacted him on his cell. He didn't recognize the number, it wasn't in his contacts and there was no caller ID.

Liam was about to reject the call when his stomach tightened, and the fur on the back of his neck stood up. Could it be...? There was only one way to find out. He tapped the icon and tentatively brought the handset to his ear. "Hello?" he said.

"Where do you live?" a masculine voice asked. Liam recognized the voice immediately, how could he fail to? He had obsessed over that voice almost as much as he had obsessed over that body. The Stallion-Mare had the most calm, confident male voice, deep and warm like a tropical lagoon.

"I-I'm sorry?" Liam stammered. He half-rose from his desk-chair and peered over the wall of his workstation, and comforted himself that the middle-aged women he shared his office with weren't listening in.

"Where do you live?" the voice repeated. "Street address, apartment number."

Liam stated a series of numbers followed by a single word. It was the name of his building as well as its street address.

"The apartment building?"

"Y-yeah..."

"Which apartment?"

"Forty-fourth floor, apartment six" said Liam.

"I'll bet you've got a pretty good view of the city from up there."

"Um, yeah, it's not bad..." Liam was sweating at the brow, he spun his desk chair and checked behind him.

"What do you do? What's your job?" the Stallion-Mare's voice asked.

"I'm the, um, I mean, I'm the senior data administrator at one of the big finance companies."

"What are your hours?"

"Standard office hours, um, 8:30 to 5:30, and 8:30 to 5 on Fridays."

"Any roommates?"

"No."

"Do you have a partner?"

"Not-not really, um..."

"Let me tell you what is going to happen. Tonight at 10 o'clock I will arrive at your building. You will meet me in the lobby. Together, we will go up to your apartment. Did you hear what I said?"

"Y-yes" Liam stammered, he felt as though he was about to faint.

"Good. Ten o'clock. Don't forget." He hung up.

Liam's phone fell from his hand, it bounced and rattled. He was trembling badly. He loosened his tie and rushed into the bathroom. He ran the faucet and splashed cold water in his face. He pulled himself together, more or less. Then he returned to his desk and muddled through the remainder of his workday.

***

In his apartment that evening Liam sat staring at his clock. He had cooked himself dinner, but found he wasn't hungry so most of the food became leftovers. He tried to game, put on a film, played music; and turned off each as they only made him more agitated. So he sat, tense and anxious, on the edge of his couch. His apartment's wall-clock was digital and so he didn't have the 'tick, tick, tick' of the clock to break the crushing silence.

When the display stated 9:56 Liam left his apartment and entered the elevator, punching the button for the lobby. He did not countenance noncompliance. It was a symptom of his loneliness that he concerned himself little over what might happen, even being beaten up seemed better than sitting alone in his apartment. The elevator dinged, and Liam cautiously entered the lobby.

"Good evening Mr. Foxburger, not hitting the gym tonight?" inquired the concierge, a chirpy male Avian who resembled a Crow only his feathers were red, from behind his desk. He had noticed that Liam was wearing a pair of jeans and a Scandinavian-style woolen sweater in place of his Friday night gym clothes.

"No, I'm, um, meeting a friend" said Liam awkwardly.

"Ah! I see, will you be waiting in here?" the concierge asked, he seemed to be smiling though the beak made it difficult tell.

"Yes..." Liam mumbled, unable to tear his gaze away from of the entrance.

"That's fine, feel free to sit" said the concierge, who then returned to his work. And so Liam waited, perching on one of the cubical purple sofas amongst the concrete planters of the glassy foyer. He took out his phone and kept track of the time.

He arrived at 10:04, appearing dressed in the same tapered fit sweatpants and close-fitting hoodie that the other trainers had worn, in black and with red Alpha Gym logos, and he was carrying a duffel bag slung over a shoulder. Liam got up but otherwise didn't move. The concierge leaned out, looked at Liam, looked at the entrance, and jabbed a button under his desk. There was an electronic buzz and the door unlocked, and the black Horse entered.

Oh wow... It was a dumb Fox stereotype but Liam really did find Horses fabulously attractive, even if this particular Equine lacked the centerpiece of the ensemble. His black mane tumbled in oily ringlets over his thick neck and his shoulder muscles bulged inside his hoodie. He comported himself with easy poise and total confidence.

He strolled up to Liam and said: "Let's go to your apartment."

Liam made no reply, but allowed himself to be walked over to the elevator. Before the doors could slide shut he overheard the concierge muttering wryly to himself: "Enjoy your workout..."

The Crow thought he had hired an escort.

Liam's cheeks blazed with embarrassment. He didn't want to show his face in the lobby ever again, and if that meant never leaving his apartment then so be it.

They rode up in silence, and once on his floor Liam led the way. He fumbled with his keycard and needed several attempts to get it in the swiper, and when he finally got it in he swiped the wrong side and had to start again. If the Equine was annoyed he didn't let it show. He waited patiently, one hand resting on the strap of his duffel bag. Eventually Liam got the door open, and they went inside.

Liam stayed by the door while his self-invited guest conducted a self-guided tour. He checked the compact galley kitchen, the small circular glass dining table along with the three chairs set around it; his living space with its leather couch, curved wood and glass coffee table, TV and game system. The Stallion-Mare took in the view from the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window that consisted one whole side of the apartment. The building was on the edge of a crop of skyscrapers, facing outwards, and commanded a view of the nearby brownstones, and the suburbs and the smoky industrial districts beyond the ribbon of the freeway. He entered the bathroom, which was a wet-room; a showerhead projected downwards from the ceiling, uncontained by partitions, and there was a drain in the middle of the black-tile floor, once again a whole wall was made of glass. Then, after briefly reentering the living space, he rudely thrust his big Horse head inside Liam's bedroom and inspected the low, blandly Japanese-looking double-bed, the ergonomic closets and the by now ubiquitous vast window.

Back in the main living-space he tried the balcony door. He jiggled the handle, and when the door refused to budge he swung his head around and shot Liam in inquiring glance.

"I keep it locked" Liam blurted.

The Stallion-Mare shrugged indifferently and let go of the handle. He strolled into the middle of the space and took a more general, all-encompassing look at the modern, modest little apartment. Approving of what he saw, he unshouldered his duffel bag and dropped it to the floor with a whoosh.

***

He sat on the center cushion of Liam's cream leather couch, adjusted himself so he was not sitting on his tail, and reclined against the backrest and looked with casual interest at Liam, standing, confused and curious, just inside the door.

"Place my bag in the bedroom" said the Equine simply, in his warm, deep voice.

"Uh, sure..." said Liam. He could have asked why or refused, but he didn't. Instead, he made excuses; his guest probably didn't want his stuff cluttering up the living-space, which was not terribly spacious, and Liam would be a good host if he moved it for him. He picked up the duffel bag, it was fairly heavy, and struggled with it into the bedroom.

When he returned his guest had a further task for him: "Move that out of the way" he said, gesturing lazily at the coffee table.

"Where-w-w-where do you want me to put it?" Liam asked, flustered.

"To one side, by the window."

In their current configuration Liam's couch, table and TV made three equally spaced parallel lines. Liam picked up one end of the table. It was unwieldy, and he had to drag it. The Stallion-Mare made no attempt to help him. When Liam was finished the table was against the window, and so the TV, couch and coffee table formed three sides of a box.

"Stand there."

"OK..." Liam moved and stood before of the Stallion-Mare, on his rug that had four rectangular compressions. His curiosity and apprehension boiled over. "I'm sorry," said Liam, smiling, "but, um, w-what exactly-"

The Stallion-Mare silenced him with a raised hand. He sighed wearily, and said: "You'll want to get out of the habit of asking questions."

"I'm sor-"

"Let me explain how this will work; this apartment belongs to me now. All your furniture, all your things, everything you own is now mine. You are my slave-"

"What?" Liam whimpered, his voice was barely audible and a distraught aspect had emerged on his furry vulpine features.

The Stallion-Mare raised his hand again.

"You are my slave," he repeated in the same cool, disinterested tone. He continued rapidly: "You are my possession and you belong to me. You will do whatever I tell you to do. You will not talk back. You will not ask questions unless you need clarification on a task I have set for you. If you need to speak you will ask my permission first. You will always address me as 'sir'. You will say, 'permission to speak, sir', and I will decide if you can speak. If you fail to follow my instructions, or if I feel that you are not trying your best, then you will suffer forfeits of privileges as well as punishments. Do you understand?"

Liam's lips pursed and wobbled. He was verbally impotent, robbed of the power of speech.

"Would you like me to say it again?" the Stallion-Mare asked. He had rattled off the rules for the situation like a cop reading someone their rights for the thousandth time, Liam had heard perhaps half could barely remember the rest.

"Um, n-n-no..." he said.

"'No, sir'" the Stallion-Mare corrected him, softly, yet firmly. "I think I'll start easy. I noticed you play videogames, I suppose that you know what a tutorial level is. Do you know what a tutorial level is?" The question hung in the air.

Liam intuited the response the Stallion-Mare was fishing for, and he understood his answer would be future-defining; not in the content, but in the form. His lips pursed and wavered, and with an exhalation of relief he mumbled: "Yes... sir..."

"Good" said the Stallion-Mare. If he was gratified he didn't show it. He remained as calm and inscrutable as ever. "Tonight is your tutorial level. The challenges will be easier and the punishments will be lesser. Tomorrow, we will start to play the game properly. Take my advice and enjoy it while it lasts."

Liam gulped and swallowed dryly, so dry he strained his Adam's apple.

"Fetch me a glass of water."

Liam jolted, he fulfilled the request with the grace and coordination of a baby horse learning to stand and walk. He opened a cupboard and retrieved a glass, filled it from the faucet and brought it to his master.

"Thank you, slave" said the Stallion-Mare, upon receiving his drink. "Say 'you're welcome'."

"You're w-welcome-"

"'Sir'"

"Sir - you're welcome, sir."

"Such a polite slave, I hope you can keep this up." He sipped the water and then set the glass aside. "Bring me your wallet."

Liam retrieved his brown leather wallet from the wooden bowl on his kitchen's granite work-surface, and handed it over. The Stallion-Mare picked through the brown leather fold. "Where's your driver's license?"

"I-I don't drive, um, sir."

The Stallion-Mare grumbled throatily. Flicking through, he located Liam's keycard and took it from its membranous pouch. It had the dimensions of a credit card and contained his photograph as well as his full name and apartment number.

"Liam Joseph Foxburger" he read, his chest tightened slightly as he suppressed a snigger at the unfortunate coincidence of his name. "Hmm. Alright." He put the keycard back inside its pouch, and tossed the wallet casually aside. It struck the coffee table with a dull leathery thud. "Now take off your clothes."

"What?!" Liam wheezed breathlessly, watery eyes popping out.

"Don't talk back" the Stallion-Mare warned. He said again: "Take off your clothes."

There was a heavy moment of pause. Liam screwed up his face, and took a shaky hold of the hem of his hairy knitted sweater, and following the struggle of a few seconds tugged it over his head, messing up and tufting some of the red fur of his scalp which he compulsively smoothed as tufts were irritating. He wore no shirt nothing underneath.

"Don't drop it on the floor" said the Stallion-Mare, "fold it and put it somewhere."

Liam lay the sleeves on the chest and folded the sweater in half, and placed it on his circular glass dining table. He unbuckled his belt, unthreaded it from his jeans, coiled it and placed it with his sweater. Then, with some trepidation, he opened his button fly and popped the loophole at the rear that let his tail to protrude, slid his pants down, folded them neatly and added them to the pile, leaving him in his boxer shorts.

"Everything."

Liam winced, he avoided the Stallion-Mare's steady gaze.

The Stallion-Mare sighed. "Come closer." Liam stepped in. The Equine beckoned him nearer, wiggling a jet black digit. Liam leaned in, and the Stallion-Mare sat up to meet him. Liam gazed into those soulful, muddy-brown irises, he was near enough to see the galactic swirls within.

"When I give an order," the Equine said, "you don't think about it. You don't wonder if you'll like it, or if it'll be embarrassing. You perform the task. Understand? You don't think about anything, you do as you are told. Now, be a good slave and take off your underwear." The Stallion-Mare reclined again into the cushions of the couch, and Liam retreated a step and half back to his original place.

Up until this point, Liam had been fighting a battle inside himself. It felt as though his body was bound all around by invisible ropes, he thought he was pathetic because he couldn't break them. The ropes were humiliating because he still imagined himself as a person, a man. It was clearer now; he was not a man, or a Fox, or a Liam, or a twenty-three year old administrator for a large financial firm; he was a slave, without dignity or prerogative. His fears and anxieties didn't matter in fact they no longer existed. His consciousness was reduced to a function and his responsibilities were nil. That was his role. That was his ideal. The sensation was liberating, serene. It was transformative. He felt weightless. He understood now.

Liam hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and slid them down, and stepped out of them. He put them with the rest of his clothes and returned, uncomfortably yet capably nude, to stand again in front of the Stallion-Mare.

The Horse would have seen a 5'5" Fox with a slim, reedy build. His glossy red fur giving way to a dullish white on his chest, stomach and groin, and to reddish-brown 'socks' on his feet and shins. The backs of his up-sticking ears were also reddish brown, darkening to black at the tips. And there were sharp black slashes on his snout, behind his whiskers. His coloration was natural, not entirely symmetrical, and the divisions were fuzzily defined. At his white-furred groin there was the vertical tube of his sheath, and below that a pair of adequately sized, dangly balls.

"Turn 'round, I want to see your ass," said the Stallion-Mare crudely, he had no reason to be polite. He was now sitting with his thighs spread, resting one hand near his groin like a man receiving a lap-dance.

Liam turned and showed the Stallion-Mare the fur of his back, dented by the blades of his shoulders, and his huge white-tipped brush tail. He never lost sight of his master, he saw him in the black mirror of the TV screen. He was tilting his head, checking out his butt.

"Bend over further."

Liam leaned forward and placed his palms on his knees. Thinking of himself as a slave meant he was capable of carrying out requests, however that did not mean he had shed his sense of shame, or the degrading, invasive feeling of being leered at. These feelings were not cast off lightly or easily. And by his complicity he felt strangely culpable, he experienced the shame of the victim as well as the guilt of the perpetrator. Wincing, he raised his tail and afforded the Stallion-Mare - a stranger - an unimpeded view of his fluffy-white backsack, his bulging perineum, and the pinkish bald-spot spot of his tailhole.

"Face me." Liam turned. "OK now place both your hands on top of your head and close your eyes." Liam closed his eyes, stacked his hands on his head. "Stay like that, if you take your hands off your head or open your eyes you will receive a punishment. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Alright good, now get hard for me."

This wasn't very embarrassing, it was less embarrassing than showing his tailhole. Liam had been expecting this development. His first instinct was to touch himself, however with his hands on his head this wasn't an option. His arms crunched and fluttered, and he squirmed as he stood. Willing to start, yet unsure of how to proceed.

"Use your imagination, slave, and gyrate your hips."

OK... Liam wondered how he was going to pull this off. Then he remembered an image that never failed to cause his body to react, the image of his cuntboy houseguest emerging, steaming from the scalding gym showers. It worked, he felt a swarming sensation and his cock began to swell inside his sheath. It wasn't easy conjuring an image that was by now two-weeks old, and grown vague with time, so instead he focused on picturing the Stallion-Mare naked as he sat on the couch in front of him. He pictured him slouching, lithe gut muscles creased where his athletic body bent, one hand resting on his lap while his other arm stretched across the backrest. He struggled to recall the exact look of the Stallion-Mare's crotch, though he knew from pornography what a fat black-skinned Horse-pussy looked like, and soon he had constructed for himself a decent, usable mental picture.

His sheath swelled, and the sharp red tip of his cock emerged. He followed the advice he had been given and thrust sensually into the air, and strained his groin, and his cock pushed a little further out with each movement. After six inches of sharp-tipped, ruby-red Fox-cock had emerged his sheath became caught on his knot, and got stuck. The lobes ballooned his sheath from inside and stretched the malleable skin of his sheath painfully. Liam made a single continual, sustained, upward straining thrust. And after a moment's discomfort his sheath finally slipped over his knot and bundled around his narrow stem, and his fully erect cock emerged.

"Well done" said the Stallion-Mare. As dumb as it surely sounded, Liam received the praise enthusiastically. He hoped for further praise. He badly wanted the Stallion-Mare to like him, and to do that he was willing to be a good slave. The existence of punishment implied the promise of reward. "No matter what happens you are to keep your eyes closed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." Liam heard the hooves clopping on hardwood, followed by the electro-static sound of a polyester blend hoodie being pulled off. The Stallion-Mare was undressing. Suddenly, keeping his eyes closed was a real test of his resolve. Liam didn't dare look, and so he tried to 'see' by listening. His vulpine ears rolled attentively forward on his scalp and twitched at each fresh noise. He heard more clothing, followed by a dull thudding, rubbery clatter, which was surely his 'packer', the flaccid dildo he wore so nobody would notice his lack of bulge. And then he heard another tight fabric whoosh that he identified as the Stallion-Mare's underwear.

He didn't have long to wait before he heard the sound of masturbation. His manically focused ears detected the sound of a fingertip manipulating soft, squishy flesh. He sniffed, and picked up the scent of sexual arousal, distinct from his own, as it diffused into the warm air of the apartment. The smell was unexpected, though perhaps Liam should not have been surprised. The scent of the Stallion-Mare's aroused genitals was not at all feminine, no, his pussy smelled like a dick.

"Stay like that," said the Stallion-Mare, "don't move a muscle..."

Keeping his eyes closed was torture. There was a change in the air, a warmth and a closeness permeated. The Stallion-Mare's masturbation increased in vigor. He noted wet labial squelching and more than one low, pleasured masculine grunt. He no longer needed his imagination to keep himself hard, his red rocket-ship dick strained constantly and leaked like a broken faucet, trailing a spider's thread of slick pre-seed down to rug under his feet.

The torture lasted several minutes. Liam squirmed and thrust into the air, he was desperate to open his eyes and it was all he could do to keep his hands on his scalp.

"You can open your eyes and drop your arms" said the Stallion-Mare, his voice had gained a breathless quality, "but don't touch yourself."

Liam let his arms fall, they had gone slightly numb from being raised for so long, and opened his eyes. He saw his master as he had expected to see him, the image his imagination had produced was largely accurate. He slouched, gut muscles creased and thighs spread, the slippery fingers of his dominant hand making a jiggling/hooking motion against his pussy as he pleasured himself.

His pussy was everything Liam remembered. His labia was an elliptical ring that bore a fair resemblance to a horse collar. A soft rubbery exterior transitioned into a taut and fleshy-pink interior, partly on display thanks to those tugging fingers. Everything glistened, and his clitoral hood bulged. However the biggest turn on was the sheer novelty; the masculine body combined with the feminine genitalia, it was as perverse as it was incredible, and it was as hot as hell.

"Get on your knees, and service me" the Stallion-Mare decreed lustily.

Liam folded his body and adopted a kneeling positon, and then transitioned to all-fours, and crawled until his head was between the Stallion-Mare's thighs. His pussy dominated Liam's vision, he saw every crease, every fold in extreme detail, and the incongruous and intoxicating scent of male arousal flooded and rapidly overwhelmed his sinuses.

Apprehensive that the taste might be unpleasant, he hesitantly dipped his chin and delivered an exploratory lick. He wasn't bad! The Stallion-Mare's pussy had the familiar gamey taste of cock. Liam licked again, and several more times, and soon the slimy texture of pussy juice coated the inside of his mouth. He halted momentarily to adjust his position, adopting a pose he could maintain; knees on the soft rug, hands resting easily on his master's thighs. Once content, he got to work.

He licked a couple more times, and then he buried his nose in the Stallion-Mare's man-snatch. He'd had a girlfriend for three years, he knew how to eat pussy. And, well, not that anyone ever said this out loud, but, Horse-pussies weren't exactly difficult to work with. They were kind of huge down there, their fun-bits weren't exactly hard to locate. The Stallion-Mare relaxed, spread his thighs, and placed a steadying hand on the back of Liam's head. He needn't have bothered. Liam didn't need encouragement or guidance. This was his opportunity to prove himself useful, and the Stallion-Mare was so unbearably hot that it was good for Liam too; providing pleasure was itself pleasurable, though not necessarily in a physical sense.

"You've done this before..." the Stallion-Mare groaned. Liam didn't stop to explain.

He didn't want to stop, it was too much for him. He licked, kissed and sucked lightly, breaking the seal immediately each time, and did not balk at the idea of cramming several inches of his narrow muzzle inside the Stallion-Mare's pussy so that his tongue could reach the pink fleshy interior. There were moments when his slit-nostrils were pressed closed, and with his mouth occupied there were long periods in which he neglected to breathe. He drooled copiously, consumed by the act he hardly noticed. He guzzled pussy with abandon.

He was ravenous. His oral love-making combined the ecstasy of the religious zealot with the miserable pathos of the drug addict. His body blazed and his heart raced. He shut his eyes and let his insignificant, forgettable self be subsumed by servitude. His self was all gone. There was no longer a self, only service.

It was a turn-on like no other. He had inched around it in the past, with Becky, when she had dragged him up to her dorm and thrown him down onto her bed and pinned his arms, and before with Kyle, he secret high school boyfriend, who he was always submissive towards, but had never given himself over so completely. He plunged now into a bottomless pool, sinking infinitely into its depths, to a place so deep he could not possibly come up for air and where there was no light, and once there he no longer sensed the water's embrace.

He never touched himself, his hands remained fixed on the Stallion-Mare's muscled thighs. It made no difference. Liam suffered a hands-free orgasm, a sissy climax.

His body crunched and shuddered, and his rocket-ship cock twitched in pulses as he squirted rope after rope of his cloudy, stringy semen into the strip of hardwood between the base of the couch and the edge of the rug. And with each pulse his Fox-knot swelled and tied with thin air. He moaned raggedly as his belly contracted and the air was pushed from his lungs. His muscles weakened, it was a struggle to keep from collapsing.

The Stallion-Mare, noticing first the odd behavior of his slave, and second the suddenly strong scent of cum, sat up and looked, and saw the splatter of jism on the floor in between his dark hooves.

"Get up" he said. His tone remained neutral, though he wouldn't have given the order if he was pleased.

"I'm sorry..." Liam offered feebly, still shuddering, and breathing heavily as though he'd been running.

"I don't remember giving you permission to speak," the Stallion-Mare rebuked him. "Get up."

Liam rose unsteadily. His cock had gone soft at the stem but was otherwise undiminished, his knot would retain blood in his shaft for the next five minutes, so his cock hung heavy before his red-furred thighs and continued to dribble cum. Liam kept his eyes penitently on the ground and sunk his shoulders. He knew he was in trouble, he believed he'd earned it... and things had been going so well.

"Go stand in the corner."

Liam shuffled mutely off, and stood by the door to the apartment's balcony while the Stallion-Mare considered his next move. Liam wanted to apologize, and explain that he hadn't wanted to cum and that it had been an accident, and that it would never happen again. Yet he lacked permission to speak. The stress was overwhelming. He wanted badly for the Stallion-Mare to understand. His recent orgasm made him emotional. His vision blurred as tears welled in his eyes, and he began to cry.

"Don't cry" said the Stallion-Mare, he retained his neutral voice though his tone was strangely awkward. It was almost a plea. "You don't have to cry."

Liam sniffled as big tears rolled over his cheeks, and his shoulders shook. The Stallion-Mare looked away, scratched the back of his thick equine neck, and finally raised himself to his feet while avoiding the puddle of Fox-cum. He approached Liam, and drew him into a hug, pulling Liam's tear-wetted cheek into his bare chest.

Liam returned the embrace. He felt better, he wasn't in trouble, and his master was not very disappointed in him.

"It's OK," said the Stallion-Mare "I'm not angry at you." He stroked the fur of Liam's back, it was comforting. "Look at me" he let go of Liam's head, and the Fox looked up at him. The Stallion-Mare used his thumb to wipe tears from his cheeks. "I will only give you a punishment if you are being lazy. If you are trying your best you will have nothing to worry about. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." Liam sniffed. The stream of tears was slackening off.

"Listen; I never expected you to be a perfect slave on your first night" he said. "But do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to coach you and guide you, and make you into very good slave. I think you have a lot of potential, already I have seen you improve and make progress." There was a pause. "I paid you a compliment" the Stallion-Mare raised his brow encouragingly.

"Thank you, sir" said Liam, he smiled gamely. He was overjoyed that his master believed he could be a good slave one day.

The Stallion-Mare glanced up at the wall-clock. "It's getting late" he said, "I want you rested for tomorrow. You have a big day ahead of you, and I want you washed and ready for bed by eleven." He wrapped a strong arm around Liam's narrow shoulders. "But first," he said, "you have a mess you need to clean up." Liam was led out from the corner over to the couch, where a puddle awaited him.

"Clean your mess."

Liam looked at his cum, then at his master. The Horse placed a hand on the nape of his neck and gently pushed him, first to his knees, then to his hands and knees. He stayed with Liam, kneeling beside him on the rug and keeping that gentle guiding hand in place. Liam glanced up at the Stallion-Mare, who nodded lightly to confirm the order. So Liam bowed his head, and, while his master stroked the fur of the back of his neck, licked his warm cum off of floor

***

Liam was not permitted to sleep in the bed. The Stallion-Mare explained that sleeping in the bed with him was a high privilege that his slave had not yet earned. And so he constructed a sleeping space out of his living room rug, which he folded in half to make a thin mattress. A throw pillow from his couch was repurposed as his bed pillow, and he covered himself with a blanket from his closet. He was, however, allowed to wear his pajamas. Naturally the Stallion-Mare took the bed, he sprawled across the middle of the mattress, nude under the thin sheets.

"Goodnight, slave." Another pause. "Say goodnight."

"Goodnight, sir."

The light flicked off, and the bedroom plunged into a semi-darkness, lit by the light-pollution of the city. Liam lay at the foot of what was once his bed, and let twenty minutes or so slide by. The Stallion-Mare's breathing grew slow and regular with the onset of sleep.

Liam sat up in his 'bed'. Within his arm's reach, on the polished surface of one the bedroom's ergonomic storage spaces, lay his mobile phone. The Stallion-Mare hadn't taken it away, nor had he ordered Liam not to call anyone. He hadn't made any attempt to isolate him from the outside world. Liam extended an arm and silently retrieved the phone. He lay back down again and pulled his blanket over his head to conceal the glow, and jabbed the touchscreen. His vulpine features were illuminated by a greenish light.

Friday - 23:29 - No Missed Calls - No New Messages - Four Bars of Reception.

The concierge's phone number was listed in his contacts. Liam was entirely indifferent to the red-feathered Crow's opinion, his house-guest turned slave-master being mistaken for his escort was by far the least embarrassing event of the evening. A touch of the button and a few whispered words, and he could have security summoned to eject the Stallion-Mare, a man whose name he did not know. It would be easy. The choice was his to make.

Liam stared at the screen. Time passed. First the screen dimmed, and then it went black. He had made his decision. He reached out and replaced the phone on the cabinet surface, then he rolled on his side and closed his eyes. A profound sense of peace washed through him. He drifted into deep, dreamless sleep.