We had spent yesterday backtracking to farms more distant from the mountains. We weren't sure if any farmer to date had been alarmed at the loss of any stolen articles — things were always being misplaced, and "there's a runaway slave from the breeding pens breaking into our homes" would not be the first idea to spring to local minds. But I was uncomfortable with the idea of setting out in plain sight to the mountain trail carrying stolen articles right in front of the farmers we'd stolen them from.
After visiting two farmhouses, Runner had gathered everything from the short checklist we had made. Once that was done, we hoped to steal a dogboy and attempt the mountain crossing. Then we had picked enough peaches to fill the basket of our newly-acquired cart. At the end of the busy day, Runner had asked me — as he often did — to "show me another sex way."
I was starting to run out of favorite positions, but I'd showed Runner one Maverick and I had often enjoyed. We both sat upright on the ground, with our legs intertwined so our cocks could touch. We hugged each other, and pressed our bodies together, and kissed passionately — for nearly an hour. Then I grabbed some fat I'd trimmed off our food earlier, and spread it on Runner's very hard cock. I grabbed Runner's shoulders and lifted myself up, then slowly lowered myself onto him. He hugged me tightly to him. I lifted myself a few inches, then lowered myself again. Each time, the head of my cock rubbed against his belly fur. Not hard — I couldn't have cum from just the rubbing, but it was an extra pleasure, added to the feeling of Runner inside me.
I'd kept moving like that, slowly, until Runner begged, "Please...?". Then I started bouncing up and down, and in a couple of minutes I felt the steenbok cum inside me. That started my own orgasm, a huge, shuddering thing. I clamped my mouth on Runner's to muffle my screams as I spurted onto his fur, again and again and again.
Afterwards, we'd traded kisses more languidly. Runner, still flushed from his orgasm, asked me to promise we could do it that way again soon, "but I want to be on top next time." That was the way it worked, just as with Maverick — both of us wanted to be the one feeling his lover inside him, so we had to take turns being fucked. I smiled and said with mock reluctance, "Oh, okay," as we'd settled to the ground for a night's sleep in the mutual nipple-kissing position. I was growing very fond of that. I'd had a few nightmares since being stranded on the island, but so far none when I slept with Runner's nipple in my mouth.
Back when I'd been visiting the clubs I'd always enjoyed being fucked, but it hadn't been the earth-shattering, better-than-my-own-orgasm sensation that I felt now. Only with a partner who I felt very close to and very attracted to — first with Scott, and then with Maverick and Larry. And now with Runner...
Now I crouched behind a bush, peering through its branches at the tiny figure of Runner, far ahead on the outskirts of the chosen farm. I took in a quick breath, my heart pounding. Runner was backing toward me, bent over. I couldn't see around Runner, but I assumed... yes, there he was. A dogboy was following Runner's slow retreat, obviously interested in the bite sized chunks of meat and peaches Runner was holding out for him.
My guess was that dogboys were always kept a little hungry during their working hours. That way they'd be feeling cranky — and less tolerant of slaveboys getting out of line. Hungry dogboys might be more motivated to bite a recalcitrant slaveboy's leg. And the slaveboys were fully aware of that danger. At least, that was my hunch, based on the behavior of the dogboys who had earlier menaced me until Runner had rescued me. In any case, this dogboy did seem to want the food Runner was offering him.
As the dogboy came closer, I saw he had light brown headfur, slightly curly, in the very short style enforced on all slaves on the island. Instead of a metal collar like mine, the dogboy had a buckle-on leather dog collar, with no lock — a dogboy had neither the physical ability nor the inclination to remove his collar anyway. He had leather dogboy booties on his feet — all four of them — like the other dogboys I'd seen. The dogboy had a handsome face, and seemed to be 100% mainlander blood. I couldn't see any hint of the islander genes so dominant in Runner. The dogboy looked like any teenager I might pass at the mall, laughing with friends, walking fully dressed on two legs rather than trotting naked on all fours. He was about Runner's age, and had probably been working at the farm a very short time. I had suggested Runner try to attract the youngest dogboy he could find. I hoped that the most recent additions to the farm's "staff" might not have had time to bond with other dogboys and be unwilling to leave. I also hoped that a newer dogboy would be more susceptible to the behavior-modification we were about to try.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. So much depended on what happened in the next few minutes. And it wasn't without its own danger.
When Runner and the dogboy were within about twenty feet of me, I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to move. I rose to my feet from behind the bush that had hidden me.
The dogboy saw my unexpected movement. He froze and glared at me, baring his teeth, which were filed to points like the ones I'd seen before. A low growl came from the back of his throat. Obviously I had no business being here, so far beyond the farm's outer boundaries, and the dogboy was determined to correct the situation.
The dogboy barked twice, and I was amazed again at how authentic the sound was. Of course, as high-pitched as it was, it was really the bark of a dog much smaller than the boy. But slaveboys here had no basis for making that comparison, and it was a threatening sound to any slaveboy.
We were far enough from the farm that normal conversation wouldn't be audible from there. But prolonged barking would be heard and investigated. We had planned for this. Runner knelt quickly beside the dogboy and said sharply, "Stop!" As I had hoped, it worked. I assumed that dogboys were trained to obey anybody wearing clothes, and that they would understand a variety of simple verbal commands. Something as simple as "Stop" could hardly fail to be one of them. The dogboy quieted, though he continued growling softly, and didn't move farther toward me.
Runner offered the dogboy some more bits of sliced peaches. While the dogboy was licking the treats out of Runner's hand, I picked up the vest from the pile of clothes beside me and began dressing. The vest was the one Runner had given me last week, and it was now supplemented by the standard floppy hat and a pair of leather shorts.
As I finished, I saw that the dogboy was looking at me with the first completely intelligent expression I had seen on any dogboy, one of pure puzzlement.
Beside the dogboy, Runner began undressing — dropping the hat, kicking away his mocassins, dropping his shorts, and shrugging out of the vest.
The dogboy looked helplessly back and forth between Runner and me. Runner in particular seemed to befuddle him — the bearer of delicious snacks, previously accepted as a master, now standing next to him as naked as any slaveboy. The dogboy made an uncertain "rff" sound, trying to process a situation for which no previous training suggested a response. Any upright-walking person with whom he had contact was either a master or a target. He'd no idea that anyone could change teams.
Runner reached into his bag for more food. He knelt again beside the dogboy and held out some meat slices in his hand. I came closer, knelt on the other side and began petting the dogboy. The dogboy gave me that same puzzled look, but let me continue stroking his headfur and rubbing his back, while he licked food again from Runner's hand.
The dogboy's reaction to this point was encouraging. I decided it was time to put the second phase of the plan into action. I reached underneath the dogboy, and slid my hand slowly down his stomach to his cock.
The dogboy seemed to want to pull away at first, and I stopped for a moment. The dogboy bent his head down and looked to see what I was doing with my hand. I waited, holding my breath, to see whether he would run.
He didn't. My hand was nearly touching the dogboy's cock; he had to be feeling some excitement. He looked up now, straight into my eyes, and made a new sound, something between a puppy-whimper and a sigh of desire.
I slid my hand farther down now, gave the dogboy a moment to get used to the feeling of my hand on his cock, and started rubbing gently. The dogboy moaned a little. I licked my hand and wrapped it around his organ, still moving slowly. He began breathing in rapid, shallow sips, accompanied by that same whimpering sound.
I continued my rubbing motion, leaned in closer, and softly kissed and licked the dogboy's neck, just behind his ear. On the other side, Runner did the same, and reached under the dogboy with a wet finger to begin playing with his nipples. I didn't know exactly what kind of stimulation the dogboy would find most arousing, so we were going for a full sensory overload.
My guess was that no dogboy had ever experienced this level of intense sexual attention. He wouldn't be a virgin — I was sure one or more of the farmers had used him — and he had probably had anal sex with other dogboys. But no dogboy was physically capable of doing what I was doing, and the farmers wouldn't give a damn about a slave's pleasure.
The dogboy was moaning now, his eyes closed, his mouth open, his hips twitching in a rhythm that matched my hand movements, his head bent down to expose more of his neck to our tongues.
I slid down, letting the steenbok keep up the neck kisses and nipple stim, and enveloped the dogboy with my lips. I was pretty sure that this, too, would be new to him: other dogboys could lick him, but the lip lock and suction that I was applying would be difficult with a mouth full of teeth filed to sharp points. Sure enough, he reacted, panting, almost crying in his need for more of the pleasure I was giving him.
I reached behind him with a finger and wormed it into his tailhole. I wiggled it around until I found his prostate, and slid my finger back and forth across it.
He cried out suddenly, another fully anthro sound, and his entire body quivered as jet after jet of semen spurted into my mouth. His stubby forearms could no longer support him and he dropped shakily onto his elbows, breathing in gasps.
When I was sure the dogboy's orgasm was over, I withdrew my finger and stopped moving my mouth. But Runner continued kissing the dogboy's neck and playing with his nipples. The dogboy turned to Runner and licked his cheek, making him giggle. Then the dogboy bent down and kissed my neck.
I looked at Runner and nodded. The licking was an excellent sign — the dogboy had almost certainly never before offered any affection to anyone other than another dogboy.
We both stood, I undressed and put my clothes back in Runner's bag, while Runner dressed. Runner picked up the bag, and the two of us began walking away. It was time to see whether the plan had worked.
I tried not to look directly at the dogboy as we walked off, but I could see his stunned expression out of the corner of my eye. Seconds later, he came galloping after us with an anxious-sounding bark.
We both knelt as the dogboy reached us, offering warm hugs and back rubs as he licked our faces again, wriggling and whimpering with excitement.
It worked. We've made a new friend.
Runner laughed again as the dogboy's tongue lapped against his chin. He asked, "Why doesn't he talk, Wynn? I never heard any dogboy talk."
"You have to learn when you're a baby, Runner. When they took the Big Boys away and you got your littles to take care of, they couldn't talk at first, right?
Runner nodded. "They mostly just cried. But after awhile they could talk."
"Right. They had to learn, and they really needed to do it when they were babies. It's something special about babies, the way they can learn to do things they see and hear older people doing around them. This dogboy just grew up around other dogboys like him. He does what they did, but just like him, they didn't talk." I had read about cases of people who had grown from infancy to adulthood, or adolescence, in non-verbal environments. Despite efforts of experts, most of them never learned to speak.
It suddenly occurred to me that the dogboy was not, however, truly without language. He actually did have one, though it wasn't as rich as the one Runner and I spoke. It was a language of pure emotion, consisting of barks, growls, whines, and any other sounds a dog might make, and he used it to say how he felt about things happening around him and to him. It was, indeed, the language he had learned as a baby — no wonder he could do it so well — and it had been passed down through generations of dogboys, learned from the real dogs that the first baby dogboys had lived with.
I'm a Hanging Boy, with special training in reading people. I could probably do much better than most people at learning to understand the dogboy's language.
We need to give him a name, I told myself. After a moment's thought, I said, "Let's call him 'Puppy.' "
"What's that mean?"
"In my part of the world, we have dogboys that are called puppies. Puppyboys. They walk on four legs just like him..." I gave the dogboy another affectionate squeeze, and decided to leave out explaining to Runner about the modified dog-tails, "...but they wanted to become what they are. They're really friendly, and they just try to make people happy. I want him to be like that."
"They can't talk either?"
"Well, they can, but they don't. That's part of being a puppyboy. So that's another way they're like him."
I sat back a little. When the dogboy looked at me, I put his hand to my chest. "Wynn." I reached and touched Runner's shoulder. "Runner." Then I touched the dogboy's shoulder. "Puppy." I repeated the cycle in a different order, and then a third time, and then said, "Runner?"
I smiled as Puppy turned immediately to Runner and licked his face once more. I said, "Wynn?" and laughed as Puppy lunged to give me a few more licks. Finally I said, "Puppy?" and clapped my hands when Puppy barked, as if calling attention to himself.
He did catch on to that a lot faster than a real dog could. He's not an animal. He's intelligent. Maybe he'll never speak our language, because he's past that age when he would try to imitate anything we do. But that doesn't mean he can't learn anything.
I stood again, and grinned at Runner, who was also rising. "I think we're ready."
With Puppy trotting behind, we headed back toward our camp by the mountain trail.
When we arrived back at the camp, I judged that it must be late afternoon. I was sure it had taken hours for Runner to creep up on the farm, wait for a dogboy to come close enough, and then entice him away. We'd spent more time establishing rapport with Puppy, and hours more to return to our base camp. I didn't want to go up the trail and get stuck there in total darkness, and neither did Runner. And puppy might panic in the darkness in an unfamiliar environment — and a misstep would send him tumbling down the rocky slope. We decided it would be best to wait for morning.
Puppy was watching closely as Runner took off his farmer's outfit. I stroked Puppy's back in case any calming was needed when Puppy saw Runner naked again. But it seemed that we had successfully short-circuited Puppy's training. Puppy's upbringing was alien from anything experienced in my world, but maybe the tendency to question everything was just hard-wired into teenagers. Lucky for us.
We ate dinner from Runner's bag, taking turns letting Puppy eat from our hands. After that we played a few more repetitions of Runner's pebbles-in-the-circles game, with the usual result.
As I looked over the smoothed-out area where Runner and I had been sleeping for several nights, I absently back-handed away a twig that had fallen from the overhanging tree into the midst of our bed. Puppy gave a brief bark, sprang after the twig, picked it up in his mouth, and trotted back to stand in front of me with a hopeful expression.
I gave him an astonished look. I wasn't sure whether games of fetch were instinctive to dogs or a matter of training, but I was pretty sure they weren't instinctive to humans. Maybe a century or so back when dogboys were raised alongside real dogs, settlers had played the game with the dogs, the dogboys had learned to play along, and then settlers kept doing it.
It was going to be really disconcerting to keep seeing signs of Puppy's humanity in one instant, and then in the next instant see him behave more like a dog than all but the most dedicated puppyboys. I didn't want to demean the dogboy by treating him like a mindless animal, playing Fetch. On one level I understood the appeal of puppyboys, but I had never felt that appeal personally.
But Puppy stood in front of me, whining hopefully. I suddenly wasn't so sure it was really demeaning. It certainly didn't seem to be so to Puppy. Puppy was giving the impression that it was an enjoyable game, occupying a place in his heart identical to the pebble game in Runner's.
I reached for the stick, and Puppy happily relinquished it. I threw it about twenty feet, and with an excited yelp, Puppy turned and raced after it again.
Runner took turns with me throwing the stick. Before long, whichever of us threw it, Puppy would return it to the other. He's being anthro again, right in the midst of acting like a dog. Puppy had quickly understood that Runner and I wanted to take turns, and was accommodating us. I didn't think any real dog would have caught on that quickly.
At last Puppy dropped the stick at my feet and ran to the nearby stream for a drink. When he returned, I had the impression he had something in mind other than continuing the game. He stood in front of me and whined in a different, more breathy way, a small smile curling his lips. He dropped his head and looked under himself toward his crotch, then looked up and whined again.
I choked back a laugh. One way or another, he did manage to communicate. "You want sex again, Puppy?"
Puppy had no particular reaction to the never-before-heard word, but whined and looked at his crotch again.
I smiled at Runner. "We'd better do him again. We need to stay friends with him." I looked at Puppy again. "Puppy likes sex." Let's see how long it takes to teach him the word, I thought. As before, I reached under Puppy's stomach to his cock, my hand curling around it.