Chapter 1

Let me tell you about Megan. She could be a charming, beautiful woman when it suited her, but most often she liked to play the arrogant bitch. At other times, she addressed the world at large behind a mask of cool efficiency, piloting our fortunes through good times and bad. Which of those personas was the real Mistress Megan, perhaps not even she could know for certain.

Three years ago, I'd been seventeen-years-old and a favorite of Mistress Laura, the woman who'd brought me into the clandestine world of catfighting. I'd been modeling at the time, not much of a fighter at all, and so it wasn't my non-existent skills that attracted her eye; she simply had a thing for beautiful young women.

But beauty isn't always the blessing most people assume it to be. I practiced fighting and worked on building a body that wasn't merely pleasing to the eye, but sleek with muscle. I grew stronger and eventually entered the arena against a girl my own age, or slightly younger, actually. I lost my virginity along with my first fight, to a pack sister named Melissa while Laura and her Pride watched.

I never fought again, although I would beg my Mistress often for the opportunity. She loved me, however, and too much for her own good. She kept me in her bed, treating my body to the most exquisite tortures imaginable. Someone might expect such favoritism to cause dissent and jealousy among the other girls in the pack, but that wasn't so. My sisters felt only sympathy for me. Not because of any pain or humiliation I might endure for Laura's pleasure, but because they knew how badly I wanted to fight.

Anyone can be a toy and a great many girls are precisely that. They come and go at the whim of their owners. If they break, they're thrown away with casual disregard. There's nothing special about being beautiful and if I wasn't allowed to at least try and prove myself as a woman, then I was worthless. But that's precisely what Laura had forgotten and she'd elevated me far above my true value.

Something like that doesn't remain a secret for very long. When Megan discovered how precious I'd become to my Mistress, she laid a cunning trap. They're very jealous of each other, the women who rule their packs, and they plot and scheme endlessly in hopes of injuring their rivals. Reputation is everything and through me, Megan thought she detected a weakness in Laura.

There's one grand tournament held every year to determine which Mistress holds dominance over the others. That's the real prize, and the only one that matters, but there are always a great many wagers placed. Great sums of money are won and lost. Likewise the cats themselves may occasionally find themselves won or lost to a hated rival, for none of us would willingly bear the shame of being enslaved by another Pride. Our loyalty is unquestionably to our Mistress, whoever she may be, but our hearts must always belong to the pack that birthed us.

A woman only becomes a Mistress if she is a great fighter. They're the best, and if a Mistress is not, someone is always willing to challenge her for ownership of the pack. At thirty-one years of age, Laura was in her prime. I'd only witnessed one challenge to her position and she'd dispatched the threat with ruthless zeal.

Renee, twenty-eight years old and regarded as the strongest cat in Laura's pack, ended her career sobbing and broken. It's customary for the loser of such a fight to be permanently maimed as both a punishment for failure and a warning to others. It was a custom our Mistress observed with a bone shattering kick to Renee's left knee. She would learn to walk again, but never fight.

Most fights are not so dreadful in their outcome, but exact their toll emotionally. The Grand Tournament is no exception. Laura had won dominance the year previously and everyone expected her to retain her position, although any Mistress could rightly be considered a contender based solely on their individual prowess in the arena. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the tournament standings are determined by the performance of the pack.

Each Mistress brings with her three cats, one from each of the tiers, and obviously her best. Matches are drawn by random lot with each of the cats fighting three times. As there are nine packs, that makes for twenty-seven matches to be held over a week. Points are awarded for victories and thus each Mistress gains position in the tournament. Only the top two positions are of any importance at the end of the matches.

In the event of a tie, additional matches are held to determine who will vie for the championship. It's in that final match between the top two finishers that one Mistress will actually meet another in combat. By gaining position they will have already proven their ability to select and train the cats in their pack and all that remains is to demonstrate their physical superiority.

Of course, before and during the tournament, a great many games are played between women like Laura and Megan. The atmosphere is pleasant, even carnival-like, with much entertainment to distract the senses. Deals are struck and information passed back and forth, and each Mistress has her agents and spies working behind the scenes. In that sense, the tournament resembles a diplomatic cocktail party as much as anything else. We are a nation within a nation, secretive and jealous of any foreign influence, but not without resources.

As it happened, the Mistresses Laura and Megan were considered to have the most promising tier three cats in attendance. Unlike other violent sports, like boxing in which fighters are classified by weight, catfighting organizes itself strictly by age. Tier three cats are those girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, and are generally considered to be novice fighters at best, with more potential than actual skill. They're most often referred to as "kittens" for good reason. Of course, any girl brought to the tournament must be at least competent simply because a single point can become extremely important to the final outcome.

Mistress Laura had brought a girl named Bambi, a deceptive name that fooled no one. She was seventeen and surprisingly petite, but quite attractive as well. Catfighting, it's often said, was born of vanity and I for one believed that to be true. One would be hard pressed to find a cat, or most especially a Mistress, that did not meet the current social definition of beauty. And naturally, the standards of the pack are somewhat higher in that regard.

Bambi had been fighting since before Laura had even heard of the girl. She'd had a troubled youth, to put it kindly, suffering abuse at home and shuffling back and forth between social services and juvenile detention. Laura, like every other Mistress, had deep connections to the various organizations that deal with minors. Bringing a girl into the pack from a happy, respectable home wasn't usually desirable, or even possible, despite whatever potential the child might possess.

Orphans, on the other hand, runaways and delinquents and girls suffering a particular sort of bad luck, they could always be made available to an interested buyer. For that's very much what it was, the buying and selling of teenage girls to women like Laura. All legally done, of course, so long as one didn't peer too deeply into the process. Civil servants, it seems, are woefully underpaid. Three years ago, Bambi had been bought and paid for, and probably for the first time had found herself in an environment where she could happily flourish. That girl loved to fight, and she'd already been very good at it, but Mistress Laura had made her even better.

Megan's prize, a seventeen-year-old named Swan, had never hit another girl in her life until a young recruiter arranged a fight with the girl at school. I'd never met the girl and got the story second hand. So some of it may be apocryphal, but apparently Swan not only punched the other girl's lights out, but added insult to injury by dropping her panties in front of the whole school and pissing on her helpless victim's face. Maybe that really happened, maybe not, but it's all about the attitude, believe me. While the loser's name is now forgotten, by all accounts Swan quickly grew into a rather cruel and obscenely beautiful kitten.

That was the key for Mistress Megan, that not only could Swan challenge Bambi for dominance in the arena, but that the girl's beauty rivaled my own. I attended the tournament, but only as a decoration. Being women of power, every Mistress had brought along a trophy or two like myself. We were young, desperately pretty and unique in our fragility, and put on display for the envy of all, but with a single exception ... Swan. She was more than a mere bauble to be admired. The girl could fight, as I explained, and that was guaranteed to infuriate Laura.

The drawing of lots is traditionally held at midnight of the first day and it would be impossible for anyone to tamper with the process, but all the same, it did turn out more than fortuitous for certain parties. Bambi would fight Swan in the third match of the third tier, on the third day of the grand tournament. I wasn't present, but it couldn't have taken much prodding on Megan's part to convince my Mistress to accept a so-called friendly wager. "One kitten against another, winner's choice." That was the bet, verbatim and posted in public, as such things are.

It wasn't usual for Mistress Laura to share me with someone else, but it wasn't outside my experience either. The second day of the tournament is for rest and preparation, and all the behind the scenes maneuvering before the matches began the following afternoon. When Laura sent me to bathe and massage Bambi, I was only a little surprised. She wanted to impress upon the girl her personal value to our Mistress and what better way than to offer Bambi that possession which everyone knew Laura treasured most.

This year the tournament was being hosted at the home of a certain Dr. Arthakama, whom I'd only met silently on the arm of my Mistress. Apparently he was a software engineer originally from India, a very wealthy one, who had a genuine passion for catfighting and was willing to make considerable donations in its cause. There are a surprising number of enthusiasts, but only those with something substantial to offer in exchange for the privilege of modest participation are acknowledged. The ordinary men and women who enjoy catfighting as a fetish are wholly unaware of our existence, as it must inevitably be.

I found Bambi standing on the balcony of her bedroom, leaning against a darkened glass railing overlooking Puget Sound. The house was formidable and modern in design, constructed of metal, glass, and concrete with lush, oriental interiors that belied its cold exterior. How many rooms it possessed would be anyone's guess, but there were enough that each Mistress had her own suite. Laura's other two cats, Vicky and Natalie, shared this one large bedroom with Bambi, but they were out for the moment. Perhaps they'd gone to the gymnasium or just on an exploratory tour of the house and its grounds, it mattered little to me.

"Nice view," I offered from the balcony's open doorway.

The entire wall had been constructed of wide, sliding glass doors, six or seven of them, adorned with brightly colored veils of silk that fluttered in the cool breeze. I could smell the water, the salt and faint brine of the ocean, and dark clouds loomed across the horizon. Everything looked blue out there, without any other colors at all, just every shade of blue imaginable.

"What are you doing?" Bambi wondered, turning her head and allowing herself a smile. She wore a white terrycloth bathrobe belted around her slim waist and it did little to hide the shape of her sexy butt.

"Mistress wants me to give you bath," I explained, leaning against the glass and shrugging. "And then a massage and then..." I shrugged, returning her smile " ... we can do whatever you want."

I'd been the official face of Neiman's teen fashion for two years before Laura had found me, so I knew how to make a girl feel special with just a look. For official functions, like the tournament's dinners and various parties, as well as the matches themselves, I always dressed up for my Mistress. She'd spoiled me with a whole new wardrobe in anticipation of showing me off, but this was unofficial and private. I wore the clothes I was most comfortable in, namely a pair of long faded blue jeans and an old Huskies sweatshirt that tried valiantly to disguise my female charms.

"But since we're alone right now," I continued, glancing over my shoulder as if to make sure, "maybe we can do whatever you want right now."

"Fuck," Bambi sighed, shaking her head as her doe eyes wandered across my body.

"We can do that," I agreed with a giggle.

I probably didn't have to tease her that much, but I was enjoying myself. Unlike a lot of my pack sisters, I'd been with guys before, and I much preferred having sex with girls. I envied their freedom, too. Since Mistress Laura had taken me as her lover almost immediately, I had far less experience than I should have had. We were nearly the same exact age, with our birthdays less than a month apart, but she'd probably had sex with dozens of different girls. Certainly all of the older cats delighted in breaking in the new kittens, that was normal and expected, and I'm sure Bambi had amused them in her turn. But they didn't often get a chance to play with Laura's pet.

Bambi had never touched me, but that was about to change as she turned away from one breathtaking view to embrace another.

"Get on your knees," she told me. "No, just leave your clothes on for now."

"Alright," I agreed, keeping my bright blue eyes fixed on hers. A small gust of wind pulled my hair into my face and I lifted a hand to remove it, but Bambi stopped me.

"Leave it alone," she said, untying her bathrobe and shrugging free of it. "I love your hair."

"It's too long," I complained. "I wish it was shorter, like yours."

Most of the cats kept their hair relatively short, simply because long hair like mine could be a real handicap in a fight. Bambi's hair fell just below her shoulders and she usually kept it in a short ponytail. My honey colored hair was long and thick with waves, curling at the ends, and I always wore it loose for my Mistress. I disliked my hair because it made me stand-out so obviously amongst the other girls, which is why Laura refused to have it cut. With one look at me, everyone knew I wasn't a real fighter and even after two years, I still felt the sharp pang of that humiliation every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

I should have been a cat, but the woman's affection had betrayed me. That innocuous remark about liking my hair had been a warning. The older women could regard me with sympathy, but a girl like Bambi wasn't yet experienced enough to understand my suffering. She probably thought that I liked being little more than a sex toy for our Mistress, and unfortunately, I had no choice but to behave as if that was true. Bambi would doubtless appreciate Laura's gift, but she'd think very little of me as a person by the time we were finished.

"Kiss me first," she said. "Do you like my body, Kara? Am I beautiful?"

"Yes," I whispered, touching my lips to her muscular thighs. "I've always thought so."

"Hmmm..." She smiled, using her left hand to guide my kisses closer to her clean shaven sex. Cats are always kept smooth, a tradition I'd learned to appreciate since joining Laura's pack.

My hands moved up and down Bambi's legs, marveling and the taut flesh beneath her soft, bronzed skin. Our home was in Vancouver, hardly the best place to achieve such a wonderful tan, but among the pack's resources was a small chain of salon's dedicated to that purpose. Like all of the catfighters, Bambi spent a great deal of time and energy on her body. Not sculpting it like a true body builder would, but training for endurance and agility, as well as strength. After three years, she had a sleek, predatory figure that any girl would be proud to own. Seeing her that way, clothed only in the glory of her potential realized, made me feel very ordinary by comparison.

I kissed her left hip and then the right, near the front where Bambi's pelvis joined her thighs. I teased her with my tongue and bee-stung lips, filling my too small hands with her firm, generous ass. Even there she felt hard and unyielding, although the seventeen-year-old girl had all the shapely curves anyone could desire. There was nothing masculine about Bambi, or any of the others, except perhaps a natural dominance that most outsiders would have found uncomfortable at best.

"Kiss my pussy," she said, tugging at my hair with her fist. "Tell me you love my cunt."

"I love your cunt," I quickly replied, covering her vulva with my open mouth and wriggling my tongue across her plump labia.

Bambi spread her legs a fraction wider, giving me more room as I kept my face tilted upward. I gave her my eyes and kneaded the solid meat of her ass while we fucked. That's what we were doing, fucking, and I kept my tongue stiff as I pushed it inside her tight, buttery hole. She held my head with both hands, smiling and licking her lips, thrusting against my efforts to bring her off. The girl's tart flavor filled my mouth immediately and I didn't hesitate to swallow Bambi's arousal. I loved the taste and couldn't get enough of it as my own body had quickly warmed to the task.

Beneath my clothes, I felt my nipples stiffen and throb with excitement. As much as I resented my place in Laura's pack, I had to admit that I did enjoy having sex as much or more than any teenage girl. I only wished for a little more variety, since my Mistress most often kept me for herself. It can be frustrating, almost stifling to be surrounded by so many attractive women, to see them pumped with lust and smell the sweaty musk of their passion spilling from their pores. Fighting and fucking are two sides of the same coin for women like Laura and her cats, and for me as well.

Our sex would have been better if Bambi and I had fought first, but we both knew that the smallest bruise to mar my otherwise perfect complexion would have angered our Mistress. Not that I stood a chance of beating the girl, but that's not the point. I would have given her my best and gladly savored the sting of humiliating defeat, and painfully surrendered my ass, cunt, and mouth to whatever punishment Bambi could have devised. It's the victor's right to rape her fallen opponent to the amused envy of the pack. They would offer equal opinion on her ability to fuck as well as fight, urging the girl to climax upon my fallen form.

It was a good fantasy, my favorite for the moment, and I had to resist the desire to massage my drooling sex through my jeans. I had a fire burning deep in my belly as I closed my pursed lips around Bambi's clitoris, so wonderfully long and erect like a tiny, pink cock. I flicked it with my tongue, feeling her tense and even shivering beneath the shadow of her approaching orgasm. I'd become so well practiced at such things that I sometimes took my considerable skills for granted. Spending countless hours worshipping Laura's body with my mouth, dining on her pussy every single day for nearly two years, had turned me into a genuine artist. For the moment, Bambi was my canvas and I brought her off quickly, jamming my right thumb inside her cunt even as I nipped her sensitive clitoris with my teeth.

"Fuck!" she gasped with a sharp explosion of oily juice, pulling me hard against her pussy and grinding with mindless abandon. I knew she'd like the pain.

After taking the edge off, as Bambi called it, we adjourned to our bath. She sat on the toilet, pissing while I undressed. Although the owner of the house had come from India, as I mentioned, he seemed to favor the Japanese attitude toward bathing. There was a rather ordinary shower, a large one behind etched glass, but rather than a bathtub, the room was dominated by a deep, circular hot tub already filled. Nearby a simple faucet with metal buckets and ornate water scoops waited patiently. It took me a moment to find the controls, but soon enough the gas heated tub began to grow warm.

I'd been to Japan twice and had the benefit of my experience, but Bambi didn't care for the idea of taking a cold bath before being allowed to soak at leisure.

"That water's freezing!" she complained, hugging her knees as she sat on a stool. I only smiled and poured another scoop over her shoulders.

"It's supposed to be cold," I told her. "They say it's good for you."

"Brrrr..." She shook her head and shivered.

"You big baby," I teased. "Relax a little. I have to wash you all over. Lift your arms."

"I just don't like being cold," Bambi said, pouting as I began washing her body with brisk, soapy hands.

I knelt on the tiled floor, letting my breasts rub her back as I reached around the girl. She had smaller tits than me, but they filled my hands nicely and especially enjoyed how firm and heavy they seemed. I'd grown up quickly, reaching five-foot-ten shortly after my fifteenth birthday and adding another inch shortly after that. My breasts, along with every other part of me, had kept pace and I'd been rather pleased with myself at the time.

I'd been the envy of my classmates, being a 10th grade sophomore standing 5'11" and 126 pounds, with 36-24-35 measurements. I only knew such vital information because for a model, it's precisely that. Vital. I didn't do runways, nothing like that, although I sometimes considered going to New York and looking for work. That's a tough market though, even for a sixteen-year-old girl who looks like Venus, and in the Pacific Northwest, I was a big fish in a small pond. I made enough money working between San Francisco and Vancouver.

Too much money, as it turned out, and that's how I ended up with Mistress Laura.

"What do you mean," Bambi asked. She sat across from me in the nearly scalding water of the tub as I told her about myself.

"It turned out that my agent had a little gambling problem," I explained, closing my eyes and trying not to move too much. "He basically lost every dime I had, but that's not the worst part."

"What's the worst part?" she wondered, the way everyone always does and I smiled.

"He was my dad, too."

"Oh."

"So I was sixteen anyway and a friend of mine, this other girl who modeled, she turned me onto her agent," I continued. "The first thing we did was file for emancipation, and that was a no brainer. I think my dad kind of hated me for it, but..."

"That sucks," Bambi decided. "So you were still modeling, right?"

"Yeah, but it was all messed up," I sighed. "I didn't know what I was doing. I had to live by myself and pay my own bills, tell myself to clean my room and go to school, and I thought it would be nice not having my dad tell me what to do all the time."

"I wouldn't know," she said, giggling. "I never had anybody. How did you end up with Laura?"

"Well, I started going to parties and drinking and drugs and that whole stupid cliché, which really sucks. It's true though, so I guess that's why. But anyway, I was really stoned one day. This guy gave me something, I didn't know what it was, but I ended up totally fucking up the shoot and everyone was pissed. Heh! I was pissed."

We shared a grin through the steam and it wasn't the first time I'd told this story to someone, but I usually didn't.

"I hit one of the assistants, this ugly girl who did wardrobe, I just..." I shrugged. "I don't know. I just wanted to beat her face, you know? I never hit anyone before, but I hit her like ten times before they pulled me off. I think I still got scars on my hands, see?"

I held up my fingers, turning them as I leaned forward.

"She had some hard fucking teeth!" I said, laughing at the memory. I wasn't proud of it, though, nothing like that.

"Should have hit her in the stomach," Bambi suggested. "Or in the tits, that always hurts."

"Yeah. I should have," I agreed. "After that, it got pretty hard finding a job. I got arrested for possession of narcotics, not for beating up that girl. She never pressed charges, but I got busted a couple days later for DUI and I had some coke in my purse and it was all fucked up."

"Sounds like it."

"And that was pretty much the bottom," I sighed. "My lawyer gave the judge a sob story about my dad and all that, so I ended up with probation and seventy hours of community service and that's how Laura met me. I was checking in with my probation officer and she was a serious dyke, by the way."

"They all are!" Bambi giggled. "Fucking juvi's the worst. They're all dyke pedophiles."

"Really?" I asked, and she gave me a knowing nod. "Anyway, it turns out my probation officer knew Laura and gave her a call, saying she had this completely fuckable, sexy, ex-model who loved to punch out wardrobe girls sucking dyke pussy under her desk right that very moment and Laura should get her catty ass downtown and adopt me!"

"Right!" We were both laughing, because of course the woman hadn't said anything like that.

But it wasn't so far from the truth, either, as we both well knew. My probation officer had called Laura, but not only her. Several other Mistresses were on speed dial for a lot of people working in the various corners of social services. They were paid finder fees, for lack of a better term, and most often paid extra to lose annoying paperwork. I could have easily ended up in a different pack, and I often wondered how that might have turned out, but Laura had been the first one to answer her phone. When she saw me, well ... It was love at first sight, as they say.

"I'm thinking about taking off for awhile," Bambi said an hour later, which took me by complete surprise.

We'd been talking non-stop, mostly about ourselves as we got to know each other, and I enjoyed it immensely. Bambi and I had known each other for almost two years, but that didn't make us friends. Until today, we'd hardly spoken at all, despite not only living together, but even going to the same school. She was a catfighter and I was something else, a part of the pack, but not really one of them. That difference had defined every aspect of our relationship, until today. We were talking and becoming friends, discovering to our mutual pleasure that we liked each other.

"You mean, leaving the pack?" I asked, blinking down at the girl as I straddled her thighs. "When?"

I had her naked on one of the beds, face down and groaning softly. I'd covered Bambi with warm, scented oil from her neck to her feet, and was in the process of working those hard, toned muscles of hers into melted butter.

"As soon as I turn eighteen," she replied. "Or, ummmm ... That feels good."

"Or what?" I insisted. leaning into her shoulders with my stiff fingers.

"Or when I graduate," she said. "Next June, probably. I have about eight thousand dollars saved up from my winnings. I'll have even more by then, especially after I beat that Swan bitch tomorrow."

"Where will go?"

"Around the world," she said, turning her head and smiling. "You could come with me."

"You mean like on a cruise or something?" I asked, giggling at the silliness of it, but her dark eyes were serious.

"No, not a cruise," she snorted. "Backpacking around the world, you know? Just going wherever we want. I've got guidebooks and everything. People do it all the time."

"You're serious about it," I said, narrowing my eyes and trying to work out the logic of what she was suggesting.

"I've been thinking about it a long time," she agreed, and then grinned as she rolled over, catching me before I could fall off the bed.

We lay side-by-side, with Bambi's arms around me as my hard nipples pressed against her breasts. Our tummies touched, our hips and thighs, and her cunt couldn't have been more than a few inches from the ache deep inside my own. She kissed me for the first time right then, after I'd fucked her pussy with my tongue on the balcony. After I'd washed her asshole with my mouth and fingers, lapping at her anus as the girl bent over the edge of the hot tub and held my face between her cheeks. We'd had sex, several hour's worth, and now we were making love.

I opened my mouth for her tongue and worked my left leg between hers. I hunched my hips, grinding my pussy against Bambi's thighs while she stroked my back. I'd brought her off five or six times already, most recently with my oily hand carefully planted inside her cunt. I'd fisted the girl to orgasm, much the way I often did it for our Mistress, and now I wanted to cum as well. It wasn't going to take me very long, not with Bambi's tongue filling my mouth and her warm and sweetly scented body pressing against mine. I might have been five or six inches taller than she, but we must have been close to the same weight, and I felt small and helpless in her arms.

My heart felt ready to burst and this was what Laura had been trying to give me for so long and couldn't. I didn't love my Mistress, but Bambi had sparked that most desirable emotion to burning life. Perhaps it was only infatuation? If so, I didn't care, and that seems to me only an excuse for other, more painful reasons relationships fail. People are never infatuated with each other until it's gone, I've noticed. They're only in love and I wanted that more than anything else in the world.