jiji

“Fuck off now, will you ever just fuck off, god damn, fuck off!”

Third time tonight. Normally I don’t get antsy like this when I’m out but when you have the same person spill your drink three times in a row it can get to you. Clubs are second to pubs for me, you see – I’m at that age now where I’m starting to look conspicuously older than the average clientele and my life decisions only serve to widen that gap, in that I’m not off my nut on whatever powder it’s currently fashionable to shovel up your nostrils. Mostly I tend to find myself at clubs as a beggared favour...this is how it goes. Meet up with friends in a pub, shoot some pool, maybe even perform some spectacularly awful karaoke. Just as the night’s starting to wind down someone makes the suggestion...it’s like it happens in slow motion, you can see them get their second wind, down whatever drink they’re on and before you can stop them it’s, “Let hit the clubs!” all wide eyed and manic. Now, you can fight it but you’re the stick in the mud, you’re the dickhead who’s killing the night out, don’t you know that this is the first time we’ve been together in ages, we used to go clubbing all the time, bro, don’t be a cunt about it.

So you end up in a club and within half an hour you’re wearing the best part of three lagers because some hopped up blue bitch is bouncing around the whole place like a pinball in a miniskirt. She doesn’t even register it when swear; course not, it’s too loud in here to hear anything that’s not shouted directly into your ear. If it doesn’t hurt, you can’t hear it.

I turn around and wish I had a good pair of tits to flash at the bartender but to give him his due, he seems to recognise what’s going on – my soaked shirt and jacket and pissy expression probably is one that he’s seen a few times in the past. I hold up the now empty plastic cup and nod hard – he receives the signal – same again. I might even get the chance to drink this one.

Don’t leave the bar, that’s my motto in a club. Dancing in a club isn’t dancing because either you’ve got the drugged up nutcases, case in point being that blue wolf, I can see her trying to climb up on a table that’s covered in drinks and oh what a surprise, she’s spilled them all, oh what a further surprise, she’s dancing away as if nothing had ever happened or you’ve got the drunken flailers. If you’re lucky you might come across the rarest of the rare, someone who can actually dance and isn’t in a chemical state that’s got more to do with a power plant than a body.

Also, it fucking stinks.

The plan’s simple – wallflower at the bar until I get that “were r u?” text at which point I’ll arrange a meet up at the door and we’ll all pile out together and harass the taxi drivers for a ride for all of us at once and finally settle on taking two taxis instead. Occasionally shift left or right depending on how busy the bar gets but it’s not a crowded night tonight, I should be alright. Now and then take a wander to the toilets because hell, I’ve been drinking all night too, ain’t going to be able to hold up for the next few hours and take a step outside to see if I can find any smokers. I gave up near a year ago but on a night like tonight I see no issue with scobing a smoke off a friendly face and actually having some conversation out in the air and away from the heat and noise and lights of the club.

I get it. Some people thrive on this kind of place. I ain’t one of them. I take another look out over the dancefloor and it’s the usual mix of blatantly underage, strangely skinny looking kids, too-old gutlords trying to dance with the genuinely pretty girls (they’d be a whole lot prettier if they weren’t tarted up like Christmas trees with cunts) and of course, the junked up nutters. Tonight seems to be Ol’ Blue’s time to shine, she’s currently grinding her crotch against some kid’s face. Can’t be legal.

I take some time to think about that. I say some time; as long as it takes to take a long drink of the lager I’ve been served. There’s something about watered down beer in a plastic glass that just doesn’t quite hit the spot – unlike, apparently having some over-dyed bitch grab the back of your head and rub your snout under her skirt. I mean, credit where it’s due, she’s managing to keep the beat of whatever song’s on, that’s got to be a skill. Even from here I can see that her eyes are nothing but white and iris, she kissed her pupils goodbye somewhere around the third line, if I’m any judge of these things. Kid’s having the time of his life – I wonder if he knows that she’s old enough to be his mother? When she shoves him away and makes out with a nearby railing instead I like to imagine that it’s a wake-up call for him but since he’s just had a noseful of cunt I don’t reckon he’ll be picking up that she’s being more affectionate to a metal pole than she was to him. Probably just leapt to #1 in the wankbank and I bet it won’t get dislodged for quite some time. He’ll probably spend the next fifteen years coming to clubs expecting to replicate the moment until he ends up looking more like...more like...my eyes wander until I spot a particularly portly fellow, a fox, gyrating and swinging his hips all around – and his big bushy tail and overhanging belly swing around too. It’s not a flattering look.

Frankly, the heat and the noise and the smell (a hundred colognes and perfumes all rising up at the same time, drinks and breath and panting and hot bodies, long ground in stinks from months and years gone by, the open doors of the washrooms, pockets of steady light in the otherwise strobing mad darklights and not a single breath of fresh air ever invited in) is making my head spin.

Now you can’t go leaving a drink around and you can’t take it out so my choices are limited and I choose the obvious option – I down that pint and immediately regret both buying it and downing it and rub my eyes just the once. Definitely need to be outside for a few minutes; spit, maybe I might split on this night. My shirt’s soaked, my head’s spinning and a taxi home with a stop off for a cheeky kebab is a much more appealing idea than anything else right now. Wake up with a stinking hangover that I’ve not even had fun earning, take the flak from my friends for pissing off, job’s a good one.

I give the bounce one of those, “I’m alright,” waves as I step past, god knows why I bother, there are folk who can’t even stand up well anymore in there, I’m past buzzed but I’m pretty sure I can still manage a persuasive conversation and well, here’s my chance to prove that point to me. Outside any club there’ll be a gaggle of smokers and this one is no different. I take a moment to line up my thinking; a rabbit, a skunk and a raccoon. God damn, there’s always a raccoon, they smoke more than a green-bark fire, those ones.

A more genuine wave announces my arrival to them. “Hey guys,” I say, despite the fact that there’s only one guy there. Strange that, “guys” seems to fit better than anything else in that situation. “Ah...you know when someone’s quit a while and ain’t got a pack on them?” I give my most bashful and ashamed smile. They warm to it and reach for their pockets. Winner.

Let me tell you this, when you’ve not smoked in a while that first inhalation – it’s like someone’s let an artist loose on the air to shade it and colour it and define it; it’s fucking bliss – even if you have to stop yourself from coughing. Seconds later, a tingling buzz from the unfamiliar nicotine rattles up from your chest, the back of your neck and hits you behind the cheekbones and brow and it is wonderful. It’s worth quitting just for the return smoke. They’re looking at me wryly, the three of them, the rabbit speaks first, holding his delicate little hand out to shake. I do so. There’s a camaraderie in smoking now that there never used to be, ever since you had to take it outside.

“Not having a fun night?” he asks.

I could bluff it but they’ve just seen that drag I took and I imagine that I was radiating the sort of sudden calm of someone who’s just punctuated a stressbomb with exactly the right full stop. Flicking the ash I lift one should affably and say, “Not my scene. And I ah...keep getting my drink knocked over me.”

A quick flick of the eyes the two girls laugh behind their hands. “Blue wolf?”

“You noticed her too?”

“Yah huh,” says the skunk, “Came over and sat between us, tried making out with us, offered us a key and then the song changed and she went skipping off to the dance floor again. She’s umm...” A tap of a finger on the side of her nose says it all. Nobody’s got any illusions about what’s fuelling the showpiece of this particular night in the club. “Where you from?”

Common question, really. “Local,” I say, “Parents, not so much. By not so much I mean,” and I finish the sentence by pointing as far as I can. “Got the same accent as you, don’t I?”

“Yah, uh huh, sure you do, that was a stupid question.”

I wave a dismissal.

“Say,” she says, perking up a bit, “Tell you what. Find me inside, we’ll dance. I en’t had too much to drink, you seem like you could do with cheering up.” She flicks her cigarette away and turns on her heel. I don’t think it’s an accident that she sweeps her tail around with a flourish either. Thing’s massive, you could decorate it at Christmas and it’d put some trees I’ve seen to shame. “Inside, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say. She walks off and looks over her shoulder the once. “Is she...” I start, letting the question hang, hoping that one of the other two can answer it.

“Single? Yeah. Looking? Maybe. Can you dance?” says the raccoon who’s already lit another cigarette. I get the feeling that her and the rabbit might be...and I might be third wheeling right now...

“I can try,” I say and lift my shoulder again. My cigarette’s pretty much done now so I flick it down, grind it underfoot and turn on my heel. “Hey, what’s her name?”

“Find out yourself,” is all the answer I get.

As I walk away I lift a hand and call over my shoulder, “Cheers for the smoke.”

“Yah, no problem.”

Ok, maybe this isn’t going to be so awful a night after all. Going to have to make a right specimen of myself on the dance floor but so long as I can get the sympathy laughs for my total lack of co-ordination, I already know that she’ll go outside now and then where we can talk and, yeah, this could be rocking here. I go to step past the bouncer and he puts a hand on my chest.

“It’s twenty in.”

Now, let me explain what’s happening here for those of you who haven’t been in this situation. I’ve left the club but not the premises and as such, don’t have to pay a new entry fee. I’ve not left his sight the whole time. He knows that I’ve already paid in. He also has seen me talking to a cute thing and knows that I want to get back in. He also knows that he could fucking paste me if I decide to make too big a fuss out of it and since his job is to deal with the unruly, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Frankly, given that he’s a badger, I likely wouldn’t have a literal leg to stand on by the time he was done kicking me up and down the parking lot. He knows this. He knows that I know this. That twenty note is going right in his back pocket and he knows that I know this as well. The sensible thing to do (the only thing to do) is to hand over the money without a question. Well.

“Fucks sakes mate, you just saw me come out, don’t take the piss here, my friends are all still in there and you know nobody answers their phone in a club.”

“Twenty in or beat it.”

“This is a fucking liberty, you can’t pretend you en’t recognising me, there no other fucking jackals in there, you know I’ve paid in already.”

“Oi, twenty in or fucking beat it.”

The worst part is that I can feel my ears flattening. That’s damn close to an open invite for him to wallop me. Sign of aggression, see? So I dig into my wallet and pull out a twenty and toss it up in the air and stalk – yes, stalk, I can’t seem to unstiffen my legs properly, past him and of course I have to go and mutter, “Fucking prick,” as I do so. Thankfully, these are moments that never come back to haunt you.

All the good vibes from being outside seem to have been eroded by that encounter at the door and I’ve almost forgotten about the offer of the dance – when I get back inside and squint into the murk and glare of the club, trying to see past the flashing lights to the bar my heart just drops another few inches. All I want now is to grab a drink and see if I can spot that skunk again but on the bar, fuck the four seasons back to the start of the year, that blue wolf is standing there gyrating in spite of the bartender shouting at her to get down.

I’m not put off. I’m getting a god damned drink.

She’s, of course, gathering a bit of a crowd; a crowd that I have to push my way through to get to the bar. I have to shout, “Drinking!” in a few ears to get past them – the phone cameras are out and whatever happens next is going to end up on fifty Facebooks and Twitters and Instagrams and...the other thing...that one...with the...sharing and liking and...the video one – well, if anything particularly stupid happens, I imagine.

Finally I make it to the bar and make a point of ignoring Ol’ Blue in favour of getting the bartender’s attention, which is proving trickier than I thought it would be. He’s some kind of a stoaty, weasel, minky, ferrety thing, I can’t decide which just by looking but one of those slinky, lean things and unfortunately for him, that doesn’t give him much in the way of lung power – he’s shouting at Bluey to get down or she’s getting kicked out and, well, I can’t hear him and I’m closer. Thing is, as long as he’s shouting ineffectually at her, I’m not getting served, am I? So I take a breath and dark out an, “Oi!” to get him to turn my way. I mime the ‘come here’ finger to him and blessed breath of heaven he does so. Then we start leaning uncomfortably close to each other over the bar and have a high-volume, shout-and-spit conversation that, at the end of it, has us both rubbing the inside of our ears to get rid of the other’s saliva. Such is the way of transactional talk in a club, anything beyond, “Drink now – dance now – leave now” gets difficult.

It actually takes five or six attempts to get this across but the summary of it all would be, “If I can get her to fuck off can I get a free drink?” and the answer was, “Yes.”

Good deal, if you ask me.

I rubs the last bit of stoaty, ferret, minky, weasel spit out of my ear and look up at my challenge. First things are first, I’m going to have to get her attention now and I don’t think that a barked, “Oi” will do the job here – she’s got her eyes closed, hands behind her head and she’s swaying in time (possibly? It’s hard to pick out any kind of rhythm cause the music’s so insanely loud) to the tune that’s on. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to that. I think she’s had some kind of accident during the night because one side of her dress is torn to shreds and, best as I can tell, she’s lost a sock too...I’m not even sure how that’s possible, how do you lose a sock in the middle of a night out? Mind you, I’m not the one that’s standing up on a bartop flashing my underwear to the world – a short skirt that’s half shredded and standing four foot off the ground is a good way to give the world a view of what you’ve got on underneath and in her case the answer is, surprise surprise, not much – some black thing that looks like it might be silk or satin from the look of it, tightly hugging her crotch anyway.

I reach up and give her calf a squeeze, reckoning that that will serve to get her attention. I’m careful, of course, I don’t want to get kicked in the face and I don’t want to trip her either, if she suddenly decided to jump down at that very moment and I’m holding her leg, that’ll end up with her taking a one way trip to Faceplant Villa and the floor of a club is not a friendly floor to fast-falling faces. So it’s just a quick squeeze and then I let go, expecting some kind of...outburst of outrage?

Instead, I get a faceful of her face – she bends double like she’s showing off in a yoga class and pushes her nose right up to mind – I’m looking up and she’s looking down and good heavens but her eyes are red...my first thought is that whatever she’s on has bust her eyes but...it must be contact, got to be, they’re bright, startling red, certainly enough to astound, especially since she’s coloured her fur in blue. Is she singing? I think she’s singing the words to the song, though how on earth she can pick out the words is beyond me and I’m about to flinch away, expecting the worst reek of breath imaginable but – that doesn’t happen, even though she’s mouthing the words excitably, hyperbolically, even though her breath is puffing over my face, can’t smell anything other than wolf. Fair play to her.

“Hey!” I shout, still with my eyes on the prize. “You got to get down!”

She opens her mouth wide, I think if I could hear her that she’d be laughing, instead I just get a good look at the inside of a wolf’s mouth which, if you don’t know, is pink and full of teeth. Strikingly though, she’s got a gold fang – I wonder if that’s real or a veneer that she’ll take off at the end of the night.

“Barman can’t work, you can dance on the floor like everyone else!”

Too many words for a club, of course. She’s already straightening up again and I’m about to turn to the bartender with a “I’ll try again in a second,” sort of expression when she lifts one of her feet and puts it on my nose.

I caught it out of the corner of my eye just before she did it and I have to say, I was expecting a stomp, a kick to the face for telling her to get down. I was expecting a big, heavy paw too but instead, with a light a touch as you’d like, she places her surprisingly delicate paw right on the bridge of my snout and, balancing on one foot, looks right down at me and snaps her fingers a few times, her tongue sticking out from between her jaws like she was thinking through some difficult puzzle and then she tap-tap-taps her foot on my muzzle in time with the clicking of her fingers and I’m looking right up her leg which seems to go on forever from down here and she’s looking right down at me and tapping her paw and clicking her fingers and I cross my eyes to look at her paw, finding myself wondering if maybe it’s not dye cause even between her toes, even right up to the claws is blue fur, that’s either incredible attention to detail or that’s a natural hue...

And I’m yanked out of that moment when someone reaches over and pours their drink all over her paw and my nose, some kind of cocktail, sweet and cold and definitely surprising to have suddenly all over your face and I lift my sleeve and turn around and wipe my muzzle and between wipes shout, “The fuck, mate?” and a grinning, sly-as-fuck-looking fox points back at the wolf on the bar counter cause she’s holding her wet paw out at me and she’s pointing down at it. If there’s any doubt as to what she expects, a tilt of her head and a lift of a shoulder and a little flick of her cocktail-soaked paw makes it perfectly clear.

I remember about all those phones getting ready to film some fun from the club. I look over at the bartender. He’s looking at me expectantly.

Guess this is going to be my free drink.

Or maybe not. A quick flick of my eyes to the side confirms what I thought – this is getting interesting enough for folk to start filming; seems this is catching the imagination a bit. Now then, if there’s something I’ve learned about clubs is that if you can put on a bit of a show you don’t have to dip too deep into the pockets for the rest of the night, there’ll always be some punter willing to sort you out with a pint or a mixer or ‘dude come do shots with us that was great’ – it’s like winning the pool tournament in a pub – so I lift one of my hands and I take that blue wolf’s ankle like I’m holding a crystal champagne flute. Credit where it’s due, she’s still snapping her fingers and bobbing her head but she’s keeping her balance and holding her foot still. Gives a little wriggle of her toes – they’re dripping.

Let’s see if I can’t work out what that cocktail was.

A little sniff around first but that’s not something I really have much control over, it’s just habitual, I know that my ears’ll be turning this way and that – I do it when I’m opening letters, so it doesn’t mean much and then I part my jaws and I flick the tip of my tongue – tap tap tap – against each of her claws, catching a few of those hanging drops of the cocktail – something with fruit juices, I can get a citrus twang to it.

I look up the wolf’s leg and lift my other arm so that it’s around the back of her leg, almost exactly where I initially squeezed her calf to get her attention. Didn’t much expect this when I was cutting a deal with the bartender but I’ll take it.

Still looking up her leg, I let my tongue slide out of my mouth and let it be known that a jackal has plenty of tongue to share, long and pink and when it starts to fold on the top of her paw, that’s when I lick, deliberately against the grain of her fur, mussing it up and making it stand in little wet tufts – definitely a fruit juice, I’m thinking a mix of pineapple and mango – and a taste of her too and I’m pretty sure that it’s not a dye in her fur now cause you can always taste that, the feel of her little delicate bones just underneath the fur against my tongue and the look on her face – a massive grin with that gold tooth catching all the ever-changing lights of the club in a distinctly different way to the rest of her smile – both encourage me and after a few drinks (which, despite her best efforts earlier in the evening I have managed to get in) I’m pretty encouragable.

Someone shouts something and I ignore them because my neck lick is one to smooth down the fur on the top of her paw, get it lying smoothly again; even wet and sticky with the cocktail there’s a silky fineness to her fur that most wolves don’t have...and when I get back to her toes again I bring one into my mouth, close my teeth gently around it, feeling that lovely contrast between the hard boniness of the top of her toe and the malleable pad underneath and start to suckle on it, moving the hand on her calf down to her ankle and the hand that had been holding her paw there, I slide it on down to the underside of her paw.

I’m thinking...pineapple, mango, rum and something...

Hopefully surreptitiously, I rub my thumb along the underside of her paw, especially between the pads, I presume that the suckling on her toe is going to keep her attention and I think I’m right cause she’s wriggling it around in my mouth, her claw pressing into my tongue in all kinds of interesting ways. I keep my thumb going around the underside of her paw until such times as I’m sure that any floor dirt will have been cleared out and move onto the next toe, give it a sucking until it’s clean and dry of the cocktail’s juices and then the last one and, with all her toes and the top of her paw nicely cleaned off by my tongue, I lift her foot up a little bit and –

“Supposed to be getting her down from there you dick.”

I nearly jump out of my skin. Bartender’s abandoned the counter, come around and is shouting directly in my ear. I try to convey that this isn’t the best time to be reminding me of previous verbal contract by virtue of expression alone but he seems pretty pissed off. I’m more surprised that the people around are also looking pissed off and someone throws something and someone else throws a drink right in the bartender’s face. I’m not licking that off and he seems to know it because he shouts some obscenities and pushes his way through the crowd in the general direction of the toilets.

My intentions are to turn around and see how the rest of this blue wolf’s paw tastes but apparently she’s got herself a new idea – she pulls her foot out of my hand, turns on her heel and bends over, reaching for whatever bottles she can find and tosses them out into the crowd who don’t say no to her generosity. I quickly scan the crowd and don’t recognise any of them...the dance floor’s still full and the tables around the edges are packed, my friends must still be among the general hoi polloi rather than enjoying this moment. Each time she bends over to grab a few bottles there’s a cheer and no wonder – with that tattered skirt and that strip of black between her legs there’s not an awful lot being left to the imagination – though I suddenly find myself imagining what it would be lick to get my tongue there...

And she turns around again, gleefully clutching a large bottle of something that (it must be the way the light’s catching it, shit looks like it’s neon pink) normally gets measured out in tiny little shot glasses...unscrews the top and downs about five gulps of whatever it is. I give her calf another squeeze, thinking that this might be a good time to get down and once again she swings her face down and shoves her muzzle against mine. She’s not swallowed her last glug from the bottle and before I know it she’s pushed it into my mouth, it’s sweet, god it’s sweet and unexpected and warm from being in her mouth and I swallow it and take a step back and she’s taking another couple of gulps before screwing the top back on and tossing it into the crowd.
The music stops. That’s rare in a club.

It starts up again and you should see her face light up – she must know this one because immediately she’s bouncing on her heels and her hands are nearly shaking with the need to be doing something. Hell, it’s infectious enough that I’m about to climb up there when she goes and ensures that nobody’s paying attention anywhere else. How? Well, she reaches up to the straps of her dress, buttons are at the front, just above the curve of her breasts and flicks them open, tossing the straps over her back and holding the dress in place with her fingers instead, nodding at us in time with the music, everything’s in time to the beat with her and she isn’t going to get anyone trying to dissuade her, that’s for her.

Someone passes me a bottle and I lean on the bar top, looking up and nodding along with her, watching the sway and swing of her tail behind her – looks like the show’s about to get even more interesting.

First time she’d bumped into me and spilled a watered-down lager all over my shirt, bounced off with a sway and laugh I’d wondered (after the initial bout of internal swearing had passed) why she was dressed like a cartoon orphan. The answer became pretty clear seconds after she’d popped the straps off of her raggy dress because she’s not at all gentle when she throws her hands down, grabs the hem of her dress and tears it up over her head – and I mean tears – strips of scarlet fabric go flying and now she’s using her dress like a ribbon or a flag or something and waving it around as a part of her incessant, never-ending dance.

I remember that, not a few moments ago, when I’d come back into this club there had been thoughts of spending a good hour, two hours trying to court the slightest bit of attention from a skunk that spared me an in whilst outside having a smoke – I remember how my stomach knotted with annoyance when I’d seen Bluey here on the bar upon returning – spit and hellfire, I remember when my group of friends had voted overwhelmingly in favour of hitting the club and I’d tried to talk them all out of it and only tagged along because I wasn’t ready to go home just yet, wasn’t drunk enough just yet...

Now, I say I remember all this but only in the abstract because the sight in front of me right now pretty much blew any cobwebs of ‘I don’t want to be here’ right out of my head there and then.

I’d just caught a glimpse, fleeting, of her form before a change in the music led to a change in the lighting and harsh, flashing, sparking, shuttering strobe slashed through the club, turning everything into an agitation of monochrome; the wolf’s dancing became staccato and the eye couldn’t keep up (mine at least, maybe a cat’s eyes would’ve been able to see past the strobe) as she hooked her claws underneath the little strap at the waistband of her underwear and snapped them upwards, the flimsy fabric fluttering down between her legs and ending up on the bartop amidst the spills of the night and I wish for a moment that I still had the taste of that cocktail that had been poured over her footpaw in my mouth and remember that the taste that I have in my mouth is partly from her mouth anyway and it’s all fine again.

My eyes are starting to hurt but I don’t want to look away and finally the middle eight or whatever it was in the song ends and the DJ relents on the strobe; normal lighting is resumed (normal for a club, which means flashes of yellow, red, blue, white, green in no order that makes any sense to the likes of me) and I can sort of see again.

I muse on blue and red. If there has ever been two colours that sit well with each other in contrast, it’s blue and red – it’s likely why she’s still got that particular dress even though she’s managed to tatter it with her claws; the vivid scarlet shouts when it’s set against her blur fur and, as with nearly all of her kind, she’s two-tone; down the front of her throat and her lower jaw, her sides and her belly and between her legs are lighter, a dodger, pastel-electric hue of light blue if I had to pin it down in the light of the club. Maya, maybe? Just as the scarlet dress and the bright dark blue of the rest of her fur served each other when she was clothed now her light blue underside serves to highlight the pinkness of her nipples and that neat little slit between her legs; I know that I’m not the only one with my eyes wandering over her body and she knows it too; she leans to one side so that the lines of her curves stretch out and her leg, thick at the thigh and wide at the hip is straight and then the other way; I don’t think there’s anything accidental about the way that her tail swishes behind her as a counterpoint to those two leans.

A movement out of the corner of my eye – I’m not sure why it gets my attention but it does and I turn my head. Bartender’s shouting into the ear of bouncer. Bouncer’s glaring a hole right though the crowd at both myself and the wolf.

Shit.

This is what happens next: bouncer, still pissed off that I gave him lip when coming back into the club sees an opportunity. Bartender’s not shouting about me, he wants his bar back, that’s understandable, especially if he saw the bottles getting nicked and thrown around. Bluey is getting booted in about ten seconds flat. I’m front and centre at the bar and there’s no way that I’m not getting booted too. I might even get a booting whilst getting booted. Bluey is in a spot of bother because she may be holding the club captive right now but outside it’s cold, it’s grey and it’s a city at night, definitely not the right place for her to be, especially if I get a booting from the bouncer and I’m not even able to stand up, let alone sort a taxi out for her. Next morning I wake up with more bruises and less teeth than I started the weekend with and in a couple of days time read a story about some clubber dead in a gutter, waiting to be identified, any information please contact –

Unless...

I turn to the crowd and that devious looking fox who poured the cocktail over her paw is still there and I think he’s clocked onto the possible next thirty seconds as well, so I lean into his ear and shout a few things and he leans into a few ears and shouts a few things and I reach up and grab Bluey’s hand and pull her down to within hearing range and shout three words and this time it seems to get through to her because the mad look of musical bliss slips from her expression for the first time all night (that I’ve seen) and she nods, leans heavily on my arm and hops down, landing like she were a gymnast rather than a wired clubber.

She transferred the grip I had on her wrist into holding my hand and I won’t lie, I felt that same little frisson of excitement that always comes with feeling fingers laced between your own and clasping, even if this wasn’t the most normal of situations. The bouncer and the bartender were heading our way but ah; yes – give a crowd a show and free booze and they’ll return the favour in their own way; the gathered number around the bar were very passively but very deliberately blocking their way.

I hadn’t thought much beyond “Time to go” when I shouted it in her ear but she seemed to have some kind of plan and was dragging me along with it, cutting across the dance floor and completely ignoring the stares and calls in her direction – she dropped her dress at one point and didn’t seem inclined to care; I stooped and snatched it up without missing a step...

She turns around then and that look of ecstasy is back on her features, jaws parted and red eyes bright, gold tooth prominent and I have just enough time to wonder how the hell I’ve gotten myself into this situation and how the hell I’m going to get out of it without getting my face kicked in by a bouncer that I gave the smarts to and she tilts her head and her shoulders bounce a little (and if I pretended not to notice the way that set her breasts into motion, I’d be lying) and mouthed three letters and pointed towards the back of the club.

I should’ve known it, really, she wouldn’t have been behaving the way she had been down here unless she had a pass up to the VIP lounge.

The things I’ve heard about the VIP lounge...

I take a good look around the VIP lounge. I say a good look; it’s not exactly easy to see everything that’s going on – unlike downstairs with the harsh glares and flashes, the lights are a bit more muted up here. The music’s every bit as loud but it’s equalised right – you can make out the other parts of the songs other than just some kind of ‘train station rumble’ of bass. There are, not to put it too succinctly, a lot of dark corners, booths of various designs and they seem plenty occupied. The phrase ‘a cut above’ comes to mind. I don’t get the luxury of a full sweeping look around because my collar’s grabbed and I’m damned near hauled off my feet.

Not for the first time this night, seems like I’m going to get the seven shades of legend kicked out of me – I’ve got no VIP pass and that’s a booting for definite but she turns around and with a scowl you could grate cheese on knotting her brows she whacks at the hand that’s holding me like she were giving a puppy a telling of a lifetime and shouts, “With me!” Her word seems as good as gold in here because I’m dropped and would you believe it, I even get my lapels smoothed.

I don’t even turn around to look – I’m buzzed, I’m amorous and I’m in the VIP lounge with this blue wolf – she leads me right over to a booth by my hand and pretty much hauls me in. I don’t exactly put up a fight, of course.

There’s a moment as I sort of stumble and sort of slide and sort of shimmy into the seating of the booth where I take stock of what’s going on. Either she’s taken a shine to me or this is all kind of drawn out, elaborate joke that I’m happy to be the butt of. I’ve gone from having a whinge in the bar about going to a club to having my shirt continually soaked by her, by her erratic dancing to flirting over a cigarette with a skunk to...I shake my head as she fumbles around for something, I can’t see what my blue companion is hunting for.

Since I came back into the club from that cigarette things have taken quite a turn. There she is, standing on the bar and I go over to – what was it again – to get her down off the bar so that I can get a drink and a moment later I’m sucking a cocktail off of her toes and stroking her leg and then she’s pulling her clothes off and pushing nameless alcohols into my mouth in mad kisses and then we’re legging it across the dancefloor up into the VIP lounge and now I’m in a booth with her. I don’t believe it myself but here I am.

She’s sitting across from me and she catches my eye with a devil’s gleam in her red ones (I still don’t know if they’re contacts or not) and produces a box from – well, must have had this booth reserved because I’m carrying what’s left of her clothing after she attacked it during her bartop striptease and when she opens the box I’m not at all surprised to see that it’s full of a bright, white and very fine-looking powder.

Well, no other way of explaining her, is there?

Far from being coy, she digs a finger into the box, uses the curl of her claw to get a generous helping and lifts her finger up to her nose and – I can’t hear it but I can imagine the sharpness of the sniff from how quickly the powder vanishes. Bluey’s got the sense to snap the lid of the box shut before kicking back in the seat, lifting her arms up high and shaking them from side to side, giving her teeth a grind and then with a shake of her head, she pulls her knees up to her chest and kicks her legs out so that her footpaws land on the table right in front of yours sincerely. I can well remember the taste of that one paw of hers but she goes a step further this time and flicks the top of the box open, leans forwards and gives me another one of her half-mad looks whilst dusting her foot with powder, spreading her toes so that the most of it ends up between them.

I honestly have a moment where I can’t process this. She’s just powdered her paw with a couple of hundred worth of that stuff. I’m not an expert.

And she’s wiggling her toes at me and looking down her nose expectantly at me.

There are moments in your life where you can see them branching out two ways. In one universe I’m sure that at that instant everything just got a bit too much for me, I stood up, shrugged widely and shook my head with a stupid grin on my face and left the VIP lounge. I’m sure in that universe that I saw that skunk on the way out and she gave me such a dirty look that I knew right away that she’d seen my paw-licking exploits when Bluey was on the bar and knowing that was a strike-out if there ever was one, left the bar, told the bouncer to go fuck himself in passing, flagged down a taxi after a mile or so of walking, went to the all night offy, bought a couple of bottles of shit wine, had one of them half drunk by the time the taxi dumped me at my home, overpaid the taxi driver for ‘putting up with me’ and then drank myself into blackout sleep and a hangover that could level cities the next day.

I feel sorry for that version of me.

A moment’s apprehension about what that powder might be is killed off by another wriggle of her toes – it’s on the paw that hasn’t had a cocktail (or, for that matter, my tongue) all over it so the powder’s still loose and dry and some of it falls out like snow when she wriggles her tongue and I lean forward and shove my nose between her two biggest toes and, now with her toes rubbing either side of my nose, pushing my whiskers back and forth, I take as hard a sniff as I can.

Oh! I don’t even realise that my head’s snapped back and I’m pressing the back of my head against the cushion behind me for a second, my eyes are shut and I know that now I’m baring my teeth and grinding them like she was a moment ago because rushing through my whole body is an absolute triumph of sensation, my nerves are lit up and suddenly everything’s so much more than it was and the scent of that wolf’s paw is sweeping through my senses along with the magnifier of the powder. The phrase, “a cut above” comes back to mind.

Do I get the feeling that she’s getting exactly what she wants out of me? Damned right I do. It’s happy serendipity that we’re on the same wavelength because I’ve barely thrown myself back away from her paw than she’s wriggling her toes again, this time on both of them and a rare sustained blast of white light giving me a proper look at the underside of her long, slender paws, the pink pads, the light blue on the toes and the dark tips of her claws and I’m leaning forwards, back to the paw that I’ve just taken such a sniff from. I reach out for her other paw with my hand and push my fingers through her toes and clasp it tightly, feeling the shift of those long, delicate bones on the top of her paw and the softness of her pads with the palm of my hand and, at the same time, I push my tongue down on the claw of her biggest toe on her other foot, just pushing down, letting my tongue slowly fold over her claw and then her toe until I can close my mouth around her toe and suck on it. It’s not like the last time, where I was sucking cocktail off her toes, this time, the taste of it is all her, a marvellously piquant mugginess that’s almost musky, I suck on her toe and look up at her and she’s squirming in her seat from having one footpaw squeezed and her other tongued; she’s not shy of letting her hands run down her belly to between her legs and she’s just toying with her lips right now but I wonder if I can get her to do more than that...

It’s a thing, isn’t it, that when it’s someone else’s on the line that you always handle them with kid gloves. I mean, wake up in the morning and there’s a good minute of claws in and around the balls, hiking them up and pushing them around and getting a good, solid scratch sorted before the blanket even gets kicked back and she’s the same, looking up her leg she’s pinching at the lip of her vulva and tugging on it more roughly than I would ever dare, squirming in the seat as she is and when she does, she rolls her head back, biting her bottom lip and I can see the pinkness of her inside for a moment and then she lets go of her stretched out fold, making a fist instead and pressing and rubbing her knuckles between her legs...obscuring my view, yes, but watching the way hand flexes and the way she presses down on her crotch and the way that she writhes in the seat...

Frankly, it’s nearly enough for me to forget that I’ve got a mouthful of toe and a handful of her other paw...but not quite, cause it’s every time that I press my teeth against her big toe, still in my mouth, that she presses her knuckles harder between her legs and squirms in the seat, it’s every time that I give her other foot a squeeze with my fingers that her head rolls on her shoulders and her chest hitches up with what I just bet would be a little squeaking sound...if I could hear it...that’s the moment that I realise that I’m doing all this to the beat of the music, I’m dancing to her tunes now, all of her snapping of fingers and tapping of feet earlier and here I am now, play-biting her toe and squeezing her footpaw right with the beat.

I open my mouth and lift my head away from her big toe and let go of her other paw. She looks down at me with an expression that’s ready to be disappointed. I have no intention of disappointing her. She likes having her paws played with? Who am I to go cheap on her? However, I place a hand on her ankle and start to slowly run it up her leg, curling my fingers around the back of her leg so that I can give her calf a squeeze, then around her knee and, leaning forwards, I slide my hand up the inside of her leg; there’s a quiver in her thigh as I muss her blue fur, rubbing it against the lie of it, making it stand up in silly little tufts, her greyish white undercoat showing through – the wolf takes my queue and lifts her hand up away from her crotch when my hand’s close. Like I say, I’ve just watched her rolling her knuckles hard between her legs, I’ve watched her pinching her own lips and tug them apart to spread herself and yet I’m as careful as can be when I slide one finger inside of her.

Did I think her thigh was quivering? Colour me mistaken. All around my finger, tight, warm, trembling - yes, trembling flesh and her head goes back and her hand slaps down on top of mine; she abruptly leans forwards and her mouth’s open wide, tongue hanging loose and the light glittering on her gold tooth, those red eyes of hers as wide as her mouth but I look right up at her, leaning over as I am and shake my head with a quick glance down at her hand on mine and, with obvious reluctance, she lets go.

Thing is, I could undo my belt and drop my trousers right now, throw myself on top of her and I’m pretty she’d take me on and we’d manage just fine but if you want the world to move for you, you got to build up the Richter a little bit at a time and when I withdraw my finger...well, to say that it’s well wetted would be a fair understatement. Her arousal hangs off the tip of my claw like drool for a moment, a thin, clear line of slickening fluid between her lips and my claw and we both look at it as it dangles there: she’s holding her hands near her hips and her fingers are flexing as if desperate to grab onto something...and then it drops away and she shoves both hands between her legs as I push myself back just in time to see her legs stiffen, straighten and her toes spread out wide.

I reach down and catch the ankle of one of her legs, lifting her footpaw up this time and she’s stretching it like she’s got a cramp in it but watching how her hands press between her legs I know it’s more than that; she’s wet as hell and the way she’s flexing her thighs and stretching her footpaws and spreading her toes, well – I take that finger that had been inside of her and, deliberately and carefully, I set about painting the underside of her paw with her own wetness – I push my fingertip between the pads of her paw, I turn my finger over and press a knuckle between them, I slide my finger up and down and over her pads and, still holding her paw, I lean down and push my nose between the padded ball of her paw and her clawed toes and sharply inhale and get another sharp hit of her powder, ‘cept this time I’m also hit by the mingling scents of her arousal and that native tang of musk from her paw itself and my head bounces back again, I quiver and squeeze my eyes and grip her ankle hand.

When I look down again, she’s got two fingers either side of her slit, her legs open wide and she’s spread her lips wide, stretching them so that there’s a hell of a display on and I can see from here (course, the lights of the club help with this as they flash and shift) just how sopping she is...

She’s got me where she wants me, I know it and she knows it and I don’t mind it a bit – I press my nose against the middle of the footpaw that I’ve still got held aloft and I take a long, slow, deep inhale, knowing that where I’m sniffing at will feel cool to her and, when I’ve filled my lungs with that blended scent of paw and cunt I exhale, wondering how that’ll feel, a long, warm breath wafting over her paw...but I don’t give her time to think about it – I start licking her pads...getting my tongue in between them, twisting and turning it to get right into the nookiest nooks and the cranniest crannies of her paw, right where I’ve already smeared her juices and just as I thought, her paw jumps in my hand as she bucks her hips, she’s not just spreading her lips anymore, she’s got two fingers sunk right into herself and she’s digging for gold.

Let’s just see how she finds this, then. Still holding her ankle, I turn my head and, tongue sliding over and around and between the pads on the underside of her footpaw, I turn my head and open my jaws wide – I’ve got good, long jaws, after all, and I move them up the sides of her paw and close them, so that I’m holding her paw between my teeth as I work at the underside with my tongue.

Like it? Near kicks the top of my head off in excitement, she does. So here I stand with a powdered paw in my mouth, a blue wolf furiously playing herself to what I can only imagine is going to be a particularly fiery peak of pleasure and this is just, best as I can tell, for starters.

Why exactly did I think it was going to be a bad night again?