Jason wiped spilt ice cream from the marble counter, pushed his glasses up the spotted muzzle. His apres-school job was helping, in lots of ways. The cat could finally afford to go out with friends on Saturdays. It was an anchor of stability, especially after that last semester.
The door opened; it tinkled the bell. Ms. Cromwell, English teacher.
They had a history.
"Hi." His tone was not cheery, nor proprietary, but of a familiarity regretted. He reached for the scoop, a cup, the chocolate chip tub.
The vixen looked him over, cool. Appraising. It was an afternoon ritual that had gone on for months. Jason's parents had made it all too clear what they thought of Shakespeare at 10PM in their son's teacher's apartment. But that didn't mean she wasn't free to visit him at his place of employment.
"Perhaps something... different today," she suggested casually. But there was nothing casual as her gaze locked the cheetah's, nothing at all apropos to a transaction over ice cream. The double entendre of that sweet and creamy after-school treat into which she most liked to sink fangs, the young male cone she loved to wrap her tongue around, had become cliche. Jason so wished she'd take his coolness for the obvious hint it was, just leave him to hell alone.
The cheetah in pastel-dotted uniform vest wedged the frozen paw-packed confection into an angry spherical mound, disregarding his customer. He'd grown used to the daily ritual, her taunts, the subtle raise of her brow as she pinned him with lewd puns, tortured him with suggestive references to their forbidden tryst that he so desperately wanted to forget. She had been his teacher, dammit! He gritted fangs, tried to ignore her.
The bell over the door tinkled again. Jason glanced up through the sloped window of the foggy freezer case. He recognized the young wolf walking in, or so he thought. Patrick, a friend of his own little brother. Or perhaps not. The canid looked barely old enough to be in high school, so he could be right, at that.
"I'm in... the mood for something... cherry," the vixen teacher said, with a yiffy smile. She teased open the front of her blouse as Patrick approached dragging boots on the floor.
Jason watched as their eyes met, the youngster's dropped to her breasts. His stomach fell all the way to his paws.
"Two... scoops, please."
Patrick noticed the cheetah, looked away. His grey tail thrashed, jaw tightened. "'Lo, Jase."
"Uh, Patrick, right?" They'd never been introduced.
The wolflet nodded. Almost hid behind his teacher. She pulled him in front, petted him shamelessly. "So what'll you have, sweety?" Her look at Jason was that of a predator, whose fangs laugh even as they disembowel.
The cat had been sure he was over... that. Her. Hated himself. Hated her for ever making it happen. Why couldn't it stop? Why wouldn't she just go away?!
"Umm, nothing." Patrick's whisper was dry, airy with quiet, embarrassed shame. In a flash it had become obvious to him what Jason knew. And maybe just why. He'd seen the expression on Ms. Cromwell's face.
The cheetah handed over the heavy ice cream cone to his erstwhile tutor, his ex in other ways. She licked at it fellatively, as only a literary vixen in glasses can. And the taste in her muzzle was the sweet of torment, of the sly revenge upon which she shamelessly snacked of an afternoon.
"C'mon, Patrick," Jason said with a sudden grin. "It's on the house." He took a long stare at Ms. Cromwell, she lewdly servicing the phallic treat in her paw. It would only be only fair, after all, he thought. "Here ya go. A Kiddie Kup."
The topmost scoop tumbled from the vixen's cone. She shrieked in surprise as it took the most forthright and chilling route to the floor - right down through her blouse.
"Ring-up my bro after school sometime," Jason said to the wolfboy when they were quite alone. "Maybe you and I can have a quiet talk."
Patrick glanced doubtfully out the door to where the teacher was getting into her car. She placed his backpack on the sidewalk.
"Yeah. I think I might."