Page 3 of Controller's Obsession

Who the fuck has just kicked us in the balls?

Who?

His demon actually had the audacity to laugh.You know who!

Chapter Two

Peni

Overwhelm imminent.

Overwhelm imminent.

Shut down in five…

Cut that out, you silly beast. We can’t afford to faint right now.Peni had no idea why his goat form tended to speak like a computer in an old science fiction movie sometimes—it might have had something to do with the amount of time Peni spent watching them—but they could not faint, not now.

He was running, his tiny hooves slipping and sliding over the tiles he’d polished just that morning, heading outside. Peni needed to think, he needed to make sure his heart wasn’t going to burst out of his chest, and he needed somewhere private to do that.

You can’t leave him. Go back. Go back.

Maybe it was all the cleaning fluids he’d been using. Peni had absolutely no idea why his animal half wanted to go back and face a demon that looked like he’d just stepped out of a scene from a horror story. The demon was worth looking at from a purely aesthetic standpoint, but… Peni ran around the back garden and huddled under the nearest bush, his ears twitching at every foreign sound.

Mate.

Gods, now his goat half was bleating like a lost lamb, and that was not a good look.Please, just shush. Keep an ear out for that demon and let me think.

Peni was aware his usually sweet little goat side was muttering, but he knew how to tune that out. He was more focused on how, in heaven’s name, his day had gone so wrong.

The demon in the house wasn’t the one who owned it. Peni knew that much. Dakata, who owned the house, was almost a celebrity. Everyone knew who he was with his fancy cars, pockets of money, and the bands he’d made so successful.

But then I’m not the cleaner who’s supposed to be working in the house either.Which meant technically, Peni couldn’t consider the new demon an interloper when he was pretty much the same thing. Mrs. Danials, the woman who did have the job cleaning Dakata’s house, was in Florida. She had been for months. “Those rich bastards never notice the help,” she’d said, rather crudely, in Peni’s opinion, when she’d offered him the job.

“You just do what has to be done. Make sure it’s between the hours of nine and four, Monday to Friday, and the demon won’t even notice I’m gone. I promise. I’m paying twenty bucks an hour, and I pay weekly on a Friday.”

Mrs. Danials had said more about how her sister was sick, and she was the only one who could look after her, and things like that. Peni knew that was all lies because he could scent it. But the twenty dollars an hour was true and a godsend to a homeless little goat. Peni always felt as if he was constantly struggling to stay one step ahead of the wolves in the world. When he found out the house had a disused basement, Peni thought he’d won the lottery.

It was the basement window Peni was staring at now. He could just make out the outline of the little bed he’d rigged up for himself.

I have to get my things. My jeans, they have to be ruined, and my headphones, they dropped on the floor. We could’ve broken them. I saved for almost a month to buy them.

Stop thinking about that.His goat was still miffed.That man in there is our mate, and you kicked him in the balls.

It was your hooves on his balls, not my feet.Peni didn’t want to even think about that, but it seemed his goat had other ideas.

That was a silly accident. It happens. You know, if you went back in there, on your two feet, explained that our hooves just slipped, and offered to give them a rub and a few smoochy kisses to make them feel better…

Are you talking about me doing that to the demon’s balls?Peni was shocked and a teeny tiny bit intrigued.

They’ve probably got my hoof prints on them. You should kiss them better, at the very least.

Peni shook his head and waggled his ears. He liked that he could do that in his goat form.I don’t understand why you head-butted him in the first place. If you hadn’t knocked him over, then you wouldn’t have accidentally kicked his balls.

I want to sniff his delicious-looking horns. Weren’t they pretty and so studly? Worthy of the biggest goat in existence, you have to admit that. It’s not like I could reach them when he was standing up. I can jump, but not that high… well, not from a standing start.

Don’t use the word studly.Peni shivered.That’s just creepy and weird.His father used to tell stories about how he’d gotten trapped in his animal form and ‘put out to stud’ was how he called it. Forced to impregnate females, all because the non-paranormals at the time had a fascination with tiny farm animals.

Peni wasn’t sure how much force had actually been involved because his father usually had at least three or four women on the go at the same time. It was one of the reasons Peni had been homeless when he took the cleaning job from Mrs. Danials. His dad used to think it was fun to have orgies in the house and didn’t see why Peni couldn’t join in. Peni could think of at least a dozen reasons why not and left.

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