Savage's Woman

by Loki Renard

  “If you're near the door, stand clear!”

  Zora pulled the chair away and opened the door just in time to see a fellow with a great iron battering ram in his hands taking a back swing.

  “That's a little extreme, don't you think?” she made the observation mildly, noting the grim and dour expression on Ms Wright's face. To be fair, the woman often looked grim and dour, but in that moment she was looking grim and dour in a very particular and threatening sort of way.

  “Thank you, officer,” she said. “You may return to what were no doubt more important duties.”

  “So you called the cops,” Zora said as the man retreated.

  “I will do what is necessary, Ms Matthews. Consider yourself fortunate the door wasn't broken down. As it is, you still have a door.”

  Zora watched as Ms Wright entered her room and retrieved the laptop.

  “How did you know our conversation was over?”

  It was Ms Wright's turn to be annoyingly silent. The woman's lack of response made Zora suspicious.

  “Were you spying on me?”

  “All your communications are monitored, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright informed her as she tucked the laptop under her arm. “You might want to keep your panties on next time.”

  Zora's jaw dropped and her face was suffused with a bright red glow. Ms Wright had seen everything. She'd seen... Zora was too mortified to be angry. Tears came to her eyes as she turned and slammed back into her room, casting herself on the bed in short order. Hot stinging misery poured out onto the sheets as she cried with frustration and rage.

  Chapter Nine

  “Zora?” Ms Wright had opened the door a tad. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I should have warned you that the call was monitored, and I should not have teased you about it.”

  The apology had come quickly, but the damage was already done. They'd taken her freedom. They'd taken the man she loved, and now she couldn't even get virtually naked with Savage without someone monitoring her vagina.

  Zora picked up the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a pillow, and threw it full force at Ms Wright. Ms Wright caught it and tossed it lightly back onto the bed.

  “I am truly sorry, Zora,” she said, her usual harsh authoritarian tone softening somewhat.

  “Me too,” Zora said. “I'm sorry I ever allowed myself to be talked into staying in this stupid place. I'm leaving!”

  She sat up, grabbed a backpack and began stuffing things from her drawers into it. If a successful bid for freedom could be made with three bras, two pairs of panties, a package of tissues and lubricant, she was completely set.

  “Zora, you're not going anywhere, you know that.”

  “You can't stop me,” Zora said. “Unless you call one of your brutes, and by the time you do, I'll be gone!”

  “I don't need a man to make you settle down, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright said, rolling up the sleeves of her pale gray blouse.

  Zora knew Ms Wright was bigger than her, but Zora also knew she was much angrier than Ms Wright. She would have angry strength if it came down to a tussle, whereas Ms Wright would only have old battleaxe strength.

  “Get out of my way,” Zora demanded imperiously. “I am leaving now.”

  Ms Wright was in the doorway, blocking egress admirably. “You are not going anywhere until you calm down.”

  “I will not calm down until I leave,” Zora retorted.

  She was then treated to the coldest steel gaze she'd ever experienced. “It sounds to me,” Ms Wright said, “as if someone wants a good, hard spanking.”

  “Try it and I'll twist your nose off,” Zora replied. She was not terribly good with threats, especially those of the physical kind. “Now, out of my way!”

  Ms Wright would not move out of her way. She stood there, immovable and very much in charge. And Zora hated it. She hated it with a passion that brought forth a primal scream of rage as she dumped her bag down and threw herself back on the bed.

  “Really, Ms Matthews, I've seen imbalanced teenagers with more self control than you,” Ms Wright remarked.

  “Maybe that's because you're treating me like an imbalanced teenager,” Zora retorted. “Listening in to my calls, demanding to be let into my private space, refusing to move out of my way. I've had all my adult rights stripped from me, what do you expect to happen?”

  “I expect you to understand that this is being done largely to keep you safe from yourself. You are constantly in trouble, Zora. So much so that you require the supervision of two people to ensure that you do not end up in prison.”

  “I am in prison,” Zora yelled from the bed. “I have been in prison ever since Savage came to my door. It doesn't matter if I'm in a cell or not. I have no choices. No control over anything. So don't fucking tell me you're stopping me from going to prison. You’re the damn jailer.”

  “Tell me,” Ms Wright said. “How long are you planning on clinging to that excuse?”

  “It's not an excuse.”

  “Yes,” Ms Wright said. “It is. I've seen your file. I've seen some of what you're capable of. If you truly didn't want to be here, you wouldn't be. And you wouldn't break out by screaming at me or throwing a tantrum. You'd be gone in the night. So what you're doing now, this isn't about wanting to actually go anywhere. This is about your inability to deal with the fact that you might actually want to be here.”

  That shut Zora up. That shut Zora up good. Somehow Ms Wright had managed to see right through her with those flinty gray eyes and damn near read her soul. The woman had a habit of doing that. Ms Wright was dangerous.

  Maybe she would be happier if she let Martin Holt tinker around in her head until she fell neatly into place, but Zora wasn't keen on that idea. She was, however, enjoying having an actual job to do. The Fort Thistle data center had some very impressive toys to play with.

  The first thing she did after having helped out some of her not quite colleagues and generally allayed suspicion by being helpful in ways that others seemed to find remarkable, Zora got down to doing what she really wanted to do – which was finding Savage.

  His mission was classified of course, which meant she wasn't supposed to pull any data on it. Zora wasn't supposed to have access to pretty much anything other than her own ass. In fact, she wasn't even sure she had clearance for her own ass. She was probably technically obliged to ask Ms Wright if she wanted to sit down, but rules were there to be broken and in the ‘heat of battle’ as people who had never been in an actual battle called it, nobody really noticed when she pulled down a few files from the server.

  It turned out, to her great relief, that Savage was still on the mainland. In fact, he wasn't really all that far away. Utah, in fact. Not even a day's drive away. So what the blazing Hades was keeping him away so long?

  She looked a little deeper into the files and saw that he was working an anti-terror mission, details very classified. So much so that they hadn't actually been loaded into the system. Zora was good, but she wasn't good enough to pull files that hadn't undergone the formality of becoming.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ms Wright was hovering again. She did that. Hovered. Zora suspected that there was some sort of device involved. She would have suspected a broom, but it was probably a vacuum cleaner. The woman loved cleaning. Loved it. In fact, Zora had taken to lightly tormenting Ms Wright by leaving trails of crumbs through the house. Nothing too large or obvious, nothing that could be thought of as deliberate. Just enough to make Ms Wright pull out her little hand vacuum cleaner and go about the place on hands and knees, seeking out little specks of toast for destruction.

  Having Ms Wright for a supervisor was simultaneously frustrating and quite convenient, largely because Ms Wright didn't understand what she was supervising. That meant Zora could do practically anything she liked within reason and as long as she had a likely explanation for it, Ms Wright would accept it.

  Zora put her best frown of concentration on and began typing super fast on the keyboard. It was
important to type super fast on the keyboard, so that people knew what she was doing was urgent and important.

  “I'm just tesseracting some of the analogous data modes, looking for sleeper nodes that may have slipped primary analysis. Can't have them getting into the tertiary grid. If that happens, we could have a full discombobulatory fractalizing of the data.”

  Ms Wright's steel gaze nailed her to the chair. “Do any of those words actually mean anything, Ms Matthews? Do you think I am stupid?”

  “Well,” Zora said, still typing like a mad thing. “Stupid is a very relative term... OW!”

  Several heads turned as Ms Wright dragged Zora up from the chair by her ear.

  “I've had just about enough of your attitude, young lady,” Ms Wright declared.

  “But the data...” Zora flailed for the keyboard. “It's fragmenting!”

  Ms Wright turned to the nearest operator. “Is the data fragmenting?”

  The fellow pushed back from his station and peered at Zora's screen. A sharp frown and a few keystrokes later and Zora's terminal was locked. “Not fragmenting,” he said. “That's not really a thing. She was accessing restricted information though.”

  “Nark!” Zora hissed at the man. She didn't know his name, but that didn't matter. Once she was done with him he wouldn't know his name either.

  “I thought as much,” Ms Wright declared, her iron tones grating with satisfaction. “You're coming with me, Ms Matthews, and I'm going to teach you what happens to people who try to pull the wool over my eyes.”

  It was a small mercy for Zora that she was marched upstairs to Martin Holt's office. Fortunately, he wasn't there, so she was spared Ms Wright's recounting of her sins prior to the punishment taking place. And oh, what a punishment it was.

  “Take your pants and panties down, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright ordered.

  “You take your pants and panties down,” Zora snapped back. She hated being in trouble, and she especially hated being in trouble with Ms Wright. There was none of the thrill she felt when Savage got his hands on her; it was all pain and punitive intent.

  “Oh I see,” Ms Wright said. “Having been caught, you're going to pout and stall because you don't think you should be in trouble. Because rules aren't for you, are they, Ms Matthews?”

  “Rules are only for people stupid enough to think that rules matter,” Zora retorted.

  Shaking her head, Ms Wright took Zora yet again by the now very tender earlobe and drew her to Martin Holt's couch. “I don't need you to do as you're told to thrash you,” she informed Zora.

  Her point was proved in very short order as she wrangled Zora down over her lap, wrapped an arm around her waist and a leg around the back of Zora's thighs and pinned her as effectively as any wrestler. Zora could do nothing as Ms Wright pulled her pants and panties down, baring her there in Martin Holt's office.

  “Goddammit, Wright, let me go!”

  “I'll let you go when I am done with you,” Ms Wright said, landing her palm across Zora's cheeks in a hard slap that bought a yelp of pain springing from Zora's lips.

  As far as she could remember, Ms Wright had always used implements in the past. Zora had figured that was because the older woman lacked the strength to perform punishments any other way. As it turned out, she was wrong. Ms Wright's hand was just as hard as Savage's, and she hit damn near as hard.

  In between biting back shameful yelps and cries, Zora worked out why that was. It wasn't that Ms Wright was possessed of super man strength; it was that Savage had always held back when spanking her. She supposed it made sense; a man like him would probably destroy her backside if he hit her with anything near full power.

  Caught over Ms Wright's knee with painfully stinging slaps raining down on her flesh, Zora let out a sob. It was not a sob of contrition, or one related to the spanking she was getting. It was a sob of memory, of a strong man who was so gentle with her, even when he was tearing strips off her hide.

  The sob seemed to work to her advantage, because it gave Wright the wrong idea. “This isn't pleasant, is it, Ms Matthews?” The woman paused for a moment to allow Zora to reply.

  “No.” Zora gritted the word out, keeping her teeth clenched hard together in order to hold back a tidal wave of smart aleck replies rushing forward in response to the inane question.

  Ms Wright began spanking again, working her hard hand smartly against the most tender and sensitive parts of Zora's bottom, her lower cheeks, her upper thighs, and then most shamefully, against the inner skin of her cheeks. It was a style of spanking that could only be truly achieved by using one hand to press Zora's cheeks apart, then plying the tips of her fingers in a fast tattoo against the inner flesh.

  Zora let out a howl of outrage and pain and began fighting for all she was worth to get away. She knew damn well the view Ms Wright was getting. It was a view that left her with no intimate secrets whatsoever. Every little crease and crevice was exposed to the woman's gaze as she spanked on with a grim determination that made the flesh of Zora's bottom flower into heated hurt and eventually left Zora completely drained, crying over the woman's lap.

  “Have you learned your lesson?”

  A rush of anger resulted from the question. No, Zora had not learned her lesson. She was sore and she was pissed off and she was upset, but she was not contrite. No lesson had been learned, save that Ms Wright was a goddamn bitch.

  Zora informed Ms Wright of her opinions on the matter in a torrent of profanity that seemed to leave the woman stunned for a moment. Then she reached for something in her pocket. Zora heard the sound of a rod being extended and craned her head around to see that Ms Wright now held some sort of whippy device in her hand. She didn't know if it was plastic or metal, but when it bit down across the center of her cheeks, making her cry out with fresh pain, she knew she never wanted it to be used on her again.

  “I'm disappointed, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright said, laying a second cut of the thing that hit like a cane and burned like a thin line of napalm against Zora's already heated skin. “You're such a bright woman, but you consistently make such terrible behavioral decisions.”

  A third cut across her cheeks and Zora cried out again, clutching at Ms Wright's pants leg. “Stop! Please, stop!”

  There was a pause. “Am I getting through to you now, Zora?”

  “Yes ma'am!” Zora's hips wriggled back and forth furiously as she tried to escape the sting that was somehow still searing through her bottom. The rod was something straight out of the devil's playbook, it really was.

  “Three more, Zora,” Ms Wright said, her voice softening a touch as she rubbed her hand over Zora's lower back in a touch that was vaguely comforting, but did nothing to mitigate the inferno that was Zora's bottom.

  “No! Not three... OWWW!”

  Zora cried out again as the rod landed once more, making her body jolt with the pain of it. It was all too much for her to take; too much soreness, too much heat, too much ache that fled deep into the muscle of her bottom and made it tic and pulse in anticipation of the next stroke which duly fell, accompanied by another shriek and plentiful tears splashing onto the tastefully carpeted floor below.

  She was squirming, fighting, wriggling so hard that Ms Wright could barely keep a grip on her, but yet she did. Zora felt the woman's leg lock more firmly around her thighs, mitigating movement as she prepared to deal the last stroke.

  “Now, let's not be having any more of that shameful language and behavior, Ms Matthews, do you understand?”

  “Yes ma'am,” Zora cried.

  The last stroke landed, accompanied by yet another shriek and then it was over. That was what Ms Wright said at least; but it was not over, not for Zora's bottom. Not for her skin which felt as if it had been tanned still on her body. Her bottom was fire hot and it felt swollen and tight. The lines of the rod were still smoldering as Ms Wright held her in place, stilling her residual struggles until Zora simply stopped fighting and lay on the couch and cried.

  Ms Wright was a
lmost tender after the spanking. She released Zora's legs, stood, and helped Zora to lie comfortably on the couch. “Do you want Arnica gel?”

  Zora nodded, mute with tears. She shut her eyes tight as Ms Wright retrieved the gel from her breast pocket where it always seemed to reside, and began gently applying it on her heated cheeks. It was a kind gesture, but the woman was forced to stop when Zora could not stand even the touch of the gel on her bottom. With even delicate touches, she winced and jerked away, fresh tears leaping to her eyes.

  “Okay young lady,” Ms Wright said. “You just lay there, when it has settled a little more, I will put the gel on.”

  There Zora lay, thoroughly thrashed just as Ms Wright had promised. She buried her head in her arms and cried to herself in a way she knew was pitiful, but couldn't help. Ms Wright sat nearby in an armchair, saying very little.

  After a few minutes, the door of the office opened and a masculine voice cursed. Martin Holt. Martin Holt never swore.

  “Zora,” he said, stepping into the room and shutting the door quickly behind him. “Ms Wright. What... what is going on here?”

  “Ms Matthews was in need of discipline,” Ms Wright explained.

  Martin Holt took a few steps closer. “My god woman, what have you done? Zora, are you all right?” There was genuine concern in his voice, which overrode Zora's embarrassment as he crouched down next to her. “Look at me, Zora.”

  Zora lifted her tear-stained eyes and looked into a face racked with worry.

  “Mr Holt, I assure you, she is all right.”

  “Her backside looks like she was run over by a train,” Martin Holt said, clearly upset. “Did you do this to her?”

  “I did,” Ms Wright said. “It was necessary.”

  “Ms Wright, this is brutality,” Martin Holt said. “I will not stand for it. She is bruised!”

  Zora wiped her eyes on her sleeve and watched as Martin Holt tore into Ms Wright. She had not expected his reaction. It was interesting. Very interesting.