by Maren Smith
“Liar.”
Rowth paused long enough to level a stern look upon her. “A magistrate never lies. Whatever he says, it’s always the truth and even when it’s not, he should never be argued with. Cease your contrariness before I decide what you need to go to dinner with isn’t clothes so much as a hot backside. You have no way of knowing, but my hand is by far not the worst implement in my arsenal.”
Her mouth was open before she caught herself. He waited while a wave of impotent rage rolled up her spine, stealing in under the back of her skull and filling her head with that familiar throb of room-coloring redness. She swallowed back a slew of unwise comments, barely managing to close her mouth without saying any of them.
“Good girl,” he said, and even managed to sound frustratingly sincere when he did so. She had a whole slew of responses for that too, but she wisely locked her teeth together.
Rowth walked away from her, approaching a section of wall she never would have suspected was a closet until the door slid open to admit him. A soft amber light winked on when he stepped inside, shining instant illumination over a narrow rack of clothing, neatly arranged by color and length. They almost obscured the much broader display of what Brinley instantly recognized as torture implements. Whips, straps, and multi-tailed floggers hung from hooks alongside harness-like restraints and neat coils of rope, and God only knew what was in the hip-high chest of drawers positioned just beneath.
“Remind me to call in a tailor,” he mused, selecting an emerald green frock no longer than his own shirt from the clothing side. He looked at it, then at her, and then exchanged it for another article colored a dark shade of blue. Lingerie was every bit as universal as ‘oh shit’ handles in cars. This one was lacy, cut to hug breasts much bigger than her own but hang loose everywhere else. The material so transparent that she could see his outline through it from all the way across the room. Brinley looked from it to the black braided whip hanging just past Rowth’s shoulder and didn’t say one word as he brought the garment to her.
“Arms,” he said.
Mother. Fucker.
Looking anywhere but at him, her face flamed as she held up her arms and let herself be dressed. Like an infant. A very promiscuous infant, apparently. She stared, horrified by the paleness of her own flesh showing right through the gossamer fabric of this babydoll dress. Her shoulders were too narrow. As soon as she moved, the straps slid down her arms. The dark circles of her nipples thrust against the blue mesh and the shadowy ‘v’ between her thighs was clearly seen. She might be clothed, but this was not much better than being naked.
She should have shaved before she left Earth.
Brinley caught herself all over again. Why would she even think that? She should have shaved? For Rowth? That made her both angry and mortified all over again.
“You look surprisingly enjoyable,” he said, a strange thickness in his already deep voice making it seem even more growly that usual.
Drawing back, Brinley snapped her arms up to cover herself again. Two wasn’t enough to hide all the parts of her that needed to be hidden. “What does that mean?”
Rowth visibly pulled himself together. “That means it’s time for dinner.”
Brinley scoffed, a harsh burst of laughter that didn’t quite qualify as such. “I’m not going to dinner with you.”
At last his black gaze returned to her eye level.
“Yes,” he replied. “You are.”
“Not like this I’m not.”
Somehow Rowth managed to square off against her without ever moving. “I see your confusion. Allow me to clarify. You are going to dinner because it’s dinner time, you need substance in your stomach before you can take your medication, and because I tell you you are going. Also, you are going dressed as you are because that is what I decided you would wear. Rule Sixteen.”
“And if I decide to throw up all over you and this dress, where does that fit in the rules?” she snipped back.
His steady gaze on her both sharpened and darkened. “Are you saying you feel as if you’re going to disgorge?”
If she had to stick her fingers down her throat to do it. She met his eyes without flinching. “Yes.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “You feel ill?” he pointedly rephrased.
Every time she looked at him. “Yes.”
“Are you lying to me?” He held up a hand, staying her before she could reply. “I’d advise you to consider before answering.”
Heat rushed her face. She liked to think it was a flood of anger making her blush, and not this irritating sense of embarrassment that accompanied being scolded as if he truly were her parent. “What do you want from me?” she demanded.
“The truth.”
“Fuck you, and that’s the truth! Now, go away!”
He didn’t. He folded his arms across his chest, one finger lightly tapping his own bicep as he studied her.
“Fine.” He walked out of the room, leaving Brinley sitting on the edge of the bed in an outfit barely deserving of the name.
Miserable, she yanked the bedspread up around her shoulders. The evening air wasn’t cold, but she shivered anyway. Probably due more to nerves than temperature. For once, her door didn’t slid shut behind him. Aggravated as she was, she was about to crawl off the bed and butt-scoot her way over to see if she could figure out how to make it close when she heard the crisp march of his shoes coming back down the hall.
Rowth re-entered her room with his tablet in his hand. Frowning, he tapped at the screen. That expression was another mask, she realized. One that he’d just donned for her benefit alone as he consulted whatever was on that tablet for almost a full minute before dropping it onto the bed beside her. When his attention locked on her, an answering knot tightened deep in the pit of her stomach. Brinley hiked her chin, staring back up at him but feeling very much as if she were looking down the barrel of a shotgun. One she knew was loaded. What she didn’t know, was how many shots he had left.
She flinched when he reached for her, but he caught her chin between his fingers anyway and checked her eyes.
“Clear, bright and focused,” he said, out loud but definitely more to himself than to her.
“Anger will do that.”
He shifted his grip from her chin to her throat and Brinley flinched again, but he didn’t grab her there. He checked her pulse instead.
“Elevated, but normal,” he decreed.
She glared. “Anger will do that, too. Stop touching me.”
Hooking the edges of the bedspread, he stripped it from her.
“Hey!”
“You had your chance.”
She tried to slap him away, but he slid a hand under her thighs and, despite his brisk manner, gently lifted her off the bed. “What are you doing?” she demanded as he carried her from the bed.
“Either establishing the truth of your illness or catching you in a lie.” Another section of wall slid silently open as he walked up to it, revealing a spacious bathroom with lights much whiter and brighter than that of the closet. As empty as it was immaculate, the bathroom looked as if it had never been used. Clear glass walls surrounded a shower with two rows of evenly spaced spray nozzles, but no shampoo, soap, towels or washcloth anywhere in evidence. A wooden bench provided the only sitting surface apart from the toilet, but there were no other fripperies or even toilet paper. The polished stone floor reflected the utilitarian glare of recessed ceiling lights, with only one thin white area rug set before the sink. She counted half a dozen hooks between the door and the shower, but there were no paintings, no decorations, not so much as a seashell. And when he set her down on the counter by the sink—a polished stone basin with a rain spout-like faucet jutting out of the tiles just below the mirror and no obvious handles—she became the only item of clutter in the whole room.
“Let me guess.” She twisted around to eye their reflections in the massive mirror. “That’s where the hidden cameras are.”
Rowth didn’t answ
er. Tapping just beneath the counter on the opposite side of the sink from where she was sitting, he opened a hidden drawer, removing a small tin container, a gray washcloth which he snapped out of its folded state, and a cylindrical tube that was capped on both rounded ends and which was as thick as her thumb and three times the length.
“What is that?”
“Your doom,” he replied. Were he anyone else, she’d have thought he was joking, but he said that like he said everything else: without the slightest trace of humor. Wondering why that made her nervous, she watched him drop the lid on the toilet before spreading the washcloth over it and placed both the tin and cylinder on top of it. “Mind your legs,” he said as he came back to her. Through she tried, she wasn’t any more successful at avoiding being picked up now than she had been any other time before.
“What are those?” Nervousness edged the anger from her tone as he carried her to them. “What are you doing?”
He sat on the bench, parting her legs to sit her upon his right knee. Ignoring both questions, he said, “I want you to remember, I gave you three chances to retract your falsehood. You have brought this on yourself.”
Brinley grabbed his shoulder, but he just as firmly caught each of her hands, twisting her arms behind her back and pinning her wrists in his iron-fast grip. In a move that was as terrifyingly easy for him as it was unsettling for her, he upended her over his left thigh. Her feet bumped the floor. She stubbed her toe, but that wasn’t the pain that made her shout.
Hooking her hips, he lifted her high enough to shift both his legs under her. She tottered, nose inches from the floor, fingers clawing the air but unable to twist free or grab for balance. He elevated her hips with his thigh, swiveling just a bit to prevent her involuntary kicks from hitting either the toilet or the floor.
“Wait!” He was going to spank her again. Her breath caught in her throat, choking her. Her bottom clenched. Pure panic filled her, wave after chilling wave pouring through her veins and turning her blood to ice. Even knowing how much it would hurt for anything to touch them, she kicked her feet up to cover her vulnerable bottom. “Don’t!”
“Put them down,” Rowth ordered. “If you injure yourself through insubordination, the severity of your punishment will be increased just as soon as the hospital releases you back into my care.”
The single knot in her stomach became as braided and as tangled as the falls of the flogger she’d seen hanging in the bedroom closet. Her panic grew and yet, in the oddest show of opposition she’d yet felt within her own body, a tiny spark of heated arousal popped into being down in her belly full of knots.
“D-don’t spank me!” Brinley wailed.
“I’m not going to spank you.” The calm in his voice was at maddening odds with the trembling now spreading through her. When it reached that tiny spark in her belly, heat blossomed and the trembling became tingling. She didn’t understand it, but it got exponentially worse when his dark voice deepened and added a threatening, “Yet.”
Brinley’s mind raced, but without a single coherent thought to set itself above the sense of doom spreading through her gut. She couldn’t get up. Even if she could run away, she couldn’t get off his lap. She was stuck until he decided to let her go, with nothing but the most ineffective barrier of transparent cloth to shield her bottom from a hand she already knew was going to feel hard as hell when it came striking down.
I will never, ever again be as gentle with you as I just was. He’d already promised her that, and she believed him. She’d believed it when he’d first said it, and she absolutely believed it now.
But, he’d also said he wasn’t going to spank her.
Yet.
Unsure which to believe, she reluctantly lowered her feet. She felt for both the toilet and the floor, but her reaching toes found neither. She tensed, fighting to quell the trembling but she was pretty sure he could feel it. Certainly, she felt it when he picked up the little round tin and set it on her bottom while he one-handedly removed the lid. Back the tin went to its place on the washcloth.
“Wh-what are you doing?” She stopped with a squeak when she felt the back of her scanty outfit being raised. He neatly folded the bottom hem back over her hips, tucking the length beneath her pinned hands and out of his way. She tried to twist around far enough to see, but the clap of his hand catching the seat of her right buttock stopped that.
“Be still.”
She arched, her whole body stiffening with the shock of suddenly feeling his large fingers slip between her buttocks. A dollop of cool gel caressed her anal rim. He was lubing her up. He was going to sodomize her!
“Oh no, no!” Brinley jerked, fighting to wrench upward, to yank her hands free, to find the floor and she didn’t care how much it hurt when she did. But he’d been waiting for that. The instant she moved, his grip on her wrists became a crushing vise. She shouted, but she didn’t break free.
Leaning on her back, he pinned her even tighter and in a flash, his probing touch between her buttocks vanished and the flat of his hand came bearing down in a rigorous assault that, true to his word, made the spanking she’d taken from him in the kitchen seem like foreplay.
That tingling spark between her legs burst into a heartbeat pulse of the most ludicrous wanting, a sensation so at odds with the stinging smart vigorously clapping from one naked bottom cheek to the other. At first she didn’t believe it. It was too absurd to be real. And then she didn’t have to believe it, because within only a handful of blistering strikes all she could feel was the swarming, intensifying, white-hot pain mounting on top of all the places his smacking hand had already struck.
Brinley stopped fighting to escape and instead, with renewed desperation, fought to break free far enough to catch his arm, or cover her bottom, or to roll over somehow and tuck her flaming ass into some magical place where he’d never be able to reach it again.
“Stop!” she squealed. “Please, please stop!”
“Submit.” The boom of his command filled the bathroom. “Fight me and I will make this last the night!”
“No!” Her voice broke. A flood of tears rushed her eyes, making them sting now too. Brinley clenched inward, forcing all her struggles to wooden stillness and squeezing her eyes tightly shut. No way was she going to break down bawling over Rowth’s knee, no matter how hard he spanked her or how much her bottom burned because of it.
The spanking stopped just as soon as she did. Sucking and gasping for air, shaking now all the way to her core, Brinley forced herself not to move. Her feet were up again, her ankles crossed and toes curled, and her legs pressed so tight together she imagined not even a slim piece of paper could have slipped between them.
For a long time—hours, it seemed; a miniature forever broken only by her occasional sniffles and shaky in and exhaling breaths—everything fell silent and still. Then she felt him tap the ball of each of her bare feet.
“Put them down,” Rowth reminded her.
Brinley stared miserably at the floor below her. She also lowered her feet, forcing them down into a semblance of relaxation that no other part of her shared.
Rowth administered another gentle tap between her tense shoulder blades. “Ease your body.”
Her body shook harder. Her muscles likely couldn’t have held her up much longer anyway, but the rest of her was still slower to obey. Her shoulders dipped, her back loosening, and eventually, she forced enough of her to relax that she once more lay draped across his lap with her nose just inches off the floor and her wounded bottom centered upon his knees.
“Are you done?” he asked, that punishing hand of his coming to rest on the back of her right thigh. She didn’t know if it hurt as bad as her bottom, but the heat of his palm blazed against her skin.
It was too much. Her teeth gritted, her eyes squeezed shut, but the first of her tears still broke free.
She nodded.
“No, that’s incorrect.”
She didn’t think it possible to get angry again, but th
ere it was—that flash of temper that rose up in equal parts humiliation and despair. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
His forefinger tapped the back of her thigh, a Morse code of disapproval that could just as easily have been expressed via another series of stinging swats. He didn’t. Instead, with inexhaustible patience, he said, “I expect you to say, ‘I am done being a naughty little girl. Please, Master, I beg you continue.’”
Another tear fell as Brinley gaped at the floor. He couldn’t possibly be serious? Naughty little girl? Master? I beg you? She couldn’t say that! She couldn’t say any of that, and her prolonged silence must have told him as much because his finger began tapping the back of her thigh again.
“Brinley,” he warned, still calm, still infinitely patient. “Say, ‘I am all done being a naughty little girl. Please, Master, I beg you continue,’ or I will go get a paddle from the closet and you will eat all your meals standing up for at least two days.”
Lying where she was, her ass blazing with hurt, that she believed without a doubt, too.
“I-I…” Her throat tightened, choking her on the mortification of her own words. “I a-am done…”
“All done,” he coached. “Start again, please.”
“I-I a-am…” She began to cry. She tried to choke it back, but the tears were just as evident in her squeaky, whispery voice as they were dripping off the end of her nose. “I am all d-done being a… a n-naughty little g-girl. Please, Master, I… I b-b-beg you. Continue.”
He patted the back of her thigh. “Good girl.”
She felt the movement as he reached over to dip his finger back into the tin and the second dollop of gel smeared a cool circle of intent all around the puckered rim of her anus. Her tears fell faster. She tried to stop it, but when she felt his probing finger push for entry, her muscles locked down. “Please don’t rape me!”
His questing finger actually stilled, then withdrew. It was a long time, while she struggled to rein in her brief flurry of tears, before she noticed that he wasn’t moving. Afraid she’d get swatted if she tried to steal a peek back over her shoulder, she waited for him to do or say something more. When he didn’t, she tested her wrists but the minute she moved, his grip tightened.
