by Maren Smith
“Are you quite finished?” His tone was tense, calm but with an angry undercurrent.
Like he has anything at all to be angry about, Brinley thought bitterly. She nodded.
“Rule Seventeen,” he told her, bending back toward the items spread across the lid of the toilet, “melodramatics are not permitted in this house. I abhor them.”
She heard the thin clatter of the tin being closed up, and then another metallic scrap that she could have sworn meant he’d just opened it again. But no, the cylinder. She tensed as the dull rounded end of something cool and solid replaced where his finger had just been.
“Rape you,” he scoffed, and then it was inside her. She stiffened, her muscles clamping down, but it was small and straight and it invaded her in a slow, well-greased push that had whatever it was thoroughly lodged before she could do more than gasp. “How dare you say such a thing to me? As if it were even possible. Stop moving.”
Unaware that she had been, Brinley froze. Her eyes were huge, her mouth gaped. She had never in her life been so personally invaded as she was right now. This was beyond humbling. She didn’t know what this was, but for all that her head kept telling her it was awful, her sex was responding in a completely different way. Beads of tickling moisture were trickling through the folds of her twitching pussy. That sensation was anything but awful.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she whispered.
“Taking your temperature,” he said drily. “You’re ill, remember?”
Taking her…? It was a thermometer. He had a thermometer pushed up her ass. Not deep, just deep enough for her to be humiliated by the thought of the view she was presenting him. All but naked, her brightly spanked bottom on full display… with a thermometer half sticking out of it.
“What?” she gasped. Her fear of only a moment before entirely forgotten now, she got mad all over again. “Why would you do that?! You could have put it in my mouth!”
For the first time, his temper sparked off of hers. Every part of him that was in contact with her, stiffened. “You want this in your mouth, knowing where it has been?”
“Not now,” she snapped, wresting at her imprisoned hands. His grip was as firm as ever, and she kicked the empty air in frustration. “I am not three years old!”
“No, you’re twenty-six, but from what I’ve thus far seen, there’s very little Earth difference between the two.”
“I can take an oral temperature!” she bellowed.
“Not if I prefer otherwise.”
“No, you’re preference is to scare me to death and make me think you’re going to rape me!”
“Not possible.”
“No? Well, it’s not because your species is dickless, I guarantee you that. You’re the biggest dick I’ve ever met! From both our worlds!”
He laughed, a dark and mirthless chuckle.
“God, I hope that translated right.” She kicked the empty air again.
“Oh, it did.”
A soft beep from behind her signaled the thermometer had reached its conclusion. Even after Rowth removed it, Brinley continued to burn with humiliation.
“Normal,” Rowth concluded. “You are not ill. Congratulations, you’ve been in my house—” He consulted his wrist. “—three hours, and you’ve already earned your first real punishment.”
As sore as her bottom was, still burning, still throbbing, she was just mad enough not to care about the consequences. “Ooo! I’m scared.”
“Not nearly enough.” He released her hands and helped her to sit. His mouth was flat and his gaze cool, but despite his obvious irritation, he paid careful attention to keep her legs from bumping the floor, the bench or toilet, his own legs and even against bumping into one another as he lifted her back into his arms.
It was a cruel trick of the imagination that, in spite of what he’d just done, when he held her to him like this, for one awful moment, she actually felt… wanted. Safe, even. With him, of all people.
And never mind that odd feeling she got the second she realized he was taking her back to bed without retaliating for the angry things she’d just said. Because, well… whatever it was, it wasn’t disappointment. That would be crazy. She was tired, that was all. Tired and homesick and mad. She wanted her pussy to stop twitching. She wanted to go back to bed and be left alone, with decent clothes that fit and a one-way ticket back to Earth on the nightstand. With a date set for whenever she was fully healed, because honestly human doctors couldn’t regrow bones and this really hurt.
But there was no ticket on the nightside table and Rowth didn’t allow her a decent set of clothes. Instead, when he carried her from the bathroom, he took her straight to the closet. Not only did she get to see his array of torture implements up close, but her curiosity about what was in that chest of drawers was, unfortunately, satisfied. The entire top drawer was packed full of wrist and ankle restraints, blindfolds, gags, clips linked together on thin chains, every manner of phallic substitute imaginable, and endless other things she wished she could un-see.
He selected a silvery elongated, egg-shaped item with a very thin neck and a wide round base. It was the smallest of a set of six, and she was not so innocent in sexual matters that she didn’t immediately recognize the butt plug for what it was or not know how it would be used.
“You’re not putting that in me,” she said, as if her heart hadn’t just stumbled, her nipples hadn’t just tightened into buds, and her sex hadn’t locked down in a mini spasm that could almost have been mistaken for eager anticipation.
Frowning, Rowth looked at her, then shut the drawer and took down a wooden hairbrush from where it hung among the straps and floggers. Carrying her back to the bed, he tossed both on the coverlet, then adjusted her in his arms. Brinley was struggling before he sat down at the foot, but nothing she did changed the outcome. He flipped her over, laying her facedown across his lap once more.
“No!” She jabbed his ribs with her elbow, but he still captured her legs in the vise of his own. She reached back, grabbing and swatting, even clawing as she tried to hook his hand to stop him, but Rowth caught her by the wrist and pinned her arm to her back. “No!” she wailed, but ‘yes’ was his picking up that plug, sliding it in between her buttocks, nosing it up against her already lubricated rim and in it went.
It was the smallest in the drawer, but as she opened to take the widest part, both the fullness and the pinch as it sank all the way in made her yelp. It was a small cry for a fleeting discomfort, and that sound was nothing at all to the one she made when he picked up the hairbrush and, without a word of scolding, immediately put it to use. His hand had been hard; the hairbrush was worse. That he wasn’t using the full strength of his arm was as clear as the fact that it didn’t matter. With little more than snaps of his wrist, he peppered the whole of her bottom in crisp, fiery snaps that instantly turned her fight against him into wailing pleas.
It lasted forever, or only a few seconds. But two seconds spent under the whuck and crack of that hairbrush were a thousand seconds way too long. And yet, from the very first snap of that wide oval head of wood, as much as it hurt and as bad as it stung, deep down inside her, she found peace in the pain.
But pain was pain, and her body didn’t care about inner peace as much as it did escaping. Yet he was so much stronger than she was; Rowth held her down and didn’t let go. And he didn’t stop, no matter how she twisted. No matter how she hard cried or how many names she called him (and she called him quite a few) until the dam of her tears broke and she collapsed over his lap, angry, hurt and bawling.
Somewhere between the sniffles and the hiccups, the confusing inner peace and her mind-boggling disbelief over how a thing as inconsequentially ridiculous as a spanking could hurt this much, at last Rowth’s arm fell still. She never felt him lay the hairbrush aside. All she knew was, at some point, his hand came to rest on the scorched surface of her ass. Softly, with gentle rubs and caresses, he soothed away the hurt.
The raggedness of her tears
ebbed, then faded away, much like the sting as it faded into fire. Not disappearing so much as becoming something else. As she struggled to catch her breath, she became aware of two things. First, Rowth was talking to her, his low, calm voice washing over her in waves every bit as soothing as the caress of his hand as it wandered the hills of her bottom, fingertips brushing down the backs of her thighs before traveling up again, sometimes skimming, sometimes pressing in on the base of the plug that filled her up. Second, a teary, snotty, hiccupy mess, every time he said something, she said something back.
“Are you going to be good now, Brinley?”
“Yes, Sir. Y-yes, Sir. Yes.”
His fingers circled the plug. “Yes, what, little one?”
“Yes, M-Master. I’ll b-be good.”
“Will you?” He took hold of the base, lightly pulling on the plug but not withdrawing it.
She groaned as the widest part forced her open and the feeling of fullness intensified. The sound poured from her, both sultry and guttural. Her ass was burning, aching, and throbbing. Throbbing so fiery and so deep inside her that she could feel the rhythmic pulse all the way up between her legs.
“P-please, t-take it out,” she begged between hiccups, but he pressed it back deep inside her again.
“You want it out?” he asked, the rumble of his deep voice vibrating through the heated pulse.
Head bowed, Brinley nodded.
“No more lies,” he told her. “Mind your tone and your manners. Agreed?”
Again, she nodded, but deep down, that thin veil of inner peace dissipated like mist in the morning sun. Sullen anger began to tickle its way back in. Maybe Rowth sensed it, because he did not immediately remove the plug.
“Brinley,” he warned, “if I must discipline you again tonight, I won’t use the plug. I’ll use my cock, I won’t be gentle, and I will not allow you pleasure. Do you understand?”
The peace was definitely gone now. All Brinley had left was the cold grip of her anger and the heat still pulsing through her ass. She had to swallow twice before she trusted her tone not to betray her.
“I understand,” she whispered. He tapped the base of the plug. She made herself swallow again. “Master.”
“Good girl. Deep breath.”
That she tensed was as involuntary as the moan she struggled to stifle as he gently worked the plug free. He left her sitting on a hot, sore bottom while he disappeared into the bathroom to clean it, then put both plug and hairbrush back into their places in the closet.
“Put your arms around me,” he said as he came to carry her again, and she did it, but only because she didn’t think she could take any more of his consequences. Not right away.
“Good girl,” he said again as he carried her from the bedroom level, up the stairs to the main level of his house.
“I’m not hungry,” she said as he brought her into the dining room and shifted her in his arms enough to pull out a chair.
“I know, but you need to take your medication and I have decided that you will take it at the supper table, where you will eat and be civil, and polite, and either pleasant or quiet company.”
“Lovely options.” She tried not to glare at him, but she knew from the way he looked at her as he set her down, that she wasn’t quite as successful at keeping the sulkiness out of her voice. “Behave or get beaten.”
“Spanked,” he corrected and scooted her seat closer to the table. “Although I do have other methods of disciplining once I realize spanking is not enough to elicit the behavior I desire.”
“Butt fucking,” she countered, trying and failing to find a less painful way to sit in this uncushioned chair. “You’re going to split me apart and leave me to bleed to death.”
“No, I won’t. But I can see you delight in challenging me, so perhaps another round of punishment is exactly what you need.”
“You think I’m challenging now, Master, just wait until you really piss me off.” And she could sit again.
“Who is… urinating… off of what?”
Brinley startled. Angry as she was, she hadn’t noticed they weren’t alone. Her gaze darted from Rowth’s office, to the kitchen, but it wasn’t until two claws crept up to grip the table’s edge and a wide, flat, big-eyed and flat-muzzled face rose up from below it to peek curiously back at her, that she realized the chair directly opposite of her was occupied.
“Oh my God,” she said before she could stop herself.
It—what it was—squatted across from her, with a sheet of paper resting before it and a pen hooked in one lethally clawed hand. Its eyes were black and huge compared to the rest of its face. A short, flat muzzle ended in a dog’s black-tipped nose. With molasses slowness, it rose up high enough to cast her a leering, toothless grin that took five horrifyingly long seconds to fully manifest, and that was practically Speedy Gonzales compared to how long it took for the clawed hand clutching the pen to complete its short, half-moon of a greeting wave.
“Hello,” it wheezed. “Welcome… to the… family.”
It leered again.
“Fuck me,” Brinley breathed, hardly daring to move for fear the creature might feel invited to venture closer. “What the hell is that?”
“That,” Rowth replied, delivering a disciplinary tap to the top of her head, “is your foster brother and you, young lady, will mind your manners or I will mind them for you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Brinley Lawson, may I introduce Rog Daeli. Rog,” Rowth turned to the creature, offering a formal nod of a bow. “This is Brinley Lawson, from Earth. She will be staying with us for…” His hesitation was barely noticeable. “…the near foreseeable future.”
“Hello,” the creature, Rog, repeated.
“Oh my God.” Brinley jerked when Rowth again thumped the top of her head with two fingers.
He frowned. “Manners.”
“It’s… all right.” The creature leered—was that a smile?—and half disappeared out of sight below the table as it dipped its flat head in three slow nods. “Mekron by… birth. Star-farer… by profession.”
“Star-farer?” In the back of her mind she knew she was being rude, but at the moment it was everything she could do not to duck under the table for an incredibly offensive gander at the horror that was the rest of him. As it was, she couldn’t make herself stop staring.
“Astronaut,” Rowth supplied, still standing at the back of her chair. He watched her, a certain wariness in the way he hovered that, even in her stunned frame of mind, she noticed. It struck her as protective, though for the life of her she couldn’t put a finger on exactly why it should. Nor did she know who he was protecting: her from the creature (she leaned as far from the table as her chair would allow); or the creature from her. Which was laughable. It might not have teeth, but its claws were at least three inches long and black as…
What, wait. Astronaut?
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“All… my life,” Rog said, proudly drawing himself up high enough to reveal several inches of spotted, sagging, naked neck flesh. “I was born… in space. The first… of my kind to… be so… honored.”
She was staring. Shaking her head, Brinley caught herself. “That’s… that’s, um…” She looked at Rowth. “Nice?”
Rowth looked from Rob to her, his masked expression inscrutable. Why she thought he’d help her, she didn’t know.
Brinley tried again. “What, um… What brought you here?”
“Horrible legal… representation.” Rog raised his head even higher, shifting his leer to Rowth.
“Ha, ha,” Rowth said, unamused. “You had excellent representation.”
“Him?” Brinley guessed. “Good thing we weren’t put to death, right?”
“The option was on the table,” Rowth pointedly told them both.
“I… like to think… he’s… joking… when he says that,” Rog mock whispered to her, playing with his pen and adjusting the paper he’d been writing on. “But I… also don�
�t push… the point.”
Two soft beeps from the kitchen were followed by the pop of the lid unlocking off a crockpot-like container on the counter. It jettisoned steam, filling the air with the spicy aroma of cooked meat. The scent, at first pleasant, then hit her nose like the sting of too much wasabi.
Brinley clapped both hands over her face.
“Supper… is ready,” said Rog helpfully.
Rowth hesitated. She tipped her head back to see him looking at her and suddenly it hit her. He was protecting Rog.
“I’ll watch… her,” Rog promised. Wheezing a cough of a laugh, he turned his grin from Rowth back to her. “That’s… funny. If he… carried you, that means… he… can move faster… than either of us.”
Brinley snorted before she caught herself. “Wait until I get my legs back.”
She knew Rowth looked at her then. She could feel the calculating weight of his stare all the way from the kitchen. She pretended not to notice the same way she pretended it didn’t hurt when she gingerly shifted in her seat.
Rog’s eyes twinkled. “I like her,” he told Rowth. “Can… we keep her?”
Rowth tsked. He also dished stew into three bowls and brought them back to the table, placing one Rog, gave another to Brinley, and then lay the third at the empty place beside her. He returned to the kitchen long enough to fetch three perfectly round and deep spoons, and a bottle of dark sauce from a cupboard that instantly misted the floor with a cold fall of the interior air.
“I’m not… hungry,” Rog demurred with a wave of his pen. Using his claws to shield his whisper, he told her, “Don’t… try the… sauce. Your mouth will… burn enough… without that… stuff.”
“Eat,” Rowth told them both. “And you…” He lay a spoon beside her bowl before depositing a single white pill on the table next to it. “Take this.”
Brinley made a face, but when he continued to stand there, waiting, she picked up the pill and popped it into her mouth. She swallowed.
