Learning to Blush: Swarii Brides, Book Two

by Korey Mae Johnson

  “Okay, so her bottom is extremely sensitive to touch. Far more than Ellie's,” Fie said over her head. “That’s really interesting. Did you start her on the stretching kit I suggested last month?”

  “I bought it,” Thorton replied, his voice deep from his obvious arousal. How could he be so aroused when she was in this position? Damn him! “But I haven’t started her on it. Graham once said that Ellie hated it more than anything else, so I didn’t want to ruin the mood. She's still getting used to me. I figured maybe a couple of weeks from now…”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked Fie. She was worried, because she already guessed what they were talking about. She really hoped, however, that she was wrong and that they were not actually talking about sticking anything up her bottom.

  “Stretching you so you can accommodate your husband’s girth in your anus,” Fie replied, and then as the shock of that set in for Penny, he turned to Thorton. “The intricacies of marriage to a half-breed, Thorton, is nothing to follow Graham's example on. Graham never follows my advice, and he's not a very firm husband. Eleanor would probably be recreational by now if Graham didn’t spoil her. He hasn’t even used that kit once a month. I told him once a week! I’m going to say the same thing to you. You’re not doing her any favors by putting it off, and the more you do it, the less likely you are to hurt her once you start engaging in anal sex more frequently.”

  She couldn’t even imagine Thorton fitting up her bottom. The idea was ludicrous.

  Fie turned to her. “Have you ever had anything up your bottom in any of your past encounters?”

  She didn't even like Fie knowing that she'd had past encounters! It didn't bother her that she was known as sort of a slut on Earth, but here? Here it was different.

  She shook her head, feeling slightly nauseated and completely winded by not just the conversation, but by the orgasm she’d had.

  “Hm… I don’t think humans are too big on that,” Fie admitted, and then he withdrew his finger and turned away from her.

  “Question—” Thorton asked, clearing his throat. “What about the mouth?”

  “What about it?”

  “Is… Well, this might sound odd—but is her using her mouth on me harmful?” Thorton asked, sounding a little nervous. Penny closed her eyes, actually embarrassed over using her mouth on him, despite it only being “third base”. She couldn’t believe it was so taboo that he was asking a doctor about it.

  Fie suddenly laughed, “Wow. Kinky, Buddy. Good for you.” That was the least professional thing Fie had said since she walked into the room, but then that thoughtful, professional countenance took over again. “No, it’s not harmful. Not even if you finish in her mouth. You can even reciprocate if you want. I think it’s popular in human society because they don’t have so many nerve endings as we do; they’re more concentrated in just one place: their clitoris, while Swarii and half-breeds have them in more places throughout. But because most of a human's pleasure doesn’t come from the intercourse… Oral play has become popular on that planet.” Fie grinned over her head at Thorton, then he looked down at her. “This is gonna feel cold, but try to relax anyway. Speculum.”

  She blinked with confusion. “A wha—?”

  A very, very cold metal thing touched her inner lips, causing her to suck air in through her teeth. “Holy monkey!” Relaxing wasn’t possible, but she felt her lips being spread uncomfortably apart.

  She wondered for a horrible moment what Fie could see, and she suddenly let out a sob.

  Fie turned his back, but then when he turned towards her direction, messing around with tools in his hand, he looked surprised. “Oh, Honey. You’re okay. You’re doing great,” he encouraged, patting her thigh consolingly.

  “I wanna go home!” she cried, not caring if it made her sound like a five-year-old.

  Fie responded by pressing something deep into her and swabbing something. He did this a few times, pausing between each one. Eventually he stood up and left her there, still splayed, saying, “I’ll run these tests and come right back.”

  He wasn't gone for long, but long enough for her to process what happened and why she was there. Now, she just wanted to crawl up in the fetal position somewhere with her bruised ego and the fact that she had been molested for “science”. And all because of Thorton.

  Thorton tried to stroke her cheek with his calloused thumb. “How're you doing?” he asked her softly, as if he'd known that she was at her wit's end.

  “I hate you,” she seethed, and meant it. The idea of going back to the apartment with him was too much to bear right now. He'd spanked her because she wouldn't come here for this to happen. He'd dragged her here. What sort of lousy person was he?

  “You'll feel better when you get home and you nap for a while,” he assured her. “You've had a long day, that's all. I know you're not used to any of this, but trust me—other Swarii woman go through this sort of appointment all the time. It's normal. Tomorrow, you'll realize this wasn't such a big deal.”

  She didn’t think so. She had an anger boiling up inside her right now that she’d never had before. She locked her jaw and diverted her eyes from him, too angry to even look at him.

  A couple minutes later, Fie opened the door. “Thorton, come here. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

  Somehow, everything felt even worse when Thorton left the room, too. And she’d thought it was bad with them both in there! It seemed like it took so long before they came back into the room; and there she was—just lying there, shocked and cold, with her feet still strapped to the stirrups.

  When they came back, they were quiet. She glanced at Thorton and saw that there was a dark look behind his eyes, although she somehow felt that it wasn't directed at her. She wouldn't have cared if it was. Thorton came back to hold her, and kissed her on the cheek as he did so, ignoring her attempt to pull her cheek away from him.

  “Alright, Sweetie. I’m just going to give you a shot here,” Fie said as she felt a very sharp poke where her thigh met her ass.

  She gasped and wiggled as much as she could, but Fie merely finished and said, “The boys got those in their arms, since they were large enough. But they didn’t like it either,” he admitted. “That’s robocuffin, an essential amino acid that will promote cell growth, brain function, and keeps you essentially from aging too quickly. It’s like a super multivitamin. That’s only a once-a-season sort of deal, I promise, and only for the first year until you’re getting it normally in your diet.”

  He raised her legs up a little more in the stirrups, raising her butt higher. “This you might not be so crazy about, either.” He looked at Thorton. “Hold her tight,” he advised, and Penny felt Thorton press her harder to the table.

  She felt something pressing into her bottom—something as large as a human man’s thumb, followed by Fie’s finger, which was so much larger. “No! No! Stop!” she begged, hating the stretching and burning that restarted.

  Fie shushed her like she was a crying baby and withdrew his finger. “You see?” he said to Thorton. “No problem to insert. And it’s only once a week. You’ll be fine doing it for her.”

  “What is? What was that?” Penny screeched, still feeling an uncomfortable fullness in her bottom, one that tingled and felt strangely cold.

  “Do you remember anyone putting anything up your vagina the three days when you were with that tavern-owner?” Fie asked.

  She shook her head, and became worried instantly.

  “Do you remember anything sexual at all?”

  Penny gulped. “I… I remember him touching me with his fingers. I was naked a few times with him, but I can’t remember anything more than that.” And it was true, although she didn't want to think too hard on it. It was nauseating to know what she'd had sex with—an Alien pimp—and she hadn't even been sober enough then to realize that she hadn't the ability to say no to him. That drug had just given her zombie-like compliance.

  “Sometime while you were on that planet
, someone had placed a strong medication into you when you were there,” Fie informed her. “The medication keeps any harmful virus off of you for when he planned to sell you to his customers. Unfortunately, it will kill any semen that tries to impregnate you as well. We’re removing it from your system, but it will take a few months of treatment.” Fie looked strangely awkward. “In your case, the treatment will be suppositories. It’s better than a regimen of injections, believe you me.”

  Thorton finally let her go and brushed her red hair with his fingers. “I am so sorry,” Thorton told her softly. “I won’t let anyone touch you like that ever again, okay? You’re my angel,” he was saying, but she couldn’t see his serious expression past her own veil of tears.

  “Her appetite should return more and more as the medication leaves her system; that's what was causing it. Everything should normal up in a couple months. Now, dress her. I want her back here in two months. Mary’ll have those suppositories ready for you,” Fie told Thorton, and left the room.

  Penny nearly expected Fie to thank her for allowing him to cause her so much horribleness. She slowly stood up, her whole body trembling.

  Thorton stood in front of her and scooped her body against his. “It’s over, okay? You were a good girl,” he told her, despite what he’d said earlier. “I’m so glad I brought you in! I’m so sorry about what happened to you…”

  Penny narrowed her eyebrows, and then broke his embrace to walk over to where he’d put her clothes and she started tugging them on. Even Yule hadn’t put her through this much grief! She wobbled on her feet, exhausted and feeling sore and drained.

  Thorton tried to help her put on her clothes, but she turned away from him and buttoned every button herself. “I know you're angry with me, but you have to know this was for the best,” Thorton told her, seeming to feel her anger radiating in his direction. “But it’s all over now, Penny. We'll get you healthy and then we can put that planet behind us and start our family.”

  Penny sneered, sure of only one thing—after everything that happened today, she hated, hated Thorton Hux!

  Chapter Eleven

  Ellie felt numb, besides her hatred for the admiralty. The admiralty had decided that she'd be fired from the service before her disciplinary hearing had even begun. Jack had admitted as much, even though she knew Jack didn't have much to do with it.

  The admiralty was no friend of Jack's. It was comprised of twenty men who loved power and wanted more of it in the form of Jack's job. It was a section of government, it seemed, comprised of naysaying every decision Jack made and trying to get him fired as well. Jack was too good, and hadn't given them a reason to get the emperor to oust him, however, and the emperor was the only man alive who could.

  Somehow, Ellie was angry with Jack, anyway—especially because he kept trying to make the admiralty sound like they were just short-sighted rather than evil. Though Ellie was angry with everyone, now! What was she going to do without a job?

  She had hit her prime, she was not only finally good at something, she was at the top of her game. She was finally free, she finally had resources, and she had her brother and cousins nearby to give her support—this was the time to create devices to wipe the Frian scourge from the galaxy, but here she was, looking at the ceiling and laying on her bed, her working permit permanently denied. She was even denied the ability to access information from their internet so she couldn't work on her own.

  She had been used and rejected like a wet tissue. She couldn't even bring up the creation of the fledge at the hearing because it was so top-secret, and the fact that she was a half-breed with capabilities that they didn't have was also top-secret and couldn't be mentioned. The admiralty sat on the knowledge they knew of her with smug grins and got rid of her because she was a woman who they felt couldn't provide them any further use. They didn't like women in their military. They didn't even like humans in their military. They didn't like the change, and they didn't like the fact that her connections were so high. She was a bug that they were happy to finally have the opportunity to squash. There wasn't a decent man among them.

  She heard the door to her bedroom open. As her brother Mike, Tim, nor Tom could enter a room quietly, it had to have been Jack paying a visit. She didn't know what he was going to say now; after the hearing he hadn't said anything helpful, and eventually rushed her family out of the room before the boys started to suggest she start 'the revolution'. When they were alone again, she hadn't spoken to him. She was too angry. Eventually, he had left her bedroom and let her sleep.

  “Honey?” Jack's voice said tenderly.

  She rolled over to turn her back to the door. There was nothing to say to him. She was still too angry—mostly at all the Swarii in general. She argued that Jack could have put up more of a fight for her, even if there was nothing he could really do. He just stood by, and let those horrible men degrade her for about four hours.

  To avoid conversation, she closed her eyes to pretend to be asleep.

  The weight on her mattress shifted as Jack sat down and put one of his large hands over her hip. “You've got to be hungry, Eleanor,” he sighed wearily.

  She didn't respond, she merely curled her feet up and balled herself more into the fetal position.

  “Talk to me, Babygirl,” Jack begged, only with a warning tone. Apparently, he didn't like to be ignored.

  “Your whole species are a bunch of idiots who aren't worthy of technology as advanced as an electric toothbrush. You should all still be living out of caves. You'll be sorry I was fired. You'll all be sorry that you wouldn't let me finish my project. One day another plague will come to your door and it will wipe out the rest of you, and I won't feel sorry. My species has a pair of balls. Your species is opening the door to the Frians while treating us like garbage.”

  It all sort of came out in a very sultry rant. She found herself spitting the words sourly into her pillow.

  “When have I ever treated you like garbage?” he asked incredulously, realizing that he was part of the group she hated.

  “When have you not, Jack?” she said, rolling over and sitting up on the bed. “You're sending the boys away to a damn school, like they're dumb kids or something.”

  “Tim and Tom? They are kids,” he argued.

  “See? There's my point. They're not. They're twenty-one on Earth. On Earth, we've had people take over the world at sixteen! We mature faster than you. They're not kids, they're men… Possibly with a small drinking problem, but men nonetheless. And Mike gets no respect either! You let Thorton punch him in the face!”

  “Mike told Thorton where he could go and what he could do with his dead mother once he got there,” Jack replied evenly.

  “Yeah, but people say stuff like that on Earth, Jack. It's not like Mike remembered that Thorton's mother was actually dead, or else he would have never said it. He didn't actually mean anything by it,” she replied with a roll of her eyes.

  “What we say means something here, Baby. You know that,” he reminded patiently.

  “Mike kept me from going insane when Graham didn't show up. He didn't get any credit,” she said bitterly.

  Jack rubbed his hand soothingly over her knee. “Mike's a boy. Boys get over it; they fight. I'm thankful to him for watching you, but he did completely drop the ball. Your safety is the most important thing in the universe to me, and Mike's job was to keep you safe, not bring you along on half-baked rescue attempts.

  “And the reason I'm sending away the boys is because they don't know anything about our culture, and although they speak Shal'ta to the point of being irritating, their use of our language is shoddy at best. They'll go to school for a couple of years and come out better for it—I'm not sending them into the desert, you know. I'm sending them to one of the best schools in the galaxy.”

  “They don't want to go, Jack. Who are you to make them? Who do you think you are?”

  “I'm the damn commander of the entire fleet, Eleanor, and one of the few people that know that
a Swarii-Human crossbreed even exists.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, right. You're a commander. I nearly forgot, since you just watched me get completely humiliated in a half-ass trial and just sat there like your lips were stapled and your ass was glued to the chair. I swear that half the time it looked like you were catching up on your emails,” she hissed.

  There was a silence that made Ellie nervous; there was a thickness to the air between her and Jack, one that she wouldn’t have been surprised ending with a threat.

  “You gave them all the fodder they needed to fire you, Eleanor. You would have still had your job if you minded your Ps and Qs.” Jack stood up from the bed, saying, “I think you need a little more time in your room to recall what happened before you go around blaming people. Remember that it wasn’t me who couldn’t follow the rules for a single moment since joining the service. It wasn’t me who stole a ship, it wasn’t me who spit in the eye of the culture that took me from bondage and brought me in as one of their own!”

  She heard him slam the door behind him on his way out.

  She sat for a long time, grinding her teeth as she stared at the door to the bedroom—not her own, but Jack's. Jack made her stay with him so she could be 'watched'. Somehow that made her angry; like she couldn't live on her own!

  After stewing for a while, she began to miss Graham. Sure, he wouldn't have made her feel better. He was a Swarii, too, and there was probably nothing he could have done to save her from being fired even if he was able to go to the hearing. Instead, Graham was still at the hospital where they were trying to save the sight in one of his eyes. She missed his voice, though. She missed his warmth and the way he just held her when she needed to be held…