“I told you to wait at the corner of the street names you’d given me. When we had that conversation, you had already wandered off on your own; you were already in trouble. Instead of listening, you went off by yourself and nearly got hurt. It’s a good thing I got here when I did.”
“I didn’t know that was going to happen! I didn’t ask for them to do that!” she retorted, not seeing why she was in trouble.
“I knew this was a dangerous area of town. I wouldn’t walk down here on my own and I’m taller than most of the people who live here,” Ral said, as the car drove them to their destination. “Do you know what it’s like to see scumbags like that surrounding your little girl? Touching her? To see the look of panic on her face because she can’t get away? You could have avoided the whole situation by doing as I told you. I should spank you right now.”
“Please, not in public,” Sarah whispered, losing a lot of her feistiness. If she stopped arguing, she hoped she may at least avoid getting spanked in full view of anyone who saw inside the car. Getting out of the spanking completely could happen later.
Back at their apartment, however, Sarah didn’t have a chance to try to talk her way out of this spanking, because Ral simply took her schoolbooks from her, placed them on the low table, then hoisted her over his shoulder. He went into the kitchen area and opened a drawer for something—Sarah couldn’t see what it was—then he maneuvered her over his knee and pulled her borrowed shirt up above her hips, exposing her underwear.
“I was going to take you shopping this afternoon, to pick up some of the things you’ll need so you can be comfortable here. The shops will be closed by now. If you’d waited outside the academy, you would have finished the day with a nice shopping trip.” He slipped his fingers into the waistband of her panties.
“No! Leave them alone! What are you doing?” she demanded.
“This behavior calls for a bare bottom spanking, young lady. That means your panties need to come down.”
“They can’t! I won’t let you!” Her face flushed hotly as she tried to resist, but in spite of her movements, he gently worked her panties over the curve of her ass and down her legs, where they tied her legs up, stopping her from kicking much. She tried to wiggle them off, but the angle was all wrong.
“You don’t have a choice, young lady. If you want to avoid this happening again, you need to behave yourself.” His tone was stern and firm, and she knew he wasn’t pleased with her behavior.
She felt so exposed as she felt air against her bottom cheeks. He couldn’t see between them, though, as far as she knew. She tried to reassure herself that he wouldn’t do anything untoward. Then, she thought about what it might be like if he did do something improper. A shiver coursed through her body as she contemplated his big hands parting her cheeks and pressing into her most intimate places. She imagined him caressing her clit while she writhed helplessly over his knee.
Her train of thought was interrupted when his hand landed on her ass. It was worse than it had been the day before, when her panties had protected her from the full force of his hand; that, or he was spanking harder today. Sarah knew that he wasn’t messing around. She must have really riled him up this time, but he seemed so calm, she couldn’t imagine that he was still angry with her. Before he was very far into spanking her with his hand, she was trying to bargain with him and get him to reconsider.
“Isn’t it punishment enough that I got touched up by a creepy sexist guy? C’mon! This isn’t fair! I have the right to a fair trial!” Sarah protested. He didn’t even pause as he spanked her.
“Getting harassed wasn’t a punishment, it was exactly what I was trying to keep you safe from.” His hand landed loudly on the crest of her bottom and she yelped.
“But why should you have to keep me safe? People just—oww!—shouldn’t do that shit! I was only walking down the fucking street!” She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was just so strong.
“After I told you not to because I knew you could end up in a dangerous area if you got lost. It’s not up for discussion. And while we’re on the topic of behavior, you’re not allowed to swear during a punishment.” He spanked her harder and her bottom really burned now.
“Okay, fine, I get it; you’re spanking me because I didn’t do as you said!” Her voice was barely audible now over the fast succession of loud swats, then Ral stopped spanking her. Sarah was pleased she’d convinced him that she didn’t need any more spanking.
A few seconds later, something solid rapped sharply on her sit-spot and she yelped in surprise at the unyielding hardness of it.
“I thought it was over! It should be over!” She tried to kick free again because she was sure she didn’t want more of that hard thing.
“It will be over when I decide you’ve learned your lesson. By the amount you’re arguing with me, that’s not going to be any time soon.” He brought the hard thing down again and she yowled like a startled cat.
“What the purple fuck is that?”
“It’s just a wooden spoon I keep in the kitchen drawer. It’s made from Cerulean hardwood, so it produces a very satisfying result. And since you’ve been warned about swearing already, I’ll show you the main advantage of using a spoon instead of my hand.” He pulled her cheeks apart and landed the hard spoon on that area of her butt cheeks right beside her puckered hole, making her howl as he did it again on the other side.
“How is that an advantage? What’s wrong with you?” she demanded in surprise, as she tried once more to twist out of his grip. She cursed her stupid panties for being tangled around her calves as she tried to elbow him instead. It was so sore when he spanked her there, and felt so much more intimate.
“This can always get worse, young lady. If you continue fighting me, I’ll make you hold your own bottom cheeks apart.” The idea of having to actively participate in her punishment was horrifying, and she stopped struggling.
The skin around her bottom hole was a lot more sensitive than the rest of her bottom, and as he continued to spank her there, the sharp pain made her claw at the rainbow floor. She was furiously humiliated that he could see her rosebud as he continued to punish her in her most intimate and shameful place.
She had just about come to terms with that when he landed a particularly nasty swat directly over her bottom hole. She shrieked in surprise as her entire bottom seemed to tingle for a moment. Every time she thought this couldn’t get any worse, he found a more sensitive and humiliating place to land that evil spoon. What was worse, she could feel her clit throbbing as he swatted her bottom hole again.
As she began to cry, he returned to spanking her sit-spot, and she sobbed over his knee from the embarrassment as much as the pain. She wished the ground could just open up and swallow her about now. Had he seen her clit, engorged and pulsing? Was her slit wet from this? It was too much to imagine him looking down at her right now and seeing how her body felt about this spanking. He moved the spoon down to the sensitive area at the top of her legs and she howled and tried to kick through her tears. By that point, Sarah felt pretty bad about what she’d done.
“Go and stand in that corner, Sarah, and don’t even think about pulling your panties up.”
She was still tearful as she shuffled to the appointed corner. She wanted to make things right. Facing the convergence of two gray-blue walls, she cried herself out and thought about what she’d done. He told her to wait for him outside school, and she had gone off on her own in an unfamiliar town. Then, when she had gotten lost, she had still ignored his attempts to get in touch. When she had finally answered him, he had told her to stay where she was, and she’d deliberately walked off. She hadn’t known that part of town was dangerous, and she hadn’t known she was going to get harassed, but maybe she should have trusted him to have a good reason for telling her to stay put.
When he called her back to him, she turned and saw two hot chocolates on the low table. She pulled her beanbag closer to his and before she sat on it, she turned to
face him; his height even when sitting gave her a slight chill.
“I’m sorry I left the academy grounds on my own, Daddy. And I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls. And I’m really sorry that I walked off like that. I guess I was trying to prove I could find my way home, and I couldn’t.” She looked at the floor, her cheeks turning the same color as she was certain her bottom had gone. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Thank you for apologizing; I accept your apology, and everything is forgiven. Now pick one of these hot chocolates to drink while you tell me all about your first day at the academy.”
Chapter Six
Ral got an urgent call from the Besgue government to go and survey an ancient site, and for the rest of the week, he had to spend long days traveling between Minos Kerala and Besgue, the next planet over. If it had been any further away he would have just stayed nearer the site, but with Sarah at home he wanted to make sure he saw her at least once every day, to check she was eating properly and doing her homework if nothing else.
On the long journeys to and from Besgue, he had a lot of time to think. He quite liked the girl, and under usual circumstances, he would have made a move on her by now. These weren’t normal circumstances, though, and he didn’t want to complicate things when she might need time to get over what had happened to her. Anyway, he decided, he was enjoying where things were at.
By the end of the week, he had finished surveying the site, and he made a recommendation that one of his assistant archaeologists manage the actual digging of the site, which would give his assistant some much-wanted experience running a low-stakes project while Ral stayed home with Sarah. After all, he thought, it wasn’t like the universe needed more examples of intact Besgue ceramics, let alone the tiny potsherds he’d found during his preliminary work. This whole dig was really just to satisfy planning law, so he didn’t have concerns about handing it over.
Friday evening, he got home at nineteen hundred and found Sarah curled up on a beanbag with her books spread out around her, making notes.
“I got you a present, little one.” He handed her the little paper package that he’d picked up on Besgue. Sarah’s eyes lit up.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Open it and find out,” he replied with a chuckle. He’d missed seeing so much of her while he’d been gone. She unfastened the paper and pulled out his gift, then frowned.
“What is it?” She turned it this way and that as she stared at it.
“Shake it and find out.” She did as he told her, then squealed in delight as the glass rectangle lit up with sparkles.
“It’s like a little flat snow globe… only it’s light instead of glitter! How does it work?”
Ral remembered someone explaining it to him at some point. “It’s some trick to do with electron excitement.”
“Where does it get the energy from?” Sarah was so intrigued, but light-emitting snow globes were far beyond Ral’s expertise, so he had to concede that he didn’t know.
“Why don’t you find out about it on your tablet?” he asked. “Perhaps wait until you’re less busy. I hope you’ve been taking regular breaks. That’s a lot of studying.” He pointed at the thick textbooks she’d pinned open with a couple of his paperweights. She wiggled the snow globe again and stared at it, entranced.
“Yeah, they had all of it in electronic form for the tablet, but I prefer being able to flick through actual books when it comes to studying. Luckily the academy’s library still has hard copies of everything I never needed to know about Vanserai.”
“Ah, Vanserai. Very important topic. What have you learned so far?” He sat down beside her and glanced at her neatly written notes.
“He was a great space tactician who conquered half the known galaxy; one of the Prime planets was named after him in his honor. He was also a great political mind and came up with the concept of Perpetual Expansion which said that all civilizations are fundamentally in a state of expansion or decline, so in order to avoid going into decline, civilization must always try to expand. Vanserai was killed by the leaders of various indigenous species because they were fed up with him trying to expand by claiming their homelands.”
“Does it really say that?” Ral raised an eyebrow.
“I inferred. He did die at a summit that was very condescending toward indigenous peoples and the cause of death was twenty-seven different bludgeoning wounds made with at least ten different weapons. He’s sort of like a modern-day Caesar.”
“Who was Caesar?”
“No freaking way! I thought you were an expert on Earth! Oh, yeah, I forgot; you don’t know about Rome.” Sarah had an amused look on her face, and Ral was pleased to see that she was so involved in something.
“Tell me about Caesar while I make dinner,” he suggested, walking toward the kitchen area as Sarah told him what she knew about Caesar. Ral wished there had been more information about Rome when he’d studied Earth.
“This is very interesting, Sarah. This could be the big discovery that secures funding for more research into life in the Solaris system.” He pulled out a large egg-shaped pod and unscrewed it, then started stuffing ingredients inside. When it was full, he fastened it back together.
“What’s the Solaris system?” She eyed the egg-shaped container with curiosity and he wondered if they’d been used in her time.
“Where you used to live.” He set the egg in the center of the cooker and waited for it to self-adjust.
“Oh. When I was there, we called it the solar system, and most people on Earth couldn’t even agree on how many planets were in it. Is Pluto a planet?”
“Pluto’s a huge field of dust; it was totally destroyed in the un-terraforming wars, so no, it’s not a planet.” She looked disappointed.
Ral pressed a button on the cooker and Sarah shrieked and jumped as the egg started spinning.
“Watch.” He pointed at the egg, which rose a few inches into the air, still spinning.
“Why does it do that?” she asked in amazement.
“It’s how it stirs the food while it cooks it.” As soon as he said it, Sarah narrowed her eyes at Ral.
“So you’re telling me that you don’t even need that evil wooden spoon that you spanked me with on Monday?” She glared at him. Ral laughed when he saw the indignant expression on her face.
“Of course I need it. How else would I keep your naughty bottom in line when you did things you shouldn’t? Anyway, I don’t always cook with the eggs; they’re just very efficient and easy to clean.”
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.
“Careful,” he warned her. “If the wind changes you’ll be stuck like that.”
“How do you know random Earth sayings but you don’t know who Caesar is?” She threw up her hands and went back to her beanbag. Ral just laughed and got out a second, smaller egg, which he filled with vegetables. It was obvious she was only teasing him. One of the things he liked about Sarah was her sarcastic sense of humor.
* * *
Sarah had a whole pile of studying to do. History was a totally useless subject as far as she was concerned, but since she had a test on Monday, she had to at least scrape a respectable result. Her pride as a former straight-A student was at stake. Stupid Minos Kerala curriculum, she thought. When Ral had told her about it, he’d made it sound useful and relevant, and instead she was learning the birth and death dates of some guy who was obsessed with expanding his society into planets that had been quite happy with their own societies, and that were subsequently repressed and stamped out. History was almost always depressing, that was one big reason she hated it. What use was it going to be in a job, anyway?
After reading about Vanserai for most of the evening, Sarah got bored and decided to play The Avocado Game on her tablet instead.
“You finished for the night?” Ral asked.
“Sure.” Sarah threw an avocado and hit a birthday cake, which was replaced by the number 5000 in flash
ing yellow.
“How’s about we make a plan for the weekend before you go to bed?”
“Do I have to? It’s Friday night. I haven’t been sent to bed before midnight since… since I was… oh, snap.” Sarah threw another avocado, this time it smashed a window and she got more points.
“Exactly. You don’t have all your memories, and your brain is currently doing a lot of work in the background, which means you need to get your rest. I’m thinking we should finally get that shopping trip tomorrow; I think the washer needs a break from constantly cleaning that same shirt of mine you borrowed. We can eat lunch while we’re out and I’ll take you to the Rolling Alley.”
“What’s a Rolling Alley?” She was well on her way to getting the high score.
“It’s great fun, you’ll love it. You get inside a giant ball and roll around on a color-changing floor.”
“Sounds interesting. You’re coming with me, right?”
“Of course, sweetheart. Then on Sunday I thought we would decorate your room together.”
“Decorate it?” She looked at him, trying to keep her face neutral so he wouldn’t know how interested she was.
“I’ll take you to the interiors store, you can pick some nice colored paint, or something else if you like a different wall covering, and we’ll make that room look more like it’s yours. Would you want to do that?”
“Yeah, I guess.” She feigned disinterest because she didn’t want him thinking she was enthusiastic about this for some reason she didn’t quite understand. Despite herself, she felt compelled to add, “Do you think we could find some posters or something? You futuristic space people have posters still, right?”
“Posters… you mean images that reflect current cultural trends? I’m sure we can find some from somewhere.”
“They used to come in magazines.” Sarah wondered what the futuristic equivalent of magazines was. Did they even have anything similar? She couldn’t imagine what would replace them.
His Little Earthling Page 6
