by TylerRose.
He refrained from pointing out that he had not died. This was her moment to get it out. He was not going to shut her down.
“Before this last year, no one I knew had died,” she continued. “I never had a pet. No family members had passed. No one. I have never had to deal with it before in my life and suddenly it’s Nails and Dicer and Mom, plus everyone I ever knew in Toledo except two people. And I met them after all that happened. Then it was Alen and Mariah. Shestna nearly killed Jerome the other day. I’m dying for a cigarette. Plus my grandmother--”
There she choked up and had to stop and turn away.
“That’s the one really hurting you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Your Grandmother.”
She could only nod, the thick rock in her throat blocking all breath and sound.
“Stop trying to be so strong, Zitara. You’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed cry. You should cry. It’s not good to keep all that grief and stress inside. You can cry for your grandmother whenever you need to. Whenever you want to.”
She did, her forehead thumping against the side of his chest as he put his arm around her. Saber politely turned away, affording her the moment in semi-privacy.
A tissue appeared in her hand to wipe her eyes and clear her nose when she was cried out. He took her hand to stand up and took her inside.
“Freshen up a bit and we’ll go back.”
She balked, the expression plain enough in her blue eyes.
“Trust me,” was all he said.
She went into her toilet room to wash her hands and face. She hadn’t worn any makeup to lunch but definitely needed to change her clothes. Her dress was dusted with soil from the garden. Rather than a sun dress, she selected a sleeveless sheath and contrasting shawl. Evening would be coming on soon, the supper hour, and this dress was more appropriate.
We will be there shortly, Shestna read on his phone. “They’re coming back,” he said to Dorn.
“She let him in? She wouldn’t let me in.”
“Obviously she likes him better than she likes you,” Shestna said.
Quarter of the hour passed before the front door opened. Mankell led the way in, holding her hand.
“Don’t say anything,” he said to her. “Go to the bedroom and lie down. We’ll be in shortly.”
She went, not even looking at her husband and brother-in-law as she walked around the sunken circle. Mankell stepped down into it, taking a seat on a corner of a sofa to glare at Shestna until she was out of hearing.
“You are doing a good job of protecting her. Of providing a safe place to live and working toward getting rid of one of her biggest enemies. But you are failing in taking care of her emotional and intellectual needs. Those are far more immediate. You do things without considering how she feels about it. Without her input. You stripped Jerome’s power from him without ever having discussed it as a possibility. You outright told her that being married was the only answer. I am confident it was not needed. But here we are and she is trapped in a future she had not seriously considered.”
He paused but neither Voranian said anything.
“Being the Apogee doesn’t mean you decide everything and impose your decisions on her,” he continued. “You need to be a team, all three of you. Do not make yourselves into her opponents. You absolutely need to minimize the discord around her from now on. That’s why she fled. She became overloaded with the conflict of energy in the room and her own very new and raw emotions connected to people fighting over her and dying. She cannot stomach the thought of men fighting over her in the smallest sense anymore. I cannot say I blame her, having been one of the first to kill someone in her defense. I remember how off-balance she was that night and the next day.”
He paused again to check his tones, keeping himself to this circle so she would not hear.
“She’s having a hard enough time accepting who and what she is without men fighting to possess her. It will stop. However mature her demeanor, we must not forget that she is only nineteen years old. I am over twice her age and you?” his eyes landed on Shestna. “You are sixty eight? She is now stepmother to men and women who are a decade or more older than she is. Can you imagine how ludicrous that is?”
Mankell saw in Shestna’s expression that he hadn’t thought of that.
“We must also remember it is less than a year since everyone and everything she knew perished in a manner of extreme horror and violence. All she needs is a little consideration for the positions that she is constantly being put into through no fault or doing of her own. I don’t know when it happened, but the pressure being put on her has grown exponentially. It is palpable to her. If there is one thing that will cause her to fail, it will be that pressure. Part of the purpose of the team of five is to shield her from everything they can. To deal with things so she doesn’t have to. That’s what my men were doing earlier. Doing very well, I might add.”
He took a breath and changed his tone and bearing. “She’s had a good cry and temporarily purged the things that were troubling her. She’s prepared to continue our time together. I’m going to go enjoy her. Join us when you’re ready.”
He didn’t wait for any indications, exiting the circle from the end nearest the bedroom corridor. Opening the last door on the right, her found her in the bed that had been designated as his before she’d left. Nude, her pale form a series of curves that could not have been more lovely and enticing. On her side in much the same position as in the portrait, but he saw her from behind rather than the front. He could almost imagine his House Mondragoon in front of her, almost expected to see a goblet of wine in her hand.
Unmoving, breaths even and deep…she was asleep. He undressed quietly and eased in behind her to enjoy her warmth against him. He had missed her too much. She woke when he kissed her shoulder.
“No, shhh. Don’t move yet. Let me enjoy being alone beside a married woman about to be my lover again.”
“Maybe he should be the Apogee,” Dorn said once the bedroom door had closed.
“You are not being helpful.”
“I have told you these same things in private several times since you took the crystal energy from the Earthling. It is not my fault if you did not take my words to heart,” Dorn said with a finer point.
He followed Mankell, loosening clothing along the way so they were easier to remove when he got into the room. She was whimpering quietly, unseen in front of the nude K’Tran. Clothes on the chair next to a dresser, Dorn went around the second bed to see she was on her side facing Mankell and he had his cock in her. Her eyes were closed while they kissed, her hand resting on his shoulder.
Dorn moved in behind her, reaching a hand around to grasp her breast firmly but not painfully. Mankell stopped her from turning her head to look.
“No. Keep your eyes closed. Let him be unknown. You know it is one of two men. It doesn’t matter which is here right now.”
That thought, along with a slow penetration of her anus, brought her to a gut-clenching orgasm. Mankell grunted with the sudden dousing of his member as the second penis slid up alongside his own, felt through the flesh that divided the two channels. They moved in tandem, one penetrating while the other pulled back, the unending motion hurling her into an unrelenting round of orgasms.
“Move to your back. Take her with you,” Mankell said, pulling out to give Dorn freedom of movement.
Holding her tight around the thigh and under her arm and ignoring her squeals, Dorn rolled on his back. Mankell placed her feet wide apart outside Dorn’s legs and repositioned himself. Hands around the head-bars of the bed frame, knowing this would likely be the last time he would ever get to have her, he enjoyed her to his own preferences as he had her last night in his House. Long, deep thrusts, with another man holding her in place by arms gripped at the elbows, bent knees keeping her legs too wide to move, and the hard rod up her backside.
The tightness, her repeated and prolonged clenching during orgasm, the cock sliding against his from the other side of
the vaginal wall, Dorn was the first to ejaculate. He slid out from under her at once, left the room with his clothes in his arms.
Mankell was glad to be alone with her. He lowered himself to hold her under the shoulders and kiss, remaining still inside her.
“Look at me.”
Those crystal clear eyes, so deep blue, so unlike the women of K’Tran.
“I am not going to stay long after we are done. I know what your husband wants to do and I do not want to partake. Open handed spanks are one thing. A whip is another entirely and I have no interest in watching or participating.”
She only nodded. He resumed, and was swiftly reminded of her strength and endurance in passion. Knowing she was going to get at least one more round after he was done with her, he didn’t aim for satisfying her. He came with a grunting thrust and remained in place to maintain their closeness with kisses, not letting her fall asleep just yet.
“I have a question for you,” she said, turning her back to him as he lowered to his side next to her.
“Yes?”
“You know all this goddess and Immaculate stuff, right?”
“I know enough,” he admitted.
“If you were the Apogee, the one in charge to coordinate the other four who are supposed to be around me, what would you do right now?” she asked. “Knowing everything that we know.”
A question he had not anticipated.
“I would move you in secret to a more secure location and surround you with an army of soldiers. I would also surround you with an excess of technology to protect you while you developed into whatever it is you will become. I would bring to you educated persons to teach whatever you wanted to learn.”
Translation: Keep you in a very tightly controlled prison.
She rolled in his arms to face him, kissed him most deliberately. “Thank you for today. All of it. I look at what people say is my future and it scares the hell outta me.”
“As well it should. It has long been the wish in every species of humanoid, to have god-like powers and to become a god. They fail to realize how arduous a journey that is. When you need shelter from it, you know where I am.”
She kissed him again and left the bed. Left him. The pulsing, coursing energy that was her new husband was in his bedroom. She went to him there, finding him sitting in the chair at the edge of the open wall. Dorn was not there.
Naked as she was, she knelt on the floor and leaned against his leg. Her head tilted to rest on the thigh. Unspeaking, needing to be near him. This moment, seemed so familiar in so many ways.
They watched birds and squirrels in the yard for a time. A voice came to her. “You cannot call a nun a dried up old prune.” She’d done a wrong thing today. A sensation built within her until she was compelled to move to kneel directly in front of him in the grass. He looked down to her, eyes devoid of emotion.
“Husband, I have a request.”
He said nothing, waiting for her to speak it. She needed a few seconds to rebuild her nerve.
“I have a need to be punished,” she finally said.
“What for?” he asked.
“My behavior earlier after lunch. I was rude. I shouldn’t have been like that. I should have been patient and just waited. I’m sorry that I embarrassed you in front of our guest. I embarrassed myself. I went with my instinct rather than thinking like a rational human being. I’m sorry for that too.”
“I am glad you recognize that you were wrong. I don’t feel a need to punish you for it. You’ve already done that, in denying yourself the pleasures of having three men at once.”
“I still had sex with a man I once loved and got a double penetration to boot. That’s not much of a punishment. I did wrong and I need to be punished for it.”
“Need?” he questioned.
She nodded. “Nails did not hesitate to issue a hard discipline. Usually his belt and no touching or sex to turn it to pleasure, and then he sent me home or to another room for a while. He got me used to the procedure of it. You had said you might begin a weekly punishment session for our intimate pleasures. Maybe tomorrow? I need a real punishment that I will hate every second of to help cleanse me of the guilt I feel for my bad behavior.”
“Why his belt?”
“Because he was always wearing it. Because it hurt like a motherfucker without leaving any real damage that wouldn’t heal overnight. He wasn’t into prolonged punishments. At least, not with me. It would last five or ten minutes if he didn’t want to count, or a set number of strikes.”
“Bring his belt to your hands. The one you disliked the most.”
That was easy. The last one, when he’d strapped her ass vertically with her bent over his desk, for calling a nun a dried up ol’ prune and nearly getting herself expelled from school.
She conjured it up to appear across her palm, taken from wherever it had been all this time, and held it up to him. Thin for a man’s belt, hard and shiny finish because Kevin hadn’t worn it very often. Shestna tested it with a fast swing against his arm. Nice sting even at that velocity.
“I will decide when and I will decide how much. Dorn is in the front room. Go get him,” Shestna told her.
She did, speaking his name at the open end of the corridor and turning about to return. Shestna had turned his chair and brought a second to face it.
“Kneel here,” he pointed between them. “Facing inside the room.”
She did, and he guided her down until she was on her forearms and shins, bottom on her calves. He placed a stiff, rather heavy board on her back. They set up a game similar to chess and began to play, the clock chiming the top of the hour a few minutes in. They discussed numerous topics related to their father, the palace and court, dealings with the Congress, expected meetings with Ambassadors.
Yup, she hated it. She didn’t have the yard to look at for something interesting, only the side of his bed. When she moved too much, he swung the belt down for a harsh strike to the bottoms of her feet.
The clock chimed the next hour. They played on for some time before Dorn declared the win. The game put away, board taken off to her immense relief, Shestna offered his hand to help her up. She was slow, working stiff muscles a moment. He took her only a few steps away and bent her over the end of his bed.
“Brother, please use this and punish my wife for her leaving my home without her escorts.”
Dorn looked at the belt in Shestna’s hand, looked to her bent over the bed…not protesting.
“How many strikes?” he asked, taking the strip of stiff, hard leather.
“Twenty five for this offence.”
Shestna pulled Dorn’s chair back a couple feet for a better view and sat to watch the punishment being administered. Dorn looked at her position. He placed her hands on her back.
“Move them and I tie them,” he told her. “Feet wider apart.”
She had been standing as Nails wanted. He always used his foot to open her more if he wanted. Left foot a few inches over, right foot a few inches over. Dorn said nothing more.
He did not test the implement except for a swing that audibly cut the air behind her. He did not swing lightly. Ever. Nor did he aim for her bottom. He knew what she could take there. Standing to one side, he landed the leather with a loud SMACK! to the inside of her right thigh. The tip curved to wrap around, ending with a more intense pain just at the place where delicate inside started to become the front of her thigh.
The pain was so shocking that she froze for a few seconds before her throat opened and the sound came out. She got twelve just like it, one at a time with a few seconds between for him to take fresh aim. He moved to the other side and her left thigh got exactly the same treatment. Twenty four.
The last was a full arm swing starting high above and slamming down onto her right buttock.
“Well laid, Royal Brother. Now give her another twenty five for locking you out of her home and refusing to let you in.”
Oh shit.
These were not metered. He did
not give her time to catch her breath or let the sting of one fade before he applied the next. These he gave her rapid fire to the inside of her right thigh and had her screaming and sobbing real tears from the first to the last.
“Will that be all, Brother?” Dorn asked.
“No. Fifty more, with vocal admonitions that a Voranian wife is to be obedient to her Lord and Master, and the other usual things. I’ll keep track of the count.”
Dorn stepped around her left side to deliver these the same way he delivered the previous round. Hard and fast, keeping within a six inch area, with sharp statements that a wife was to obey her husband. She was to yield to him in all things. She was to remember that her actions reflected directly back onto her husband. Her shameful behavior brought shame to him. She was to respect her husband and his brothers equally. She was to treat with respect all those who protected her, for they risked their own lives every single minute.
“Fifty,” Shestna said.
Dorn could not stop his hand in mid-swing. She got one more to the welted and weeping redness.
“Take the female at once to the room across the hall with an order to remain until summoned,” Shestna said.
Without allowing her time to stop crying. Dorn lifted her by her arms still at her back. As soon as they were out of the room, Shestna went to his bottle of whiskey and drank directly from it. He’d commanded other brides be punished and not been nearly so affected. It about killed him to order Tyler punished, hurt him deeply to have to watch. On her request or not, it had been a damned hard thing to do. He swore an oath to himself that he would never do it again.
Dorn returned as Shestna was putting the bottle down.
“From now on, I will send her to you for that. I can’t stand it when it’s an actual punishment.”
“I expected you would say that,” Dorn replied. “Consider this a portent, Brother. This acting out is how you will know something is very wrong. I have the rings from your ceremony, to give to Father. I will go now.”
