by Cara Bristol
“Stop it, this instant.” His face hardened.
“Fuck you.” She fastened her hand around the only other thing on the table, an empty tankard, and targeted the left side of his head. Marlix jerked right, but at the last second she adjusted her aim, and the heavy stein clipped his right temple.
“Enough!” he roared and eliminated her shield by sending the massive table skidding into the door. She had only a moment to blink before he hauled her off her feet. She struck him with her fists, interspersing Terran into the Parseon language—epithets, he suspected.
“You lying, cheating, rat bastard!” She pounded on his chest.
He carried her struggling body to the bench. She fought, but her strength could not match his. Another of her shifts fell to ruin as he tore it from neck to hem. The sudon hung on a hook across the room, so he grabbed the long-handled brush she used for bathing and taming her hair.
“Let me go, you asshole.” Tara swung at him, but he blocked her blow and hauled her over his lap. Without preamble, he cracked the flat wooden brush in the middle of one buttock.
“Fucker!” she screamed.
He landed two rapid hard swats.
She let loose a steam of invective.
“I do not understand your words—”
“Moron fucker—”
“—But I am not mentally deficient. I know you are screaming obscenities in your language, and I will not allow you to address me in such a disrespectful manner. This”—he delivered a scorching whack—“is for ‘rat bastard.’
“And for ‘fucker.’” He measured his stroke and stung her reddening skin. Anger suffused him as he listed the names she’d called him. “‘Asshole’”—Smack—“Moron fucker’”—Smack—“Oh, and, ‘son of a bitch’”—Smack—“Is there anything else you’d like to say to me?” He taunted her.
“I hate you.” She spit at him.
Tara had hurled that at him before also. She used her words like weapons, while he had been patient and accommodating. He had relaxed Protocol for her benefit, while she responded with disrespect and disobedience. And he, an Alpha Commander, had tolerated it. How galling. His affection for her had influenced his judgment in the most deleterious manner.
Now she had progressed from a verbal assault to a physical one. He assessed the damage she’d wreaked. The cottage appeared as if it had ransacked by invaders. He shook his head and returned his focus to a thrashing and cursing Tara. Her behavior demonstrated the repercussions of ignoring Protocol.
Dissent. Rebellion. Chaos.
With rapid and forceful strokes, he paddled the fleshy part of her buttocks. She fought, kicking and twisting.
“As long as you resist, I will continue to punish you,” he said. Her buttocks glowed red.
“Go to hell,” she yelled, but after a few more strokes of the paddle, she stopped writhing and fell silent. He delivered a couple more swats for good measure and then lifted her onto her feet to stand between his legs. He gripped her arms. Discipline had done little to dampen her mutinous spirit or improve her attitude. She compressed her lips into an angry line, and her eyes radiated animosity and—he frowned—hurt and betrayal? Because he’d punished her? Marlix scanned her face. “Why are you behaving like this?” he asked.
She averted her gaze and refused to speak.
“As you wish.” He set her aside, stood up, and glanced at her feet. He’d stripped her naked, but she still wore her boots. “Clean up the mess.”
Slowly she lifted her chin. A new spark of rebellion glinted in her eyes. “I will not.”
Spanking with the brush had not done any good. The wood had left some dark spots, and further chastisement with the makeshift implement would only bruise her more. He had no wish to hurt her, but he could not allow her to defy him.
“Very well.” He strode across the room and grabbed the sudon.
Tara flew for the door, but he intercepted her before she got halfway there and hauled her struggling body back to the bench, sat, and positioned her over his lap, tipping her head toward the floor. She kicked, and he swung his leg to subdue hers, but only succeeded in capturing one limb. The position served to part her thighs, and he could see her sex. Despite his anger, or perhaps because of it, the urge to use her arose with his manhood. Taking her was his right. Perhaps leniency and coddling had caused the problem all along.
Marlix raised the sudon and snapped it on the reddest center of one cheek. With the blood drawn so close to the surface by the brush paddling, her body absorbed the sudon’s venom immediately. Tara shrieked with pain. He laid three more strokes to the same spot, then four to the other side.
She had dissolved into sobs by the time he ceased. “Shall I continue, or will you clean up the mess?” he asked.
“N-no.” Her body shook.
“No, you do not wish me to continue or no, you won’t clean up the mess?”
“N-no, I don’t w-want you to continue.”
“Beginning this moment forward, you will address me with proper respect and use my title. I am Alpha. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Her body lay limp.
He smacked her with the sudon, and she howled. “Yes, what?” he said.
“Y-yes, A-alpha,” she cried.
Hearing his name spoken in her accented, quavering voice caused his manhood to stiffen even more. Her buttocks glowed scarlet, and the centers bore inflamed raised areas caused by the sudon. Between her legs, her pink sex glistened in a nest of curls, her labia parted. Marlix slipped his hands between her legs and penetrated her channel with his finger.
Still rebellious, she resisted with a muttered protest. To enforce his dominance, he added a second digit and pumped. Testing her, he withdrew and traced the ring of muscle of her rosette. She tried to squirm away, so he swiped his finger in her moist sex and pushed it into her anal channel.
Her moan sounded like acceptance his time, and she squeezed his digit with her muscles.
Further thoughts of punishing her evaporated.
He withdrew his finger. Keeping hold of her, he moved them to the sleeping platform, where he adjusted her over his lap again. He grabbed the jar of acca oil; at room temperature, the sweet-smelling ester formed a solid. He scooped out a bit.
After it melted in his hand, he worked the oil into her anal passage. With the exception of a low whimper that sent heat coursing through his cock, she remained compliant. Her submission aroused him more and confirmed quelling her rebellion had been the correct course of action.
He continued to add oil until his digit could slip in and out of her passage with ease, and low moans of pleasure erupted from her throat. “I am claiming you as my female,” he said, formalizing what he now realized had been his unconscious intention the moment he’d ripped her out of Ramon’s arms. “You belong to me. I am your Alpha. No other male will have you. You are mine and only mine.”
“But you will take other females.” Bitterness vibrated in her voice.
“That is my right,” he acknowledged, “But I shall not. I do not want other females.”
Tara stiffened and twisted, resisting the penetration. He inserted a second finger and pumped hard. She started to cry.
He froze. “Am I hurting you?” He planned to use her, but he did not wish to cause her physical discomfort. That she derived pleasure from the sexual act was a Terran practice he wanted to keep.
“Yes, you are hurting me! I saw you with her!”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“You are the most intelligent female I have met.” He extracted his fingers and reached for the oil.
“And is the other female intelligent? The one you smiled at and hugged and laughed with?”
Marlix furrowed his brow as he struggled to think of who she might be referring to. The only female other than Tara he’d had any contact with had been— “Anika?”
“So you admit you have taken another female.”
“Monto, no!” He ga
sped. “She is the offspring of my sire.”
Tara went motionless and silent. Then in a small voice: “She is your sister? You have the same parents?”
Realization dawned. The feleen had been jealous. Tara cared. Joy threatened to burst his chest. “That is correct; Anika is, as you say, my sister.”
“I guess I overreacted.”
He would have a few bruises from the objects she had thrown at him. The hut was in shambles. “You did,” he said, although, had the situation been reversed and he’d caught Tara embracing a male, he would have torn him limb from limb.
He shifted her off his lap onto all fours on the bed.
She twisted to peer at him. “I am sorry…Alpha,” she said.
He regarded her submissive pose, her punished and reddened skin, her upturned, remorseful face. He had never wanted her more than he did in that moment. Marlix stripped off his uniform and rolled an elasticene prophylactic onto his erection.
TARA’S HEART THUMPED as Marlix—her Alpha—lubed his erection with acca oil, preparing to use her in the Parseon way. The prospect did not terrify or outrage her like it would have a few weeks ago, because in a matter of hours, the world had tilted. All pretense and lies had fallen away to reveal the truth. She wanted to belong to him.
Catching him with Anika and assuming the worst had changed everything. What fool rejected love for political ideology? She wasn’t marrying Parseon; she would be joining Marlix. Sure, his controlling nature would irk her. But she loved him, needed him. And he cared. She could tell he did.
She no longer had reservations about obeying him. Just the thought of what was about to transpire had her trembling with anticipation, her womb contracting, wetness pooling. She would be proud to call him Alpha. Even as he’d punished her, she’d yelled, cursed, and kicked, but something had clicked into place inside with a rightness that could not be denied. She belonged with him, in his bed, over his knee, in his life. You are mine, he had said. Well, he was hers.
Her relationships with Terran lovers now seemed like an artificial substitute for true satisfaction. Marlix’s demands, his orders, his dominating nature, enlivened her. That was why she’d stayed when she’d had a chance to leave.
All of which led to the biggest truth of all: she, a Terran female, an entrepreneur, a traveler, an adventurer, the aggressor for most of her sexual life, had a submissive side. No wonder none of her relationships had worked out.
He knelt behind her, and she lifted her hips, prepared to receive him. She held her breath, half expecting him to push into her right away, but he trailed his fingers over her ass. Whether due to her arousal or the effects of the sudon, her bottom seemed to pulsate. His touch felt cool at first, but then left a wake of fire.
He trailed his fingers down her buttocks to her inner thighs and stroked the swollen tissues of her pussy, dipped inside her channel, before moving to her clit. “It is not enough for me to use you, Tara. I want you to want me to.” His voice rumbled in her ear.
She thrust against the hand drawing magic circles around her clit. “I-I do.”
He withdrew his fingers and leaned over her. His breath warmed her neck moments before he bit her hard enough to bruise. Pleasure contracted in her pussy, her clit, her womb, her ass.
“It pleases me to mark you as my breeder,” he said.
Marked. Such a primitive expression of possession. She tilted her head to give him greater access to her throat and was rewarded with another nip. She moaned.
She could not see what he was doing, but he shifted, reached for something.
“I visited the Bazaar the other day. They have something there called a sex shop. Are you familiar with it?”
“I know of it. I have not been there.”
“I will take you one day,” he said.
A white heat scorched her at the thought of visiting such a place together. She struggled to guess what, if anything, Marlix might have bought on his own, when he guided the head of his cock to her rosette. She focused then on the pressure of his erection, the need to relax to ease the entry. He pushed his cockhead inside, and she gasped. Ass on fire…ass on fire…ass on fire…
Her ears buzzed, a sound she attributed to panic, until Marlix touched her clit with a vibrating object. She jerked and cried out in surprise. He made no move to plunge deeper but held himself immobile and ran the finger vibe over her clit, igniting urgent sensations. When pleasure chased all pain, he pushed deeper, and an orgasm hit her with a sudden and full force.
Gripping her hips, he drove into her, then picked up momentum and speed on the inward stroke.
The vibe buzzed once again, but the sensation against her sensitive clit now transmitted an exquisite torture. “Noooo,” she moaned. “Too much. Too much.” Protests fell on deaf ears, then her discomfort shattered into ecstasy again just before his orgasm claimed him.
“Now you are mine,” he growled in her ear.
Chapter Fifteen
“We must talk,” Marlix said after they recovered and they’d washed in the water Tara heated on the stove. “But first, you must restore the hut to its previous condition,” he said.
She recognized a test when she heard one. She donned her boots and a shift and scurried to complete the task. Her ass cheeks still felt like they were being pinched by fire ants, and inside she was sore too. As Marlix watched with arms folded, she clopped around and swept up the shards and dumped them in a bin. He hauled the table to the center of the room, and she replaced the benches and chairs in their proper location.
He approached her. “Do you understand what it will mean for you to be my female?”
“I think so.” Tara nodded.
“You will belong to me.”
Belong. A euphemism for “own.” They weren’t discussing semantics, the difference between potato and potahto. She would be his property. To have and to hold, to do with as he pleased. But the fact that an Alpha had asked her if it was okay spoke volumes. At least she thought it did. “What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“To whom will you belong?”
His face went blank for a moment. “To you,” he finally said.
“Just so you know that.”
He frowned as if he tumbled the concept around in his mind to study all the angles. “I have never belonged to anyone before.”
“Neither have I. What about my shop? Will you allow me to sell textiles?”
“You may run your shop.” Marlix scowled. “The male may not touch you.”
“Ramon? He’s not interested in me. He’s gay.”
“His happiness is of no concern to me, but I will make him exceedingly miserable if he touches you.” Marlix’s expression darkened more.
Tara choked off a giggle. “Not that kind of gay. Ramon is homosexual. He has sex with other men.”
“That does not mean anything.” Marlix still glowered. “Alphas and betas engage in sexual relations, but they still use females.”
“That is Parseon; Terra is different. Ramon is different,” Tara said, but considered the implications of his words. Jealousy gnawed through the pit of her stomach. He had said he would not take other women, but did his promise extend to men? Urazi had admitted they did not have sex, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take another beta—or succumb on occasion to the convenience of Urazi. “What about other males?”
“What about them?”
“Will you engage in sexual relations with them?”
“No.”
“Have you ever had sex with men?” She gave rein to her curiosity.
“No.”
“Only with women?”
“Yes.”
“So why did you object to the Enclave for so long?”
“You ask too many questions,” he snapped, stalking over to the table and straddling a bench. In the blink of an eye, his manner had shot from indulgent to angry.
What had she said wrong? She’d pried into his past, but considering the commitment she was about t
o make, wasn’t she entitled to know? If he didn’t want to talk about it, all he had to do was refuse to answer. Tension knotted her stomach as she shuffled around, preparing dinner. Was she going to have to parse every thought before she uttered it? Her appetite had vanished, but she needed to busy herself. It was either cook dinner or curl up on the bed and weep—or lob a skillet at his head.
She jumped when he pressed his large body to her back and flattened his hands against her lower abdomen. “I am sorry,” he said. “Your questions raised some old discomforts, which I have not entirely come to terms with. But that is my problem, not yours. I was wrong to scold you.”
“It’s okay.” She melted against him.
“It is not okay for me to strike at you because of my lack.”
“I meant I forgive you.” She wondered how long it would take before they worked out their cultural and language differences.
“Oh. Well then, that is different.” Marlix curved a hand over her mound and cupped her breast with the other. He held her tight against his muscled body. “Since we have settled things between us, we will leave the Enclave this week after the hunt and return to my abode.”
“Hunt?”
“The animals are in rut, and this is the best time to put up meat for the winter. Since we have been here, the Enclave has fed and housed us. Urazi has suggested, and I concurred, that he should assist with the hunt. It is important to replace what we have taken from the Enclave.”
“I will miss this place,” she said. She looked forward to the comforts of Marlix’s domicile but would always remember she’d gotten to know him at the Enclave and had fallen in love here.
“I will miss it too. Perhaps we can visit sometimes.”
“A vacation,” she said in Terran.
“What is that?”
“It’s when people take a respite from work and go someplace to have fun.”
“I like that,” he said. “I expect we will experience a transition period. You are unused to our ways, and I have never owned a breeder.”
