She couldn’t be no matter what. She would have to learn.
He would lift his arm and everything would feel like slow motion.
Her flesh would reverberate under his hand, the soft globes compressing hot and smooth into his cupped palm and she would call him every name in the book, and a few he hadn’t heard, not even with all his years among the rough-and-tumble guardians.
Marax had other ideas of what to do with her too, not a few of which involved chains, bondage and tight enclosures. Whatever he did to her, she had forfeited any pretense of freedom in his mind.
She had been judged, convicted, and soon she would be sentenced. The moment she got close to finishing her little project. Or the moment he got tired of watching her play the part of escape artist. Something she did rather poorly, truth be told, though in her mind she must surely think herself a genius.
Marax felt his cock again, stirring the way it did almost constantly in her presence these days.
That was another thing.
This sexual arrangement between them, the utter avoidance of dealing with her actions in the emergency shelter must come to an end. In its way, attacking him in her sleep, however sweet and seductive, was its own crime and he must deal with that too.
She had touched a primale’s body and for that she would be paid with a different kind of sentence. One involving intense sexual frustration visited on her by none other than himself. And why not solve two problems at once? Let her satisfy his urge to spank even as he used his body to discipline her.
Together, the pain, the teasing would make a new woman out of her. Then she’d understand what it felt like for him watching her take these prolonged and quite unnecessary showers.
The little minx, full of her mixed signals, the disorganized mind ruled by passions, it screamed out, “take charge of me, make me whole, make me peaceful, make me yours”.
Make me yours. This last thought chilled him like the touch of a Narthian spider.
What primale would want a female like this?
None. That was the answer and him least of all, out of every single primale in the entire cosmos.
He clenched his fist.
Today.
This charade was going to end. No more hours of exercise, no more pushing back the fantasies in his mind, no more dreams. No more remembering the touch of a woman he could not possess.
Let her look him in the eye, wide awake this time instead of in her sleep and let her feel his body against her…as he drove her to near insanity. And all without any hope of real sex-making.
Yes, it was high time she understood exactly what it meant to be in a primale’s keep.
Dekalia knew he was watching her shower. Was he becoming suspicious or was he merely captivated by the sight of her washing her body?
Much as he pretended to be preoccupied with his primale business, exercising and surveying and reconstructing the damaged ship, she knew he was responding to her as a female. Perhaps it was only his suspicions that kept him so close at hand, but truly of what intelligence value was it to watch her showering?
A part of her enjoyed the attention. The reminder she wasn’t alone in the world. Heaven knew he ignored her most of the rest of the time. It was for this reason that she had taken to spending more and more time under the man-made waterfall as opposed to the convenience of the personal cleaning chamber in her quarters.
Just a few whisks of treated air and she would have been scrubbed clean to the base of her skin cells. But nothing beat the exhilaration of rubbing a sponge over one’s torso, letting the water sluice down her head and back and over her breasts. It was more than a little arousing too. The water was just cool enough to make her nipples peak.
She smiled, thinking of how this must be making him react. It was an extreme point of ego for him not to appear aroused, so naturally she provoked his primale sensibilities where she could. He was so predictable.
Dekalia would almost miss the man, honestly, except that she had so much work to do back home on Earth.
The Embracer movement needed her almost as much as she needed them. Which was why her transmitter idea had to work. Indeed, she could only hope that once her followers had her coordinates they’d be able to find her and overcome Marax long enough to spirit her away.
They had an advantage in numbers but he had everything else, strength, agility and stubbornness. By the moons and planets, were primales ever stubborn.
Dekalia smoothed the sponge over her glistening thigh now. The warm, artificial sun shone down on her skin, the breeze lightly kissed her lips.
It might have been a spring day on Earth, at the edge of a jungle, or on the edge of some tropical island, generic, but gorgeous nonetheless.
“Dekalia, I want to talk to you. Could you please come here?”
As usual he had appeared as if out of thin air. Wonderful, a discussion with Mr. Personality.
“What is it about?” she called out to the shore where he was standing, seemingly relaxed but with an eagle-eyed intensity that made her pulse race like lightning. As usual there was no mistaking how close he was and how he could come after her. If he wished to swim in after her right now, for example, he would have hold of her in a heartbeat.
It was always this way with Marax. Even outside their little dome he seemed to sense her movements. Eerie.
“If I wanted to shout it out to you, Dekalia, I would have already done so.”
Dekalia frowned. “Have I told you how much I hate primale logic? And don’t give me an exact number, because I know you have it calculated.”
Wow, was that a smile?
There and gone, just for an instant. The mighty, implacable Marax, showing a trace bit of humanity.
He handed her the towel she had left on the rocks. Snatching it from his hand, she covered herself.
As if he hadn’t seen it all already.
“I would like to examine the contents of your quarters,” he said now, quite out of the blue.
She swallowed hard. “What the hell did you just say?”
“You don’t need me to repeat it, you heard me quite satisfactorily.”
“Maybe I just can’t comprehend bullshit,” she fumed. “You are not my fucking jailor.”
“I’m authorized by the Commandant General and Acting Council President to—”
“To do shit,” she interrupted. “So why don’t you go to the devil, all of you.” She spun on her heel, hoping to make a rather dignified run for it. This was stupid, how did she expect to get away from him if she couldn’t even hide the components of her device long enough to try in the first place?
Marax stopped her, his hand on her wrist. “Going somewhere?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Your attitude is unacceptable. I expect cooperation.”
“Go to the devil,” she spat.
“As you wish.” With that he reached out and deprived her of the towel.
Just like that any semblance of equality was gone.
“What are you trying to do? Punish me like one of your obedients?”
It was intended as a taunt but he never even flinched. “In part.”
“What’s the other part?”
“I enjoy your nude body, Dekalia. It pleases me.”
Her jaw dropped. Was he serious?
“What happened to your precious primale code of morality?” she demanded.
“A primale adapts to his environment. He does what he needs to do establish authority.”
“Acting like a pervert won’t win you points in my book.”
He seemed unconvinced. “Your cheeks are red, that indicates an emotional state of embarrassment, does it not, a close approximation of submission.”
She rolled her eyes, though he wasn’t far off the money.
Something was going on and it wasn’t just about the transmitter.
“If I find anything in your quarters, Dekalia, I will spank your bare bottom—until it is as red as your aforementioned cheeks.”
<
br /> Dekalia snorted. “This is nuts, Marax, even for you.”
“You will begin walking,” he said. “In the direction of your quarters.”
“Fine,” she said, putting her nose in the air. “It’s not like I have anything to hide.”
Hah, hah, fucking hah.
Nothing that is but a box full of comm link components mixed in with her clothing. That would be easy to explain away for sure. Maybe he would believe she was building an old-fashioned hair dryer.
“Making me walk nude is a violation of my rights,” she informed him as she padded across the sand toward the black onyx structure, pyramidal and multi-chambered, which served as their living structure.
It was a clash with the beach theme, though it was a stroke of luck for her since a grass hut would have been far less suitable for her clandestine activities.
The massive, pseudo-stone door slid aside as the building sensed them coming. It immediately gave them a climate update, as if the interior was ever anything but 72 Fahrenheit, eleven-percent humidity with the same ridiculously precise quality of molecular air components.
“Why do we even have that audio message over and over?” she complained.
Marax ignored her.
“It’s redundant,” she said, desperate to make conversation.
He continued to say nothing as they passed the small living area with its nano art, holo tablets and imitation Numerian dinosaur-skin seats all the way down the corridor past Marax’s quarters, the contents of which she’d only seen once.
The décor was über-masculine of course, consisting of some imitation swords from ancient Japan, a wall mural of the Battle of the Crab Nebula and some calligraphy quotes from The Art of War.
He slept on a thin slab of stone, harder than the onyx the walls were made from.
She had given him a hard time about the paintings and the swords. They were scarcely practical and utilitarian, the way he claimed to be all the time.
“A set of samurai swords is not on par with five thousand pairs of shoes you will never wear,” he had said.
“I don’t have them lying around,” she’d said, trying not to sound defensive. “They are only templates in my objectifier.”
Just down the hall from his quarters was the rounded door of her chambers, the rooms he had never before entered, though he had manufactured the entire structure with the help of the nano-construction robots.
“For the record,” she said, placing her palm on the identifier pad. “I highly object.”
The door whooshed open obediently, but before she could cross the threshold, Marax took hold of her arm.
Turning her toward him, he lifted her onto tiptoes. She was about to ask the meaning when he showed her, imposing his lips.
It wasn’t exactly a kiss, but it could hardly be called an intellectual discussion on the nature of Japanese swords versus designer footwear either.
His lips just rested on hers. Then they began to move, probing, branding, marking, exploring.
She tried to hold out, to remain passive, but in the space of a few heartbeats she felt herself yield.
He released her before she could kiss him back.
Her lower lip trembled.
She looked at him with pent-up rage and hurt, along with a desire to make sex she had never, ever known. As wrong as this man obviously was for her, as much as he represented every obstacle in her life, immediate and long range, she could not keep the thought from her mind of being with him and closing that stormy, deadly gap between them.
Though to do so might be the undoing of them both.
“You’ve flipped out,” she said, seeking some explanation, anything at all. “All that time out on the ice has frozen your brain.”
“Confess now,” he told her, oblivious to her words. “It will go easier.”
She forced herself to keep eye contact. She had been fighting it all along and now it was right on top of her, the implied threat in his words and the images that went along with them.
Marax was going to punish her the way he would one of his obedients, by taking it out on her bare ass, his large and powerful hand crashing down on her tender skin again and again.
It wasn’t fair, damn it.
Would he put her on his knee or make her bend over? Her pussy would be exposed and her tender asshole. It would be so humiliating.
And so fucking hot.
She had been having dreams almost nonstop and they were getting more intrusive, Marax having his way, doing things, and her wanting more, always more.
That was one of the purposes of going to the waterfall though she was unwilling to admit it even to herself how much she needed the distraction, the water to cool her ever-steaming loins.
“Do your worst,” she heard herself say. Had she lost her mind? What kind of thing was that to say to a primale, especially one like Marax?
“Your choice,” he said with a wave of his hand, signaling for her to precede him.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” she replied, referencing the piles of clothes and art supplies for the paintings she had been working on, largely as a cover for building the transmitter.
Hopefully he would be taken in by her strategic mess.
Marax took little interest in her state of cleanliness, however.
“Where is this place?” he wanted to know, pointing to a landscape she had made, red and yellow leaves on oak trees lining a country road.
“It’s inspired by a piece from the North American exhibit at the North American Geo Museum. This represents the area where my ancestors came from.”
She couldn’t believe he cared at all, or was this more of his psychological warfare campaign?
A frown crossed his face for an instant. “Why would you concern yourself with ancestors? We all contain the same genetics.”
“And that’s the problem. We have no history, no identity and therefore nothing to embrace.”
“You may commence the search,” he said, signaling the end of his show of humanity for the day, probably the year.
“Me? You want me to do this myself?”
“You said you had nothing to hide.”
“I don’t.” She reached down to her bed and picked up a lacy pair of panties to toss at him. “Here. Inspect this all you like.”
“I’ve seen the contents already.”
He meant her pussy. She felt the heat rise again in her cheeks as she sought to cover herself. How could she have forgotten her nudity?
“Can I put something on?”
“No.”
“Bastard.”
“So I’ve been told. You may continue.”
Dekalia stepped gingerly over the piles of supplies, trying to postpone the inevitable. She lamely offered him a paintbrush to examine, but the gleaming silver in the container she took it from caught his eye.
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“Don’t make me ask again,” he said.
Dekalia deflated, reaching for the micro-transponding disk head, which according to the directions connected to the meta-resistor head link, which connected to the knee bone, knee bone connected to the leg bone, or however the old song went.
She held it between thumb and forefinger.
“And is this also a representation of a piece of art?” he mused.
“You know it’s for a comm link,” she fumed, tired of the game of cat and mouse. “Why don’t you stop this stupid charade? I’m busted and we both know it.”
“You had a chance to confess,” he reminded.
“Ever heard of the Fifth Amendment?”
“No self-incrimination, better known as Guarantee Five of the Earth Confederation Constitution.”
“You know your history.”
“Better than you know hyper-engineering. You do realize that a transponding disk head—a real one—requires triclor-gas infusions? What you’ve made is a lovely museum copy. You’ll find it’s the same for the rest, like that holo needle cone behind t
hat stack of canvases over there.”
Dekalia licked her suddenly dry lips. She had been more of a fool than she realized.
“Objectifiers do have limits, you know. They can’t duplicate any technology superior to or equal to their own,” Marax said. “Nor are they allowed to manufacture weapons, items of wealth, instruments of currency or—”
“I get the picture, I screwed up.”
“No,” he said, his eyes focusing like lasers. “A real screw-up would have been if you had succeeded in making an actual comm link. You know the consequences of your being found, don’t you?”
“My followers would denounce your Guardian Corps as a group of kidnapping thugs and come and rescue me?”
“They might try. They might even succeed. But who gains from a revolution? No one in the human race, that’s for sure.”
“I know, the Narthians reap the rewards of a weak and liberal Earth government.” She said it sing-song like a nursery rhyme.
“You say it like the Narthians are a myth. I could show you the scars.”
This surprised her.
“But you are unmarred.”
“Externally.”
Dekalia was unsure what he meant. Was it internal to his body…or his psyche? It was a bold admission for such a man of steel.
Though they had merged minds and that changed everything. Perhaps he saw there was no real way to conceal his true pain?
“Look,” she said. “I am sure you are only doing what you think is right. The same is true of me. We both have our missions.”
“Except I will make sure mine succeeds,” he said. “And yours fails, which is why I will not be the one going to bed with the sore bottom tonight.”
She contemplated making a run for it. “You are bluffing. You wouldn’t touch a member of the council in such a manner.”
“Not without the authority, no. However, this is war and as such I have the full mandate of my commander to override civilian rules and regulations.”
“Rules and regulations? You’re talking about laying hand to an officer of Earth’s government.
“As you recall, I told you already at the start that I was empowered to treat you as I saw fit as an obedient. As for seeking sympathies I believe the majority would be on my side in calling this an effort to teach a certain insolent little fem a lesson.”
Dominating Dekalia Page 6
