by Loki Renard
She fiddled with the tool he called a spoon.
“I will thank you to pay attention,” he said sharply.
“I don’t know what these authorities or papers are,” she said. “I don’t think I care.”
“You didn’t have anyone making rules in your village?”
“Not really.”
“Well, here, there are many people. And here, those people are ordered by authorities. The rules are made and we must all follow them.”
She looked up at him again. “You must follow rules?”
“The wealthy have fewer rules, but there are still rules. Even for me.”
“For you.” She grinned at the idea of Kyren having to follow someone else’s rules. It seemed to Tara that he controlled the world. And it was true that he did control her world. But the world beyond his doors was bigger and broader than anyone might imagine and he was not in control of it.
“You like that, don’t you.” He allowed himself a small smile. “You think it is funny. I assure you, the consequences of the authorities finding that you have been among the citizenry are not amusing.”
“You’re in trouble,” she said in a sing-songy voice. “They’re going to come and spank you.”
He snorted. “They are not going to do anything of the kind. I, on the other hand, am thinking you might need something to focus your attention. A stinging bottom should do the trick.”
“No!”
It was too late. Kyren took a handful of the back of her dress and lifted her up over the table, pushing the cutlery away with a clattering sound as he propped her against the hard wood and tossed the hem of the skirt up over her back.
“You will pay attention when I am instructing you, pet,” he said, his hand meeting her bottom with a sharp clap. “I am attempting to educate you for your own benefit. I am trying to keep you out of an enclosure, but frankly, if you will not take this seriously perhaps I will give you a dose of the life of a pet.”
“I am paying attention. I am paying attention now!”
“Of course you are. Do I have to thrash you every time I need you to listen? Should I spank you before I speak with you?” His hand met her bottom with every word, bouncing against her bare cheeks and leaving a hot sting in its wake. The lecturing was worse than the spanking. He was very stern and very displeased. His tone had taken on the dominant note she was starting to recognize as being a sign she had seriously displeased him.
“I was just playing!”
Her words caused him to spank her harder and faster, slapping her bottom to a hot stinging crescendo that made her squirm and flail, tossing the Fillus fork onto the floor along with its multiple companions.
“Playing,” he lectured. “This is not play time, pet. This is training time. And when I train you, I demand that you pay your full attention. Do you understand?”
“Yes!” she gasped and writhed beneath his hard hand. “I get it!”
“Good,” he said, softening the slaps a fraction. “The more I have to punish you, the more time we waste, the longer you will have to spend here… but maybe that’s what you want… hmm… pet?”
He pressed her thighs apart and put his fingers to her lower lips. “You’re soaked,” he said, the words sounding like the accusation they very much were. “No wonder my discipline is so ineffective. You enjoy it.”
“I do not,” she lied.
He probably thought he was being harsh with her, spanking her bottom the way he did, but Tara had been a wild hunter since her early teens. She was used to discomfort. There were no effective painkillers in her village. When she’d hurt herself back on Earth, there had been herbal tea and nothing else. She’d gotten used to pain. A spanking on her bottom, even a fairly hard one, was more stimulating than painful. He seemed to know that now.
“Pet, you continue to surprise me. You seem such a delicate little thing, but you are much stronger than you look, much more resistant too. You resent me, don’t you.”
She answered the table top. “I was abducted, and sold to you.”
“I didn’t have you abducted, Tara.”
“But you deal with people who do abductions.”
“They’re collectors, and usually when they’re dealing with lower life forms, they’re excellent at their jobs. You come from a planet which barely has any sentient life left. So your experience has been… difficult. If I had not purchased you, Tara, they would have sold you elsewhere. To another collector, perhaps, but more likely to a display of some kind. Or perhaps, a research facility… you are rare, and precious to me, but rare things are not always treated well. Especially not by those who see them as something to be studied… taken apart.”
Tara frowned against the table as his disturbing words sank through her. She didn’t know what he meant, exactly, about the research, but being taken apart was graphic enough for her to understand. “Are you trying to scare me?”
He laid a hard slap to her bottom, grabbed the hair at the back of her head in his fist, and pulled her up from the table, his eyes meeting hers with a serious gaze. “I’m trying to explain your situation, pet. Because you don’t understand it. You think these lessons are silly. You think they are a chance for you to test me, to get yourself into trouble, to take pleasure from the punishments I must inevitably give you. They are not. They are the gateway to a good life, Tara. They are the chance for you to fulfill the potential I see in you. They matter.”
Tara nodded slowly, inasmuch as she could with her head held so firmly by Kyren. “Okay,” she said softly. “I understand.”
“When I bought you from those traders, I took your life into my hands. It is a responsibility that I take very seriously. I want to be kind to you, pet. I want to be nice. But if you will not behave, I will not be nice or kind. You might think me strict, or cruel. You might even hate me. But I will pay the price of your hate if it means you are safe.”
She was squirming now as a range of emotions flooded her body. Almost from the beginning, Kyren had been the face of her imprisonment. The hunters, captors, traders, whatever they were, she had not known them long enough to feel much besides anger about them. But with Kyren, it was different. He had become the reason for every bad thing that had happened, from her capture to her distress at finding herself in an alien environment. She’d never really given him any credit for trying to help her. His insistence on calling her pet and acting as her owner had made her blind to what he was doing to help her survive in a society she did not understand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wriggling from toe to toe.
“I’ve heard you say that you’re sorry before,” he said. “You were sorry, but you still didn’t understand. You don’t understand now.”
“I think I understand.” It was hard to talk while being held like a wild cat, spoken to like a spoiled little brat.
“I am sure you do,” he said. “I’m sure you think you do. You don’t know how little you know, pet. You’re very good at working with small bits of information. Like when you saw the maids here and decided to pretend to be one of them. That was smart, pet. Very smart. But the thing is, smart people make mistakes when they forget they don’t know enough.”
She stared at him blankly. Now she really was lost. His lecture was over her head. She did not think she was smart. Actually, she was very simple.
“I…”
He must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because he sighed and released her. “You need to dedicate yourself to learning, pet. To absorbing everything I tell you, and to obeying me.”
Tara nodded mutely.
“To motivate you, I’m going to need more than my palm.” He strode across the room and returned with a long slim rod in his hand that looked a lot like the bamboo plants Tara was familiar with.
“Bend over the table,” he said, gesturing with the tip of the rod. “I want to give you a demonstration.”
She could hardly refuse to obey seeing that he had just given her the lecture of a lifetime about obeying him. Tara
slid back over the table, her ass arching high.
Kyren used the tip of the cane to flip her skirt back over her bottom. Then he pressed the length of the rod against her bottom and tapped it lightly in the center of her cheeks. It was a gentle touch and it was hardly anything to concern her. Tara found herself wondering what he was trying to prove—until the cane slipped away from her cheeks and he brought it down swiftly. There was a swishing sound as the rod cut through the air, and then a loud crack as it met her bottom.
For a second, there was nothing. And then Tara let out a shriek as a sudden blaze emanated from the spot where the cane had landed. She leaped up from the table, grabbed her bottom and danced about, swearing at the top of her lungs. The cane hurt like the blazes, and even though she was rubbing her cheeks, the heat and sting wasn’t going anywhere.
“Over the table, pet,” Kyren ordered sharply.
“No! That hurt!”
“It was intended to. Lay back down over the table.” He was stern and unyielding, pointing to the table with one finger, still holding the cane in the other.
“But I don’t want to.”
“I know,” he said. “That is very much the point. Now bend over the table, pet.”
Tara shook her head. Kyren was done asking and done ordering. He grabbed her and pushed her back down over the table, one hand firmly on the back of her neck. Tara yowled as the cane bit against her bottom three times in quick succession, bringing an almost insufferable blazing sensation. She flailed her legs wildly, kicking out at him without shame. If he could bring the cane down on her bottom, she could catch him with her foot.
“Kick me, and I’ll cane you somewhere even less pleasant,” he warned her. “I shouldn’t have to hold you down for this, pet. You should present yourself for my discipline.”
“I will never willingly present myself for this,” she shot back.
“You will,” he said. “Because that is what obedience means.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
Sense or not, the cane landed again, cutting across several of the other raised lines where the previous strokes had landed. The cane produced a blaze that set her entire body on fire. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t clench when it landed. Kyren landed three more strokes, setting her whole bottom alight with the punishing strokes. Her cheeks were swollen and tender and very uncomfortable by the time he put the cane down, and she was whimpering softly.
“I don’t think you’re finding this arousing, are you, pet?”
He reached between her thighs and she felt his fingers swipe along the seam of her lower lips.
There was a pause, then a dark chuckle. “I see I am wrong.”
Tara let out a little moan as his fingers returned and began to rub between her lips, finding the little nub at the apex without trouble. In spite of the fact that he wanted her to be punished rather than pleasured, he didn’t seem annoyed at her response. He seemed almost… proud.
“You are a challenge, pet,” he drawled darkly. “I spank you and like it. I cane you and you soak yourself with desire.”
Tara would have denied it, but the intense heat from the cane had done just what he said. She was slick with juices and his fingers were skillfully rubbing her clit and lips in a way that made her hump her swollen, sore bottom in the air, and cause her hips to grind and gyrate with need.
She heard his pants open, and then his hand was clenching the back of her neck, pinning her in place again. She froze, thinking he might go for the cane—but it was an entirely different rod that met her flesh. His cock pressed inside her with one long, hard thrust. Her lips split apart around him, gripping his manhood eagerly. His thrusts were demanding and powerful, giving her very little time to accommodate him. There was no easy entry, no slow buildup. From the beginning, he fucked her hard, pounding her pussy and slapping her bottom at the same time, his palm catching the raised lines of the cane. Bolts of hot sensation rushed through her with every thrust and every slap. Tara moaned in a long wail, her cries of pleasure filling the room. There was nothing cultured or civilized about what he was doing, fucking his woman in a way that would not have been out of place in the most primitive parts of planet Earth. They came together in the heat of that carnal fire, Tara’s climax triggering Kyren’s as he flooded her bare pussy with his seed in a way that was becoming deliciously familiar.
He was breathing hard as he pulled out of her pussy and flipped her over on the table, looking down at her with an impassioned gaze as he slid himself back inside her and held his cock deep inside her creamy pussy so that they were joined as much as they could possibly be as he spoke the words she hadn’t known she had been waiting to hear.
“I love you, Tara.”
Love. She was loved by a man. Tara had never expected anything like it in her life. She had never thought she would lay eyes on a man, let alone feel the hot seed of one who loved her dripping slowly down the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.
“Now,” he said. “Let us return to your training.”
Chapter Seven
A week on from her capture, Tara woke one morning, opened her eyes to Kyren’s face, and felt her spirits rise as she took him in. In a very short time, he had become so much more to her than she had ever imagined. From a strange captor, a creature she didn’t understand, he was now the closest person to her heart in all creation. She had experienced friendships on Earth, but never anything like this. She found her thoughts going to him when they were apart, and when she saw him after a separation, even a natural separation like sleep, a smile rose to her lips. She could have walked out the doors of his home at any time and escaped into whatever wilds Udine might have, but she wanted to be by his side. She was drawn to him, and day by day, she found herself wanting to please him. She wasn’t sure if she was submitting to his training because she wanted to go out into the world, or because she wanted to see pride and approval in his eyes.
Did he feel the same way? She wasn’t sure. He was keeping her as a pet, after all. In some ways, his mind and his heart were closed books to her. She wondered if she would ever be able to understand his alien ways. Could a man like Kyren love a woman like her? Was she deficient in some way she wasn’t even capable of understanding? Worries chased themselves around inside her head, multiplying until she remembered that they were both lying in bed entirely naked, and that she could feel every part of him. If she wanted to know his heart, she could press her head to his chest and listen to the slow, deep pumping. Maybe that was enough. Maybe it had to be.
She tried to push the thoughts out of her head and snuggled closer to him, enjoying the warmth and security of his body.
“Hello, pet,” he said, speaking before he opened his eyes.
“Hello,” she said, nuzzling under his chin. She could feel the prickles of the stubble that appeared on his face overnight. It was the strangest thing the way hair seemed to sprout across his cheeks, chin, and jaw. “What are we doing today? More training?”
“I thought today we might both have a day’s rest,” he said, smiling down at her. “I thought I might take you somewhere nice, somewhere you’d enjoy. There is a garden…”
“Sir.” A subtle cough made Tara hide beneath the bedclothes as an attendant made his presence known in the bedchamber. Kyren’s closest servants had an unsettling habit of appearing here and there, usually when they were least expected and she was still not at all used to it and her prey instincts were always triggered by their slippery ways. “There are some gentlemen here to see you, sir. They are from the Authority.”
Tara felt Kyren stiffen next to her at the mention of that final word. Authority. In an instant, his body was taut like steel. His voice took on a terse note as he responded.
“Bring Tara something to eat, Smythers,” Kyren said. “I will see our visitors.”
He slid from the bed and began dressing, leaving Tara curled up beneath the covers. She didn’t know what was going on, so she couldn’t worry about it. She snuggled ther
e in the residual warmth of their shared body heat until Smythers appeared with a plate of food. She was sitting up in bed nibbling at a plate of fried roots when Kyren returned half an hour later.
“Are we going to go to the garden now?” She knew, even as she asked, that the answer would be no. She could see the strain in his handsome features. Something had gone wrong.
Kyren shook his head grimly. “We are going to lunch.”
She cocked her head at him. It was a simple sentence, but his tone made it sound like a dark pronouncement. “Lunch? That doesn’t sound so bad. Why do you look so serious?”
“The authorities are here,” he said, his face graver than before. “The incident on the shuttle the other day has been traced back to me, as I knew it would be. They wish to see the young lady who caused so much trouble.”
It took a few seconds for the words to make some sense in Tara’s mind. “So they want to see me. They want to yell at me?”
“If that were all, I would not be worried. You are a pet, Tara. According to the law, and in their eyes, you are no different than an elequad…”
“You really have to show me what an elequad is one day,” Tara interrupted.
“Tara!” Kyren barked her name and made her jump a little in the bed. “I am trying to explain how badly this could go if they connect you with the pet I imported. I don’t believe they will, but there is some risk if they do. They already know what you look like, so there’s no denying it was you on that shuttle. You need to listen to me well…”
