by Renee Rose
He grinned. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still own your ass. So when I say bend over, you’d better obey quickly, pet, or I’ll make the punishment more challenging than I already planned it to be.”
A shiver visibly ran through her, but she did as he commanded, gingerly folding herself over his thighs and presenting her perfect little ass.
“Reach back and pull open your cheeks.”
“What?” He sensed more confusion than disobedience in her tone.
“You heard me.”
She shot him a questioning look, but reached her hands back and prized her cheeks apart.
He unwrapped the root and worked the freshly peeled end, which he’d carved in the shape of a finger, against her anus.
She clenched her back pucker, tightening her ass.
He slapped the back of her thigh. “Do you need a spanking, too?”
“No.” He loved the sullenness in her tone.
He popped each cheek once, anyway. “Open up.” Wiggling the end of the root against her back entrance, he applied steady pressure.
She gasped when it breached her tight muscles and entered. He pushed it in until he reached the end he’d notched to keep it from entering all the way.
“Now stand up.” He gave her ass a pat.
She stood up, the little root sticking out from between her ass cheeks. Soon it would begin to produce heat, even burning.
“Straddle my knees,” he ordered.
She adjusted and started to climb onto his lap, but he held her back with a hand at her hips. “Not sitting. Standing.” He lowered his knees, hoping she’d manage it.
“Oh.” She lifted her weight onto her feet, which forced her legs to be spread wide.
“Good, pet.” Her bare breasts bobbed right in front of his face, her pussy was spread between his legs, and he checked with his fingers to make sure the spicy root he’d inserted still protruded from her ass. The sight was so erotic, so lovely, he wanted to capture it forever.
He reached behind her and pumped the root in and out of her ass, watching her face flush and nostrils flare.
“What is that?”
“Anal punishment.”
She tossed him a suspicious look—probably guessing there was more to it than that.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Wariness scrawled over her visage.
“Your bottom is too sore, but there are other parts of you I can spank. Can you guess what they are?”
Her belly fluttered with a rasped breath. “No.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
He slapped her left breast with a quick, arcing open palm.
She jumped and moved to step back, but he caught her waist. “Ah ah. Where are you going? You stay right here for your punishment.” He slapped her right breast.
Her breath quickened, making her breasts rise and fall at an alluring rate.
He yanked her forward and applied his mouth to her left nipple, twirling his tongue around her nipple, scraping his teeth across the delicate flesh then sucking it into his mouth. The moment he released it, he slapped his fingers across it again, watching it bounce under his treatment.
“Which is better? Breasts or…” He clapped his palm up between her legs, connecting with her wet, plump folds. “Pussy?”
She cried out, wobbling, but he held her up with the hand on her hip.
“You’ve been naughty, pet. Your pretty little pussy deserves to be punished.” He slapped it again. “So does this ass.” He pumped the root in her anus.
“Oh.” Her startled look told him that the root had begun to heat inside her.
He slapped her pussy again, which dripped with arousal. “I told you I would punish you every day until we reach Ocretia. I wouldn’t lie. If your ass is still too sore tomorrow, I’ll tie your legs open and whip those inner thighs until you scream for mercy.”
The wariness had gone from her face, replaced by desire. Her eyes glowed glassy, breath came in pants. “Please,” she breathed.
He screwed two fingers inside her hot channel and watched her face. Judging from the way her muscles contracted around his fingers, she was ready to blow.
He shoved down his flight pants, allowing his cock to spring free. “Climb on it.”
The relief in her expression was almost comical. Or it would have been if his own desperation didn’t match hers. He gripped her ass and impaled her on his cock, unable to wait for her trembling movement.
She gasped at the sudden intrusion. He let her adjust to his size by pumping that wicked root in and out of her ass, twisting and turning it to renew the burn.
“Oh stars, oh veck,” she moaned, rocking her hips up to meet his.
He nearly died from the rightness of it.
“That’s it, beautiful. Take me deeper,” he growled, moving her hips forward and back over his erection, using the length of his cock to rub her clit each time she moved out.
“Oh veck!” Her gaze flew around, a frantic wild quality to her movements now.
He took her right nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, still yanking her in and out over his cock so fast her teeth probably rattled.
The sound of her gasping breath, the desperation of her gyrating hips sent him over the edge. His thighs tensed, balls contracted. Stars danced before his eyes.
“Come, Lily,” he roared, unable to wait for her.
He yanked her body against his and held her tight, his cock buried deep inside her as he came and came.
She, too, found her release, shudders bucking through her lithe body until she lay limp as a rag doll.
He bit the place where her shoulder met her neck and laid a kiss behind her ear. To his surprise, she pushed off his lap, limbs jerky with anger.
Oh veck. Had he hurt her? A sheet of cold doused his body.
~.~
Lily stalked away to face the corner, arms crossed over her chest, shoulders hunched.
Get it together, Lily. Get it together.
Tears burned in her eyes, and her heart jumped erratically in her chest.
What had just happened? She’d never lost control like that. Veck, had she ever even been present during sex before?
“Lily?” She heard Rok surge to his feet behind her, and his two beefy forearms appeared on either side of her, caging her against the wall.
“Veck, Lily. Did I hurt you?”
The shocked concern in his voice only made the restless emotions ricocheting through her body worse. She had to get a grip on them before she unraveled completely.
When she didn’t answer or turn, he shifted to catch her shoulders. “I went too far. I’m sorry.”
His apology only ratcheted up her confusion. Why did he care about her feelings? Wasn’t this supposed to be retribution for her crimes against him? The icy truth that her suspicion it was something altogether different sent her tumbling headlong down the mountain of uncertainty.
What was this male playing at? And why—by the Earth’s one true moon—why did he have such an effect on her?
He turned her slowly, and the soft regret on his face undid her.
“Get off me,” she shouted, shoving his hands away. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I want no part of it.”
“Tell me what I did. Why are you angry with me?”
Because it wasn’t what he’d done but this very concern that had her chest in shreds, she slapped his face.
He let her. Yes, she actually saw him start to withdraw the target then let the slap fall. But he’d had enough. He caught both her wrists and yanked her against his chest.
“Did you like it too much?” his face was grim, and the knowing in his tone nearly dropped her to the floor.
Tears spilled down her cheeks like a valve had opened.
Rok caught her around the waist, holding her up. He plucked out the vegetable that burned and heated her ass, leaving her entire pelvic region warm, her pussy dripping. Even after that vigorous ride, after taking his huge Zandian cock, she want
ed more.
And it terrified her.
She shouldn’t desire her captor. Find pleasure with her master. Receive comfort from the male who planned to give her over to her death in just a few weeks.
This maelstrom of conflicting emotions made it impossible for her to think, to reason her way out of this bizarre entrapment with a tender captor who liked to cause her pain.
Except she hadn’t noticed the pain because the driving force of the need, the vecking edge he’d had her on all planet rotation had her begging him for it. And the humiliation of it all—the burning root he’d pumped relentlessly in and out of her ass, the pussy spanking, the breast spanking—it all replayed in her mind so loudly, in such vivid detail and color and sensation, she couldn’t breathe.
This wasn’t her.
Rok scooped her into his arms and slid her onto the sleeping platform. He popped a tube in a liquid pack and pressed it to her lips. “Drink.”
She hadn’t known she was thirsty, but the sweet liquid cooled her mouth and throat. She pulled hard, swallowing in quick bursts until she’d finished the entire pack.
“Look at me.” Rok stood beside the platform, a crease between his brows. His shirt was off, and his bare chest rippled with muscle.
She obeyed.
“Are you hurt?” He asked the question slowly and clearly, as if her answer was of the utmost importance.
She shook her head.
“Did I take things too far?”
She couldn’t bring herself to say yes. It hovered on her lips, both a truth and a lie.
She dropped to her side, offering her back, and stared at the wall.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Rok caught her upper arm and rolled her over to face him. “Don’t you dare turn wax doll on me, Lily. Not after that vecking spectacular display of sensuality. Sexuality—whatever. We’re going to talk about this. You liked it. I know you liked it,” he said fiercely, as if the universe depended on him convincing both of them. He brought his palms to her face, bracketing it with a soft touch. “It was intense for me, too.”
Her breath stalled. Stuttered. Stalled again. Their gazes locked, his amethyst eyes boring down into hers, nothing but dead sincerity on his handsome face.
After a long moment, he flicked off the light. “I’m going to crawl up there beside you, and if there’s anything you want to tell me in the dark, while you don’t have to look at me, I’ll be listening.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. What did he think she would say? What was he inviting her to say?
She had no experience to help her navigate this male, nor the feelings still swimming around her gut.
He lay down beside her, catching and tying her wrists so easily in the dark she wondered if she was the only one who couldn’t see. The blackness did provide some measure of safety, though it also seemed to give her emotions room to expand, which she didn’t like.
“I got scared,” she admitted.
Rok slid his hand across her breast in a light caress. “You haven’t let go before.”
She considered his words, plopped like stepping stones in front of her, to help her find the way out of the hole she’d descended into. “No, I haven’t.”
“I did humiliating things to you, and you’re not sure how you feel about that.”
Even as her insides squeezed in the agony of embarrassment, her pussy clenched. “Yes,” she whispered. This might be the crux of the problem. Her sexual response was not in line with her mental one. “Why do you enjoy that?” she snarled. “Hurting and humiliating females?”
“Lily...If you hadn’t responded, if you’d cried or begged me to stop, if you’d turned to stone, as I’ve seen you do, I would’ve stopped. But you liked it. Your pussy dripped for me. You begged me to take you.”
Her face grew warm in the darkness. Yes, she had begged him.
“Is that what you like? The begging?”
“I love all of it, pet. I love being in charge. I love frightening you. Hurting you. I love making you cry and then I love making it better.”
She curled into a tight ball on her side. “That’s just wrong.”
The light came back on, and she yelped from the intensity, blinking as the sheet of white blared across her vision. “Very well.” His clipped voice made her sit up and pay attention.
He stood from the bed and made an impatient gesture. “Get up.”
“Why?” Her heart thudded; somehow it knew this consequence would be her worst yet, and it wasn’t going to involve pain. At least not the physical kind.
“I’ll lock you in a different room. You can stay there until we arrive in Ocretian territory.” His expression was closed and stony. She saw the warrior in him now—huge, fierce. Terrifying. Not a being she’d want to cross.
Cold waves of panic ran through her. “No.” Her rational mind said she needed to stick with Rok if she wanted any chance of escape. Her heart screamed the same. Her insides had dropped to the floor, leaving her an empty shell, cold and paper-thin, ready to blow away at Rok’s next breath.
He arched a brow. “No?”
She shook from head to foot. Since her rational mind had left, she reverted to her training, dropping to her knees at his feet, bowing her head low. “Forgive me, master.”
He hauled her back up so quickly she yelped. He lifted her by her upper arms until they saw eye-to-eye, her feet dangling in the air.
“Ouch.” She squirmed. Somehow she knew this wasn’t one of the ways he meant to hurt her.
She was right. He dropped her like she’d scalded him and stepped back. His eyes burned dark purple with anger.
She wanted to rub her arms, knowing there’d be finger bruises there soon, but her bound wrists made it impossible. She tried it less formally this time. “I’m sorry, Rok. Please don’t send me from your chamber. I won’t complain of your treatment of me again.”
But that still wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He put his hand to the screen and his door slid open. “Let’s go.” The coldness in his expression cut her like a blade.
Her throat closed and her nose burned. She thrust her jaw forward. “No, I won’t go. I belong here. For your punishment.”
He remained wooden. No, stone. “Don’t feed me what you think I want to hear.”
She winced and held her breath to keep from crying. “I’m speaking the truth. You were right. I like what you do to me. Maybe too much.”
There. That was the most raw veracity she knew.
The harsh lines of Rok’s face gentled, though he didn’t move.
“My ass isn’t really sore,” she admitted. “It just looks bad. You could spank me tonight…” The heat of a flush crept up her neck.
Rok stared at her for a long moment. Then the corners of his lips twitched and he cupped her nape, dragging her against his huge, hard body and pressing his lips to her hair. “It’s not sore, hmm?”
“Not so much. A few twinges now and then.”
“I’ll punish you for that deception, too, then. Tomorrow.”
The door swished shut as he released his hold on the hand-panel. He spun her around to face the sleeping platform and forced her torso down. She held her breath, waiting. He’d said tomorrow for the spanking, so what was this? More sex?
But his huge palm clapped down on her ass, landing a flurry of spanks that sent her to her toes. Six, seven, eight. He stopped and rubbed her screaming flesh.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to fuck this pretty little ass. Teach you to mean it when you call me master.”
~.~
Rok scooped his little human onto the sleeping platform and crawled in beside her, wrapping an arm over her waist and molding her soft body against his. Despite the difference in their sizes, in their species, she nested perfectly with him.
He hit the button on the wall behind his head to extinguish the artificial light in the room. He hated that weak light—his cells longing for the crystal-amplified sunlight Zandia had featured.
“Is that why you don’t like
when I call you master?”
His chest closed, the ache every time she said that word automatic. Taraw had called him that, with complete surrender and total submission. She’d look up at him with adoration, waiting for his command.
“She called you that.”
He sucked in a breath, startled. Did the human read minds like Mierna?
“Who?”
“Depri’s sister. You never said her name.”
“Taraw. Yes.”
Silence stretched between them as his throat closed with grief and guilt. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He couldn’t speak. Taraw had been as different from Lily as a female could be. Willowy and tall, like Depri, she’d been a warrior, as forceful as any. Only on the sleeping platform did she surrender. Lily had been a slave, trained in subservience, but she resisted her real surrender. That was the part that had frightened her earlier.
“I’ve never loved anyone.” Her voice sounded hollow. The emptiness of it scraped at his chest.
“No?” The image of her sister and mother’s faces, pinched with concern over her flashed in his mind. “No family? Friends?”
“None. The closest I came to friends were those slaves I escaped with. But…”
“But what?”
“Things turned divisive with them almost as soon as we settled. There wasn’t enough food to go around. Things were hard. We took care of each other, but there was a lot of infighting and resentment.”
“They all died in the explosion?”
“Yes. I was out foraging for food. We weren’t supposed to be out alone, but I’d needed some time away. I was still enjoying my freedom.” The bitterness in her voice made him wince.
But she wasn’t a slave anymore, not really. If she didn’t realize that yet, she would soon. Even more when she was reunited with her mother and sister. He smiled, knowing she couldn’t see him in the darkness. Giving her that gift—one she’d never had, or could no longer remember—would be sweet.
Chapter Four
Lily woke in Rok’s chamber just as mixed up as she’d been the night before. The lights were on half-strength and she was alone, but he’d moved a hover seat close to the bed and a plate of food sat upon it.
