by Maren Smith
“Nor will I,” he replied. “I would have preferred not to do that to start with. However, prisons have their own protocols and those protocols, for the safety of the officers involved, must be followed. If it makes you feel any better, I made sure your companions would not suffer the same treatment. Put your arms around my shoulders, I intend to carry you.”
Startled laughter burst from lips gone suddenly numb with equal parts shock and horror. “No, you’re not.”
He bent to slide his hands in under both her knees, and she seized his wrists, visibly startling him. His hands were huge, so much larger than her own, and the moment her skin touched his, she felt a racing jolt of the most ridiculous attraction. It shot straight from her fingertips, to her belly, to her nipples.
“I,” she laughed again. “I am not comfortable with the thought of being carried by you.”
“Either remove your hands from mine, or you will find yourself far more uncomfortable, albeit for a vastly different reason.”
Her mouth flattened, her eyes narrowed, and a lot of that grossly misplaced attraction died in an instant. “That sounds like a threat.”
“I prefer to think of what I just said to be an uncharacteristically patient warning.” His gaze held hers, steady and unwavering. Not backing down in the slightest.
“You touched me first,” she said through gritted teeth. “On my world, that’s assault.”
“It’s assault here too,” he agreed. “Unless, of course, the person touching you is a magistrate. If he is a magistrate, then you let him. If he’s a General Magistrate, such as myself,” he pointedly added, “you let him touch wherever he wants, because he is a man of law and as such, likely has a damned good reason. Let go of my wrists, put your hands on my shoulder, I’m going to carry you.”
“I’m not letting you pick me up against my will!” Instead of relaxing, she tightened her grip, especially when he attempted to disengage.
He frowned now too. “You have been in the hospital for almost a week. A full third of the bones in your body had to be mended or regrown. Bone length is quicker to accomplish than proper density. You, Brinley Lawson, are brittle. You require at least three good weeks of bedrest, a great deal of physical therapy, and a steady diet of nanoglucatopamine to help accelerate your body’s natural, albeit incredibly stunted healing process. Happily, the doctor provided me enough in pill form that you can now take your medicine by mouth. Still, the less movement on your part, the better. Now, move your hands. I’ve commanded you twice. In fact, I’ve done nothing but repeat myself since I’ve met you, and I don’t much care for the experience. I am your lawful superior and the foster parent to whom you have pledged your obedience until the day of your legal emancipation—”
“The hell I did!” she bellowed. She hadn’t meant to, but the mountains of affront building within her would not be contained any longer.
Rowth visibly struggled to maintain his temper. “You did,” he calmly replied. “I, myself, put your thumbprint on all the legal documents while you were unconscious.”
That furious mountain inside her became instantly planet-sized. “You can’t do that!”
“Indoor voice.” He frowned, a tic of tightness leaping along the hard line of his jaw. “And, of course, I can. I am responsible for your physical, mental, and emotional welfare, and that includes your legal decisions.”
Smacking his hand out from between them, she bellowed even louder, “I never agreed—”
“If you ever—” He pointed at her with a disciplinary finger.
“—to anything so ridiculous—”
“—strike a magistrate, any magistrate, and most especially me, ever again, I will—”
She slapped his hand with all the fury of a woman who already knew she didn’t have the arm span to reach anything more vital, and at the top of her lungs, roared, “In. My. Li—Ah!!”
Rowth stood up faster than she could react. Before she could do more than flinch, he had her yanked out of his silver bullet of a car. For the briefest instant, weightlessness and helplessness collided as he hupped her up against his massive chest, one incredibly burly arm clamping tightly around her hips, pinning her to him while he slammed the shuttle door shut. Her feet never once touched the ground, something she became heartily grateful for the instant he strode from the garage and her left foot accidentally knocked against his leg. A strike from a ballpeen hammer could not have hurt her more than that single, gentle bump of her toe against his shin. She grabbed Rowth’s neck and shoulder, her shout of pain ripping up the back of her throat before she could swallow it.
It didn’t slow his step or gentle his secure hold. Like an overgrown child, he lugged her from the shuttle house. The door panel, seeming to sense their passing, slid shut and clicked as the locks engaged. He continued without pause across the spartan cobblestone courtyard.
“Oh my God, that hurt,” she moaned once the sharpness of that unintentional bump faded back to levels that she could both see past and breathe through.
“I gave you more than enough warning,” he returned as he marched her to the edge of the cliff. “You have no one to blame for this but yourself.”
For one horrible second, she was sure he meant to throw her over the rail-less edge. She panicked, grabbing onto Rowth’s neck and shoulder again. She crushed his dark jacket between her fingers and though twin shocks of pain again lanced up her legs, she still lashed them around his waist.
“I’ll take you with me,” she vowed, but the pain in her legs grew with each jarring step he took. Within feet, unable to endure it, she had no choice but to let them drop.
Rowth tsked, his strong jaw ticcing again. “Your melodramatics are as appalling as your manners. What do human parents bother teaching their offspring before foisting them off on the rest of the universe?”
“My Spanish mother and French father made sure I know how to say, ‘get fucked’ in three different languages. Four now, thanks to your translator. Want to hear?”
By then, they were close enough for her see what the lip of the courtyard cliff had kept hidden. Tucked two steps below an optical illusion she had been too distracted to pick up on until they were almost to it, was a narrow ledge, carved into the sheer rock-face, evolving into a series of stairs-landing-stairs that went all the way down to the front entry of a massive pink, yellow and blue-colored home built straight into the rock face. The overgrowth of vining plants from the plateau above tumbled down from the cliffs above, clinging like the frantic grasp of many leafy arms to any section of roof, walls, or window ledges that could be grasped, as if the flora sought to keep the structure from falling into the sea below.
“This is your house?” she gasped, for a moment so surprised that she forgot the indignity of being carried. This couldn’t be one house. Layered in three distinct sections on three levels of plateauing rock, it seemed more like a trio of resort apartments. The lowest portion, its cobbled balcony, was perfectly positioned to watch the setting sun from between the break in the cliffs at the mouth of the cove. It perched only six feet above the gently lapping waves. The highest, with its entry door tucked into the rocks so as to shelter it from inclement weather, rested on a level a good twenty feet below the cliff top. His was the only house built within the spacious cove. The sense of isolation was as overwhelming as the salty-sweet air washing in off the sparkling blue ocean was refreshing and as complete as the sound of his front door sliding shut, promptly locking again once they were inside.
An overabundance of floor to ceiling windows let in the daylight, making the need for artificial lights unnecessary. Now that the master was home, half the windows swiveled soundlessly open, letting in the sound and smell of the ocean and the cool comfort of the afternoon breeze. Brinley had never seen anything like it in her life, and she stared transfixed, drinking in the high-class empty elegance as Rowth crossed the foyer. The crisp fall of his hard-soled shoes echoed off the walls as he marched across the polished stone floor.
It w
as a very open living plan. The living area was full of television monitors built into the wall and furnished only with a silver and glass-topped desk. More than a dozen news channels flicked on automatically at his arrival, albeit with captions instead of sound. She recognized the kitchen for what it was and the dining area with its massive and ornately carved table and chairs with enough space to comfortably seat ten. Another balcony walkway overlooked the peaceful cove waters and the set of outdoor stairs and landings that led down to the next tier of the house.
She took it back. A magistrate must make a hell of a lot of money.
Being an astronaut, however, while it had profited her family immensely and had guaranteed her Corgi a long and comfortable life with the project director’s highly pampered Papillion, had bought her a one-way ticket to Zeta-12. And of course, to here. Just thinking that made her angry all over again.
Pain or not, she struggled to push out of his arms, but Rowth held on with infuriating ease all the way to the dining table, where he stole one of the chairs and pulled it well away from the table. Careful of her legs, he shifted her enough to sit down on the edge of the table with her in his lap without allowing her feet striking anything.
“If you fight and cause yourself injury, I will be very displeased,” he said as he sat on the edge of the table.
“As opposed to what?” she demanded, struggling not to let him seat her upon his thigh. “Being an ass?”
Had she suspected what he had in store, she might have kept that caustic barb to herself. But she didn’t know. Even when he transferred his grip from her waist to her arm and suddenly the whole world flipped upside down. She landed with a “woof” of expelled air, belly-down across the twin of the thigh she had been sitting on only a heartbeat ago. Her hands hit the tabletop, barely preventing her face from doing the same, but that was all she had time to do before she felt the entire paper back of her gown being ripped away.
“What—” She broke off with a shriek when he caught the inside of her left thigh. His finger skimmed across her naked sex before he humped her higher, propping more of her torso on top of the table and centering her upturned buttocks directly upon his leg. His arm came down like a weighted level across her back, pinning her in place. That was when Brinley realized what he intended. You’ve got to be kidding me was her one thought before the flat of his hand came walloping down on her bare bottom with force enough to send every hint of thought thereafter scattering like seabirds in a storm.
A massive, violent, fiery storm that assaulted her bucking, twisting backside like nothing she’d ever felt before.
He spanked her, the flat of his open hand as hard as the table she half-lay on, with no pause between the vigorous flesh-on-flesh claps for either the pain to dissipate or for her to find breath, thought, or any kind of ability to deal with it. Later, in the privacy of her bedroom-like cell, she would reflect on it as she lay on her back beneath the blankets of her lovely, new four-poster bed with its high, soft mattresses. The soft ocean breeze sweeping through the open windows framed by cascading blue curtains would bathe the tears from her cheeks, and she would be absolutely mortified by how badly she had taken his discipline. But for now, all Brinley could do was react.
She shouted. She jabbed her elbow into his ribs and kicked wildly, fighting first to shove back off his leg and then to haul herself forward across the table, unable to find any leverage or avenue with which to escape this incredibly juvenile, humiliating and utterly effective punishment. She was stuck, locked across his lap for the duration, until he reached whatever fathomless conclusion finally convinced him that she’d had enough. Two smacks in, Brinley knew she’d reached that moment. Rowth, however, took a lot longer before he decided she was done.
She wasn’t in tears when that last fiery smack bounced off the center of her scorched backside, but she was not far from it. Tears of rage, she told herself. Not tears because she’d just been spanked like an unruly child and now had a bottom that smarted and burned as hot as the fires of orbital re-entry. Her face burned just as hot, but she kept her tears in fast-blinking check and refused to humiliate herself by letting them fall. Not even when he picked her back up off his lap, thunked her down to sit on the table in his place, and squared off against her.
“I am in charge,” he told her, bracing his hands against the wood to either side of her scalded hips. “You will do as you are told, are we clear? You may answer ‘Yes, Master Rowth, I will do as I am told’ or you may answer absolutely anything else, in which case I will put you back over my lap and finish the job I just started.”
Hands fisted to keep from rubbing and showing how much his punishment truly had hurt, Brinley glared at him. Master Rowth her big, fat, burning-hot ass.
Her jaw worked to call him any number of things, but Master Rowth wasn’t one of them. She had to swallow twice before she could make her too-tight throat cough up the hated words. “Yes… I will do as… I am told.”
His dark eyes stared into hers, hard, unblinking. Unyielding. He tipped his head to one side. “What did we omit?” he coaxed, his tone dangerously soft.
“I didn’t understand what the translator said,” she lied, fighting to hold his gaze but in the end, not quite able to do it.
He knew she’d lied. She could tell by the way he continued to stare, one long minute bleeding into the next without either of them moving. Slowly, he pushed back off the table and stood another full minute silently staring down at her. For a moment, she thought for certain he was going to spank her again. But at last, he said, “Master. It’s a word that stands for deference and respect, and you will learn it because I will never, ever again be as gentle with you as I just was. Now, did you understand that?”
Brinley didn’t say anything. But then, she didn’t need to. They both knew she had.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rowth stood outside Brinley’s new bedroom, checking the lock on her door for the second time. It was secure. He knew it was secure. To continue fussing with it like this was not only a waste of his time and attention, but undignified. He straightened himself, giving his gray business coat a tug—first at the cuffs of each sleeve and then at the chest, rolling his shoulders as if to unencumber them, but the nagging constriction he was suffering was not located within the coat region and, therefore, continued to annoy him.
His palm felt hot and tingly. Before he could stop himself, he tried the lock again, but it wasn’t the cool metal of the latch he felt in his hand. It was the soft curve of Brinley’s small but shapely bottom, flattening under the impact of his hand. He could still feel her back, bucking and straining against his forearm, her hips wriggling and writhing as he drummed a hard, fast, disciplinary rhythm into flesh so responsive that within only a few swats, the whole of her bottom had turned as hot and as pink as Oola Fairnscast’s beloved butterpuffs.
Breathe in, Rowth commanded himself, fists clenching at his sides. His heart pounded; he could feel the force of it like a drumbeat in his veins, in the full fury of the carefully guarded passion that crawled his nerves in search of a release he was not about to exorcise on a half-pint, disobedient human with no idea of what her yelping and writhing had done to him. His stare bored into the barrier the door presented between himself and stubborn Brinley, who had had the audacity to glare at him with open dislike as he’d sealed her inside, but who had also lied right to his face while her busy hands clutched and rubbed fitfully to put out the bonfire of hurt that he had so thoroughly paddled into her.
Oh, and that shimmer of tears he had seen building along the fringes of her lashes… gathering, but not allowed to fall.
Well, they were falling now, he noted, his belly warming. The ready twitch of his cock made the confines of his trousers that much more distracting, but if he listened closely, he could still hear the hiccupy gasps and high-pitched keening she was trying to muffle in her pillow.
He wanted to go back in there.
No.
He wanted to run his fingers up her t
ear-streaked cheeks and into her hair—
Gain control of it.
—twisting as much of the dark wood-colored locks in his fist as he could hold—
Own it.
—before forcing her head back, so he could see the intoxicating submission of her emotional surrender. The honesty of her most hidden self, exposed to him and him alone, as he removed his clothes and showed her the power of the body that would rule hers.
Desire burned in every inch of him, but Rowth held himself in check and refused to give in to those base impulses. He was a General Magistrate. He ruled his impulses, not the other way around. No matter how strongly the sound of her tears called to him, begging him to take command of her small alien form and assert his will until her own had no recourse but surrender.
To lay his claim to every fragile inch of her, marking her as his.
He almost unlocked the door, but at the last minute stepped back instead. His hands were tense; his balls, tight with need. He could see himself storming back into that room, dragging her from her bed to her knees, shoving his thumb into her argumentative mouth until she opened wide enough to accept the thrust of his cock. He could already see her gagging for breath while he fucked her mouth and her seductive tears once more flowed, but openly this time. Teasing him with the forlorn eroticism of her submission, inciting his passion to heights he no longer attempted to swallow back… until that flash of indignant fire once more lit her teary eyes and she clamped down on his cock with all the teeth she could sink into him.
Because, absolutely, he could see her doing that. In fact, he could see her doing that long before she yielded to any command of his, much less sexual ones.
She was his ward; he had no business giving her sexual commands anyway. But even as he thought it, he discarded that objection as holding no significant weight. Brinley Lawson, as well as her companions, might well be legally filed under the care of the juvenile court system, but Brinley, in particular, was a ward of the state only because it suited his current need. Not the carnal ones, he firmly reminded himself, but the one that required he have sole custody of her without the hassle of outside interference. It was not lost on him that the Council of Nine had let him have his way because no one else had any idea what to do with the aliens.