by Maren Smith
Still, despite her size, Brinley wasn’t a child, none of the Earth women were, and he’d known that from the beginning. So did the Council of Nine, his lower brain asserted, which meant if he truly wanted to, Rowth could butt-fuck Brinley in the center of Market Square, and so long as it wasn’t played on the daily news, it wasn’t likely he’d receive so much as a verbal reprimand.
Rowth retreated another step from her door, his shoulders butting into the wall behind him from the effect of that mental image—Brinley on her knees, head down, and ass up while he lodged the head of his cock against the dusky rim of her anal opening and pushed. Her eyes would squeeze shut and her teeth grit tightly, trying, but not quite able to bite back that first squealing cry as she was made to accept him.
He could hear his own growl as he imagined how good, how hot it would feel to sink into her. And unable to take it, she’d snap a hand back and push against his belly in teeth-gritted pleading for him to slow, or wait, or even stop completely. Not that he would. His hand twitched, all but able to feel Brinley’s wrist captured within his imaginary grip as he twisted her arm behind her, turning her struggling limbs into the handles he would use to keep her bouncing back on his cock while he pumped into her. Her tight-fitting ass would grip him like a fist, clamping down with each grunting cry as he passed sentence over her bad behavior in such a way that, extraterrestrial or not, she would know her ordeal would be over neither quickly nor painlessly.
“Little girls who bite get punished.”
“She…” Wheeze. “…bit you?”
Rowth startled, crashing back out of the fantasy he never should have let take possession of him, much less voice out loud. Especially not where Rog could hear him. But then, as slow moving as the Mekron were, sometimes it was hard to hear him coming.
Rog came around the end of the hall one long arm at a time, twin finger-claws tap-tapping at the floor tiles before hooking into a crack and dragging his wide, flat, three-foot body a few inches around the far corner. Once upon a time, his species might have been arboreal. Their wide, flat bodies seemed built for scaling high branches and negotiating the treetops, but no one—including the Mekron—knew their origins for certain. The first anyone had known of their existence had been the day Pra’kir launched their third manned mission to the moon only to pass the Mekrons’ ship on the way. Somehow, it had gotten caught in Pra’kir’s gravitation pull and had been drifting quietly around the planet for nobody knew how long. Not even Rog, who hadn’t noticed his ship had been boarded until soldiers entered his compartment, plucked him off the wall he’d been climbing and loaded him with the rest of the Mekron onto a shuttle bound of Pra’kir. According to the report filed away in Rowth’s office, that had been a tense flight on the part of the soldiers responsible for towing the Mekrons’ failing ship back down to the planet’s surface, and a mildly irritating one on the part of the Mekron themselves. Most of whom expressed their displeasure with slow, disgruntled hisses.
Rog lifted his wide head. There was a long pause while he searched for another claw-hold until by the time he’d fully negotiated his way around the corner, it was all Rowth could do not to walk the twenty or so feet that separated them and pick him up.
“Nobody bit me,” Rowth informed him.
“But… you just… said—”
“Are you hungry?” Rowth interrupted and walked away, down the hall, past two storage closets and into his own room. He wasn’t retreating. General Magistrates didn’t do that. They did, however, change their clothes. So although he usually didn’t bother, he made good use of that banal excuse now, shrugging out of his coat and stepping into his closest to find something more comfortable. It got him away from Brinley’s door, which could only be for the best. But it had the added benefit of also getting him further away from Rog, who rarely had any interest in anything going on around him and yet who just as often exhibited the most freakish ability to know more than he should. “What would you like for supper?” he called back over his shoulder.
“Conver… sation,” Rog wheezed back, and even from deep inside his closet, Rowth could hear the tap-tapping of the Mekron’s claws, followed by the slide of his belly as he dragged himself down the hall. “I ate… yesterday.”
“Right.” He made a mental note to log that on his tablet once he found it. He patted his coat pockets before hanging it up. It was likely still in the car. Unbuttoning his shirt, he shrugged out of it, exchanging the stiff-collared gray shirt he wore to work for a much softer but equally gray sweater that would nevertheless make the cool evening air more comfortable. “You used to eat once a day.”
“Yes,” Rog said from down the hall. “Well. I’m dying. What more… can… I do?”
Rowth changed his pants, from gray slacks to black, listening with sinking gut as Rog either wheeze laughed or wheezed coughed—it was getting harder to differentiate between them these days. “When was the last time you expelled bodily waste?”
“I… log that… nonsense on your… spreadsheet… specifically so I… won’t have to… talk about it,” the Mekron grumbled, claws tapping out a gentle search for the next hand hold.
“There is nothing shameful in the natural workings of the body.”
“That doesn’t… mean I want… to… discuss them.”
“You are being argumentative.”
“Says… the lawyer. Does… the girl… know?”
Sitting on the padded bench within his well-lit closet, Rowth set his work shoes in the empty space on the shelf beside his other shoes, then selected a softer, more comfortable pair of relaxing shoes. He put them on. “Know what?”
“How… impossible… you are.”
“She’s three times worse than I am, I promise you.” Standing, Rowth checked his reflection in the mirror. His right hand still tingled from brisk, repeated contact with Brinley’s surprisingly delightful backside, but at least his erection had diminished to something that could almost be ignored. He adjusted the lay of his trousers. “She is mouthy, disrespectful and as I already stated, argumentative.”
And she had a bottom that colored beautiful when he spanked her. Zabra, the woman he usually called whenever he felt the pinch of bachelorhood a little too keenly, rarely colored for him so nicely. Not even when he wanted something harsher than the usual slap and tickle, and took her down into the old pantry and wine cellar.
Damn, his erection was coming back. Rowth adjusted his sweater to hide it and forced his thoughts back to Rog. Speaking of which…
Exiting the closet, he walked back out to the hall. In all the time he’d been changing clothes, Rog had managed to drag himself four feet further down the hall.
“She sounds… delightful,” the Mekron wheezed.
“Only because you don’t have to deal with her.” At this rate, it was going to take all night for Rog to get where he was going and Rowth would be stuck here, waiting impatiently and talking banalities until the sun came up in the morning. And while he was wasting time with that kind of pointless leisure, Brinley would be left alone. Not that there was a lot of nonsense she could get up to locked in her room, but he was certain she was already plotting something to aggravate him.
Decided, Rowth went to Rog.
“Don’t… help me,” Rog said, although by the time he’d wheezed it all out, Rowth had picked him up and was halfway down the hall toward the stairs leading back up to the upper tier of the house.
Rog hissed his displeasure, and was still hissing it when Rowth set him back down on the main floor between his media office and the kitchen.
“I can’t wait the two years it would take you to crawl to the upper level before I start dinner. Our guest,” Rowth told him, mustering his most dignified lecturing tone—he liked to call it his ‘paternal authority voice’, although Rog once mutteringly referred to it as his ‘dominant asshole routine’; it was a point on which they (for the most part, quite politely) still agreed to disagree. “Our guest would starve and that would be, what?”
> Rowth paused meaningfully while Rog eventually heaved his head high enough off the floor to cast him a baleful look.
“Most inconvenient?” he guessed.
“Bad manners,” Rowth corrected with a censuring frown. “Although inconvenient does run a close second.” Pushing his sleeves up past his elbows, he headed to the sink to wash his hands. “Are you going to help me with dinner?”
“Wouldn’t… want it to take… two years,” Rog grumpily demurred.
Soaping his hands at the sink, Rowth shot him another frown, but already Rog was making his way to the nearest chair, tucked into the head of the long dining table. Rowth eyed the distance—approximately twelve feet before he reached it—then checked his watch.
“Tone,” he reminded, noting the time for future reference before tapping the faucet to shut off the water and drying his hands.
Rog snorted. “I’m too sick… for you… to spank.” Locating another hand-hold crack in the floor tiles, he started to heave himself that much closer to the table only to pause again. “Not to mention… too old, but… since I know… very well… that wouldn’t stop you…”
“How about I fetch you a pen and paper? You can help me by writing down a list of rules while I dictate them.”
Rog scoffed. “That would take forever.”
“All right.” Rowth set a pan on the cooking counter. “How about I fetch a pen and many sheets of paper and instead you can write ‘I will never be grumpy and sarcastic when I can be helpful and obedient’ in point-perfect penmanship one thousand times? I promise, I will scan every page and look at every letter on each line, and you will do it all over again if I find so much as a single mistake.”
“Sadistic… bastard,” Rog groused and pulled himself up the rungs of the chair he’d just reached. Pausing, he peeked around the legs long enough to stretch his muzzle into hugely sarcastic smile. “I mean… I love… lists. I can’t… wait to be… helpful.”
Finding both pen and paper at his desk in the media area, by the time Rowth returned to the table, Rog was squatting on the seat. Placing the paper directly before him, Rowth held the pen steady and upright until the Mekron hooked it in his two-clawed fist.
“Number one,” he dictated, patting Rog’s shoulder twice before returning to the kitchen. “‘General Magistrate Rowth is to be obeyed at all times and in all ways, with respect and without deviation, on penalty of severe consequences.’ Let me know when you’re ready to continue.”
“Already… hard at work… on that ‘routine’… I see.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, how… do you spell… ‘magistrate’?” Rog flashed another hugely sarcastic grin.
“That’s what I thought you said. Do the best you can.” Turning to the cold cupboard, Rowth pressed the lock and the twin doors slid open. He studied their options, partially wondering if he was going to have as much trouble getting her to eat as he did Rog. The prison had sent him home with a full Behavioral and Repercussions report on all four humans, which included their mealtime behavior, but he hadn’t had time to read it yet. Brinley had been on a feeding tube right up until the moment she was bagged, tagged, and carted out to his car under heavy sedation and in cuffs. Although she hadn’t physically needed the feeding tube for days now, the decision to keep her on it had been made out of sheer convenience on the doctors’ part. Her companions had turned mealtimes into such battlegrounds—flinging food, dishes, trays and pocketing even disposable utensils to fashion into makeshift weapons—that it was just easier to keep Brinley on liquid nourishment and let someone else deal with introducing her to the alien palate that would govern the rest of her days. Having calculated what he knew of her natural penchant for dissidence and the most likely progression of the verbal sparring to follow, his brain was now occupied plotting out the course of the upcoming fight, complete with that heady array of facial expressions that so confounded and beguiled him as he watched her temper prick hotter and higher and her ability to keep her most secret thoughts hidden from him faltered.
That she would argue with him, he already knew for a certainty.
Taking two choices of protein from the lower shelf, he balanced them, weighing what little he knew of the nutritional requirements Xan had given him during Brinley’s take-down, with what he knew of the volatility of her nature. One half of his brain picked through an assortment of potential dishes, each with an increasingly blander and blander spice requirement as he came to the decision to introduce both her new-grown stomach (as well as her potentially selective taste buds) to proper meals in the same way toddlers were: gradually. The other half of his brain had already followed the most logical course of potential disobedience from ‘What the hell is this crap?’ to hurling it everywhere, like a canifous rodent flinging waste from the entrance of her winter burrow.
Of course, he would step in, calmly ignoring how much more frantic her reactions became as he rose from his chair, circled the table toward her chair—or, wait… perhaps he should put her in the chair directly beside his. He usually preferred the added intimidation of sitting across from someone, which allowed them to enjoy the full effect of his cool, unblinking stare while they strove to find answers to his seemingly innocuous questions and which allowed him to enjoy watching them squirm. So, everyone was a winner there. But if he had her seated beside him, then all he had to do once her behavior hit that unignorable point of no-return would be to reach over, catch her by the scruff of her neck and toss her across his lap. Or, no! No, not over his lap; not in this chair. Until she grew accustomed to his rules and learned how to master her own responses to the discomfort and humiliation of having her bottom vigorously smacked, it would be too easy for her to hurt herself.
He could sit on the edge of the table again, like he did earlier. Pushing the chair well back so she could kick and fuss, and throw all the fit she wanted to, giving him more than enough reason to prolong the experience. Or start over again. Or perhaps even just to give her a taste of proper discipline before putting her back into bed and leaving her there with the parting decree that she would receive the full measure directly before bedtime. That would give her hours to wait in dread, her hot bottom feeling scoured and scorched against the soft mattress, wondering how much worse it was going to be the next time he paid her a visit.
He held the two packages of cool meat—one white flesh, one a deep bloody red—the frigid temperatures in the cold cupboard turning to mist in the warmer kitchen air before tumbling down in ethereal wisps to the tiles around his feet. He barely noticed. He picked through a variety of positions—upon his knee, which was preferable but too risky for her; bent over the edge of her mattress, which made it easy to pin her, but again, one scrambling kick of her foot against the floor, and her new bones could easily break all over again. Spreader bar, his brain supplied. Wrists cuffed to rings in the headboard, while she mewed and squeaked and tried to wrest free; spreader bar securely attached to the footboard, preventing her from harming herself no matter how much it hurt; her bottom elevated on pillows, vulnerably bared to the visual, audial, and tactile pleasure of delivering a good and thorough strapping to a female who knew how to receive it. If she didn’t know now, she would before he was through.
“Number… two?” Rog said, dotting the first rule. It took several long seconds for him to reposition the point of the pen on the next line.
“All misbehavior will result in punishment. All punishments will be decided by General Magistrate Rowth.”
A low throb began to fill his lower abdomen, heating and tightening in his core until it became the most distracting thing. Rowth wasn’t fond of distractions. He didn’t want his mind wandering from the pleasure to be had in welting and striping female hinds to anything else less pleasurable—
A snippet of memory flashed through his mind, as clear and as bright as the echo of Zabra’s weeping moan bouncing through the confines of his cellar, “I submit! Please, my lord! Mercy!”
More pleasurabl
e thoughts, on the other hand, were always welcome. And there were few thoughts half as pleasurable as Zabra when she cried for mercy. Especially when they both knew, ‘mercy’ wasn’t what she would receive. Not in the cellar. Not tied stretched over the barrel, with her wrists bound and her arms fully extended, her legs spread wide and her ankles chained to the floor.
Except now it wasn’t Zabra chained across the barrel, her miniature body stretched taut, without the barrier of clothing to restrict his enjoyment as he lay the strap he’d whipped her with across her tightly bound arms, so she could not help but see it, and remember the stinging hurt of each fiery ‘whap’ that reddened her from hips to thighs, and fear that it might not truly be over if she did not obey even the most inconsequential of his whims.
He could see her pulling at her bonds, that light of helplessness and hurt alive on her expressive face, that sheen of sweat glistening over every inch of her as he stepped between her widely splayed knees.
He could hear her gasping, hiccupy cries escalate as he unfastened his trousers, exposing the jutting length of a cock she could not twist far enough around to see, but which she instinctively knew was rising up to replace the strap in the arsenal of tools he enjoyed using when he punished his sexual partners.
Zabra knew the routine. She knew what was expected of her from the moment he sent a summons for her to come to his house.
Brinley didn’t know. Not yet, but she would learn. In fact, the more she tested his authority, the more likely it was that she would learn sooner rather than later.