by Maren Smith
He looked at her, showing nothing of his thoughts, as statuesque as any museum work of art.
Crap.
Shifting the pill out from under her tongue where she’d pocketed it, she swallowed for real before showing her empty mouth.
“Good girl.” Rowth took his seat beside her.
That wasn’t a compliment, and she had no business feeling mollified because he’d said. So knock it off, she told herself as she picked up her spoon and turned her frustrations on her supper. It looked a lot like beef stew, but with chucks of chicken drifting in a thick brown broth. She gave the contents a dubious stir, unable to identify the vegetables. If she were on earth, the paler chunks might have been potato or onion. She had no idea what to compare the purple chunks to. Oh lord, and the smell. She covered her nose again, but breathing through her mouth meant she could taste the spice level each time she inhaled. She coughed on the exhale. The smell wasn’t unpleasant, but it was strong.
Her stomach rumbled, though whether from hunger or as a warning, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t avoid eating forever, though. She watched Rowth get comfortable, well within arm’s reach if he needed to be. That observation wasn’t lost on her. It made the entire side of her body that was closest to him tingle with an odd awareness. His hand on the bottle of the dark sauce, as he twisted off the lid and liberally sprinkled the contents into his soup, seemed so normal, but it was right there at the forefront of her mind how large that same hand had looked in comparison to her own, or gripped upon her arm, the strength of those fingers as they’d pinned her wrists together behind her back, or the feel of his fingers as he spread the lubricant between her butt cheeks.
The cool slide of the thermometer as he’d inserted it, punishing her for her lie by taking her temperature in the most mortifying way imaginable.
And God, that hand when he’d spanked her.
She shifted in her chair, rousing the lingering pulse and tenderness in the parts where her weight met the hard seat of her chair.
Rowth looked at her, whole nuances of carefully guarded expression locked in his knowing stare.
A whole new wave of heat assailed her face and she dropped her eyes to her food again. It was far less judgmental.
“Eat,” he ordered.
She had the most absurd urge to dump her supper directly into his lap. She wasn’t three, damn it.
“I’m not… hungry,” Rog grumbled, bowing his wide head back to the task at hand. He slowly scratched out his first word.
Rowth got up, rounded the long table and took both paper and pen away from him. “We can finish this up later.”
Rog hissed until Rowth lay a disciplinary tap on his head, then he hissed louder. Discretely wiping away the flecks of white skin the distraction of the paper had hidden from her notice until it wasn’t there anymore, Rowth set the soup bowl more directly before him and pressed the spoon into Rog’s clawed hand. “It’s been two days. Eat.”
“I don’t think my… stomach can… handle it,” Rog grumbled.
“Five bites,” he said, returning to his chair beside Brinley. “Be good and we’ll have a game of Barracks later.”
Already big Mekron eyes rounded even wider and Rog’s hiss changed to a soft purr instead. “Oo!” Hefting his spoon, he dipped it into the soup.
“Protein bites,” Rowth added, stirring his own bowl once before taking a bite himself.
“Not… part of the… original agreement.” Rog sampled the broth and smacked his lips.
“Rule number thirty-seven.”
Rog’s entire face very slowly screwed into a grimace of resigned irritation. “Damn it.”
Tiny flecks of white fell to the table as he bowed his head, but his next spoonful came up with chunks of pale meat and purple pieces.
And this was it right here, Brinley suddenly realized. This was what the rest of her life was going to look like, sitting around this table in a very warped ‘Leave It To Beaver’ familesque household, eating food so spicy that breathing in the fumes curled her nose hairs and heaven only knew how bad the suffering would be on the toilet the next day.
Her stomach rolled. She pushed her bowl away and, before he had even fully sat down, Rowth pushed it promptly back again.
“Eat,” he told her too.
“My stomach can’t take it either,” Brinley muttered.
Rowth checked the time. “Your medication needs to be taken with food. You’ve already taken it, now eat.”
“Five… bites,” Rog said around a mouth full of purple pieces, some of which fell out again onto the table. “You can play… Barracks, too.”
He lowered his head to lick the fallen bits off the table and into his muzzled mouth. Brinley watched his thick black tongue slither around the lip of his bowl and tried not to make a face. She suspected she might have failed when Rowth tapped her on the head.
“The whole bowl,” he corrected, frowning. “That’s Rule Nineteen for you.”
Brinley stabbed her spoon into the broth and trying to fish out the least objectionable looking chunk. If she wasn’t positive it would end in what he’d threatened—and quite possibly, a punishment delivered right here in front of Rog—she’d have enjoyed telling him what he could do with his rules.
“Do I get to make rules for you too?” she muttered. She suspected she already knew the answer.
“Rule… Number One,” Rog grinned. “General Magistrate… Rowth is to be… obeyed… at all times and… in all ways… with respect… and… without deviation… on penalty of… severe… consequences.”
Brinley turned her glare on Rowth, who ignored it.
“We’ll have plenty of time to go over them later,” he promised. The ominousness of that statement was not at all lost on her. “For now, eat.”
Grinning that lopsided leer, Rog took another bite. Adding a generous sprinkle of dark spice from his condiment bottle, Rowth did the same. Holding her breath and then her nose (which immediately got her another thump on the head), Brinley took her first bite. The flavor was nowhere near as bad as she’d feared. It was oddly meaty, although not of an origin she could identify. Maybe poultry; at least the piece she was chewing on had a poultry consistency. Dense but tender, and not as spicy as it smelled. Until she took that first swallow and the broth juice hit the back of her throat like a shot of cheap whiskey.
She coughed, her hand smacking the table first and then clapping over her mouth to keep from spewing half-chewed chunks all over everything. Her mouth ignited in a slow but insidious fire, while what liquid she’d already swallowed burned a path down her esophagus all the way to her stomach.
“Oh shit.” She coughed again and smacked her chest, but already her stomach was igniting. “Water,” she gasped, hardly recognizing the hoarse wheeze that was her voice. “What the hell did you give me?!”
Tapping his spoon on the side of his bowl, Rowth stole a sample out of hers. Eyes narrowed, he watched her while he chewed. “A perfectly acceptable and incredibly bland supper,” he decreed. “I am not a fan of dramatics. Eat.”
Brinley shoved her bowl away.
Dropping his spoon, Rowth placed it back in front of her again. “Tell me what is wrong with this.”
“You’re trying to kill me!” she accused. “That’s what’s wrong.”
Wiping his mouth and hands, Rowth folded his napkin, slapped it on the table by his bowl, and then turned sideways to face her. One arm resting on the table and the other braced against the high back of his chair, his fingers drummed the elegant wood. He waited.
“You… are going to love… the consequences,” Rog mock whispered.
“I’ve already had them,” Brinley spat, fighting to breathe through the fire. The heat burning through her mouth, throat and gut wasn’t getting any hotter, but it was still in her, churning through her stomach like a living thing.
“They get… better.”
“Enough,” Rowth told him.
Rog chuckled, and was about to take his last bite when
he suddenly sneezed. The violence of it smacked the flat of his muzzled face full against the lip of the table and all their bowls shook. He dropped his spoon. It bounced off the table, and Rowth was out of his chair and around the table before it clattered to the floor.
He caught Rog’s forehead before the second sneeze hit, protecting the much smaller creature from hitting the table again. Rowth’s hand hit instead. The force of the impact made Brinley jump, but if it hurt him, Rowth didn’t show it.
Through two more violent sneezes, he cupped Rog’s head, his other hand resting lightly upon the Mekron’s back until the storm had passed. Blood trickled from Rog’s nostrils. Flecks of white like a dusting of snow surrounded the spot where his face had hit the table. Bits of stew and broth knocked from his bowl or spoon were scattered through it.
“Easy,” Rowth soothed, dabbing the blood away and checking his muzzle for injury. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“You… promised to play… a game.” Vicious-looking claws gently hooked Rowth’s neck and shoulder as Rog picked him up.
“And so we shall.” Rowth all but cradled the short, squat Mekron to his chest. “But you will play your part resting in bed.”
“Best two out… of three.”
“Best one out of one,” Rowth countered, checking his muzzle again.
“Am I bleeding?”
“Just a little. You still only get one game.”
Rog slouched sulkily in his arms. “Fine.”
Rowth carried him away, pausing after only a few steps and only long enough to level a stern look at Brinley. “You will not move from that chair,” he told her, fires of warning igniting in the black of his eyes. When he pointed at her, her stomach flipped in an acrobatic show of nerves she hadn’t felt since she was sixteen and her uncle caught her and her fourteen-year-old cousin sharing a cigarette under the exhaust fan in the family bathroom. That acrobatic flip-flop became a wave of uncomfortable tingling that spread down and across the whole of her bottom. She held herself frozen, trapped in the severity of Rowth’s stare as he pointed next at her bowl. “I expect that to be gone before I return. Is that clear?”
He left her there, staring mutinously into her bowl.
“I don’t have to eat if I don’t want to,” she muttered, but the defiance came out sounding every bit as childish as it did hollow. Especially when no one was there to take exception to it.
Brinley picked up her spoon, but the soft clatter of utensil against dish made the quiet of the room even lonelier than it was. Unable to bring herself to take another spicy bite, she found herself staring across the wide expanse of table to Rog’s vacant chair and that semi-circle of white flecks peppered all around the smudge of spilled soup where he’d face-planted. Dropping her spoon, she started to get up, but one foot knocked against the high leg of her own chair and that pain, coupled with the increased agony of standing, quickly changed her mind.
She threw a mini-fit, slapping the table twice and elbowing the back of her chair, frustrated beyond bearing for her inability to do something as simple as walk. Or crawl across the tabletop far enough to swipe a fingertip through the whiteness and get a closer look at what it was. All she could do was sit here, stewing in rebelliousness, feeling useless and homesick, and weird in the belly region in a way that might signify hunger or queasiness, or maybe still arousal. It was really hard to tell.
Her stomach rumbled again.
Picking up her spoon, she pulled her bowl closer. She glared, prodding at the floating chunks. She hoped she was queasy. It would serve Rowth right if she threw up because he’d forced her to eat this alien stuff.
What if everything on this planet was spiced up hotter than all the Hunan, Ethiopian and Indian cuisine on Earth combined?
She took another bite. Her mouth caught fire all over again, and so did the back of her throat, but—again, like cheap whiskey—the first swallow was the worst. Although they all burned, each new one went down easier than the last. Which left her plenty of time to sit and stare, and chew while she thought about all that white stuff, which didn’t quite look like dandruff or dead skin cells. But what else could it be?
And on top of that thought, around and underneath it, flowed the unwanted realization that whatever else Rowth was, he cared about Rog. Proof was in the speed in which he’d rushed to protect the short creature’s head during the violence of his sneezing fit and in the gentleness of his hands as he’d picked him up and carried him away. Those same hands had beat her. Twice now. Those same hands that had been gentle with her too when he’d carried her up here.
Brinley shut her thoughts off. She didn’t want to think about that. It took too much of the monstrosity off of Rowth. It made him seem more… human. Likeable even, and that was just too much.
Likeable was something she just wasn’t ready to accept.
* * * * *
“One more… game,” Rog suggested hopefully.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Rowth continued putting the game pieces away, tucking each neatly into its shiny black box before putting that away on the lower shelf of Rog’s bedside table. When he was done, he tucked the blankets in a little closer around his friend. “Not tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps, if you’re well enough.”
“I’m well… enough,” Rog good-naturedly grumbled. “It was just… a little blood. Not… like the last… time.”
Perhaps not, but the occurrences were coming closer and closer together. Rowth didn’t want to think about that. Before he went to bed, he’d log the incident in Rog’s daily health journal. That was soon enough for him to have to face the bitter truth: The disease currently ravaging its way through all the Mekron was no long holding static inside of Rog. It was progressing.
Rog was dying.
He pulled the blankets snug right up under Rog’s wrinkled, age-spotted chin. “Get some rest.”
“Are you… going to play… a couple… games… with Brinley?”
Rowth wasn’t fooled by the other’s feigned nonchalance. He was too good at his job for that. He was himself, he liked to believe, the Supreme Judge of Nonchalance. “You just saw me put the box away.”
“I’m not… talking about… Barracks,” Rog said, snuggling into a soft pillow that was easily twice his size. “I’m… talking about…” He leered a suggestive smile. “…games.”
Rowth stopped fussing with the blankets long enough to frown. “Go to sleep.”
“I’m not… tired. I… slept yesterday… as you… very well know. You and your… blasted… journals.”
“Lie still with your eyes closed, then.” Getting up, Rowth headed to the door.
“Don’t forget… the lights. You forgot… last time.”
“I ‘forgot’ because you don’t sleep when the lights are on. You wander the room.” Hesitating with his hand not quite on the control panel, Rowth glanced at the web of climbing ropes that hung in a tapestry knotted ladders and swinging lines. He frowned at Rog again. “Are you going to get out of bed if I leave a light on?”
“Not while… you’re standing there.”
One had to admire the honesty. Shaking his head, Rowth tapped the control panel, programming the closet light to stay on until morning and for the door to remain cracked open. “I want at least fifteen minutes of lying still with your eyes closed,” he said sternly, but he had no delusions that he would be obeyed. The Mekron paid little attention to time, and yet it never failed to amaze (or rather, amuse; perhaps even annoy) him how, for a being who notoriously took all day to traverse one level of the house, fifteen minutes could be disregarded in less than two. He’d be surprised if Rog was still under his blankets fifteen seconds after Rowth left.
Claws plucking at his blankets, Rog leered again. “Are you going… to spank me… if I don’t?”
Rowth met Rog’s chortling purr with another stern frown, but it faded as soon as the door closed behind him.
“Na,” he muttered, shaking his head and fighting back a losing smile. One disobedient f
osterling down for the night; another still waiting for him at the dining table.
A low pulse of rekindled wanting thumped back to life in his groin as he started down the hall. He forced back an involuntary and completely inappropriate surge of eagerness and kept the length and pace of his steps normal as he climbed the steps leading up to the main tier of the house. He might place a call to Zabra once Brinley was in bed. He should not be this excited by the prospect of sorting out whatever bout of mutiny she must be now plotting while she awaited his return.
Gods, he hoped she was planning something. Had he known the little human would trigger this part of him so aggressively once he got her home, he would have made other arrangements, housed her elsewhere. With someone possessed of a guilty criminal secret, perhaps. Nothing too serious. Just severe enough to gain Rowth all the cooperation, silence and access he required, and none of the responsibility that came with minding another’s daily care. Someone with patience aplenty to suffer Brinley’s snappish temperament until enough was enough, and he finally took her in hand.
Someone other than Rowth who would look deep into her ever-widening eyes while he advanced on her, seizing her in hands that would brook no further argument before dispensing the discipline she so desperately desired. That she did desire it, he had no doubt, despite all her fussing, fighting and crying. If she didn’t, she would not push so hard to earn another punishment so soon. Not when he’d already told her how he intended to punish her.
She also would not have lubricated so completely, spilling the arousal of her body all over his knee while he’d spanked her with the hairbrush and played with the plug in her bottom. It was all about dominance, and like young people all the world over, she was acting out in her search for someone willing to give it. And oh, was she acting out against the best man for that particular job.
Another wanton thump. His cock stirred.
He really was going to have to call Zabra. Or maybe Hileen. A night spent in the cellar, that was what he needed right now—with the crack of his lash and the mewl of a woman’s cries growing in synchronized fervor and ferocity until she could bear no more and at last brayed out those honeyed words, ‘I submit’, freeing him to take her, her mouth, her heated cunt, her ass, wherever and however he wanted—that was what he needed. Then, with his passions expended and his wayward cock once more firmly under control, then he would deal with Brinley’s insubordinate testing with the tolerance and stern hand of a proper and impartial foster-mentor and magistrate.