by Loki Renard
“Give it a minute,” Owen replied. “We have a boat to catch.”
Aster kept her concerns relatively silent as they were driven to a river port where a gaily-painted blue and white riverboat was waiting, already packed with sweaty tourists from various nations. Aster gave Owen a significant look.
“Be good,” he said, sensing her temper rising. “It’s going to take a few days. The thing with wild places is that you can’t fly a Boeing straight to them. It takes increasingly small and dubious methods of travel.”
“If dubious travel is what’s needed, then this works.” Aster frowned. Paint didn’t hide the fact that it was a two-story contraption made of aged wood. It also didn’t change the fact that most people had decided to stand on the top level, which seemed to make the thing lurch about a fair bit. “We don’t have our own boat?”
“We have a launch waiting at the next stop,” Owen informed her.
“Why isn’t it at this stop?”
Owen’s brows drew down into a not very friendly looking ‘V’ and his mouth went all flat. He was not impressed by her whining, but Aster didn’t care.
“That boat is more dodgy looking than that helicopter was after it crashed,” she frowned, putting her arms over her chest. “I’m not getting on it. Charter us something. It’s not as if we can’t afford it.”
The film crew was standing around with all their gear and the guards were looking unimpressed and altogether it was a bit of a mess, but Aster held firm. She was not getting on something that looked like a rickety old building perched on a boat.
It took some time to find a charter to Aster’s liking. There were many boats, but none of them quite met her expectations. One was too small. One was too brown. Another she didn’t like the name of. After an hour of this, Owen pulled Aster aside.
“What are you doing? Are you trying to see if I’ll spank you in Brazil too?”
“I’m trying to find us a boat that will actually get us where we’re going without sinking in crocodile and piranha infested waters!”
“Why don’t you leave that decision to the professionals,” Owen said. “The team have found a vessel to take us down river, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
Aster didn’t like the boat that had been chosen. It was much like the first boat, save for being a little newer and only single storied. The camera crew and the security team were already on it, five fairly annoyed looking men of various shapes and sizes. Aster hadn’t had a chance to get to know any of them terribly well yet, but they seemed to have taken her measure already.
“Do you want to explore the Amazon, or do you want me to turn around and take you back to LA?”
She frowned at Owen. “I’m just saying, there are bathtubs better suited to river going than that boat.”
“Make a choice,” he said. “Are we doing this or not?”
“We’re doing it,” she said. “Just... OW!”
Owen had swatted her hard and was about to do so again. She scuttled up the gangway and onto the deck, where more than one of the crew was smirking at her. Aster shot Owen a glare as he followed behind her.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she hissed.
“Yes, I did,” he replied. “You’re being a brat again.”
“Well excuse me for having some concerns about the safety standards of craft we travel in,” she said in sarcastic tones. “It’s not as if I might have a reason for worrying about the safety of vehicles we travel in. It’s not like I haven’t boarded something you told me to board before and ended up on the wrong side of a crash.”
For a brief moment, a flash of something like guilt passed through Owen’s eyes. She’d not seen that expression before, and it made her sick to her stomach. His entire demeanor changed, became somewhat guarded, more stern.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t your fault.”
Owen nodded swiftly. “I’m going to talk to the captain.”
He turned and walked away, leaving Aster’s stomach churning. She shouldn’t have said that. It had been a cheap shot and it had clearly hit home. Nothing about the crash had been Owen’s fault. And if their boat sank, it wouldn’t be his fault either.
In short order, they set off along the river. Within an hour or so they were out of major civilization, but not away from people. There were many simple huts built along the river, charming looking partially open structures with thatched roofs, standing high on poles to keep them above the water line.
Aster forgot about her concerns as she watched the world sort of roll itself up and go away. Traveling along the river was like watching the journey of civilization go in reverse. The concrete and pavement was the first to go, followed by power lines, until the only remnants of the world beyond the jungle were the tee shirts and jeans worn by the people in the huts. Tee shirts and jeans appeared to be the most pervasive form of civilization.
“Aster?” One of the production crew was at her elbow. “Do you want to get some shots of this?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get shots of everything.”
“You should be making some notes for later voice over work,” he said. “We’ll have you do a camera piece in a few minutes, an introduction to the Amazon for the opening scenes.”
Aster frowned. This was starting to sound a lot like work. “What do I say?”
“Whatever you have to say. You’re the director and producer. We do what you want to do.”
“Well, I don’t want to do anything right now,” she said. “Why don’t you guys just film anything you think looks interesting and we’ll deal with it later in editing.”
She hadn’t really considered the work aspect of the expedition. In her mind it was more like a holiday with a little more justification than most holidays. The look on the crewman’s face told her that he wasn’t much impressed with her skills thus far.
Of course, what did his opinion matter? She was the boss of the small crew, of the cameramen and the bodyguards and Owen too, for that matter. That thought made her feel a little better, so she went back to taking in the passing scenery.
“Aster.”
“Yes?” She turned to face Owen with a bright smile on her face, hoping that the awkward moment from earlier had passed. One look at him told her that it had not. “What’s wrong?”
“The film crew is telling me that you don’t have a production plan.”
“I do,” she lied.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I know you only had a week to prepare, but you told your father you would be ready.”
“I am ready,” Aster said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Your production manager is worried about it.”
Aster rolled her eyes and raised her voice. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s have a company meeting!”
That bought the camera guy, the sound guy and the guy whose job it was to be annoyed with her around. The extra guards stayed back a little, but were in earshot.
“I want you to be rolling all the time,” Aster told the camera guy. He probably had a name, but that was incidental to his role. “And I want you to be recording all the time,” she told the sound guy. “And I want you,” she said, pointing at the frowny guy, a skinny man of medium height and middle age, balding slightly and in the habit of wearing oversized sunglasses. “To let me know when you think something is worth doing some narration over and I’ll do it. If we get enough raw footage, we’ll be able to string something together.”
“All due respect,” frowny guy said. “What you’re describing is essentially The Blair Witch Project, Amazon Edition. We need to decide on shots ahead of time so we can make sure we get them from the right angles.”
“The right angle will be whatever angle we get the shot at,” Aster declared. “Listen, my father is funding this, and you’re all getting paid either way, so try not to stress.”
“We have professional reputations too,” frowny guy said. “We’d like to come away from this with some
thing worth having made.”
Aster fixed him with her darkest glare. “What’s your name?”
“Albert,” frowny guy told her.
“You’re fired, Albert.”
“No, he’s not,” Owen broke in. “You’re not fired,” he reassured the man. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to Aster for a moment.”
He grabbed Aster by the arm and hauled her to a relatively quiet part of the interior of the boat, a side room where people could breakfast, or be lectured by their lover.
“Why did you do that? You completely undermined me!” Aster turned on him the moment they were alone.
“You were alienating the team,” Owen said. “You’re pissing off the people who work for you, and you—”
“Did you hear what he said to me?” Aster interrupted Owen’s lecture.
“He spoke his mind,” Owen said. “From what I gather, your father respects this guy a lot. He’s done work all over the world from Antarctica, to various war zones. He knows what he’s talking about, and it makes sense he isn’t going to stand by and let his reputation take a hit because you didn’t do the work you should have done before we got here.”
“My expedition, my rules,” Aster bit back. “I’ll fire everyone if you push me.”
Owen snorted. “Feeling your oats, are you?”
“What?”
“You think because your father has paid for this, and that you’re in charge of it, you have the right to prance around, expecting everyone to bow down to you. Not on my watch, young lady.”
Aster didn’t have to ask him what he meant that time, because what he meant was abundantly clear as he sat down and gave a hard tug on her arm, sending her sprawling over his lap. He flipped her skirt up over her back and his palm started landing hard and fast against her rear cheeks. She was being spanked, again, and not really all that privately considering that the ‘room’ they were in didn’t really have walls so much as it had half-walls and open spaces where windows could have been, but weren’t.
Aster’s squeals of outrage pervaded the vessel very quickly, her squirming buttocks becoming a point of interest to not just Owen, but the whole team of men who seemed to take no small measure of satisfaction in her chastisement.
“You’re going to apologize to Albert and everyone else,” Owen said. “And then you’re going to sit down with your team as you should have done before you left, and you’re going to make a plan for filming. Understand?”
“No!” Aster shrieked. “This is my trip! I get to say what happens!”
It was difficult to really believe that with her nose inches from the floor and her panty clad buttocks bouncing around under Owen’s palm, but Aster tried her best to believe it anyway.
“Do you have any idea how spoiled you sound?”
She didn’t sound like anything at that moment because the sound of his palm whacking her bottom was dominant over all others. It even temporarily drowned out the droning of the boat’s motor. As for her wailing, that stopped for a moment as she drew in a long breath, which only erupted in a squeal when the slaps stilled.
Her cry was so loud and piercing that in its aftermath, everything seemed silent. Then sound came rushing back, and with it, intense heat and sting.
“Cut that out!” Owen growled down at her. “I’ll gag you if you keep that up.”
“What! You want to be able to beat me without any inconvenience?”
“I’m smacking your bottom, not beating you,” he said. “And I know damn well that you’re not in that much pain, you’re putting on a show, which is silly seeing as you have a camera guy and a sound guy already and their equipment is more than capable of picking up everything without your amateur dramatics.”
“What!” Aster lifted her head abruptly and looked over her shoulder. In the mid-distance, there could be no denying that the film crew had obeyed her original orders and decided to film everything. Everything. Including her panty-clad bottom still squirming under Owen’s palm.
“Stop that! Cut! Cut!” Aster squirmed up and off Owen’s lap. He let her go, apparently considering the embarrassment of having been professionally filmed in the midst of a spanking to be sufficient punishment.
Aster righted herself and stormed out to the cameraman. “You need to delete all of that,” she said. “Destroy the tape or the card or whatever it is, but if you show a single person that ever, I swear to god I’ll... OW!”
Owen had followed her and slapped her bottom yet again. “Stop threatening people,” he said. “They know they’re not going to show anyone that tape. They’re going to give it to me. It will be our special cut.”
Aster scowled at Owen, at the crew, and at the world as a whole. “This isn’t fair!”
“Actually, it is. If you’d behaved yourself in the first place, this wouldn’t have been an issue,” Owen said firmly. “Now let’s get on with the job, shall we?”
All notion of an easy holiday was off the table, and Aster had realized that once again she was in way over her head. Maybe she should give up and go home. Maybe she wasn’t really cut out for this. Maybe she really was just a spoiled brat who’d managed to survive a week or so in the wild with the help of a professional, but wasn’t actually of any use to anyone. What did she know about making documentaries? All she had behind her was money. And a name, a name she’d managed to drag through the mud for the past few months.
“Sorry,” she said, blinking away tears which clouded her vision. “Sorry to have wasted everyone’s time.” She turned and walked away, unable to face anyone any further.
Owen wasn’t going to allow her retreat however, he reached out, grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her back. “Everyone knows the situation they’re in. Everyone knows what they signed up for, and who they signed up to work with.”
“Really,” Aster said gesturing toward her crew. “These people all want to work with me, do they? Do you?”
To her surprise, there was a murmur of assent, several ‘yes’ responses and a great deal of nodding.
“As long as we’ve got Owen here, there shouldn’t be too many issues,” Albert said. “He seems to have things under control.”
“Work with Owen then,” she said. “I’m going home.”
Aster stormed off again. This time, Owen let her go.
As far as Aster was concerned the whole trip had turned into six against one. The guards, the film crew, Owen, they were all against her. What the heck chance did she have of actually exploring the Amazon with them looking down at her, judging her, filming her...
Unfortunately, being on a boat meant that she couldn’t actually storm off very far. She managed to storm as far as the bow, where she sat scowling at the world as it turned deeper shades of green and the houses by the sides of the rivers began to thin out more and more.
She’d lost all her dignity in the first hour or so of being in the Amazon, and she could feel the wildness beginning to subtly strip away the rest of her too. It was happening again. The wild was taking over, leaving her with little in the way of ego to defend.
After half an hour or so Owen slid up behind her, one arm on either side of her as he caught her neatly against the rail of the boat. “Are you done with your temper tantrum, Ms. Wilder?”
Aster let out a little growl.
“Listen,” he purred in her ear. “The worst has already happened. You’ve had your hot little bottom spanked red in front of everyone and you didn’t die. Now you know that discipline remains no matter what, so the question is, how long are you going to sulk before you come and join your crew?”
“Who says I’m going to?”
“I say you are,” Owen replied. “And, more than that, if you go back home now, all you’ll have to show for this trip is an HD video of you being spanked. You came here for a reason, Aster.”
He was right. She leaned back against him, let him take her weight as the waters passed by and the jungle grew thicker all around her. Just for a second, she thought she caught a flash
of something bright and iridescent, the wings of a bird flying through the dense bush.
With Owen’s arms wrapped around her and the wilderness laid out before her, Aster forgot about her embarrassment and her discomfort. This was what she had come for, a chance to see the world as it was, and to show people back in civilization how life could be if only one surrendered to nature. If that meant surrendering to Owen, and to the demands of the film crew, then that was what she would do.
As the boat cut its engines and coasted into a little riverside port, she could feel adventure beckoning. She was brimming with the urge to get off the tourist boat and plunge deep into the jungle, to discover its secrets and to learn something more about what it meant to be human too. Then and there, Aster decided that she’d take all the spankings and lectures Owen had for her if it meant being able to continue her journey.
“Okay,” she said, slipping out from under Owen’s arm as the boat docked. She waved to the crew, then put her fingers in her mouth and emitted a sharp whistle to get their attention.
“I don’t give a damn how you film this,” she shouted. “I don’t care what you film. All I care is that you keep up. If you don’t like it, feel free to take the boat back to Manaus. Anyone who wants to do things my way, follow me.”
With that she dashed from the boat onto the rickety pier, steadied by Owen who was right on her heels, protecting her, loving her, guiding her through her wild impulses, and helping her to follow her even wilder heart.
THE END
Loki Renard
Prolific author of romantic and genre fiction, Loki Renard is primarily concerned with the dynamics of power as they exist between strong willed heroes and heroines alike. There is no room for wilting wallflowers in worlds where dynamic personalities clash and spark, kiss and spank, live and love.