The Sevarian Way

by Justine Elyot

  “Yes, but that was before I knew I…” She stopped herself just in time. “Before I knew how I felt. About you.”

  Paul squeezed her fingers. “Suka, you’ve had a very powerful sexual experience. That can affect your reasoning—”

  “Don’t you dare patronise me, Commander. And don’t you dare tell me how I feel.”

  Commander Paul hauled her to her feet.

  “Okay, enough,” he said. “You’re going back up to the ship. I’ll complete this mission alone.” He moved to take his communicator from his belt, but drew the whip instead, having forgotten he had placed it there.

  This gave Suka enough time to slip free of his grasp and race out of his reach.

  “I’m not going back,” she called from behind a huge flowering shrub. “You’ll have to catch me first.”

  “Ensign!” he roared, but she was away, picking out the remnants of the path beneath the drying reeds and leaves, sure of only one thing, which was that this adventure was not ending yet. Not until she had made Commander Paul realise exactly how significant the emotional exchange between them had been.

  It was hard to run with her legs still weak from the sex and her bottom tingling and her whole groin area aching and swollen, but she managed to gain some ground, taking advantage of the obfuscatory foliage to foil Paul’s attempts at second-guessing her route. Through the brown-greenery, she began to make out the wall of a building, looming ever closer, built of a dark, glittering brick, windowless and sinister in its appearance. Suka tried to find a door, but between running full-pelt and trying to place Paul’s location by the sound of his irate yelling, her senses were busy enough, and it wasn’t until she was almost smack-bang into the wall that she worked out how to get into the building.

  She vaulted over an iron balustrade and scampered down some steps to a basement door. Hoping against hope it would not be locked, she yanked at the handle. The door creaked aside and Suka found herself in pitch darkness. Good, she thought. He won’t be able to find me just by looking.

  She reached out, feeling for walls, and tiptoed rapidly along the side of the building, listening out for sounds of her master’s voice.

  Crackling of undergrowth from above, heavy footsteps on the stairs, then his voice.

  “Suka? Stop this now. You’re in more trouble than you can ever imagine, girl. When I get my hands on you…”

  Suka had to suppress a gasp, sure already he would be able to locate her by the deafening beating of her heart.

  A narrow beam of light bisected the darkness. He was using his communicator torch. Luckily, the chamber was vast and full of strange corners and cubbyholes. If she used her sense of touch wisely, she could find a way out of here before he lit on her.

  Huge shapes, malevolent and fantastical, loomed in the greyness. Had Suka not been so focused on the chase, she might have wondered about their purpose, but only one imperative drove her. The beam of light swished around, sometimes coming close, but she was light-footed enough to keep her footsteps near-silent.

  She heard Commander Paul curse.

  “Suka! This isn’t going to help you. Come here now.”

  Her fingers closed around a metal ring in the wall. It might be the latch of some kind of portal. Feverishly she tried to turn it without making a noise. The light gained on her, advancing with Paul’s footsteps, closer and closer.

  Damn, she thought. I don’t have time to be subtle. She gave the ring a wrench and a door began to slide open. Now Paul would know where she was—as evidenced by his quickening pace and sudden, nearby roar of, “Suka!”

  Come on, door, open, open, quickly. But the grinding of the gears was infernally slow, and Suka was halfway through trying to insert her slim figure into the narrow opening when Paul’s hand landed on her elbow, closing around it like an iron band. Fuck. So much for that plan.

  Not that it had been much of a plan. More an anti-plan, a reaction against Paul’s unacceptable plan for her.

  “You’ve broken one rule too many, Ensign—” Paul was barking, when suddenly his torch caught the edge of something and he was silenced, flashing the beam slowly around the new chamber.

  “The punishment suite,” quavered Suka. “It must be.”

  “Yes.” Paul, forgetful of his wrath, used the communicator to light the room more fully, zapping the wall-mounted brackets until a flickering glow illuminated the scene.

  Suka’s legs buckled and she was momentarily grateful for Paul’s firm, if uncomfortable, hold on her elbow. This was incredible. She was reminded of an illustration in one of the anthropological texts she had studied for her dissertation. ‘Figure Two: Typical BDSM “Dungeon Club”.’ She had looked at that picture over and over, imagining herself restrained in some of the equipment, at the mercy of a heartless man or men, or maybe even a woman like the one in ‘Figure Three: A Professional Dominatrix.’

  “It’s like a dream,” she said softly, “all of this.”

  Paul jerked to attention, reminded of her company. He narrowed his eyes, frowning down at her.

  “Your worst nightmare?”

  “No. Leaving here. Leaving here without you is my worst nightmare.”

  “One you don’t have much choice about,” said Paul robustly, but Suka could see he was struggling to maintain his resolve.

  “We always have a choice,” she said. “Commander. Please don’t send me back.”

  “I have to.” There it was, palpable regret, almost anguish.

  Suka knew she had to build on this, drive home her advantage. She bumped her hip against his and raised entreating eyes.

  “Another punishment? Please? I know I deserve one. Anything you want. Just don’t send me away.”

  “Suka—”

  “Give me what I deserve, Commander. Make me take my punishment. Please discipline me as you see fit.”

  He groaned, trying to push her away, but the bulge of his crotch signalled her imminent victory and she pursued it relentlessly.

  She used her free hand to push the waistband of her trousers downwards, bringing her bottom, cooled now but still tender, out into the frigid air of the punishment chamber.

  “Use the whip, Sir,” she suggested feverishly. “I need it. I need to feel your dominance over me, or I’ll never learn, will I, Sir? Teach me the lesson. Make it a hard one, one I’ll never forget.” She rubbed her hand over the receding welts, pinching her flesh, moving in to press against the imprisoned erection.

  Paul’s hand smacked down hard on the rudely-exposed backside, and Suka’s cry was only partly of pain. Jubilation fizzed through her. He could not resist this opportunity. She had bought time, time to convince him this was no momentary aberration but a shared emotional experience on which they could build a happy partnership.

  “You’ll get it,” snarled Paul. “Believe me. You won’t forget this for a long time.” He pulled her roughly forward, taking her on a tour of the well-equipped suite. “The only question is, where shall I start?”

  Suka’s beady eyes worked hard at taking it all in. There were hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling with adjustable pulleys. There was a large wooden cross on a platform. There were medical gurneys with arrangements of straps. As they advanced through the room, Suka began to have misgivings. Some of these items were proper, fully-fledged torture devices. She screwed up her eyes and clamped her legs instinctively, praying she had not let herself in for anything too physically gruelling.

  Paul stopped in front of a horrifying-looking bed of nails.

  “What do you deserve, Suka?”

  She squeaked, trembling, wanting at once to hide in his arms, and run away. Which was the best option?

  He took pity, patting her shoulder.

  “I’m not a true sadist,” he told her, and she let the balloon of air that had been constricting her chest out again. “I don’t like hurting people who aren’t enjoying it. But this is my quandary, Suka. I want to punish you. But I don’t want you to enjoy every moment. I want to test you, stretch
you, take you to a limit. What’s your limit?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Suka, her voice uneven. “Never been there.”

  “We’ll find it,” promised Paul. “And it will be painful. Don’t think it won’t. You need to feel it. But when you’re sure you can’t take any more, you must tell me. Say the word ‘surrender’ and I’ll stop. And you can go back to the ship, alone.”

  Suka pouted. He was still talking about making her return.

  “What if I never surrender?”

  Paul sighed pleasurably. “If you never surrender…I’ll have to rethink, won’t I? I have my limits too. I couldn’t damage you, couldn’t draw blood. I wonder whose boundary will be reached first?”

  Suka felt there was nothing in the whole wide universe she wanted to find out more.

  Chapter Four

  “Strip,” said Commander Paul suddenly, and Suka froze for a moment, gathering her wits and her nerve, before leaning down to remove her left boot. She was going to view this as a test. A test of obedience, a test of endurance, a test of courage. And if she passed it, she told herself her prize would be Commander Paul as her master, in her personal life as well as the professional sphere.

  Standing barefoot on the cold smooth floor, she finished the job of lowering and removing her trousers until only her top half was clothed. She wondered, with a hot flash of embarrassment, if Paul could see the dried crust of his own semen clinging to her inner thighs, but she banished the thought by lifting her crew jersey over her head, pulling stray blonde curls from the severe plait.

  Now naked, Suka could not help hugging herself under her ribcage, shivering in the frigid air. Luckily, the wall lights seemed also to generate heat. A bearable temperature would take a little while to establish itself, but it was on the way.

  For now, though, Suka’s nipples stood out like hard pink pearls, painfully tight and still slightly raw from Paul’s earlier treatment. She was not sure what to do with her eyes—if she looked at him, was that too bold? But she didn’t want him to think she was scared of him, even though she was, a little. She settled for tilting her head down and regarding him from beneath lowered lashes. He seemed to approve, feet planted wide, arms folded across his chest, letting his eyes travel from her toes to the crown of her tousled head.

  “What shall we do with Suka?” he asked the shadowed walls, looking around him. “What does she deserve?”

  He found a large storage chest and opened it up, exclaiming delightedly at its contents. Suka watched him retrieve a glossy black thing and hold it up.

  “She needs to be dressed and prepared for punishment,” said Paul. “Lift your arms.”

  Suka obediently raised her arms above her head and allowed him to wrap the item around her middle torso. It was a cupless corset-type affair, strictly boned, cinching in her waist and supporting her breasts, which stood pertly above the shiny fabric. Paul drew the back-lacing as tight as he could without making her squeal, restricting her so she had to breathe with care. He put his hands on her hips and traced their outline, apparently pleased with the way the garment made her bottom swell underneath its rigid busk.

  “You should wear one of these all the time,” he said conversationally. “It would keep you in check, I think. Now, next…”

  He returned to the chest, and this time he bore a wide collar of a dark, leather-like material, which he buckled around her neck, forcing Suka to keep her chin up. The final item made Paul laugh as he rummaged in the box of tormenting treasure.

  “Good old-fashioned high heels,” he said, drawing out a pair of dangerous-looking pumps. “You know, all sorts of women used to wear these all the time, even on Earth.”

  “I know,” said Suka, having to exercise her chin muscles to get the words out over the top of the collar.

  “What did you just say?”

  Suka stiffened. Something had displeased him, but she wasn’t sure what. She gambled.

  “I said, I know, Sir.”

  “You didn’t,” said Paul sternly. “But you should have. Okay. I’ll overlook it. What size are you? I think these should fit.”

  He pushed Suka’s bare feet into the stilettos, giving her a few moments to stagger around in an attempt to accustom herself to her sudden height.

  “This is a punishment in itself,” she muttered to herself. The shoes were wildly uncomfortable, cramping her toes together at the pointed end. Had ordinary women really worn these? Wouldn’t their feet have evolved accordingly, so as to make them easier to walk in?

  “Prolonged wear damaged the foot,” noted Paul. “So they died out eventually. However, it has to be said, I can see why they were popular. They make your legs look sensational, and as for your arse…”

  He slapped her outthrust cheeks with relish.

  “Let’s see you parade your new look,” grinned Paul, almost openly salivating. “Up to that whipping bench and back.”

  Suka tottered along, her spine poker-straight and her head held high, conscious of how the shoes made her bottom wiggle with every step. She imagined Paul’s eyes on her hot-pink rear and tried to inject that extra bit of sass to her step. You will want me. You will not be able to resist me.

  By the time she turned to face him again, he had one hand discreetly hanging over his crotch, the other clamped to his upper arm, pretending a casual, natural posture. But Suka knew different, and the power this gave her probably did little for her efforts to appear meek and submissive.

  Confident on the heels now, she strode up to him, hands on swinging hips, lips pouting outward.

  “All right, the catwalk show’s over,” said Paul gruffly. “Take your disobedient backside over to those suspended cuffs. It’s time for your lesson.”

  Hanging low to the side of the room were some leather-lined metal wrist cuffs, attached to a chain. The thick metal rope disappeared upwards until it met a hook in the ceiling, then it travelled back down again, ending in a pulley a few feet away from the cuffs. Suka could see straightaway how this would work. Paul would literally be able to keep her on her toes.

  She held her wrists out for him, making no comment as he snapped the cuffs shut then stepped back to put the pulley into motion. Her arms swung upwards, slowly enough to make it seem like a ceremony of sorts. She felt the pull of tension against her corseted ribs, then her arms were vertical, reaching for the sky, up again, fractions of inches, so very slowly, until she was on tiptoe, struggling to keep upright. Now she knew that this was going to be a real test. Every nerve, every sense, was on alert. The tension of her body spread, inside and out, until she was one tightly-wound string, waiting to be plucked. The high collar prevented her from turning her head to try and locate Paul. All she could do was look ahead, at her own shadow, gigantically tethered and teetering, on the opposite wall.

  “Now then,” said Paul, fixing the pulley in position and sauntering over to Suka’s helpless form. “Let’s start with an inspection.”

  He ran a finger down her cheek, feather-light and caressing, making her want to sigh and lean into it. But he held the flushing cheek in his palm, using his thumb to part her lips and push inside her mouth. “Mmm, someone’s hungry?” he said as she tried to suck the thumb inside. “Dinner may be a while yet.”

  He laughed quietly and pressed down on her tongue while his free hand made a thorough inspection of Suka’s prominent breasts.

  “Nipples fully engorged,” he noted as if ticking off a checklist. “Those little clamps earlier made them sore, didn’t they? Ooh, ouch. Does that hurt?” His pinch was gentle, but it was still enough to make Suka flinch.

  “They’re sensitive, Sir,” she squeaked.

  “Good,” he said, leaning down and breathing warm vapour over them so they throbbed ticklishly. “So they should be.” The tip of his tongue danced a light circle around each in turn. Suka writhed in her bonds again, but this time her actions were motivated by pleasurable frustration. She was dampening below again, despite the recent and serious seeing-to Paul had given her
in the temple. It occurred to her that the Commander could torment her in all kinds of ways while she was trussed up like this. A whipping would be the very least of it.

  He moved his hands to her shoulders, holding her still so she wasn’t tempted to waver and wheel about on her toes, and began to attend to her breasts in earnest, bathing them with his tongue and sucking at them for all he was worth. Deep sounds of throaty relish made Suka want to push them further into his mouth, prolonging the feast, while she tried as hard as she could to urge her pelvis forward into contact with his. He had her fixed in position, though, and her poor needy pussy had to wait.

  “I think they’ll do,” he said finally, releasing the oversensitised nubs to the now-warm air. His hands followed the artificially-enhanced curves of her waist and hips, dropping below the corset to land on her bottom.

  “The whip marks are fading,” he said, using his hands to make this observation. “Your skin is almost smooth again, and cooler than it was in the temple.”

  “It still feels a little sore, Sir,” Suka told him.

  “That won’t make any difference to the severity of your punishment,” Paul said, and she bit her lip. “Well, you should have thought of that before you went running off, shouldn’t you? Ensigns with sore bottoms should know to behave themselves. By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll know the meaning of the word sore.” He pushed a finger between the cheeks, which Suka tensed shut immediately. “Don’t you resist me, Ensign,” he scolded. The finger pad seated itself firmly at the hidden twist of her arsehole. “There are all sorts of ways to discipline a rebel. As you will see.”

  Suka tried to squirm away from him, but he had her too highly-strung. Any attempt to elude him could only end with her spinning and lurching out of control. He took pity—for the moment—and concentrated on her front prospect, lightly slapping the insides of her thighs to make her stand with her feet wider apart. This was a struggle, bringing her almost off the floor, but she persevered and managed to hold her stance somehow. All those years of military-type parades at the Academy had paid off at last.