Bebe

by Phelps, Darla

  Silently—something that scared her even more—he wrapped her feet again. Picking up the wet and blood-stained bandages, he held them out to her, arching both eyebrows pointedly as if to say ‘do you see these?’ Shaking, Bebe obligingly stared at them until he let the soaked cloth plop from his fingers into a heap on the floor. Seizing a firm hold of her arm, he sat down on the edge of the mattress beside her and jerked her facedown across his knees.

  Bebe burst into tears even before that first hard crack smacked across the chilled surface of her buttocks. He gave her no mercy or respite but paddled her bottom with breath-stealing vigor. In some distant part of her mind, she vaguely recognized that Ma’am and Sir had sometimes spanked her harder, but even without a hairbrush somehow this hurt worse. It left her howling, bucking, kicking up her feet and reaching back to cover her bare bottom with her hands.

  Abruptly, the spanking stopped. Pulling her up off his lap, he indicated to the door first and then the locking pad, and then gave her that pointed, eyebrow-arching look again. “No! Don’t touch! No!”

  Shaking her head wildly, Bebe fought to break out of his unyielding grip, but back down over his lap she went anyway. Her stomach met his thighs in spite of all her struggles, and he shifted his legs to capture hers, grabbing her wrist when she flailed back, palm up to protect her already sore bottom. He spanked her all over again anyway, and kept right on spanking until that cold sensation in her skin was only a distant memory. Everything behind her was fire now, searing, scorching, burning her up until any ability she might have had for holding still, for taking her spanking like a good girl, was utterly gone. She had never fought a spanking so hard in her life, but he blazoned that sensitive skin where her bottom met her thighs and didn’t stop until she was just too exhausted to fight any more. Drooped and sobbing, she simply lay across his knees, absorbing each punishing smack of his palm until he finally stopped for good.

  He was still obviously angry when he pulled her upright again, but he gave her no pause to rub or soothe her wounded, throbbing bottom. Dragging a chair into the nearest corner, he set her down on it and left her there to face the wall and cry.

  Covering her face with both hands, Bebe obligingly did plenty of that.

  * * * * *

  Arms folded across his chest, Tral stood over her, frowning down at the back of her head and trying hard not to flex his stinging palm. Her bottom looked thoroughly roasted, as it should. He’d be happy if it stung half as much as his hand—who’d have guessed a spanking would also hurt the spanker?

  Hands behind her head where he’d put them, his little stray all was rocking and shimmying on her seat, trying to ease the pressure on her bright red bottom and yet unable to hold still for the burning effects that still assailed her. She stayed in the corner though and, her more frantic sobs having finally dwindled to breathy, keening hiccups, she tipped forward to balance her weight on her thighs and pressed her forehead to the join of the walls.

  “Yeah,” he growled. “You stay right like that.”

  Tral walked away from her then. He picked up his coat where it lay on the floor by the bed and was just irritated enough to hang it up on the wall peg. He tucked his work chair back up to the table and dropped to sit at his computer.

  “Like I don’t have better things to do than go chasing after your skinny ass all morning long,” he muttered under his breath. “In over a foot of snow.” He cast her a sour glare. “Attacked by wolves.”

  The sting in his palm was little more than a tingle now. He rubbed at it, flexing his fingers once before he caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye. She had turned her head to peek back at her through the curtain of her tangled blonde hair.

  He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Face forward.”

  Her bottom lip quivered. She faced the walls, but only for a few minutes and then she turned to peek at him again.

  “Do you see this hand?” Temper beginning to spark hot all over again, Tral held up his tingling palm. “The spanking can resume at any time. Now, face the corner until I say otherwise.”

  When she did not immediately comply, he snapped his fingers twice and pointed. “Little girl, you are testing my last nerve!”

  She still did not obey, but instead very softly, very clearly, her voice quavering, said, “Home.”

  She could talk?

  She could talk!

  At first so startled that he could scarcely think, a wave of swift rising anger quickly brought him back to himself. If she could talk, then she could understand at least some of what he was saying. He held up his hand and began to tick them off. “Number one, I don’t know where your home is. Number two, I have no way to get you there, even if I did. This isn’t a lost pet taxi service; it’s an observation post. We observe. And number three—and you’d best pay really close attention to this one—they’d only turn right back around and dump you someplace else. A more inhospitable and remote than this one will be hard but not impossible to find, and then you’ll die!”

  Her face crumpled as she began to cry all over again, although he suspected due more to his tone than what few words she might comprehend.

  “Corner,” Tral snapped one last time. If she didn’t obey this time, in every fiber of his being he was prepared to grab her back off that chair and—tender palm or not—turn her bright red bottom a deep and fiery crimson.

  Her small shoulders shaking, she faced the wall and pressed her forehead back against it, hands laced behind her head while she cried. It was a heart-rending sound that stole the edge off his anger with each gasp and sniffle and hiccupy keening whine. And the longer it went on, the more the urge to get up and comfort her began to needle at him, until Tral was shifting in his chair every bit as uncomfortably as she was.

  A man had to be firm with humans. It did absolutely no good at all to blister the tail off her and then turn right back around and hold her or comfort her or do anything at all that might look as if he were sorry for it.

  “I’m not sorry,” he grumbled, as she sniffled again. He frowned and faced his computer again so he wouldn’t have to keep looking at her. That sound was really starting to grate on him.

  He got up abruptly, but not to comfort her, he told himself. Gathering a wad of tissues from the bathroom, he brought them out to her and pressed them into one of her hands. She looked at him and sniffed.

  “Oh for the love of—” Planting his hand on top of her head, he took the tissues back and covered her nose with them. “Blow,” he said, expelling air through his own nose when she only looked at him. “Come on. I mean it, blow.”

  Tentatively, she blew.

  Thoroughly unimpressed, he said again, lower and slightly more impatiently, “Do it again, this time as if you actually mean it.”

  She blew harder, and he wiped her nose.

  “Thank you,” he said, and would have directed her attention right back into the corner again had his own not suddenly been captured by a very slight, crunching sound. It was so soft, almost completely drowned out beneath the muted pops and crackles of green logs being consumed in the fireplace, but when Tral tipped his head to the door and listened intently after only a brief pause he heard it again. Soft, evenly spaced crunches. He raised his head, following the sound blindly through the station wall as he suddenly realized he knew exactly what it was. He heard it every time he ventured out into the snow. It was the sound of footsteps. Smaller than his own, definitely, but there was no mistaking the crunch of feet—little feet, more than one pair even—prowling through the snow right outside his front door. Maybe even a whole wild pack’s worth.

  The little female jumped when Tral grabbed her off her chair, yanking her up into his arms where he could keep her close. As if they both weren’t perfectly safe inside this locked station house.

  They were in a locked station house, weren’t they?

  “Oh crap!” Dropping his human on the bed, Tral leapt for the door, reaching it just as soft human feet scaled the porch. Tr
al hit the locking pad and then stayed there, leaning hard against the door just in case. He was slipping.

  For almost a full minute, everything was quiet. The crackling of the fire in the fireplace was the only sound. Very softly, the footsteps moved back off the porch, retreating beyond what he could hear.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he met the wide blue stare of his female stray. She was kneeling on the mattress, watching him with wide startled eyes. He pointed at her. “Stay. Don’t move.”

  As quietly as he could, Tral went to the window behind his work table. With two fingers, he peeled back the curtain and peeked cautiously outside. The yard was clear but for a swarming trail of footprints haloing all sides of the snow-covered porch. It wasn’t hard to tell what direction they’d come from either. Apparently, he noted with a groan, they’d followed the same snowy tracks he’d left behind after chasing down the little female earlier. His footprints were completely obscured by a trampling of smaller man-sized ones. The wild pack had hunted him all the way home.

  “This is not good,” Tral said.

  It didn’t get any better a half-second later when, on the tails of that realization, the pack leader, who had apparently still been standing quietly on the porch-side of the wall, abruptly stepped in front of the window to confront Tral through the glass partition. He was a short animal, the top of his scruffy brown head only coming up to Tral’s ribs, and wild. Very wild.

  The startling differences between an untamed human and a house pet became irrevocably cemented in Tral’s mind when, from a distance of less than two feet, the pack leader yanked back his spear and jabbed at him with startling force of purpose. The sharpened tip struck the window at chest-level, bouncing harmlessly off again though not for the human’s lack of trying. Had it not been for shatter-resistant glass, Tral knew he’d have just been killed. It took a moment for that realization to fully sink into him and for Tral’s heart to start beating again. Someday, he really ought to thank his uncle for all the foresight and personal funding that had been poured into making this old station the human-proofed bastion of security that it now was.

  The wild pack leader seethed, steaming the air outside with his breath. His dark eyes narrowed on Tral before, spear in hand, he turned sharply and stalked stiff-legged off the porch. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave. Signaling to the rest of his four-man pack, the humans began to spread out around the house.

  “Damn,” Tral said—calmly even, all things considered. This really was not good. Not at all.

  Moving away from the window, he drew the curtains closed in the hopes that not being able to see him directly might help reduce their aggression. Circling through the small house, he drew all the windows’ curtains closed and checked to make sure everything was locked up tight. Why were they here? The Preserve had been fully stocked with game at the beginning of the winter and his close encounter with the wild man had revealed a male in good physical health, so Tral knew they weren’t starving. He could chuck a few packages of food out to them, he supposed, but the last thing he wanted to do was reinforce their bad behavior with edible rewards.

  They’d never come this close to the station house before. Something had to have brought them. His eyes swept the small room, coming to rest on the little female sitting on his bed. Tral stared at her for almost a full minute, too stunned to move. Then he began to laugh. “Great. Just great.”

  Her eyebrows quirked as she watched him, and her fingers began tapping nervously together.

  Maybe they had seen him carrying her back here. She might be in heat; maybe they could smell her.

  What was he going to do?

  He ran his fingers through his short hair. “I have no idea.”

  Where was his dart gun? He turned in a tight circle, searching the floor with his eyes, but a soft bump against the ceiling quickly redirected his attention towards the barren wooden rafters of the station house.

  “What are you doing, you cunning little bastard,” Tral laughed, tracking the soft movements of the human sneaking across his roof towards the chimney flew.

  Crossing the room, he quickly added two more logs to the already high blaze. His eyes met the female’s. She was following him, crawling from one corner of the bed to another, watching him closely. Now and then, her gaze darted from him to the ceiling and back again. Although nervous, she didn’t look anywhere near unnerved enough considering he could probably end this whole conflict right now by setting her out on the front porch.

  “You’re very fortunate I’ve got a conscience,” he told her sincerely. “And nowhere near enough gift-wrapping.”

  Over his shoulder, whisper-soft footsteps padded up to the front door. Very softly, the latch was tested. Another faint scratching came from the direction of the bathroom. Tral promptly went back there, throwing open the door and turning on the light before smacking the flat of his hand half a dozen times against the wall. Just so the humans would know he could hear them. Already the paperwork on today’s activities was swiftly approaching novel-length proportions. The last thing he wanted was to have to explain to his superiors how a wild animal managed to tunnel through his bathroom wall in pursuit of a mate.

  Leaving the bathroom light on as a warning, Tral returned to the main room. By sheer accident, he spotted his dart gun on a shelf. If it had been a human, it would have stabbed him.

  “Really bad analogy,” he muttered as he pulled it down. He was just tucking it into his belt when he heard something that raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Someone knocked on the window by his work desk. It was a very deliberate sound, a slow and steady, one-knuckled rap that repeated five times and then stopped.

  The little female straightened abruptly. She stared at the window with those wide blue eyes of hers, weaving a little unsteadily as she crawled to that corner of the bed and whispered hopefully, “Sir?”

  “No. It’s not Sir.” Tral didn’t move. She looked at him expectantly, then fixed on the window again. That slow and deliberate knock came a second time, six steady raps that faded quickly into silence soon after the last fell.

  Tral jumped when the little female let out a sudden squeal of delight. “Sir!” She fell off the side of the bed and then, crying out when her feet touched the floor, to all fours on the floor. That minute pain didn’t dampened her excitement or stop her from crawling towards the door. “Sir! Sir!”

  Images of her blindly throwing it open to admit the wild pack into his station hurtled Tral to his feet. He threw out both hands, snatching her back when she tried to use the latch to pull herself upright again. “No!”

  “Ma’am! Sir!” she cried, struggling against his restraining hold until, in a fit of frustrated desperation, he dumped her stomach-down over the edge of the bed and gave her still warm bottom a resounding smack.

  “I said, no!” he thundered. Whether it was the smack or the shout, finally she froze, cringing when she looked at him, her blue eyes huge in her all-too people-like face. “Stop!” he ordered, then pointed at her, doing his best to seem as big and imposing as possible. “Sit! Stay!”

  At least twice her size, he must have succeeded because she stayed. Rolling over, she sat where he put her, blinking back tears. Her legs still dangled over the edge of the mattress, her bandaged feet only inches from the floor, but at least she stayed.

  “Don’t move,” he warned, backing slowly towards the window and the source of the deliberate knocking. Hardly daring to take his eyes off her, he reluctantly reached out to part the curtains.

  The leader of the wild pack stood directly in front of him once more. Glaring, unsmiling, the shaggy lengths of his dark hair billowed around his grim face as the wind began to blow. There were flecks of white in his beard and hanging from his bangs; Tral hadn’t realized it had begun to snow again and so hard in so short a time.

  The human scowled at him, the hard angles of his face harboring a dark and not entirely unexpected dislike. A good two feet shorter than he was, the leader of the wild pack was nev
ertheless doing a very effective job of staring him down.

  A hand touched Tral’s arm and he jumped, that well-known phrase ‘nothing as bad as human behavior’ taking on a whole new level of meaning in his mind when the little female pushed past him. She wedged herself in between him and the window and, ruined feet or not, arched up onto her tiptoes to better see over the high sill. She barely looked at the wild male, but he definitely noticed her. The black stare vanished behind a veil of open-mouthed surprise. He made a sound and tried to catch her attention, pressing his hand—the one not currently carrying a spear—flat against the glass before her.

  The little female ignored him completely. She twisted her face this way and that, trying to see beyond him and out into the snow. She smeared the glass with fingerprints and steamed it with the heat of her breath.

  “Sir?” she whispered brokenly, but wherever Sir was, he wasn’t out there.

  After a moment, crushed by a disappointment so obvious that it was nearly tangible, she lowered herself back onto her bandaged feet. She made only a single soft, keening sound as she turned and walked back to the bed. Lying down on her side, she pulled the blankets completely up over her and began to cry.

  The human male pressed to the glass, trying to keep her in his sight for as long as he could, but the minute she vanished under the blankets, his unforgiving stare found Tral again. Slowly, seething with every heaving breath, the human’s face underwent a positively volcanic change. Gone was the icy dislike. His dark eyes burned with savagery; his alien face flushed with rage and a deep-seated, unequivocal hatred so intense that Tral could feel it trembling out of that smaller male’s body, right through the unshatterable glass of the window and straight into himself.

  Not knowing what else to do, Tral let the curtain fall closed. In hindsight, he probably should have done that right from the start. Halfway expecting the human to suddenly launch himself into some form of exuberant spear-pounding-into-glass activity, he also took a healthy step back.