“With all of what goin’ on?” Peyton asked.
“You know…” she said, following him closely. “The voice… The one he doesn’t use his mouth to make.”
Peyton turned to her slowly, his eyebrows lowered. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“Don’t you hear it? You can hear what he’s thinking…” her words faded out as Peyton’s face grew darker and darker. “I guess… you don’t?”
“You heard… voices,” Peyton echoed.
For a moment, she thought that Peyton might take her in hand just for talking like a crazy person—or simply for being crazy. “No… Only one voice. Jazeel’s… You didn’t hear the part about making you into a… eunuch?”
Peyton’s eyes widened in horror at the mere prospect.
“That he thought you might be… you know… coupling… with the maids,” she went on, twiddling her fingers nervously. “He’ll be checking their virginities soon, something like that? No?” She swallowed hard. “Okay. Maybe I imagined it.” The look Peyton was giving her was so intense, she winced.
Only just then, another serving girl shuffled up to them from behind. “Peyton,” she breathed. “The master wants to check all of the girls to make sure we’ll all pure…” Her cheeks were blushing. “One by one. Before supper.”
Peyton looked slowly over at the girl, gave a singular nod and said, “Very well—inform the girls.”
The girl scurried down the hall quickly. Peyton slowly turned back to Ellie. “You—come with me,” he said, taking her by her forearm and pulling her, hard and fast, through the nearby kitchen and into a pantry. He closed the door behind them and began to speak with a very low, quiet voice. “You can hear Jazeel’s thoughts, then.” It didn’t seem like a question, so Ellie didn’t answer. “So… So am I safe, then?”
“Jazeel seems happy with you, now,” Ellie said, her voice even quieter than Peyton’s. “He likes it when you punish the girls… So, you can’t hear the voices?”
“No,” Peyton hissed. “Nobody can. Humans don’t have shal’ta!”
Ellie blinked a couple of times, confused. “Shal’ta?”
Peyton looked back and forth, as if to double-check they were alone. “When Frians speak to each other, they don’t use words or sounds. They use Shal’ta, they call it. Supposedly their thoughts naturally fly through the air, like words. If they want to, they can keep thoughts silent—so it’s sort of like…”
“Telepathy,” Ellie whispered, nodding. She cocked her head to the side, now looking more confused than ever. “Then why can I…”
“I don’t know, but if you don’t want your brain put under a Frian microscope, don’t tell him that you can hear him. Don’t let anyone know. You never know who’s listenin’, and you don’t want anyone to tell on you to get out of somethin.’ Keep this between you and me,” Peyton demanded, wagging his finger at her face.
“Why would I even want to read his mind?” Ellie asked. Really, she was disturbed by what she had heard already.
“I just saw you use it to your advantage! I’ve never seen him take such a likin’ to a girl before. You did everythin’ perfectly. I’ve been servin’ for four years now, and I couldn’t have done so well. He normally doesn’t give gifts to anyone. Besides, if you tell me what he wants, there will be less severe punishments. The best we can do is please him. If he’s pleased, we get rewarded, if he’s pissed, he takes it out on us. You can’t even begin to understand what the Frians are capable of. They’re soulless. We aren’t even slaves to them—we’re livestock.”
Peyton’s lip was curled with disgust, but Ellie could tell he was still excited. With reason—her freakishness was going to save his balls, literally. She was going to help him look around the corner, and make his life easier and less fearful. She could only hope she wouldn’t screw up.
* * *
After that day—really, after her first punishment—Peyton and she became friends… As much as one could become friends with Peyton, who ran the palace as if it was a war zone under attack. They both had one objective in mind—to do anything to keep Jazeel happy with them.
Ellie was ever-listening to his thoughts and his conversations. Jazeel was very powerful, she recognized, even where other Frians were concerned. It seemed the Frian kingdom wasn’t broken into provinces, like on earth, but by planets, and Jazeel was the High Ruler of his own—everything she could see from the windows was his. She served Jazeel however she could, pretending it was a game. He liked her looks, he liked her spirit, and occasionally he liked to nitpick her in order to have her spanked, which he greatly enjoyed as if it was a spectator sport. Peyton was on her team; when he spanked her in front of Jazeel, as Jazeel would have him do from time to time, he didn’t give Ellie more than she could handle, and she kicked and screamed and cried like an Oscar-winning actress. Ellie was never spanked by Jazeel’s hand. He simply never got angry enough with her; she never gave him the opportunity.
Peyton’s planned worked, as well—the servant girls were getting punished less and less by Jazeel. Peyton was finally able to understand Jazeel’s sadistic tendencies as if they were a sexual inclination, and acting on that, Peyton was able to constantly put on a show of the girls’ discipline without them actually coming to any harm. There were no more whippings. There were no more harsh punishments.
Jazeel enjoyed Ellie more than anyone else, and even made her prima—the head female servant—within the year.
* * *
There was a parade outside of the palace one morning—it showed up all of the sudden, and Peyton hadn’t mentioned anything about it. For a moment, Ellie feared that it was for the arrival of Lady Galaal, who was Jazeel’s betrothed, and who had the same sexual tastes for humans as Jazeel did—it was why he chose Lady Galaal for his mate, in fact. Yet Ellie thought she wasn’t expected to arrive for another few days.
She put on her best, figuring it was some special day or special celebration she didn’t know about, but hoping that Jazeel would be in a good mood because of it. A good mood for Jazeel normally meant gifts and rewards to the servants for doing the smallest of things for him. She nearly hoped to be called into his chambers that day—she could please him better than anyone.
She woke up and did her hair in a twisted up braid as it was how Jazeel best liked it, and wore pants that actually went to her ankles, but she knew Jazeel liked them, anyway. They were white, light, and flowy. And they were open in slits on the outer sides, which gave Jazeel just enough skin to satisfy him. She rarely was asked to take off her clothing anymore; she knew what his alien eyes liked to see even better than her skin.
She walked into the kitchens and found them empty of people. For a moment, she was certain that she had woken up earlier than she thought. She walked into the pantry to begin preparing Jazeel’s breakfast.
“GOOD LORD!” she cried, walking right back out of the pantry.
Peyton had been in there, with Mary, who had joined their house in the last six months, and who he had instantly become infatuated with. Ellie had only looked for a second, but that second was enough. She saw that Peyton’s fingers were pressed into her hips and she was pressing back against his groin to take his member more fully into her bottom, moaning with a mixture of pain and pleasure.
It took a moment before Mary scurried out of the pantry, adjusting her short skirt back into position. “I’m sorry, Ellie!” she pleaded, her face beet-red with embarrassment.
“Oh, God! My eyes BURN!” Ellie cried, rubbing her palms over her eyes.
“Shh!” Peyton hushed fiercely, following Mary into the kitchen, buttoning up the front of his pants. “Shut up, Ellie! Are you tryin’ to inform the whole palace?”
“Don’t get angry at me because you were doing the nasty in the pantry,” Ellie scolded back, putting her hands on her hips to face down the burly-armed human. “Gross, Peyton! Gross.”
He sighed and looked at the ceiling with exasperation. “Grow up. You know we have trouble finding a place. And e
verybody’s out watching the parade.” He shrugged unapologetically and hoisted himself up on the counter.
“What’s the parade about?” Ellie asked, her lip curling. “Nobody tells me anything!”
“It only happened last night. The Frians are celebrating the destruction of a nearby enemy base on Playana,” Mary explained innocently. “Supposedly there’ll be fireworks and everything tonight. It’s almost a holiday.”
Ellie knew better than to expect a holiday in the sense that she knew it on Earth. There was always work to do, and they were expected to do it. But the prospect of any sort of entertainment was exciting. Especially to Ellie, who was a bit of a partier back on Earth.
“Don’t get too excited,” Peyton grumped. “You’ve got work to do, lil’ girl.” He pointed his finger into Ellie’s chest. “Jazeel will want his breakfast the same as usual. I think he’s speaking with the leader of the prisoners in there now, or soon… Whenever they get here. I sorta lost track of time.”
“I can see how that could have happened.” Ellie nodded, her face deadpan. “And I know that you don’t like my advice, but you know what would happen if you stuck your thing in the wrong hole… errr... the right hole. Right is wrong,” she clarified. “I just don’t think you’d be the Peyton we’ve all come to love once you’d been neutered.”
She was right; he didn’t like her advice. Possibly because he didn’t think Ellie understood his suffering. He needed relief, and he loved Mary… Making love to her seemed natural; fooling around never seemed like enough. Anal sex was a nice respite, but Peyton knew he had to wait before he took Mary’s actual virginity—Jazeel loved checking to make sure the girls’ hymens were still attached, making everybody just as sexually frustrated as he was.
“Trust me,” Mary answered for him as both of them ambled over to the sink to wash their hands. “His balls are constantly in the forefront of both of our minds.”
“Oh, mine too,” Ellie assured sarcastically. She began to prepare Jazeel’s breakfast. The Frians, despite the fact that they looked incredibly different than humans, ate very similar fare: coffee, pastries, eggs, hams… And while she prepared it, she would eat her own breakfast from his platter.
“So,” Ellie said, noticing that Peyton was lingering about, staring down Mary’s blouse as she began to work alongside her, “why would he want to talk to the leader of the prisoners?”
“He wants information on other bases,” Peyton said as if it was obvious, sitting back up on the counter and comfortably sipping on his coffee and then munching on a couple of large slices of bread and ham. “It’s sort of ‘his way’ to ask nicely for information, and then bribe, and then torture. And then kill them, of course. There’re only a small handful of them that didn’t get killed during the raid on the base. If we’re lucky, the Swarii leader won’t do anything to piss Jazeel off. I don’t like cleaning up bodies.”
“The master’s in a good mood this morning,” Mary said in her usual chipper, sing-songish voice. “I don’t think he will kill anyone. It will be a good day, a beautiful morning!” Her optimism earned her a kiss on the neck from Peyton, who walked over just to hold her in his arms for a long moment.
“Oh, what a beautiful morning….” Ellie sang, mostly to make fun of Mary, causing the others to laugh as she picked up her silver platter of food and began to carry it out. “Oh what a beautiful day… Peyton, get the door.” He obliged with a grin on his lips that he couldn’t repress. She continued to sing out into the hallway, “I’ve got a beautiful feeling eve-ry-thing’s go-in’ my way!”
She walked down the hallway and stood outside of the doors to Jazeel’s largest chamber hall with the heavy tray in hand. She wasn’t singing anymore, she was humming; blissfully unaware of what was being discussed on the other side of the door until the two Frian guards let her into the room.
‘Fuck you.’ Was the alien, unrecognized shal’ta voice that strangely sounded to her as if it had an Irish accent. It was alarming to walk through the door just in time to catch a curse spit at Jazeel, though, true to Mary’s prediction, he had a wide, sharp smile on his face. Ellie stood in her tracks for a moment.
Her eyes looked straight toward the five prisoners that were now chained together and kneeling on the floor. It looked like they weren’t permitted to stand—they were being held to the floor by the rods the Frian guards had with them—the rods, she knew, would send a fierce electrical shot through them.
Still, because of what she saw, she did not move. She stood still, unable to breathe.
‘You’re a fool, Commander Masterson,’ Jazeel replied flippantly. ‘Your race is done for, anyway. Why drag out this process? Why don’t you all try to live as comfortably as you can?’ He looked straight at Ellie and broke into a wider smile. “Oh, my dearest Pet. Do not be afraid of these creatures. They cannot hurt you,” he said, beckoning her to approach him by crooking his finger.
The Swarii commander turned around and looked straight at her as she walked into his line of sight, and his body froze the same ways hers had. They stared at each other, hers with more surprise. She was looking into a large, yet brilliantly handsome, nearly human face.
Chapter Two
These were the Swarii? She wasn’t prepared at all for how much like her own race they would look. Possibly the only thing different might have been the shal’ta he had used, which most humans—except her—couldn’t understand, or possibly the way he hadn’t seemed to need to blink over the course of the last minute, or maybe the fact that he, and the other prisoners, were all about seven feet tall. They were walls of men, and would have formed quite a mean defensive line for any American football team.
The eyes that were staring at her were a milky brown, his hair was a wonderful chestnut, his arms, chest and shoulders looked strong, his eyebrows and other features were chiseled marvelously into his face.
He was possibly the most masculine, wonderful thing she had ever seen before in her life. She had to force herself to look at Jazeel, who was interpreting her dazzlement as fear. She put his food on the table next to him and began to pour his coffee with shaking hands. “Tisk, tisk!” he chirped at her. “Don’t be so nervous, Pet.”
“I am never nervous in my master’s presence, my lord,” she responded, raising her chin up high. “I only live to serve you.”
As the words came out, they didn’t sound as clever as she normally thought they did. They sounded anxious, submissive. She didn’t like being so distracted—she needed to concentrate when she was around Jazeel to protect herself.
When she finished fixing his coffee, which she did as carefully as she could, she knelt and served it as he preferred.
His eyes casually dropped until Jazeel was looking at the hardened nipples peaking through the fabric of her flowy blouse. “Sit on my lap,” he told her, patting his knee.
She closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to sit on his lap—it was embarrassing, especially in front of company. With an embarrassed glance at the commander, who was still making a study of her, she got up from her knees and turned around to let Jazeel easily lift her onto his lap.
In moments, Jazeel positioned himself so she was straddling his large leg. ‘I grow tired of you, Commander,’ Jazeel continued in shal’ta, as if he was an evil villain in a movie with a cat on his lap. ‘I know you have the information I need. Must I take it from you by force?’
“Afraid so,’ the commander straightened his shoulders. He squinted with hatred. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, lizard.’
Jazeel merely looked at the guard next to the commander, who, on that cue, gave the commander a zap with his rod. Lightning seemed to shoot out the end of the rod to hit the commander square in the middle of his shoulders. He grimaced and made a sharp sucking noise with his teeth as he fell forward for a bit.
Ellie jumped and flailed a little bit in place, nearly trying to step back with her feet, which weren’t even touching the floor. Jazeel put his arm firmly around her waist and, with the oth
er hand, slapped one of her thighs, hard, through the cloth. She squeaked from the pain, but got the message—she stilled.
Grumbling, he untied her shirt, which was wrapped together in the front, ignoring her soft whines of protest. The commander still was wheezing with his forehead nearly resting on the floor, but the other four prisoners watched carefully as Jazeel pulled her shirt off her shoulders, revealing young, soft pink nipples.
She barely stood for it, but the slap on her thigh still stung. She wasn’t used to this level of humiliation, but she was used to him playing and toying with her nipples. She closed her eyes and pretended that there weren’t men staring at her, ogling.
Besides, with the Swarii in the room, knowing shal’ta was not helping Ellie read Jazeel’s thoughts. He was keeping his inner thoughts secret from the rest of the room. He was only using it to communicate.
Her body began to shake. Partially from the cold air in the room, partially because she had never felt so put-on-display in her life.
‘Ah, looking at my pet, are you?’ Jazeel chuckled aloud. ‘These humans are little beasts they seem, but very similar to yourselves. Stupid as a brick, but they have something that may appeal to you… You could use them for your own sick pleasures. They have the same breasts…” He pinched her nipple extra-hard; her body twitched and she gave a chirp of protest. “The same wet, delicious little cunnies… I cannot use them to their full extent myself, unfortunately… But you probably could. And they are extremely obedient… Surely, one would feel nice in your bed?” He smiled widely as he added, “Especially since your female population has so dwindled as of late…”
The other Swarii growled, but the Commander launched himself violently at Jazeel.
Horrified by his quick movement, she let out a shrill scream. Again, he was knocked to the ground just below their feet by the guard’s rod.
She felt Jazeel’s chest heave a heavy laugh from under her. ‘I can see that that’s still a tender issue.’
Never Submit! The Swarii Brides, Book One Page 2