The queen stared at her with her typical skepticism. Alice was used to this look; the Queen would constantly give it to her and talk about how she wouldn’t have believed Alice was her mother’s child at all if she hadn’t seen her birth with her own eyes. “And what would you do for your nectar?”
Alice looked up, her mouth open. She had worked so hard in the kitchens. She had done such a good job for so many years. She was almost treated like she wasn’t dirt at the bottom of their shoes, and then her Mother went out and tried to destroy the Queen the moment she’d been released from the dungeons, where she’d been since before Alice was born.
Despite the hardship of only knowing her mother through the bars in the dungeon gate, she had never stopped working. She had never tried to overthrow the queen; she wouldn’t have even talked of such a thing. “I’ve been working in the kitchen since I was only a child!” Alice cried, desperate and hurt. “I do my share!”
“Don’t raise your voice to me,” the Queen demanded, drinking nectar wine from a crystal glass as she watched her.
Alice whimpered and bowed lower. “Please, please I’ll do anything. Anything for nectar…” And she meant it. So far she had watched them kill her mother without making a sound, eager to show her loyalty so that she wouldn’t be forced into nectar sickness.
“Would you collect for your hive?”
Alice’s head shot up from the ground, looking at the Queen with horror. Collect? But Alice was no collector! Collectors were trained for years—they started their training at older ages. “Collect? Collect, your highness? But I’m a cook! That’s all…”
“Yes, but your freakish looks are popular this day and age,” the Queen hummed, but then looked amused at Alice’s continuously shocked expression. “Do you think yourself above such work?” the Queen demanded in a crisp drawl.
“No…” Alice replied. But she was terrified of it.
Alice was thirty-year-old virgin who had barely ever left the Hive. She barely knew anything about men except what she saw in the movies. And collecting was an art of seduction—one she wasn’t schooled in whatsoever. She didn’t know how to kiss properly, let alone know how to get a mortal man in the throes; the point of pleasure they would revel in before release, to take the Nymph’s needle-like bite who would suck all the lust from their body and then bring the liquid lust back to their hive to turn into nectar.
Alice had always believed that collecting was easily the worst job in the hive, and the most dangerous since many men they would collect from weren’t the noblest sort. But nymphs that collected could fend themselves off of any man. They were warrioresses; strong, fast, and mean when they had to be...
And then they would drain the man dry of their lusts. Some took years to get their lust back, some never did again. That had always struck Alice as especially wrong.
Not that she would say anything—she couldn’t. She was living on a queen’s mercy to her mother, who begged the queen to let her live. Half-bloods normally didn’t get the privilege of living at all. Alice kept her nose to the ground always, making sure never to give anyone an excuse to find fault in her.
“Then you’ll have no trouble doing it,” the Queen decreed. “You’re lucky we don’t lock you in the dungeons. Half your blood is filthy. The other half is of a traitor.”
The words stung, but Alice couldn’t help but continue to plead, “Please, I can’t. I’m only thirty! I don’t know the first thing—”
The Queen snorted loudly. “Don’t be ridiculous. The man we will assign you to will teach you everything you need to know. And when we prepare you, we will remind you how to know when he’s in the throes. Do not drink before, nor after. Do not drink immortal blood. Those are the only rules.”
Alice trembled, a tear rolled down her cheek. “Anything else, please,” she begged.
“This is all. But if you stop your wailing, I will let you have the last drink of my cup. If not, I can assume you’re not as desperate as you make yourself out to be.”
Alice scrambled over to the Queen without another pause, crawling across the cold marble, to grab the crystal chalice into her hands and drink the last gulpful.
Her eyes stopped hurting. Her chest stopped hurting. Her heart slowed down in its beating. Normalcy returned. She licked the rim of the glass, trying to get every last drop.
“Mary,” the Queen said, gesturing to a maid at the palace door, who came to attention. “Take young Alice back and prepare her for work this evening. Remember that the mortals expect high-quality from our agency, if nothing else.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the maid bowed.
“And Alice?” the Queen added.
Alice looked wearily at the Queen.
“Do not come home without pollinating a man. You will not get another handout.”
Alice put down the glass onto the floor and put her hands over her eyes, unable to believe what was happening. Nothing now could save her from the loss of her innocence.
* * *
Alice chewed nervously on her bottom lip and simultaneously played with a lock of her hair by twirling it over her fingers.
Her first collection. Alice had never been so nervous in her entire life.
She was told by Mary that seducing would be easy—they worked in an ‘escort service’ where the men would pay them money to be seduced… And the hive would just pick a man or two every now and then to pollinate; not that the man would know what’d happened to him, or who was responsible for his impotence.
But Alice knew that she couldn’t really play the role of a high-paid prostitute. She felt more like a clown, wearing high-heels for the first time in her life while trying to look confidently sexy… When she was sure she didn’t have a confident bone in her body.
She got instructions from the prim and proper concierge who gave her instructions on where to go, leaning in. “The guest in room 713 hasn’t left his room all day, which is irregular. He stays with us at least part of the night every Friday, and he normally has no need for me to find him company, he does so quite well himself. But today, I warn you—he looked depressed. Disheveled, even.”
She had smiled sweetly and promised that she would take care of him. But as soon as she got into the posh elevator—even the elevator had a damn chandelier—she began to chew her nails.
When the elevator made a BING noise, informing her that she’d reached the right floor, it nearly gave her a heart attack. She practically stumbled out into the hallway… But she stumbled everywhere in these damn high heels. She wasn’t used to wearing them at all. She would normally spend her days in bare feet, cooking and playing her music ultra loud… Not this.
She was in an expensive dress, with even more expensive lingerie, and a coat. But she’d never felt more naked before in her life. She took a deep breath and rapped on the door so quietly that she was afraid that he didn’t hear it, that she might have to be brave enough to try again.
But just as she reached again for the door, it was opened by a very disheveled, shiny black haired man. He was tall with light brown eyes that looked her up and down, analyzing her. He smelled like what he held in his hand—whiskey. “Are you legal?” he finally asked, his voice husky but chiding.
She blushed. “Of course.”
He opened the door wider, allowing her in. “You look younger than I thought you’d be. But then… I haven’t paid for company in quite some amount of years…” he drawled. She could feel his eyes rest on her ass as she walked into the room and took off her jacket. She had trouble believing that it had been some years since he’d paid for company—he wasn’t that old. Maybe in his early thirties.
He put his whiskey bottle down on a table by him and leaned against the door after he closed it, crossing his arms appreciatively. “You look… absolutely delicious, I must say. Your agency has very good taste.”
She smiled, trying not to look nervous or embarrassed, trying to seem elegant like Audrey Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor. She raised her chin high. “Tha
nk you,” she finally said. She eyed the bottle anxiously, hoping that the man in front of her wasn’t so drunk that he was dangerous. She was weary of drunk men, anyway—she didn’t have much experience with mortal men, and on television the drunks were always such louts. “You’ve been drinking, then?”
“Just out of the minibar,” he replied, as if it didn’t count towards making him drunk. “But, I admit, I’ve been at it since about… nine.”
“Well, that’s not so bad.” It was only nine-thirty.
“I mean a.m.,” he replied, surprising her. He looked drunk, but not that drunk. “That doesn’t mean I’ll be a bad lay, by any means. This fact is tried and true,” he told her, and she swallowed. “I could probably go out for company, but I wouldn’t attract the type I’d most desire,” he divulged. “And I deserve a little fun after a horrible, horrible morning.”
She didn’t want to ask, she was too timid, but she did anyway. “Who do you most desire?” she choked out, trying to be sensuous and teasing and failing utterly.
“To be the one in control. It’s easy to do when I’m the one paying,” he explained simply, unabashed. “Take a seat,” he offered, waving his hand. “Get comfortable.”
She stumbled again on the way to the chair, completely tripping out of her shoe, then rushing over to grab at it. She looked at him, horrified, but he only raised an eyebrow. “Have you been drinking?”
To keep from blushing, she narrowed her eyebrows. “I’m… My shoes are borrowed,” she admitted, which was true.
He grinned. “New to this?” he asked knowingly.
She nodded. “Very,” she admitted.
“Drink?”
She gave a wry chuckle. “Yes.”
He poured her a drink and handed her the glass. “There you are, Darling,” he sat down next to her, looking at her as he drank. When she took a sip, she couldn’t keep a sour look off of her face, as if she had drunk cough medicine. “Not used to drinking, either. Are you sure you’re legal and not just out on a school night or something?”
“I’m twenty,” she lied, knowing that he would never believe her true age of thirty. She went into her immortality when she was twenty, however, and that’s the age she remained.
“I would send you back—I thought I was in need of an actual professional, and not an amateur,” he told her, waving his hand like an English aristocrat. “But you might actually work better this way. You’re pretty enough, at least.” His perfectly clean, glass-like fingers tapped against the edge of the glass. “Have you ever role-played?”
She opened her mouth to say ‘yes’, but then shook her head honestly. “No, Sir.”
He grinned again. She could swear he had fangs, for a moment, and her heart thumped. Maybe he was a vampire? Her eyes looked through him, but then she remembered that vampires all had dark, red eyes. Not his color at all. He had to have been just an odd human.
She was just being paranoid, allowing herself to fright so easily. Everything else about him cried, ‘Rich, arrogant, drunk human’. Any other nymph would get a trill about pollinating him without remorse.
“Sir? Oh, I like that,” he replied excitedly. “Sir. Hmm.” He leaned forwards and put a hand on her knee. “When was the last time you were spanked, My Dear?”
She swallowed, her eyes widened for just a moment before she realized why she was there—to pleasure this man. If a spanking was going to get him in the throes, then… “Why?” she simpered. “Do you want to spank me, Sir?”
Again, he looked her up and down. “Very much so, yes. Just as an experiment, you see… I was originally going to have to pretend you were a recalcitrant young lady—one who would goad me into fighting with her because she was a spoiled brat. But you… You’re too sweet for that, aren’t you?”
She swallowed. “I could be a…”
“No, no, you couldn’t,” he assured, his smile widening. He put his hand to his chin thoughtfully. “No, let’s pretend that you have been a naughty girl who got horrid marks on her last exam. And I’m the headmaster who cares for your welfare and is very disappointed in you.”
“The drunk headmaster,” she murmured nervously, lowering her eyes, her heart beating in her chest in a way that made it feel like it was being strangled by her own nerves.
He frowned. “I changed my mind. You are a young wife that has gone wild at the market, and I am the husband that has so recently found your swipe card statements.”
Her expression had to have been one of bewilderment, but he seemed to like that. He clapped his hands together. “Excellent. What’s your name, then?”
“Um… I am… Uh… Um… A-Alice.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Nervous about your spanking, Alice?”
She cleared her throat. “A little…” She smiled shyly.
“Then you shouldn’t spend so frivolously, young lady,” he replied with a firm mouth, but then when her mouth dropped open, he gave her a kind wink, and then crooked her finger towards the bed. Trembling, she put down her glass on the table and walked up to him, ready to play his game.
* * *
Alice took a deep breath, closed her eyes and opened them. Her client was gorgeous, but he was also tall and even strong in a lean sort of way. If he wanted to harm her, he could easily do so. And now he wanted to play spanking games.
Great, her first victim—and he’s a sadist. Or at least very odd. How could spanking be thought of so sexually, anyway?
“Do you know why I called you into the bedroom, Alice?” he asked her so firmly that her posture straightened.
Alice, never having role-played before… Had never had sex before, been kissed before, or even been alone in a room with a strange man before, didn’t know why she was called into the bedroom in this fantasy. “N-no, Darling. Wh—whatever—”
“Do we need to play a guessing game?” he asked her. When her eyes dropped nervously to his stomach, he reached down and put a finger under her chin to look up at him. “Alice? Are you going to lie to me?”
She wrung her hands. “N-no.” She bit her lip. “It’s about… It’s about the bill, isn’t it?” She knew that pleased him, because he stifled a smile. “Look, Darling, I can explain,” she was feeling more confident with her lines, now. “I just—”
“You just blatantly disobeyed me,” he finished tersely.
He was far too good at role-playing. He could have been an actor—easily. He pinched the bridge of his nose as if he was getting a headache. “Alice—you promised you’d abide by a budget.”
“I know, but everything was so cute, and fit me so well, and I just… I just lost my head.” She fluttered her eyelashes and then put her trembling hands upon his chest. “I promise I won’t do it again.” She toyed with one of his buttons and pressed herself up against him.
His erection was massive. She could feel it through his trousers, even, as if the belt itself was holding it back. He grasped her hand that played with his shirt and squeezed it. “You and I have had many discussions about this, haven’t we?”
“It depends how you define ‘many’,” she squeaked nervously, swallowing again.
“Alice,” he sighed. “What did I promise to do last time if you spent over budget again?”
She blushed. She couldn’t say it—she couldn’t say the word. “Darling, please… You couldn’t have been serious…”
“I was serious,” he informed flatly. Her throat was so dry as she watched his eyes burn into her. He brushed his hand across her face. “Alice—when I tell you to do something, you will obey me. Is that quite clear? Even when you don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I’ll do better next time.”
“I know you will, because I will give you something to remember,” he grabbed her upper arm, pulled her toward the bed, and then over his lap in a quick movement.
“Please, Darling! Don’t,” her beg sounded believable, because it’s what she really wanted to say. She couldn’t help but be nervous. “I’ll be good! I promise!�
�� she squeaked, kicking her feet out of her shoes.
“You promised me the same thing the last time,” he growled, and pushed her dress up to her waist. “Now you’ll learn that I’m serious.”
One spank came down over her panties, and she squeaked. It stung, but it actually didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. It actually made her skin tingle, especially when he rubbed and grabbed her ass between each spank. She was becoming more and more tender, but before she knew it, she was moaning and waiting anxiously for the next spank.
And then he pulled down her panties, which fell below her knees. She squirmed anew, humiliated. This, too, was a first. Nobody had seen her bare ass or pussy before, but with her bottom turned up in the air like it was, she was quite sure that this man had an eye-full of both.
“No! Don’t!” she begged, squirming harder.
He didn’t, he just readjusted his legs, pinning one of his legs over the backs of her knees to keep her from kicking and launching her bottom even higher in the air. “Bad girls get spanked on the bare-bottom. You might want to consider that next time when you’re at the market,” he lectured as he continued.
The spanking and rubbing was making her wet—this she knew. Her arousal was almost painful, but still, having it was embarrassing. She didn’t want to be here at all—she wanted to be at home, in the kitchen, making cupcakes or something equally fattening, drinking nectar-cider.
When her bottom actually felt hot, he stopped. “Did we learn a lesson?” he asked her, rubbing his hand back and forth across her bare ass.
“Yes, Sir!” she cried pleadingly.
“Good. Are you ready to be a good girl?”
“Uh huh,” she replied, and squirmed her bottom.
She heard him make a purring noise. “Alright, young lady. Let’s get you up and let’s stand you in the corner. I want you to think about what you learned.”
She was grateful to be let up off his lap—if he spanked any longer, she was certain that she was going to orgasm. And then he’d be certain to be rougher on her the rest of the night. After all, what was next on the menu with this type of man? Handcuffs and hot wax?
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 13