Chapter 2 #2
I wish I had, but the truth is that I made my escape and I took it.
I have not been able to do anything to the creatures that took me captive.
Not yet. That will come once I return to my home realm and consult with Alara.
I know my rage is disproportionately affecting what I want to do.
The power of a Psyon is considerable, and not to be deployed without thought and consultation.
“I bet you did,” she says. “Look at your claws, and look how big you are, and your teeth. I bet you ripped them apart! Or did you use your Psyon powers? Did you turn them into chickens?”
Clearly she understands some of what I am capable of, but not all of it.
“They are going to be handled,” I assure her.
“You mean they have already been handled at some future time because Psyons can work through time,” she says.
She is grasping these concepts very well.
Some of it I have not explained properly as yet, and somehow she seems to understand it all intuitively.
We are linked, she and I. When we mated we were connected physically.
Our genetic material was blended. I believe that may have had deeper significance than I imagined.
I can feel into her mind. I wonder if she can feel into mine in turn.
“Are you going to try to go home?” She asks the question in a way that reveals her own concerns.
I can feel the yearning for home in her bones, but I know she cannot risk going back there.
She will never return to the colony that sacrificed her.
I know that for a fact. But I will not tell her that.
She needs to experience events as unfolding, rather than as known quantities.
There is a legend that says one of my kind was once captured and forced to act as a fortune teller to a human king.
After just a few weeks of knowing everything, that king went entirely mad.
His mind shattered, and never healed. Humans are not supposed to know everything.
Their minds require a certain amount of uncertainty the same way their lungs require a certain amount of oxygen.
“Yes,” I say. “I have a job to do. It was interrupted. I will need to speak with, well, I suppose you could call her my boss. She will be wondering where I am.”
Mara cocks her head to the side, even more curiosity flooding her mind. “Why weren’t you rescued?”
“I don’t believe they knew where I was. The facility was shielded in several ways that would have made it very difficult to detect me. Now that I am free, we will soon be in their presence. I will have to be more stern with you there, and you will have to be on your best behavior.”
“Why?”
“Because we are engaged in war,” I say. “There are battles taking place all around us. Most of them will go unnoticed by you. And that’s okay. But I will need you to start obeying me, my little human pet. I do not want you to be hurt.”
“A war with who?”
“There are forces looking to tear apart the universe as we know it. We are fighting them. It is complicated, convoluted, and has been taking place in every corner of reality for as long as existence has undergone the formality of occurring. These fights are happening at all times and in all places.”
She looks like she understands, but I know she cannot possibly fully fathom the forces at play here.
There are energies in this universe that haunt the darkness and flee to the spaces in between and find their ways into the minds and souls of creatures who act as vessels for them.
Psyons are guardians of what is good, fighting all that is evil.
“When are we going to go to your home realm, then?”
“Soon,” I say. “But for the moment, I wish to work on your training, my pet.”
* * *
Mara
I was supposed to be fighting him calling me his pet. I have to keep reminding myself not to enjoy it, though, and that tells me I am losing the battle.
I don’t know if I am supposed to find this all as sexy as I do. When he calls me his, I feel a warm surge of something like love, but even better. I don’t want to. I want to be independent and strong. I don’t want to need anybody. I was just trying to escape, after all.
But then he takes me in his arms and he looks deep in my eyes and I feel an encompassing warmth that makes all the objections I have when he’s not around melt away.
“Whaddaya mean, training?”
“When I tell you to kneel, I want you to kneel for me,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because it indicates that you are willingly submitting to my control. And having you willingly submit to my control makes us both safer. The places we are going and the things we are going to do could be dangerous. I need to know that when I tell you to come to heel, you will come to heel.”
“What if I have my own ideas?”
He smirks sexily. “I am sure you will always have your own ideas, pet. But when I give you an order, I expect you to follow my will, not your own notions.”
I screw up my nose at the idea.
He chuckles to himself, stands up, and stretches. I watch his big blue torso ripple with alien strength and sort of forget what I was annoyed about as arousal starts to warm me.
“That’s cheating,” I tell him. “You know I can’t think about anything besides…”
He reaches out and cups my chin gently, but firmly, in his strong alien hand. He looks down at me as I sit on the bed, and after a moment has gone by and I am lost in his gaze, he issues a command:
“Kneel for me, pet.”
My body is already in motion as he utters the words. I shift about so I am on my knees on the mattress, my hands helping support me because of the soft surface.
“You see? It was so easy, and you were so good at it,” he praises me. His voice sounds like liquid love, and I feel the warm wash of approval sinking through me. It is not quite as intense as an orgasm, but it feels like the sun is shining on my soul.
“Maybe,” I admit, feeling myself blush though I do not really know what I am so afraid of.
“You will enjoy being good for me, pet,” he promises, his voice sending more of those warm waves of liquid praise running through me. “You will find peace in it. And you will be protected always. You’re never going to be abandoned again. I promise you that.”
I didn’t even know I’d felt abandoned until he said that, but I have the unmistakable sensation of having a fear assuaged, so I must have. It’s so intense, being around him, feeling parts of my mind open up for him that would have never opened up for me.
He already has more control over me than I’d like to admit. He understands me more deeply than I understand myself.
I squirm out of position, and he gently, but firmly puts me back in it.
“You can do this,” he says. “Just stay there.”
I start to feel itchy in a weird, non-physical way. I want to move. I want to be free. The same impulse that made me agree to get into the ship for the sun, then veer off into space is coming to the front of my mind now, and I cannot resist it.
“No!” I declare, bouncing off the bed entirely. “I’m not a pet. I’m a human. That makes me a person. And I’m not always going to do what you want me to do, so you may as well start taking that into account now.”
He smiles patiently.
“What? Why aren’t you mad?”
“Because you did well,” he says.
“I told you to fuck off.”
“You didn’t, actually. You did as you were told. Just because you didn’t keep doing it for an extended period of time doesn’t mean you don’t get credit for trying. I don’t expect miracles, pet. Just effort.”
He is being so nice, so reasonable, so… Absolutely fucking in control no matter what I do.
He is defining my reality around me. He’s not letting me make any choices about anything. He wanted to take me on this ship, so he took me. He wanted to train me, so he’s training me.
I have been captured.
And I can’t even rebel. I don’t even get the satisfaction of calling him my captor, because he’s just so nice.
“I can feel you winding yourself up, pet,” he says. “Take a breath and…”
I kick him in his big blue shin, which is what everybody should do to everybody who tells them that they’re winding themselves up.
“I see,” he says. “You want to be handled more firmly.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t,” he says. “You showed it.”
He zips my suit down, peels it until my upper body and ass are exposed, but leaves the lower part around my legs, and tosses me over his lap and sets about smacking my ass until I start to cry out for mercy.
His big, blue hand lands on my cheeks over and over, dozens of times. I feel heat and shame all at once, and then I start to melt into the punishment. I am getting what I wanted and needed, even though I’d deny it if he accused me of wanting it.
“I can be rough with you if you like, pet,” he growls. “I can make your ass hurt if it needs to.”
I thrill to his harsh touch and his rougher voice.
It is easier to take somehow, simpler to submit to.
Much harder to resist, too. Every time he spanks me, I am jolted into submission.
I am reminded that he is bigger than me, stronger than me, that his mind is capable of things I cannot even conceive of.
In trying to resist him, I am trying to resist something bigger than me in absolutely every way.