Chapter 34 Jean
Something whispers behind me. Not a voice, but a sound like smooth stone sliding against leather.
It is a sound I have heard before.
Tingles race over my bare skin.
I look back over my shoulder at the alien standing behind me, his bug-shell armor gleaming faintly in the grimy sunlight filtering down through the dirty air. His orange face and long blue hair provide an oddly colorful counterpoint to the gray overcast of the sky.
The sword is in his hand. That strange, blue, crystalline blade.
“What are you going to do with that?” I stammer.
I should probably run, but I’m too scared.
My body is frozen in fear, bent at the waist, hands pressed to the stone wall in front of me, naked as the day I was born, save for the breathing mask strapped to my head.
Images flash across my mind’s eye. Images of my head being separated from my shoulders.
Of my body split in two. Of my limbs dismembered like those bugs down in the darkness of the mine.
The alien smiles. On any other face, that expression might be reassuring, but not on his.
“Fear not, little human. I would never dare to mar the perfection of your body. I simply need to let you know who is in charge. Now, eyes forward.”
I turn my face toward the wall, not out of obedience, but because I don’t want him to see the sudden redness that I can feel rushing into my face. Did he just say what I thought he said?
…the perfection that is your body…
THWAK!
The sword hits my bottom with a whipcrack sound. Not the cutting edge, but the flat of the blade. It jolts a cry from my lips, a sound of shock more than pain. Then, a moment later the fire comes. A great burning stripe of it, spanning both sides of my punished ass.
I start to stand, but a hand seizes me by the hair, forcing me back down again.
“You will stay bent, human, and accept your punishment with honor.”
“Honor?” I shout. “You’re fucking spanking me with a fucking sword!”
“Correct.”
The word is uttered without any emotion, cold, flat, matter-of-fact. I am stripped and bent in the middle of a desert landscape, an alien is spanking me with a crystal sword, and he’s treating it like it’s all in a day’s work. And you know what? For him, maybe it is. But not for me.
What can I do, though? I can’t fight him. I can’t run. I have no choice but to accept my fate, if not with honor, then at least with the few shreds of dignity I still have left. I make up my mind not to whimper, not to beg, not to cry.
The alien senses the tension leaving my muscles, and he eases his grip on my hair.
“Are you ready to continue?” he asks. “Or perhaps you have changed your mind about your punishment.”
“I’m ready.”
I’m not going to let him hurt Scythro and Ghorak. Not if I can help it. The two of them have done so much for me over the past days, and I’m the reason they’re both in trouble now. This is the least I can do.
“Very well,” Venim says, releasing my head. “I have given you one blow already. Seven more will make it an even eight. Prepare yourself.”
An even eight? What?
Then I remember: Znthians have two fewer fingers than we humans do. I might even find it amusing under other—
THWAK!
I am not prepared for the second blow. It lands a little lower than the first, widening the swath of fire across my backside. A river of obscenities comes pouring out of my mouth.
“Two,” Venim intones.
He counts off the blows as he delivers them with a steady, almost mechanical efficiency.
The force of the impacts is startlingly consistent.
The only variable is the location. Some of them land higher, others lower, until everything between my tailbone and the top of my thighs is painted with an even coat of pain.
Somehow, I manage to bite back the shameful sounds welling in the back of my throat, the pleas for mercy I so desperately wish to utter.
The tears, however, prove more difficult to restrain.
They fall from my eyes and plunk quietly against the inner surface of my breathing mask.
I promised myself I wouldn’t whimper, beg, or cry.
Two out of three isn’t bad.
Alien fingers, gloved and gauntleted, brush against my tender flesh. I shiver. Behind me, Venim hisses, a sharp intake of air between clenched teeth.
“You are leaking,” he whispers.
At first, I think he’s talking about my eyes, but he can’t see those from where he’s standing. Then his fingers delve between my legs, touching the lips of my femininity. They are as swollen and tender as the cheeks of my ass, but not for the same reason. I gasp and pull away.
Venim does not chastise me. He is far more interested in the wetness glistening on the tip of his armored finger. He stares at it for a moment, then he tastes it with his split tongue. His eyes widen.
“You are…”
He leaves the sentence unfinished, and I’m grateful for that, but I can hear the words echoing through his mind just as surely as they are echoing through my own. Aroused. Turned on. Horny. It shouldn’t be this way. Not in the daylight. Not with him. But it is. Oh God, it is.
He licks his finger again, and his eyes narrow. The sword is still hanging loosely in his other hand, the instrument of my humiliating punishment. He stabs the end of it into the ashen soil beside him, and leaves it standing there, erect.
He removes his right gauntlet.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He drops the gauntlet on the ground beside him and starts on the left one.
“I have seen to your discipline,” he says coldly. “Now it is time to ensure your safety.”
“My safety? What are you—”
“Sit.”
I sit. My legs feel weak and trembly in the aftermath of my spanking, not from pain, but from a prolonged tension of holding back something I know I shouldn’t be feeling. I try my best not to wince as my bottom touches down. I almost succeed.
Venim has both gauntlets off now, as well as the chitin bracers that were covering him from wrist to elbow. His exposed forearms are a fiery orange, just like his face, corded with muscle, bulging with veins.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask, surprised at the steadiness of my own voice.
The alien doesn’t answer. He just keeps taking off his armor, exposing his upper arms, his shoulders. Then he unfastens the breastplate encasing his torso and lifts it off over his head. It drops to the ground with a clatter, and I smother a gasp.
Venim’s body isn’t just powerful, it’s excessive. Inhumanly wide shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. Muscles layered on top of other muscles, separated by grooves that look like they could have been carved with a knife. And all of it wrapped in that same burnished orange.
I shouldn’t stare; it’s impossible not to.
My eyes catch on his chest. There’s a symbol imprinted on the right side, the same place where Scythro and Ghorak have theirs.
The shape of Venim’s is different, and so is the color—a strange, shimmering blue that matches his eyes—but I know it can’t be just a coincidence.
Those symbols mean something. Something important.
But what?
Venim doesn’t give me a chance to think about that question to any degree of depth. His four-fingered hands are already moving lower, working on the armor covering his lower body. He unfastens his codpiece, starts to pull it aside. My breath catches…
…then releases in a sigh. A quiet spasm of relief, short-lived. He’s wearing pants underneath. Black leather. The material obscures the precise shape of the anatomy underneath but does nothing to conceal its size.
Oh God, oh God, oh God…
He continues methodically removing his armor—thigh plates, shin plates, boots—adding each item to the haphazard pile growing beside him. I notice something gleaming within.
Weapons. Dozens of them, all stashed within little pouches and straps lining the inner side of the armor. Ninja stars. Throwing knives. Darts. All of them seem to be fashioned from the same blue-glass material as the sword.
Venim notices me looking.
“You’re welcome to try,” he says coldly, “but I must warn you: it will earn you another spanking.”
My butt prickles with heat, and I nix whatever crazy plans I might have been forming. There’s no way I could grab one of those weapons quicker than Venim could grab me. No way. I settle back into the wall.
“That’s what I thought,” Venim says.
He continues undressing. The only thing he’s got on now are his pants. His fingers move to the laces running up the front. My heart jumps.
Earlier, Venim said he had no intention of breeding me, but I’m starting to think he changed his mind. I’m already naked, and soon he will be too. The possibilities are limited.
The bastard takes his sweet time with the laces, slowly loosening the leather cords, giving his bulge room to breathe. His blue eyes never leave my face, studying my reaction. His forked tongue flicks in and out, no doubt picking up chemicals even the best poker face can’t hide.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“I know,” he says, without the slightest trace of irony. “I can taste it.”
Then, in one rough shove, his pants are around his thighs. This time, I make no attempt to stifle my gasp.