Chapter 3 #4
Alara nods. “There is much work to be done,” she says. “I will see what I can find for you and your little animal.”
I hear the beginning of a growl in my pet’s throat. She had better get control of herself, or I will be forced to take even harsher measures. I do not want to, but I feel obliged.
* * *
Mara
Ow.
Ow. Fucking ow.
My butt hurts like hell. I feel like I have been branded damn near, spanked so thoroughly I won’t be able to sit down. It’s not fair. Just because I tried to… well, maybe it is fair.
Still doesn’t feel very good. I didn’t think he’d do that to me, but maybe that was naivety on my part. I am sure Freak is capable of all sorts of things besides the ones he just did to me. He is a monster, just like all of the others who are here, acting all fancy and being all terrifying.
I want to be home, but the home I want to be in doesn’t exist anymore.
It stopped being my home years ago when my father disappeared.
I used to have a place that felt like it was mine, a soft place furnished with loving memories.
My mother died when I was a baby. He raised me.
Treated me like a son in many ways. Always took me on his merchant trips, and then when we would return to the colony, there would be long, lazy weeks and months.
He taught me to read. He taught me to shoot.
He showed me how to hunt. And all the while the elders of the colony told me I should be prepared for marriage.
But he wouldn’t do that to me. He told them I was made to follow in his footsteps. And then one day, he took off without me. They said he had to. That the mission he went on was too sensitive, and too dangerous.
He never came back.
Months passed. I waited. I grew older. I became desirable. My father’s business became mine, but I was not permitted to run it.
And then, there was the offer of marriage. It came from the elders’ middle son. A dull man with a dull brain, fifteen years older than me and wanting me as a housemaid and broodmare.
I refused.
And then they gave me the option to go to the sun.
I took that instead.
My life these last few days has been desperation, survival at all costs, pretending that I love and am loved. And now the pain of the thrashing has broken through all my defenses and all I can do is cry.
Freak snugs me close and carries me away from the scene, away from the aliens he just punished me in front of.
“Breathe, pet,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I had to do that, but an example had to be made, and you tried to bite our leader.”
I take in a deep breath. I don’t want to be crying either, but he got all the sadness out of me all at once, including the sadness about things I didn’t even know I was still sad about.
“I can feel it all inside you,” he says. I remember, then, that he knows a lot more than most men would. When I bring these sorrows to the fore of my mind, he can see them.
“You deserved better,” he murmurs against my ear. “The people who tried to turn you into a sacrifice so they could steal your father’s wealth are not men. They are monsters.”
I can feel his anger through his embrace, and I realize that I can experience his thoughts as well, just not in a magical sort of way.
“Why do you care?” I ask the question, looking up at him with real curiosity.
There are still tears in my eyes, but for the most part they have stopped flowing.
I should be mad at him for spanking me like that, but I guess I did try to attack the important woman, and he had to do something about it. Could have been worse, I guess.
“Yes,” he says. “It could have been worse. You’re lucky you’re not currently muzzled, you little animal.”
“Stop reading my mind,” I grumble.
“I’m not intentionally reading your mind,” he laughs. “It’s just how my mind works. I am sorry, pet. I know humans like to think of their private thoughts as being sacred. Unfortunately, you will never be able to hide from me, not even in the confines of your skull.”
I don’t know why I find that statement so comforting. The pain in my ass has transformed itself into a hot ache. It is not gone, but it is not bad anymore. I think my body is good at taking punishment. Maybe I even crave it. Maybe that’s why I tried to bite her. To see what would happen.
And now I know. He’ll take me in hand, and put me over his lap. He will humble me. He will punish me. He will make me cry if that is what is necessary. And then he will comfort me.
“You’re aroused,” he notes.
I am soaking wet.
“I cannot tend to your animal needs now, pet,” he says, his voice thick with lust that reciprocates my desire.
“But I can enjoy the way they feel. Your need is my pleasure as much as it is yours. Stay with it while we finish our obligations here, pet. Immerse yourself in imagining what I might do to you, what you might be allowed to receive from me. Keep me entertained with your desire.”
“Won’t everyone be able to hear me?”
His teeth flash sharply, canines long and dangerous. “Yes,” he grins. “And they will know that you burn for me.”
I blush and hide my face in his chest and he cuddles me close, and the worst of the punishment is already forgotten.
Again, I revel in the safety of his arms, and in the sense that he is stronger and more capable than I have the capacity to be.
I am human. Softly human. I am limited. And he is massive, with an intellect I can barely begin to understand, let alone match.
And he has claws. And big hands. And he knows how to make me ache, and burn, and beg…
I feel him rumble next to me. “I need to obtain a private room for us,” he says. “You are about to turn this entire entanglement into an orgy if you are not careful. Such a hot little thing. You generate sexual energy.”
I curl up in his arms, my hip finding the hard staff in his pants.
None of these creatures wear much in the way of clothing.
He is still in his tight black underwear and nothing else.
Physically, nobody can see because my body is in the way, but I slide my hand down beneath his pants and wrap my hand around his thick cock.
I feel him stiffen, both in my hand, and in general.
“What are you doing?” He murmurs the question softly.
“Touching you.”
He looks around, then back down at me.
“I can’t shield my thoughts from everyone,” he says. “They will know.”
I wish I cared, I think to myself.
He snorts, and I know he caught the message.
I squeeze his cock and stroke it. He reaches down and catches my wrist in his much larger hand and shakes his head at me. “Not here, and not now, pet. I am pleased at you taking the initiative…” His voice trails off into a groan as I squeeze my fingers around him.
“I wanna get out of here,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “This place must seem very strange to you, but you can’t seduce your way out of uncomfortable situations every time…”
I grip him tighter again, and I don’t need to be a mind-reader to tell that he is trying to decide if that is actually true or not.
“Are we going to have to speak out loud to get your attention now, Tasin?”
A stunning blue alien wearing very little comes up to us, and I release Freak’s cock because now I am shy about what I am doing. I look into the face of the newcomer and see glowing eyes, flashing teeth, incomparable wisdom.
I really am an animal compared to these beings. But they are also more powerful and more feral. They are more of everything. Always.
Every time I meet another one of them, I feel smaller and more animal.
“I just wish they’d put clothes on,” I mumble to myself.
“She doesn’t think we’re clothed?” The alien heard me clearly.
“She can’t see the clothes,” Freak explains. “She can see the underwear, but not the metaphysical trappings.”
“Humans can’t see metaphysical adornments?”
“They see what is there, and not what is not. Well, some of the time. It is possible to activate their imaginations sufficiently that they are able to create soft realities, but on a base level… no. They cannot.”
“So she thinks we’re all in our underwear?”
“I mean, in a sense, we are all in our underwear,” Freak smiles.
The alien throws back his head and laughs. “Oh, my god. What a priceless little thing. I should get one for my own. No. I couldn’t possibly. I don’t have the time to train one. They’re basically wild, aren’t they?”
I turn out to be a very controversial appendage. Another alien approaches our little group and begins to weigh in without so much as a by your leave.
“Really, Tasin. A human. They’re barely sentient. They count on their fingers and toes. They don’t have the capacity to understand what we understand. They live in a three-dimensional world of cause and effect. What could you possibly have in common with her?”
“She’s my pet,” he says. “She belongs to me, and with me. We all know better than to question why things happen at this point, don’t we?”
They have to agree to that, because, as far as I can tell, they all think that everything already happened. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s how Freak has explained it to me.