Chapter 1 #7
Sharp releases me naked into this pile of bedding and lets me burrow into it. I dive in, pulling the blankies around me, crying to myself with a great deal of miserable self-pity.
I do that for what feels like quite a while, before I realize I never heard him leave. I poke my head out of my damp fortress and see that he is still there.
“What the fuck do you want?”
He frowns at me, and I feel my ass pulse with the memory of what it feels like to be spanked. I didn’t like that. I don’t know why the barbarian did that to me. I was being nice to him. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t fair…
“Quiet,” Sharp says, running his hand over my hair gently. He has scaled markings on the back of his hands and fingers. He also has them around his hairline. They’re blue and green, slightly iridescent in this low light.
“I didn’t do anything to him and he hurt me for no reason.” I start to get annoyed again, but there’s nothing to throw this time. I wish there was. I wish I could break this whole damn ship.
“You need to calm down,” Sharp says to me. “It was not for no reason. We have been searching for you for years. We thought we might never see you again. I know it hurt, but you can’t lash out like that. I thought we trained you out of breaking things.”
“Apparently not,” I say bluntly.
He smiles, just a fraction, and it softens his features and makes him look incredibly handsome for a brief moment.
“Apparently not,” he says. “You say you don’t remember us. Will you tell me what you do remember? Do you remember this room?”
“No. I don’t. This isn’t my room.”
“This is your room. It’s the place you felt the most comfortable. We installed it for you. And, to be honest, a lot of what you just broke are things you bought either for us, or you bought for yourself, or we bought for you. You smashed a lot of sentimental things.”
“Am I supposed to feel guilty about that?” I say, instantly feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing. I’ve been wanting my memories, but I’m apparently destroying them as fast as I can.
“I don’t want you to feel guilty. I’m trying to save you from feeling worse later than you do now,” he says. “Please, pet. Tell me what you do remember.”
“This is a change,” I say bitterly. “Weren’t you the one telling me I was going to pay and you weren’t going to let me get away with it? And then I chose him because I thought he’d be nice, and…” I let out a little sob.
“You really don’t remember much,” Sharp says with just a hint of something like amused pity.
“I don’t remember anything. I woke up three years ago in a hospital in Zeal’s New New York, and I didn’t know anything about myself. That’s it. Since then I’ve just been getting by. Doing work. Selling pills. Then you guys showed up and hit me.”
He frowns at me. “You really don’t recall anything prior to the hospital?”
“No. Somebody melted my mind. They can do that now. They have all kinds of toys. They can fuck with your brain. It’s known. I was trying to get my memories back, but it’s really expensive and I couldn’t sell enough pills.”
“Okay,” he says, running his hand through my hair and scratching my scalp lightly. “It’s okay. We’ve come for you now, and you’re safe again.”
“Am I? I don’t feel safe. He hit me! Really hard! Does he do that often?”
“You used to take a lot more than that,” Sharp says. “We’re used to you needing to be corrected roughly and thoroughly.”
I peer at him from the blankets, scowling quite furiously. “You used to do that to me all the time? No wonder I ran away and blanked my mind.”
“You think you did this to yourself?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing about not being able to remember. You can’t remember.”
There’s salt in my tone, and it makes his scaled brow rise a fraction in a warning I somehow feel very low in my stomach.
“I don’t know,” I repeat in another, less aggressive tone. “I don’t know me, and I definitely don’t know you.”
“Alright. Get some rest. We’ll talk and decide what to do with you.”
The arrogance is extreme. How dare they decide what to do with me, as if I am some possession to be managed and handled. I’m going to make them regret coming for me, I decide. If I ran away from them once, I can do it again. And this time, I’ll make damn fucking sure they don’t come after me.
“Who the fuck are you people? What are your names?”
“I’m Sharp,” he says. “The one who spanked your ass is Kronos and the one with the horns is Boss.”
“Is Boss in charge?”
“Not really,” he says. “We have a flat management structure. There is no true captain.”
“So I am also in charge, as much as any of you?”
“Oh, no,” he says with a sexy, indulgent smile. “You’re our pet. We look after you, and in return, you occasionally do what you’re told.”
The door opens and Kronos, the alien who just beat my ass comes in.
I have an animal urge to hiss at him and retreat into my blanket burrow, so I do both those things. I don’t know how I ever stood being handled that way by them. I hope I made his life hell before I ran away. Stupid sexy beautiful mean alien.
“Pet? I’m sorry that hurt you so much,” Kronos says. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“I wasn’t frightened. It hurt. Idiot,” I answer from inside my blankets, treating them like an invincible alien force field.
“Your mouth has gotten coarse over the years,” he says. “You must have suffered.”
“I’ve been having a really good time, actually,” I say. “I’ve been in the club most of the time. I’ve been dancing every night, partying, enjoying myself. I haven’t remembered or missed anything, and I’ve definitely not been hit by any massive aliens who want to hurt me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. “I thought you were misbehaving. And you did choose me to punish you.”
“I didn’t know that’s what was going to happen,” I whimper. “I told you I don’t remember.”
“You used to lie a lot,” he says. “I thought you might be lying again.”
“I’m not lying! I’m not a liar! Fuck you!” I curse. He has all these reasons, but he still did what he did and that was not okay.
“Okay, pet?” he says. “I am trying to take care of you, but for someone who doesn’t like being punished, you are practically begging for another punishment. You are acting like a spoiled little girl.”
“And you’re acting like a massive fucking asshole,” I shoot back.
The blankets get pulled off me at that point.
Sharp and Kronos look down at me sternly. I make a rude gesture at them both.
“I forgot how much trouble she is,” Kronos says to Sharp.
“Absolutely constant,” Sharp says.
“Take me back and let me go,” I say.
“Never.”
They reply in unison.
“I hate you,” I say. “I hate you both, but especially you, Krogor.”
“Kronos,” he says, reaching for me and picking me up. I bite him as hard as I can, and to my surprise I actually leave a ring of teeth on his arm.
Sharp takes me from him. “I have scales, pet,” he says. “And all that will happen if you keep throwing this tantrum is you will blunt your pretty teeth.”
Sharp holds me against his chest in a hug and sits down with me on the bed again.
I try to resist being comforted by this alien, but when you’re upset, you lean into anything that feels good.
I am so exhausted, so scared, and so sore.
When he starts to rub my ass, it feels good.
Like he’s soothing some of the ache away.
“We’ve got to treat her like she has full amnesia,” he says over my head. “We need to get her to a vet and see if there’s anything that can be done.”
“Agreed,” Kronos says. “I feel bad about spanking her that hard.”
“Don’t,” Sharp replies.
“No! Do!” I pipe up.
Sharp’s hand pats my ass gently, and I fall silent again.
“She needed to know what it feels like to be disciplined,” he says. “She’d forgotten that, too.”
“I am right here,” I mutter. “You’re talking about me like I have no ears, not no memories.”
“You should hear this too,” Sharp says to me. “You should understand how we are with you, and how you are treated. You’re a very naughty creature at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.”
“Can I hold her?”
Kronos sounds like a little boy asking for a puppy.
Sharp releases me a little, but I recoil from the barbarian.
“Come here,” he says, reaching for me. “I promise I won’t spank you again.”
I reluctantly let him pull me away from Sharp, and draw me into his big, muscular arms. He cuddles me close and rubs my butt, and it doesn’t hurt that bad anymore.
His hands are big and warm and almost human in the way they feel.
I’m still angry at him, but something inside me tells me he will make me feel better.
I’m giving him the chance to soothe me, and it’s kind of working.
“You were wet when I was spanking you,” he says. “Do you want me to make you feel better?”
“Is that another one of your trick questions?”
His fingers are drifting up the inside of my thighs very lightly, the tips of them making my pussy clench. I’m saying what I think I should say, but I’m not saying what I feel. I want him to make me feel better. All the way better.
I let out a light moan, and he lays me down on the bed. He is on one side, and Sharp is on the other. I am facing Kronos as the pair of them start to touch me all over, giving me a gentle massage that finds all the right places.
A flickering tongue curls around my earlobe, sending pulses of excitement through me as Kronos’ fingers run very lightly over my clit and back down to the entrance of my sex.
I am blushing with embarrassment, because this feels very, very intimate with complete strangers. I am acting like one of the Real Women TM. I’m making myself available and allowing myself to be exposed by them.
“I like the way your ass looks when it is bright red from a well-deserved spanking,” Sharp growls in my ear. “You might not like being punished because you’ve always been a brat who wants her own way, but it looks good on you.”
He emphasizes the point by slapping my ass. It’s not hard enough to hurt, but it is hard enough to sting and reignite some of what Kronos did to me earlier. My hips jolt forward, onto his fingers.
“I want to fuck her,” Kronos says. “But I’m afraid I’ll be too rough.”
“She hasn’t earned a fucking yet,” Sharp says, his tone slipping back into that stern register. “She needs to behave herself before she has our cocks inside her. Good pets get fucked. Bad little pets get spanked and teased and sent to bed wet.”
“No!” I gasp, as if he just said the worst thing in the world.
Both alien men chuckle at me.
“Our little pet gets so grumpy if she’s not allowed to come,” Sharp says.
“Oh, I know.” Kronos pats my pussy affectionately, then gives it enough of a rub to make me squirm.
I am getting sleepy. I’d been up all day anyway; it was like three in the morning when I got abducted. And now I have been petted and made to come, and punished, and now soothed. I really am so tired. Maybe I will be put to bed wet.
In the liminal space between waking and sleep, memory floods my mind…