Chapter 6 #4
Another stroke lands, right over the other one. I gasp and shriek and utter some curse words and try to get up, but of course I cannot escape Thor’s grasp. He is far too strong and powerful.
A third follows, and my feet start to drum against the floor. Pain hits different depending on context, I’m learning. I don’t know that I have ever actually been straight up disciplined before. I hope it never fucking happens again.
“Take those underwear down,” the captain says. “I’ll give our little guest the last three on the bare.”
“No!”
But yes, they come down, and my sore, punished ass is bared to this stern stranger who is allowed to do with me as he pleases. On a ship, a captain may as well be a god. There’s nothing he can’t do.
I have fucked up so much more than I intended to fuck up.
The next three strokes all land with brutal precision. Each of them hurts more than the last, and by the time they are finished landing, my ass feels like it is swollen to twice its size and burning like a volcano.
“Pull your underwear up,” the captain orders.
“And when you go to the brig, think about how you’re going to conduct yourself as a prisoner, because I can promise you right now, there’s more where that came from.
I don’t get to use the paddle much these days.
Having a prisoner who deserves to be punished will be the closest thing to fun I allow myself to have on this ship. ”
I whisper a silent prayer to whatever gods might lurk in deep space, and I pull my underwear up over my blazing ass.
“She should be covered through the halls, sir?” Thor says.
“Is that a statement or a question, Officer?”
“For decorum and modesty.”
“Those things are for members of the crew. This is not a member of the crew. This is a stowaway. Stowaways have no rights. They are not entitled to anything.”
Thor hesitates.
I can see by his face he did not expect this to be quite that bad. He thought I’d be dealt with in a professional manner, not laid into by a mad deep space captain who truly does not answer to anybody. We are so far from any concept of real law right now. Thor has not brought me to justice.
Thor has ensured that I am going to suffer.
He has betrayed me. He has betrayed himself, as far as I am concerned. He held me down for that treatment. He let me be brutalized, six times over with the captain’s paddle.
He escorts me out into the hall, where once we are well on the way to the brig, he takes his jacket off and zips it around me. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
“For what?” I stay glib and sassy, even though I am fucking terrified and very sore. I’m going to be locked in a box soon, and the predator who just beat my ass is going to have unfettered access to me.
“You deserve to be held accountable for your actions, but that was…”
“I guess you get to think about who you serve now, huh,” I mutter. I am not going to tell him this is okay. He could have kept my secret. A real man would have. He would have acted to protect me and kept me out of the way.
I can see regret written on every line of Thor’s face, but unfortunately for him, there’s other lines written on my ass right now, and they’re not going to shift as easily as a facial expression.
“You should know something,” I tell him.
“What?”
“I’m not on birth control. You’ve been coming inside me over and over.”
He looks at me. I expect him to be mad, but a hint of a smile appears on his lips. He tries to fight it back, but I fucking see it. This asshole is glad he might have knocked me up.
“You like that!” I accuse him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Do you want me to be angry I got to come inside your fertile little pussy?”
“Don’t sweet talk me. I’m angry at you,” I tell him.
We walk to the brig, me wearing his oversized officer’s jacket that comes down past my mid-thigh, him in a shirt. We get looks again. The ship is going to be absolutely buzzing with the gossip about me and my exploits.
That makes me feel a little better. Maybe one of the on-board bards will make up a song. Our culture has a rich tradition of singing about people who do unexpectedly cool or stupid things. I started as a category 1, but it’s going very cat 2 right now.
My ass is aching, but it’s not actually as bad as I thought it was when it was happening. The shock of being held down and punished was more than I expected it to be. Who does that? What kind of monster just… disciplines people who misbehave on his ship? Asshole.
“Try not to get into any more trouble in here,” Thor says as he opens the door to a literal prison cell. The little glimpse I get inside does not make me want to go in.
“You can’t put me in here.”
“I have to put you in here. Captain’s orders.”
“If the captain told you to suck his…”
I don’t get to finish the sentence, because Thor picks me up, puts me in the room, and shuts the door behind me, and I am too busy cursing and squealing the entire time he is doing that.
When the door is shut, and there is no way out, and everyone has gone off to talk about me, I take stock of my current situation.
The brig is a square metal room with a toilet and a bed. It is not designed to be comfortable. It is designed to make the person in it deeply regret the actions that put them there.
I cannot believe Thor betrayed me. His loyalty to this stupid ship and the stupid crew and the even more stupid captain is pathetic. He would rather follow some stupid rules than continue to writhe and tryst with me between the sheets? I am glad to be rid of him. I am fortunate to be done with him.
He turned out to be a coward.
Men who defer to other men are not men, I tell myself. It’s not a coherent thought, but it doesn’t have to be. If I ever love anybody, it will be someone who respects no law outside themselves.
Me, with a dick, basically. And hopefully taller with more muscles and greater weapons proficiency, because I really wish I could defend myself better. I was so easily overpowered. It wasn’t fair.
I sit down on the metal box that passes for a bed, then immediately stand up because it makes my ass throb. That captain treated me like I was nobody.
I’ll make him suffer.
I’m not sure how, but my bloodline won’t allow me to rest unless I swear at least a little bit of vengeance.
I end up leaning against the wall, arms folded, ass aching, trying not to cry.
I feel betrayed by Thor. I could be in his arms right now, wrapped up against the cold of space, filled with his cock.
Instead, he had to use me to learn a lesson everybody should know by the time they are twelve years old: authority is bullshit.
I don’t know how long I am going to be left here, but I do know I am fucked. Whatever happens next is going to be bad.
Eventually, I work out a way to sort of lie down in a way that allows me to be somewhat comfortable. I prop myself up sideways on the bed and I close my eyes and I imagine that I am back at home in the house my father built. This is the only place that home will ever exist again.
I wonder if they’ve already started bulldozing the remnants.
I wonder how mad Freya and Mila will be when they realize I wasn’t actually supposed to be on this ship.
I remember the smell of my room, the feeling of the hand-woven rug my mother made underneath my feet as I got into bed.
I remember how it was quiet in the earlier days, and how later on a near constant hum of traffic was just barely muted by the walls.
The ship makes a similar hum down here, I realize.
There’s not as much padding in the walls or whatever.
Insulation. I squeeze my eyes a little tighter, and I go back to when I was small and safe in bed, when I could hear the family moving around the house.
My father’s deep voice, my mother’s laugh.
Freya and Mila fighting over a doll as quietly as they could because the baby was trying to sleep.
I am not a literal baby anymore, but they still treat me like one.
I conjure the feeling of being loved and safe and secure as much as I can as an antidote to the harsh punishment and the unexpected betrayal. I suppose Thor did still save Freya and her baby. I owe him something. Just not as much as I did before.
A hero will do the right thing, I realize. Doing the right thing isn’t always going to work for me, because I am so often doing the wrong thing. I don’t want a hero anymore. I need a man who will burn the world for me.
At some point, I fall asleep for a bit. That speaks to my exhaustion, I think. The tension I’ve been keeping in my body from the fear of being found out is all gone. The worst has happened, and now I can relax.
I wake up what could be minutes later, or hours later. The door is squeaking. I sit up and try to look presentable, but that’s hard to do when I have almost no clothes.
The door opens and two people walk into my cell.
The first of them is a woman with a blonde braid and the sort of demeanor that I would find intimidating if Freya was not my older sister. She’s accompanied by a tall, dark, and handsome man. I get the impression she is an officer, and he is a guard.
“Selene Weltheim,” she says. “Same name as the city?”
“The city was named after my family,” I reply.
She smiles, but not in a pleasant way. She thinks I am egotistical about it. I’m not. It just happens to be the truth.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” she says. “I’m Mara Greenthorn. I’m the head of personnel on this vessel.”
“If this is going to be an official interview, I should probably have pants,” I say.
She nods.
“Sven, please get our guest an unmarked uniform and a blanket and a pillow, along with a decent dinner ration.”
The male guard nods and goes to attend to her wishes. I get internally excited by the prospect of being both fed and clothed. It is a very intimate and vulnerable thing to be held prisoner.
Getting on the ship was a mistake in that regard. I really limited my options and put myself at the mercy of a mad hierarchy.