He was rhythmically spanking her now, and she was awaiting each slap with tense muscles. She sobbed, unsure if he would continue spanking her until nighttime. She knew her skin was turning bright red, and that the guards outside the door were listening to her punishment, the slaps, the gasps and sobs, her humiliating pleas. The mewl as the wave of pleasure confusingly rolled through her just before the next slap on her skin.
She gave up and fell limp over the warrior’s knee.
His hand came to rest on her buttocks, and the heat of his skin made the sting flare almost as though he had spanked her again for good measure. She forced herself not to squirm away as he rubbed her casually. She stared through wet eyes at the ground, at the muscles of his calf, glowing red beneath his markings.
“You will be obedient,” he growled.
“I will be obedient,” she whispered, sniffling.
His fingers were lingering near the space between her legs, where surely he could see the stickiness that had coated the insides of her thighs.
“You will be utterly submissive,” he growled.
“I will be... utterly submissive,” she choked.
“And favor no one warrior,” he said.
From the heat of his hand on her welted skin, a pulse of heat followed by the erotic throb that seemed to come from his touch radiated and shook Lana’s insides nearly to orgasm. She breathed heavily, and her vision swam in front of her: the warrior’s red markings pulsed. “I will favor—” she panted and was unable to finish for a second as her abdomen spasmed. It was a struggle not to push herself back to his fingers, which lingered ever so close to her swollen, wet sex. Just one touch, and she would be over the edge...
“No one warrior,” she managed to say.
She was dropped to her knees almost immediately, and crumpled to her heels, panting, trying to overcome the extreme pleasure the spanking had given to her, even as it had humiliated her and burned still on her bottom.
Zain was returning to his throne, which he sat in for several moments before summoning his guards. “Take her to the ceremonial house,” he ordered gruffly.
She was lifted to her feet by the two guards. She turned her head briefly to look at Zain, who was staring at the wall, glowing red racing through his markings. His breath was unsteady, his stare severe, his thoughts on something, Lana decided, of greater import than her.
Chapter Eleven
The guards followedLana, hands on her elbows, steering her along the footpaths that crisscrossed the encampment. Lana struggled to order her thoughts; as she had at the training facility, her first stop on this wild adventure, she had a nagging idea that she should be scoping out the sights around her with the goal of finding a means to escape. But inside her, she could feel a growing sense of futility. This was a planet whose location she didn’t even know. She was here with rebels of the Imperial Realm, which meant the location was almost certainly as remote as she could imagine.
Not thatknowingwhere she was would help her much, anyway. She couldn’t pilot one of these ships, let alone be assured that she would have the supplies of food and water aboard to get her anywhere.
And where would she go? Home? Surely she would be captured long before she reached her home planet. If not by the very rebels she had escaped from, then by the Imperial Realm itself.
She found herself nurturing these hopeless thoughts, all the while her body was pulsing with excitement, fear, and perhaps, though she didn’t want to admit it, desire.
