As Mina remained, transfixed by the sight, frozen inside the elevator, the doors began to close. She was unaware of this until they impeded her vision and were nearly closed. She looked around frantically at the controls, which were minimalist and marked in Draquun.
But the dark red hand of the Herstrakaa appeared suddenly in the crack, with a slam. The doors reopened, and she was face-to-face with the enormous beast.
“I… the storm… I meant to…” she stuttered, taking a step forward to show him that she had not intended to do anything foolish, like escape.
He glowered at her—or at least it seemed that he did—but stepped aside. Mina stepped into the room. Mozok, who had walked to the windows, turned slightly to speak to her. “Come and enjoy the view,” he told her. “It is a most spectacular storm, and once the… I do not know this word in your language, the hrkahk, arrives, we will see nothing but blackness from these windows.” He turned back to the view. “But as we are in Trothplight, I doubt very much that the view shall interest us.”
The Herstrakaa was standing next to her, and Mina heard a flutter that almost sounded like a bird ruffling his feathers. She stole a glance at him but didn’t dare look long enough to figure out what it was. She stepped forward tentatively, teetering in the shoes.
“Come,” Mozok repeated, without looking at her. “It is an order. You must obey without question.”
“Is that part of Trothplight?”
Mozok turned to look at her derisively. “I believe you know that it is,” he responded.
“And what happens if I don’t? Obey?”
Mozok turned around fully and looked at her with a stare that was impossible for Mina to decipher. He did not respond, and she waited, her heart cool with fear, for what seemed like an eternity. Just when she was about to repeat the question, or give up, Mozok spoke.
“I elect to answer your question with a demonstration, rather than a verbal explanation,” Mozok said, each of his words sharp as a knife. He raised his hand, his eyes shifting from Mina to the Herstrakaa. Then he spoke in the bird-alien’s language. He lifted his wrist, as though he were checking the time, and Mina started to turn to see what the Herstrakaa was doing.
Suddenly, she felt a hard shift of reality and almost a thud, as her feet became instantly heavy. As she had been turning her body slightly, she was suddenly off-balance, flailing, because her feet had become glued to the floor, as sure as if they had been planted in cement.
The Herstrakaa caught her flailing left wrist in a gentle grip and steadied her.
“What the—?” she started to say but cut herself off as his other hand closed around the back of her neck in the same gentle but clearly inescapable grip, and he started to push her body forward and down.
She sensed that she had no choice but to bend with him; her feet were glued to the floor, and he might as well have been a machine pushing her down to the floor. She relented, until she was bent over, realizing at the same time what was about to happen: she was going to be spanked again.
The Herstrakaa was still holding her neck and had crouched himself to do so. She heard Mozok’s footsteps as he approached and circled behind her. She felt the robe being lifted, cool air caressing her bottom. As she considered her approaching punishment, the sore skin on her bottom flared up in another wave of phantom heat, and her pussy throbbed again with the strange desire she could not define nor stop.
The robe fell over her head, obscuring her view, so she could only wait in blindness, her bottom bare and exposed, for the inevitable spanking she was to receive.
The first smack from Mozok was sharp, biting into her already sore skin. He delivered ten smacks in quick succession, each of them taking her breath away. She might have cried out, because the pain was intense, but her breath was lodged in her chest, cold shivers radiating through her body on the heels of each wave of hot, stinging pain that Mozok delivered.
She was determined to take her punishment without giving him the pleasure of her tears or even a sign of her discomfort, but her eyes grew wet in spite of her determination, and on the eighth smack, the tears spilled onto her cheeks.
Mozok delivered his final smack, and the sound echoed throughout the room. Then she heard his footsteps returning toward the window as he spoke in Herstrakaa. The giant beast released his grip on her neck just as the weight of her feet was released. She stumbled forward a bit and stood up, knowing her face was red and her hair mussed, and that tears rolled shamefully down her cheeks. She struggled to maintain a composed expression, wiped the tears quickly away, straightened her hair, and jutted her chin again.
Mozok, however, was standing exactly where he had been, watching the incoming storm.
“From this moment forward, you will also thank me for your punishments,” he said, almost as if he was commenting on the weather.
Mina lifted her chin even more defiantly and shook her hair out. She’d show him. “I’ll start now,” she said, her tone sassy. “Thank you, Sag Osolin, for my punishment.”
Her insides burned cold as she said the words. How humiliating. But that was his plan, she was sure. She could get used to it, she thought, and reminded herself of the amount of her commission should she secure it. It stiffened her resolve.
Mozok turned toward her, the same curious half-smile on his lips.
“That is not the manner in which you will thank me, trothhahlak,” he said, ominously. Then he turned back to the windows. “Come.”
Mina tried to shrug off the far greater, and more fearsome, humiliation Mozok had just delivered. She walked toward the window and stood next to Mozok, looking at the storm.
He said nothing for a few moments. Mina was about to speak when she heard his voice, low and deep.
“Kneel.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and hesitated, but her burning bottom could not bear any more spanking so soon. She crouched, then knelt, and burned with shame as she did.
