She sniffled. She wasn’t even sure how she had earned this spanking, so she was afraid to speak.
Keep it simple,she told herself.
“Yes,” she said, and the humiliation of the response made a lump develop in the back of her throat.
Rychor slipped his hand beneath her torso and sat her back up on his lap. The lump traveled down her esophagus, a hot stone of shame that settled in her chest, where it burned slowly and poured into her.
Rychor had seated his body on the platform, which was tall enough that she needed assistance to get on it unless she faced it. For him, it was like an easy chair to fallinto.
She fell against his muscular torso with a mere nudge from his hand, and settled against him as his arms wrapped protectively around her. When she closed her eyes, a tear spilled from beneath her eyelid and rolled down her cheek, and she wanted to wipe it away but held her hands together in her lap.
She was resisting it with every fiber of her being, but shelikedthe feeling of sitting in Rychor’s lap, her bottom burning, her acquiescence pleasing him. He stroked her back in silence as she calmed down—not just outwardly, as a facade, butinside,really calming.
Rychor’s demeanor was stern when at last, he nudged her to sit up on his lap, his hand moving from her back, over her shoulder, and down the center of her front, between her breasts. She didn’t have to look down to know that her nipples had formed stiff peaks; they were crying out for his touch.
She sniffed again and dared to look him in the eye.
“You have been spanked because you did not obey,” Rychor told her.
“What—” she began, but clamped her mouth shut as soon as she began her question.
“You have been instructed not to ask so many questions,” Rychor said, severely. But as he did so, his eyes darted around the room, then poignantly back to hers.
Was he telling her something? It seemed so. He seemed to be telling her that they were being watched. But she could be wrong about that—she could be wrong about everything. She was reading far too much human behavior into this alien race, assigning motives to the aliens’ actions that were probably silly to them.
Still, she clung to the idea, even though she knew it was likely her own mind playing tricks on her, attempting to portray her captor as more caring than he actually was.
She hung her head and nodded, in silence, the cool disappointment and humiliation burning in her chest. Surelythiswas their game: to break her down, humiliate her into submission, obtain her “consent,” and then use her body for breeding.
She couldn’t possibly justgive in. Even if her body seemed to be receptive to… well, everything Rychor did.
She sat up straight, determined to avoid another punishment and give in to Rychor in theory. She needed more answers, more time, more information, to make a plan. But she didn’t dare ask him questions now. She would wait, until they were alone again.
Rychor stood up, placing her on the floor as he did so. His eyes wandered over her body, lingering on the liquid between her thighs. She blushed, humiliated beyond belief, but waited with her head bowed for his instruction.
A sound came from somewhere above them, like a speaker system. It took her a moment to realize it was the voice of an alien, and she knew, somehow, that it was Afina. She spoke in the language she and Rychor shared, and Rychor waited, his features impassive, as she barked what seemed to be instructions.
A pause, while Sonya lifted her head and looked at him imploringly. He then touched the back of his neck, and a very short burst of speech left his mouth. He walked toward the door, giving her an icy look and a single line of instruction: “Do not speak. You will remain here.”
She stayed where she was, looking at the floor, her heart beating erratically like a trapped fledgling in her chest.
CHAPTER7
Afina was displeased, and as she was the lone female of their clan, her displeasure could be felt by all in its most undiluted form. The Ryvokia psyche, partially shared through their technology, was especially sensitive to the desires and distastes of any female mind synced with it.
But if her displeasure hadn’t been known from its dark current in the shared mind space, her face certainly announced her annoyance. Afina was not one to hide her feelings.
She turned to face him, her displeasure burning through him as painfully as if she had stabbed him with a red-hot sword.
“This human is not like the others,” Afina said, communicating in their language, a mixture of vocalizations and thoughts radiated into their connective tissue via their internal mind spaces. “Her psychological profile is almost identical to the others’. And yet she continues to resist submission.” She paused, and then, with her typical abruptness, spat: “Theories?”
Afina always asked for the opinions of the males, but Rychor sensed—and rightly, if one surveyed Afina’s actions—that she did so to keep up appearances. The appearance of a democratic society; the appearance that she, by virtue of being a female, did not possess the ultimate power over all of her clan. The truth—and Afina knew it as much as any of them did—was that she needed only toseemunhappy, and a profound, instinctive desire swelled in the brain stem of every Ryvokia beneath her command: to make her displeasure go away.
None of them were her mate, though, so they would never be able to make Afina truly happy.
“I think you are correct,” he answering, electing, as he often did, to share his thoughts only through vocalizations. He didn’t need Afina sensing his feelings, and feelings could escape his grasp if he connected with their shared consciousness. “She is different,” he continued, because Afina was still displeased. “She may require a different approach.”
This piqued Afina’s interest. Her keen, very old eyes glittered with a new thought, and he felt a surge of energy within her. Her feelings shifted, but they were unreadable to him. Just as he started to feel their contours, they receded, like a tide, slipping from the system and leaving nothing in their place.
