“You whine like a juvenile,” he says. “Do you want to be treated like a little baby? Is that it? Should I treat you like a little pup? Crate you? Take you out to the toilet? Ensure you are not messing yourself?”
He is not going to let me get away with this. The others just put me on my knees and go about their business. But Sharp is more patient than that, and smarter too.
“Kneel, pet,” he says. “Or what happens to you will be so much more humiliating than the simple act of going to your knees. I can promise you that.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” I say, only somewhat joking. I thrill to threats. I know nobody on this ship is going to hurt me.
“Don’t be,” Sharp says flatly. “Kneel.”
I almost kneel. I seriously really almost do. But at the last moment my knees just refuse to bend. There’s something in a human that just doesn’t want to give in. I think it’s built into our DNA.
He picks me up, and starts stripping me of what little clothing I had on. In seconds, I am naked. He attaches a leash to my collar and pushes me into a hands and knees position.
“You’re going to crawl,” he tells me. “You’re going to follow me naked on hands and knees until your kneeling becomes second nature to you.”
I try to get up, of course. But he pushes me back down, then tugs on the leash.
“Come,” he says. “Come, and think about how much easier and less uncomfortable it would have been if you could have just kneeled to begin with.”
“This is mean,” I whimper in complaint.
“Mean would be whipping you for your insolence. Mean would be taking my leather tongue lash to your beautiful breasts and buttocks until you begged for mercy—and then showing you none. Now come with me, pet.”
“I’m sorry, Sharp,” I whisper, pulling back against the leash.
“I’m sure you are,” he says. “I promised you that you would regret your actions. And now you are. Take some heart that you can trust my threats.”
He gives me quite literally no choice in the matter. I can’t physically resist him. He’s much stronger than I am, and he is determined to make this punishment happen.
That doesn’t mean I don’t try to get out of it. I flop to the side and let him simply pull on the leash. This results in an unpleasant choking sensation. I gag and writhe and make myself look as pathetic as possible. Unfortunately this also has the effect of making me feel as pathetic as possible.
“If you don’t want it to hurt, don’t make it hurt,” he says, his voice calm and even.
“Just let me do what I want,” I whine.
His stern face cracks just a little. He smirks and shakes his head. “No. It wouldn’t do you any good.”
He crouches down in front of me, running his hand beneath my chin and turning my face up to his. His alien gaze searches mine. I feel probed. I feel known.
“Hands and knees, pet. And next time I ask for you to kneel… kneel.”
He drops a kiss on my forehead, and then he makes me crawl.
I remember too, that I eat my dinner naked, kneeling at his feet. Kronos and Boss act like this is normal, even though every part of my body feels like it is absolutely aflame with shame.
He offers me a treat from his fingers every now and then. This is clearly the only way I will eat this evening, so though I want to be prideful and refuse, I accept it.
“Good girl,” he praises, giving me a little sweet treat.
“God,” I mutter to myself as my face goes bright fucking red. The things these mates have done to me. The things I have done to them…
I come back to the present moment as the ground rushes up at me faster than it seemed to be doing before. I don’t know what that’s about, but I guess it’s a good thing because it means I can get into the fray and save the aliens who treat me like an animal but somehow make it hot.
“Stop!” I shout, floating in with my parachute. My plan was to kick the guns out of their hands, or at least kick them over. I have a lot of momentum that comes from falling from the sky. But I don’t have a lot of experience in directing myself while fallingfrom the sky. It’s my first time. So instead of coming through the attacking soldiers like a bowling ball through pins, I skim over their heads and sort of knees up barrel right through my mates.
It’s not all a loss though. The parachute lines and the canopy fall behind me and grab the soldiers up sort of like a big moving net that can’t be resisted because of all the aforementioned momentum.
“I’ve saved you!” I declare at the top of my lungs, as my mates go through the writhing canvas and kill every single one of the soldiers while they are unable to get up.
