“Commander,” someone said from the far end of the table. “She’s extraordinary.”
“Yes,” Talyn said.
The rose-gray officer took a step toward us. Just a single one. Like he’d forgotten himself or made a calculation and decided to chance it. His eyes were on me.
Talyn’s hand found the small of my back.
He went still, the sort of particular stillness of someone very dangerous deciding whether to move. The chain in his other hand shortened by a few links. It was just enough for me to notice. I came imperceptibly closer to his side.
The officer stopped.
He looked at Talyn’s face, and he must have found something there to make him take a deliberate step back.
The hand at my back stayed where it was, but his fingers brushed against me.
I breathed carefully and tried to examine what was happening in my chest with any kind of useful neutrality.
He was proud of me.
It wasn’t the way he’d been proud of making me cry over his knee, or proud of wrestling pleasure from a body that should have known better. This was different. He was standing in front of the men he commanded, and he was proud that I was the one on his leash. That I was wearing what he’d dressed me in, marked with what he’d marked me with, standing here with my chin level.
Like I was worth showing off.
I hadn’t been worth showing off to anyone in a very long time.
I filed it away next to everything else I wasn’t ready to examine, which was becoming quite a crowded place.
Talyn turned to his men. “Carry on,” he said, and led me away.
By the time we came back upstairs, everything was pristinely clean. There wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere. I spotted an android working in one of the rooms with a duster and an almost silent vacuum, cleaning who knows what.
It was early in the morning by the angle of the sun through the windows. It was a nearly cloudless sunny day, the blue of the sky bright.
Seeing the city in daylight was daunting, however.
The buildings seemed taller, sleeker, and much bigger than they looked the night before. The streets down below were full of alien men and the skies seemed to come alive with flying ships hurtling through the buildings with ease.
He tugged me along and I was forced to look away from one of the windows as we left his suite. We walked down a hall into a clear glass elevator on the exterior of the building. The doors closed and I looked out at the dizzying view down below. We were so high up and I took a step away from it just to move closer to the door in a protective measure.
“You don’t particularly like heights, do you?” Talyn asked.
“I’ve climbed trees in the past and been fine, but this is a bit different,” I admitted, and he chuckled softly.
“Indeed.”
“Where are we going?” I pressed. He seemed to be in a light mood. I’d take advantage of that as much as I could. As soon as I asked the question though, his face darkened considerably.
“You and I are going to deal with the problem of the human renegades together,” he responded, and I stiffened visibly.
“What does that mean?” I asked with growing concern. His eyes had turned almost black, the violet of his irises barely noticeable anymore. I took a step away from him, but there wasn’t anywhere to go inside the elevator.
“Your people are the ones who are attacking at my borders, aren’t they?”
I didn’t answer right away, and he grasped my arm, tossing me against the wall so that I was forced to catch myself with my palms. He flipped up the back of my dress, baring my bottomwith ease. I was never more aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing panties until that moment.
He spanked me viciously hard several times and when he wasn’t pleased with that, he kicked my legs open and slapped my pussy. I cried out and tried to close my legs so I could protect myself, but he didn’t let me. He gripped me with his palm, squeezing lightly.
“Answer my question, Raiza,” he demanded.
