Never Submit! The Swarii Brides, Book One (14 page)

Her fever was steadily returning because of it—which was embarrassing. Thorton had already made a couple of snide jokes that Graham had been unable to satiate his wife, and if Thorton was joking about it to his face, than normally the rest of the crew was joking about it behind his back.

Yes, yes. He would order her a medical exam from Fie that afternoon. She could do a full analysis on Ellie and let him know her limits.

Ellie was still sobbing on his lap, making ‘boo hoo hoo’ noises that were actually quite heartbreaking. He had it in mind to make her stand in the corner for an hour, but instead, he found himself arranging her body around until she sat on his lap, where he put his large arms tightly around her.

“Was that
so
horrible?” he asked softly, becoming disturbed by her amount of crying.

She didn’t reply. She was definitely feeling quite well-chastised, but she didn’t know whether or not to still be angry about being disciplined. She was mostly glad it was over, and to have her head rest up against Graham’s nice, warm, comfortable chest.

She felt like a well-watched over child and fell asleep within moments.

* * *

“
Te’ka! Te’ka, boo iki dek
!” wheezed Thorton, who felt, for the third time in a row, manhandled.

“Speak HUMAN,” demanded Peyton, increasing pressure on Thorton’s pinned position. “Or do you want
more
?”

“YOU
WIN, you asshole!
”

With a victorious grin, Peyton released him, leaving Thorton able to untwist himself. Thorton lay flat on the floor afterwards, looking pretty mangled. “Best six out of eleven,” Thorton finally huffed while rising, trying to find his center of balance again.

“Somebody’s going to get hurt, don’t you think?” Graham finally said from the doorway, playing with his t-shirt as if he was trying to dry out the wet tears on it. “I think the Beast might be going easy on you, Thorton, I hate to tell you. Besides, he just nearly smothered you with your own kneecap.”

Peyton laughed and put his jacket back on as Thorton huffed angrily, “No
way
am I letting a human beat me.”

“You already have. Five times,” reminded Peyton before he turned around to Graham. “How is she? Is she angry with me?”

“No.” Graham looked behind him towards the hallway. “She actually just fell asleep. She needs to get checked out—hopefully she’s not coming down with something. She sleeps all the time.”

“She fell asleep durin’ the…” Peyton began wide-eyed.

“No, no;
after
. But seriously—she sleeps like… six hours a day.”

“She’s
supposed
to be sleeping about
eight
,” Mary replied from the doorway, rather tersely. “Really—if you’re gonna be married to a human, Commander, you should learn at least a few
basics
. Even the
Frians
aren’t so imperceptive.”

Graham’s face flushed red with embarrassment. He huffed, “There’s a lot to learn! The interweb is a very large place, and there isn’t anything written by an actual
human
on there. And the Frians write human information much like it was a pet owner’s manual, not quite an anatomic encyclopedia.”

Mary shrugged. “What about Swarii? Haven’t the Swarii studied humans at all?”

“We’ve
sort
have been fighting a pretty tough war. So, we’ve
barely
studied you—and certainly we haven’t done so very thoroughly. Even the mission where we sent a team to Earth was a failure. Only one member of the team ever came back, and even then—it was limited information; possibly even completely inaccurate. The Frians, unfortunately, are winning this war right now—they have the time on their hands
necessary
to enslave an alien species properly,” he defended, walking over to plop down into his commander’s chair.

“Well, one thing you should get to know is that grown-women don’t get spanked on Earth.” Mary raised her chin snootily as she said this, planting her feet firmly next to the commander’s chair.

Mary had to admit, she had hated that Peyton would spank so many of the girls, and had always been glad to have never been one of them. She couldn’t really hold it against Peyton then, however—it was an alien planet, and he didn’t have much alternative. But to see grown-women treated like children was something she’d never get used to. “In fact,
children
don’t even get corporally punished there anymore!”

Although she would be the first to admit that Ellie wasn’t exactly the ‘obedient’ type, or the most intellectual—Ellie had fallen under the ‘salt of the Earth’ category, for sure, and Mary had watched Ellie drive Peyton up the wall on many occasions. But she had also hoped that after a rescue, if it was possible, that Ellie would finally live without fear of punishment… Something unlike what she had heard going on in Ellie’s bedroom.

Graham looked at Mary’s steady expression then slowly turned his head towards Peyton, who was shaking his head and saying, “Maybe in
Connecticut
they don’t. In
Texas,
though—”

Mary quickly threw her hands up in the air. “Oh,
here
we go! Another ‘tough in Texas’ speech! Well, let’s make it clear now, Buster. You’ll never be touching
me
or
our children
that way!”

Peyton’s face twisted up to begin to argue, but before he could get a word out, the room was filled with mocking laughter, including from Graham himself, who thought Mary’s resolute expression—and hands-on-the-hips posture was just darling, as was her crazy notions.

Peyton’s face turned bright red. “Just because most of America has forgotten about the proper way for a husband to handle his wife, doesn’t mean
I have
, Missy! The only reason
you’ve
never gotten a good hidin’ is because you’ve never given me a reason. Keep up your naggin’, though, and see where you end up!”

Mary sputtered angrily, looking too taken aback by Peyton’s threat to fully contrive words.

“I LOVE humans. I
want one
!” Thorton finally blurted, looking merrily entertained by the tense energy surging between the couple. “She is SO cute.”

“Learn when to shut up, Thorton,” Mary demanded, turning her head to glare daggers at him.

“What I really hope to see is when she gets to Swaraan and is absolutely
shocked
by how much goes on there. Hell, the Admiral took a belt to
me
until I was eighteen!” he continued. Then, thoughtfully, he added, “Which is odd, really—because I don’t think he punished Graham since he was
thirteen
… And he wasn’t
my
father….”

“It’s because you never
did
learn when to shut up,” replied Graham with a laugh. It was true—when he had grown up with Thorton, Graham’s father, the High Admiral, had taken him under-wing as his own, especially because Thorton’s own father was dead, and his mother was small and feeble, even before the plague when she finally passed on.

Graham finally looked over at Mary, who was so upset that she was practically shaking. “You do need to get over it. That’s the way things are: children and naughty wives get punished.”

“
Naughty wives
?” she replied venomously. “What the Swarii need is to wake up to modern times! Put away all the misogyny,” she decided sternly. “Start acting like an intellectual species!”

“Well, if our culture upsets the
little human girl
, let’s change!” said Fie, who was normally quite quiet, from across the room where he was at the navigating controls. “Let’s just throw about a hundred years and the heritage of several species of our ancestors out the window—better to do that than to offend your
delicacies
.”

Graham put up a hand as if to calm Fie, who still looked quite insulted and defensive. “Have patience with her, Fie,” he instructed. “She doesn’t know better.”

“No. I
do
know better,” assured Mary stubbornly, stomping out of the room. “
Troglodytes
.”

As she stormed into the hall, all the men looked towards Peyton, who shrugged. “Nope. I don’t know what that meant, either.”

* * *

Even before any of the humans were called in for a medical examination by Fie, the girls were already in a nasty mood. Ellie woke up with the taste of soap still in her mouth and a sore rear end, and, as she was trying to avoid her punisher, had found Mary immediately when she braved leaving the bedroom. She quickly discovered that Mary was all in a huff.

Still, Mary was in the mood to sympathize with Ellie about her chastisement. “It’s not right! None of it!” Mary assured her with fervor. “I want to go back to Earth.”

“Supposedly it’s about a two month trip
that way
,” Ellie mumbled, pointing towards the back of the ship. “I already asked. And trust me, you have no idea how much I wish we could be home, too. Since I got abducted, it’s been one long train of aliens sticking their fingers up my tush and then abusing it. Now, I have some sort of strange addiction to an alien’s peeper—there’s nothing I can do to get away. Once I think I’m done with this stupid ‘sickness’ of theirs, it comes back! And then I’m at Graham’s feet again!”

“I was about to say—you look pretty feverish,” Mary acknowledged, with a sad smile. “So, I guess you believe all that union stuff now?”

“Believe it? Ha! I
live
it.” Ellie shook her head. “Maybe I’m
not
all human.”

“Hell, I could have told you that!” Mary replied immediately, grinning.

Ellie didn’t look amused by the joke. “Seriously—you really have no idea the weird stuff that has been going on in my brain. I really think I’m
other
. Why else would I be like this? And the thing is: I’m not even very well equipped for sex. I can barely walk afterwards—I swear last time I pulled my groin,” she complained.  “His peepers is, like… BIG.”

Mary made a face of disgust. “Really, I don’t need that much detail.”

Ellie chuckled. “Ah. I get it. So, I get the gory ass-sex details back at the palace, but now that I have a story to share, nobody wants to hear it?”

Mary nodded. “Yep. That’s pretty much right.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, her face still looking angry as she went back to the original topic. “You know, I graduated the first in my class at Harvard. First in my class! I was gonna
be
something. Someone. I worked my ass off to get my MD! And then,
poof
! I get abducted and before you can say, ‘Tim Gunn’, I’m a seamstress slave trying to avoid eye contact from my alien
masters
, being sold, then bought, then bought and sold…”

“Hey, at least you got into OUR palace in the end. Peyton fell head-first when he first looked at you. Know what he did the first time WE met? Strapped me!
Hard
. And I hadn’t even been spanked before in my
life
! It was a FINE how-do-you-do, let me tell ya!” Ellie grumped.

Mary looked up at the ceiling, shaking her head. “That man can be a real ogre. And this living on Swaraan isn’t going to help him one bit. It’s already making him more macho then ever!”

“And just when I thought Peyton couldn’t get any
more
macho...”

“You and I know two different Peytons. I know the sweet, kind, careful, thoughtful-leader Peyton, and
you
know the brotherly-fatherly, protective, self-righteous, easily-frustrated Peyton,” she noted. “Although, now that the commander’s in the picture, and he doesn’t have
you
or the other girls
anymore to vent to, I’m beginning to see more and more of the Peyton YOU know.”

“Ha!” Ellie gloated in response. “Well, hopefully the sex is good, that’s all I can say.”

Mary’s face blushed. “It’s
very
good, actually… It was everything I ever hoped it could be.”

“Good, because the brute is
all yours
.” Ellie’s eyes suddenly squinted into slits. “I still have to get even with him, though, for turning me in. The
prick
. The traitor!”

“I can’t believe you keep letting them manhandle you—men. I would
never
let Peyton put a hand on
me
.”

Ellie sized Mary up—Mary was about four inches taller than her, maybe a tad bit more muscular, about nine years older… But Ellie still raised a doubting eyebrow. “LET doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it, honey. I’m somehow married to a seven-foot Swarii, and YOU’RE married to a six-and-a-half-foot BEAST. You’ll
not let
him spank you as much as I
don’t let
them spank
me
.”

“It just wouldn’t happen,” assured Mary stubbornly, closing her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” Ellie said, slinking away, feeling a little slighted.
Was
she weak? Is
that
why she’d been spanked? Or did Mary absolutely have no idea what she was talking about?

During and after the conversation, all Ellie was thinking about was her last spanking; reliving it. She had asked for it, she knew that—it was that submissive new part of her that did it. Did the same part keep her from fighting?

She looked over in Mary’s direction, jealous. She began to think that maybe she had a way to keep spankings from happening; that Mary was right. She’d stick to her guns.

And then she spent the rest of the afternoon getting manhandled by Fie, who—standing even a foot taller than Graham put Andre the Giant to shame—manipulated her fighting movements like she was an angry kitten. He made short work out of his unfortunate task to get x-rays and take blood samples from her, Peyton and Mary.

She left with a glance towards Mary as if to say, “I’d like to see YOU try.”

Mary merely smirked at her and shook her head as if Ellie was just being silly.

Chapter Seven

The next afternoon, Graham was running diagnostics on the engine when he found Fie, who was usually a quiet, calm fellow, running in his direction, shouting with excitement.