Never Submit! The Swarii Brides, Book One (20 page)

“Thank you for your honesty,” admitted Graham, also sighing. “I’ll talk to your husband later on. Just make sure that idiot, Thorton, is okay.”

“Okay,” Mary said, her throat dry. She pushed off from her place on the sofa and slowly trudged down the hall.

Graham watched her go until she was out of sight, and then let his gaze slowly rotate back to Eleanor. “You.” That was all he said for a few long, silent seconds. His tone was very discouraging. “You have been a very, very bad girl, Eleanor.”

“Yes,” Ellie said, clearing her throat and tapping the pads of her fingers against themselves nervously. “I think you might be looking at this from a bad angle. There were things that went wrong, yes. BUT I couldn’t help it. That robocuffin has made me crazy, Graham! Everything’s been so clear! I have all these ideas now, all these thoughts! I couldn’t just sit on this experiment. It’s
really
important.” She looked imploringly at her father in law. “
Can you please explain how important this is?
”

“Don’t get my father in the middle of this,” Graham demanded, his jaw locking. “The experiment would have been done fine TOMORROW. Or the next day. With proper system backups. With precautions made. With supervision, safety previsions. This isn’t even our ship anymore; Thorton sold it. We have to leave in the morning, and now we have to rectify the communications to where it was, or else we’d be putting your new technology into a stranger’s hands. AND if you BROKE the communications system, we’d be liable for the damages! That’s thousands of dollars and it would come out of
everyone’s
prize money. You’d be less than popular.”

“I just wanted to work on it by myself—I had to figure it out on the fly a little bit,” she replied, hoping it was a good reason.

“The way I understood it, you’re lucky I didn’t find you frozen to the wing. You probably thought it was pretty cold out there during the day? Do you know how cold it is NOW? It’s ten below out there. It’s
cold
. You’re lucky my father came by to save you. Not to mention if you missed the wing when you slipped…”

She sighed audibly. This was going just as badly as she’d imagined. She leaned her head wearily against Jack’s chest, who rubbed her back with paternal comfort. “
Don’t wear her hide out tonight
,
Boy,
” Jack told him in shal’ta, obviously so she could hear that he was pulling what strings he could for her. “
She’s tired, and your men will have to move in the morning. You and I have to talk about your next assignment, anyway.
”

Graham looked like he was swallowing back a very bitter flavor that was in his mouth, but eventually he conceded. “Say goodnight to my father,” he told her, firmly but too wearily to feel threatening. “We’ll be discussing this tomorrow.”

Ellie swallowed. Somehow, she didn’t trust that they’d be
discussing
much.

* * *

“What did you call him to do this?” Mary asked, wrapping Thorton’s knee now that it was reset.

“Do you know what a zoopafoob is?” Thorton asked, gritting his teeth together.

“No.”

Thorton dropped his head back in his pillow. “Yeah, I don’t think there IS a human equivalent. Let’s just say it’s pretty bad. Still, he cheated. And Ellie’s gonna kill me when she realizes that I gambled away the motorcycle. I know she wanted me to at least take her on a ride before the Boss made her get rid of it…”

Peyton came in finally from visiting Fie, his expression reflexively dark. He
knew
. And what was strange was that she was glad that he knew. She hadn’t been able to really look at him since he returned; she was too guilty.

Mary glanced at him, blushed, and then gave Thorton a sort of desperate expression. “Alright, so, before you do anything rash to my Mary,” Thorton said, understanding Peyton’s expression. “Understand that she’s a good girl, led astray by the small one.”

“I can’t believe that you’re the one who drugged him,” Peyton sighed, obviously disappointed. “What could Ellie
have possibly
said to talk you into doing that? Please say blackmail.”

Mary blushed; she was wrapping Thorton’s knee as slowly as possible. “She explained what she was doing, and I got lost somewhere when she was explaining something about magnetic repulsion and radio waves. I didn’t even think she had brains, you know? Not
real
ones. I just thought I’d throw her a bone... I thought she knew how to keep out of trouble…” She shrugged when she saw Peyton’s incredulous gaze. “She was pretty damn good at it when she worked for
Jazeel
.”

Peyton looked somewhat incredulous that Mary could be that naive. “Mary, Baby… We worked as a
team
. I was in charge of making sure she didn’t do anything stupid, and not because Jazeel wanted me to. All she could do was listen in on Jazeel’s inner monologue—she doesn’t have enough sense to rub two thoughts together. Never has. I’ve never seen someone so tunnel-visioned in my life.”

“I didn’t know,” Mary admitted, shaking her head innocently. 

“You knew better.”

“Peyton, let her be, eh? She’s patched
me
up pretty well!” Thorton peeped in, patting Mary’s hand reassuringly. “We should all be lucky enough to have a Mary in our lives!”

Mary shook her head, her face blushing. “No, no. Poor Fie—I don’t know what I was thinking! Even Ellie almost died tonight. It was the biggest clusterscrew in history.” Her lips were curled with disgust for herself. She had been at Fie’s side all night, discovering how much an eight-foot-man could throw up. She discovered that it was a lot. She’s lucky he didn’t have heart failure. She could have never lived with herself.

Thorton was surprised to see a tear drop down Mary’s cheek. She was deep in picturing how bad things could have gotten that night. “It’s okay, Mary. Everything worked out okay,” Thorton reminded.

“You’re done,” Mary told him, sticking out a strong chin. “Just get some sleep, Thorton, and for God Sakes—take it easy.”

Peyton’s eyes even softened when he saw tears. He led her out of the room with his hand gently on the small of her back. He heard her sniffle.

“Thorton’s right. Everything did end up working for the best,” he heard himself saying soothingly. “Don’t cry, Darlin’…”

“I was stupid.”

“
Ellie
was stupid.” If he didn’t know any better, he would say he was arguing against his earlier self. He didn’t like to see his wife torture herself. 

“No, Ellie was being Ellie.
I
was being stupid,” she shook her head stubbornly, more tears escaping her eyes. “If I hadn’t done it, Ellie wouldn’t have been in any trouble. She wouldn’t have gotten the chance to get into it! Poor Fie!” She wiped her face clean with her hand, but tears soon replaced the ones that she wiped off.

“Let’s just go to sleep for now, Honey. You’ll feel better in the mornin’,” he cooed sympathetically, putting his muscular arms tightly around her.

He got her to believe that sleep would make her feel better. But when they did go to sleep, she just dreamt of it. Dreamt of Ellie being stuck up thirty feet, the bottoms of her bare feet stuck to the spaceship as she froze to death in a heavily-polluted space station. Peyton had WAY better circulation than either of the girls, and he still had to wear several layers—even double
socks
. And he still came in half-frozen!

After the same nightmare woke her up twice, she sighed loudly and crawled out of bed and began rummaging around in the dark for Peyton’s belt, which was still on the pants he was wearing that day.

It was probably about six o’clock in the morning, which meant the Swarii were probably up and at ‘em already, and Mary and Peyton had been asleep for a measly four hours. But when she found the belt, she got up on the bed and knelt by Peyton’s head. “Honey?”

Peyton slowly woke up by opening his eyes and closing them. Shocked to realize he just saw his wife leaning over his head in the darkness, his eyes opened again, this time much more awake and much wider. “What’s wrong?” he asked, wiping the sleep off of his face as he sat up. He turned on the light next to him.

“I think you should spank me,” she said quietly, her cheeks flushing, wringing the belt in her hands.

Peyton’s eyebrows raised with surprise. “Just the other day, you said I didn’t have the right to spank you. Now you demand it?” he didn’t sound incredulous as much as amused.

“I can’t sleep, Peyton. I feel like… like I owe someone something, you know? It’s weighing on my conscience. I don’t want to get away with anything. You
know
Ellie won’t, and I don’t want her to get punished but I get off scot-free.”

Peyton sighed. He was obviously tired. He was having a nice dream where they were both somewhere warm, like Maui. Maui with a TV close by, playing the super-bowl. It had been awhile since he saw one of those. Still, he didn’t like the sad look on Mary’s face—and there were worse things than one’s wife wanting to get punished for wrong-doings.

“Alright,” he said, rolling out of bed and heading over towards his pants, which he quickly pulled on, as if being naked while punishing her was an inappropriate act. “I was going to punish you. But then you were doing such a great job of punishing yourself. But you’re right—punishment should come from me.” He opened his palm so she could lay the belt into it. “The great thing about having me around is so you don’t HAVE to punish yourself.”

She already looked like she was second-guessing this whole thing, and very slowly put the belt into his hand.

He put his other hand on her cheek and gently stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I’m really proud of you—for coming to me for this,” he told her, smiling softly.

“Good you think so,” she replied, sounding like she was in pain already. “I think I must be
nuts
.”

“You’ll feel better about it, I promise.” He helped her off of the bed and wheeled her naked body around the other side of him. He sat on the bed and pulled her over his lap. The cut still healing above his ankle tingled at the remembrance of the last time—the last spanking that was already so different. She was letting him arrange her body over his knee so her wrists were pinned to the small of her back by one of his hands, and his leg held down the backs of her knees. There wasn’t very far she could go.

“Now, what are you about to be spanked for?” he asked somberly, looking at the small bruises that were still lingering from the first time.

“Doing something devious; let alone
far
against the Hippocratic Oath…” she groaned, crossing her feet nervously.

“Yes, Ma’am. That’s correct.” She was adorable, Peyton thought. He just loved her. It nearly killed him when he raised the belt up and brought the leather down upon her bottom, and he found himself cringing when he did it. SMACK! There was hardly a sound from her—merely a guttural moan. He brought it down again, and again.

About the tenth smack, she cried, “Please stop! That’s enough!” but he kept on.

“It’s not enough,” he replied firmly. “We’re just gettin’ goin’.” And he was just getting going—her bottom was barely welted enough to make any part of it even pink. And although she asked for this lesson, he was still going to teach it properly. What she had done, he reminded himself, was dangerous, and irresponsible, particularly for a girl in her late twenties. With Ellie it was predictable—if she was the type who’d go to college, she’d be one of the first of them to get drunk and show her boobs on ‘Girls Gone Wild’. Mary wasn’t. She had more self-control than that. But obviously, she could be talked into stupid.

“Peyton!” she yelped. “I’m sorry! Just stop!”

She began to try to violently squirm from his grip. But he knew she wouldn’t bite him again. He didn’t want to have to punish her for THAT infraction again. This time, it would have been much worse.

The belt, be it convenient, was not one of his favorite tools to spank with. When he had time, he liked to use a wooden paddle at the palace—that was easier to wield. Belts and straps were long enough to give him less control of the territory he was spanking. He wanted her bottom a nice shade of red, but he didn’t want her too bruised.

She squealed and screamed loud enough for probably the whole ship to hear, and that, he decided, was for the better. Everybody needed to hear that serious mistakes were dealt with, even by the humans. But eventually her screams and demands shrank down into sobs. Finally, she had fully submitted to her punishment. She was letting him do this—she didn’t even fight against him any longer.

Her bottom was a very pretty red—it was a dark color, really. The zone he had covered was from the top of her bottom to nearly above her knees, mostly because he knew that thighs hurt more. She should feel properly punished from this—she would feel better. Her penance was fully paid.

Finally, he felt he could put the belt down and rub her bottom as she sobbed over his knee. He released her hands. “Shh, baby,” he cooed at her. “It’s over.” He helped her into standing, watching her continue crying, and took her onto his lap. He held her and rocked her for a long time, but she eventually fell asleep, a heavy one.

He smiled and laid her down and pulled the sheets over her. He pulled off his pants and crawled into the bed next to her. “You are so sexy,” he whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “And you’re such a good wife.” He put his thick arm around her and nuzzled his nose into her long, blond curls, his groin pushed against her tender, warm bottom. It was easy for him to fall asleep.

* * *

Graham could hear the distant sounds of Mary’s chastisement in the hours of the early morning. He looked down at the soft little body that was snuggling into him for warmth so that she was practically lying underneath of him, and he sighed.

He was too angry with Ellie to even punish her last night. He had put her to bed and then went out to rejoin his father, who he hadn’t seen in person in two years. Graham had to give his little wife this much: his father loved her, and his father didn’t even
like
a whole too many people.