Never Submit! The Swarii Brides, Book One (21 page)

“Mmm… Magnetic… repulsions...” she murmured in her sleep.

He pursed his lips together. It wasn’t natural, what was happening to her. Her mind was expanding too quickly, her ideas were becoming boundless. She was clever before the robocuffin—she had quite a knack for fixing things. Those sorts of people were on high demand on the Libiian, Swaraan, and all the other Swarii planets. They were not-so-affectionately known as ‘gear moguls’, mostly because they charged so much money to fix things that took them very little time. 

The robocuffin, however, had made something much better than expected. Gear Moguls had irregularly the desire or the imagination to go about inventing things—inventions normally came sparsely from scientists rotting in laboratories. And the concept she created for spying on Frian signals was so genius yet so simplistic that she was able to make her temporary adjustments with a butter knife, a paper clip, a coin, and a package of chewing gum.

But for a genius, she could sure be a real idiot. She didn’t quite conceive of how fragile she was, or how irreplaceable. She was going to wind up being very short-lived if he didn’t do something about it soon.

“Don’t be too rough on the poor little thing,” his father had told him after Graham returned from putting Ellie to bed. Jack had been scribbling notes onto his electronic tablet with his headphones on; Graham was honestly surprised that he had noticed Graham re-entering the room. “Some women can’t even help but make poor decisions every five seconds. Especially the absent-minded ones.” 

“She’s going to end up dead,” Graham huffed, crossing his arms and sitting next to Jack.

“Yeah, well. That’s what
you’re
for. I’m just saying—don’t carry any resentment over her. Punish her to your heart’s content, but make sure she knows she’s forgiven afterward.”

Graham turned his head slowly in the direction of his father. “Are you the same man I grew up with? Since when are YOU compassionate?”

He chuckled, but still continued to etch upon his tablet. “I don’t know. Humans are sort of cute. The biggest struggle the federation is going to have isn’t going to be to accept the humans into our alliance—it’s going to be to keep them from becoming
pets
.” He finally slid his pen into his pocket and turned to face Graham. “So, I guess we should get down to business?”

“You’re here to promote me, aren’t you?” Graham asked flatly, not sounding particularly happy about it.

Jack’s brows knitted together. “How did you…”

“Last time I saw you, it was for the same reason,” he sighed, then got up with the intent of making himself a heavy drink at the bar.

“It’s time you rejoin the fleet, Graham,” Jack instructed. “It’s not going to kill you, not being the biggest fish in the tank anymore. And who knows? Maybe it won’t last long. Becoming a captain at thirty is nearly unheard of. You’ll be kicking me out of
my
job before you know it.”

“Ugh,” Graham grunted, as if the prospect of being the High Admiral was even more distasteful than having to be a captain of a ship attached to
one of the seven hundred ships
attached to ONE of the larger motherships. Having that many captains in so little space was a cesspool for drama.  “I think my men were hoping for a little bit of leave,” he admitted.

“
Leave?
Leave at a time like
this
? In the last few hours, I have listened to Frian plans against our fleets that would make your toes curl. This is no time for a vacation, Son. And besides, the meatballs you have running around this ship can’t survive out in the wild. They’re alone for five seconds and they’ll be up to their asses in trouble.” Jack pointed to the direction Thorton limped away in. “You and I both know it. Besides, if you’re thinking about just getting your kitten situated and safe at home, then you’ve got another think coming. She’s not just some tame Swarii girl who will bow her head to you and work on her cooking so she’ll be perfect by the time you get back. She’ll probably go about destroying the house before you get home.”

Now, as Graham lay in bed, he looked down and realized his father was right. He had to take her with him on the ship, as distasteful as the idea was. She deserved better—she deserved being safe back at home, free to shop, to socialize… to do what women do. But she would probably find some way to get killed before the week was out.

Taming Ellie was not going to be easy, especially for major infractions like blatantly disobeying him and putting her own life in danger because of it, not to mention egging Mary into a punishment. Not that Mary shouldn’t have known better than to let Ellie talk her into helping her on her harebrained schemes.

Luckily, there was a way to kill two birds with one stone. Fie needed to check her anal and vaginally elasticity anyway. If any time was a good time for such an awful test, today was the day.

* * *

Since Mary’s punishment was over by the time they reached the mothership via the shuttle, Mary and Peyton were actually able to
enjoy
the shuttle trip. Ellie thought Fie was trying to bore a whole through her head, which was making her endlessly nervous, and Graham hadn’t smiled at her once all day.

She had done her best to be helpful—she put the sheets and towels in the freshener and folded them, made sure her room was clean, repaired the communications system back to its useless originality with the help of Jack, who was so careful with her when they walked back out to the top of the ship, that he had very efficiently gotten in her way at every step. Still, she didn’t complain.

The mothership was massive; but then, she expected it to be. The mothership carried on it about two hundred thousand souls… And it wasn’t the only mothership of the Swaraan fleet. There were literally hundreds of motherships.

And Jack was the commander of every single damn one of them. “So… You guys are LOSING the war?” she asked Jack as she knelt on her seat to watch the view of the oncoming mothership from the window behind her.

“Our population has greatly declined, yes. We colonize a lot of planets, remember. An army of a few million isn’t a lot compared to the rest of our population, and it’s nothing compared to what the Frians have,” Jack explained patiently, giving her a fatherly pat on the rump as if to remind her that it was far more proper to
sit
down on a seat.

She turned around and plopped heavily back onto the tall seats that left her feet dangling slightly above the ground. “Give me a tour when we land?” she asked Jack.

“You and I have a
lot
to discuss when we land,” Graham reminded darkly, looking up from the electronic tablet he was reading. “The tour will have to wait.”

Her cheeks flushed brightly and she looked back and forth to see if anybody else had heard of her impending doom. Fie grinned back at her. He still looked a little behind the weather, and certainly tired, but he looked far better than the last time she had seen him.

“You are such a brat,” Peyton snorted, but not very loudly. She only heard him because he was seated on her other side. “I can’t believe you did that to Fie. Are you sociopathic or something?”

“Any time you feel like shutting the hell up, Peyton, you go for it. Don’t wait around for my permission,” she snapped, glaring up at him. “I didn’t mean to hurt Fie. I meant to put him out for a nap. My cousin used to slip my uncle a roofie all the time so she could go party. The man didn’t even wake up with a hangover. He was never the wiser!”

“It was stupid. You’re lucky
I’m
not in charge of you anymore, Girl,” Peyton snapped back.

“Peyton—don’t threaten my wife,” Graham said firmly, yet strangely patiently. “Or egg her on, if you would. She’s in enough trouble.”

Peyton immediately retracted and respectfully replied, “I’m sorry, Sir.  You’re right.”

Ellie leaned over Peyton so she could make incredulous eye contact with Mary. ‘Sir?’ she mouthed.

‘He’s working for Graham now,’ Mary mouthed back, rolling her eyes. ‘God help us.’

‘But… Peyton doesn’t tell ANYBODY ‘they’re right’…’ Ellie replied, still mouthing.

“Eleanor, stop it,” Graham ordered, quickly becoming annoyed by watching mouths move but no sounds come out. Not that the facial and hand gesturing wasn’t making it incredibly obvious what they were talking about, anyway.

Ellie sat there, pouting, embarrassed at constantly being snapped at, and glared down at her feet. She couldn’t wait for her punishment to be done with. She couldn’t stand having the weight of it above her head.

Or so she thought until an hour later, when she was sitting in her new room, on her new bed, fretting about how any second Graham was going to finally come through the door and spank her. At least she thought so. Now that she was thinking about it—did they
have
worse than spanking? Did she
deserve
worse? She did, after all, invent something very bad-ass. Shouldn’t that buy her
some
leniency?

Graham was taking forever—she thought she would be punished as soon as they landed, but instead he just had a solider guide her to their bedroom. At first she was relieved for not being spanked right away, now she was dreading it.

Whirr
. It was the sound of the electric door opening to the bedroom. She could hear Graham’s boots step into the room. She very slowly pulled her head up to look at him, hoping to appear as pathetic as possible.

She looked even more pathetic when she saw what could only look like a paddle in his hand. And a small, hard suitcase. She was more concerned about the paddle, though. “Can’t we talk about this?” she asked, her voice filled with hope.

He slowly rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “You blatantly disobeyed me, didn’t you? You endangered yourself, didn’t you? You and Mary nearly put Fie on his death bed.”

“Well, I
did
invent something pretty awesome,” she reminded.

Graham didn’t look as impressed with her as she obviously was with herself. “You could have waited to invent it. You could have waited until I was there, and you were safe. You could have asked for help, for protection. You knew I didn’t want you leaving the ship alone. Besides, if I let you do whatever you want just because something good comes out of it, what am I supposed to do when you screw up? Punish you for not being a genius that day?”

“Can’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?” she offered.

“No! Because one day you’re going to do something that’s going to get you killed, Ellie! I don’t want to come to this bridge again!” he replied, exasperated, putting down the small suitcase. He sat down in an armless lounging chair by the door. “Come here.”

She nervously rose from her seat on the bed and very slowly walked over. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the paddle in his hand. Now that she was a foot closer to it, she could see that it was made out of leather. It still seamed incredibly foreboding.

“This is called a slipper paddle, Eleanor. You’re sure to become
very
acquainted with it during our marriage,” he informed sternly, reaching out his hand and grabbing her forearm the second she got close enough.

“Didn’t your
hand
do a good enough job the last time?” she asked fretfully as Graham quickly pulled her across his knees and adjusted her body on his lap.

“Yes, but this should sting more and bruise less,” he added with a touch of optimism as he flipped up her little skirt and pulled her panties down and off her legs. “A gift from your new father-in-law,” he added, taking her arms and pinning them behind her back before the spanking began. 

This she was surprised by—she thought that Jack liked her. He hadn’t at first, certainly, but he did treat her very tenderly, more like a man would a daughter than a daughter-in-law. Why in the galaxy would he give his son a weapon to use against her? “What—” SMACK! Her eyes widened with the shock of even the
sound
of the paddle touching her flesh. “Oh! JESUS!” The sting was lingering, harsh. It felt like burning lightening.

The paddle came down again and again, leaving a well-sized red mark behind in its every wake. Although supposedly it didn’t ‘bruise’, she certainly didn’t think it felt any better than his hand. It felt much worse, in fact. It was biting, scalding.

Her eyes were crossing from the pain, and she was done making surprised gasps from the slaps as she viciously tried to kick her legs as if there was a way she could swim off his lap. Yep. It was definitely time to start screaming.

She was certain that there was no difference between her scream and a twelve-year-old girl’s. Not even by human standards. Her scream was shockingly shrill and squeaky. She pretty much continued until her voice broke from the strain.

And then she began to blubber. SMACK, SMACK, SMACK! The paddle went on and on. Graham didn’t speak this time, his jaw was locked tightly with resolve, obviously not listening to any of the begging that she was now beginning to try to put into babbling words. There was certainly a level of red he was going for, and her bottom was steadily becoming that. He didn’t want her to sit down comfortably for at least a couple of days.

He adjusted her quickly so her legs splayed apart a little, exposing the creamy white skin between her thighs. Eleanor treated it like he had just restarted the spanking—she had stopped struggling for the most part and had started to make her “boo-hoo-hoo” sobs, tears were running down her cheeks, her sniffling would ring constantly through the room. Spanking the thighs made her start screaming again.

But eventually he slowed. Everything on her bottom was a cherry-red color; swollen. With his finger tips he could feel the heat seeping out of her skin. But he wasn’t done.

He stood her up, and just as she tried to pull her skirt down over her bottom, he grabbed the suitcase, grabbed her arm and dragged her into the bathroom. He pointed to the bathtub and told her to bend over.

She looked up at him with her watery eyes, horrified. “But… But…”

“We’re not done,” he informed, and pointed sternly to the tub again. “Bend.”