Page 19 of Commander's Slave
The hopelessness was the worst, because it choked her breath and made her tears fall faster.
Edek paused but kept his hand on her bottom, a threat that he could resume spanking at any second. “I will be a fair master to you, Betsy. I won’t cause you any permanent harm. The worst you can expect from me is a good strapping if you’ve committed a serious offense. Your behavior reflects on me and I expect you to conduct yourself accordingly, especially while in the presence of others in the householdandin town. Disobedient slaves in other households are punished much more severely than you will be here. You should consider yourself lucky, little human.”
Lucky. Right. She sniffled and willed the tears to stop, but her bottom ached and she hated the emotion swelling in her chest. She must be crazy, because a little voice in the back of her mind whispered that she might in fact be lucky. If the disgusting pervert had won her instead of Draken, she suspected she would be much worse off right now. Possibly dead, or wishing for the release of death.
She sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “I apologize, Master. I will sleep where you tell me to sleep, and I will try my best to obey you.” The words she uttered so easily would’ve shocked the old Betsy. The Betsy who’d shouted at her father that she wouldn’t marry a Kall warrior, the Betsy who’d escaped DC and made it hundreds of miles north, all on her own.
But she wasn’t that girl anymore. She might as well have lost her name for real the day she stood on the slave block. In a way, she already had. She was Heslla, a human slave named after an orange flower that grew high in the mountains of an alien world she would never escape.
“I’m glad to hear that, Betsy.” Edek caressed her bottom, rubbing some of the sting away. To Betsy’s mortification, his touch warmed her insides and incited a pulsing ache between her thighs. Her whole body tingled. “Now, we will fetch your belongings from the closet and bring them here. Then you may get ready for bed first. You are free to use my washroom.”
He set her on her feet, and she rushed to pull up her panties, wincing as the material scraped over her punished bottom. Edek escorted her downstairs, pausing to allow her to retrieve her shoes. He continued guiding her to the closet and helped her gather up her dresses and the bag of toiletries, then he hurried her back to his room.
How strange it was to get ready for bed in his bathroom. She quickly washed her face, brushed her teeth, and donned her thick nightgown. Afterward, she slipped into the bedroom and stared longingly at the rug in front of the fire, hoping she could sleep there, rather than in bed next to Edek.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He nodded at the bed. “Get under the covers. I expect to find you there when I’m finished in the washroom.”
“But Master,” she said, careful to speak softly. “Shouldn’t I sleep on the floor? I-I am happy to sleep on the floor. Truly, I am.” Yes, she longed for the comfort of a real bed, but nothisbed. If she must sleep in his room, please let it be on the floor and as far away from him as possible.
He stared at her with one eyebrow lifted in warning, and she soon found herself backing toward the bed. With a sigh, she slipped under the covers and pulled them up to her neck.
God help me.
Chapter 9
Edek pausedin the washroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
He was a Kall. A warrior.
He’d been on his way to kill as many of Betsy’s kind as he could get his hands on, but now he was seriously considering having his way with a little human female. He peeked out of the washroom and spotted her on the bed with the covers pulled up over her head.
Her fear was intoxicating—a cold, sweet scent that set him on edge when it reached his nostrils. Except he didn’t desire to battle her like a warrior on the field.
No, he desired to take her.
Completely.
Senses heightened with desire, Edek shed his clothing and approached the bed, his swollen cock jutting out and swaying with his movements. He ached to yank the sheets away from Betsy and tear her nightdress off, but he knew she would put up a fight, and then he would be forced to punish her yet again. He’d already spanked her bottom bright red and didn’t think she could tolerate additional punishment tonight. She was a tiny human, and so very delicate, and he needed to remember to treat her with caution.
Why did the thought of hurting her, of causing her true harm, turn his stomach and heat his blood with anger? And why—fluxxingwhy—had he ordered her to not only sleep in his room, but in his bed?
The image of her sleeping alone on the floor of a storage closet had tugged at his heart most unexpectedly. Knowing the servants hadn’t treated her with kindness also bothered him. Perhaps because her loneliness was a reflection of his own. Though he would admit it to no one, he hated spending the long night hours all by himself.
Human or not, Betsy was here with him now, and she must do as he bid her. He tried to tap into his dark side, the side of him that had pushed her against the wall in the dining room as he wrapped his fingers around her throat. The side of him that had growled at her and shouted at her and threatened her. She was his slave, and he was perfectly within his rights to order her to sleep in his bed.
Though she’d promised to obey him only moments ago, he sensed she had some boundaries. The fact that she hadn’t wanted to sleep in his bed in the first place proved it. Obviously she feared being used for her body. She feared having choice taken away.
He breathed deep and crawled under the covers.
Coldness. Fear.
Her scent hit him again with so much force it froze the air in his chest.
He stared at the lump under the sheets and saw she was shaking. Poor little human. He shook his head and sat up against the pillows, trying to decide what to do with his acquisition. He wondered if he would still feel affected by her emotions if he’d actually seen battle against the humans. If he’d actually taken human lives.
He sighed and adjusted the covers over his raging hard-on. What did it matter? He was here now, and so was she. The two of them thrown together, despite their cultural differences. As far as he knew, slavery didn’t exist on her world in any form, and he suspected the shock of being a possession still hadn’t run its course.
Slaves on planet Kall were former criminals, criminals guilty of misconducts great enough to warrant a lifetime of slavery but not great enough to warrant a death sentence. Breaking the Kall-Earth treaty as Betsy had was a crime serious enough under Kall law to warrant death. Surely she must’ve known this when she ran away and hid in the refugee camp.
