Blue Light of Home (3 page)

He recoiled, as if this were the very last thing he’d expected to hear, as if wanting an introduction to the man you were going to be taking orders from, having sex with, and possibly getting spanked by for the next two years were just mind-boggling.

“I’m Skye,” she said. “With an E.”

His brow creased. “S…K, E?”

“S, K, Y, E,” she corrected. “I guess I should have said, ‘With an extra E.’ Please, what do I call you?”

Maybe it was the please. He didn’t relax exactly, but he did manage to disguise some of his obvious discomfort with this whole line of questioning, and after some delay during which he visibly grappled with it, he said, “Vala.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Vala,” she said desperately.

He stared at her, openly baffled, and said nothing.

She went to her room.

* * *

She fell asleep.

She didn’t mean to. Realistically, it was probably only noon when she got into bed, but she was tired—emotionally and physically sapped—and it was always the middle of the night outside every window. Although she’d made a point of dressing and hanging out in the main room with him for a few hours, Vala had not once looked at or spoken to her. So she went back to her room. Unpacked. Did a few puzzles from one of the many puzzle-books in her “Things To Do” suitcase. Ate one M & M. And went to bed.

Her dreams were tangled things in which she was simultaneously chased down dark tunnels and trapped in tiny boxes, the sort of thing that made no sense but wasn’t exactly beyond interpretation. They weren’t nightmares, but they weren’t pleasant, and she was almost glad when the overhead light came abruptly on and woke her out of them.

Skye raised her arm from its sleeping place over her eyes and looked blearily up at the alien filling her doorway. It was kind of a shock to see him, as if part of her had been hoping he’d blow away like the rest of her dreams.

“I’ve been waiting,” he said, and pointed.

She looked. The light over the bed was on. A steady, piercing, pale blue light which she had effortlessly shut out with the application of her crooked arm over her eyes without even waking up. “Oh,” she said, disoriented. “I’m sorry. I’ll be right there.”

He closed the door without even crossing her threshold and retreated down the hall.

Here it was. Her first night as a bought woman.

She pushed the blankets back and sat on the edge of the bed, looking uncertainly toward the cupboard where she’d put her clothes. Should she dress? Seemed kind of silly to dress just to undress again in a few seconds. Equally, it seemed silly to walk around naked just because she wasn’t required to wear clothes to do her job.

She’d made the Space Administration people buy her a nightgown, something short and slinky and silver. She’d thought of it as her working clothes at the time, back when the shock of all this was still a pleasant dampener over the rest of her reality. She guessed it was time to put it on.

The material was clingy, very light, almost transparent. It had no sleeves, just some silver spaghetti-thin straps. There was a little lace low on the neckline, right between her breasts, with a rose at the center. It was easily the most feminine thing she’d ever owned, and one of the most expensive, to tell the truth. You didn’t buy a lot of nice things on a janitor’s salary. She wished she had a mirror. Then she decided she really didn’t want any sentimental memories of how she looked on her first day as a whore. She brushed her hair, took a few deep breaths, and walked barefoot down the hall to his room.

Vala had mostly undressed. He’d taken off his harness anyway, and his armored leggings. Now he sat on the side of his bed wearing only some uncomfortable-looking underwear that was mostly netting with a metal panel over the crotch. He made no effort to remove it right away.

“I will not be kept waiting while you cover your eyes and sleep,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“This is not going to happen again.”

“No, I’m very sorry.”

He stared her down, then grunted, and beckoned her to him. As he reached for her hand, he said, firmly and matter-of-factly, “Now you will be disciplined.”

She yanked her wrist back reflexively. “Wait a second!”

In the next instant, he was on his feet and towering over her, his grip like steel around her arm. “Do
not
argue with me!” he snapped. “There are very few rules. You were warned of the consequences of breaking them.”

“I said I was sorry! I didn’t do it on purpose! For God’s sake, I was asleep!”

“Now you will remember to sleep differently,” he said, and swung her roughly around.

She didn’t believe he was going to do it, not really, right up until his hard, scaly hand came down with a SMACK over her thinly-covered bottom. She jumped away; he hauled her back into place and spanked her three times more, each time just a little harder, as if testing her resiliency. She howled at the second, screamed at the third, and flung back her hand to cover her burning bottom from further abuse.

She thought it worked. Briefly.

Then she was being towed fast to the side-table, which was cleared with a sweep of his arm, and thrown face-down over it, her ass in the air and both wrists pinned in one of his hands at the small of her back. She had enough time for a wail of anticipation, and then he was spanking her hard and fast, blistering every inch of her bottom as she kicked and howled for him to stop, please stop!

This was it. This was as bad as it could possibly get. She was half-naked and defenseless, pinned down under his implacable grip, getting spanked like a little kid, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She had never felt so horribly exposed or vulnerable in her life. That is was an alien doing the spanking almost didn’t even matter, except that there was no getting away, no calling for help, no driving angrily to a friend’s house afterwards. The isolation overwhelmed even the pain.

She was alone up here. She was alone with nothing to look forward to but more of this.

She didn’t cry, but it was a near thing. A very near thing. She hadn’t cried in years, not since her parents’ funeral, and she wasn’t going to cry now, not over this. He could do what he wanted, but he wasn’t going to make her cry.

The spanking stopped, and he was there, breathing hard somewhere behind her while she huddled miserably against the table, trying to pretend she was somewhere else.

The heat in her bottom just kept on getting bigger and bigger, as if it was still going on in some other dimension. It dug itself in, stinging and gnawing at her under the skin, and the battle to keep her eyes dry just went on and on.

“You said one slap on the snout was enough,” she said finally, shakily.

“You would not stand quiet!” he snapped. “Discipline is effective only when it is accepted with remorse!”

“How am I supposed to stand there when you—”

SMACK SMACK SMACK!

Skye clenched her teeth together and focused on breathing, just breathing, deep and slow.

He muttered something in another language, something that did not sound angry as much as incredulous, and released her to stomp back to his bed. He stripped away his underwear and threw it down; that metal panel clanged as it bounced over the floor. She heard him sit down.

Her bottom throbbed. Throbbed and stung and burned all at once, like a really bad sunburn sometimes will. She straightened up slowly, leaning on the table as she reached gingerly back to feel the damage. It just felt like a bottom. That was actually hard to believe.

‘I got dressed up for this,’ she thought, and felt the threat of tears again, only be damned if she’d break with him glaring at her. She turned around.

He was naked, but not…not what she expected. Between his splayed thighs was only a heavy pouch, a narrow slit. He saw her confusion, her trepidation, and some of the anger dimmed from his eyes. He beckoned. “I know we’re different,” he said. “But not so different as we appear. Sit down.”

Her rubbing hand clenched protectively at her bottom. “You must be joking!”

“Then kneel!” he shot back, voice and temper rising.

Skye clenched her jaws and went to kneel before him. He put out his hand; she gave him hers, and he guided her to the hot bulge beneath his skin, moving her in careful passes only once or twice before letting go and leaning back, leaving the rest to her.

When his phallus first began to emerge, she yanked back like her hands had touched hot lava, but just as quickly resumed her stroking motions. She was in no hurry for Round Two under his spanking hand. And while she wasn’t what anyone would call worldly, she could see that he really wasn’t so different. He kept it in a weird place, but apart from that, he was just a man. Like all the rest of him, it was a little bigger, a little different, and a little scary, but still just a man.

“Touch,” he said, gazing at the ceiling. “But be gentle.”

She obeyed, taking the wet rod of him into her fist and queasily stroking. He hissed sharply, but waved at her to continue, slowing and coarsening his breath to match the rhythm of her hand. ‘I guess I’m good at this,’ she thought, and wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or just hugely depressed.

“Are you a virgin?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” she answered, giving him a startled look. “Did you want one?”

“Good,” he said, ignoring the question entirely. He pointed, and she backed up, confused, until she bumped up against the little table where he’d spanked her. He stood, gestured for her to turn around.

Okay, she got it. She obeyed, bent, gripping the surface of the table and wincing as she felt her slinky nightie raised. Her cotton panties scoured like steel wool as he pulled them down, starting her bottom stinging all over again. His fingers tested her, gave her thigh a distracted sort of pat, and then he was pushing into her.

He stopped almost at once. Skye realized she had sucked in a breath and held it, had in fact locked up her entire body. She muttered an apology, tried to relax, and did it again the instant he resumed.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked. The concern in his voice was as shocking in its way as his anger could be.

“No.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“I’m scared.”

Silence for a second or two. Then he gripped her hips and drove in until his own came right up against her ass. He started moving, the scales of his flat stomach rubbing and scraping at the sting of her.

She wasn’t prepared for it in a lot of ways, but the worst of all was how quickly it began to feel good. Not in spite of the heat and throb of her spanked bottom, but almost…okay, no almost about it…
because
of it. Skye ducked her head, confused, fighting to keep her breath even and uninvolved as that heat he’d spanked into her stoked itself steadily up and inward, completely independent of her will. She wasn’t into this, wasn’t into pain, wasn’t into leather and bondage or any of that weird stuff, and had never ever even thought of spankings, except as some mythical childhood punishment she had miraculously avoided both by being fairly well-behaved and having extremely progressive parents. No, she wasn’t into it, but no amount of reason could stop or combat what her body was doing as he moved faster, his hips now slapping against her burning ass as vigorously, if not as painfully, as his hand had done.

This couldn’t be happening, it just couldn’t be. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished frantically to be somewhere else as her traitorous body leapt and came, more vibrantly than it ever had. Vala stopped at once, his claws digging at her briefly, as she seized on him in silent, mortified spasms, then grunted again when it was over, and resumed.

‘Please don’t say anything,’ she thought, her hands pressed over her face.

He didn’t, not then, and not a few minutes later when she came again, even harder. This time, he drove through it, hissing to himself in apparent pleasure until his own release made an end to it. He still didn’t say anything as he stepped away and retrieved his clothes to dress, didn’t even watch as Skye pulled her panties up and shook her nightie quickly down. He didn’t speak as he opened the door to let her out, but there was a certain smugness in his eyes as he watched her make her ignoble retreat that made it impossible for her to leave in silence.

“Was I okay?” she blurted, hating the question, afraid of the answer.

He regarded her with sudden, obvious unease, his hand still on the door’s controls. “I’m sure you’ll serve me very well,” he said finally.

Then he shut the door on her before she could say anything else.

She didn’t know how long she stood in the hall, just staring at the blank face of his door, fighting tears and the insistent glow of her body’s bizarre satiation, before she finally turned away. She went back to bed, crawled beneath the thin covers in the warm room, and stared out the window at the blue glow of Earth.

CHAPTER TWO

It wasn’t so bad. It really wasn’t.

She had to keep telling herself that so she wouldn’t forget. Vala was terrible company. He rarely spoke to her except in answer to her direct questions, and unless those were damned good ones, he ignored them too. He worked all day, moving from computer station to computer station in the round main room, painstakingly sifting through the internet to find information worth recording and collating. When he needed a break from this, he walked right past her to the exercise room and either ran on the incline or lifted weights. He ignored her if she came in to watch. He ignored her if she joined listlessly in. He ignored her if she ignored him. At regular intervals, he made himself a gravy boat full of colorless glop and drank it. If she happened to be in the room, she’d make herself one too and choke it down in the hopes that it counted as taking meals together. He never replied to her comments about the thick, tasteless slime, just went back to work. When he decided he was done for the day, he took another run, washed up, and sent for her. A half-hour of perfunctory, silent sex (he never began with any kind of foreplay, never made any effort to stimulate her, never encouraged her to perform beyond what it took to make him ready and then to just lean over the table, and yet, seemed strangely disappointed when it was done), and she was back in the hall on her way to her own bed.