Bound, Spanked and Loved: Fourteen Kinky Valentine's Day Stories (70 page)

Tick was already chewing her out before they brought her onto their own vehicle, driven by the planet’s authorities. “We asked you to do one thing, Chloe,
one thing
!” he harped, using her first name for the first time since she’d met him nearly a month before.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, snuggling against Dax’s chest harder than she’d ever snuggled anything.

“Sorry?” Tick echoed. “You
will
be sorry. That was extremely stupid. You’re lucky that we called you and realized something had to be wrong when you didn’t answer. Or else it would have been too late. What would have happened then? Huh?”

She had had too horrible of an experience to even look pitifully in his direction. She had thought getting forced into space was bad, but getting put into the car with those strangers, on this planet, made her shake to her bones. Dax hadn’t said a word so far, just held her and rubbed his giant palm against her thigh to soothe her.

She glanced up at Malo as he stepped back into their vehicle, and she couldn’t get eye contact. His body was tense, rigid, and by the way his jaw was clenched but shifting, she could tell he was grinding his teeth. Because of the tension he brought into the confined space, she didn’t even attempt to apologize or thank him; he looked like he might go off on her any moment. Only Dax seemed calm and collected, which was surprising. She didn’t know him to be a sympathetic, reasonable sort of man. Since the second she’d met him, she’d recognized him as a hothead like she was.

Now, Dax was kissing the top of her forehead tenderly.

“Do we have any more meetings?” Dax asked Malo, breaking the thick silence.

Malo shook his head, but his whole body was still tense. “No,” he replied tersely. “We’re done.”

This was good news. Chloe wanted nothing more from life than to be off of this planet as soon as possible.

When the vehicle stopped in front of the ship, they all spoke in a separate language, presumably to bid farewell and thank their hosts, who were obviously cracking jokes at her expense based on much they laughed and gestured at her. Malo bowed slightly and continued speaking as Dax helped her out of the car and guided her back into the ship, keeping a hand on the small of her back.

“Come on. Let’s get you into the shower,” Dax suggested, soothingly rubbing her back. Tick opened his mouth to protest, but Dax put out his hand. “We’ve all had a scare. We should all take a few minutes to recoup.”

Tick quieted at that, but when she looked over her shoulder at him she could tell that he was less than happy with the suggestion. He stood muttering to himself in his native language, kicking at the sand that had collected by the hatch door.

When Dax led her into her room, he took her into the bathroom. This looked absolutely nothing like her old apartment’s bathroom had. It looked more like a lab room combined with a Japanese sauna, complete with a large shower with multiple showerheads that Dax parked her right outside of. He began to tug at her clothing, starting with her shirt, which he discarded onto the floor as soon as he had pulled it over her head, leaving her in her bra.

“What are you doing?” she asked, trying not to shiver as he seemed to be eyeing every piece of her body.

“Just looking you over,” he answered, and then spun her around and plucked her bra clasp loose before sliding the straps off of her shoulders. She had been naked in front of him dozens of times, yet he was being so clinical about it that she found herself cringing away. He spun her around and, when she put her hands over her breasts, he tugged her hands down. He checked her waist, her hips, and then began to unbutton her pants, pulled them to her ankles, and then told her to step out of them. Her panties quickly followed, leaving her completely bared before him.

She found that she was blushing and feeling more awkward than she had in her entire life, especially when he turned her around and ran his fingers over her skin, as if trying to remember her by feel. There wasn’t silence between them, at least. He was constantly reporting any findings that concerned him.

She was surprised that he had found a few bruises and cuts on her legs, particularly her knees, that she now was remembering receiving when she had been thrown into the strangers’ truck. “I don’t know who treats another person like that,” she finally said.

“They assumed you stole the communicator piece since women aren’t allowed to carry them, and that you were up to no good in the shipyard because here, women aren’t allowed to space travel,” he informed her frankly. She had just remembered then that he surely spoke their language fluently and heard whatever it was they had been saying. “And they thought you not answering them made you look even guiltier. It probably didn’t even occur to them that you didn’t speak their language.” He gave a hum and then stood up and turned on the shower for her. “You’re lucky that you were hardly hurt at all. We’ve had female casualties here in the past when an authority brought their mates along. That’s one of the primary reasons, aside from common sense, that we wanted you to stay inside.” The corners of his lips turned down. “I’m really disappointed that you felt you had to go against our concerns.”

“I didn’t mean—” she began, truly wanting to apologize so she could stop feeling guilty about doing something so stupid. The more she thought about what had happened, the stupider she felt.

He put up his hand and silenced her. “Not now. You’ll have a chance to apologize and explain your actions. Right now, just shower the sand off of yourself, then dress in what I lay out for you on your bed before you head out into the main entertaining area.” He stood close so that he was looking directly down at her and, when she found it impossible to look up and take his disapproving glance head-on, he tilted her head up to meet his eyes, anyway. “Am I clear?”

She nodded, although his instructions sounded strange and ominous. Her body was covered with goosebumps that, even when he left the room and she’d stepped into the shower, didn’t fade with the help of warm water.

She showered for a long time, first watching the dirt and dust wash off and then simply not wanting to get out and face the guys’ displeasure, which was immense. She wasn’t used to having someone that would flip out on her, as she was so used to being on her own. In the past, she was the only person who’d get mad at herself.

But eventually, she felt she had to get out and face the music. She was just going to have to come up with a great apology so that everyone would move on and hopefully, sometime in the not-too-far future, they would forget all about this episode and move on.

She came out of the shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and walked into her small bedroom. On the bed, neatly folded, were simply pajamas and a pair of panties. She frowned, but put them on, thinking that the request of her outfit was a little odd, but she’d give him what he wanted. She felt like she had been difficult enough for today.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised to see all three of the guys sitting in her living room, but she had three pairs of eyes on her as soon as she stepped out of the bedroom nonetheless. She shifted foot to foot. “Hey,” she greeted, glancing guiltily toward the floor. “You guys still angry with me?”

Their expressions seemed to speak volumes. She was in big trouble.

*****

“I
shouldn’t be angry,” Tick shrugged as they waited for Chloe to come out of her shower, since she’d been in there over forty minutes at this point and was apparently going for the record. “I mean, we all sort of knew she’d just go out and do it. It’s in her nature. It’s like getting angry at a bird for flying or a fish for swimming.”

Malo took a deep breath in and let it out. Malo knew from the moment he mentioned that they had landed somewhere that she was going to want to go out and investigate. And the fact that it was that silly human holiday was not a good sign, because apparently it was a human day devoted to women getting whatever nonsense they wanted, so she immediately assumed she had carte blanche.

It was still extremely frustrating having someone uncontrolled and undisciplined on a ship like this, and it wasn’t as if they could just send her home. None of them would want to, even if it were an option! But now they had to discipline her for her disobedience in hopes that she would think twice about disobeying when she was told to do something in the future.

Spanking her was something none of them wanted to do. Although it was a common practice for mates to rein in their females that way, the three of them hadn’t ever done anything like it before. They’d never had a mate, never had a female companion that they were close to. Honestly, they’d hoped that their constant threats to spank her over the previous weeks would have done the trick by themselves.

Still, they’d known that their Chloe wasn’t the type of female who easily responded to threats. She had ignored those warnings as if they were merely annoying, or as if she’d never heard them at all.

“We’ve been too lax with her,” Malo decided, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That’s the problem. I thought it would be good to let her adjust for a few weeks, but apparently that’s just made her feel like there’s no authority figure, no hierarchy.”

“As I told you she would,” Dax reminded, his posture straight and his eyes narrowed. He had been very gentle with Chloe, since he’d clearly been worried about her being hurt or in shock, but since coming out of her bedroom he had been thoughtfully sitting in one of Chloe’s chairs. Now, he rubbed his hands together and admitted in an embarrassed grumble, “Although I admit I haven’t been very firm with her, either. I didn’t want to put my foot down, because the few times I did she would suddenly claim she wasn’t in the mood for anything in bed. I should have put her over my knee the first time she tried
that
kind of manipulation.”

“She is a hardheaded little thing, isn’t she?” Tick said, and not without a certain degree of pride in his tone. “I’ve been spanking that ass this whole time, though,” he added.

Malo and Dax both gave him disbelieving glares. “In
bed
,” Dax argued. “You’ve never disciplined her. There is a major difference between those experiences.”

Tick looked up innocently at the ceiling, “I know. I’m just saying I’ve come the closest to it,” he grumbled.

Malo wasn’t in the mood for Tick’s jokes or teases. Probably Tick wasn’t even in the mood for them
himself
. They had all been nearly sick with worry when Chloe didn’t answer her communicator, and that quickly turned to complete panic when they didn’t find her in the spaceship at all. Luckily, the planet’s authorities happily helped them trace the coms because of their political station. “It doesn’t matter what we did in the past. From now on, we’re going to nip this sort of defiance in the bud.”

The other two men nodded, and then fell into silence. Malo suspected that they were probably doing what he was doing: trying to replay in their minds every punishment they’d ever seen someone give to their mate and remember how well the mate had accepted it.

When Chloe finally came into the room, his heart pattered and his cock stirred at the same time. Somehow when she was in her pajamas in the middle of the day, looking extremely guilty and shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot, she looked adorable. To his surprise, he found that he was excited at the thought of giving her the good hard spanking that she so thoroughly needed.

“You guys still angry with me?” she asked, avoiding eye contact with any of them and taking a great interest in the floor under her feet instead.

“Come here,” he told her firmly, beckoning her toward him.

She slowly walked up to him until she was nearly to his knees, and then she put one bare foot on top of the other as if they were cold. She was still looking mostly at the floor, so he tilted her head up with his fingers. “Tell me what you were thinking today when you left the spaceship after we explicitly and tirelessly told you not to,” he asked her.

“I just wanted to try the bread across the way. I wanted to stretch my legs,” she murmured in a pout. Slightly more defiantly, she added, “I had just as much a right as you to leave, and then you wouldn’t let me like I was a naughty child.”

Even though he was still calm, he could feel some of the heat coming back to his face as his anger simmered under the surface. “Well, now you’re
going
to be treated like a naughty child,” he promised her. He spun her around and pointed her to the sofa. “I want you bent over the arm of that so that your bottom’s high in the air and your face is against the cushion. I’d say you earned yourself twenty with a belt.”

Her body went rigid at that order. After a few seconds of not moving, she eyed the other men and then, when she didn’t find any assistance there, she slowly turned her head up to look at him. “Seriously?” she asked as if he had just asked her to put a snake in her pants.

“I have never been more serious, Chloe,” he assured her firmly.

She turned, her expression indignant. “No way! That’s insane. I’m a grown woman.”

“Who can’t do what she’s told, ever, and who put herself in serious jeopardy today. I can only imagine what could have happened to you if we weren’t able to run down the communicator’s location. You’re going to start learning—apparently the hard way—that we aren’t to be ignored and disrespected. So
march
.” He put his arm out and pointed toward the sofa again, but she stood firm.

Her face was red. Whether it was from anger or embarrassment, or both, he wasn’t sure, but she snapped with feeling, “Go fuck yourself, Malo!”

He wasn’t as strongly built as Tick or Dax, who had spent most of their lives either in physical labor or in combat, but he wasn’t a weakling, either. When he grabbed her arm and dragged her to the armless chair he had been sitting on, it was the easiest part of his day, even with her trying to free herself from his grasp.

He pulled her over his lap and immediately slapped his hand against her round, wiggling bottom. She let out a loud, sharp cry, even though he was slapping through two layers of cloth. “Malo!” she snarled. “Stop it!”