Learning to Blush (31 page)

Yet Jack had never been more frustrated than he was with the wide-eyed, five-fingered little sprite-like creature staring at him with her hands on her hips, making threats and ultimatums after he’d just had the night from hell.

Somehow his last button had been pushed. The girl had realized it, too, because she dropped her hands to the side and frowned nervously. Thorton took two giant steps back from behind her, obviously noticing it, too.

The idea of the admiralty submitting to her requests simply because neither Graham nor even Jack had kept her in line had him seeing white with rage. He couldn’t fathom that sort of humiliation.

Jack grabbed the girl’s arm firmly and literally dragged her to the nearby sofa, although she had dug her blood-red sneakers’ heels into the ground like she was being carried off by a wild horse, resisting with all her might. “No! Jack! Jack, listen! See it from my side…”

With no effort at all, Jack tossed the girl over his knees as soon as he sat down. If it wasn’t for her tight black leggings, the skimpy skirt covering her uniform would leave nearly nothing to the imagination from this position. It was all too apparent that Graham liked his wife to dress as skimpily as the rules of modesty allowed.

“Keep this up and you’re gonna lose the damn war!” she hissed angrily, trying to find the floor with her toes and coming up short. How can someone so small be so utterly over-confident in her abilities? Jack had no doubt that she really did think she could single-handedly win their war for them.

He pinned her flailing arms to the small of her back and then, with no other thought, flipped up her skirt and pulled down her leggings and panties, exposing the creamy orbs of her round bottom.

She screeched. “You can’t do this! You can’t! You can’t!”

He’d given Ellie a swat or two more than once, despite that she wasn’t his wife or his
true
daughter. In the past, he had always felt like he had crossed some sort of line when he chastised her. He didn’t want to annoy his son or create any bad blood between them. Alien little brat though she was, Graham absolutely adored his wife. That was something that you didn’t have to be psychic to see; it was why Graham allowed her to get away with murder and grow snarky on top of it!

But now Jack had all the right in the world to discipline his daughter-in-law! He was her guardian until Graham was released from the hospital. “Oh, I can,” he argued, nearly gleeful about it as he smacked his palm down on her exposed flesh.

His hand swatted down again and again as Ellie tried to twist back and forth, trying to fall off of his lap somehow. After the third smack, Jack shifted his knee and she stopped twisting around. Instead, she now tried to kick as much as possible as his hand came down with a firm 
smack, smack, smack.
 Her bottom began to glow bright red already; far more quickly than he remembered from spanking any of his daughters or his wife. “I’ll teach you to throw a tantrum, little girl. Stubborn, disrespectful… insulting…!” he said, listing her offenses grimly.

Thorton stood against the wall, completely expressionless except the dark, tired look behind his eyes as he watched her punishment with his bulky arms crossed tightly against his chest.

“I’m not your slave!” she cried. “You can’t just tell us what to do because we’re smaller and we look different!”

“Girl, I look on you like my own daughter!” he growled.

“No, you don’t!” she cried. “You look at me like I’m your pet! Every time we run into a cultural rift, you immediately assume you’re right and we’re wrong because you think your species is superior. We’re adults where we’re from, but you think you can treat my family like they’re kids because the arbitrary age you chose to define adults doesn’t match up with ours!”

“I’m representing the admiralty, which you want to have crawl like a dog!”

“I’m representing my species, which you
already
have crawling around like a dog!” she retorted.

Her voice cracked then, and she gave a tear-ridden whimper. “I won’t do it…” she whined miserably, wrapping her slender arms around Jack’s thigh as he spanked and shaking her head. She stopped really arguing, in too much pain now to do so. She only sobbed, “I won’t…! I won’t!”

Jack’s anger was residing quickly. He could never stand an upset human; their misery was unpalatable.

As soon as his anger subsided, what she said began to actually sink in.

It was possible that he wasn’t being fair. She had a good point; for someone who’d never asked to be a citizen of Swaraan, she had been forced to bend backwards for it. They hadn’t much cared what her own culture was. Jack still didn’t know more than two words of human, despite how much time he’d spent with Ellie within the last year. And it was true that they weren’t Swarii. They looked young, but they were another species with their own set of rules and their own abilities. For example, young though the twins might have looked, he didn’t know any teenagers that could have passed the engineering exam like they so effortlessly had.

He swallowed, beginning to truly feel sheepish, and that was before he realized something: he had spanked her on her
bare bottom
. If he was ever cautious about making sure Graham never thought he had stepped over the line, Jack hadn’t done a very good job of it.

And he had spanked her in anger. What the hell was the matter with him?

“I won’t… I won’t…” she continued to miserably sob, as if he was torturing her in order to pilfer information from her.

And maybe that’s exactly what he was doing. She had a reason to want television cameras to witness the admiralty make her the promises she desired. Of course she didn’t trust them; even Jack was treating her no better than a Frian.

Feeling disgusted with himself, he pulled her into standing and then hugged her tightly onto his lap, wrapping his arms tightly around her as he kissed a wet cheek.

“I won’t, I won’t…” she was still miserably saying, over and over again like a mantra.

“You don’t have to, Sweetheart,” he replied. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m so sorry. I was angry with you. I shouldn’t have disciplined you when I was like that. I wasn’t thinking. Can you forgive me?”

She began to nod, sniffling sadly, leaning her head against Jack’s chest as she continued to cry out the pain and hard-bearing that she’d so recently received.

Thorton pushed himself away from the wall he had been resting against. When Jack glanced up, Thorton’s mouth was open with incredulous disgust. “What did I miss?” Thorton demanded. “She’s being a stubborn brat, she’s keeping knowledge over our heads and she’s made hell out of my day! And you’re
apologizing
?”

What was a little scary was that Thorton had an even younger mostly-human mate waiting for him at home, and he apparently didn’t have any more understanding about them than Jack did ten minutes ago. “Boy, she’s right. None of them have asked to be here, and we’re treating them like less than adults, less than
citizens
, despite the fact that they are so clever about certain things—I don't think we can pretend that we don't need them. We’ve been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. She’s not being a brat—she’s using this last-ditch effort to get herself on equal footing. We’ve made her desperate. We’re no better than the Frians on this one. Can’t you understand that?”

Thorton closed his mouth and gnashed his teeth. “We’re trying to get them all to do well on Swaraan,” he argued evenly. “You said so yourself. We’re not being mean or cruel.”

“We’re happy to sacrifice their happiness and comfort for our own. Notice we’re introducing a whole new species to our world—one close enough to ours that we can even breed with them— and we’ve only made
them
understand and learn Swarii culture. When was the last time we attempted the other way around?”

Thorton sighed sharply. “I just want them to act like everyone else. I want my wife to act like other wives. I want what’s best for her—and them!”

“No. We don’t. We want what’s best for
us
. Do you really think we’re being entirely altruistic?”

Finally, Thorton’s straightened shoulders slumped as he digested this.

“So what now?” Ellie’s little voice sounded so tired and so dry. She wiped her cheeks down with her sleeve.

“The admiralty will not apologize for anything on galaxy-wide television. A lot of them would rather take a bullet to the face. That wouldn’t help your cause or mine,” Jack admitted with a sigh. In truth, he was surely one of them. He hated apologizing; apologizing and having only Thorton as a party to it was nearly too much to bear.

“I need it on TV. How can I trust them to keep their word?” Ellie asked.

“I’m the High Admiral. I’ll make them keep their word, Sweetie. That is one thing I can force them to do. You may not be able to trust them, but even after what happened today, I hope you’ll trust
me
?” Jack told her tenderly, hoping her hadn’t spanked away all the trust he had built between them for the last year.

She nodded.

“We’ll just say that because you were punished by your husband over the matter without our knowledge, you will be reinstated with your original rank. You will no longer be working on combat airships, you'll no longer work under Thorton. You and your brother will create your own sector of innovative engineering, and we will reward you for your efforts so far without going into specifics…” Her head lifted from his chest and turned. Her glassy eyes were wide with excitement.

She was a pretty little thing when excited. “You will be stationed on the mothership. You will follow safety procedures. You will not kill another gravity generator or blow a big hole into this mothership so we all get sucked out into space….” He added quickly and firmly before her excitement kept her from further using her ears. “You will create proper documentation on your work. You will not keep secrets, you will share your know—”

Ellie threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

He gave a laugh and then returned the hug.

He heard Thorton grunt. “You are not the same man I grew up with,” he told him blankly.

Jack looked over at him from over Ellie’s head. Thorton was right. Death and the stress of war had changed Jack. And in the last ten minutes, Ellie had changed him even more. He had never been known as an understanding man.

Jack stood up and Ellie slid off of his knees and quickly tugged up her leggings. “No, I’m definitely not the same man.” He looked down at Ellie. “We have an understanding, then?”

“What about Tim, Tom, Mike, and Penny?” she asked immediately.

“I’ll make sure they’re working under you.” He looked towards Thorton, hoping to get his support.

“I really just wanted a wife who’d cook, clean, and have my babies!” Thorton complained. “Why can’t I have that? It’s what
you
had!”

“It wasn’t in your cards, Boy. I’m not going to force you. But you have to think what will make your wife happy. What does it matter as long as she’s safe?”

“So that’s it? We’re just going to go the full other way and bend to whatever they want?” Thorton asked, frustrated. “I suppose I should be
apologizing
for spanking
my
wife then,” he added a bit too flippantly for Jack’s tastes.

“I’m not saying we have it all together,” Ellie assured quickly. “I’m not saying that I haven’t deserved most of the spankings that Graham’s ever given to me! I know I’m not a perfect angel, and I like that spanking can sort of repair the damage I’ve done to our relationship and our trust. I’m just asking for a little give and take. Being forced to do anything is… well… not fun, in my experience. Especially if you expect Penny to act like a Swarii wife! She's never going to want to just cook and clean for you, Thorton. She’s crazy good at computers. I need her to write up some code for our project. Penny’s always sort of been the glue that has kept us together… And we’re all she’s got, too.”

Jack feared that Thorton would merely grumble and argue until he was blue in the face. But he sighed, shook his head, and then put out his hand to gesture Ellie to put hers within it. “Alright, alright. You might have a point, but don’t get used to it. I’ll talk to my wife. And
you
will teach me how to fix the fledge.”

Ellie smiled and grabbed Thorton’s massive hand with her own. “I never noticed, but you guys sound like you’re telling me something when you’re only
asking
me something…”

Both men laughed, and Jack shook his head, wondering how he was ever so angry at her not five minutes before. At the moment, all he could feel for her was love for this mischievous little half-human daughter of his.

* * *

Thorton came into the cafeteria and immediately found all of the half-breeds sitting at the far table, including his wife. It was dinner-time now, and Thorton had just woken up from finally getting some sleep, especially since Ellie took maybe ten minutes fixing the fledge once she started on the project.

It had seemed very anticlimactic. He would have liked to see her struggle at least a little bit, especially after he had tried for so many hours the night before to fix it.

The humans weren’t into eating anything healthy. They all had coffee and cakes and were sitting around rolled out plans. Peyton and Mary, full humans, were still rolling their eyes at the half-breeds jokes and antics.

“How’re you doing, Beast?” Thorton asked, putting his hand on Peyton’s shoulders.

Peyton looked up and over at him. “I feel like we fell into a geekery,” he said, motioning towards the plans rolled out and scattered across the table. “Tell me—how in the Blue Blazes did she get her work permit reinstated so damn fast?”

“Long story,” Thorton said, and tried to sit down next to his wife.

Penny turned her head, shot him a look of distain, then got up and moved between her brothers. Thorton frowned and then looked towards Peyton. Peyton looked suddenly very awkward.

Mary, as always, was warm and inviting and patted the seat next to her. “Give her a little bit of personal space,” Mary suggested.