But not this guy, apparently. He has that alien-iron stare that never wavers, no matter what I say. I get the feeling I could tell him the most graphic horrors of my life and work, and that stare would not change.
“I cannot change your past. But I can be your future.”
God. That’s fucking heavy. That’s commitment. We barely know each other.
“You’re not going to want to commit to that, space guy.”
“King Brawn,” he corrects me. “Not space guy.”
“Whatever. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, and it’s cool you want to help me out, but the land and goats will do. You don’t have to, like, save me.”
“I would not have a life if it were not for you,” he says. “I dedicate what remains of it to you and fixing what is broken inside you.”
“Oh yeah? How are you going to do that?” I know the second the question is out of my mouth that I shouldn’t be asking it twice. I’m basically begging for elaboration of the kind I’m not going to like.
“I’m going to punish you when you deserve to be punished. I noticed that you defied reasonable orders given to you by your superiors on Earth.”
“Because they were going to kill you, and probably me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. What I know for certain is that you were ready to die at a moment’s notice for a complete stranger not even of your own species.”
“For you. Shouldn’t you be flattered by that? Shouldn’t you be thanking me? Not lecturing me?” I try to shame him into shutting the fuck up and noticing things about me. It doesn’t work.
“For anything. I think my appearance was convenient for you, because you had already decided to throw your life away on the next convenient crisis.”
“That’s not true.”
“I think it is true.”
Well, isn’t he just full of coincidentally accurate observations today. I kind of hate being seen this way. Usually people just sort of bounce off my cold, hard exterior and then I don’t have to deal with all the emotional consequences of them, ugh, getting to know me. But somehow, this alien king already knows me, even though he doesn’t know me at all. Literally what the fuck.
"So what are you going to do to me, exactly?”
He leans down, bringing his alien face ever so close to mine. I see strange skin stretched over alien bones. He is so very fucking green, and he has the longest, biggest fangs of any creature I have ever seen. He is a predator. It is written into his code, and it is clear in every line of his hostile face. He is not trying to threaten me, but his very existence is a threat. When he speaks, it is with quiet promise and absolute intensity.
“I am going to dominate you. Completely. I am going to take all that unfettered need for constant entertainment and stimulation, and the carelessness with which you spent your life on your world. I am going to make you feel everything you need to feel. Starting with sore.”
He lays his hands on me. They are massive and they are powerful, and when he wraps them around my limbs there is no escape. He takes me and pulls me over his thighs. I fit there in a way that makes me feel just as small as he intends for me to feel.
“You wanted to be a bad girl? You wanted to find someone who wouldn’t let you slip away into the cracks and leave you to your own slow destruction clothed in aiding others?”
He can really fucking read me, this king. He knows my every trick, and he barely knows me. He must have been observing me very closely on Earth. I don’t think there was a single word or deed that went unnoticed.
“I am that man, though I am no man at all,” he growls in my ear. “I will be the monster you need me to be. I will torment you. I will ensure that you have nothing to protect you. I will make you raw. I will take you bare. And I will fix you.”
If he thinks he is getting my clothes off me, he has another thing coming. I’ll fight tooth and nail to stay clothed and avoid the vulnerability and shame which comes from being naked. My uniform has been my social armor for as long as I’ve been in the force. I’m not giving it up without a fight.
Brawn clicks his fingers and my clothes Just. Fucking. Disappear. One minute they’re there, the next they really can’t be bothered existing anymore. Suddenly I am nude, my naked flesh pressed against his massive body, my modesty removed as swiftly as my clothes.
Then the pain begins. I was half-scared that he was going to spank me with his massive palm and accidentally crush me, but he knows his size, and his strength. He is careful with me, even when he unleashes some godawful kind of implement which makes a hissing sound as it passes through the air, and then lands on my bare cheeks with a powerful POP! There is a flash of pain, followed by a stinging tingle which ripples out from the site of impact and makes me wriggle and squirm, my bare belly and thighs and… unmentionable parts grinding against his alien pants. I really hate that he is clothed and I am not. It is an extra inequality and indignity which seems so very unfair.