Those thoughts make me flush hot with shame and frustration. I was taught that you could always win if you persevered long enough, but I can feel a very different truth running through me now. The reality I inhabit is one where I am a soft female creature in a world dominated by a massive, muscular, sharp-toothed master who could absolutely destroy me if he wanted to. Even this spanking is being moderated so as not to seriously harm me.
“Volt! Please! I’m sorry! I don’t know how to do this… I don’t know how to be the thing… I…”
He stops. Perhaps not because of what I said, because what I said was barely coherent, but the tension in my voice, the desperate plea for forgiveness.
Volt runs his palm over my searing cheeks. “Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”
“I think so,” I answer in a little voice. I am dangling from his knee, aching and on the verge of tears because I just don’t know what to do with myself. My old thoughts are telling me I need to escape. The new ones are telling me I might not have anything to run away from.
A human is a creature made to seek freedom, and to rebel against shackles. I thought for a second he didn’t understand that. Now I wonder if he understands it even better than I do. This tension between captor and captive, predator and prey, this is where life happens. Powerful forces of creation and perhaps destruction exist between us.
“It’s not easy for you,” he says, helping me to stand. “It is not easy for me either. I thought I would have a Vulpari mate, or none at all. And you, who knows what you thought.”
I sniff in agreement. Who knows what I thought. Did I ever think beyond basic survival and potential profit? I don’t know. I almost feel like I wasn’t a full person until I met him, which is about the saddest thing anyone could ever admit to themselves.
“I spank you because you need it,” he says. “And I will keep spanking you for as long as you need to feel that this is the new way of things. This is where you will be happy, if you let yourself be.”
I can’t imagine being happy in captivity. Can anyone? Can anything?
“You may not believe me now,” he says. “But you will see. Now. As you can probably deduce, this is a punishment dungeon. I’m going to leave you in it for tonight. I want you to absorb all that has happened. You’ll need to sleep for that. Your human mind is incapable of incorporating all the events of a day without rest.”
“Can I have Bilbo?”
“Who?”
“The goat.”
“Ah, yes.” He leans out the door. “Bring the ungulate!”
CHAPTER 6
Penelope
I wake to my first day in captivity with my pussy aching. The physical sensation is only part of what I am enduring. It is as though the very core of me has been changed, stretched, and finally altered.
I was a virgin until yesterday. Now I am nothing but the possession of a rough alien who will tolerate no disobedience. I was a lost rebel yesterday. Now I am the captive of that same beast.
All of this hits me within seconds of opening my eyes. I think I might have a complete breakdown except for the fact that I can feel Bilbo next to me, his warm body pressed up alongside mine. Bilbo is the one constant. Always there, except when he’s burning my shit down.
Creeeakk…
The door opens and we face Captain Volt. I feel a flush of heat across my face as I meet what is now his knowing eye.
“Sleep well?”
I don’t know how to answer that question.
“Bilbo needs some hay, some water, and the floor in here needs a clean,” I say instead. You cannot keep a goat in a small area for long without creating an unhygienic environment.
“Don’t worry, all his waste will be recycled and used to grow fresh crops,” Volt says. “You must be ready for a bath.”
I smell like goat. And Volt. For the past few months, living with the wild things, I didn’t worry about how I smelled. With Volt before me, I suddenly care about how gross I feel.
“I am,” I agree. “Please.”
* * *
Volt escorts me from my cell to a bathing room. The moment I smell soap some part of me relaxes instantaneously. The bath is massive, clearly designed to fit several Vulpari at one time. It is full of steaming hot water. I do not wait for permission to dive in. I slip into the interior and emerge with a sigh of pure relief.
“I forgot how good baths are.”
“You will not only suffer in my care. You will be rewarded when you obey.”
He steps toward me. I am worried that he might join me in the tub, which will make it much furrier than I think I am comfortable with right now. He stops on the verge of it and beckons me.