The Blue Light of Home by Robin Smith

Note: This novel was previously published on Discipline and Desire. It is available in the long term members' area under its Author's story page.

They didn’t bother with a phone call or anything, and the security guard waved her on in the same as he did every evening, but something was sure up and you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to sense it. For one thing, there were soldiers. Oh, seeing a few soldiers around the Space Administration’s compound wasn’t too unusual, but tonight, they were everywhere, with guns, all business.

And two of them were waiting when Skye stepped out of the ladies’ locker room in her flat grey custodial coveralls. Waiting for her.

They took her to the big office. The Big Office, even. The one a lowly custodial engineer like her couldn’t even get in to clean. Several men were waiting inside. Some of them wore uniforms. All of them looked nervous.

Nervous couldn’t begin to describe Skye’s own state of mind by this point. No one sent armed guards to help fire the janitor unless they’d found a bomb made out of cleaning supplies in a rocket somewhere. Something was wrong here, very wrong, and everyone seemed to think she was involved. At this place, in the age of Homeland Security, to a painfully blue-collar girl like her, this wasn’t nerve-wracking, it was terrifying.

“Skye Westlocke?” asked the man at the center of the office. Not a soldier. Maybe a scientist, although she’d never seen him before. He was wearing a suit, but he’d taken off the jacket and tie and sweated heavily through the shirt. He looked like he’d been up all night, maybe doing jumping jacks.

“Sit down, please.” He took his own invitation, claiming the authoritative leather seat behind the room’s mammoth desk, and brought out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

“Don’t start. Disgusting habit.” He lit up, took a deep drag, and held it. The glowing tip shook a little. He and the other men in the room exchanged glances. The atmosphere was almost bad enough by now to make Skye feel faint. Then he looked at her again, smoking hard. “I can’t think how to say any of this, so I’m going to tell you the same way we were told. I want you to... to try not to panic.”

And with those cryptic, uncomforting words, the man pushed a button, brought down a widescreen TV from the ceiling, and began to play something.

There was no image, only blackness broken here and there by thin lines of static, but the static never interrupted the sound, which was clear, distinct, and unemotional:

“We are speaking now to the many leaders of Earth. We are envoys sent from the Empire of Vaaj. Your world has been under observation for many years and our studies confirm we are your superiors in every way: technologically, militarily, governmentally. We are here now to initiate the first official contact between our peoples. We have every intention of pursuing a peaceful co-existence, but your age of autonomy has ended. Prepare to join the Empire.”

“My God,” Skye said through numb lips. She looked wildly around the room and saw only grim old men looking back at her. “Is... Is this a joke? Or a hoax?”

“It is our earnest desire to avoid a general panic among your many diverse populations. Therefore, we contact you in the spirit of discretion, to tell your leaders to make ready. We have placed in orbit around your world our emissary, whose task it shall be to make in-depth investigations into your cultures and histories, so as to better facilitate your integration. The task is laborious and the process lengthy. Do not attempt to curtail his access to your media satellites or make any aggressive overtures. We do not leave him undefended and we are fully prepared to annihilate your entire civilization if hostilities are invoked. The emissary is not here to negotiate terms and will respond to no entreaties from your governments whatsoever. Do not attempt to contact him except in response to this transmission. He will instigate all further communications at need.”

Skye felt frozen fingers at her lips and realized they were hers. She had pressed herself into the back of the chair so firmly that her spine had begun to ache, and still the men around her kept watching her. Not the TV, where the voice held sway, but only her.

“The emissary requires a human presence aboard his vessel to answer any questions he may have concerning your world and to serve him in any way he deems necessary. The assistant will be female, no less than twenty and no more than fifty years of age, in excellent physical and mental health. You will contact the emissary to arrange for her transport within seventy-two hours of this transmission. She will remain aboard the vessel until his task is complete, which will be no less than one year and perhaps as many as two.”

The man behind the desk switched off the recording. “That’s all you need to hear, Ms. Westlocke.”

She stared at him, unable to speak, even to shout the question eating up her brain. He couldn’t mean her, could he? He couldn’t mean her?!

“This has been a hell of a night,” the man said, lighting a new cigarette. He still hadn’t introduced himself. “Name a country, I’ve been talking to them. No one wants to deal with this thing, but someone has to, and for some goddamned reason, it has to be us. Ms. Westlocke, I’m going to say this as bluntly as I can, and please don’t take offense, but we are not sending one of our highly-trained astronauts or biophysicists up there to be some alien commando’s Girl Friday. In this situation, we are all agreed, the less the woman knows, the better for national... for Earth’s security. Neither are we going to run to the corner of 48^th Street and hope we can find a professional in the next – ” He checked his watch. “Fifty-one hours who fits his bill. We need to be quick, we need to be quiet, and we need to play it safe. We need someone close to home, who can understand our position here.”

“I can’t!” she gasped, almost choking on the words. “My God, how can you – ? How can you – ? I can’t!”

“We are prepared to compensate you,” he said quietly, without a trace of shame in his eyes. “Half a million dollars for every month you... work. Tax-free. When you come down, you’ll have a whole new identity and a place to live in the country of your choice, your own private island, if that’s what you want. All we ask is that you do your... job to the best of your ability, and that you do not talk to anyone about it afterwards.”

“We don’t have a lot of choices,” he said. “You don’t have a family to leave behind, your bill of health is clean, your phone records don’t even indicate a boyfriend.”

“We can have you on that... the emissary’s vessel in twelve hours. We will give you anything you need to make that happen.”

He pushed another button. The television snapped an image up – a gleaming, silvery sort of pear, floating against a sea of stars, with a couple of chunks of space debris and half of Earth in the background.

“That’s him,” he said, not looking at it, only at her. “This is real, Ms. Westlocke. This is happening. The clock is ticking and I know what we’re asking, but this is so much bigger than just one person. If our positions were reversed, I don’t even know what I’d say, but I’m begging you for the sake of my wife and my kids and my grandkids to do this because we simply do not have time to find someone else.”

“You’ll be serving your country, if that matters to you. I won’t ask if it does. You’ll be serving humanity. You’ll be ensuring a future in which, come what may, you will never have to work again. Or you can say no.” He leaned back in his chair, tapping ashes indiscriminately onto the floor for some janitor... some other janitor... to clean. “But knowing what you know, I’m afraid you can’t exactly be free to go.”

“Then I’ll do it,” she said, and the Earth kept right on spinning, as if saying that was no big deal at all.

“I’ll send a couple boys home with you to help you pack and do any shopping you might want to do. You won’t be allowed phone calls or private access to any computer during this time, but they’ll help you get your business affairs in order, if... if you need to.” He looked at his watch again. “I want a six a.m. launch time, so if you want to get some sleep or get anything special to eat, just let one of your boys know.”

“You don’t have to go back to work,” one of the other men said, as if this were a tremendous favor he were bestowing on her. “Unless you want to.”

She looked at them, all these old men, and felt her eyes stinging. Then she got up and staggered out of the office to go home and pack.

Everything was automatic – the launch, the flight, the docking, everything. All Skye had to do was sit there in her heavy suit, the harness like an iron hand pressing her into her seat, listening to her breath echo back through the helmet speakers as the voices back in the Space Administration’s Ground Control told each other what a safe flight she was having. The alien vessel took over at the end. The last human voice Skye would hear for a long time told her everything looked good, told her the thoughts and prayers of the people of the Earth went with her, told her good luck, and then went silent.

With a gentle nudge and a soft metallic ‘clank,’ the nodule was stabilized and held by alien clamps. Skye listened, fingering the release switch on her harness, as something sealed itself to the hatchway below her. The commlink clicked once and a male voice said, “Disembark and come at once to the pressure chamber.”

Skye unbuckled herself and worked the hatch open. She got her suitcases and gave them a push into the open sleeve beyond the hatch, then followed, swimming awkwardly through weightless space.

The commlink clicked behind her and she thought she heard the voice again, but couldn’t tell at this distance what he’d been saying. She should have answered him, she guessed, acknowledged him at least, but no one had told her how to use the commlink. “Don’t touch anything,” had pretty much been her only instructions. She wasn’t an astronaut after all, she was... well, she knew what she was. Or what she was going to be anyway. Very soon.

Nerves tried to take her away. She didn’t let them. She couldn’t afford to be all blubbery and panicked when the alien introduced himself. First impressions mattered.

The sleeve ended at another hatch, a larger and somewhat nicer one than that of Earth’s ship. It opened while she floated outside, trying to figure out how to work it, and she pushed her suitcases in, then swam in behind them. The door shut.

Fasteners. Skye looked around and saw what looked a little like metallic spiderwebs here and there along the walls. She touched one hesitantly and it contracted around her hand at once, reminding her a little of the way anemones at the touch tank in the aquarium will grip on and try to pull your finger down. When she tugged, the web tightened, but let go when she tugged harder, snapping back to its previous shape.

The speakers clicked. “Secure your possessions now,” the voice said, sounding just the slightest bit annoyed.

Skye towed the first case over, the one with her clothes, and pulled the web out to push it under. The web promptly stretched out to cover the suitcase and brought it up tight to the wall. Skye kicked away to find a second web for her other case, became ensnared in one briefly, and heard the speakers click again, although the voice chose not to speak, not even to blow a long-suffering sigh at her.

When she was free and both her suitcases were securely bound to the wall, the voice came back: “Locate one of the stabilizer grips along the wall and place your feet on the floor.”

Stabilizer grips. Okay, there were a number of evenly-spaced objects like towel-rings all around the wall. Skye swam over to one, got hold of it with both hands, and pushed her feet down until she could touch the floor.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, with a great hiss and a dizzying pulse of perception, gravity slammed down on top of her. Suddenly the floor was “below” and she had weight. One hundred and seventeen pounds dropped into her bones; she lost her grip on the towel-ring and landed on her butt, slapping her hands up hard against her helmet as vertigo churned in her head.

Gradually, the leaden effect of gravity waned. Eventually, she was even able to turn her head without wanting to throw up.

Another hiss. The voice said, “Recover your possessions and come up to the main deck.”

Up? Sky looked and sure enough, a hatchway had opened in the ceiling. As she stared at it, a lift-panel detached from the floor and rose about three inches before stopping again, expectant.

She lugged them onto the lift instead, and tried to stand as small as possible in the space remaining to her, looking queasily up as the lift began to rise. She was about to see an alien. She was about to see the alien she would be having sex with for the next two years. She hoped he wouldn’t be... squishy.

It was not well-lit on the main deck. In fact, apart from the consoles that ringed the room, it didn’t appear to be lit at all. The alien blended into the shadows. She didn’t see him until he stood up from his chair and came a step toward her. Then, in spite of all her mental bracing, she tried to leap back and fell right off the stupid lift.

He finished his cool stride forward in a lunge, clawed hands sinking into her suit-sleeves and yanking her roughly around before she could either take a nasty drop into the pressure chamber below or, more likely, get pinned between the still-rising lift and the floor of the main deck and be crushed. She supposed she should be grateful. Instead, she wanted to scream.

He wasn’t squishy. He had that going for him at least. His skin had kind of a gleam to it, but that was more the luster of healthy scales than slime, and it was healthy scales over a very hard, muscular, male body. He was wearing clothes: a kind of complicated harness or vest, some armor-plated shorts, and a cuff or something over one ankle. The rest of him was very dark green in color, so dark that he was black everywhere that light didn’t fall directly on him, and his eyes were huge, ovoid, and shark-empty. The back of his bald head grew out in an elongated bulge and came to something of a blunt point; the front of his head mimicked this with a long, broad snout or skin-covered beak. He had no nostrils that she could see, but there were some slits along his throat that might be either a nose or gills. Or anything at all, she guessed, because in spite of his more or less familiar bipedal and symmetrical shape, this was an alien life form. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t human. It was holding her in his inhuman hands and looking at her with his alien eyes.

Slowly, the alien set her on her feet and let her find her balance. It was difficult to tell just where he was looking, as he had no whites or pupils in his black eyes, but he seemed to be inspecting her just as intently, although without her obvious alarm.

Without warning, he brought his hands up and gripped the spacesuit’s helmet. One quick twist and he pulled it away, releasing a hiss of trapped oxygen. He studied her face as she gasped on alien air that was, in retrospect, more or less exactly like Earth air only staler and warmer. Then he dropped the helmet indifferently, and unlocked and removed her gloves. He picked up one of her small, pale hands and held it in his slick, scaly, three-fingered one, turning it over and examining it in silence. Finally, he undid the closure at her neck and peeled the whole rest of the suit down so that she stood there in her clunky boots, white tank-tee, and plain jane panties.

He straightened up with a thoughtful grunt, his gaze moving over her without emotion. Finally, he came back to her eyes.

Skye shivered in the warm air. “I’m here to represent Earth’s people and to answer any questions you may have about humans.”

He waited, and then his thin lips curled around the edges of his beaked face in a deep frown. “Did no one tell you there would be sexual services required?”

Skye swallowed hard, trying not to drop her eyes, to look at those clawed hands, those contorted legs, that powerful and wholly inhuman body. “There was an implication,” she admitted.

Was that a question or a reminder? Skye forced a smile of sorts. “They gave me the choice of being locked up for an indefinite amount of time, or dropping off a dump truck full of money in front of my new house in the Caiman Islands when I get back. I’m not an experienced prostitute, but seeing as those were my options, yes, I am willing to make one hell of a prostitutorial debut.”

The fingers of one hand flexed, drumming on his armored thigh in a preoccupied manner. He glanced at her suitcases, then turned around. Without another word, he went out through a doorless opening and into a narrow hall.

Well, she guessed the interview was over. Skye stepped out of her boots, gathered up the spacesuit and spent a few minutes trying to juggle it and both suitcases (which, thanks to the gravity, were now both heavy as hell), and finally trudged after him.

It wasn’t a long walk. He was waiting by a closed door maybe ten feet away, and while he did not offer to hold one damned thing for her, he did open the door. “This will be your room,” he said.

Grand. She got everything inside, let the suit drop, and looked around. The room wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Low-ceilinged, but bigger than her bedroom back home. There were cupboards all along the walls, a nice view of the Earthrise out the window, and, of course, a fairly good-sized egg-shaped bed.

She stared at the bed, wondering if the next phase of orientation included a trial run of “sexual services.”

“Here,” the alien said behind her, and when she turned, he thumbed a panel on the wall. Out came an oddly-shaped but perfectly recognizable toilet bowl, with a sink where the tank should be.

“Waste,” said the alien, toggling each of three switches in turn. The toilet hissed a flush. “Wash.” Water jetted up from the sides of the bowl. “Dry.” Another hiss of air. He hit the panel again and the toilet took itself away.

Much nicer than Earth’s space-faring setup, she had to admit, although she wasn’t sure how she was going to feel about a power-wash and an assertive breeze.

“There is ample room for your possessions,” he continued, gesturing towards the cupboards. “I can adjust the temperature controls if you are too uncomfortable.” He paused, but when Skye just stood there, went on, “Put your soiled bedding in the washer behind you. It’s all automatic.”

The alien pointed to a dark bubble on the wall right behind the bed. “The light will come on when I want you. You will come to my room. This way.”

Skye followed him back into the narrow, curving hall, past another closed door – “The exercise room,” the alien remarked. “Daily regimes are recommended. I will show you how to work the devices.” – to his room.

It was exactly the same size as hers, which came as something of an illogical comfort to her. It was all pretty Spartan; he had a spare harness tossed over the foot of the bed, a couple of alien devices casually strewn over a small side-table, and one dark stone object of unclear purpose sitting on a narrow ledge, perhaps as decoration. There was no light above his bed, but there was a small panel within easy reach of it, so he wouldn’t even have to get up when he decided he wanted her.

Again, her nerve tried to fail her. Again, she refused to let it. She was going to be here for a whole year, maybe two. She’d just better learn to deal.

The alien decided she’d had enough of a look and shut the door. Without comment, he continued along the hall and back to the main room through a second door.

“When you are hungry,” he began once she joined him, and thumbed at a wide panel above a small alcove in the wall. The first button he pressed opened a cupboard full of what appeared to be gravy tureens. He took one and placed it in the alcove, then touched a second button. A thick, colorless gel began to plop heavily into the tureen; It was about the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. “This will satisfy your nutritional needs,” he continued, watching the tureen fill. “You will require two servings each day. I require three. Have you eaten?”

He grunted again, took the filled tureen and drank it in ten deep swallows. “Emptied vessels are placed here,” he said, wiping his snout, and set the tureen in another cupboard. He pressed a button. “For sterilization.”

They waited while the wall hummed. He drummed his fingers now and then, glanced at her and away. The wall sounded a tone. He took the tureen and put it with the clean ones in the cupboard.

“You can sit to eat if you like,” he added, and indicated yet another touch-panel without activating it. “Apart from these things, you will not touch anything on the bridge. That – ” He pointed straight up at another hatch in the ceiling. “ – is the navigations deck. You won’t be going up there. Neither will I, until my work is done. If you are unsure at all which controls are which, ask me.”

He looked at her again, from head to toe and back again. “There is sure to be a need for disciplinary measures before our time is ended. How would you prefer them handled?”

“Disciplinary measures?” she echoed, feeling her eyes bug out slightly. “No, sir, I swear I’ll be good!”

He rested his eyes heavily on hers. It was a singularly unamused look. He began to walk around her, inspecting her closely. “If you were one of my people, a light slap to the snout would be sufficient deterrent, but – ” He came back before her and eyed her nose. “ – I wouldn’t want to break anything. Where should I strike you?”

“Violence is effective,” he said evenly, and began to circle her again. “The threat of violence is particularly effective once violence has already been implemented. The object is to discourage conflicts before they occur.”

“This is not a negotiation. Here?” His claw brushed at her stomach and her hands flew up at once to cover herself.

“It is unreasonable to expect there to be no conflict between us. I would like a firm understanding of expectations before we reach our inevitable difficulties. I dislike improvisation and I greatly dislike surprises. Here?”

Skye flinched away again. “Not there, it’s... look, why can’t we just solve our problems with mutual discussion and respect?”

“Because this is not a partnership. You are not my equal. You are here to serve my needs. I do not plan to discuss things with you. Understand, human, that what we are doing here is as symbolic as it is vital to a peaceful assimilation. You will learn to live according to my ways, and my discipline shall be painful and uncompromising, an example to all humanity.”

“It isn’t. In your own histories, when two peoples meet and make a treaty between them, even in peacetime, the strongest walks away with the better deal. The Empire is strongest. We are subjugating you, make no mistake, but we are doing so precisely because we wish to avoid a bloody conquest, whether you believe me or not. Here?”

Skye hopped forward, one hand flying back to clutch protectively at her nether cheeks. “What, like a spanking? No!”

She didn’t want to, and it was on the tip of her tongue to refuse, but then she realized all at once that if he was here to study Earth’s satellites and all the information on the internet, he could easily find out about spankings for himself, and then he’d just punish her for not telling him. Stammering, she tried to explain whatever there was to explain about getting spanked, but it was difficult to think of the words when he was just standing there, staring narrowly into her eyes, silent.

“I don’t anticipate a frequent need.” He angled his head around to look at her bottom and grunted again. “I haven’t many demands. Pick up after yourself and don’t touch the controls, come when I send for you and do what you’re told. Don’t argue with me.”

She opened her mouth for a final desperate protest, ready to suggest slapping her hands or, heck, slapping her snout, anything that was not the indignity of a spanking, but that might be construed as arguing with him. She closed it again unhappily and stared at her feet.

He recoiled, as if this was 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 was just mind-boggling.

“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.”

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.

She looked. The light over the bed was on. A steady, piercing, pale blue light which 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.”

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 as though 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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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