Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Once again, I worry my hand might be too heavy. Could do too much damage. So instead I choose the tanned strap I used before. It is more of a slapping tool than an impact weapon, and it means I can thrash this defiant little human for as long as I feel the need without doing any real damage.
SLAP!
From the very first stroke, she yowls like a banshee. This is another aspect of a predator. Prey knows how to submit. Prey goes still and quiet and soft. But a predator fights. A predator uses its teeth and its claws and it does not give in because it is not wired to do that. I see her hunter side more often than not, but the absolute truth is that humans have a little of both beasts inside them. I intend to quiet the predator today.
* * *
Lyssa
I am in fucking pain. First, because I failed. Second, because the leather lash whipping me is producing a hellish sensation across both cheeks and down my thighs. Manik seems to leave no part of my skin untouched from my ass almost all the way to my knees. This is a true punishment, an inflicting of pain and humiliation.
The entire time he is punishing me, he is lecturing me too.
“That was so spectacularly stupid I can only assume it was some act of insolent rebellion, because I slew those two invaders you insist on mistaking for rescuers. They were not here to save you, Lyssa. They were here to make money, and they died for that sin. Understand that you are mine, and I will kill anybody who tries to take you from me. Understand too, that you have no understanding of the forces at play here. You are an angry woman on a vendetta against the memory of a man who does not care. You’ll kill yourself out here in the depths of space and he will never know. I’m not going to let that happen.”
I can’t argue with him. Mostly because I can’t speak, only wail. He just keeps lashing me, over and over, dozens upon dozens of times, leaving me with an intensely hot and swollen ass and a bruised ego. This punishment is fucking devastating. I want it to stop, but I know it won’t stop until he decides he’s done. I am his thing, his owned possession. I am a bad little pet he has decided to take pity on, and there’s no way out for me.
Finally, he stops. It has gone on a lot longer than it did the first time he punished me, and it has not provided me with any of the sweet arousal I experienced on the last occasion. He wanted me to hurt, and he has succeeded in that aim.
Manik leans down and murmurs in my ear. “It would have stopped a long time ago if you had said you were sorry.”
I’m not sorry.
This psychotically possessive alien thinks he knows me because he made a couple of guesses about my past. He thinks he wants me because I appeal to him. My ex was the same, a shallow judge of character who thought he had special powers of perception.
I feel him brush my hair away from my neck and slide something around my throat. It’s cool and plastic feeling, but I bet it is a lot stronger than the plastics I’m familiar with.
“This has a tracker in it, as well as an electric pulse that will activate if you leave the hideout,” he tells me. “Consider yourself on lockdown.”
“Where did you get this from?” My curiosity gets the better of me. This is not a piece of tech hacked together in the back of a cave. This is pre-made.
“This was used on me,” he says. “Which tells you what kind of beast it was calibrated for. Do not go outside this enclosure. You will regret it.”
Fateful hours later…
I have recovered from my whipping in spirit, if not in flesh. I am going to feel that pain for quite some time. But that is what life with Manik is like. An ongoing series of pains to be endured. He is somewhere in the rear again and I have been left to my own devices.
Enclosure. What does that even mean? He said I had to stay inside, and he took my suit, so that obviously eliminates the hyper-bolted front door. But there are still depths to this cave that I have not explored. I push back the blankets and I sneak toward the dark rear. Nothing bad happens, and I start to think he might just be fucking with me. Sure, he has the neck thing, but what are the odds he has the other parts of the machinery? If he escaped with this on, he probably never had a chance to get the infrastructure needed to make it work.