His Human Vessel (Zandian Masters 5)

“Yes, Master.”

He closed his eyes, a wave of crushing disappointment rolling through him, making him sway on his feet.

He’d punish her. Nothing else could be done until he’d settled the score. He opened his eyes and drew back his arm. He brought the paddle down smartly across the center of Bayla’s ass. He’d delivered three quick and powerful strokes before she let out a high-pitched scream that shot straight through the center of his trunk and out the other side.

He stopped, horrified that he’d elicited such a sound from her. He checked his cuff and found her pulse too elevated, the signs of stress too high.

Veck.

She gasped for breath, her back heaving on the mattress.

“Too hard,” he muttered, rubbing away the bright red bloom of color.

“Yes!” she agreed.

He rubbed her flesh vigorously to reduce any possibility of bruising. Despite his fury with Bayla, he would never cause her real harm, and the idea he’d gone too far sickened him.

Her buttocks and legs trembled beneath his palm, and her back still heaved with sobs, but they were slowing.

He picked up the heavy paddle and tossed it into his waste receptacle. With his superior strength, he never needed to wield such an implement. Hadn’t he made her cry with his hand alone?

But what she’d done warranted far more than a hand spanking. He selected a thin, reedy cane. It would bite her flesh and cause significant pain without going as thuddy or deep as the paddle.

Bayla hadn’t moved from her position, but she turned her face in his direction. He brought the cane down against his leg to measure its bite, and her slender shoulders hunched.

Standing at her side, he lined the cane up to cut across both her buttocks and let it swing. Bayla rose up on both her tiptoes, a choked gasp sounding in her throat. It left a neat white line across her reddened buttocks. He flicked the cane again and left a second stripe.

Bayla let out a sob.

He snapped the cane again and again. There was a satisfaction in leaving the stripes across her clenching bottom. As her distress mounted, his eased, and a sense of calm settled over him.

He struck again. Bayla cried out. He checked his cuff. Forty percent aroused. It had been zero when he used the paddle. There was something about the measured pain that excited her. He continued caning her, striping down her buttocks to her upper thighs.

“Reach back and pull open your ass cheeks,” he commanded.

Her hands crawled back and parted her plump, punished cheeks for him.

He lowered his wrist and angled the cane on the vertical. With far less power, he struck her between her buttocks, along the line of the crack, punishing her tender, clenching bottom hole.

She shrieked, her body popping off the bed. “No, please, Master!” She threw herself at the floor by his feet, wrapping her arms around his ankles. Then, probably remembering his dictate to remain in position, she surged back up and laid over the sleepdisk, her beautiful body trembling.

Something about her subservience—the desperate throwing herself at his feet—brought a surge of satisfaction. Of dominance and power. His cock thickened, and punishing became more of a pleasure than the desperate need to rebalance the scales.

“One more round for leaving position.”

She wept into the covers.

He gave her four more stripes crisscrossing across the neat, even row he’d left before. “Pull your cheeks apart.”

Despite her obvious misery, she remained in complete submission, reaching back to pull open her buttocks. He delivered one last spank to her crack and pulled her floating cage over to them, lowering it to the level of the sleepdisk.

“In your cage, now.”

She crawled right in and stayed on her knees, her chest pressed to the mat, her hands reaching back to cover her welted bottom.

It was an adorable sight, one that eased his remaining anger. He rather enjoyed seeing her as a punished and sorry girl.

She’d made a mistake. One with terrible repercussions for him and his species. But she’d been punished and was sorry. He’d made many mistakes, too. He should have realized a human might develop an attachment to the baby she grew in her body. He’d been an idiot not to consider it.