Ransom

“Astaria! That’s not an apology!”

“I know,” she whispers. “I’m playing it up, you know?”

“You don't need to play it up. You’ve actually killed several of my men.”

“Oh. Yes. True.” She frowns. “I forgot about that. There’s just been a lot going on. You know?”

“Bend over the table,” I sigh. We have rigged the head table with cameras and soft coverings so she can be kept in place throughout the duration of this punishment. A series of implements are also laid out beside her — paddles, straps, canes, a whole plethora of human instruments of discipline.

Astaria bends over the table dutifully. She knows just what to do to make things hard for me. Seeing her lying there, her skirts lifted over her back, her rear so publicly vulnerable. There is a part of me sworn to protect her, a part that wants to clad her and keep her from what is to come. But another part of me, the larger part, knows she needs this as much as they need it.

“This is going to hurt,” I warn her.

“I hope so," she says with that twisted glint in her eye. I feel a welling of warmth toward her. She ls a perverted little beast after my own heart, though she may also be a pretty princess built to refined measurements.

I bring a lash down for the first stroke. It sings through the air and lands across her hindquarters with a satisfying smack.

“Ow!” she cries out, before laughing.

“Harder!” Redpelt calls for more heft.

“Stop laughing,” I growl in her ear, curling my fingers in the growing locks of her hair. She used to have very little at all, but now there is a good handful to grasp when I need it. “You need to sound penitent, you terrible little minx!”

“I’m trying,” she whines.

I determine to help her so she need not try. My affection for her has stilled my hand too many times to count. I have held back when I should have been harsher. I am yet to tell her of the pure despair I felt when I realized she had been taken, with no way to find her, no trail left to follow, not even a whisper on a solar wind.

I would have given anything to have her back in those desolate twenty-four hours, but I could do nothing. I was forced to wait for fate and Astaria’s own will to bring her back to me. I faced the very real possibility of going the rest of my life without her. I did not like that feeling at all. It felt as though I had been hollowed out from the inside, as if nothing could ever matter again.

Now I have her pretty little ass displayed for me and the crew, and she is practically begging for the whipping she should have received before. I will give it to her. Every lash. Every bite of leather. I will make her genuinely contrite, and I will take the burden of blame from her.

I begin to lash her harshly. SLAP! CRACK! WHAP! Back and forth my great arm goes, the leather following its arc. It catches both of her cheeks faithfully, painting them a bright red hue. I want every single one of my soldiers to see this, so there are cameras feeding the images to screens across the hall. Every time the lash lands, there is a cheer.

It is not long before those same cameras designed to capture the punishment begin to capture other intimate details. She cannot help her body’s reaction to me and to this punishment.

Astaria

I am soaked. And, in spite of the very real pain, I am also suffused with pleasure. There is something twisted inside me. Something that makes the dark light and the light dark, turns hatred into love, and pain into absolute fucking ecstasy. This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me. I think I might be into this in a deep and abiding way.

Suddenly, he is touching me between my thighs. He is toying with me more gently than I want. I need more. I need roughness. I need to be claimed. But he is not giving me that. He is teasing me and he is keeping me on the very edge of the very beginning of what might be satisfaction.

I am keenly aware that an entire ship of hostile xenovorks is watching this happen to me. I have become more than an object of derision and loathing. I have become the erotic core of the ship itself, the tight little nexus that all desire to be inside and only one will claim.

I am his.

I was his long before I met him. I dreamed of him. I touched myself to him. I imagined all he might be, and he has been all that and more. I do not care if he wishes to display me to all creation. He can do that if he pleases. I am his, and it feels not only like it is his right but that it is right indeed to be shown.