“There’s nothing wrong with my temperament. I’m a cop. This is how we get.”
“I would prefer this was done with your consent, but if you will not submit to proper medical care, it will happen against your will,” King Brawn says. “Sedate her, doctor.”
“No!”
I leap off the bed and dive under it. It’s made for creatures their size, and therefore there are places beneath it where I can hide. Sort of. It’s not as if they don’t know where I am.
“Human, you are acting as though you need a sippy cup yourself. Come out this instant.”
“So you knew what that was?”
“You told me the drinking vessel you gave me on your planet belonged to a four-year-old. Now you are acting like one, and in short order, you will find yourself treated like one. Again.”
I step out from under the table and face my tormentors once more. “I know you’re trying to help me, but…”
He picks me up under my arms and sits me on the bed. He takes up my entire field of vision with his rippling muscles and intense stare. “But nothing, Ariel. I am going to help you, even if you don’t want to be helped.”
He holds me still, and the doctor walks around behind me. There is a slight pinch somewhere above my lower back, and I feel an immediate release.
“Oh my god,” I gasp as I feel the tension which was locking up my back fade away. That pain has been there for months. Maybe years. So long that I don’t remember what my body felt like without it. And now, just like that, it’s gone.
“Wow.”
“Does that feel better?” The doctor asks me.
“Yes. So much better,” I reply, astounded. “Wow. That’s incredible. What did you do?”
“This could have been achieved with far less conversation and general chaos,” King Brawn says. “Now you have seen that the doctor can help you, will you let him help?”
“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
I haven’t felt this mobile in a long time. I’d just gotten used to my back being stiff over the years, losing a little movement now and then. I’d become habituated to moving slowly, bending my knees, grinding my teeth, and hoping for the best.
“Remove your clothes and lie down, please, Ariel," the doctor says.
I undress, feeling as though I am shedding the last remnants of my human life. I have been clinging to this uniform for a long time, almost as long as I have been in pain. It made me feel like a person who mattered even when I felt like a big lump of nothing. Taking it off doesn’t just leave me naked. It strips me of my identity. It leaves me as nothing other than a woman. A human woman, lost in the depths of space, taken and perhaps owned by an alien king.
* * *
Brawn
She is truly beautiful. Every inch of her skin is soft and describes the curves of her body with a natural elegance. My species, and my body, is full of rough spots and variances in patterning. She is smooth all over, the same light caramel hue over almost of her body, save for a few strategic spots. Her lips. Her nipples. She has two little buds sitting atop the twin swells of her breasts. They contract and grow taller beneath my gaze.
“Can you not look at me like that, please?”
She’s shy, and that shyness is making her change color ever so slightly. It is flushing her skin with a pinkish red hue which only intensifies the longer I look. It reminds me of the way her rear colored with the application of my punisher, but there is no contact being made with her body now. There are only the feelings between us, the strange chemistry of alien attraction.
I can smell her desire. Humans have a simple reproductive system based on sheaths and swords, of a kind. I know there is a tight little crevice between her thighs which craves to be stretched and filled. My own anatomy is made along similar lines. I could push my cock inside her. I could make her submit to me with rough thrusts. I could punish her for daring to disobey me by using her body for my pleasure. I could sample her carnal delights daily, until she no longer remembers the world she came from, or who she was there.
But there is a delicacy about her. She is held together by strength, but there are cracks running through her psyche and perhaps through her body as well. She bears marks here and there, obvious signs of previous pain and injury. There is one on her stomach, a thin line I trace with the tip of my curious finger.
“Surgery,” she explains. “I was shot on a domestic call out. Some guy was threatening to kill his ex. I went there and he decided I’d do. When he couldn’t shoot her, he shot me.”