She heard the words, stern and disciplinary. But there was something far more intense behind them, an energy that slid from the finger beneath her chin and wrapped its way around her spine, finding the middle of her belly and sinking lower. Lower. Deeper. Hotter.
“Take your clothes off. All of them.”
She drew in a deep breath. He looked at her, brow raised. Was she going to argue about this? Or was this what she wanted too? He’d bared her like a brat two days ago, punished her like a bad little girl. He’d made her feel like a bratty little academy dropout then. Now she still felt that thrill of disobedience, but the other feeling was complementing it. The raw arousal between them threatened to overwhelm her.
“I don’t think I can, sir.”
“Of course you can.”
“It would be easier if…” Did she have the nerve to say it? Of course she did. Tessil prided herself on always having the nerve. “If you helped me.”
He let out a low growl. His hand slid from her chin to the jumpsuit that clad her body. These things were easy to put on, and even easier to remove. The little zipper fastening was not made for Kitari hands, though. When he put his fingers to it in order to lower it, it caught in its own runnings and then snapped off entirely. The suit fell open and began to peel itself from her, revealing the smooth lines of her body. Her breasts dropped from their snug position as the suit relinquished its hold on them, and the down of her pussy came into view as the upper part of the suit settled in a natural place around her hips.
“You are not wearing any undergarments, Tessil,” he noted.
She was blushing all the way to her navel now.
“I… uhm… must… You don’t really need them in these suits.”
“You came to my private quarters to report yourself and now you reveal yourself to be naked beneath your attire, that you knew I was going to have to take down to punish you. Ensign Tessil. You came here to seduce me.”
He wasn’t even asking a question. He was telling her what she’d done.
“No! Nu uh! I…”
She looked into his eyes and realized it was a thousand times harder to lie to him than it was to lie to herself.
“You know there are strict rules against sexual relationships between superiors and subordinates.”
“They’re more like guidelines. Janus fucks whoever she wants…”
She saw by the way his expression immediately composed itself into one of severe sternness that had been the wrong thing to say.
“Your behavior is one thing. Calling the captain’s reputation into question to justify this wanton display is another. Bend yourself over the bed, Ensign. Now.”
His bed. He wanted her in, well, over his bed.
She noticed for the first time that his quarters were very sparse. Most officers of his rank had accumulated personal possessions with which to decorate their spaces. He had nothing. Nothing at all. The room almost felt like it didn’t actually belong to anybody.
“Where’s your stuff?” She asked the question even as she walked the few steps to her doom.
“Not all of us festoon the ship with every bit of garbage we have managed to accumulate over the years,” he said. “Over the bed, Ensign.”
She did as she was told, settling herself over the soft and comfortable edge of his bed. Higher ranks had better bedding. His felt like lying down on a cloud. Her face was nestled by blankets that smelled like him. This was what she had wanted. To be enveloped by the feeling she’d gotten at the peak of the spanking when he’d turned her insides into molten heat.
She felt his big hand slide into the back of her half-down jumpsuit and peel it slowly down over her hips, baring her ass and her thighs. He left it around her knees, effectively hobbling her, as if she had any chance of escaping him anyway.
He growled softly, and then each one of his big alien hands settled on her bare cheeks and spread them.
“What are you doing?”
“Inspecting you,” he said.
He was looking at her most intimate places. He was taking his time. She was surrendering to him, not knowing if he would lash her for her insolence, or give her what she was starting to think they both craved. She found her upper body squirming against his bed. Her lower body could not, for it was very much clamped in place by Commander Atlas’s grip.
“Are you going to spank me, sir?” She asked the question with uncharacteristic softness.
“I don’t think spanking is the most effective punishment for you, a girl who comes back with defiance in her eyes and impudence on her tongue. You’re not here because you need to be thrashed—though you do need to be thrashed. You are here because you’ve followed your instinctual need for a more complete kind of domination.”