“My end?”
His brows lowered over his searching, searing gaze, and his voice emerged from the depths of his chest with a finality which would frighten even the bravest soul.
“The end.”
But it wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of something impossibly strange, terribly wonderful, and horrifyingly romantic. There was no way for our heroine to know that at the time, for Elizabeth was being held by her throat, the very real possibility of losing her life flashing before her dimming eyes.
“Why are you going blue, human?” Konan demanded. “Is this some kind of defiance?”
“You’re… choking…me.”
“Oh. You keep your air hole in your mouth hole,” Konan realized out loud. “What a silly design. We should amend that.”
He released her neck, showing that he didn’t actually intend to kill her, which was nice. But it was a very limited kind of niceness which did nothing to reassure her that she would survive this encounter. She slumped back to the ground at his feet, shocked by his rough handling. Elizabeth already knew humans had no status whatsoever for most aliens. This one barely seemed to know what she was as a life form. He knew what humans were, but he didn’t know that their necks weren’t handles.
“Tell me why you were trying to break into my ship.”
“I wasn’t…”
The king pulled her over his thighs, leaving her to squirm for a matter of seconds before his massive royal hand came down across her ass in a hard slap which made her wail.
He was spanking her. Without warning. Possibly without reason. She had the feeling that he was punishing her for a multitude of sins she hadn’t committed.
“You have a pleasing rear, human creature," he declared. “I have punished many fine rumps in my time, and never seen one quite this shapely.”
His hand clapped against her ass again, imparting another hot flash of sting. “Yes. You are not made for much in the way of survival, but you are pleasing to handle.”
She would have thanked him for the compliment, but he followed his statement up with a flurry of slaps which landed all over her cheeks and her upper thighs, somewhat softened by her pants, but not entirely. She was befuddled by the treatment, which seemed punitive, but without much in the way of real anger. It was as though he was testing her, trying her out. Seeing what he could do with her body. It was an interrogation of sorts, but not one that sought any information from her mind.
“Ouch!” She cried out as his hand met the seat of her pants more sharply, giving her a sharp stinging sensation which went on long after the slap had finished slapping.
“Weak,” he concluded. “But thrashable within suitable range. Your species would make for good whipping girls.”
“I’m very sorry I touched your ship…”
“You touched my ship!” His palm cracked against the sensitive seat of her rear. “How dare you. None may touch this ship without the express permission of the king.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought it was just a ship!”
“Just. A. Ship!?” He punctuated every single word with another firm spank. “Little human female, do you have any idea where you are?”
“No,” she whimpered. “That’s a big part of the problem.”
The king snorted, but kept spanking, his palm beating a pleasant sounding tune out on her ass as the ship started to rumble beneath them.
“What’s happening!?”
“We're leaving this planet.”
“No! I mean…” What did it really matter if she left the planet? She had been alien abducted once. Why not twice? She had no ties to the lava world. But this did seem worse. Nobody had taken it upon themselves to spank her while she roamed the city of the winged king. It was this brutal, scaled beast of a king who treated her body as though it was his, and punished her with crude and archaic discipline.
She should have known better than to touch something that wasn’t hers. That was good behavior 101, but in a world where nothing made sense and everything was alien, she’d gotten used to touching everything to explore it. The king did not seem as though he would understand that explanation. He was too busy paying attention to the spot where her ass met her thighs, a place where she was tender beyond compare.
“Oww! Ouch! I’m sorry! God! Please!”
In the end, it was not begging for mercy which compelled the king to stop spanking her. He was distracted by the take-off. At a certain point, everything started to rumble and didn’t stop. She could have sworn she heard rattling bolts being thrown at one another. This did not feel like a royal vessel. It felt like the vague concept of a royal vessel having seen much better times and now hoping to hold itself together through another ascent through hostile atmosphere.