I crack the lid ever so slightly.
“In the beginning, it was a truth universally known, at the best of times and the worst of times, that a king in possession of a great fortune must be in want of a…”
I listen with bated breath as what sounds like a recording plays. It all sounds sort of familiar, as if it is mashing up the opening lines of several prominent books. It also sounds like complete nonsense, but there has to be something of value to it, or Rex wouldn’t have forbidden me to listen to it.
“What are you doing?” His voice suddenly intrudes over the soft chatter of the chest.
I slam the lid of the chest down and yank my hand away as quickly as possible.
“Nothing!?”
“You opened the exposition chest. Didn’t you.”
I can hardly deny it. I’m sitting right next to the thing, crouched like a thief. What am I going to say, that I fell out of bed, rolled all the way here, and… no. I’m going to be honest.
“I don't think it’s an exposition chest. I think it’s more an opening chest. Like, you know, opening lines…”
“So you didn’t listen to it for more than a few seconds?”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.”
There is a secret afoot here, a mystery which involves an exiled king, a talking chest and my having fallen through time. I find myself fascinated by all the potential reasons for that.
Rex looms over me, his dark eyes slightly narrowed in irritation.
“You were given an order. You disobeyed that order. For that reason, you must be punished.”
“I only opened it a little.”
“Then you shall only be punished a little.”
He’s so damn slick. He picks me up in his arms as if I weigh nothing to him. It is easy to forget his strength. It must be multiple times that of a human man. He tosses me down on the bed, which is likewise built strong. Everything Rex has done, he has done with stability and power in mind.
Face down on the bed, I have a wild feeling of being completely out of control. Rex's hands are on me, controlling me. I couldn’t get up if I wanted to. What he doesn’t know is that I don’t want to. His touch is inflaming me. It’s not just being under the arms of a man that feels good. It’s being…I don’t know. Is controlled the word? I have been out of control for so long. My life was spiraling long before I walked into that bank. Every decision I made seemed to go wrong, and my decisions didn’t get better because of that. Somehow, they got worse.
Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. I was surrounded by people who knew me and yet… nobody said anything, let alone did anything.
Rex has made it very clear that he notices what I do, and that alone makes me feel warm inside.
“Ouch!”
His palm just met my ass in a stinging slap, igniting pain which flashes across my bare flesh.
“Bad, Kristine,” he lectures gently, but with meaning. “You must obey me in all things.”
He slaps me again, and then again. He focuses on one cheek and then the other. He makes my skin sting, and my flesh heat, and he reminds me somehow of how it felt when he was licking me to that incredible climax. I feel myself starting to respond, not with shame, but with the same response I did when he intended to pleasure me. I start to get wet.
I can’t help my response. There is something about being pinned and spanked, punished for my disobedience by this stern alien king who apparently intends to let me get away with nothing, which makes me feel so completely free. The spanking intensifies, but it is not pain that I feel, it is heat and that heat is flooding through me. It is making me catch my breath and then release it again in long moans. It is making me lift my ass to his big punishing alien hand, and it is making me spread my thighs in a primitive response coded into me long before I came to exist. I was made for this. There are parts of me that know it, and that’s why I do not fight, and why this does not feel like cruelty even though some small-minded, petty onlookers might think that being pinned by a giant male alien and spanked is a horror. It is not. It is a fucking joy. The tears forming in my eyes may have been predicated on pain, but they are being shed in relief and happiness and…
“Ouch! Ow! Ohmmmmmygoooddd…”
* * *
Rex
I have been alone in this realm for many cycles of its moons. My desire for a mate has waxed with every cycle. It is all I can do to restrain myself from plunging between those soft lips and discovering the warm depths within. Her rear is bright red, her cheeks displayed to me in fiery submission. She may not have obeyed me when it came to the chest, but she is doing as she is told now, following the instructions delivered by my palm as it meets her skin with crisp swats.