Learning to Blush: Swarii Brides, Book Two Read online

  He clenched his teeth together and grunted as his chest got bruised by every damn groove of the pipe he dragged his body over until he got to the ladder. Finally, he was close. “Swing over,” he ordered, swinging his arm in the direction of the ladder.

  She screamed from the motion. “No! I can’t!”

  “Grab onto that goddamn ladder, Ellie!” Thorton barked.

  With a whimper, she let go of his arm again and her body dropped an inch from his grasp. She gasped in both fear and pain. He swung her body over again, where she was able to hook the ladder with her leg and then grabbed hold of it with her arm. She pulled her body onto it as Thorton let go of her.

  The engine creaked again. “Go! Go!” Thorton demanded, watching her climb down using only one arm. The arm he had grabbed onto during her fall she was clutching close to her body. He groaned and climbed down next to her and picked up her body with one of his arms, pressing her to his side, and then continued to climb down the ladder at a fair clip. The engine made a sickening crunching noise and then, GABANG! A seam opened up in the engine and a large chunk of the metal swung backwards, hitting against the ladder just over their heads. He dropped them to the floor and then shoved her to the ground and put his body over hers just before the ladder fell on top of them.

  Finally, there was a loud roar and then a winding-down noise that whirred into silence. Ellie could hear Thorton breathing loudly into her ear, but didn’t move and didn’t say anything. With a relieved sigh, she pressed her face against the cold floor.

  Thorton didn’t move until another couple of engineers came to help him pry the heavy ladder off his body. “Are you okay?” one of them asked, looking at the trashed room around them and the red marks across Thorton’s back.

  Thorton rolled over to his side and one of the engineers picked Ellie up into standing. She winced at the pain getting to her feet panged in her body, and she rubbed tenderly at her shoulder before looking down at Thorton. “Are you okay?” she asked, echoing the other engineer, who knelt down next to Thorton.

  Thorton looked void of all emotion for a moment. But in the next he climbed to his feet and quickly, hastily, began to take off his belt, looking menacingly at Ellie, who was already walking backwards away from him. “That’s it, you disobedient little…”

  “Whoa, whoa! I’m injured!” she cried, running away from him towards the hallway.

  “You will be injured! I’m gonna crack your ass the other way!” he said, running after her. “You nearly got us killed, you little shit!”

  She had to run impressively fast to be able to outrun Thorton, who even sported a bit of a limp. She would have liked to be thankful for him saving her life. She even would have stood for groveling to him a little bit about how she was sorry her experiment didn’t go as well as she'd planned. She figured she’d bake him a cake or something later; just as long as she got away from him.

  She certainly didn’t wait for the elevator—she vaulted up the stairs to the next level up, which was conveniently the medical level. Thorton was blind enough with rage not to notice that waiting for the elevator would get him there faster than the stairs. He was only a foot behind her the whole way, growling.

  “Eeeek!” she hooted, running to the first friend she saw, who was luckily Fie, an eight foot tall giant of a man, even by Swarii standards. She was quick to use him as a barrier between her and Thorton, who kept on trying to reach out and grab her.

  “Whoa! Whoa, Buddy!” Fie said, putting his hands on Thorton’s shoulders to hold him back, noticing that the man was bleeding from the lip and his nose, his chest and back covered with angry red welts and bruises, and that he looked extraordinarily pissed. “Whoa!”

  “Get off of me!” he ordered. Fie continued to stand in his path, and so he looked around at Ellie, who pushed herself against a counter. “I should have you shot!” he spat, pointing at her with his folded belt. “This will be the last order YOU disobey!”

  “Calm down, Commander. Let me take a look at you,” Fie offered, his voice as low and calming as it usually was.

  Thorton’s face puckered angrily, looking up at Fie, then looking at Elle, who looked more ashamed than terrified with the way she hunched against the wall, still nursing her injured arm to her chest. “As soon as he clears you for work, little girl, your ass is mine.”

  Ellie and Fie both watched as Thorton stomped angrily out of the room, after which Ellie looked up at Fie and requested flatly, “Do me a favor? Never clear me for work for the rest of my life?”

  “What happened? I saw the alarm go off, but…” Fie asked, his brow worried. He walked up to her and carefully took her hand off of her injured arm.

  “I was too clever by half,” she divulged as Fie carefully helped her shuck off her coat. She winced. “Thorton kept me from getting dropped on an engine that was blowing… Caught me mid-drop. It was impressive, but he nearly ripped my arm off. Think it’s dislocated?” she asked, with a shred of hope in her voice, as if she really wanted him to hell her that she had a slow-healing injury.

  “Nope,” he replied simply, helping her pull off her shirt in order to look at her shoulder.

  “You haven’t even looked at it yet!” she whined. “How do you know?”

  “You have a low pain-tolerance, Ellie. You’d be screaming your head off if it was.” His words held a weight of certainty as he easily picked her up by her waist and settled her on the counter she had been leaning on, hoping the extra height would help his neck strain which he normally acquired from looking down at Ellie's short height. “A spanking would be the least of your concerns.”

  “I think he was more interested in killing me than spanking me,” she grumbled, wincing uncomfortably as he worked with her arm by moving it ‘gently’ around.

  “Does that hurt?” he asked.

  She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “No, feels fantastic. Do it some more.”

  “That’s human sarcasm, isn’t it?” Fie asked flatly. “You might not want to be sarcastic with a medical officer, Lieutenant. You’re a different enough species that I might not get it one of these days.” He looked down and saw that her entire wrist was bruised… a few of the darkening welts were in the shape of Thorton’s fingers.

  “You’re a lucky little girl, Kitten,” Fie told her. “A lot of the engine blows end up with me sticking someone in a body bag and calling his wife with some bad news.” He shook his head. “All you have is a slightly torn muscle that will heal in no time and a few scrapes and bruises. It was just a regular day on the playground, as far as you’re concerned.” He walked across the room to grab a couple of supplies. When he came back, she was trying to rub some dirt off her nose with her even dirtier coat sleeve.

  “Question?” she asked, watching him prepare a very, very scary-looking needle and trying to ignore him as he did it. “How many people actually get shot around here? For as much as I get threatened, you would think that it happens all the time.”

  “On some ships it does happen all the time,” Fie replied. “I remember the first post I served on, about twenty men were shot for insubordination… Only one was actually killed, mind you, but a lot of shooting.”

  “Nobody’s even insubordinate around here,” she chuckled nervously.

  Fie raised a dubious eyebrow.

  “Except me, I get it,” she replied flatly.

  “That’s because Graham Masterson is one of those few men whose reputation precedes him. He’s talented—even if fate did put him together with one of the more silly girls in the universe. At least you’re just an engineer. It’s really uncommon for engineers to get disciplined on the whole. On any ship, anywhere, if you were to hold engineers up to the same standards and guidelines as everyone else, you wouldn’t have any engineers left— they wouldn’t make it past the first week. Why do you think the Admiral pressed Thorton into becoming an engineer? Because he didn’t want to see him dead. As you know quite well, Thorton wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise.” He looked
up and added easily as he wielded the needle near, “This is gonna hurt.”

  He wasn’t fooling. Nobody could make her scream like a two-year-old better than Fie. Not even Graham’s spankings ever produced the level of shrill pain that Fie could unleash within seconds. It was possible that he was very correct—she did have a low pain tolerance.

  She left his ears ringing afterwards, and he let go of his steady hold on her in order to put his fingers over his ears and loosen his jaw as if to somehow repair the damage that way.

  “It burns,” she whined afterwards, wincing even more.

  “Let it burn. It’s healing the damaged tissue so I can get you cleared for work,” Fie told her.

  Her eyes widened. “I don’t want to be cleared for work today! You saw Thorton, he’s crazy!”

  “Yeah, well, from what you told me, it sounds like they need all the engineers on duty right now.” He didn’t sound very apologetic. He just picked up an electric tablet and started writing something into it. “Take a shower, take your afternoon nap,” he encouraged, “and report to duty in two hours. Your shoulder should be done healing by then.”

  “Can’t you find something for me to fix up here?” she complained as he gently helped her put her shirt back on. “Any equipment that needs tinkering, perhaps?”

  “Yeah, I could find you something… But I won’t.” He grinned teasingly and pulled her body off of the counter and set her feet back onto the ground. “I’m sure by the time you go down there, you’ll be full of spit and vinegar again, anyway. Your team needs you… Even if you’re the reason that they need you.”

  She shuffled miserably to her and Graham’s apartment and felt the communicator on her wrist buzz. God, those communicators were annoying pieces of work… They were larger than a watch, and so when she was called on one, the vibration it caused seemed to rattle her arm up to her elbow. She entered the bedroom and pushed her communicator under the main screen in her living room. Her husband, handsome in his uniform, looked very serious and very concerned when he appeared on-screen. “Are you alright?” he asked her.

  “Thorton tell you what happened?” she groaned. Exhausted, she sat back on the sofa right in front of the monitor.

  “Damn right he told me what happened! You put us behind by at least twenty hours, Eleanor! You disobeyed a direct order!” he griped, his neck showing the vein that only seemed to swell when he was angry.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know we were trucking on full speed. It could have worked, if…”

  “I’m not interested in another one of your inadequate excuses,” he said, ripping his hand through the air. “I called to see if you were alright.”

  “Well, why don’t you just read the medical report, if that’s all you want?” she quipped.

  “Your attitude will get you nowhere with me, young lady. I called you because I’m your husband; I love you, and I worry when you’re injured,” he snapped, trying his best to be patient, but she could see that his nostrils were flaring with rage.

  “Well, don’t worry. Fie cleared me for work at five.”

  “Commander Hux assured me he won’t shoot you, even though it’s his right to,” Graham added with fervor.

  “How comforting,” she replied sarcastically.

  “It’s not that comforting for you. What trouble you’re in is of your own making. You better believe you and I will discuss this later.”

  Graham was a head-of-household type that didn’t actually discuss many things with his wife. However, he did like calling his punishment sessions with her ‘discussions’, much to her disdain. “Goody goody gumdrops,” she huffed. “It’s been awhile since we discussed something.”

  “Yes. Too long,” he agreed ominously. “I’ll see you later on.”

  “Uh huh,” she agreed, watching the screen turn off.

  She did what Fie recommended—she put her clothes in the freshener, took a shower, took a nap, and damn it all if her arm felt fine afterwards! She wiggled it around stiffly, trying to loosen up the muscle, and then washed the gunk off her goggles, which were still dirty from earlier, and which she always wore in her hair like a headband until she needed them.

  The walk down to the engineering level she felt was akin to walking “the long mile” to one’s execution back on Earth. It was both too long and not long enough. She was sure that Thorton would still be angry, and as she walked through the Engineering Level and found herself avoiding more and more furious gazes from the other engineers and mechanics, she became absolutely certain that she was indeed walking to her doom.

  She finally spotted Thorton. He was standing on a raised platform with sparks flying around him, his eyes covered with safety goggles as he welded the scraps of the secondary engine back together.

  She cleared her throat. She didn’t think he would really be able to hear her above the noise, but was mistaken. As soon as she made her little cough, he turned off his welding gun and turned his head slowly down towards her.

  “What do you want me to start on?” she asked, pulling her hands behind her and looking repentant and nervous.

  He snorted ruefully. “You know the strap of leather I have hanging in my office?” he asked her shortly.

  She gave a nervous chuckle, as if he couldn’t possibly be serious.

  “I want you to get it,” he told her, looking more serious every second. “And you want to be fast, Girl, because the more I work on shit that you messed up, the more pissed I get, and the worse it’s gonna be.”

  She gulped, not liking that order one bit. “Can we talk this out first?” she pleaded.

  He tugged off one of his safety gloves with a violent jerk.

  “I’ll get it!” she assured, scurrying away from him. She knew where that was going—the last thing she wanted was punishment leading up to another punishment. Thorton obviously wasn’t at his most patient that day.

  She had worked under him for nearly nine months now, and although he threatened her constantly, he had never used the leather strap on her, although she knew full well that the entire existence of the strap was a contingency from Graham to have her work under Thorton. Graham didn’t want to see her shot, or even whipped, and yet had the foresight to predict that she was going to be a huge pain in Thorton’s ass and that, eventually, Thorton would want to—or would have to—do something about her.

  The strap of leather actually had dust on it. She found herself blushing as she came out of the office with it… She wanted to hide it under her jacket to keep any of the other men from seeing it and predicting what was going to happen. But then she figured they already were aware of what was going to happen to her, and it was humiliating. All she was to the others at the moment was a little girl about to get her bottom smacked by her boss. To her, it seemed so utterly ridiculous.

  Probably back on Earth, if whipping was still done in the Navy, a spanking would never seem adequate. But the Swarii were certainly a gentler race of beings, at least in regards to their females. They revered women to the extent that it would kill them to see one of their women suffering… Although it was rare that a woman would actually deserve severe suffering. Executing or physically damaging a woman was unheard of.

  Spanking was more common… But not as common as it seemed to be for Ellie! A ‘difficult’ Swarii woman who ‘constantly’ got spanked was a joke in Ellie’s mind. Men considered a ‘brat’ to be a woman who didn’t have their dinner ready by six or someone who would try to use sex as a reward system for getting what they wanted. Married Swarii women were absurdly obedient and submissive… Ellie was neither. She felt the pull to submit to her husband, certainly, but she knew that pull was just a biological instinct from her Swarii-side; one that she pretty much squashed with the help of the fact that she was mostly human.

  Graham was a very, very patient husband. And fortunately for her, he was very educated and intellectual enough to realize that she wasn’t fully Swarii and couldn’t be held up to the same standards as other Swarii wives. Even
so, her bottom was the victim of the flat of his hand more than enough times.

  By the time she got back to Thorton, he was nearly done with his welding. Thorton was actually on the ‘short’ side of the Swarii-height spectrum, but she never really noticed, and it was rare somebody said something about his height. Thorton was burly—he was extremely muscular and built up from years of manual labor. Her husband was quite lean in comparison; Thorton seemed like he had rows upon rows of muscle…

  She was beginning to think she might not survive the strapping.

  Finally, his welding torch fired off and he pushed his goggles off his eyes and up onto his forehead so he could get a better look at his work. He then turned and looked at her in a way that divulged that he knew exactly how long she had been standing there. He pulled off his gloves and his protective apron and slapped them both down onto the platform before he climbed down.

  “You cleared for work?” he asked as he stepped up to her with a sharp look of resolve in his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t be down here otherwise,” she assured, swallowing; looking at his busted lip with a slight amount of guilt that she knew would dissolve as soon as he started punishing her.

  “You nearly got yourself killed,” he reminded firmly, yanking the leather strap out of her small hands.

  “I know, I’m sorry. It was a bad judgment call on my part,” she admitted, her heart beating quickly. In fact, she was beginning to think her heart had relocated to her throat and she now had to both breathe and swallow around it.

  Thorton gripped her arm and pulled her to the steps leading up to another grid level. “It wasn’t your damn judgment call. It was my judgment call. What you did was directly disobey me. I’m the boss here!” He sat down on a step and pulled her over his lap with a single, firm motion. “Something you’re gonna learn,” he assured grimly.

  “Can’t we do this in your office?” she squeaked in a plea, listening to how the sounds of other engineers working were beginning to quiet so they could watch her punishment.