Chapter Three
Graham let the shower water sluice over his body and groaned. After mating with Eleanor, he really wanted to sleep for about a thousand years, but almost as quickly as they’d finished she had begun crying.
Eleanor could not be talked to and could not be consoled. He still had no idea what she was even upset about. It was a pity; all he wanted to do right now was think about how fantastic he felt, except for all the exhaustion racking his body from nights on end of not sleeping before getting ‘the sickness.’ Releasing himself into her was easily a highlight of his life; never had there been such an amazing feeling. It was indescribable—sure, other men had certainly tried to describe it, but had fallen dramatically short.
But now it was overshadowed by his mate—the little female was miserable and unhappy. This would not do.
He had tried his best to rock her in his arms for a while, tried to get her to talk to him, but eventually she just cried herself to sleep and he tucked her into the bed linens, put his clothes in the freshener, and took the moment of solace to try to clean himself and figure things out.
Unfortunately, the shower didn’t bestow on him the wisdom that showers normally did. He walked out of the bathroom, toweling himself off, and found his mate still sleeping and still sniffling. It was maddening! Why was it so hard just to convince the girl to be content and happy?
He changed into his freshly cleaned clothes and quietly left the room. He was walking a little taller; the mating had been a cure-all to him despite the fact that just the day before he had been kicked, stomped on, and tasered by over a dozen Frian guards and soldiers.
When he walked into the control room, he was surprised to see Thorton talking to the human male, Peyton, like he was a long-lost brother. Thorton stopped mid-laugh when Graham approached and looked at him mischievously. “You feeling better, boss?” he teased. “How was it?”
Graham eyed Peyton, who had stopped smiling upon Graham’s entrance. “I think she’s coming to terms with being my mate,” he admitted, turning back to Thorton. “But she is recovering from the sickness now, and that, at least, makes me glad.”
Thorton sighed, sounding put out. “So, you didn’t enjoy it?” he asked him, in their native language this time.
“Of course I enjoyed it,” Graham replied, but then turned to the human and spoke to him in his tongue. “I apologize for how confrontational I was earlier. As I said, I wasn’t in my right mind. I had a sickness.” He did feel ashamed about it. However extremely difficult it was to get his mate into bed, it would have been surely a million times harder to coax her if he’d killed her friend. He was lucky the mere threat of it hadn’t ruined everything.
Peyton’s eyes rolled slowly over him, although he at least didn’t refuse to accept the apology. Finally, he drawled, “Thorton explained the whole Union thing in a little more detail than Ellie did. I probably wouldn’t have gotten in the way if I knew that it was a done-bun for Ellie once the whole thing started. Not that I believed much of that Union crap myself, but Mary thinks there’s something to it, and she’s smarter than I am.”
“What I don’t understand,” Graham said, although he smiled at how well Peyton spoke of his own mate, “is what they do on Earth exactly. I was holed up with humans six months once. There were ten of them, and none of them were able to explain to me how you find your mates.”
“Did you talk to any women about it?” Peyton asked.
Graham shook his head. “No. Why, would that help?”
“Yeah, they think they got us figured out pretty good. I don’t think on it much. I mean, I have tons of experience with women—back on Earth I got some pretty good play an’ all. But I’d take one night with Mary over any of ‘em, or all of ‘em put together. And I think that’s how I knew she was it for me. She sort of put everyone else in the background, I guess.”
Graham had heard about ‘love’ before. He had tried to translate it, but he was beginning to think what he was translating it to, which was affection and care for, was not cutting it. Humans used the word for everything, however. They used it for a good drink, they used it for the best jokes, they used it to describe the relationship with their children, and they would also use it to describe the relationship between themselves and their mates. He wasn’t sure if the human vocabulary was incredibly lazy, or if humans felt very strongly about everything, or perhaps very weakly about everything. When he had asked humans before how they chose a mate, they had said it was love, but Graham couldn’t understand how the whole population chose a bride like he’d choose between two drinks.
“Ellie’s gonna be a tough nut,” Peyton admitted freely to Graham. “I don’t think she likes guys. She doesn’t like girls either. She’s a pretty girl, but she’s never looked at anyone in that way as far as I know. She’s not a traditional lady. I think if she had stayed on Earth, she’d probably just marry a guy who’d really be the wife while she’d bring home the bacon. That kinda thing.”
Graham and Thorton both couldn’t keep from laughing at the idea of Graham doing anything even remotely female. “Now that she sees me as her mate, she’ll naturally slip into her role and be happy about it. She’ll be submissive and—” Peyton was laughing now.
Graham raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Submissive?” Peyton echoed, then laughed harder. “Right. Good luck with that. Personally, I think you’ve got another think comin’. I mean, with trainin’, I’ve seen guys make tigers ride tricycles, but I’ve never seen a guy make a tiger enjoy doin’ that.”
Graham frowned, trying to imagine a non-submissive mate. He could be certain that he’d never met the like. “Well,” he said, feeling slightly frustrated as he began to suspect that he was on more untraveled ground than he had anticipated. “What do you suggest I do? In your opinion, do you think I should just give her control?”
Peyton snorted. “Hell, no. She’s way too immature for control. She just doesn’t follow orders well or without at least whining about it. She’s a woman in any case. She doesn’t know what she wants. I’d start storing up patience now, because you’re gonna need it while you figure her out. Don’t let her play you, though. You want her to actually respect you, not just pretend. She’ll do most anything to get her way, so you better make sure her way turns out to be your way.”
Graham felt his headache returning. He pressed his palms over his eyes. “Urgh,” he said, exhausted whenever he tried to picture the future. “Why is my life so hard?” he asked aloud.
“Well, it could have been worse,” Thorton mused. “I mean, sure, she’s not Swarii, but she’s got a hot little body. She’s not too hard on the eyes. They didn’t pick your name in the lottery, in any case. You’re lucky you got a mate at all.”
Graham immediately conceded that point, hopefully before his impatience with fate earned him any bad luck. Peyton just grunted in confusion.
“What do you mean lottery?” the giant human asked.
Graham sighed. “Well, it’s a program where names are drawn—”
“I know what a lottery is,” Peyton interrupted, his tone very dry. “I just don’t know what you’re talking about. If your mating’s tied to fate, then where does a lottery come in?”
“Our female population was cut very low because of a virus the Frians unleashed on us,” Thorton said. Graham usually couldn’t talk about it without going into a rant, or at least a depression. Thorton had grieved after the plague, but his mother had already died of a different illness years before. Graham, however, lost his own mother and all of his sisters in one fell swoop.
Thorton, therefore, was more able to explain the story to an outsider without being overcome with rage and sadness. “More than half our women died on our home planet in less than three weeks. The Union creates a connection between men and women. Men feel it more strongly than women do. The Union creates extreme depression upon being parted from your mate for too long, and upon the death of the female, most of the time the male will follow. So, when most of the women died… their mates chose not to survive afterward. I think that’s why the Frians dropped it—they expected complete societal collapse. But it wasn’t as devastating as the Frians had hoped. I know a few men who didn’t kill themselves, even. Graham’s father’s one of them. He trucked on somehow, mostly fueled by rage.
“But many of the women that died were young and unmated, and so the generation of men who hadn’t been mated yet—Graham and my generation—couldn’t all get a female. There were four of us to every one of them at the end of the day. So not everyone is given the opportunity to find their mate. It’s normally all done through giant mating festivals—all the single women that year and all the eligible men show up and touch each other’s skin until sparks fly. If they don’t fly, then they just come back the next year and try to find their mate again. But, with our generation, they had to limit the number of men that can find a mate. If there’re leftover females, there’s another drawing, and another, until they’re all mated.
“Graham never got drawn during his eligibility, even to be on the backup lists.” Thorton concluded, and then shrugged his bulky shoulders. “So Graham finding his mate just randomly out in the universe is pretty…” He pursed his lips and waggled his head indecisively before landing on the word, “lucky.”
Graham chuckled at the word used to describe it. He knew he had been extremely blessed in the matter. He had been depressed for a few years, thinking there was never any hope of him having a family. Now, there were some questions to be answered, but his faith had been renewed.
“But then, I’m lucky, too,” Thorton admitted loftily. “My name actually got picked!” He cracked his knuckles and chuckled. “Next spring, baby!” he hooted. “A few more months and it’ll be my mate who’s complaining that I’m hung like a moose creature!”
Graham’s expression was suddenly blank, and he fought himself so that he wouldn’t blush. “Could you hear what was going on in there?” he asked, reaching back to point in the direction of the room Eleanor was presently sleeping within.
“Not from here,” Thorton replied innocently. “But if you were standing in the hallway, then yeah. You can pretty much hear anything. This ship has surprisingly bad sound cancelation. I’m surprised that you guys didn’t distract each other,” he said without any shame at all, waving between Graham and Peyton.
Graham didn’t know whether or not to be angry, but he looked at Peyton with curiosity and saw the man’s face heating red. “Don’t you have anything better to do than listen to me finally be able to have sex with my own wife?” Peyton demanded.
Thorton grinned. “Actually, no. There wasn’t anything better to do.” He winked at him and added teasingly, “You stud, you.”
Graham was now stifling a laugh. “Don’t make him angry,” Graham suggested frankly, slapping Thorton’s shoulder. “He snapped a Frian’s neck back at the palace—with his bare hands.”
Thorton raised an eyebrow, appearing dubious despite the fact that Graham never made things up. “No way,” he doubted.
“Yes way,” Graham assured. He spun around in his chair and faced the console to log into the ship’s interface. He added, “He’s not a human. He’s a beast.”
* * *
Ellie woke up slowly, not feeling well rested. How long she had slept, she couldn’t be certain. The room had no windows, and there was no daylight outside to give her any clues. But she felt raw, inside and out.
As she remembered where she was, and what had happened before she fell asleep, she nearly expected to feel a gigantic, smooth phallus rubbing up against her behind. But she didn’t feel anything of the sort. She did hear a gentle but manly snore from behind her head.
Being careful, she rolled over and saw a completely dressed and showered Graham sleeping in cleaned clothes on the outside of the sheets. Graham looked extremely tired as well, although his color wasn’t pink with fever any longer, and he looked deep asleep. She was surprised that he had even bothered to kick his boots off before climbing into bed.
She slowly sat up and studied him.
You should get up and prepare him breakfast, a voice in her head lectured her. You’re his mate, now. You should take care of these things.
It wasn’t a real voice; she was quite sure that she wasn’t crazy, but if it had been a voice she might have been less concerned. The voice, she knew, had come from within, expressing a sudden yet immediate urge that she now had to chew back and resist.
She had lived with very submissive women all of her life, namely her mother and her aunt, who were almost pre-twentieth century with the way they had served their husbands. It seemed like all they wanted to do was cook and clean and look adoringly at their husbands whenever they came home from work. On her father and uncle’s side, it seemed like their wives’ constant affection had made them function better, work harder, and be happier.
She hadn’t considered what made her mother or aunt tick before. She had simply thought of them as strange, and she had never had any inclination to learn anything from them or to spend any substantial time around them.
Ellie had always thought of her career, of the garage, of her work. Besides general merrymaking with her cousins and her brother between the working hours, she was perfectly content with her lot. She had a gift—and her father and uncle let her use it as much as she wanted to. She had inherited the family fascination with problem-solving and puzzle work. She liked to make broken things work again. She liked to create new things or modify existing things to make them work better. It was her only hobby, her only care.
And she certainly didn’t care about those things any less now. It was just that this new obsession with Graham’s well-being that she was having so much trouble snapping out of was an alien feeling to her.
She told herself that the voice in her head would become softer, the urges to become wifely to Graham would become weaker, and that she would feel like her normal self in time. And eventually, if she had any luck at all, Graham would put aside any of his own expectations and just deal with her as she was.
Because even though she was determined not to give in to this new inclination to be submissive, one thing she knew she couldn’t fight was Graham. She didn’t exactly like him, but she couldn’t deny the fact that Graham wasn’t something escapable. Even if he allowed her to just walk away from him, she didn’t think she could. She felt an almost magnetic attraction to him. She was certain that she would be miserable without him. He was, for better or worse, her mate.
The problem was that she didn’t want to be miserable with him either. She had to make him realize that as much as she might be his mate, he was also hers. If she couldn’t be happy, then neither would he.
At least he was peaceful enough when he was sleeping. She felt possessive of his good looks, as if she had ownership of everything she saw before her, even the scruff on his chin. She stared, looking over his body, perusing everything else that she could consider hers as well.
She looked at his hands, and then she squinted. Slowly, not wanting to wake him, she put her hands around his wrist and lifted his arm so she could examine one hand more closely. Then, very gently, she put one of her hands up against it, just in case she was counting incorrectly.
He had six fingers on each of his hands! She wondered how she hadn’t noticed before, when she was looking for alien attributes when he had been a prisoner in Jazeel’s dungeon. She hadn’t thought to look at something like his hands. She was almost jealous—since the advent of the keyboard, it had seemed to her like five fingers weren’t enough. Graham’s hand seemed more perfect than hers because of this, not to mention far larger. As she compared her hands with his, she quickly noticed that even his smallest digit was the width of her thumb.
She gasped in surprise when the fingers suddenly closed around her own. Graham, having captured her hand, brought it to his lips, kissed her knuckle, and then stroked the hand with his thumb without ever opening his eyes. “Are you playing with me, wife?” he asked with a grumble.
She remembered him calling her ‘wife’ once before, when she was disobeying him, but hearing him call her that in good humor sounded strange to her ears, and she blushed, not that he had opened his eyes to notice. “When did you get dressed?”
“About seven hours ago, after you fell asleep. I wanted to make sure I took my turn at watch. I relieved Thorton so he could get some shut-eye until Braum woke up and was able to relieve me.”
The name he spoke was unfamiliar. “Do I know Braum?”
Still playing with her fingers, his voice sounded like a low, rumbly yawn as he replied easily, “My team has Fie—he’s the largest. He fulfills many purposes since he’s a skilled researcher and a doctor. Then there is Thorton, he’s the smartass who won’t shut up. He’s also my first cousin, and the only reason I keep him around is because he’s a very competent engineer.” He grinned, like he thought he was being funny. “There’s Jio. You haven’t talked to him, either, because he doesn’t speak Human. He just joined the service this last year, and is the youngest. Last, there is Braum. You haven’t talked to him either, because he also doesn’t speak Human. Not because he doesn’t know it—he was on the same mission where Thorton, Fie, and I learned it. He tried to make a point not to learn it, though, because he doesn’t like humans. That being said, I think he understands more than he lets on.”
She bit her lip, a little annoyed that her mate knew a language that she didn’t, although she obviously couldn’t blame him for it. “Why don’t you guys just speak in shal’ta?” she asked him. “Why’d Swarii develop their own language in the first place?”
“Speaking shal’ta is not done that often on Swaraan, and it is actually considered rude by some people,” he replied simply. “There is even a joke that if you don’t bother moving your mouth to speak, then you must be speaking to an enemy. Shal’ta is actually a very common language. Any species that developed on a water planet is sure to use a similar form of telepathy. The Frians, for example, evolved from an aquatic species that had no use of a spoken language.”
“Did you evolve from a water creature?” she asked, surprised. “That’s why you speak shal’ta?”
“We use telepathy for other reasons. The Libii, our ancestors, colonized the planet of Swaraan tens of thousands of years ago. The population of Libii and the native inhabitants of Swaraan have merged completely into the perfect specimen you see before you,” he said with a grunt of amusement, gesturing to his own person with his free hand.
“The inhabitants of Swaraan were very physically developed, while the Libii were very mentally developed and thus had their own version of telepathy already. The Libii blended the species purposefully to take advantage of both of their strengths.”
She grumbled and flopped down on the bed. “I’m too tired for a history lesson,” she grumped.
“You asked,” he reproached, and then brought his arm around to snuggle her against him. “How are you still tired after sleeping so many hours?”
“I only slept seven hours,” she reminded with a yawn. “And yesterday was not exactly a light load.”
“Your big human friend only sleeps a few hours,” he said, jerking his thumb back. He was trying to remember how much he’d noticed humans sleeping in the past. He was quite sure that they only slept four or five hours, and were happy to get it. But that might have been because they weren’t allotted any more time for sleep than that…
“Yeah. Peyton’s like my brother. He’s a machine. As long as there’s food around, he’s sound as a pound,” she replied, then thoughtfully added, “There’s food on this ship, right?”
“Is my mate hungry?” Graham asked teasingly, reaching under the covers and stroking his big, callused hand over her belly.
“How is your hand always so warm? It’s freezing out there.”
“It’s well above freezing temperatures,” he assured her. He raised one eyebrow and opened his eye slightly to look at her. “Oh. You were exaggerating. I forgot how humans love doing that. You’re a poetic species,” he said, and she saw him grin teasingly. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm.” He suddenly arched and pulled the covers down his body and then snuggled under them with her, wrapping his giant body around hers. He rolled over so that she was completely under him. He was fully awake now, and apparently feeling very playful, because he loudly kissed several places on her face.
“You’re a goofball,” she snorted, rolling over to avoid any more tickling kisses. He kissed across her shoulders but, when he finished, he soon began to run a finger down a welt across her bottom that was particularly sensitive. “Owww…” she whined.
“I know that hurts,” Graham cooed, pulling the blankets over his head and then, much to her surprise, she felt a kiss across one of her welts, and then his tongue licked across another welt. She stifled a moan. “Poor baby,” he told her. “You still have a few bruises down here.”
“Probably from your swats yesterday,” she pouted.
He snorted cynically at his. “I was in the throne room yesterday, watching,” he reminded her. She felt him begin to pry apart her bottom cheeks, and her face heated. She tried to crawl out of his grasp, but his strong hands held tightly on. “Where’d this bruise come from?” he asked, touching a sore spot just above her now fully exposed bottom hole.
She winced and knew he was touching the place that had been hurt the most when she had her butt plug in yesterday. “I don’t know, don’t touch it!” she snapped.
“Did you get this from a plug?” he guessed, much to her mortification. His tone sounded tense. “Jazeel plugs his slaves?” he asked, sounding scandalized.
“Not this one until yesterday. I only got it because of you.” She couldn’t help feeling sullen. “Don’t touch it.”
“I’ll wait until you’re completely healed, don’t worry,” he said, petting her bottom cheek softly.
She tried to flip over while firmly saying, “Over my dead body, you will! My ass is off limits!”
“You need to calm down,” he told her, his teasing tone completely gone now. He pushed down the covers and let her flip over onto her back, but he was looking down at her firmly. She tried to shove him away, not interested in a lecture.
He captured her hands and pinned them above her head. “I said relax,” he ordered. “Shh!” Eventually, despite that she was looking at him with her most lethal gaze, his face softened. He rolled onto the side of her and slowly unpinned her hands and put his hand back on her stomach. “What can I do to make you realize that I’m not Jazeel?”
“Never threaten to spank me and don’t touch my ass,” she said succinctly. She had never felt so frustrated when, in response to this, he gave her a look like he thought she was being ridiculous.
He didn’t say anything. He just rolled his body so that his warmth was covering her body, his arm draped easily over her thigh. “I didn’t choose this either, you know,” he told her softly. “I, too, have expectations. We’re together. We have to learn to co-exist.”
“Well, then learn to co-exist with me,” she replied churlishly.
“I’m willing to compromise,” Graham told her. She felt him pull her hair back from her face before he nipped the top of her ear. “I think you and I need to sit down and talk about our priorities—what’s personally important to our happiness, and then we can figure out how we can make the other one the happiest.”
She hated how reasonable that sounded, since she was predisposed to think that he was the difficult one, but she nodded anyway. “Okay.”
“Are you hungry, little one?” he asked, petting her stomach again.
She nodded and admitted that she was.
“Let’s find you something to eat,” he offered, patting her hip and sitting up with more energy than she would have suspected someone who’d just awoken would have.
She had gotten re-dressed, trying to expose as little of her skin to the cold air around them as possible, and Graham patiently stood by the door, watching her. As soon as she braved contact with him, he said, “As soon as we stop, I am going to get you something warmer to wear.” He reached out for her hand. When she touched him, he added, “I swear you have the worst circulation in the universe. I have been far and wide, and you are like a little ice creature.”
When she was taken to the small mess hall, barely large enough for five people to sit in together, Graham got her out a couple of frozen meals and heated them after telling her to have a seat. He slid her a meal full of things that she couldn’t identify, so even though her stomach ached with hunger, she mostly just poked things around with a fork.
“Fie asked if he could examine you,” he began when he sat down. “He just needs some blood samples to do an analysis for your profile.”
“What, like you’ve never done tests on humans before?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. When he raised his eyebrows in reply, she understood. Sullenly, she remembered. “Right. You don’t think I’m human.”
“I just want to make sure. I have to make reports to the mothership, and I like them to be as detailed as I can make them. Taking on three extra passengers just needs to be explained as well as possible, that’s all.”
She nodded, but sighed. She hated doctors—her whole family did. They were the greatest of unknowns, and made to look scary by her parents, who only took them in under life-or-death situations. By then the poking and prodding and swabbing was very abundant, and she imagined this would be similar. Yet, more than anything, she wanted Graham to drop any thoughts as to her being anything other than human. “Sure,” she allowed.
Graham seemed to relax instantly at this. Apparently he had thought that he would have to argue the point, and now he smiled. “Thank you. I think,” he added, loading food into his mouth, “that you think I’m scarier than I really am. I grew up with Thorton, you know, so I imagine I’m one of the more patient guys out there because of it. I’m not going to make ridiculous requests of you all the time. First and foremost, of course, I care about your health and safety.”
She squinted at him. “Not my happiness?” she presumed peevishly.
“Of course I want to see you happy and content,” he defended with a frown. “What sort of mate would I be otherwise?”
“So I can keep working, then,” she ventured, but slowly. She wanted to see his reaction.
His reaction was less than ecstatic. He swallowed his food and, after a moment, nodded. “You mean engineering?” Upon an affirmative nod, he said, “Although it’s irregular for women to work… especially in a position like that,” he began, now drumming his fingers unhappily on the table, “I suppose that you’re not a regular woman. So I suppose I’m going to have to learn to live with it, aren’t I?”
She poked at her meat again. “Yeah. And I suppose I’ll have to learn to live with this whole military thing you’ve got going. And you being an alien. And you being my mate.”
“Okay, I think I get your point,” he replied without amusement. She liked to think he realized that she was going to point out the fact that she’d have to live with him being six-fingered and male next. “Just be as safe as you can. For example, I don’t want you going up on this ship’s second level. It’s unstable and the floors are in horrible shape. I don’t want you possibly falling through or to have something worse happen.”
She hadn’t even known that there was a second level on the ship at all, and was now curious about it. Her eyes glanced upward at the ceiling, but then back down at him. He was serious, she realized, and if she argued on this point she doubted that she would win. “M’kay,” she replied simply, blinking innocently at him. “Fair enough. And if I disagree with something, you can’t just be a pill and not hear my argument.”
He smirked. “I had a feeling you’d specify that one. You enjoy arguing, don’t you?”
“I like to think I’m an intelligent person that deserves to be heard and understood,” she replied coolly, and liked that he nodded in agreement.
“Alright. Just—listen to me, too,” he requested, grinning again. “And I have to ask that you don’t argue in ways that would be embarrassing to me. I know humans’ penchant for using as many swear words as possible in order to get a rise out of someone. On Swaraan, it will certainly get a rise because we very rarely do it.”
She made a face filled with distaste at this. “So you’re limiting the way I express myself.”
Without blinking, he said, “Yes, if the manner of expressing yourself could cause people to think poorly of you, or me, without any necessity. Admittedly, my job unfortunately accompanies a certain degree of politics. I find that other people’s opinions matter more than I think they should.” He wobbled his neck a little as he added, “And it makes me uncomfortable to hear it. That’s why I’m asking you to watch your words in every language.”
She rolled her eyes at this.
“I’m serious,” he assured. “It’s more important to me than you realize.”
“Alright. But I want you to understand that, although I am thankful that you got me out of slavery and all that, I still didn’t choose any of this,” she said, waving her fork at him and then everything around them. “And look—I understand I’ve got shortcomings. I only have one thing going on, and that’s that I’m a crazy good mechanic. That’s it. If I’m pissing you off, you have to make this clear to me, because I don’t even pick up the subtle nuances from my own kind.”
“That’s good to hear, because I don’t understand mechanics at all, but I’m pretty perfect at everything else.” Graham had a straight face when he said this, but when she eyeballed him incredulously, he smirked and gave her a wink. At least he had a sense of humor about himself.
He eyed her plate. “Are you a vegetarian or just picky?” he asked, pointing to her uneaten food.
“I don’t like mystery meat,” she explained, gesturing at her meal. “I like to have a real good look at an animal to see if I trust it before I eat it.”
Graham shrugged. “It’s garbo, grenel, and feebus,” he said, gesturing at meats on the plate.
She pushed it away. “Urgh.”
He gave a laugh and pulled it over. He had already finished his plate, but he started to eat what was left of her meal. “I like that you’re picky,” he admitted. “Gives me a chance to spoil you.”
“Spoiling’s good,” she said, perking up.
“I think I saw some muffins in there,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the deep freezer.
“You’re just trying to suck up, now,” she teased.
“No,” he laughed, pushing himself away from the table. “I’m trying to soften you up for a second round.”
She smirked. “You just had me seven hours ago.”
He looked very unashamed about this. “If you let me, I’d probably have you every hour on the hour for the rest of our lives. If you had any idea how sexy you are…”
She chewed her lip, a little embarrassed by the attention, but at the same time enjoying it immensely. “Well, I’m a little sore…” she said, rubbing her thighs together.
He closed the freezer slowly and turned toward her as if he was afraid of scaring her off. “Do you want me to make it feel better?” he drawled carefully as he took a step closer.
She blushed. “Your food’s gonna get cold.”
His look was filled with intent, like a predator. “Well worth it,” he assured, stalking closer. He walked over to her side of the table, but then pulled her up and, as soon as she was standing, picked her up and put her on the countertop behind the table, then walked between her knees and began to kiss her hungrily.
She felt more anxious to have him inside of her than she would have expected if anyone had asked her just fifteen minutes before. She was already plucking at his belt for him. As soon as she opened his belt and pulled at his pants button, he picked her up and peeled her pants and panties down and off.
This time, she took a good look at his cock as she unsheathed it from his pants. His eyes hooded with pleasure as she gripped his cock in her hand, enjoying its length and smooth feel. She still had no idea how it had fit inside her. She played with the mushroom head after she ran her hand up and down the length and then she ran her thumb around the opening, where a bead of thick fluid was building up. She glanced up and blushed when she saw how intently he was looking at her. “Here,” he said, pulling it out of her fingers. “Let me play with you for a second.” He opened her thighs wider and then started running the tip of his cock back and forth against her entrance.
This was delightful, especially when the smooth head of his member pressed up against, or even just touched, her sensitive, swollen nub. But eventually, his cock wet with her juices, he pressed against her entrance and it gave way far more easily than it had the night before. She was still sore, but once the full size was lodged within her the soreness eased and she ground herself against him. He began to thrust himself deeply into her.
It was becoming very clear that this wasn’t going to be a reprise of the lovemaking from the previous night. This was fast and fierce. She tilted her head back and moaned, and was surprised at the added sensations when he reached down and pressed one of his thumbs against her clit as he pumped firmly into her, grunting as he looked down, watching her every move.
What he was looking at in her expression was lost on her, but his eyes never shifted for a moment even as she seemed to explode with pleasure, gasping as she did so. He winced as her muscles cramped down upon him, but then he picked her nearly entirely off of the counter, and for well over a minute, thrust into her hard and deep until he groaned loudly. She felt his member expand and pulse, filling her with his seed.
He held her against him until he slowly put her back down on the countertop, and then they looked at each other as they tried to recapture their breath. As they began to calm their breathing into small pants, they heard applause coming from one side of the room. Ellie gasped and immediately covered herself and looked around for her pants, which were forgotten on the floor. Graham turned and covered her body with his own. He looked over to see who their audience member was and then hissed as he buttoned up his pants quickly, “Thorton!”
“What?” Thorton replied innocently. “This is a common room! I figured you guys were just into having an audience, and I figured I’d help you guys out there and play my part in that.”
“I’d run if I were you,” he growled to Thorton as he reached down and grabbed the pants and panties that he had shucked off of her minutes before.
This seemed to be Thorton’s first clue that his presence wasn’t a good joke, because his smile faltered a little, and a small twinkle of concern flashed across his features. “Oh, come on,” he grunted. “Don’t be so—”
Graham, seeing that Ellie was covering herself well with her pants and also that she was mortified beyond all imagining, now walked toward Thorton in a way that would have made anyone run. Thorton was not special in that regard, but Ellie suddenly felt pangs of homesickness since Graham running after his cousin reminded him distantly of her brother Mike and one of her own cousins, who was always looking to rile the red-haired beast beyond his breaking point.
She took a deep breath, then hopped off the counter and tugged her pants and panties back on. Before she could even take a good look at the food warmer, Graham re-entered, apologizing.
“Did you beat Thorton to a pulp at least?” she asked, trying not to sound as embarrassed about being spied on as she really was. She had immediately realized, upon Thorton making his presence known, how remarkably stupid it was to have sex in the middle of the mess hall.
He sighed and walked to the freezer. “I lost him. I could spend an hour looking for him, but I promised my wife something palatable to eat, and he could be anywhere.”
“That’s a great excuse for pacifism if I’ve ever heard one,” she agreed, lifting herself back up on the nearby counter. “Feel free to kill him after your human is satiated,” she granted teasingly, waving her hand.
He grinned. “The humans I was imprisoned with a few years ago once used a saying that Thorton has stolen for himself: The way into one’s heart is through one’s stomach.”
She gave a singular nod. “Purer truths are rarely spoken,” she replied gravely, and then smiled. “I don’t know how you’re going to get there without a bag of Cheetos, but it’d be fun to see you try.”
“You’re not going to try to feed me, then?” he teased.
She glanced over at him and then shook her head. “I’m going to be honest here. I can’t cook. At all. I’ve never so much as boiled water in my whole life. And I’ve never even done my own laundry. I don’t clean—ever. If fate’s the one that made us mates, then I don’t know what you did to fate to get it to bone you this hard.”
He was obviously a little perturbed by some part of what she’d said… or maybe everything she’d said, but she wasn’t going to, nor could she, take that one back. It was a family motto to never waste time at something you’re not good at, and she’d never done any of those things. Her mom or her aunt Molly always did that sort of thing for the whole family. All the rest of them had to do was show up and change into something clean. If Graham was expecting that sort of thing, she knew that she had to nip that sort of thinking in the bud.
“So all you do is fix stuff?” he asked, leaning in and squinting at her, looking like he was hoping that she was joking.
“All you do is command?” she echoed in the same tone and expression. After a pause, she added, “And find me muffins? Still doing that?”
This seemed to break him away from whatever train of thought he was currently on. “So, this will be just like living with Thorton again,” he sighed as he rifled through the freezer. He pulled a container out of it and closed the freezer. “Well, I guess there’s the sex…”
“That’s the spirit!” she teased, trying to lighten the mood slightly in case he was spiraling into a depression. She watched him put the container into a toaster-like machine. In seconds, he pulled it out, pulled off the top, and handed her a container with two steaming muffins inside. “Eat these,” he ordered, still looking a little tired. “I’m going toward the front of the ship to work. Stay out of trouble.”
She nodded, trying to force herself not to be concerned over what he was thinking or any disappointment he might be feeling. She had been through too much in the last year, mainly slavery, to give his feelings much mind, especially when she reminded herself that she hadn’t touched him nor had she wanted to be mated to him. She, too, was stuck, so they just had to make the most of it. And she was who she was. “Yeah,” she replied. “Don’t worry. I’ll be good.”
* * *
Graham couldn’t believe he was having a staring contest—or rather, a glaring contest—with a little creature who he should be just taking his belt to. At first, he had decided to be patient with his new mate since obviously she was from a different culture and had been through a lot. Now, however, it seemed like she was disobeying him like it was her job.
Even her own kind were beginning to betray her. Peyton himself had been the one who had alerted him to this newest disobedience, probably because this time it had involved her safety.
“I asked very little from you, Eleanor, but I demanded you not step foot on Level Two, didn’t I?” Graham lectured, squaring his jaw with annoyance.
“You’re not my commander,” she replied as she stuck her nose in the air and crossed her arms.
He wanted badly to inform her that he damn well was her commander, but just about everyone on the ship was watching this interaction, and he knew it. Now was not the time to bicker with her. He had already bickered with Eleanor more than most husbands bickered with their wives in the whole of their marriage.
When it came to disciplining wives, the saying had always been ‘If they’re asking for it, give it to them.’ And Eleanor was asking for it.
“Eleanor, go to our bedroom—right now—and then take down your pants, stick your nose in the corner, and wait for me,” he ordered.
His mate had the nerve to seem startled by this order. Her eyes went large and round and her cheeks went bright pink. She opened her mouth, searching for something to say, but apparently words were too far from her grasp, and time was still ticking by.
“Do you think I’m joking?” He squared his shoulders and pulled himself up from the commander’s chair. “Start moving.” Most Swarii didn’t have to come across as threatening or intimidating to their wives to get them to toe the line. Graham had done both with Eleanor and she always brushed it off, just like she was brushing it off now.
She echoed his stance, as if she was trying to intimidate him right back, which was cute in a way. She was about as intimidating as a mouse.
“Drop dead,” she growled at him. As soon as he started marching toward her, unmoved by her scathing suggestion, she finally decided it was time to get out of his way. She spun around, looking like she had planned on running, but Peyton had positioned himself close behind her and she ended up running against his chest as if it was a wall.
She looked up at Peyton and he looked back, looking unapologetic and intense. Graham was certain he just saw their relationship melt right before his eyes. “You’re just loving this, aren’t you, you colossal prick? I’m glad you finally found a commander where you don’t have to arch your neck down too much when you’re sucking his dick.”
Graham pulled Eleanor up under one arm before Peyton could respond. Graham could tell that his response wasn’t going to be any prettier than hers, based on the way even his ears were turning a dark red as he tried to summon speech.
All the way to the bedroom, Eleanor seemed to be filling in all the swear words Graham had not yet heard, and some he had heard but which she put together in ways that made no sense yet were quite colorful. Her current claim that Peyton was both ‘motherless’ yet at the same time was a ‘son to a miserable bitch of a whore’ was a good example.
It was obvious that Eleanor hadn’t fully comprehended how much trouble she was in until well after the door had been closed behind them, but after a bit she seemed to recognize that Graham was losing his patience with her.
Graham had been considering pushing her into the shower and letting the cold water chill her temper. He had never seen such a horrible scene from a female in all his life, and was more than a little taken aback by it.
But then he saw her look up at him and he could almost see the gears inside her funny little brain begin to turn in another direction. She put up her hands and took a giant step back from him while suggesting, “Let’s be rational here, Graham…” He was apparently wearing his emotions on his sleeve, because she was certainly acting threatened.
He pressed his lips together, reached forward, and grabbed her arm. He half-dragged her to the bathroom sink, not slowing himself down for her shorter steps to keep up with his.
"I think we’ve merely had a misunderstanding…” she was assuring, her voice’s pitch a little higher with alarm.
When he had her at the sink, he fenced her body in against the counter with his own. He reached around her and washed his hands quickly, saying, “The only misunderstanding we’ve had is whether or not you could do or say whatever it was you wanted, and that I would let you.” He dispensed some soap onto his finger and pointed that finger toward her mouth. “Open your mouth,” he demanded.
Her eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together as firmly as he imagined she could. “Open now,” he growled. Not even he was sure how much patience he had. His nerves felt frayed by her poor behavior and lack of respect toward him.
She shook her head, looking at him like he had lost his mind.
He wanted to throttle whatever wild animal had deemed to raise Eleanor to be the girl standing in front of him. Disobedience in a mate was one thing, but then she had the nerve to kick up a fuss when she was punished. He simply could not, and would not believe that she’d never had her mouth washed out before. The punishment was widespread across the more intelligent lifeforms of the galaxy, mostly used for backtalk to bad language. Eleanor, of course, had done both.
He locked his jaw with frustration and heaved a short, heavy sigh as he washed the soap off his hand. His next movement was to spin her around and to hoist her up so that she was bent over that sink with her feet dangling well off the floor. He reached around her front as she scrambled to get footing, quickly pulling her loose-fitting leggings down around her calves. Her panties quickly followed.
“Let us get on the same page here, wife. When I give an order, you are going to obey without acting like a stubborn, spoiled child. Am I clear?”
* * *
“Am I clear?” Graham seethed, obviously expecting some sort of response from her other than her trying to press herself up from the sink and back on her feet.
Ellie had apparently somehow upset this giant of a man. It seemed like he was acting very dramatic when all she’d done was go up onto the second floor—which was just as amazing as she’d suspected it would be as soon as he’d made it deliciously off-limits.
She was still reeling from Peyton’s blatant betrayal when she was met with Graham’s desire to wash her mouth out. Sure, Peyton had threatened to wash her mouth out lots of times, but she’d thought that was just a turn of phrase that mean Texans liked to use. It had never been something that she had taken as a literal threat.
She really hoped that when Graham had bent her over the sink, it was because her confidence had turned him on so much that he was going to just unzip himself and mount her for a round of wild lovemaking.
Her hopes were dashed when he began to spank her bare ass with the palm of his hand. His swats were fierce enough to make their first night together seem like a couple of love pats. She was quickly realizing now that she was in very deep shit, because he was only a few moments in and she was already going into a wild panic. “You’re hurting me, you asshole!” she shrieked, then tried to catch her breath.
The assault suddenly became worse in response. Although her brain wasn’t good for much at the moment, it did inform her that it could probably even get worse than this. Graham was much larger than her, stronger than her, and there was no way he was spanking her as hard as could—or as hard as he probably wanted to.
She began to cry out from the spanks, which in themselves were deafening. When Graham eventually spoke, he had to almost shout just to be heard. “Are you ready to be compliant?”
“Yes!” she immediately replied, ready to do the Chicken Dance if that was what it was going to take for this pain to stop.
He finally let her drop back down to her feet and spun her around again. Her legs were still twisted up in her leggings, and she put her hands over her bare mound to keep from being too exposed. She noticed that the soap was back on his finger, and he was looking more determined than ever to get it into her mouth. “Open,” he said, dismissing the pitiful look she now tried to put on to get him to lighten up.
She knew she didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter, so after hesitating a few times, she opened her mouth ever so slightly. As soon as Graham had enough opening, she had the alien’s large, sausage-sized finger thrust into her mouth.
The way she’d gotten her mouth to open was by thinking, Really, how bad could it be?
Well, it could be pretty bad. Soap tasted like pure, goopy evil. It was jarringly bad, and even had a stinging, burning sensation that caused her eyes to water.
She sputtered and gagged in no time at all, trying to pull her whole head away from him. That only worked for a microsecond before the soapy finger was reinserted while his other hand grabbed her chin and held her still. “Bite me and you’ll regret it, little girl, let me tell you,” he warned in response to her mutinous glare.
He didn’t seem to care that she was gagging and probably turning green as he ran his soapy finger over her every tooth, over her gums, over her tongue, and even across the roof of her mouth.
“You represent me, and therefore you will only speak intelligently and reasonably to everyone you come across. You are going into a culture where we don’t have to speak to each other, we choose to. We watch every word we say, and you will as well. Get used to taking responsibility for every word that comes out of your mouth,” he told her, and then spun her back around. “Spit,” he ordered.
She was glad to spit that stinging flavor out of her mouth quickly and repeatedly. She even cupped her hands together under the faucet to try to get some water to swish it all out, but before she could do that more than once, he loomed over her back. She watched him warily in the mirror. “Do you have any more filthy language or insults that need to be washed out?” he asked her, sounding much calmer than he had a few minutes ago.
She shook her head, grinding her teeth together to keep from saying exactly what she thought of him right now. She was lightheaded from the discomfort she’d felt, and she felt herself beginning to shiver with emotion.
“Are you sure?” he threatened.
She wanted so badly to slap him that her palm itched. Inflicting any sort of pain to him at all would have been the greatest of all delights. “Positive,” she growled in reply.
“Good.” Without hesitation, and without letting her have a moment to pull her pants back up, he grabbed her elbow and dragged her back into the bedroom, seeming not to care that she was tripping over her pants the whole time. When he got to the edge of the bed, he turned, sat down, and tugged her leggings and panties the rest of the way off.
Goosebumps began to prickle down her arms as she realized that he planned to spank her more, but just as the horrible realization struck, he yanked her body over his knees. “Okay!” she surrendered. Now was not a good time to be brave. “Okay, I’m sorry!”
“No,” he said over her grimly. “I’m sorry. Apparently, I have given you the wrong impression of me. Let me correct that now. When I ask you to do something, I expect you to obey me. You don’t have to like it, but I expect you to obey nonetheless.”
She gave an angry sob. She couldn’t believe that this was happening. Not again! “I’m not your pet!” she snapped. “I don’t have to do what you say!” Hadn’t she been freed?
Apparently not. The skin on her bottom was already tender and burning from his earlier attentions.
She felt Graham’s large, warm hand rub across her bottom again, and she finally realized how huge his hand was in comparison to her bottom—it covered most of that territory. His work would be easy and very efficient.
“You’re my mate, and if you don’t choose to be an obedient one, then you’ll find yourself in this position very often, I guarantee you. There is one leader in this relationship, and that is me. Get that clear.”
“I hate you!” she shouted, feeling helpless and defeated.
“Fine, hate me if you choose. But you will obey me,” he snapped. Unless she was mistaken, she was almost certain that she could hear pain and frustration in his tone.
Just as she was beginning to wonder if he was feeling just as helpless as she was, the spanking commenced.
It was hard to say how long the spanking lasted. Probably not for more than five minutes, but for her it felt like she was kicking powerlessly over his lap for days. During these long minutes, she went through a range of emotions: anger was the first. She clenched her teeth shut, hoping to play the bad ‘whipping boy’ who suffered in silence.
The idea of silence quickly melted down until she was kicking, crying, and wailing.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, remorse hit her.
She had felt remorse slightly after Peyton had switched her. She’d had a brief moment where she could see things from his point of view and felt like she did, in a way, deserve a punishment for putting them both in danger.
But she hadn’t expected to ever feel remorseful about disobeying Graham. The emotion, and the clarity of it, hit her like a truck. Graham’s point of view must be that this alien girl that he wouldn’t have ever chosen to marry couldn’t follow the simplest instructions. He was the ship’s captain and his new mate was constantly undermining him and making him appear weak and unfit to command. What had Graham done to deserve a mate who was so completely wrong for him?
Whether or not that was actually Graham’s perspective, or if she was reading too much into it, was irrelevant. She was suddenly thinking, Why can’t I just be a good mate and obey him? It wouldn’t hurt me. He didn’t ask for much. Maybe I do deserve this. Maybe I wanted this reaction on some level…
This thought passing through her mind made her realize that maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. There was no way in hell that she’d ever wanted a childlike chastisement that would reduce her to tears. No, no. This was just another case where she didn’t think things through and she was sloppy enough to get caught.
Still, she was reacting to the spanking differently now. She was crying, but now she was crying softer. Her throat was sore and dry from shouting and screaming in protest, and although his spanks felt more and more painful against a bottom that was getting persistently more and more tender, she was too tired to fight against him.
“Are you going to be a good girl?” she heard him ask.
“Y-y-yes!” she sobbed, pressing her face against the blankets under her chin.
Finally, the spanks stopped and the room silenced. She could feel her bottom actually throb, and it felt like it had been tenderized. She could leave his lap now, she knew, but she made no move to do so. She found that she didn’t want to move. She just wanted to sob there, realizing that this relationship might doom her more than her relationship with Jazeel. While Jazeel didn’t control any part of her mind or soul, Graham apparently did.
How could she be free, she wondered, if he already had such tight webs woven around her? How could she escape the part of herself that had apparently decided that she was his?
* * *
Graham swallowed down his concern for his mate as the naughty, very well-punished creature continued to sob over his lap. He began to very gently pet his hand across her hot-to-the-touch bottom.
Perhaps he had spanked too hard. He’d realized as he was spanking her that he didn’t really know her tolerance for pain. Human women, for all he knew, were very sensitive to this sort of pain. He didn’t spank her any harder than he might spank a child, but she had still struggled against his punishment like a wildcat.
As he considered her reactions to his punishment, he allowed his finger to slowly slide toward the puckered rosebud of her anus. She flinched noticeably when he even got near it.
He frowned. Anal sex was very, very common among the Swarii, but the idea of doing that with Eleanor—although it was a very sexy thought—was frightening. Even sinking his length into her pussy had so far proven to be excruciatingly tight, and it had been a full week since he had stretched her hymen. From sex alone, she had been walking slightly bowlegged for a while. It had made her so tender that she had requested a three-day break.
That three-day break was given, although his instincts warred against the concept. Eleanor’s instincts were obviously doing the same thing, because her fever was returning, which meant that they hadn’t fully bonded through mating yet. Her fever was obvious, and it was proving to be embarrassing for him since his men were already getting brave enough to make jokes about his performance. He knew he shouldn’t care about that sort of thing, and that he should just be the mature one yet again, but he found himself being infuriated by the snide comments nonetheless.
When Graham had first brought up the idea of getting Eleanor examined by Fie, who was a medical researcher back at home, she had balked… Or more honestly, she had reacted with such venom to the idea that he had been sorry to even suggest it at the time. But now he was adamant about having her seen to—he had to know about certain things. He had to be sure where her limits were; sexual and otherwise. He didn’t want to hurt her. There were also questions that needed to be answered—was she a full human? And if that was the case, how the deuce was it possible that he had mated with her?
Graham continued to rub Eleanor’s bottom in slow, soothing circles before moving those circles up her back. It didn’t seem like her crying was subsiding at all. She was still making ‘boo hoo hoo’ing noises that were actually quite heartbreaking, despite the fact that she had all but asked for a good spanking. He had had it in his mind to make her stand in the corner for an hour and think about her behavior, but all the crying had changed his mind.
He began gently arranging her until she was sitting on his lap and he could put his arms tightly around her. “Was that so horrible?” he asked softly, feeling more like a monster every second.
She didn’t reply. She just continued crying, though she wasn’t trying to get away from his embrace. She just pressed her face into his chest as she cried, and all too slowly, she finally fell asleep.
He wasn’t used to disciplining women, so he wasn’t positive if crying until one fell asleep was normal or something to be concerned about.
He decided to be concerned. He bundled her up under a blanket, picked her very gently off of his lap, and then laid her on the bed. He stroked her hair back from her tear-streaked face, leaned over to kiss her forehead, and then left the room, feeling horrible.
As soon as he left the room and headed toward the front of the ship, he could hear the voice of Thorton becoming clearer and clearer, although his voice sounded like he was being smothered as he was begging for someone to stop hurting him. Diverted from his current thoughts, Graham quickened his pace back to the control room only to hear Peyton reply grindingly, “Speak Human.” As Graham walked out of the hallway, he witnessed Peyton kneeling over Thorton’s body and increasing pressure on Thorton’s neck, which was getting pinned down to the floor by Peyton’s elbow. “Or do you want more?”
“You win, you freak!” Thorton shouted in the human’s language.
With a victorious grin, Peyton released him and let Thorton untwist himself out of the position he had been wrestled into.
Graham stood agape as Thorton pulled himself off the floor, his shirt askew and his face red where he had been pressed into the floor, then stretched out his shoulder and huffed, “Best six out of eleven.”
How Peyton, a human, could take down a thick, tough brute like Thorton was beyond him. Peyton didn’t even look rustled. He just cracked his knuckles and, after a moment of face-off, he took Thorton down with such quickness that Graham was left speechless.
“Best seven out of thirteen,” Thorton wheezed wearily from the floor afterward.
“Somebody’s going to get hurt,” Graham finally warned, letting his presence be known to the rest of the room.
“I’m not going to let a human beat me,” Thorton puffed, trying to crawl off the floor and regain his balance.
“Thorton, he almost just smothered you with your own kneecap,” Graham reminded, grimacing.
“Besides, I already beat you six times,” Peyton reminded, shoving his hands into his pockets and shrugging his broad shoulders. He turned to Graham and asked, “She still angry with me?”
“We didn’t discuss you much,” Graham replied, crossing to the pilot console.
“Ellie has one of the warmest hearts and the most loyalty of anyone I’ve ever met,” Peyton informed him, but then sighed. “Unfortunately, she is a pain in the ass. Swarii mate for life, right?”
“Yes,” Graham admitted.
One of the corners of his lips twitched upward. “Then God help you.”
Graham was going to ignore that and turned around in his chair to look at the piloting interface, but then he turned back around. “Humans mate for life too, don’t they?” he asked, confused.
“We try to,” came Peyton’s cryptic response.
“See—it’s the try there that confuses me. Why would you stay with someone when you didn’t physically have to?”
“Because we… love them…?” Peyton replied slowly, as if he was afraid of answering wrong.
Graham blinked at him. “Like the feeling one has for a sister or a brother?” he tried to clarify.
Peyton pursed his lips in deep thought. “Yeah, only that times a million… and different. You know, there’s that whole sexual attraction thing, but it’s not just that. People love their spouse so much that they’d forsake their family in a heartbeat. My dad didn’t talk to his family at all since he loved my ma, and his family didn’t approve of her. I would burn the universe down before I let anyone touch Mary,” he added. “I’d burn it down without a second thought.”
“Hm,” Thorton grunted critically, plopping down in a seat. “And you lot think the Union is a strange concept.”
“So…” Peyton drawled. “You don’t love Ellie, then?”
“I care for her, certainly. I’d die for her. But what you describe… I don’t have those feelings. I feel an irreplaceable physical attachment to her. Like one might feel for their own heart or brain,” Graham specified thoughtfully. “Don’t get me wrong—she never makes me feel bored. She’s a cute little thing that provides an endless source of diversions.”
“Well, that’s quite miraculous in itself!” Thorton added with interest. He turned to Peyton. “Graham has sort of a one-track mind.”
“Sex?” Peyton guessed, his lip curling with disgust.
“No.” Graham rolled his eyes at this, but then realized he had been thinking about it a lot recently. Hell, he was thinking about sex with Eleanor right that moment. She had a very beautiful body, after all. It was hard to stop thinking about it… “I mean, not until recently, anyway.”
“Let’s just say everyone back home wants to eliminate the Frian scourge,” Thorton clarified. “But most haven’t made it their personal responsibility like Graham has.”
Peyton’s eyebrows shot up but his mouth was still set grimly as he said, “Hey—killin’ Frians sounds like a perfect Saturday to me. Could make a pair a’ boots out of any one of those scaly sons-o’-bitches.”
Graham was really beginning to like this human.
“Before… you know, the plague y’all got, why were you fighting the Frians in the first place?” Peyton asked with curiosity.
“Frians don’t co-exist with others. They take over. So for pretty much all of our history, we had been fighting a battle just to keep them off of our planets. Everyone understood the fight, and we’d made our protection a priority… but it hadn’t been personal then like it is now,” Thorton answered for both of them.
Graham, still not liking to think about the plague, turned back to his console and then, after another moment, he asked Peyton, “So, what can I do to improve relations with Eleanor? I’ve never butted heads with anyone so much in my life.”
“You’re asking Peyton?” Mary stepped in from the hallway, looking doll-like next to Fie, who was walking along with her. “Talk about the whale asking the shark how to waltz.”
“I don’t think that’s even a saying,” Peyton retorted, crossing his arms in front of his chest defensively. “And I handled Ellie fine.”
Mary snorted derisively. “She handled you fine. Look, Graham, everything you’re doing with her is wrong. Ellie is the type of person who’s going to do what she’s going to do. The only way you can facilitate that is by going along with it and lending a hand, or else you’re just standing in the way of a hurricane.”
“She just needs a few good lickin’s, if you ask me,” Peyton huffed, “and luckily the commander here seems to be handlin’ her just right.”
“They don’t spank grown women on Earth anymore,” Mary said, dismissing Peyton with a wave of her hand as she turned back toward Graham. “You can’t treat her like that.”
“Maybe they don’t spank in Connecticut,” Peyton replied, “but in Texas, we—”
“Oh, here we go! Another ‘Tough in Texas’ speech!” Mary groaned, throwing her hands up and turning back toward Peyton and jabbing her index finger into his firm chest. “Let me tell you something, buster—you’ll never be touching me that way!”
Peyton’s face twisted up to begin to argue, but before he could get a word out, the room was filled with mocking laughter, including from Graham himself, who thought Mary’s resolute expression and hands-on-the-hips posture were just darling, as were her crazy notions.
Peyton’s face turned bright red. “Just because most of Earth has forgotten about the proper way for a husband to handle his wife, doesn’t mean I have, missy! The only reason you’ve never gotten a good hidin’ is because you’ve never given me a reason. Keep up your naggin’, though, and see where you end up!”
Mary’s fair face splotched dark crimson at those words and the room’s hearty laughter. She looked too taken aback by Peyton’s threat to conceive a response.
Thorton suddenly chuckled. “Aw. I love humans. I want one.” He looked at the space between the couple as if he could actually see the tension between them. “Cute can’t even begin to describe them.”
“Learn when to shut up, Thorton,” Mary demanded, turning her head to glare daggers at him.
“What I really hope to see is when she gets to Swaraan and is absolutely shocked by how frequent those sorts of chastisements are. Hell, the admiral took a belt to me until I was grown up!” he continued. Then, thoughtfully, he added, “Which is odd, really—because I don’t think he punished Graham since he was a teenager… And he wasn’t even my father…”
Graham smirked. Mary was onto something there—Thorton didn’t know when to shut up, particularly when they were growing up. Thorton’s father had died when he was very young and his mother took ill for years, and so the admiral, Graham’s father, took Thorton under his wing like he was his own and Thorton, in return, provided the admiral his biggest challenge.
Mary was now looking so upset she was practically shaking. “You need to get over it,” Graham advised, shifting his tone to one of command. “That’s just the way things are. Naughty mates—or wives, in your case—get spanked and then everyone moves on with a lesson learned.”
“Naughty wives?” she echoed with venom. She pursed her lips and turned back into the hallway. “I’ve had it up to here with the misogyny on this ship!” she said, putting her hand over her head even as she marched angrily off. “Troglodytes!”
Graham turned to Peyton for a translation of that word, but he merely frowned and said, “I don’t know half the words she uses and I like it that way,” he explained, and shook his head.
“Good job chasing her off,” Fie grumbled. “I thought she was being quite useful. It’s not every day we run across someone who is a walking encyclopedia of the human condition like the Mary girl.” Fie turned his finger over an electronic tablet, continuing to grumble to himself.
Graham was about to spin his chair back around to the console, but then he thought better of it. With Eleanor still forefront in his mind, he figured he’d get his concerns out of the way. He leaned forward, casually resting his elbows on his thighs, although even asking for help with Eleanor made his whole body feel uncomfortable. “Speaking of the human condition,” Graham said with a grimace. “Fie, I need you to do something for me…”