Learning to Blush

Learning To Blush:

Swarii Brides, Book Two

By

Korey Mae Johnson

©2012 by Blushing Books® and Korey Mae Johnson

Copyright © 2012 by Blushing Books® and Korey Mae Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Blushing Books®,

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Johnson, Korey Mae

Learning To Blush:

Swarii Brides, Book Two

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-818-9

Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

http://koreymaejohnson.stormynightpublications.com

Images by Image credits: Bigstock via Okssi and CanStockPhoto.com via Denisov

This book is intended for
adults only
. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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Chapter One

Captain Graham Masterson was famous in multiple galaxies, and not for one reason only, but for three. Firstly, he was known for his great works in his thirty-one years that had saved the lives of thousands of the Swarii, his own people, throughout the known universe. Secondly, he was known as the youngest captain in military history, and thirdly, because he was the husband of a mostly-human engineer named Eleanor Masterson.

For Eleanor had become not so much famous as notorious. She was an oddity, and not just because she was one of the first Human-Swarii cross species on record, but because she was the first female ever to get inducted into the service and served UNDER her husband, of all places.

What was odd about them both is that Graham Masterson, for as respected as he was, allowed Eleanor to easily be considered one of the least subservient married women in Swarii
remembrance
. Back on Eleanor’s home world of Earth, there were some cultures that found this as a positive thing: they might have made a movie or a pop song in her honor.

But she lived among the Swarii and had for nearly a whole year now, and the Swarii didn’t revere oddities at all. In Eleanor’s case, they liked to pretend she was something she wasn’t. They ignored the fact that she was practically a miniature being at only 5’2’’ and only a measly 110 pounds. They ignored that she was an engineer with little strength and only five fingers, and they most especially ignored the fact that she was a woman whenever possible.

Until, of course, she’d talk to her husband on-duty, where it became obvious that she was indeed a woman and indeed the captain’s wife… If simply because anybody else would have been shot in the face by now.

“You’re being stupid!” she heckled, following Graham over to the control bridge while carrying a stack of rolled up plans as if she was planning on using them as a club. “The modification would be well worth the delay, you can’t possibly be so obtuse you can’t see that. If there even WAS a delay, that is, and there WOULDN’T be. You just don’t want to take the risk!”

Graham stopped in his pacing just enough to growl a response. “Exactly,
Lieutenant
. I don’t.” He had hoped calling her by rank would remind her that she wasn’t just speaking to her husband, but to a senior officer—neither of whom would change their minds about a most decided topic. “The modification to the engines is unprecedented and untested, possibly even lethal. It’s likely to be of more harm than good,
and
I don’t have the time. This ship needs to be docked onto the mothership in seventy-two hours, and not a second longer. I have a schedule to keep.
Responsibilities
.” He drawled out the last word as if it was even more foreign to her than the rest of the language.

“Are you suggesting that I don’t have any responsibilities?” she quipped angrily. “Because I would like to see you to do what I do!”

“You might have responsibilities,” he granted, “But you don’t have the concept of priorities.” He suddenly looked toward the ceiling and groaned. “Lord, why I’m wasting my time talking to you about this, I will never know. What about your superior? Where’s he?” He asked this in a bit of a distant way, as if her engineering commander wasn’t Graham’s first cousin and best friend.

“My superior isn’t superior,” she sneered. “He ALSO doesn’t have a pair of balls.”

The command bridge, once a bastion of clicking noises and murmuring, silenced as everybody turned to watch how their captain was going to react.

They were disappointed if they thought he was the type that would lose his temper with her so utterly that he would take her to task in front of the entire bridge, even if it was his right. “You can return to your duties, Mrs. Masterson,” he returned crisply. “We’ll talk about your lack of respect this evening in our apartment.”

“No,” she refused, straightening her shoulders and raising her chin. “You aren’t even listening! This modification can allow you to actually control the ship while in warp jump. It could considerably shorten the length of time traveling between galaxies. It would be perfect to come into the Mothership with that sort of technology on our hands!”

He looked easily over her head towards the guards near the door. “Guards? Please escort the lieutenant to Commander Thorton Hux. Please tell him that he has to control his staff.”

It only took one guard, of course, who merely scooped Eleanor up and threw her over his shoulder as Eleanor continued to protest, “Maybe I should be head of the household, Graham! I have bigger balls than you do! Do you hear me? You’re sleeping on the sofa, Buster! If you think I’ll stand for this treatment, think again! I will not be cast aside so you can kiss your own father’s ass! Graham!”

Of course, he ignored her. She kicked her legs around after the guard took her down the hallway, and Graham still hadn’t pursued her. “Oh, just put me down, Derek!” she told the guard.

The guard, who had been the one guiding her back down to the engineering level in the past, set her down when he got inside the elevator. “You play a dangerous game, Little Girl,” the guard warned her. “If you were mine, I would have you—”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not yours, Derek,” she reminded tersely, snatching her rolled plans back from him. “And let me remind you—when I single-handedly win the damn war for your stupid race, you too will stand in line to thank me!”

“Single-handedly, huh?” Derek droned in echo, his face as blank as it always was. The elevator opened and they stepped out.

“Who the hell else will help me?” she replied, narrowing her eyes as Thorton walked over to her, bare-chested and throwing his large arms up in the air.

“Where the hell were you?” he asked, exasperated. He looked over at Derek, who shrugged, waved lazily, and returned to the elevator. “You weren’t kicked out of the bridge again, were you? Ellie—goddamn it! Who do you think he’s going to yell at for you lipping off? Me, that’s who! What in the blue galaxy—ah, for cripes… You were nagging him about that damn engine modification, weren’t you? Ellie, that modification could blow the whole damn system!”

“No guts, no glory,” she said in English, pushing the rolled up plans into Thorton’s chest.

Thorton grumbled—Eleanor had a way of shaming him that he had to fight off. That girl thought she was so much better at his job than he was, simply because he tended to look before leaping. Of course, he didn’t have the ‘I’m a woman’ safety net. He didn’t have anyone to bail him out if he failed. She had her husband at the end of the day, and past that, she had the Admiral of the entire fleet wrapped around her finger.

“Ellie, you can really kill morale, you know that? Especially mine… Look, please get the radiator on generator eighteen changed out. Please—for the love of God!—wear proper safety gear this time.”

“
You
get the radiator changed out,” she countered, walking towards the engines.

“I don’t have time to change the radiator!”

“You have time to nag at me,” she responded with a shrug.

“Goddamn it, Kitten! If you touch one engine—just one—I swear to God I will actually use my strap on you. Don’t think I won’t do it!” he threatened, following close behind her.

“Fine,” she snapped, turning the corner towards the generators.

“Safety gear!” he reminded with a shout. He watched as she stomped down the hallway until her figure disappeared around the corner, then he turned towards his office, looking up at the ceiling. “That girl’s gonna give me an ulcer. And I used to think humans were cute! Bah!”

As soon as he walked into his office and threw the plans across his desk haphazardly and sat down in his chair for the first time that morning, he heard his communicator buzz for his attention. “No,” he groaned, reading that the message was coming from the command deck. He tried to ignore it. “No!” The communicator on his wrist started to buzz. That was harder to ignore. He turned on the communicator on his desk. “Commander Hux,” he sighed wearily, his shoulders slumping.

“Do you have a problem with discipline, Commander?” Graham both looked and sounded pissed.

“If this is about Ellie, she’s your wife, not mine,” Thorton reminded bravely, shrugging.

“She works under you, not under me. Where’s your sense of control? Are you running a pirate ship down there, or are you actually part of the fleet?” Graham snapped. “Let me remind you that you’re the one that wanted her working under you. I certainly know that I didn’t send
myself
a petition to put her in my service.”

“Her engineering test scores are off the charts, Boss. You know that,” Thorton groaned. “And she’s gotten us out of a couple of binds this year, you have to admit. Only a human can human rig. We don’t have that level of creativity or problem-solving by a long shot…” He wiped some sweat away from his neck—it was always hot as hell in the engine room. “I don’t know… Maybe the modifications wouldn’t be a bad idea…” he mused, sounding tired.

“Are you giving in because you actually think it’s a good idea, or are you giving in because she wore you down?” Graham countered, narrowing his eyebrows dubiously.

“She wore me down,” he responded quickly and truthfully. “There’s no working with her when she has it in her mind to do something like this…”

The captain sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb for a moment. “No. If she wants to experiment, she can do that back at the Mothership in a closed environment abiding proper testing procedures and clearance.”

“Hah. We’ll see if she gets it since she blew up that lab last season,” reminded Thorton. “I mean, the Admiral loves her—that’s obvious. On that note, he doesn’t want her to blow herself up on his watch. He was pretty jarred after the close-call…”

“Everyone was jarred by the close call. She nearly sucked the whole floor into outer space. And she killed the gravity generator… That was expensive.” The memory was obviously not getting Graham excited about letting Ellie start her experiments on his own ship. “You need to make her drop this—she can’t keep going over your head when she doesn’t get her way. Are you a commander or aren’t you?”