Learning to Blush (32 page)

“I don’t do
personal space
,” Thorton grumbled. He knew he had to talk to Penny, of course, but his brain felt so fried—especially emotionally—by the time he came home, that he knew it wasn’t the best of times. Penny had avoided him, anyway.

In fact, Penny had barely said two words to him since he took her to go see Fie.

Ah, right. When he
forced
her to go to see Fie; damn Ellie and her sense-making. Still, if he hadn’t taken her, Penny might have never been able to have children… That damn Yule had deserved everything Thorton had given him—a blast through the head!

“It’s possible that I pissed her off,” Thorton admitted grumbly.

“No shit, Sherlock!” Peyton laughed, making Thorton confused and Mary to puff, '
Peyton!'
“A word of advice?” Peyton added. “Flowers. Girls can’t get enough of ‘em. And chocolate. And if you’ve really done bad—both.”

“Jewelry’s good, too,” Mary added with a shrug. “Especially after a day like the one you put her through the other day. You know the Jonas family never went to see doctors as children, right? Penny’s dad and the town MD had a huge scuffle at one point, so the most experience they had with a doctor was their school nurse. Penny was terrified, and you know Fie has the
worst
bedside manner…”

“He seemed friendly enough. And he was
professional
,” Thorton protested crisply.

“He didn’t prepare her for what he was doing, she was probably embarrassed to within an inch of her life.”

“Right,” Peyton, the traitor who suddenly wasn’t on Thorton’s side, nodded. “Ellie had been so humiliated and abused by the Frians that being poked and prodded by Fie didn’t seem like a big deal, but Penny didn’t have that experience…”

“Thank you,” Thorton silenced crisply. It couldn’t have been
that
bad, could it? It was just an exam, a couple of shots and a supplement!

He looked over at Penny, who eventually exchanged his look and then glanced nervously away, looking embarrassed, or like she wanted to block Thorton from her entire memory.

Thorton cleared his throat and looked at Peyton and Mary. “So. Chocolate, flowers, and jewelry?”

They nodded. He pushed himself up from the table. “Can you get those yahoos to make sure she gets back to our apartment in two hours?” Thorton asked, jerking his thumb towards the group of half-breeds, especially Tim, who had at some point designed a mustache on himself with whipped cream and was trying to act sophisticated while the group around him laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. It caused Penny to pleasantly ignore Thorton.

Peyton, who was older than even Mike, looked over at them like he was suddenly having second thoughts about being a parent. “Sure,” he finally said in a pained sort of way.

Thorton went to the ship’s greenhouse to pick up a fire flower, and found chocolates that he once saw Ellie stuffing her face with, so that he knew they were human-approved, and he came back into his apartment trying to clean up and set everything up for a romantic sort of scene… Although he was nervous about that because he hadn’t done any romancing in his entire life. On the ship, though, they had watched plenty of human films, so he was sure he had it down. He was just wondering whether or not it would be appropriate to be naked for it, since he hoped it would ultimately lead to sex like it did in those movies.

He decided to go nude. Seemed more practical…

Unfortunately, Penny wasn’t the first one in the apartment. Just as he had finished shucking his shoes off, he heard a gasp, spun, and saw Ellie in the doorway, eyes as wide as saucers before she remembered to put her hands up to cover them.

Thorton was quick to hide behind the sofa. “Holy Hell, Ellie! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you Penny?” he demanded, annoyed.

“Why are you
naked
? No wonder she doesn’t want to come home! Who wants to walk through the front door and be greeted by your pet snake?”

Thorton froze. “What do you mean she doesn’t want to come home?” he asked.

Ellie shrugged. “That’s what she said. She doesn’t want to see you right now. She wanted me to grab a change of clothes so she can stay with me, Tim and Tom over at Jack’s place.”

Since Ellie’s eyes were still closed, he made a move to go re-discover his pants. Tugging his pants over his legs he growled, “She doesn’t want to see me? Did you inform her that we were
married
?”

“Nope. Because you’re not married, you’re
mated
. Totally different. Marriage is consensual where we’re from, Bucko.”

He raised one of his dark eyebrows at her, which must have been considered threatening because her hands flew behind her back.

“It’s not my fault you blew it!” she defended. “Just apologize for whatever you did to her that she won’t talk about. Which I’m going to go ahead and assume was ass-sex.”

“We did not have anal sex, not that that’s any of your business!” He tugged his shirt over his head. “Take me to her.”

“She doesn’t want to…” He grabbed Ellie by the shoulder and steered her towards the door. “Okay,” she said, realizing that it wasn’t going to be optional.

Ellie led him back to Jack’s extremely large apartment. Jack met them in the hallway, wrapping his hand around Ellie’s braid as if petting her. “I wondered where you went to,” Jack was telling Ellie softly. He looked up at Thorton. “Didn’t I see you already today?”

“Came to get my wife,” Thorton replied tersely.

“Good—the monkey pen is through there,” he said, pointing towards the living room as he picked Ellie up into his arms like one might do with a child, settling her on his hip. ‘Equal’ or not, Thorton’s uncle was very unlikely to ever stop treating Ellie like a child. And Ellie made no signs of stopping him. “We’re going to go visit Graham. Try not to make a scene,” he suggested.

Thorton walked into the room and saw all of them sitting in front of a large computer screen, which showed greater details of what looked to be a ship. He cleared his throat.

“Uh-oh,” Tom said, looking up. “Here comes
drama
!”

Penny turned around and looked at him. “Thorton…” She sighed and shook her head. “Just go away, will you? I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Penny…” Thorton’s throat was instantly dry, and his cheeks were flushed. He was humiliated. “Penny, you’re my mate. I love you. Tell me what I did?”

She turned her back towards him. He knew that discussing anything in front of her kin wasn’t an easy task. “Penny,” he tried to walk in front of her, and she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and turned away.

“Penny, look at me,” he said, feeling himself beginning to lose patience. She was constantly and smoothly adjusting herself so that he faced her back wherever he moved to.

“Fine.” He reached down and picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder.

“Thorton! I hate you!” Penny snapped, hitting her hands against his back as he heaved her out of the room.

“Boss! Hey—you can’t treat Penny like that—” Mike protested, getting to his feet and following them out.

“I need to be able to talk to my own mate, Mike. I’m not going to hurt her,” Thorton promised, looking tiredly at Mike.

“Yes he is, Mike! He’s spanked me! Like—like—stop him!” Penny argued.

“Well,” Mike said, looking taken aback for only a moment before he began to look awkward. “Well that's… John-Waynish of you…”

“Don’t make jokes!” Penny screeched. “Tell him to put me down!”

“I’ve been there,” Mike admitted with a wobble of his head. “Women, huh? How can you make things better if they won’t talk to you?”

Thorton was suddenly looking at Mike in a whole new light—was Mike actually on his side? “Right. Thanks, Mike.”

“Mike!” Penny whined.

“You’ll be fine, Pen. Give Thorton a chance; he’s had a rough day eating Ellie’s humble pie. He needs his girl. Have fun, you Kids!”

It wasn’t fun bringing Penny back to their apartment. He actually felt a little bruised by the time he made it back because of how she was thumping her fist against him as if her spanking earlier that day had meant absolutely nothing.

He swallowed and reminded himself to be patient, and put her on the ground only when they reached the apartment. He plopped her onto the couch and then, when she tried to immediately sit up, he pinned her down with his arms on her shoulders. “Penny, Honey…. Please listen to me, okay?”

“I hate you,” she said, diverting her eyes.

“I didn’t realize fully how traumatic yesterday would have been for you. I understand that you hate me, and I’m sorry.”

Her eyes slowly turned towards him, as if he had said a magic word. He decided to go on. “Ellie reminded the Admiral and me that we’ve been asking a lot more of you than you have of us. We have to be more open-minded about who you are and who you’ve become. We're sort of close-minded as a species… That's probably why your kind is more creative than ours…

“You see, it’s easier for my people to pretend that everything’s normal, and everything’s the same. But it’s not. You’re not. You’re different. I can’t pretend you’re a Swarii wife. You’re you, and I love
you
.”

“You don’t love me,” she corrected with a pout. “You lust me.”

“I definitely lust you. I can’t pretend that when I look at you I don’t want to tear your clothes off and throw you back into bed. I can’t pretend that I don’t want you to raise my children, to have a huge bunch of them, but you can do that in your own time. I plan to be with you forever. I plan to love you for who you are. And I need to be gentler with you.”

“So… no more spankings?”

He took her hands into his and kissed them. “No, Sweetheart. I can’t promise that. But I’ll never spank you in anger. And I will do my best to be very, very open minded. But spanking stays. You can even… not be a housewife… if you’d like…” Thorton added with a wince. “I shouldn’t have forced you into being a Swarii wife. You’re a human wife. I understand you’re crazy and you’re completely confused about your gender…”

Her arms were already wrapped around his neck. He just didn’t get it. Working was viewed as a punishment for most women, yet the Jonas family relished it.

She turned her head. “What’s that?” she said, pointing to the fireflower.

He told her. “It was the flower you remind me of, Honey. You’re so pretty it hurts to look at you sometimes.” He kissed her cheek. “I also have chocolates.”

She turned her head back and let his lips meet hers. Quickly, it became heated. Clothes were quickly and wildly shucked off both of their bodies as if the clothes were made of fire. Penny was soon naked in front of him once again and he pulled her body over his, where she began to straddle him. “Wait!” he said throatily.

He flipped her onto her back on the sofa and then kissed down the length of her chest and stomach until he came to her red little mound. “What are you doing?” she asked him with a nervous giggle.

“I’m going to taste you. I think this should be a customary part of an apology,” he said, loving how a blush came to her cheeks. A blush came to his, too—this was pretty taboo stuff, after all! He spread her legs wide open with his hands and gently ran his tongue against her clit. She gave an inward purr, and he smirked, loving it.

“Nice apology,” she admitted.

“I don’t want you to think I treat you like a slave, Penny,” he told her. “I want you to want me of your own free will one day. Do you think you could?”

She chewed her lip. “Well, you’re definitely going in the right direction…”

Chapter Thirteen

“You are a very bad girl, you know,” Graham said, but he wasn’t even attempting to hold back his grin. This was the most lucid Ellie had seen Graham all month. Now, and only now, was he catching up with the things that had been going on while he was ‘indisposed’. He had gotten the use of one of his eyes just in time to see Ellie’s award ceremony on television.

“I know,” Ellie said, still brandishing the metal she had been wearing around her neck, although she had received it a few days before. The admiralty grudgingly set up the ceremony to reward her for her ‘innovative prowess’ in her service, although it had been over three weeks since she fixed the fledge for them. “I had to play some dirty pool to get this, but it was worth it. We’re gonna win the war for you, you know.”

“So you keep telling me,” he replied with a singular laugh. “Is your research going that well?”

“Well, I’m realizing the prototype I used to get to Earth was like using
a match
to heat a can of soup relative to a stovetop, compared to what I’m looking at now. I’m not piecing this together with bubblegum and duct tape anymore. I have a full team.” She crawled up on the bed and rested her head on his knees, which were pulled up in a triangle as he sat up in the bed.

Graham didn’t know if she was exaggerating or not, and he didn’t want to know.

“The Frians would shit a brick if they had any idea what we were creating,” she added.

His one eye squinted. “Language,” he warned, and then sighed. “I am going to have my hands full with adjusting the spoiling job my father’s done on you.”

“Spoiled?” she coughed. “Jack doesn’t spoil me! I
thought
it was easy street after he spanked me when I didn’t deserve it three weeks ago for not working after he fired me—”

Graham smirked, recalling vaguely that his father had confessed that much to him, but Graham didn’t quite know who his father even was about the time that confession was made. “The fact that you got an apology out of him is a feat unto itself…”

“I guess so! Three nights ago, he spanked me and then he made me sit in the corner for a whole hour when I came home late from the lab without checking in first. I thought I made it clear that I was an
adult
…”

“You are an adult. But he’s still in charge of you, and he still thinks of you as his own, so he worries. Don’t worry, though. Pretty soon
I’ll
be the one sitting you in the corner after spanking that pretty little bottom of yours.” He winked, only it didn’t have the cute-effect with one eye. It just made him look like he was blinking.