Learning to Blush (4 page)

“Are you surprised about getting demoted?” he was aghast. “Let me assure you, if you were a man, there’d be worst things. You endangered your life and Thorton’s life, you ruined expensive equipment, and you single-handedly put us behind schedule. It’s not like your record was a particularly rosy picture before now. Your record is ripe with insubordination from nearly every professional dealing you’ve had. You’ve had nearly every officer on the ship write you up.

“To be perfectly frank, Eleanor, I suggested to Thorton that he discard you from his service, but luckily for you Thorton only believes a demotion is in order. Supposedly as horrible as you’ve been to him, he still wants to work with you.”

“So I got disciplined in public
and
I got demoted?” she clarified, her face heating red.

“Your surprise about that is disturbing to me,” he told her firmly. “I don’t care if you can’t sit down for the rest of your life, Eleanor. I’m not going to lose you because of your damn pride, which is nearly what happened yesterday.”

“If you would've just let me have time to properly conduct my experiment, it would have gone perfectly! I admit that I probably shouldn’t have done the modification on Engine Number Two when we were running on full-power, but I still have faith that it will work if you give me a little more time…”

Graham looked incredulous, like he didn’t believe what he was hearing. In fact, he shook his head a little bit as if he was imagining the whole thing. “I can’t believe you’re still arguing about this! Don’t you learn?”

“Yes, I do. Which is why next time, I’ll be doing it right,” she assured, planting her feet firmly and putting her hands on her hips.

He wished she was like this only because she was tired from working until morning, but he had a feeling that the doe-eyed little pixie was actually serious. Without another word or thought, he reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her over to the sofa.

“Stop being a tyrant!” she demanded, folding her hands over her bottom even before he pulled her over his lap. “I’m talking about progress, Graham!” she cried, kicking her legs wildly in protest until he forced them down by pinning her legs skillfully under one of his own. “I’ve already been spanked, damn it!”

“Then
act
like it,” he told her, flipping her skirt back up and her leggings and panties clear down to her knee-high boots. “You need to learn not to antagonize me.” He pinned her hands to her back as they were beginning her constant pursuit in trying to protect herself that way, and quickly noticed the red welting all across her skin.

He wanted to huff an angry sigh—how in the galaxy does a woman take a spanking like that and have vinegar still left in her spirit to earn herself another? He didn’t
want
to have to spank her again! Thorton certainly did a number on her already… Not that he was upset with him for doing so. It was encouraging to know Thorton was finally serious about being an officer.

She tried to seek out the floor with her toes. She never could—she was too damn small. “Graham, c’mon!” she groaned pleadingly.

Graham suddenly started spanking her already-quite-scalded flesh with his firm, paddle-like hand, which she had told him several times was as hard as wood.

“Stop! Please, stop! I get the point!” she promised. She already felt a tear roll down her face—she was already emotional, she was already defeated.

“I don’t even care if you
get the point
or not,” he informed her in a growl. “It’s not about you understanding, it’s about you obeying. You need to learn to obey. You need to control your tongue. You need to control your actions. You need to control your temper.” He spanked quickly and thoroughly even though her bottom already looked like a red tomato. Certainly, she was already going to sleep on her stomach for awhile after this.

“You need to control your damn war!” she yelled at him, enraged by the pain.

She was squinting from the pain until she said that, but when she felt firm pressure on her anus, her eyes snapped open. “Nnno!” she argued, but growled as Graham’s large index finger pushed steadily into her hot, squirming bottom.

“Do I have your attention, or do I need to send you to get the kit?” he asked her calmly.

“Not the kit!” she cried. The last thing she wanted was a couple of good punishment enemas and then a range of plugs stretching out her bottom until she was able to fit his girth to a point that was comfortable for
him
. She didn’t enjoy bad-girl sex at all—it always incorporated a red bottom and her whining like a poodle in heat.

She found it hard to feel both angry and alienated at the same time, and so she silenced and hugged onto his leg as he wiggled his finger in deeper.

“Everyone knows you’re smart, Eleanor. But you have to go through the same channels as anybody else. If you want to test something, that means you need proper authorization. And I mean
always
.”

“Yes, Sir,” she squeaked uncomfortably. She hiccupped miserably.

“Will I hear of you going around, issuing orders to your superiors again?” he continued in a doctrinaire drawl.

“Now practically the
whole ship
is my superior,” she exaggerated, trying to swallow the bitter pill of demotion.

“Eleanor,” he warned. “Do you need me to ensure that you have a better attitude?”

She had the most horrible feeling that he didn’t mean regular sex; that he meant a regular butt-plugging with something large, uncomfortable, and painful that she would be forced to wear for an insufferable amount of time. “No, I’ll be good,” she promised with another hiccup. “I’ll just be a boring old engineer.”

She meant it as a threat but, to her distaste, Graham seemed happy about that idea. He pulled his finger out of her tight bottom as if to reward her response. “Good girl,” he told her, giving her bottom a gentle pat and rub with his giant hand. “I expect you to turn over a new leaf.”

She ground her teeth until he let her up into a standing position. He kept her standing still between his knees as he began to unhook the buttons on her coat before he pulled it the rest of the way off of her shoulders. He loved undressing her, even when she had such a sulky expression on her face. “There’s something else the matter?” he asked, unlacing the top of her boots. “Why are you in such a hurry to eradicate the Frians? We’ve been warring with them for thousands of years, but you act like you need it to end by next week.”

“You said it’s nearly impossible to go home if the Frians are still in that area,” she reminded.

He nodded and sighed. “Yes. They have control of your galaxy now… Are you
homesick
, Eleanor?” His tone wasn’t mocking at all; it was sympathetic, if anything, but to
her
ears, it came across as pedantic.

“You don’t understand what it’s like to get torn away from your home in the middle of the night and wake up in a dog cage, Graham,” she snapped. “I was perfectly happy before all this space stuff happened!”

“No you weren’t,” he assured, pulling her out of her boots and then tugging her leggings and panties all the way off. “You were lonely, stuck in a garage taking orders from your father all day working on low-level, unchallenging equipment and not living up to your full potential.”

“I’m not living up to my full potential
now
!” she cried, letting fresh tears drip from her face.

“You are if your job was stepping on toes. Engineers have a chain of command, too. Nobody can do everything they want whenever they want. Not even my father. Not even the Emperor,” he assured. He wiped the tears away from her face with his fingers and kissed her cheek. “You’ll get home one day. You’ll see your family again. We’ll push the Frians back and get you out there. Be patient,” he pleaded. He pulled her shirt over her head and then unhooked her bra, leaving her standing there, perfectly naked.

He put his arms around her and kissed her stone-like nipples and then kissed her mouth. She wasn’t kissing back. He frowned with frustration. They didn’t have sex nearly as often as he would have liked—probably only a small fraction of the amount other married couples were doing it.

When Mary announced she was pregnant a couple of months ago, Graham had to admit he was jealous of Peyton, who was still walking around the ship like he was cock of the walk. Mary did some medical research work under Fie during the day, but
she
would spread her legs for her husband nearly every night, whenever he desired her.

Ellie and Graham seemed to be on different schedules all of the time. One of them always seemed to be too tired or too stressed to be intimate. He felt lucky if they had sex once a
week
. At this rate, they might actually have to win the war with the Frians before he was able to sufficiently impregnate his own wife.

He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, hoping to entice her with foreplay, but as soon as he laid her down and moved his body over hers to kiss her neck, she snapped, “I am
not
in the mood.”

“I’m trying to
get you
in the mood,” he explained irritably. He knew perfectly well that she was, in all actuality, in the mood, and was just refusing him to be contrary. He could hear her pulse quicken, he could feel and even smell her desire towards him. She was just trying to punish him.

“Take away my demotion and the pain in my ass, and then we’ll talk,” she said, rolling over onto her stomach.

He wasn’t surprised by the tactic. She would punish herself if she could at least punish him, too—she made that clear early on in their marriage. “Eleanor, you know I don’t like to see you unhappy,” he reminded.

“I’d be happy if you left me alone,” she lied with a huff.

“Don’t act like you don’t need me, Wife,” he told her in a warning tone.

“I’m not acting. I just don’t need you,” she chirped bitterly.

He threw his arms up in the air with frustration. “Fine. Sleep alone. You’ll come to me eventually,” he told her gruffly, getting up from the bed and straightening his uniform. “I will be the
mature
one, since I care about your happiness more than you care about mine.”

“Sure you do,” she doubted, pleased with herself for making Graham pout.

She listened to him leave and fell into a weary sleep on her pillow. She knew that when she woke there would be a lot of work to get done.

* * *

Warp speed. It wasn’t what the Swarii were used to calling it, but Ellie definitely felt
warped
when she was going through it. The sensation of going through warp speed made her feel like she had been turned into clay and was being squeezed by a giant hand.

She never had to actually pay attention during it, however. That’s something Braum or Jio, who were presently on the command deck with Graham, would do for the ship. Her only job had been to strap herself into a chair and then try her best not to vomit.

This warp speed was even worse, or it
felt
worse, because she had gotten the small Ghost-Class ship—not even the size of an RV, to stay in a warp jump about 30 times longer than any ship…
ever
. So, as soon as she came out of “warp jump”, she celebrated by finally vomiting and passing out.

When she awoke again, her skin felt cold and the console underneath her was making alarm noises and flashing an angry red light.

She felt disoriented even as she tried to find her piloting manual. The board in front of her was lighting up and telling her to initiate a landing sequence, despite the fact that she could literally see Earth in her sights. She figured Earth couldn’t see
her
—the great thing about Ghost-class is that they were small and cloaked.

She flipped to the chapter on ‘landing’ but then glanced up.

Earth seemed much, much closer.

She looked down again, read a few sentences, and then looked back up once more.

Ah, crap. Earth was DEFINITELY closer, and she was easily about to enter the atmosphere. Was she coming at the planet at full-speed? Probably, she realized—but the brakes were supposed to be turned on after coming through that massive hole the ship had cut through the fabric of space itself!

She pulled up on the control, and her ship
did
slow down for a moment before she heard roaring just outside. Oregon, her destination, was getting bigger and bigger. The ship was certainly staying true to autopilot. Just… very
fast
autopilot. Probably because there was something very, very wrong with the brakes. There was also probably something very, very broken on the ship that was causing the malfunction.

She began just to hit buttons in an order she’d seen done…
once
. The ship just shook in response. Damn.
Damn
! The ship had “slowed down” maybe to 500 miles an hour. She was going to hit the ground like a damn falling train.

Projectile seats—
projectile seats
! YES! She had repaired projectile seats before… She knew all about them. She reached around and pushed the ‘emergency’ button to initiate the option. She just had to wait until she was a good distance to the ground—not too far away and not, well, crashed already…

POP!

And she was off! In the air—going up, up, up… then down, down… down… Way to quickly down.

She frowned and scrambled to find the parachute option under the seat. When she found it, she shot up another 100 feet, much to her horror, but could still appreciate the sight of an invisible alien aircraft crashing into the middle of the woods.

“Graham’s gonna kill me,” she wheezed sickly.

She wondered vaguely if Graham even knew she was missing. She didn’t know how long she was passed out, but she was certain that she couldn’t have been away from the ship for more than nine hours. Nine hours to travel over twenty-thousand light years!

“I’ve got mad skills!” she announced to the sky around her as the seat flew towards the forest under her feet. “Whee! Eureka!” She kicked her feet like a small child riding on a carousel.

This discovery was already totally worth the spanking she would undoubtedly receive later on. This sort of interstellar travel was unprecedented and nobody had even believed it could be done, and if it could, then certainly not in her lifetime.