Sharon green brat 02, p.23
Sharon Green - Brat 02, page 23
“What good would it have done to start any of the arguments in private?” Elissia countered, having expected Derand to mention the matter. “Until now it could be thought that I loved my family fiercely, so they were walking targets for assassination. Once word gets around that I resent them more than love them, killing them will seem more like a favor to me than a terrible blow. Even if the plan doesn’t work like that even though it should, they won’t be any worse off than they were.”
“So you were trying to protect them without making it look like a deliberate effort,” Derand said, a brief expression of annoyance crossing his face as he stood. “If there are any more assassins still around your plan might work, but in the meantime what about your parents’ feelings? Don’t you think your words felt like a knife plunging into their chests?”
“My parents aren’t as delicate as all that, and I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Elissia muttered, turning away as Derand got closer. “I love my mother and father because that’s what children do, but every now and then I wonder how much they deserve that love.”
“Since they didn’t murder you in cold blood while you were still a child, they’ve earned all the love you can give them,” Derand said from behind her right shoulder. “You weren’t an easy child to live with, and if they made a few mistakes with you they can be excused on the grounds that they’re only human. They never deliberately tried to hurt you even when your safety was involved, but you made no effort to return the courtesy. That particular lack of effort has earned you an effort on my part.”
And with that his big hand closed around Elissia’s left arm, a prelude to his dragging her to the nearest chair. Elissia hated the way her struggling meant absolutely nothing in the face of his strength, and then he was sitting down and pulling her across his knees.
“Let me go!” she demanded even as her sleep ensemble skirts were thrown forward over her back and head. “You have no right to do this to me, not for any reason!”
“You’re not the only one able to think around here,” the monster responded as he kept her from pushing back to her feet. “What you said to your parents and brother
-guests of mine - was rude and insulting, and I would not be expected to let you get away with it no matter how much I loved you. I hope for your sake that your plan does work, because you’re about to pay the price of that plan right now.”
Elissia gasped when the bead was quickly pushed into her bottom, but then the gasp turned into a howl when the first heavy smack reached her. The first smack became three, four, and then five, six, and seven, and by then Elissia’s howls were even louder. The monster’s hand felt like wood as it struck her bottom again and again, warming her seat to the level of the flames already rushing around her body. She wasn’t being allowed to protect her bottom with a hand and she wasn’t being allowed to squirm free. All she was being allowed was to get the spanking the monster had made up his mind to give her.
By the time the last of the heavy smack-smack-smacking fell on her seat, Elissia had long-since started to cry. The monster had obviously been really furious with her, and the spanking he’d given was one of the worst she’d ever gotten. Part of the writhing she did was from the terrible need screaming inside, a need that the throbbing, burning ache in her bottom wasn’t quite able to push out of her awareness.
And then, before he let her up, he did something really cruel?
Chapter 15
“What - what are you doing?” Elissia asked hoarsely between sobs. “No, please!”
“I’m showing you the same consideration you showed to your parents,” the monster answered as he tied her wrists together in front of her with thin material that was very soft but also very strong. He’d first pulled off her sleep ensemble, but that was hardly what might be considered a comfort. “Tomorrow you’ll be given the chance to apologize for what you said, but the choice of whether or not to apologize to your parents will be entirely yours. If you decide against making the effort, you’ll know exactly what you have to look forward to again tomorrow night.”
By now he’d pushed her back to her feet and stood, so he was able to pull her toward their bed by the end of the material tied around her wrists. Elissia was desperate to rub at her terribly spanked bottom, but she wasn’t being allowed to do that. Instead she was thrown into the bed on her back and the end of the material was tied around a decorative spoke in the headboard. She raised her aching bottom from the bed as quickly as possible by using her feet, but a moment later the position wasn’t as much of a benefit as it had been at first.
The monster slipped out of his wrap as soon as she was tied to the headboard, and now he put himself between her knees. She gasped when he began to enter her, needing him inside her so badly that she nearly demanded he hurry, but she’d forgotten what his use was like after a hard spanking. She choked and squirmed helplessly as he began to stroke in and out, the touch of his body almost making her think she was being spanked again.
But that bead in her bottom did its usual job of making her forget about everything but the way her need was being seen to - which had to be why the monster had used the thing. He’d wanted her to respond to him helplessly and completely, disallowed the choice of refusing him the least little thing. Elissia wanted to rage at being treated like this, but her own body refused to allow that. She quickly turned mindless with the pleasure she was being forced to feel, and the time went on even longer than the spanking had. After her body spasmed with release again and again and again, Elissia fell instantly asleep once the monster withdrew.
And awoke in the morning, alone in the bed - but still tied!
Derand finished his morning chores faster than he thought he would, considering that he’d taken over Seea’s job of reviewing the requests for assistance that the scribe had taken down yesterday. There were a lot fewer problems listed than the day before, but there still remained some that needed attending to.
But that was for later, when audience time came around. Right now he intended to take a pleasure break, one he would normally have taken this morning after waking up. But when he woke up still angry over how Seea had treated her parents, he decided to put off the time for a short while. A short while that ought to add to the repayment Seea was owed for the pain she’d given King Ostrin. Derand was more than just fond of Ostrin, and the man hadn’t deserved to be treated badly no matter what the reason.
Derand paced along the hall toward his apartment, more than a little disturbed that Seea would choose such a cruel way to protect her parents. She hadn’t been the easiest child to raise, something she ought to be well aware of, so the fact that she had issues from her childhood should be balanced against the issues she’d caused. Gardal, caught in the middle, had been very upset, and that had added to Derand’s anger.
The dozen fighters Derand had left in front of the apartment were still as alert as when he’d placed them there, and Derand dismissed them before entering. Leaving Seea tied to the bed with one of Waysten’s toys meant she wasn’t in a position to defend herself, so Derand had had the apartment closely guarded.
Soon the guards would no longer be necessary, since he meant to release Seea as soon as he eased her.
The bead would have her really worked up by now, but none of what he’d done to her would disappear with her need, he knew. Things were still going badly between them, and he had not even a single clue about how to make them better.
When he entered his bedchamber, Derand could hear the sound of movement in the bed. Seea would have awoken to find herself in the unpleasant position of still having an aching bottom that needed to be kept from complete contact with the bed, but shifting around to ease her bottom would have encouraged the bead to make free with her reactions. By now the woman must be squirming uncontrollably, and walking over to the bed showed Derand that he was right.
“Well, well, what have we here?” Derand drawled as he stopped to study a very unhappy Seea. “Can this possibly be a woman who’s anxiously looking forward to making an apology at lunch?”
Seea simply closed her eyes rather than answer him in words, most likely because the words she most wanted to speak would earn her another spanking. But she wasn’t refusing to do as he wanted her to, and he’d said she would be given the chance to make the decision freely about how they would spend their time tonight. That meant he didn’t need any words from her to get on with what had to be done, so he put his swordbelt aside, opened his leather trousers, and then put himself between her legs.
The first touch of his manhood to her need brought a moan to Seea’s throat, a moan that increased in volume as he slowly put himself inside her. Her helpless squirming set his own blood on fire, trying to force him into stroking her fast and hard, but he had more control than that.
Once he was as deeply inside her as it was possible to go, he put his hand to her bottom before he began to stroke slowly in and out. She yelped at the touch and tried to escape it, her squirming becoming even more delightful than it had been. When she couldn’t escape the touch of his hand she made a sound that could only be called angry surrender, then seemed to lose herself to what was being done to her.
Derand kept control of himself for only a short while, and then he let go and gave Seea and himself everything they both needed. The concept of time disappeared from Derand’s awareness, returning only when he found release and lay down on the bed beside Seea. He spent a couple of minutes getting his breath back, and then he pulled up his trousers again before he removed the bead and then untied Seea.
“You have plenty of time to dress for lunch,” he said as she sat up on her hip and began to rub her wrists.
“Take a bath and think about what you’ll say as part of an apology, assuming you decide that that’s what you want to do. We won’t start lunch without you, so don’t be late.”
Derand went into the bathing room to wash the bead before he put it and the restraint away in a place Seea wasn’t likely to find them, then he left the apartment. He didn’t miss the fact that Seea still hadn’t said a word to him, but this time it seemed to be seething anger rather than depression behind her silence.
Derand tried to consider the anger better than the depression, but the internal argument didn’t quite convince him. Each reaction was as bad as the other, since both meant trouble for him in some way?
“My king?” Derand suddenly heard, the words louder than what could be considered normal. “My king, are you angry with me for some reason?”
“What would make you think I was angry with you?” Derand asked as he turned back to Listan, who stood about three feet behind him. “And why didn’t you come all the way up to me instead of stopping back there?”
“My king, I didn’t ‘stop’ here,” Listan said as he closed the distance between them. “I came from the other direction and greeted you when you reached me, but you just kept going without saying a single word. Is it wise to let yourself become this distracted right now?”
“It’s never wise to become this distracted, but I haven’t had a choice in the matter in quite some time,”
Derand answered, silently cursing himself for a fool. “If you don’t know when I stopped having the choice, Listan, you haven’t been paying attention. Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yes, my king, there is,” Listan agreed, his face showing sympathetic understanding. “The city guardsmen we’ve been watching? The news isn’t good. Out of the three shifts of ten men each, a total of four actually make some effort to do their job. One on the eight to four shift, one on the four to midnight shift, and two on the midnight to eight shift.”
“Only four men out of thirty who actually try to do the job,” Derand said disgustedly with a shake of his head. “I wondered why there were so few men on each of the shifts, and now I know: It doesn’t make sense to pay more men to do nothing. Tell me, Listan, why didn’t we know about all this sooner? Why did it take bringing a tornado into the city to find out what was being mishandled?”
“When we first got here, the last of the war took all our attention,” Listan answered with his own headshake. “After that we were involved with cleaning up the remaining loose ends, so we made the mistake of believing that your predecessor here had things running smoothly. I feel certain that we would have found the trouble as soon as we began to settle in.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Derand said, not really believing the words he spoke. “But whichever way it would have gone, right now we’re heading in the proper direction. If you haven’t already done so, assign twenty-five fighters to each of the shifts. Their first assignment will be to arrest most of the men they’re replacing, but I want to be there when we take the present shift. Let’s get the necessary men together
-along with those who did the watching - and take care of the matter right now.”
Listan nodded and led off, and it wasn’t long before he and Derand and the necessary men were mounted and heading for the city guard post in the middle of the city. And that was another thing Derand suddenly noticed that was wrong?
“Listan, assign some men to look into putting guard posts in the various segments of the city rather than just one post in the middle,” Derand said as they rode. “Get a map of the city and use it to figure out where the posts ought to be. The current arrangement is downright stupid.”
Listan’s brows rose as he realized that Derand was right, and his nod was on the distracted side. Derand knew that Listan was already making plans, so the problem would certainly be taken care of as fast as possible.
They dismounted and left their horses a street away from the current guard post, then went the rest of the way on foot. Instead of disappearing, the people they passed on the street watched them curiously, and some even started to follow at a small distance. Derand took the reaction of the people as a good sign, and made no effort to chase them away. They needed to know that their new king was serious about making the city a decent place to live, and showing them was a better idea than simply telling them.
Derand had already given his orders, so when they reached the large, blocky stone building that was the guard post his men spread out to surround the place. One of the men who had been watching the guardsmen was dressed in ordinary clothing, so he was the one who would go inside while Derand and the others took their turn at watching. There was no sense in letting the current guardsmen claim there was some kind of mistake about their being arrested, not when it was possible to arrange the necessary proof.
An open window in one side wall was the position Derand chose for himself even while he mentally shook his head over such sloppiness. A proper guard post shouldn’t even have had windows let alone open windows, but at least the nonsense would soon make no real difference. He and Listan stood to either side of the window, and Derand was able to look inside as his man in ordinary clothes entered hesitantly.
“I’d - like to report a robbery,” the man said after a moment to the room at large. Nine men sat around in various poses of relaxation, most of them drinking something a lot stronger than tea, five of them playing cards. They were a scruffy-looking bunch, and most of them ignored the man who had asked for help.
One of them, who was seated at a small table writing something, put his pen aside, got up, and walked toward the “ordinary citizen.”
“Maybe I can help you,” the guard said, sounding tired and almost hopeless. “Do you know who it was who robbed you? Did they take something you can prove is yours?”
“Shut up and sit down, Roblen,” one of the others slurred as he lurched to his feet. “I’ll take care a this?
How much money you got, fool? No, never mind, just hand it all over. And if it ain’t enough then I’m gonna bust you up some to teach you better’n to come in here poor. We don’t listen to scum like you for nothin’, do we, boys?”
“No, sure as hell don’t,” and “Hell, no,” and other like comments came from around the room along with laughter. The man called Roblen had taken a step back with anger seething in his eyes, but considering how badly he was outnumbered it was no surprise that he did nothing else.
“Well, scum?” the drunk demanded after emptying the bottle he held before tossing it aside to break in a spatter of glass. “You gonna pay, or you gonna get a beatin’?”
“Neither,” Derand said through the window after signaling most of his men to enter the building. “This time you get the beating, but after that you won’t get off as easy. Take them all alive.”
The drunk had managed to focus on Derand with a scowl that was probably supposed to be frightening, and that was only the last of the man’s mistakes. He never saw the fist thrown by Derand’s fighter in ordinary clothes, but he staggered from the blow and went stumbling back toward the man Roblen.
Roblen could have had no idea about what was happening, but even as black-clad fighters filled the post he reached all the way back with a fist and then sent that fist to connect with the drunk’s jaw. The drunk dropped like a felled tree, and Roblen rubbed his knuckles with a grim smile on his face as he stared down at the man he’d hit.
Meanwhile, Derand’s fighters were taking the other so-called guardsmen into custody. Two actually tried to draw their swords after jumping to their feet, but the weapons were only half drawn before there were points at their throats. One of the two swallowed hard before surrendering and the other cursed, but both chose not to fight. It wasn’t long before all the prisoners were being put in chains, and by then Derand and Listen had left the window to enter the building. Derand looked around for his man and the one called Roblen, but both men had disappeared and the door to the back of the building stood open.
