Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Hm?”
“It’s time to eat. We have burgers.”
I sit on Freak’s knee at a table that would otherwise be ridiculously oversized for me, and I eat burgers that are ridiculously oversized for me, and I feel a kind of contentment and peace that I haven’t felt in a long time.
The aliens are talking among themselves, mostly out loud, so I am not left out. I am sure they are having their secret discussions as well, but I don’t need to be part of those. I like just being here, being held, feeling as though I have escaped misery and tragedy one after the other.
“Alright, pet,” he says, patting my ass. “I have something special in mind for you tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Training. You have to learn to discipline your thoughts.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot take you around telepaths if you are constantly mentally screaming about which one of them is hot, or which one you’d like to push off a bridge.”
I give him an innocent look. “I thought those things?”
“Yes, pet,” he smirks. “You did.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight, and before tonight, and…”
“I don’t think humans can control their thoughts,” I interrupt him. “I think we just have them. If you don’t want people hearing them, put a tinfoil hat or something on me.”
“There’s a difference between the stream of consciousness you experience, and thoughts that are more projected,” he says. “The ones that are loud in your head may as well have been spoken out loud in reality.”
“Really?” I grin.
He smiles back at me with that super sharp grin that reminds me just how alien he is. It’s amazing how fast you start to see past blue skin and scales, and just start to think of even the most interestingly odd aliens as just another kind of person.
“Really,” he says. “Some of what you were thinking when I brought you to our home was truly unrepeatable. I’m sure they’re still talking about it.”
I giggle. I don’t really care what those aliens thought of me. I care what this one thinks, because he has shown me kindness. But still, we have known each other for just a few days and there’s always the chance he’s going to eat me or something.
“You want me to think quieter?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm yeahhh spank me.” I think as loud as I can. Never imagined thought as having volume before, but it makes immediate sense. Weird how humans do know how to think in various ways like that, loud and soft and everything in between, almost like we’re calibrated for a skill we never got. I wonder if maybe I could learn to read minds if I tried really hard.
There’s a laugh from somewhere else in the ship. Wow. I guess they really can hear through walls.
Freak obliges me immediately. Gripping me by the scruff of my suit, he gives me an immediate wedgie. That wedgie is accompanied by several hard slaps to my cheeks, each of them making my ass burn. They’re hard and fast and they don’t give me any time to react until they’re already searing through my skin.
“I was going to do this anyway,” he says. “But seeing as you asked for it, I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“I was joking! It was a prank!”
“A painful one for you,” he notes, carrying me about in that undignified scruffed position. I feel myself softening in his grip. I feel the tender burn in my cheeks starting to sink deeper and feel better. Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe he’s going to give me sweet treatment.
Just as that happens, another set of slaps land, harder and more painful than before. He delivers them through my suit, but the tight legging style design does nothing to really stop most of the sting, and all of the impact gets through to me without any buffering at all.
“Argh!” I cry out, cursing him in my mind and then realizing that’s kind of the same thing as cursing him out loud. “Fuck you!” I say, because I may as well do it if I’m going to be punished for it. I’m starting to feel like I’m always going to be in trouble with him. I was never very good at being what people wanted me to be even before this, and he wants me to be all sorts of things above and beyond that.
“For reference, pet,” he growls at me. “It is still worse for you to disrespect me out loud than it is to have a thought.”
He carries me back to our private room with a bed that is big enough to fit him and also more than large enough to fit me as well. Living in an alien-sized world makes me feel more like a pet than anything else he says or does.
He drops me lightly on the bed, then immediately captures me by the back of the neck, covering my body with his own. The warmth of his flesh and the pressure of his body calms me.