Sci Spanks (4 page)

She shook her head and glanced toward the windows. “No, I mean pretending to be Bryn, to be a clone.”

He gripped the sides of her chair, shock rolling through him. “Beth?”

Chewing her bottom lip, she nodded.

Darryl stood and pulled her into his arms. Doubt crept in and he set her back on her feet. “But you deployed.”

“No. Bryn went in my place.” She clasped his hands. “I knew it was a suicide mission. She did, too.”

“And you sent her?” Clone or not, she shouldn’t have been sent to die.

“She kind of volunteered.” Beth rubbed the side of her neck. “I didn’t stand a chance when she tied me up and cut me so it would look like she’d removed my portal.”

“What about hers? Didn’t anyone notice?” He loved having his wife back, but didn’t want anyone to learn her identity and take her away.

“They didn’t even look.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “She arranged everything, even for my clone to be released to you after my death. Said she was created to take my place in dangerous situations and must fulfill her purpose.”

“And yet you came in here and spanked me?” Why hadn’t she told him?

The sorrow gone, his strict military wife returned. “You deserved it. Bryn would have done the same thing. She’s the one who taught me about spanking. Someone fed her that programming.”

“I think you deserve a spanking for letting me believe you’d died.” He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth, expecting Beth to demand punishment for his outburst. Instead, she smiled and cupped his testicles.

“Maybe. But we have some reuniting to do.”

He scooped her into his arms and headed to their room. His wife was home. For good.

Jessica E. Subject is the author of contemporary and science fiction romance, ranging from sweet to erotica. In her stories, you could meet clones, or a sexy alien or two. You may even be transported to another planet for a romantic rendezvous. And if you’re looking for something really steamy, check out her erotica stories written as Paisley Brown.

When Jessica isn't reading, writing, or doing dreaded housework, she likes to get out and walk. Fast. But she just may slow down if there is a waterfall nearby.

Jessica lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two energetic children. And she loves to hear from her readers. You can find her at
jessicasubject.com
and on twitter @jsubject.

By

Maren Smith

“I thought they’d never leave,” Vek clicked, his stunted mandibles clacking once in a show of good-natured irritation.

“Give a Twahian an inch and they’ll talk your ear off,” May agreed, but she’d gotten what she’d wanted from them, so she couldn’t help being happy. She flicked a suddenly shy glance at Vek. One would think after sixteen months together on what could only be termed as a very, very,
very
remote waystation on the outskirts of the Far Reaches, they would have been beyond shy glances by now. But with the arrival and departure of the Twahian merchant traders, it seemed the shy glances were only growing more frequent.

She looked at Vek, burning with that slow flush of heat that always seemed to accompany her thoughts of him these days. Sixteen months penned in together on a drifting sardine can could do that to two people. Even two people as different as humans and the mantis-like Klik’vok. She could still remember her first ungracious thought when she’d stepped off the transport and met the, dare she say,
man
destined to be her only companion for the next two years: ‘Oh ick—he’s a bug!’ Somewhere along the way, thoughts like that had become, ‘That bug is so frickin’ hot!’

Antennae flicking, Vek fastidiously cleaned both eyes, his normally brown chitin flushed in multi-bright shades of yellow, blue and green as he sidled closer.

“I witnessed you bought packages.”

“I saw you got a few too.”

“I made good trades.” Vek puffed a little. The Klik’vok were almost as proud of their bartering abilities as they were their good grooming habits. “Perhaps after dinner, we could reveal to one another our purchases?”

Oh yeah, she had fallen for Vek, all right. May had no idea when it had happened. She didn’t even know for sure
how
it had happened, but somewhere between ick and frick, sixteen months’ worth of late night grooming sessions with Vek carefully chewing his way through her ‘spines’—You have such long, soft spines, he liked to say—and those early morning moments when she would instruct him on the life-sustaining necessity of replicating good coffee, she had lost her heart to a bug.

Klik’vok mated for life; Vek had told her that once.

Sometimes humans did too, she had replied. These days, it was all she could do just to make it through a day without thinking about Vek and mating in the same moment. She didn’t even know whether he had the right equipment to pull off the kind of gymnastics that would be required for such to happen with a human. But she knew he had a genital slit somewhere beneath all those flashy, shiny, sparkly accessories that Klik’vok liked to wear instead of clothes, so that might he possessed a Tab A with which to ravish her Slot B. But even if he didn’t, May had lost the ability to see her future self anywhere without Vek somewhere in close proximity.

Christmas dinners in the Jennings’ household back in Paint Lick, Alabama were about to get very exciting.

Having already accepted Vek’s invitation to attend his own family’s
zef’kit’t
(whatever that was), May was already bracing to be the only soft, small, pink-skinned creature there…apart from the
cuttlepict
, the traditional centerpiece of most Klik-vok meals and which would, Vek had assured her, be served quite dead.

May knew she was crazy to want this, but a woman’s heart was a fickle thing and although it had taken the better part of sixteen months, May’s heart had made its choice. She liked Vek.

She
loved
Vek. He was soft spoken, kind, smart, funny, gentle and for all his incredible size, he could squeeze all his multi-segmented parts into places too small even for her to reach. For some reason, she found that incredibly sexy. Particularly when she started thinking about what big things he might have to squeeze into little ol’ her.

“We have work to do,” May said, not just ready now, but eager to get back to the packages in her room. “Dinner at twenty
ohns
?”

She started to withdraw, but stopped when Vek touched her shoulder.

“Wait.” He bent slightly towards her, bringing his strange, triangular face down to her level. May actually had a stomach clenching moment of naked excitement and stark panic when Vek parted his stunted mandibles and then, ever so gently, pressed his hard, flat, slit of a mouth to hers. He held himself still, frozen for just a moment, apart from the rapid tap-tap-tapping of his scenting antennae as they played through her hair. When he withdrew, his colors were drastically brighter, the normally dull brown of his carapace seeming almost black now while shades of gold, green, blue, even purple (and she’d never seen
that
before) colored his shell.

“Was that correct?” he asked, clicking an extra time in his uncertainty. “For a kiss?”

May melted. “Yes, you did that exactly right.”

Vek drew himself proudly upright. “Twenty
ohns
,” he said, and then he left her there, only glancing back once just before he disappeared down the distant corridor toward the service end of the station. If Klik’vok could smile, she thought Vek probably would be.

The package she had bought from the Twahian merchants was waiting on her bed exactly as she’d left it when she returned to her quarters. Sitting on the edge of her bunk, May held it in her lap for the longest time while she willed for her nervous stomach to settle. She wanted to do this, she absolutely did. May drew a calming breath, thinking about Vek, about tonight, about finally shedding those last few reservations and simply letting herself go where her heart most wanted her to.

Vek had kissed her. Every inch of May thrilled in the reliving of that moment and in thoughts of what that might mean for tonight when she, at very long last, revealed to him the depth of her feelings. Her hands crinkled the gossamer wrapping around her package before, with a deep and steadying breath, May opened it.

The lingerie hailed from the Belliore quadrant and was quite subdued as far as lingerie went. It was also made for someone with four breasts and a tail, but it was beautiful anyway, lacy in places and sparkly in others that were sure to catch Vek’s attention. With some creative pinning, she managed to make that creation of crimson and black fit in all the right places. Tonight, if everything went well, she and Vek were going to take their relationship to the next level. To an intimate level, even if that intimacy meant only that creatures as different as they would have to find contentment simply in holding one another.

The wait for the dinner hour was the longest of May’s life, but when she finally did make her way to the Dispensary, she found Vek already waiting for her there with a semi-romantic meal spread out on a table set for one. Kellian chocolate-filled
bajoree
fruit; Caspian mushrooms packed with
ege
meat, stuffing and roe; oysters, a human aphrodisiac; Klik-vok
nia’gi
, another aphrodisiac which she only recognized because she’d looked them up while researching how to prepare for this moment—all of these and more were spaced in little dishes around Vek’s chair.

Apparently, Vek had been researching too.

He stood at the head of the table, draped in a shimmering green and blue robe. His colors were very bright, a sure sign of internal excitement. “Would you like to see what I’ve bought?” he asked, fingering the edge of his robe.

“You’re wearing it?”

He clicked, a chortling sound.

“I’m wearing mine too.” May couldn’t stop herself from edging closer. She struck her best provocative pose—something she had practiced in the mirror for hours and which Vek probably wouldn’t even recognize because she was soft and squishy and he…well, he was a bug.

Right now, he was a bug in a robe, quivering with excitement and vibrant in color, no doubt thinking seductive thoughts.

“We will disrobe together,” he said.

“On three,” May added, and shivered all over again because the anticipation was damn near killing her. She had to clear her throat before she could make herself heard. “One,” she whispered, feeling the tendrils of excitement spiral through every part of her. “Two.” She felt all over again the kiss he’d pressed to her lips, only now she could feel it in other places too. “Two and a half…” She wished she’d worn a robe too. It would be much quicker to get out of than her standard-issue coversuit.

“Three!” Vek said excitedly and grabbed his robe.

May dropped her gaze to the floor grates as she shucked out of her pants and then whipped her top off over her head. She struck another pose and then found just enough bravery to risk looking up.

She almost burst out laughing, but quickly clapped a hand over her mouth to keep it back. Vek had bought lingerie too. It was the same multi-colored shimmering cloth that his robe was made out of. The corset-style bra was strung across his utterly flat chitin chest and the panties, made to fit something with only two legs and a humanoid butt, were hooked over his front-most legs and stretched across his reproductive flap, while clutched in the right of those hands, he held an antiquated hairbrush. Made of real wood, and that couldn’t have been cheap.

“A hairbrush?” she laughed.

Vek held it up for her to see, cocking his head and offering a suggestive trill. “Human foreplay is very strange, but I have researched the matter extensively and do believe I can deliver the proper stimulation to bring you to a bright pink, mateable state.”

May didn’t know whether to laugh or be concerned. On the one hand, what the hell kind of research was he reading? On the other, he looked absolutely ridiculous, but to have tried at all when it was obvious he had no clue what he was doing was extremely touching.

Lowering the hairbrush, Vek looked her up and down, and then worriedly clasped his first set of hands. “Have I assumed incorrectly, May? You…you are wearing female under clothing.”

The urge to laugh slowly drizzled out of May as she realized what Vek was really asking. “A-are you…female, Vek?”

“Of course.” Vek groomed his antennae once, more a distracted gesture than one born of any real desire for tidiness. Fiddling with the hairbrush, he—she looked pointedly at May. “And you?”

“Yes, I am.” May’s shoulders sank. They stared at one another for a long time before, in equal measures of dazed disappointment, they both sat down side by side at the table. They looked at each other. They looked at the food. They looked away.

After a moment, Vek made a harsh sound. “Pardon my rude honesty, but my family shall be so disgusted by the rest of you, I do not think they will notice your gender.”

For some reason, that struck May as extremely funny. She laughed.

They looked at one another again.

“Oh, what the hell,” Vek said in perfect human-ese. “I was prepared to be creative anyway.” Reaching across the table, she picked up a plate and offered it to May. “Would you like an oyster, or perhaps some stimulating foreplay?”

May took an oyster and then looked at the hairbrush.

“Oh, what the hell,” she agreed, knocking the oyster back before accepting Vek’s outstretched hand and allowing herself to be drawn face down across the Klik’vok’s armored knees. She had a moment, just one small half second in time, where she couldn’t help wondering just how crazy she must be. Space sickness. Very catching. Still, female Vek or not, bottom-stimulating foreplay or not, it didn’t really matter. May simply could not imagine her life without Vek somewhere in it. Compared with that, everything else was negotiable.

My name is Maren Smith. I write predominantly spanking/BDSM romances. Upon occasion I do fantasy and sci-fi. My most popular sci-fi/fantasy books are the Pets series under the pen name Darla Phelps. My other pen names are Denise Hall and Penny Alley.