Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
I take out my phone and give the chief a quick call. Or I at least try to. Before I can make contact, the phone is snatched out of my hand from behind. I whirl and see Order standing over me, blue eyes piercing.
“What are you doing?” We ask the question of one another at the same time in similarly strident tones.
“Give me my phone!” I follow the question up with a demand. I reach out and try to snatch the device back, but of course he’s taller than me and he has no trouble holding it up over my head. “Don’t think I won’t climb you!”
Order smirks. “I told you we have to go radio silent. My people are under attack.”
“Well, my people are wondering where I am. And where Sally is. My people are going to send people. Connor’s not going to let you take me and turn me into a mo… a ma… a mo…” I can’t even get it out. Mom. I am not ready to be one of them.
“A what now? What’s wrong with you? You’ve been tense all night.”
He asks the question, and the answer is ready to leap out of my head.
“Did you knock me up!? I am not ready to parent squirmy larvae.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Order says, calming me immediately. “Spiderlings are much cuter when they hatch.”
His answer does precisely nothing to reassure me. I thought I might have kids one day, but not spider babies with a mutant who lives in a hole in the ground. I do have standards.
“Tell me I am not pregnant. Tell me it’s not possible. Tell me I am not going to lay fucking eggs, Order.”
“You are not pregnant,” he says, becoming instantly more serious.
“Are you sure? How can you be sure? We’ve had sex. You’ve…” I wave my hands about as I search for the right words. “Shot your seed inside me. Is it replicating up in there? Am I going to birth a cluster of spider-human egg babies?”
These are valid, if not entirely coherent questions.
“You’re not pregnant,” he says more firmly.
“How can you know that?”
He sighs and gives me an eight-eyed incredulous look. “I feel the IUD when I am inside you.”
“That’s right!” I snap my fingers. “Holy fuck, of course! I forgot amid all the…”
“You’re overtired,” he says. “Come. It’s time for bed.”
I hesitate. “Are you going to wrap me up and carry me down there if I say no?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No. I’m starting to feel like I’m being dragged around like an accessory.”
“Like my pet, you mean. The same way you take your little Obigor around.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
One of his hands catches me by the jaw in the moonlight and directs my face up to him.
“You are my pet, Tessie. You are mine. I have explained this to you many times, but you insist on forgetting it as soon as you have the chance.”
“I…”
“No,” he growls firmly, cutting me off. “I don’t want to hear any words. I want you downstairs now, and over the bed.”
“You mean in bed.”
“I mean over the bed,” he says, his tone suddenly very stern indeed.
It occurs to me that I have gotten myself into trouble somehow, and that feeling is, well, delicious. I am a little bit scared, and a little bit excited. Mostly, I am relieved. I have all the dependents I need in Obigor, and I have no plans whatsoever to become a mom anytime soon. Or maybe ever.
“Go on,” he says, sternly. “Downstairs. Now.”
“Okay, but I need my phone back.”
“Now,” he repeats in quieter, but much more steely tones.
Everybody else has gone to bed in the various little bedding rooms when we get back down to the vault. Order marches me into our suite, a room with a green theme that is so retro it’s almost modern again. There’s no time to appreciate the decor though, for I am being lectured.
“I did not think, given our many previous discussions and what you have been privy to this evening, that I would need to remind you of the need for secrecy.”
“I can’t just go fucking missing.”
“Don’t swear at me, pet.”
I narrow my eyes at him, partially out of genuine irritation, and partly because I really want to see how far he will go with this whole pet thing.
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
Order grabs me in four hands and picks me up, lifting me so I am not only dangling in his grasp, but eye to eye with all his eyes. It’s very intimidating, and somewhat like being forcefully stared at by four annoyed people who all happen to be the same massive, powerful male.
“You are testing me,” he says, a simple statement of fact. “And you will regret it.”
I regret it far more quickly than I imagined. Order sits down on the bed, puts me over his knee, and locks me in place with five out of six hands. The sixth hand is put to work whipping my ass.