“Take her to the elimination area,” the doctor said. “When she’s finished, clean her up and bring her back.” Then to the nurse with the strap, “Go with them in case she makes this difficult.”
When Rowan’s arms and legs were unbound, she could hardly move them herself and the nurses had to help her to slide off the examination table. Between the two of them, she walked to a room next to the examining room, grateful for the relative privacy, very aware of the nurse who held the strap, who looked hungry to whip her. Once inside, the nurses closed the door.
“Turn around, bend over, and put your hands on the seat,” the younger nurse instructed with a tone that, for the first time since her ordeal had begun, was gentle.
Rowan looked at her for a long moment until the woman with the strap stepped forward. At that, she turned and bent, placing her hands on the seat of the toilet. The nurse pushed her low back down and Rowan knew to lift her hips. She felt the nurse twisting the plug and slowly, she tugged on it, twisting and turning, pushing it in and pulling it out. Rowan’s already sensitized clit swelled even more but the pressure of release took precedence now and as soon as she was free of the plug, she turned and sat down, looking up to find all three women watching her as she released in embarrassment. At least the fiery heat was gone and she hadn’t had to do this in the other room with that man watching. The shame she felt with him was far worse than when Captain Amro had stripped her to be whipped publically.
“I’m ready,” she said when it was over.
“Stand up and bend over, hands on the seat so I can clean you.”
With a warm sponge, she was thoroughly cleaned and when it was over, she straightened.
“You weren’t told to get up yet,” came the cruel voice of the one who wielded the strap.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Hands against the wall,” she ordered as the other two stepped back.
“I think she really didn’t know,” the sweet girl said with a hand on the forearm of the nurse with the strap.
Rowan watched them and the one with the strap glanced at that hand that touched her, then up at the nurse’s face and smiled. “All right,” she said. “Put your hands against the wall. You’ll take her strokes. Six.”
Rowan’s mouth fell open as the girl slowly moved to take her place at the wall.
“Bare,” the nurse with the strap said.
The girl groaned but reached back to lower her pants to her ankles and leaned forward, her soft, white bottom offered for punishment, her hands on the wall in front of her.
The first stroke fell and the sound of it against the girl’s fleshy bottom followed by her cry finally made Rowan act.
“Stop! They’re my strokes. I’ll take them,” she said, pushing the girl out of the way and taking her place, dreading the five strokes from this woman.
“A breeder with a heart,” she said, shaking her head. “Useless bunch of spoiled…”
She didn’t hear the rest as five strokes were laid quickly across her buttocks and thighs. As terrible as the sting was, she refused to make a single sound and all she could hear was the quiet weeping of the nurse who had tried to help her. It gave her courage and strengthened her resolve. The colony was cruel, the breeders prisoner no matter how it looked to the outside. They thought the breeders lived like queens behind their locked doors, but if only they knew. They were treated as less than human, even their children taken from them, their only contribution to society that of the act of breeding. Rowan vowed vengeance, not only for herself but for all of them.
“Take her back. And you,” the one with the strap said to the young nurse. “If you speak out of turn again, I won’t stop so quickly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied meekly.
* * *
Silas watched their faces as they returned. The younger nurse was red-eyed and rubbing her bottom. The one with the strap looked like pure evil but when he met Rowan’s gaze, he paused. She was staring straight back at him, her fiery eyes, the shade a perfect, striking, and stunning green, the palest of the first green of spring, bore into him, and within them he saw a strength, a resolve he did not expect, especially not after the treatment she had just been subjected to. He knew in that moment that she would be a force to be reckoned with, someone he could perhaps respect even if she did come from the colonies, even if she were a breeder.
“I trust you managed everything?” the doctor asked the nurse with the strap as she glanced at the fresh marks on Rowan’s backside.
“As usual.”
The doctor nodded then turned to Rowan. “Bend over and touch your toes. You’ll be strapped again if I need to hold you down, understand?”