Chapter Two
Eneh
The next three weeks were a whirlwind of activity; we left the galaxy and were three light years from the Milky Way before we arrived at our first real case. Of course, our days were busy, with a portion for clinic via video conferencing, with META (medical examination telemedicine avatar) components. The METAs existed in hubs across the galaxy, and we sometimes had up to twenty or more running at the same time in the field. They had been developed a century ago and had undergone several upgrades since the Final War. The Wartime Medical Academy had exclusive use of whichever the latest upgrades were, according to some contract. Rosen had explained it to me, but I’d honestly not been paying too much attention. Aside from clinic, we had lectures and simulation cases of anything from basic appendectomies to initiating immunotherapy for uncharacterised cancers. But we all looked forward to a real case, when we would meet our patient or patients in person. So, when we arrived at Fothen, a planet in the Critical Galaxy, the excitement on board was palpable.
I was looking forward to the distraction after my disastrous in-training examination. I’d had to meet with Lord Cox in his office to discuss the results. It wasn’t terrible, just not very good. At all. It was the first time I’d been alone with him since the spanking. I’d seen him practically every day since, because he trained the interns personally, but it had been while surrounded by my colleagues and honestly, he was just as professional as when he’d touched my sex in that very first exam.
My palms felt sweaty when I’d entered his office and it occurred to me that this could be a situation when I was displeasing him. But no, I rapidly reassured myself, he couldn’t punish me for being stupid, right? Right? Right?!
“I’m sorry I didn’t study!” I blurted out the words as soon as I got in. He was typing something on his laptop and looked up, almost in surprise. He gave me a slow once over and I wondered what was going on behind those brilliant eyes.
“Sit, I just need a moment.” I nodded, even though he immediately went back to his screen.
I sat in one of the armchairs, clenching and unclenching my fists over my knees.
“Do you think I’m going to beat you?” I looked up, jerked out of my own racing thoughts by the question. He was still typing and hadn’t turned to me with the question.
“I…wasn’t sure.”
“I’m not, relax. Your energy is very distracting right now.”
“My energy?”
“Your nerves are making me want to get out of this chair and soothe you, which would be a time-consuming endeavour. Relax, we’re going to talk, but nothing else will happen.”
I nodded, trying to understand what he was saying, and trying to relax. See, Eneh, there’s nothing to be afraid of! He wants to soothe you, he just said that. Then I started thinking about what that soothing would look like and reflexively squeezed my thighs together. The pulse of lust made me let out a soft gasp and his eyes met mine.
He smiled, as though he could see into my mind. I felt flushed and wanted to fan myself.
“Don’t do that either, it’s distracting for other reasons.” I bit my bottom lip, unable to respond.
He clicked something with finality and then turned to me at last.
“So, this exam, you’re saying it’s a studying issue?” Right to the point, okay.
“Yes, so I usually need dedicated time to study and I didn’t know this was coming up and so I wasn’t prepared.”
“Ideally, you’d always be prepared,” he countered.
“But I know clinical medicine, in the field! I just need a different mindset for exams.”
He seemed to consider this for some time, and even stroked his beard. Was it as silky as it looked? And the jaw beneath, would it feel as hard as the rest of his face promised?
“What do we do if this doesn’t change next year?” I shook myself, processing the question.
“Do?”
“Do. I operate on a reward and punishment model, Eneh, as you may already be aware.”
“I’m aware,” I said, and then bit my tongue at how pert that sounded. He paused mid-word, almost in incredulity at my sass.
“That said, I think you’d be motivated by perhaps a reward, if we improve this score by next year?” He finished, apparently choosing not to address my rudeness.
“What…what kind of reward?”
“What do you want?”
“To complete a case by myself,” I said, immediately.
“That’s…not usually what other students have wanted,” he said, carefully.
“Oh…so like a vacation or something?”
“Something along those lines.”
“Could I think about it?”
“Sure, take a week, let me know. And study. We’re only as good as our knowledge, remember that.”
That was two weeks ago, and I’d been trying to study more through the days, but it was definitely a challenge.
I shook off the spectre of continued studying from my mind, on the day of our landing. I could already taste the salty sea air, as the vacuums on board the ship opened. I hoped there would be time for some diving while we were on Fothen, but there were some more important matters to attend to. I’d been selected to be on the first case, a laparoscopic evaluation with possible laparotomy, radical resection and frozen sectioning. The problem on Fothen was spontaneous tumour development, following a new plant species’ arrival on the planet. Although people had quickly stopped eating the plant, the disease had continued to spread. I knew samples of the plant were being analysed in our lab, however we would better understand the disease pathology with a sample of the masses that were developing.
Our first patient was a 32-year-old female, who had developed abdominal pain 1 week ago, found on CT to have a large, mass-occupying lesion above and around the right kidney. She was the partner of an official in the Fothen government, although it was unclear whether she too held some position in their government. Her medical history was significant for 3 pregnancies and a hysterectomy. She was on medications to control high blood pressure, recently increased. A casual drinker of alcohol, occasional recreative substance use, no history of sexually transmitted infections, no known drug allergies. I’d skimmed the history from one of my colleagues – Briggs I think – and had tried to look up as much as possible about ex-laps before the procedure.
On the day of, I was first at the OR, scrubbed already and waiting for Lord Archer. I got a wink for my efforts and I smiled widely behind my mask. The patient was already under anaesthesia, she’d been draped, and a foley was in place, when he’d walked in.
“Stay on this side, you can hold the scope,” he said, and I rushed over.
We had our time out, and he made the first cuts for the trocar insertion and placed the scope in one of the cannulas. The moment we were in, there was an eerie silence in the room. Rosen was behind the curtain with our anaesthesiologist and I knew even he was carefully watching the screen.
“Call X-Ray,” Archer said shortly. The command was echoed through the room and acknowledged by one of the techs.
It was a cerulean, pulsating mass, and it had moved once we entered the abdomen.
“Eneh, I’m going to have you on the scry, we’re going to need to open the abdomen.” I nodded, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant.
“Um…should I…” I started to say.
“Scry here!” Someone called out, and before I could do anything, Cox had taken the scope out of my hand. I swallowed, stepped back and looked at the scry. Beaks had almost made sure I received limited exposure to scrying, seeming to consider it a privilege for only certain students. The tech had turned it on, otherwise my ignorance would have been exposed sooner.
“Okay Eneh, are we in?”
“Are we…” I was looking at a series of symbols and trying to figure out what to do.
“We’re in!” The tech called out.
He nodded his head toward the handle of the scry, and I nodded, grasping it, and immediately feeling a surge of energy in my hand. I’d closed my eyes in surprise, but when I opened them, the screen was no longer meaningless symbols, but clearly the same view as what I’d seen with the scope, except, instead of the glistening blue mass, it was pitch black and pulsing. Dark energy.
“Okay, I need you to reverse the pole, please.”
Reverse the what?! I looked up at the tech, hoping for more aid, but he shrugged, clearly having exceeded his knowledge.
“Reverse the pole, please.” Terse, this time.
“Do you want it per standard, or…” I wasn’t even sure what I was asking.
“Reverse the pole as you normally would.” Irritated.
“Of course! Right away!”
The silence in the OR was pressing on me from all sides. Feeling sweat drip down my brow, I turned the handle slightly.
“Stop!” I froze. There was a loud sigh. Then, “Squeeze the handle, turn it counter-clockwise, count to four seconds with each turn.” I did exactly as he said, trying to ignore what I felt were the eyes of everyone on me. “Good.”
I bit my lip under my mask, feeling tears prickling the back of my eyes. I cleared my throat to keep from choking up.
“Keep counting, in sixteen seconds, stop for one second, turn it clockwise, counting to three seconds with each turn.”
I nodded even though I felt sure he couldn’t see me.
“Where is that damn x-ray?” I jumped, at this reminder that he was annoyed.
“X-ray here!”
“Everyone, step out, except Eneh. Grand put some lead on her.” Grand was the tech who had helped me out.
“What about you?” I don’t know how I felt brave enough to ask this question. I didn’t get an answer, instead I felt a warm body behind mine and smelled him.
“Keep your eyes on the scry. What do you see?”
“It’s a black mass, and it—”
I stopped as the x-ray was taken, because the mass went crazy. I almost forgot to continue turning clockwise.
“Pay attention. It knows we’re coming.” I nodded again.
“Why were you asking about me, student doctor Eneh?” Everyone had returned to the room, and I felt my body growing warm at the question.
“The…the radiation? And how it affects reproductive organs…” As I was saying the words, I wanted to punch my mouth shut. Why hadn’t I said the thyroid? Literally any organ. Temporary insanity.
A bark of laughter was my reward for being overly concerned about his balls. There were chuckles around the room.
“In twelve seconds, pause for one second and resume counter-clockwise turning, to a count of four.” Then, “Are you interested in having my children, student doctor Eneh?”
I coughed, choking on my own saliva, barely remembering my count, and just in time, pausing and reversing the pole – as I now knew it was called.
“That’s a conversation for a more private setting, don’t you think?” I literally had no words to offer.
“What was that? Is she talking?” He seemed to be asking the room.
“She’s focused, Lord Cox,” Grand supplied. Archer Cox laughed and then sighed deeply.
“Now that you’ve successfully reversed the poles on a scry, go wait for me in my office, student doctor, Eneh. Tegan, scrub in, join me on the other side of the patient. Grand, turn off the scry, we won’t be needing it for the rest of the case.”
There was a moment of silence after these commands, but we all slowly began to obey. I knew I was going to cry as soon as I left the room, but I didn’t care. Fuck. What a disaster.
I took off all my clothes and stood in the shower for five minutes before making my way to his office. Why did he want me to wait for him? He could just as easily yell at me in the OR, why send me out? Now, I’d have to sit and wonder what was going on. It was eerie entering the spacious room without him on the other side of the massive desk. I’d had some inappropriate fantasies about that desk. I shook my head and sat gingerly in one of the armchairs.
I didn’t have to wait long; the door swung open in about ten, or so, minutes, and Archer Cox walked in. He had shed his black scrubs and now wore a black turtleneck over well-fitted army-green jeans. He walked around the desk and turned on his computer before speaking to me. After maybe five-ish minutes of typing, he looked up. His gaze was inscrutable. He observed me in silence for a few moments before standing up and coming out from behind the desk. I tensed in my chair as he came to stand in front of me, leaning his hips against the tabletop.
“Get up.”
I felt my heart skip a beat at the command, but rose slowly, pushing off from the chair to stand before him. He reached out, pulled me by the waistband of my trousers closer to his body. I tried to put my hands between us, but he, not unkindly, brushed them away. As he undid the buttons that held my lower clothing together, he spoke.
“We are going to talk after, and, although I realise you will probably have much to say, do refrain until we’re done. Nod, if you understand.” It took a few moments for the words to fully register and I nodded slowly, feeling my legs turning into jelly.
“Very good. Also understand that I will…enforce that, and you may not like how I do so.”
My trousers were undone, and he had pulled them halfway down my butt, when I tried to stop him, by holding unto the fabric. His eyes flicked upward to meet mine, for a moment, before he took first one hand then the other in one of his own. Reaching behind me, he pulled my hair tie from my curls and lashed my hands together tightly. The first cold wave of fear struck me. I shook my head silently, somewhat afraid that if I started talking, I would just burst into tears. He ignored the gesture and now continued to divest me of my pants. They were just loose enough to fall and pool at my ankles as soon as they were freed from their buttons. My boy-shorts were snug around my privates, but he soon had a finger in their waistband and tugged them past my hips. I felt my body trembling as his hands touched me and I wanted to squirm away but couldn’t move. I tried to squeeze my thighs together, looking up at his downward gaze in as beseeching a way as I could. I was ignored.
And then, when I suppose he was satisfied with my state of undress, he pushed off the table and led me to step out of my trousers and walk, underwear around my thighs, toward a couch on the other side of the room. He sat and simultaneously pulled me down with him. The couch was large enough that my upper body rested on the seat on his left, but then he arranged me, bottom down, so my right leg was trapped between his thighs, and my left, trapped under the weight of his right arm. I felt like my sex was literally resting on his right thigh, as spread as the position made me. I squirmed now, as if to test my captivity. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Please…” I started to say, but then he struck. Again, and again, his hand fell upon my bottom. There was no build up, just like the last time. Except now, as his hand connected with my bare skin it felt a hundred times worse. I vaguely noticed that he switched hands, but even with my left leg free, I couldn’t escape his powerful hold. For what seemed like an eternity, he rained fire down on my spread cheeks in silence. And then he stopped. I had reached the point of broken sobs at this time. My bottom felt twice its size and the cool air that teased my sex told me I was sopping wet. He touched me, a deliberate flick over my clit and I came in a convulsive shudder over his knee. I felt him untie my hands.
“Eneh, I’m going to fuck you. I won’t be gentle. I want you to tell me no, if this is not something you want.”
The room seemed to have gone very still, even the air stopped moving. I said nothing, unable to resist writhing over his knee, burning up with the sensation of the hard muscle beneath my softness. That was an answer enough for Archer Cox.
He pulled me up and all but tossed me over his shoulder, then stood with me over his left. If ever there was a display of strength, it was that. I felt us rise from the couch, my body bent over his shoulder. He pulled my panties down further, until they fell off my legs. I tried to look around to where we were going, but all I could see was the muscular back of Archer Cox. I heard a door open, we walked through, and I felt and saw him kick the door closed. A few moments later, I found myself being flipped forward to fall unto a bed. Large bed, dark sheets, soft but firm mattress.
“Silence doesn’t imply consent, Eneh, I’d like an answer.” He was standing over me and was taking off his turtleneck.
I realized I was pulling down the stretchy fabric of my tee shirt as I watched him divest himself of this key piece of clothing. It wasn’t a fair question. I nodded slowly. I really wanted him. Even after the spanking. And maybe…if I was being honest, a little bit because of it.
“Is that a yes?” He unbuckled his belt.
“Yes,” I said, in as tiny a voice as I could. The half-smile that broke across his lips made my sex throb.
He let his trousers fall from his thighs and felt my lips spread in an oh at the bulge that was poorly disguised in his jockeys. When he freed himself, my heart began to pound in my ears.
“You’re so…it’s…” His deep chuckle warmed my body further.
He approached the bed, and I twisted my legs instinctively shut, some measure of self-preservation I supposed. His responding smile was positively feral.
“Eneh, I think you want me to force your legs open.” I swallowed. “We both know that is entirely possible.” He’d sat on the bed, and his hand caressed the length of my legs, lingering over the tight curls at my apex, before drifting down to my ankles. I found myself squirming on the bed. I did want him to take me, I wanted the strength that would put me in whatever position he wanted.
“When we are done, you will spread your legs yourself. You will do it because I tell you to, and you would not like disobeying me.” He did not wait for a response, instead lifting my legs up, twisted as they were, so I was bent, my bottom feeling the cool air of the room. I remarkably felt more exposed than if he’d drawn my legs apart.
“Do you touch yourself, Eneh?” I was speechless, feeling my body flush anew at the answer which would have been the truth. I was rewarded with a sharp spank across my cheeks for my silence.
“No!” I cried out instinctively.
“No, you don’t touch yourself?”
“N…no, please don’t spank me…it hurts.”
His eyes met mine and I couldn’t divine the meaning behind his look.
“I won’t hurt you, answer my question. Do you touch yourself?”
Very slowly, guided by the soothing pressure of his hand wrapped around my trapped ankles, I nodded.
“Show me.”
“I can’t!” I was, oddly, somewhat frightened of the new sexual territory he was leading me into. I thought for a moment that he would smack me again, but he instead brought his free hand down to that place that felt so wet and exposed above my bottom.
“But you will.” I swallowed and found my body yearning for more than the light touch of his long fingers over my lower lips. I felt his fingers part me, and tease the hood of my clitoris, before one finger plunged within me. A gasp escaped me.
“You will touch yourself,” he continued. “Here, and here,” his thumb massaged my clit, while he now had two fingers diving in and out of my body. “And here,” he concluded, pulling his fingers out, coated with my juices, and placing just one between my cheeks at the entrance of my most secret hole. I tried to squeeze my bottom closed, but his finger made its insistent way in, while his thumb continued his assault on my clit. And so, it was that I came again, with Archer Cox’s finger in my bottom and his thumb now doused with my wetness.
He let one of my legs free, but pulled the other up, a moment before entering me in one swift motion. I screamed. I had never been with a man, but I had not really considered that it would hurt so much.
“Shh,” he soothed me, wiping a tear from my eyes. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you, but it will only be this once.” I nodded, because I didn’t want to seem like a baby, although I was a little hurt that he’d known he would cause me pain. He moved a bit and the tightness no longer felt so painful. In fact, it actually…was starting to feel good. He was moving slowly, his eyes seeming to watch my reaction, but something must have told him I was enjoying things because his pace quickened, his body rocked against mine, his powerful organ pounded into me and I began to ride the wave of that same crescendo from before. Except this time, it felt so much better, so much stronger, my clit pulsed, my nipples seemed to harden, and then I felt him stiffen, his whole body seemed taut and then his cock pulsed inside me. He cried out, a guttural sound of completion, before pulling out of me and collapsing on the bed. We lay there for a long moment, our breathing the only sounds in the room. I touched him, I actually touched his cock, now relaxing between his enormous thighs. He stayed my hand with his, and then stood abruptly.
“Stay where you are,” he called behind him, even as I started to sit up. I paused, briefly considering disobedience, but not really against remaining in his bed. He returned with a towel and a small bowl.
“Lay back, spread your legs.” I paused for a millisecond before doing as he commanded. It occurred to me that he had been right about my doing as he wished, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that thought as the coolness of the towel touched my sex. He was thorough in his cleansing and I was once more aroused.
