by Anne Rice
“You see here we are not without provisions for disobedient little slaves,” he said in his usual gentle voice. “Now clasp that hook, though it will put you on tiptoe, and you will not dream of letting go of it, do you understand me?”
“Yes, my Prince,” she cried softly.
She had hold of it, and it seemed to stretch her out, and the Prince moved back the stool on which he sat and appeared to make himself comfortable. He had ample room in which to swing the strap which he had made into a loop, and he was silent for a moment.
Beauty cursed herself for ever admiring young Prince Alexi. Yet she was ashamed that his very name had formed in her mind, and when she felt the first hard smack of the belt on her thighs, she let out a frightened little cry but was glad of it.
She deserved this, and she would never again make such a terrible mistake, no matter how beautiful or enticing were the slaves, and her boldness to look at them had been unforgivable.
The wide heavy leather belt struck her with a loud, frightening sound, and the flesh of her thighs, more tender perhaps than her buttocks, even sore as they were, seemed to ignite under it. Her mouth was open, she could not keep herself quiet, and suddenly the Prince ordered her to lift her knees and march in place.
“Quickly, quickly, yes, in rhythm!” he said angrily, and Beauty, astonished, struggled to obey, marching fast, her breasts moving with the effort, her heart pounding.
“Higher, faster,” the Prince commanded.
She marched as he commanded, her feet slapping the stone floor, her knees coming up very high, her breasts a terrible aching weight as they swayed, and again came the belt smacking her and stinging her.
The Prince seemed in a fury.
The blows came faster and faster, as fast as she was moving her legs, and very soon, Beauty was writhing and struggling to get away from them. She was crying aloud unable to stop herself but the worst of it, the worst of it, was his anger. If only this were for his delight, if only he were pleased with her. She was crying and burying her face in her arm and the balls of her feet were burning, and her thighs felt swollen and blotched with pain as now again he took out his temper upon her buttocks.
The smacks came so quickly, she had no sense of how many there were, only that it was a great deal more than he’d ever given her before, and it seemed he only grew more agitated, his left hand now thrusting her chin up and closing her mouth so she couldn’t cry, all the while he commanded her to march faster and lift her legs higher.
“You belong to me!” he said without ever stopping the loud spanking belt. “And you will learn to please me in all things, and you will never please me with your eyes upon the male slaves of my mother. Is this clear to you? Do you understand?”
“Yes, my Prince,” she struggled to say.
But he seemed at wits ends to punish her. And stopping her suddenly by lifting her around the middle, he brought her up over the stool which he had just left, so that dangling from the hook which she held for dear life, she was now thrust over it, the wooden seat of the stool pressing into her naked sex, her legs out helplessly behind her.
And then he sent his worst rain of blows on her, hard snapping spanks that made her calves quiver and sting as her thighs had done before. But no matter how he busied himself with her legs, he always returned to her buttocks, punishing them the hardest so that Beauty was choking with sobs, and felt this as endless.
Quite suddenly he stopped.
“Let go the hook,” he commanded, and then he scooped her up over his shoulder and taking her across the room, he flung her down on the bed.
She fell back on the pillow, and immediately beneath her sore and swollen buttocks and thighs felt a prickling and a roughness. She had only to cast her head slightly to the side to see the jewels glittering on the coverlet. And she knew how they would torture her as soon as he had mounted her.
But she wanted him so badly. And when she saw him rise up over her, she felt not the hot throbbing pain in her body but a flood of juices between her legs and a new moan coming out of her as she opened herself to him.
She couldn’t keep from lifting her hips, praying it didn’t displease him.
He knelt over her, removing his erect cock from his breeches, and then he brought her up on her knees and impaled her upon it.
She cried out. Her head fell back. It was a great hard driving thing inside her sore and quivering orifice. But she felt it bathed with her juices, and as the Prince forced it in deeper and brought her down upon it, it seemed a spit that rubbed against some mysterious core in her, sending the ecstasy washing through her so she was giving great guttural moans in spite of herself. The Prince’s thrusts came faster and faster and then he too gave a soft cry, and held her close to him, her breasts aching and pressed to his chest, his lips on the back of her neck, his body softening slowly.
“Beauty, Beauty,” he whispered. “You have conquered me as surely as I have conquered you. Don’t ever arouse my jealousy again. I don’t know what I would do if you did it!”
“My Prince,” she moaned and kissed him on the mouth, and when she saw the distress in his face, she covered it with kisses.
“I’m your slave, my Prince,” she said.
But he would only moan and press his face into her neck, and seemed bereft.
“I love you,” she implored him, and then he laid her down on the bed, and drawing up beside her, took his wine from the bedside stand and, gazing at the fire, seemed for a long time to be thinking.
PRINCE ALEXI
BEAUTY DREAMED a dream of boredom. She roamed the castle in which she had lived all her life, with nothing to do, and now and then paused in a deep window seat to watch the tiny figures of the peasants in the fields below gathering the fresh mown grass into haystacks. The sky was cloudless and she disliked the look of it, its sameness and vastness.
It seemed she could not find anything to do that hadn’t been done a thousand times before, and then suddenly there came to her ears a sound she could not identify.
She followed the sound, and through a doorway saw an old woman, bent and ugly, plying a strange contraption. It was a great turning wheel with a thread that was winding itself upon a spindle.
“What is it?” Beauty asked with great interest. “Come see for yourself,” said the old woman, who had the most remarkable voice, because it was young and strong and so unlike her visage.
It seemed Beauty had only just touched this marvelous machine with its whirring wheel when she fell down in a great swoon, and all about her heard the world weeping.
“... sleep, sleep for a hundred years!”
And she wanted to cry out, “Unbearable, worse than death,” for it seemed some great deepening of the ennui she had struggled against ever since she could remember, the wandering from room to room ...
But she awoke.
She was not at home.
She was lying in the bed of her Prince, and she felt the prickling of the jeweled coverlet beneath her.
The room was full of the leaping shadows of the fire, and she saw the gleam of the carved posts of the bed, and the drapery fallen about her in rich colors. She felt herself animated and flushed with desire, and she rose up, so eager was she to lose the weight and texture of her dream, and she realized that the Prince was not beside her.
But there he was, by the fire, his elbow against the stone above it which bore a great crest with crossed swords. He wore his brilliant red velvet cloak still and his high turned down leather boots with their pointed toes, and his face was sharpened with brooding.
The pulse between her legs quickened. She stirred, and gave some faint little sigh so that he awoke from his thoughts and approached her. She could not see his expression in the darkness.
“All right, there is but one answer,” he said to her. “You shall become accustomed to all the sights of the castle, and I shall become accustomed to seeing you accustomed to them.”
He pulled the bell rope by the bed. And lifting Beauty he sat her at the end of the
bed so that her legs were curled under her.
A Page entered, as innocent as the boy who had so diligently punished Prince Alexi, and like all the Pages he was extremely tall with powerful arms. Beauty was certain they had all been chosen for these endowments. She had no doubt he could have held her by the ankles had he been ordered, but his face was smooth without the slightest meanness.
“Where is Prince Alexi?” The Prince demanded. He appeared angry and resolute, and he paced back and forth as he spoke.
“O, he is in frightful trouble tonight, your Highness. The Queen is much concerned with his clumsiness. You know he must be her example to others. She has had him tied in the garden, most uncomfortably.”
“Yes, well, I shall make him even more uncomfortable. Obtain my mother’s permission and bring him to me and bring Squire Felix with him.”
Beauty heard all this in quiet amazement. She tried to make her face as smooth as the Page’s face. But she was more than alarmed. She was going to see Prince Alexi again, and she could not imagine concealing her feelings from her Prince. If only she could distract him from this.
But when she made a little whispering sound, he ordered her at once to be quiet, and to sit where she was, and to cast her eyes down.
Her hair fell around her, tickling her naked arms and her thighs, and almost with pleasure she realized there was no escaping this.
Squire Felix appeared almost immediately, and as she had suspected he was the Page who had so vigorously spanked Prince Alexi earlier. He had the gold paddle fixed to his belt so it dangled at his side as he bowed to the Prince.
“All of those who serve here are picked for their gifts,” Beauty thought, looking at him, for he too was fair, and his blond hair made an excellent frame for his youthful face, though it was somewhat plainer than those of the captive Princes.
“And Prince Alexi?” the Prince demanded. His color was high, his eyes had an almost evil glitter, and Beauty became frightened again.
“We’re preparing him, your Highness,” said Squire Felix.
“And why should this take so long? How long has he served in this house that he should be so lacking in respect?”
At once Prince Alexi was brought in.
Beauty tried not to admire him. He was naked as before, of course, she’d expected no less, and in the light of the fire she could see that his face was flushed, and his auburn hair hung loose in his eyes which were cast down as if he dared not lift them to the Prince. They were of about the same age, surely, and about the same height, but here stood the darker Prince Alexi quite helpless and humble before the Prince who was striding back and forth before the fire, his face cold and merciless and slighdy agitated. Prince Alexi’s organ was rigid. He held his hands behind his neck.
“So you were not ready for me!” the Prince whispered. He drew closer, inspecting Prince Alexi. He looked at the stiffened organ and then with his hand he gave it a rough slap, so that Prince Alexi flinched in spite of himself. “Perhaps you need a little training in being ... always ... ready,” whispered the Prince. His words came slowly and with a deliberate courtesy.
He lifted Prince Alexi’s chin and looked into his eyes. Beauty caught herself staring at them both without the slightest shyness.
“My apologies, your Highness,” Prince Alexi said, and his voice was low in timbre, calm, without rebellion or shame.
The Prince’s lips spread slowly in a smile. Prince Alexi’s eyes were larger, and they possessed the same calm as the voice. It seemed to Beauty they might even drain away the Prince’s anger but this was impossible.
The Prince stroked Prince Alexi’s organ and gave it another playful slap, and then another.
The submissive Prince looked down again and there was nothing in him but the grace and dignity Beauty had witnessed before.
“I must behave like this,” she thought. “I must have this manner, this strength, to bear it all with the same dignity.” Yet she marveled. The captive Prince must at all times show his desire, his fascination, while she could conceal this craving between her legs, and she could not stop herself from wincing as she saw the Prince pinch the tiny hardened nipples on Prince Alexi’s chest, and then lift Prince Alexi’s chin again to inspect his face.
Beyond them, Squire Felix watched all with obvious pleasure. He had folded his arms, his legs rather wide apart as he stood, and his eyes moved hungrily over Prince Alexi’s body.
“How long have you been in the service of my mother?” the Prince demanded.
“Two years, your Highness,” said the humble Prince softly. Beauty was quite astonished. Two years! It seemed to her all of her life before had not been so long, but she was more rapt with the sound of his voice than with the words. The voice made him seem more palpable and visible.
His body was a little thicker than that of the Prince, and the dark brown hair between his legs was beautiful. She could see the scrotum, no more than a shadow.
“You were sent here in Tribute by your father.”
“As your mother demanded, your Highness.”
“And to serve how many years?”
“As long as it pleases your Highness, and my mistress, the Queen,” Prince Alexi answered.
“And you are what? Nineteen? And a model among the other Tributes?”
Prince Alexi blushed.
The Prince turned him towards Beauty with a rough blow on the shoulder, and steered him towards the bed.
Beauty drew herself up, feeling her face flushed and warm.
“And the favorite of my mother?” the Prince demanded.
“Not tonight, your Highness,” Prince Alexi said with the barest trace of a smile.
The Prince acknowledged this with a soft laugh. “No, you have not comported yourself very well today, have you?”
“I can only beg forgiveness, your Highness,” said Prince Alexi.
“You can do more than that,” said the Prince into his ear as he pushed him nearer to Beauty. “You can suffer for it. And you can give my Beauty a lesson in willingness and perfect submission.”
Now the Prince turned his gaze on Beauty, scrutinizing her mercilessly. She looked down, terrified of displeasing him.
“Look at Prince Alexi,” he told her, and when she raised her eyes, she saw the beautiful captive Prince only a few inches from her. His disheveled hair partially veiled his face, and his skin appeared deliciously smooth to her. She was trembling.
Just as she feared he would, the Prince lifted Prince Alexi’s chin again, and when Prince Alexi looked at her with his large brown eyes, he smiled very slowly and serenely at her for an instant the Prince could not have witnessed. Beauty drank her fill of him with her eyes because she had no choice and hoped the Prince would see no more than her distress.
“Kiss my new slave and welcome her to this house. Kiss her lips and her breasts,” said the Prince. And he lifted Prince Alexi’s hands from the back of his neck so they went silently and obediently to his sides.
Beauty gasped. Prince Alexi was smiling at her again, secretly as his shadow fell over her, and she felt his lips close over hers and the shock of his kiss pass through her. She could feel that misery between her legs formed into a tight knot, and when his lips touched her left breast and then her right, she bit into her lower lip so hard she might have drawn blood. Prince Alexi’s hair stroked her cheek and her breasts as he carried out the command and then he stood back with that same beguiling equanimity.
Beauty put her hands to her face before she could stop herself.
But immediately the Prince took them away.
“Look well, Beauty. Study this example of the obedient slave. Become accustomed to him so that you do not see him but rather the example he sets for you,” the Prince said. And roughly he turned Prince Alexi about so that Beauty could see the red marks on his buttocks.
Prince Alexi had received far worse punishment than Beauty. He was bruised and there were many white and pink welts on his thighs and on his calves. The Prince inspected all th
is almost indifferently.
“You will not look away again,” the Prince said to Beauty, “do you understand me?”
“Yes, my Prince,” Beauty said at once, only too eager to show her obedience, and in the very midst of her painful distress, an odd feeling of resignation came over her. She must look at Prince Alexi’s exquisitely muscled young body; she must look at his taut and beautifully molded buttocks. If only she could hide her fascination, feign only submission.
But the Prince was no longer looking at her. He had taken both Prince Alexi’s wrists in his left hand, and had taken from Squire Felix not the golden paddle, but rather a long flat leather-sheathed stick which appeared heavy and with which he struck Alexi several loud blows on his calves rapidly.
He pulled his captive to the center of the room. He placed his foot on the wrung of the stool as he had done earlier, and pushed Prince Alexi over his knee just as he had done Beauty. Prince Alexi’s back was to Beauty and she could see not only his buttocks but also the scrotum between his legs, and she saw the flat leather stick land its blows in red crisscrossed marks over Prince Alexi. Prince Alexi did not struggle. He made hardly a sound. His feet were planted on the floor, and nothing in his form suggested any attempt to escape the aim of the stick as Beauty might.
Yet even as she watched, amazed, wondering at his control and his endurance, she could see the signs of strain in him. He moved ever so slightly, his buttocks rising and falling, his legs quivering and then she could hear the slightest sound from him, a whispered moan which he was obviously concealing behind his closed lips. The Prince flailed at him, the skin growing a darker red with each broad stripe from the stick, and then, when his desire seemed to have reached a crest, he ordered Prince Alexi down on his hands and knees before him.
Beauty could see Prince Alexi’s face. It was stained with tears, but the composure had not broken. He knelt before the Prince, waiting.
The Prince lifted his pointed boot and thrust it under Prince Alexi, touching the tip of Prince Alexi’s penis.
Then he took Prince Alexi by the hair and lifted his head.
