by Anne Rice
Lady Juliana’s arms were soft and her lips were tickling Beauty, stroking her, and Beauty felt her breasts against Lady Juliana’s plump breasts, and then Beauty seemed to lose all awareness of her own weight, her sense of balance.
She was drifting in Lady Juliana’s arms, feeling the delicious cloth of the Lady’s gown, and her rounded limbs beneath it.
“O, sweet little Beauty, my Beauty, you are so good, so very good,” the Lady whispered to her. And her lips pried open Beauty’s lips, and her tongue touched the inside of Beauty’s mouth as her fingers pressed harder into Beauty’s buttocks. Beauty’s wet sex was pressed against Lady Juliana’s gown, and then she felt the hard mound of Lady Juliana’s sex. “Blessed Beauty, O, you do love me, don’t you, I love you dearly.”
Beauty could not stop herself from throwing her arms about Lady Juliana’s neck. She felt the prickling of those blond braids, but Lady Juliana’s skin was plump and soft, and her lips strong and silken.
They sucked at Beauty’s mouth, plump lips, while Lady Juliana’s teeth bit here and there as if tasting Beauty.
And then Beauty looked into Lady Juliana’s eyes, so large and innocent and full of tender concern. Beauty moaned and laid her cheek against Lady Juliana’s cheek.
“That is enough,” said the Queen coldly.
Slowly, slowly, Beauty felt herself being released. She was being forced down, and languidly she let herself droop, until she sat on her heels on the floor, her legs parted slightly, her sex nothing but craving and pain to her.
She bowed her head. She feared above all that she would lose control of this mounting pleasure. She would blush, she would pant, she would writhe with it, unable to disguise it from those before her. So she parted her legs, feeling her pubis open and close like a hungry little mouth desperate for satisfaction.
Yet she did not care. She had known there would be no release for her.
It was enough to feel the rough wool of the carpet against her itching, stinging buttocks, and all life seemed but gradations of pain and pleasure. Her breasts seemed to be tipped with weights, and she let her head fall to the side, and a great ripple of relaxation ran through her. What more could they do to her with their games, it did not matter. “Do it,” she thought, and her eyes melted into tears, the torchlight a glare before her.
She looked up.
Lady Juliana and the Queen stood side by side, the Queen’s arm about Lady Juliana’s shoulder. And they were both looking down at Beauty as Lady Juliana un-braided her hair and the little rosebuds fell free at her feet unheeded.
The moment seemed to go on forever.
Beauty rose to her knees again. She moved silently forward. She bent down with great delicacy and picked up one of the tiny rosebuds in her teeth, and she lifted her head in offering.
She felt the rose taken from her. And then the gentle cool kisses of both women.
“Very good, my darling,” said the Queen with the first true affection.
Beauty pressed her lips to their slippers.
She heard through her drowsiness the Queen’s command that she be taken by the Pages and chained to the wall of the dressing room nearby until morning.
“Spread her, and spread her wide,” said the Queen.
And Beauty knew with a sweet despair that her craving would not for a long time leave her.
WITH PRINCE ALEXI
THE QUEEN slept surely. Maybe Lady Juliana slept in her arms. The whole castle slept, and beyond it the villages and the towns, the peasants in their cottages and hovels.
And through the high, narrow window of the dressing room, the sky gave a moon-white light on the wall where Beauty was shackled, her ankles far apart, her wrists spread equally wide apart above her. She lay her head to the side, gazing at the long row of magnificent gowns, the mantles on their hooks, the circlets of gold and embroidery, the beautiful ornamental chains, and heaps upon heaps of lovely slippers.
And here she was among these things as if she were but an adornment, a possession, kept with other valuable possessions.
She sighed, and she deliberately rubbed her rear against the stone wall, wanting somehow to punish it more so that after a few seconds she could feel the relief when she stopped doing this.
Her sex would not stop its throbbing. It was sticky with its own wetness. Poor Princess Lizetta in the Hall of Punishments, did she suffer worse than this? At least she was not alone in the darkness, and suddenly even those who must pass her, taunting her, teasing her, stroking her swelling sex, seemed to Beauty a desirable company. She strained and twisted her hips. It was no comfort to her, and she did not understand why she felt this craving when only a little while ago her pain had been so great she had kissed Lady Juliana’s slippers. She flushed to think of Lady Juliana’s angry words, those reproving spanks that somehow hurt her worse than the others.
And how the Pages must have laughed when a dozen Princesses had probably played the little gathering game with the roses and done it better.
But why, why had Beauty at the very end picked up that last rosebud, and why had she felt her breasts swollen with warmth when Lady Juliana took it from her lips? It had seemed in that moment that Beauty’s nipples were cruel little caps that prevented pleasure from breaking loose in her. Strange thought. They seemed too tight for her then, her nipples, and her sex gaped and hungered and the moisture trickled down the inside of her thighs, and when she thought of Prince Alexi’s smile, and Lady Juliana’s brown eyes, and her Prince’s beautiful face, and even the Queen, yes, even the Queen’s red lips, she felt herself burning in agony.
Prince Alexi’s sex was thick and dark, like all of him, and his nipples a dark, dark rose color.
She tossed her head, rolled it against the wall. But why had she picked up the rose, offered it to pretty Lady Juliana?
She stared forward in the darkness, and hearing a creaking sound very near to her, she thought she was imagining it.
But in the darkness of the near wall, a seam of light appeared and widened. The door had been opened, and Prince Alexi slipped into the dressing room. Unbound, free, he was standing before her, and very gently, he pushed the door closed behind him.
Beauty held her breath.
He did not move, as if he must accustom himself to the darkness, and then immediately he came forward and released Beauty’s wrists and ankles.
She stood trembling. And then her arms were about him. He held her against his chest, his stiff organ prodding her thighs, and she felt the silken skin of his face, and then his mouth opened over hers, hard, yes, savoring her.
“Beauty,” he gave a deep sigh and she knew he was smiling. Her hand went up to feel his eyelashes. In the light of the moon she saw the planes of his face, his white teeth. She touched him all over hungrily, desperately. And then she descended upon him with loud kisses.
“Wait, wait, my lovely one, I am as anxious as you are,” he whispered. But she couldn’t keep her hands off his shoulders, his neck, his satin flesh.
“Come with me,” he said and though it seemed an effort to disengage himself, he opened another door and took her down a long, low-roofed passage.
The moon entered windows that were no more than narrow slices out of the wall, and then he paused before one of many heavy doors, and she found herself descending a twisting stairway.
Beauty grew afraid.
“But where are we going? We’ll be caught, and what will happen to us?” she whispered.
But he had opened a door and led her into a little chamber.
One little square of window gave them light, and Beauty saw a heavy straw bed covered with a white blanket. A servant’s robe hung upon a hook, but all was neglected as if the room had long ago been forgotten.
Alexi bolted the door. No one could possibly open it.
“I thought you meant to escape,” Beauty sighed with relief. “But will they find us here?”
Alexi was looking at her, the moon full on his face and his eyes that were filled with that stra
nge serenity.
“The Queen sleeps every night of her life until the break of day. Felix has been dismissed. If I’m at the foot of her bed at dawn, we won’t be discovered. But there is always the chance, and then we shall be punished.”
“O, I don’t care, I don’t care.” Beauty said frantically.
“Neither do I,” he started to say, but his mouth was buried in Beauty’s neck as Beauty flung her arms about him.
At once they were on the straw bed, against the soft blanket. Beauty’s buttocks felt the prickles of the straw, but they meant nothing to her so much as Alexi’s wet, hard kisses. She pressed her breasts to his chest, she wrapped her legs about his hips and strained against him.
All the long night’s teasing and tormenting of her was maddening her. And then he drove into her that thick sex she had desired from the first instant she had seen it. His thrusts were brutal, strong, as if he too were overcome with denied passion. Her aching sex was filled, her tight nipples throbbing, and she snapped her hips, lifting him as she had lifted the Prince, feeling him fill her, pinion her.
At last she rose up crying out in her relief, and she felt him come with a last driving motion. Hot fluids filled her, and she lay back gasping.
She lay against his chest. He cradled her, rocked her, never stopped kissing her.
And when she sucked his nipples, bit at them playfully with her teeth, he was hard again and pushing against her.
He rose to his knees and lifted her down on his organ. She whispered her assent and then he moved her back and forth, jabbing her, working her. She had her head thrown back, her teeth clenched. “Alexi, my Prince!” she cried. And again her wet sex, stretched wide over him, throbbed in a frenzied rhythm until she was all but screaming with release as again he filled her.
It was not until after a third time that they lay still.
Yet she bit at his nipples, her hands feeling his scrotum, his penis. He rested on his elbow and smiled down at her, and let her do as she wished, even when her fingers probed his anus. She had never felt a man in this manner before. She sat up, and made him roll on his face, and then she examined all of him.
And then, overcome with shyness, she lay beside him again, nestled into his arms and buried her head in his warm, sweet smelling hair, and welcomed his gentle, deep, affectionate kisses. His lips played with hers. He whispered her name in her ear, and laying his hand between her legs sealed her tight with his palm as he clung to her.
“We must not fall asleep,” he said. “I fear that for you the punishment might be too terrible.”
“And not for you?” she asked.
He appeared to reflect, and then he smiled. “Probably not,” he answered. “But you are a fledgling.”
“And do I do so badly?” she asked.
“You are incomparable in all things,” he said. “Don’t let your cruel masters and mistresses deceive you. They are in love with you.”
“Ah, but how should we be punished?” she asked. “Would it be the village?” She dropped her voice as she said it.
“And who has told you about the village?” he asked, a little surprised. “It could be the village ...” he was thinking ...“but no favorite of the Queen or the Crown Prince has ever been cast out into the village. But we won’t be caught, and if we are I shall say I gagged you, forced you. You should suffer at most a few days in the Hall of Punishments, and what happens to me does not matter. And you must swear to me you will let me take all the blame, or I shall gag you, and carry you back and chain you up immediately.”
Beauty bowed her head.
“I brought you here. I shall be punished if we’re caught. That must be a rule between us. No arguments from you.”
“Yes, my Prince,” she whispered.
“No, don’t say this to me,” he pleaded. “I had not meant to command you. I’m Alexi to you, and nothing more than that, and I am sorry if I was harsh, only I cannot lead you into terrible punishment. Do as I ask because ... because ...
“Because I adore you, Alexi,” she said.
“Ah, Beauty, you are my love, my love,” he answered. He kissed her again. “Now you must tell me, what are your thoughts, why do you suffer so?”
“Why do I suffer? But don’t you see it with your own eyes? Did I ever forget for one moment that you were watching me tonight? You see what was done to me, what is done to you, what is ...”
“Of course I watched you and was glad of the pleasure of it,” he said. “Did you not enjoy seeing me paddled by the Crown Prince and did you not enjoy seeing me punished in the Great Hall when you were first brought in? What would you do if I told you I spilt the wine that first day so that you would notice me?”
She was stunned.
“I ask you why you suffer. I don’t mean what you suffer from the paddle, or the relentless games of our Lords and Ladies. I mean what do you suffer in your heart? Why are you in such conflict? What prevents you from yielding?”
“Have you yielded?” she demanded, slightly angry.
“Of course,” he said easily. “I adore the Queen and I adore pleasing her. I adore all those who torment me, because I must. It is profoundly simple.”
“And you feel no pain, no humiliation?”
“I feel much pain and much humiliation. And that will never stop. If it did, even for a little while, our endlessly clever masters and mistresses would think of some new way to make us feel it. Do you think I was not humiliated in the Great Hall to be upended by Felix and spanked before an entire Court, and so casually, and for so little? I am a powerful Prince, my father is a powerful King. I never forget it. And surely it was painful to be so roughly treated by the Crown Prince for your benefit. And he thought it would make you love me less!”
“He was wrong, so wrong!” Beauty said, but she sat up and put her hands to the sides of her head in consternation. She loved them both, that was the misery of it, the Crown Prince whom even now she could envision with his lean white face and those immaculate hands and those dark eyes so full of turbulence and dissatisfaction. It had been an agony to her that he had not taken her to his bed after the Bridle Path.
“I want to help you because I love you,” Alexi said. “I want to guide you. You are in rebellion.”
“Yes, but not always,” she admitted in a vague whisper, looking off, as if she were suddenly ashamed to admit it. “I have ... so many feelings.”
“Tell me,” he said with authority.
“Well, tonight ... the rose, the last little pink bud ... why did I pick it up in my teeth and offer it to Lady Juliana? Why? She had been so cruel to me.”
“You wanted to please her. She is your mistress. You are a slave. The highest thing that you can do is please, so you sought to do it, and not only in response to her paddling and her commands, but in that moment of your own will.”
“Ah, yes,” said Beauty, that was it. “And ... on the Bridle Path, how can I confess it, I felt some release in myself as if I were no longer locked in struggle, I was just a slave, a poor, desperate slave who must strive, strive purely.”
“You are eloquent,” he said with feeling. “You know much already.”
“But I don’t want to feel this. I want to rebel in my heart, I want to steel myself against them. They torment me endlessly. My Prince, were he the only one...”
“But even if he were, he would find new ways to torment you, and he is not the only one. But tell me why you don’t wish to give in to them.”
“Well, surely you know. Didn’t you rebel? Don’t you? Why, Leon said of you there is a core in you which no one touches.”
“Nonsense. I merely know and accept everything. There is no resistance.”
“But how can it be?”
“Beauty, you must learn it. You must accept and yield, and then you shall see everything is simple.”
“I would not be here with you if I yielded because the Prince ...”
“Yes, you could be here with me. I adore my Queen and I am here with you. I love you b
oth. I yield to that entirely as well as everything else and even the knowledge I may be punished. And when I am punished, I shall dread it, and suffer it and understand it and accept it. Beauty, when you accept you will flower in the pain, you will flower in your suffering.”
“There was a girl ahead of me in line last night who ran the Bridle Path just before me. She was resigned, wasn’t she?” Beauty asked.
“No, forget about her, she is nothing, that is Princess Claire and she is silly and playful and always was and feels nothing. She has no depth, no great mystery. But you have these and you will always suffer more than she does.”
“But does everyone sooner or later acquire this ability to accept?”
“No, some never do, but it is very hard to tell who has attained it. I can tell, but our masters are not always so wise, I can assure you. For example, Felix told me that yesterday you saw Princess Lizetta strung up in the Hall of Punishments. Do you think she is resigned?”
“Certainly not!”
“Ah, but she is, and she is a great and valuable slave Princess. But Princess Lizetta adores being bound up, being unable to move, and when she is greatly bored, she endures the displeasure of her betters, the better to amuse them by letting them punish her.”
“Ah, no, you can’t be serious.”
“Yes, I can. That is her way. All slaves have their way. And you must find yours. It will never be easy for you. You will suffer much before you know it, but don’t you see that on the Bridle Path and tonight when you gave the rose to Lady Juliana you felt the beginnings of it. Princess Lizetta is a struggler. You shall be a yielder, much as I am. That shall be your way, exquisite and personal devotion. Great calm, great serenity. In time perhaps you will see other slaves who are exemplary in this. Prince Tristan, for example, the slave of Lord Stefan, is incomparable. His Lord is in love with him as the Prince is with you, which makes it both difficult and simple.”
Beauty gave a deep sigh. She was flooded suddenly with the sensation of kneeling before Lady Juliana and offering her the rose. She felt herself running on the Bridle Path, and the breeze touching her, and her body burning all over with her striving.
