The prince was enjoying his wife’s submission immensely but at length he became aware of her dilemma. He was in no hurry to finish, preferring to have her for as long as possible while also hoping to give her something to think about when she felt the small twinges of tenderness he left behind after he was done with her. Yet he was keenly aware that she was suffering severely with her need, and he knew only too well how frustrating that could be.
“Reach your hand down between your legs, Princess Tartia,” he instructed her.
She obeyed him unquestioningly. “Yes?”
“Find the place above your opening where I touched you yesterday,” he continued.
“Yes, I have it,” she said.
“Now rub it like I did.” He reached his hand around to where hers was and showed her. “See,” he said. “Like that.” They rubbed her together for a few minutes.
Princess Tartia leaned her face against the cold wall of the alley as she rubbed herself vigorously with her hand. Her hips rocked back and forth in perfect time with his thrusts, thrilling both her and her husband with the delightful motion. In his excitement he ravished her behind all the harder and faster, and this excited her so much that she suddenly slipped over the edge, freezing her rocking motions suddenly in the intensity of her long-awaited release. It seemed that every minute of her delayed longing had added one decimal of strength to her orgasm, and when at last it came she felt that she would surely collapse.
As would become the rule, seeing his wife climax was the ultimate trigger to initiate the prince’s own explosive release. He threw himself into her one last time with a yell, and she was still affected enough by the overwhelming pleasure she had received to feel a delighted thrill from his satisfaction.
Afterward, the princess felt quite shaken by the experience. She trembled awkwardly as she pulled on her undergarments and readjusted her skirt.
“I want to go home,” she told him.
“Let’s have lunch first,” the prince insisted. She acquiesced, although she remained feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Her initial fear of the eel had by now metamorphosed into a total feeling of vulnerability that left her quite disturbed. They sat silently in the dark restaurant for several moments before either of them spoke.
“I was going to apologize,” she blurted out suddenly. To his look of confusion she continued, “When I slipped up on the street with the earrings…once I realized what I was saying I was going to apologize.”
“Why do you do it?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I mean, if you want something you can simply ask for it or, better yet, think of a way to get it yourself,” he continued. “How can we change things so you can get the things you want without having to…make deals?”
“I’m beginning to think that it isn’t about things I want,” she told him truthfully.
“I enjoy pleasing you, you know,” he told her then, sliding a small gray velvet box across the table to her. She opened it to find the little ruby earrings inside.
“How did you…?”
“I am capable of things you haven’t even thought of yet,” he said with a grin.
She smiled, but she closed the little gray box and slid it back over to him. There were tears in her eyes. “I don’t want them,” she said. “But thank you.”
“I want you to keep them,” he insisted. “I want you to think of today when you wear them.”
“Is there anything else you want?” she asked him teasingly.
“I want you to enjoy being my wife.”
And then and there, with those words, Princess Tartia realized that she loved her husband. She did not want their relationship to be based on an exchange of gifts and favors. And she, too, wanted him to enjoy being her husband. She told him so.
Now Princess Tartia and her husband were able to begin their lives anew. Their problem was for the most part solved, and so from that day forward the princess’s shoes remained quite pristine. Even so, it took another three days before the prince would agree to remove the little golden eel. But by that time, the princess had changed her mind about it, and for all I know she wears it to this day.
PRINCESS TOILLA
P RINCESS T OILLA PUSHED THE LAST HAIRPIN INTO PLACE AND TURNED HER head this way and that to evaluate the overall effect. As desired, her hairstyle made her appear quite cosmopolitan. It was the fourth time she had adjusted her appearance that day. Her gaze moved from her hair to her eyes and she paused, uncertain. Always she tried to hide her innermost fears and failings from the world, presenting the image of a sophisticate, but perhaps she should not try so hard to achieve that effect today, when the wizardess was visiting. Perhaps she should allow the wizardess to see her as she really was. But which hairstyle successfully represented the sexually challenged individual, who was able to lust and crave, but not able to find satisfaction?
Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked rapidly to avoid them spilling over and spoiling her expertly painted features. Perhaps if she were honest with the wizardess, that wise lady would be able to help her. Hadn’t she already inadvertently touched upon the truth when she made her claim that the princesses were “discontented” in their marriages? Princess Toilla could remember well how her cheeks had burned while she listened to the wizardess’s speech, and how she had wondered if anyone, particularly her husband, had ever guessed her secret. She had been terrified to even look at him at that moment, lest he guess that she had deceived him all this time.
Princess Toilla sighed yet again. How unfair it all was! The same doubts that overwhelmed her each and every night rushed through her mind again now. Was she doing the right thing, pretending to be fully satisfied with her husband’s lovemaking? It was, after all, her own inadequacies and not his that kept her from finding satisfaction. He always waited until she made her little counterfeit sounds of pleasure before he concluded his own pleasure. On the other hand, she felt his constant readiness and waiting for her to be somehow a part of the overall problem, but she could hardly fault him for that, either; for if he were not so aroused by her she knew that would cause her anxiety, too. It seemed that her body was simply unwilling to cooperate, and she doubted that even the clever wizardess would be able to help her solve this problem. And to make matters worse, she felt too much shame to admit her secret failure to anyone, even the wizardess.
The ringing of the doorbell drew her out of her revelry, and she suddenly regretted this last change in hairstyles. However, there was no time to remedy this. She made a few final adjustments to her appearance while her husband, unaware of his wife’s inner torment, greeted the wizardess below stairs.
Harmonia was fully disarmed by the charming husband of Princess Toilla. He showed no discernable signs of conflict whatsoever and was attentive and loving to his wife as she entered the room, looking for all the world like the most contented wife in the kingdom. The princess greeted the wizardess with a welcoming smile that seemed quite genuine, and then looked at her husband with such love in her eyes that the wizardess blushed.
Harmonia felt a moment’s discomfiture. Usually these things were so easy for her to identify. As she watched the two lovebirds in their living room she could find nothing more than love and goodwill between the two. And yet, there remained that morning’s worn shoes, which was proof positive of a conflict. Suddenly Harmonia gasped aloud. Princess Toilla and her husband stared at her.
“Is anything wrong?” asked the princess.
“No, dear,” replied the wizardess, recovering herself quickly. She smiled at the princess with a mixture of sympathy and admiration, marveling at how kind and loving she must be to so unwaveringly hide her own unhappiness for the sake of her husband’s. She seemed to have none of the usual resentment that was quite normal for a woman in her position. Nevertheless, her sacrifice was completely unnecessary, and the wizardess was delighted to think that the princess’s suffering would soon come to an end. “Just a little hiccup,” she added with
a chuckle. “I will write down your remedy presently and then be off.”
“But…!” The princess was shocked. She turned to her husband, who merely shrugged his shoulders, looking equally baffled by the wizardess’s announcement. To the wizardess’s questioning look she paled. Should she speak now or forever hold her peace? But she knew that she would never be able to speak about her secret and so, with the familiar disappointment of anticipated failure she pushed her agony aside with a sad little smile. Her inadequacies were not the wizardess’s problem any more than they were her husband’s. “I am just surprised by how quickly you have…” The princess paused, blushing, before she finished with, “Diagnosed me.”
“Oh, there is nothing wrong with you, my dear,” Harmonia assured her. “All will be well, you’ll see!”
Presently she scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to the prince. Princess Toilla waited expectantly for one of her own, but the wizardess stood up and was preparing to leave. Tears gushed forward with such force that the princess had to blink rapidly in order to stop them. She was profoundly disappointed but somehow managed to play the perfect hostess until the door closed behind the wizardess. Then she made to leave the room with a casual air, as if she had something important to do, but her husband called out to her.
“Aren’t you curious about what it says?” he asked, waving the little sheet of paper.
“Not really,” she replied with indifference, and for once she wasn’t hiding her true feelings. She truly felt that whatever the wizardess had written on that paper had no bearing on her at all. How could it? The wizardess knew nothing of her secret. Apparently she had leapt to her own conclusions from meeting her other sisters, and had simply doled out the same cure for each of them. But from her own conversations with her sisters she knew that, whatever their problems were, they were not the same as hers. She walked out of the room, leaving her husband staring after her in surprise.
The prince turned to the instructions the wizardess left him. He read them with no small amount of shock, and then read them several times over again. He could scarcely believe his eyes.
But by later that evening, the prince had quite recovered his shock, and was, in fact, quite determined and prepared. Meanwhile, Princess Toilla seemed to have forgotten that the wizardess had even visited them.
The prince entered their bedroom and found his wife sitting forlornly at her dressing table, brushing out her hair. Though it was not part of the wizardess’s instructions, he went up behind her and took the brush gently from her hand. Then he carefully resumed the brushing of her hair, looking at her face in the mirror as he did so. They smiled at each other as he leisurely performed this service for her.
The prince brushed Princess Toilla’s hair until it sparkled and snapped, then he bent down and kissed her cheek, whispering, “Come to bed, darling.”
She followed him to the bed with a small, almost imperceptible sigh. Her husband caught the little sound and smiled. He lifted her gown over her shoulders and tossed it onto a nearby chair.
“Lie down, close your eyes and relax,” he instructed her, adding, “I have a few things to do before I join you.”
She glanced at him when he said that, but then shrugged and lay upon the bed. As always, she felt a tingling pleasure throughout her body from simply being near him. She closed her eyes and sighed again, more deeply this time. How was it that she could feel such a strong longing for her husband only to have it dissolve into nothingness when she held him?
The prince had returned to the room, but he busied himself with lighting candles all around. The princess noticed immediately that there was something different about the candles. These candles, when lit, caused strange shapes to appear on the walls all around her. She stared at the odd shapes curiously as they flickered and moved throughout the room, and a slow dawning crept over her that they were actually graphic depictions of an intimate nature. She gasped when she realized this, and turned her head to look directly at one of the candles on a nearby table. The candle itself was quite ordinary, but it sat inside a metal container that had miniature cutouts of the images on the wall all around it. This then, was the trick that caused the shadowy graphics to appear and flutter all over on the walls. The effect was quite remarkable; Princess Toilla was amazed and aroused by the sight, and suddenly she found herself interested and wondering about what it was exactly that the wizardess had put down on that little piece of paper that she gave her husband.
“Keep your eyes closed and relax,” the prince told her in a teasingly authoritative tone that simultaneously caused a thrill to course through her and a nervous giggle to burst forth from her lips. There was something very exciting in simply lying nude and waiting for what might happen next, but she found it hard to keep her eyes closed with the wild images flickering over the walls all around her. She couldn’t keep herself from peering through her lashes at the images.
The next of her senses to be assailed was her hearing, as a low, pulsating beat began to reverberate in her ears. It was music she had never heard before, strange and provoking in its nature and intensity. Mingled within the throbbing tension of the instruments were other sounds she could not identify…perhaps they were voices? Yes, it seemed that they were voices, alien and unidentifiable, and yet…there was an overt sensuality in the general tone that she could detect. Or was it just her imagination? She wasn’t certain, but the combination of imagery and sound was certainly enhancing her state of arousal by fixing her consciousness on the erotic messages that were being entered through her senses. The voices in particular kept her attention riveted, as they seemed to change in tone and substance, so that just when she began to believe they were chanting something indecent it would suddenly appear that they were perhaps whispering restlessly instead. The pictures, too, seemed to change all around her, so that one moment they appeared to be shadowy lovers and the next they appeared more like wild creatures. All of this had the effect of holding two of her five senses hostage to the tantalizing arousal that was building up within her.
Her husband approached her at last, reminding her to relax as he began touching her gently, moving his hands over her shoulders and breasts, and leisurely caressing her skin and curves without regard for time as his hands traveled the length of her in an exploratory manner. Now her sense of touch joined her other senses in escalating her desire to a point it had never before achieved. When the prince’s hands reached in between her legs, the voices in the hypnotic music seemed to be chanting for her to “open” again and again, and at length she complied with the compelling directive, opening her legs wide for her husband’s gently prying touch.
The prince’s fingers prodded and pressed her flesh, massaging their way in between her little lips and into her wet opening. He slipped one of them all the way in and she gasped. A low moaning followed, but she could not tell for sure if it was her or the music. The voices now seemed to be moaning in time with her own pleasure as her husband touched her. Her breathing went in and out in perfect harmony with the instruments, even as her heartbeat began throbbing in time with the drumbeat.
A new voice pierced her consciousness and she had to concentrate for a moment to realize that it was that of her husband.
“I want you to grasp my finger,” he said.
With effort, Princess Toilla tightened her body around his finger as instructed.
“That’s very good,” he praised huskily, causing a thrill to shoot through her. “Now release it.” She did this, too.
“That was perfect,” he told her. “Now tighten up again…that’s good. Now release.” The prince had her tighten and release like this many times. Each and every time she responded to his instruction he praised her, and with each little bit of praise she felt yet another painfully exquisite thrill stream through her. And all the while the voices and images continued to entice her, until she trembled with excitement and hardly knew which sensation to focus on next.
“I want you to do these exercises every ni
ght before you come to bed,” he told her. “Just like brushing your hair.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, still clenching and unclenching her muscles over his finger.
“Tell me you will do the exercises,” he insisted.
“I will do the exercises,” she vowed eagerly. “But will your finger…?”
He laughed, a deep resonating sound that delighted her senses more than the music. “If you want I will help you with my finger.”
Another thrill titillated her with this husky reassurance from her husband. But he slipped his finger out of her then, causing her to feel a terrible loss.
The prince picked up a glass and slipped something from it into his mouth. He then lowered his face between Princess Toilla’s legs and gently began licking her wet opening with a very cold tongue. She gasped and her hips involuntarily rose up off the bed. Her husband grasped her hips with his hands, effectively holding her in place as he slipped something hard and cold—ice—into her body and pushed it in as far as it would go with his tongue.
“Oh!” she cried out loudly. The sensations were alarming. Piercing, sharp, icy stings awakened the interior walls of her body as she struggled to move her hips—not to escape her husband or the excruciating cold—but simply because it seemed she had to move. Indeed, it seemed that the music and images were telling her to move, and she wanted to obey. “I cannot bear it,” she cried as her hips bounced up and down upon the bed. Her husband’s husky chuckle antagonized her even further, making her need so great she felt almost desperate. It felt as if the music was now coming from within her, not without.
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