The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

by Ann Rice

  And Beauty saw him take his position at the foot of the bed, with his arms folded on his chest, and his back to the bedpost.

  "Little plaything," the Queen said under her breath to Beauty. "And now I understand perhaps why Lady Juliana is so enraptured over you."

  She ran her hand over Beauty's face, her cheeks, her eyelids. She pinched Beauty's mouth. She smoothed back her hair, and then she slapped Beauty's breasts to the right and to the left and again.

  Beauty's mouth quivered but she made no sound. She kept her hands still at her sides. The Queen was like a light that threatened to blind her.

  If she thought about it, lying here so near the Queen, she would be overcome with panic.

  The Queen's hand moved over her belly and her thighs. It pinched the flesh of her thighs and then the backs of her legs at the calves. And in spite of herself Beauty felt a tingling everywhere she was touched as if the hand itself had some dreadful power. She felt hatred for the Queen suddenly, more violently than she had felt it for Lady Juliana.

  But then the Queen commenced to examine, slowly, Beauty's nipples. The fingers of the Queen's right hand turned each nipple this way and that, testing the soft circle of skin around it. Beauty's breath became uneven, and she felt the moisture between her legs as though a grape had been squeezed there.

  It seemed the Queen was monstrously bigger than she, and as strong as a man, or was it only that to struggle against the Queen was unthinkable? Beauty tried to regain some calm, to think of her feeling of release on the Bridle Path, but it eluded her. It had been fragile all along. Now it was nothing.

  "Look at me," the Queen commanded gently again, and Beauty realized as she looked up that she was crying.

  "Spread your legs," the Queen ordered.

  At once Beauty obeyed. "Now she will see," Beauty thought. "It will be as bad as when Lord Gregory saw. And Prince Alexi will see."

  The Queen laughed. "I said spread your legs," she said, and gave Beauty's thighs fierce stinging slaps. Beauty spread her legs much wider and felt graceless as she did so. When her knees were pressed down to the coverlet on either side, she thought she could not endure the ignominy of it. She stared at the coffered ceiling of the bed above her and realized that the Queen was opening her sex as Leon had done. Beauty bit down on her cries. And Prince Alexi witnessed all of it. She remembered his kisses, and smiles. The lights of the room shimmered, and she felt her own shuddering as the Queen's fingers felt the moisture in this secret, exposed spot, playing with Beauty's pubic lips, smoothing the pubic hair, and finally catching a lock of it to pull and tease idly.

  It seemed the Queen took both her thumbs and wrenched Beauty open. Beauty tried to keep her hips still. She wanted to rise to escape, like some miserable Princess in the Training Hall who could not endure being so examined. Yet she did not protest; her whimpers were faint and uncertain.

  The Queen commanded her to turn over.

  Blessed concealment, that she could hide her face in the pillows.

  But those cool, commanding hands were playing with her buttocks now, opening them, touching her anus. "O, please," she thought desperately, and she knew that her shoulders shook with her silent crying. "O, this is dreadful, dreadful!"

  With the Prince, finally, she had known what was wanted.

  On the Bridle Path, finally, she had been told what was wanted. But what did this wicked Queen want of her, that she suffer, that she cringe, that she offer herself or merely endure? And the woman despised her!

  The Queen massaged her flesh, prodding it, testing it as if for thickness, softness, resilience. She tested Beauty's thighs in the same manner, and then pushed Beauty's knees so far apart and high on the bed that Beauty's hips rose and she felt she was squatting, sprawled apart, over the coverlet, her sex protruding, hanging down, her buttocks surely split so that she resembled a ripe fruit.

  The Queen's hand was under her sex as if weighing it, feeling the roundness and heaviness of the lips, pinching them.

  "Arch your back," said the Queen, "and lift your buttocks, little cat, little cat in heat."

  Beauty obeyed, her eyes flooded with tears of shame. She was trembling violently as she took a deep breath, and against her will felt the Queen's fingers commanding her passion, squeezing the flame so it burned hotter. Surely Beauty's pubic lips were swelling, their juices flowing, no matter how bitterly she struggled against it!

  She did not want to give anything to this wicked woman, this witch of a Queen. To the Prince she would yield; to Lord Gregory, to nameless and faceless Lords and Ladies who showered her with compliments, but to this woman who despised her...!

  But the Queen had sat back on the bed beside Beauty, and hastily she gathered up Beauty as if she were a floppy doll and threw her over her lap, her face away from Prince Alexi, her buttocks surely still exposed to his scrutiny.

  Beauty gave an open-mouthed moan, her breasts rubbed against the coverlet, her sex throbbing against the Queen's thigh. It was as if she were some toy in the Queen's hands.

  Yes, it was exactly like being a toy, only she was alive, she breathed, she suffered. She could imagine how she appeared to Prince Alexi.

  The Queen lifted her hair. She ran a finger down Beauty's back to the tip of her spine.

  "All the rituals," the Queen said in a low voice, "the Bridle Path, the stakes in the garden, the wheels, and then the Hunts in the Maze, and all the other clever games devised for my pleasure, but do I ever know a slave until I have this intimacy with the slave, the intimacy of the slave over my lap ready for punishment? Tell me, Alexi. Shall I spank her with my hand only to sustain this intimacy? Feel her stinging flesh, its warmth, as I watch it change color? Shall I use the silver-back mirror, or one of a dozen paddles that are all excellent for the purpose? What do you prefer, Alexi, when you are over my lap? What is it you hope for even as you are crying?"

  "You may hurt your hand if you spank her that way," came Prince Alexi's calm answer. "May I get you the silver mirror?"

  "Ah, but you do not answer my question," the Queen said. "And do get me the mirror. I shall not spank her with it. Rather I shall see her face with it as I spank her."

  In a blur, Beauty saw Prince Alexi move to the dressing table. And then before her, propped against a silk pillow, was the mirror, tilted so she could see the Queen's smooth white face in it distinctly. The dark eyes terrified her. The Queen's smile terrified her.

  "But I shall show her nothing," Beauty thought desperately, shutting her eyes, the tears squeezed out down her cheeks.

  "Surely, there is something superior about the open hand," the Queen was saying, her left hand on Beauty's neck, massaging it. She slipped it down under Beauty's breasts, and pushing them closer to one another, touched both nipples with her long fingers. "Have I not spanked you with my hand as hard as any man, Alexi?"

  "To be sure, your Highness," he answered softly. He was behind Beauty again. Perhaps he had taken his place against the bedpost.

  "Now clasp your hands in the small of your back and keep them there," said the Queen. And she closed her hand over Beauty's buttocks just as she had closed her other hand over Beauty's breasts. "And acknowledge my commands to you, Princess."

  "Yes, your Highness," Beauty struggled to respond, but to her further shame her voice broke into sobs and she shivered trying to restrain them.

  "And be quieter than that," said the Queen sharply.

  The Queen commenced to spank her. One great hard slap after another fell on her buttocks, and if a paddle had ever been worse she could not remember it. She tried to be still, to be quiet, to show nothing, nothing, as she repeated that word over and over in her mind, but she could feel herself writhing.

  It was as Leon had said with the Bridle Path; you always struggle as if you could escape the paddle, squirm away from it. And she heard herself crying out suddenly in gasps as the slaps stung her. The Queen's hand seemed immense and hard and heavier than the paddle. It shaped itself to her as it spanked her, and she real
ized she was frantic, full of tears, and cries, and all of this for the Queen to see in her cursed mirror. Yet she could not stop it.

  And the Queen's other hand pinched her breasts, stretched her nipples one at a time, letting them go, and stretching them again, as the spanks went on and on until Beauty was sobbing.

  Anything would have been better. Rushing through the hall at the end of Lord Gregory's paddle, the Bridle Path, even the Bridle Path, was better for there was some escape in the movement, and here there was nothing but the pain, her enflamed buttocks laid bare for the Queen who now sought out new spots, spanking on the left buttock and then the right, and then covering Beauty's thighs with smacks while Beauty's buttocks seemed to swell and throb unbearably.

  "The Queen must tire. The Queen must stop," Beauty thought, but she had thought this only moments before and it went on, so that Beauty's hips were rising and falling, and she found herself squirming to the side only to be rewarded with sounder blows, more rapid blows, as if the Queen were growing ever more violent. It was as when the Prince had beaten her with the strap. It was becoming more frenzied.

  Now the Queen worked on the very bottom of her buttocks, that portion which Lady Juliana had so deliberately lifted on her paddle, and she spanked hard and long on either side before moving up again and to the side, and then to Beauty's thighs and back again.

  Beauty clenched her teeth to stifle her cries. She opened her eyes in frantic silent please seeing only the Queen's hard profile in the mirror. The Queen's eyes were narrowed, her mouth twisted, and then suddenly she gazed through the mirror at Beauty though she never ceased punishing her.

  Beauty's hands broke their firm clasp and struggled to cover her buttocks, but the Queen at once moved them aside.

  "You dare!" she whispered, and Beauty clasped them tight again, sobbing into the coverlet as the spanking continued.

  Then the Queen's hand lay on the burning flesh without motion.

  It seemed the fingers were still cold, yet they burned. And Beauty could not control her racing breath or her tears, and she would not open her eyes again.

  "You shall tender me your apology for that little slip of decorum," said the Queen.

  "I... I..." Beauty stammered.

  "'I am sorry, my Queen.'"

  "I am sorry, my Queen." Beauty whispered frantically.

  "'I deserve only your punishment for it, my Queen.'"

  "I deserve only your punishment for it, my Queen."

  "Yes," the Queen whispered. "And you shall have it. But all and all..." The Queen sighed. "Was she not good, Prince Alexi?"

  "Very well behaved, your Highness, I should think, but I await your judgment."

  The Queen laughed.

  She pulled Beauty up roughly.

  "Turn around and sit in my lap," she said.

  Beauty was astonished. She at once obeyed and realized she was facing Prince Alexi. But he did not matter to her in these moments. Shaken, sore, she sat shivering on the Queen's thighs, the silk of the Queen's gown cool under her burning buttocks, the Queen's left arm cradling her.

  The Queen's right hand examined her nipples, and Beauty looked down through her tears to see those white fingers again pulling the nipples.

  "I had not thought to find you so obedient," said the Queen, pressing Beauty to her ample breasts, Beauty's hip against the Queen's smooth stomach. Beauty felt tiny as well as helpless, as if she were nothing in this woman's arms, nothing but something small, a child perhaps, no, not even a child.

  The Queen's voice grew caressing.

  "You are sweet, sweet as Lady Juliana told me you were," she said softly in Beauty's ear.

  Beauty bit her lip.

  "Your Highness..." she whispered, but she did not know what to say.

  "My son has trained you well, and you show great perception."

  The Queen's hand plunged down between Beauty's legs and felt the sex which had never grown cold or dry during all of the worst of the spanking, and Beauty shut her eyes.

  "Ah, now why are you so afraid of my hand when it touches you gently?"

  And the Queen bent and kissed Beauty's tears, tasting them on Beauty's cheeks and on her eyelids. "Sugar and salt," she said.

  Beauty broke into a fresh shower of sobs. The hand between her legs massaged the most moist portion of her, and she knew that her face was flushed, and the pain and the pleasure mingled. She felt overpowered.

  Her head fell back against the Queen's shoulder, and her mouth went slack, and she realized the Queen was kissing her throat, and she murmured some strange words that were not words to the Queen, some plea.

  "Poor little slave," said the Queen, "poor little obedient slave. I wanted to send you home to get rid of you, to rid my son of his passion for you, my son who is now as enchanted as you were before, under the spell of the one whom he released from the spell, as if all life were a series of enchantments. But you are as perfect in temperament as he said you were, as perfect as more trained slaves, and yet you are fresher, sweeter."

  Beauty gasped as the pleasure between her legs washed through her, mounting and mounting. She felt her swollen breasts might burst, and her buttocks, as always, throbbed so that she felt every inch of the abraded flesh relentlessly.

  "Now, come, did I spank you so very hard, tell me?"

  She took Beauty by the chin and turned her so that Beauty looked into her eyes. They were huge and black and fathomless. The lashes curled upwards, and there seemed a great casing of glass over the eyes, so deep they were, so brilliant.

  "Well, answer me," said the Queen with her red lips, and she placed her finger in Beauty's mouth and tugged on her lower lip. "Answer me."

  "It was... hard... hard, my Queen..." Beauty said meekly.

  "Well, yes, perhaps for such fresh little buttocks. But you make Prince Alexi smile with your innocence."

  Beauty turned as if bidden to do so but when she gazed at Prince Alexi she did not see him smiling. Rather he was merely looking at her with the strangest expression. It was both remote and loving. And then he looked to the Queen without haste or fear and let his lips lengthen in a smile as she seemed to wish of him.

  But the Queen had tipped back Beauty's head again. She kissed Beauty. The Queen's rippling hair fell down around her, full of perfume, and for the first time, Beauty felt the velvety white skin of the Queen's face, and she realized the Queen's breasts were pressed against her.

  Beauty's hips moved forward, she started to gasp, but just before it became too much for her, this shock penetrating to her wet, throbbing sex, the Queen suddenly pushed her down and drew back smiling.

  She held Beauty's thighs. Beauty's legs were open. And the hungry little sex wanted for all the world for the legs to be crushed closed against it.

  The pleasure subsided slightly, back into that great never ending rhythm of craving.

  Beauty moaned, her brows knit in a frown, and the Queen suddenly pushed her off, slapping Beauty's face so hard that Beauty cried out before she could stop herself.

  "My Queen, she is so young and tender," said Prince Alexi.

  "Don't try my patience," the Queen answered.

  Beauty lay facedown on the bed crying.

  "Rather ring for Felix and have him bring Lady Juliana. I know how young and tender is my little slave, and how much she has to learn, and that she must be punished for small disobedience. But that is not what concerns me. I should see more of her, more of her spirit, her efforts to please, and... well, I have promised Lady Juliana."

  It did not make any difference how hard Beauty cried, they would proceed, and Prince Alexi could not stop them. Beauty heard Felix come, she heard the Queen walking about the room, and finally when Beauty's tears were now a steady silent flow, the Queen said, "Get down from the bed, and prepare yourself to greet Lady Juliana."

  LADY JULIANA IN THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER

  LADY JULIANA came into the room exactly as she had come into the Hall of Punishments, her steps light and springing, her round face
full of prettiness and animation. She wore a rose pink gown, and there were pink roses threaded through her long thick braids with pink ribbon.

  She seemed too full of light and gaiety for the vast shadowy chamber with the torches throwing huge uneven shadows on the high arched ceiling. The Queen sat in the corner on a great chair that resembled a throne, her foot on a plump green velvet cushion. Her arms rested on the chair, and she smiled faintly when Lady Juliana bowed to her. Prince Alexi, sitting on his heels at the Queen's feet, very politely kissed the pretty Lady's slippers.

  Beauty knelt in the center of the flowered carpet, still much shaken and tear-stained, and as soon as Lady Juliana approached her she kissed her slippers as Alexi had done, only perhaps a little more fervently.

  Beauty was surprised at her response to Lady Juliana. She had been appalled to hear her name, and yet she almost welcomed her. She felt some connection with her. Lady Juliana had, after all, showered Beauty with affectionate attention. She felt almost as if Lady Juliana were on her side, though she had little doubt that she would now be punished by her. Lady Juliana's paddle had been too diligent on the Bridle Path for Beauty to have any doubt of that. Yet she felt almost as if this were a girlhood friend of great confidence and strength, coming to embrace her.

  Lady Juliana was beaming at her.

  "Ah, Beauty, sweet Beauty, is the Queen pleased?" And as she stroked Beauty's hair and pushed her back to sit on her heels, Lady Juliana glanced at the Queen politely.

  "She is all that you said she would be," answered the Queen. "But I wish to see more of her to judge properly. Use your imagination, lovely one. Do as you please, for me."

  At once Lady Juliana motioned to the Page. He opened the door to admit yet another young man who carried a great flower basket filled with pink roses.

  Lady Juliana took the basket over her arm, and the two Pages retired to the shadows. They stood as still as guards, and Beauty wondered that their presence meant so little to her. For all she cared, there might have been a row of them there. It did not matter.