by Anne Rice
“But do you ... do you take pleasure in it?” Beauty asked timidly.
“It is difficult to resist beauty such as yours,” he said, rubbing the oil into the backs of her arms and into the crevices of her elbows. “But I should much rather groom you and care for you.” He put down the oil and gave her hair another brisk rub with the towel, adjusting the pillow under her face.
It felt so good to be lying here, with his hands working on her.
“But as I was saying before, you may ask me questions when I give you leave. Remember, when I give you leave, and I have just given it.”
“I don’t know what to ask,” she whispered. “There is so much to ask ...”
“Well, surely you must know already that all punishments here are for the pleasure of your masters and mistresses ...”
“Yes.”
“And that nothing shall ever be done which truly harms you. You will never be burned, nor cut, nor injured,” he said.
“Ah, that is a great relief,” Beauty said, but in truth she had understood these limits without being told. “But the other slaves,” she asked. “Are they here for various reasons?”
“Sent as Tributes mostly,” Leon answered. “Our Queen is very powerful and commands many allies. And of course, all Tributes are well fed, well guarded, well treated just as you are well treated.”
“And ... what happens to them?” Beauty asked tentatively. “I mean, they are all young and ...”
“They’re returned to their Kingdoms when the Queen so wishes, and obviously very much better off for their service here. They’re not so vain any longer, they have great self-control, and often a different view of the world, one which enables them to achieve great understanding.”
Beauty could scarcely guess what this meant. Leon massaged the oil into her sore calves and the tender flesh behind her knees. She felt drowsy. The sensation was growing ever more delicious, and she resisted it slightly, unwilling to let that craving between her legs torment her. Leon’s fingers were strong, almost a little too strong, and they moved to her thighs which the Prince had reddened with his strap as much as her calves and buttocks. She shifted slightly against the soft, firm bedding. Her thoughts slowly cleared.
“Then I might be sent home,” she asked, but it had no meaning for her.
“Yes, but you must never mention it, and certainly never ask for it. You are the property of your Prince. You are his slave entirely.”
“Yes ...” she whispered.
“And to beg to be released would be a terrible thing,” Leon continued. “However in time you will be sent home. There are different agreements for different slaves. Do you see that Princess there?”
In a great hollow in the wall, on a shelf-like bed, lay a dark-haired girl whom Beauty had noticed. She had olive skin, richer in tone than that of Prince Alexi who was also dark, and her hair was so long it lay in rippling strands over her buttocks. She slept with her face to the room, her mouth slightly open on the flat pillow.
“Now, she is Princess Eugenia,” said Leon, “and she must be returned in two years by agreement. Her time is almost up and she is broken-hearted. She wants to remain on the condition that her continued slavery will save two slaves from having to come here. Her Kingdom might agree to these terms to keep back two other Princesses.”
“You mean she wants to stay?”
“O yes,” Leon said. “She is mad for Lord William, the Queen’s eldest cousin, and can’t bear the thought of being sent home. But there are others who are ever rebellious.”
“Who are they?” Beauty asked, but before he could answer, she added quickly, though trying to sound indifferent, “Is Prince Alexi one of those who is rebellious?”
She could feel Leon’s hand moving towards her buttocks, and now suddenly all those welts and sore places were brought to life as his fingers touched them. The oil burned slightly as Leon added droplets of it generously, and then those strong fingers commenced to work the flesh, with no regard for its redness. Beauty winced, but even this pain had its pleasure. She felt her buttocks shaped by his hands, lifted, separated, and then smoothed again. She blushed to think that it was Leon doing this who had been talking to her in such a civilized manner, and when his voice went on, she felt a new variant of agitation. “There is no end to it,” she thought, “the ways of being humiliated.”
“Prince Alexi is the Queen’s favorite,” said Leon. “The Queen cannot bear to be separated from him for very long, and though he is a model of good behavior and devotion, he is, in his own way, relentlessly rebellious.”
“But how can that be?” Beauty asked.
“Ah, you must put your mind on the pleasing of your Lords and Ladies,” Leon said, “but I shall say this: Prince Alexi appears to have surrendered his will as a fine slave must, but there is a core in Prince Alexi that no one touches.”
Beauty was enthralled by this answer. She thought of Prince Alexi on his hands and knees, his strong back and the curve of his buttocks as he had been driven back and forth across the Prince’s bedroom; she thought of the beauty of his face. “A core in him no one touches,” she mused.
But Leon had turned her over now, and when she saw him bending down, so close to her, she felt bashful and closed her eyes. He was rubbing the oil into her belly and into her legs, and she pressed her legs together and tried to turn to the side.
“You’ll become very accustomed to my ministrations, Princess,” he said. “You will think nothing of being groomed in time.” And firmly he pressed her shoulders to the pallet. His swift fingers smoothed the oil into her throat and into her arms.
Beauty opened her eyes cautiously to see him intent on his work. His pale eyes moved over her without passion but with an obvious absorption.
“Do you ... derive pleasure from it?” she whispered, and was shocked to hear herself speak these words.
He emptied some oil into the palm of his left hand, and putting the bottle down beside him, he rubbed the oil into her breasts, lifting them and squeezing them as he had done her buttocks. She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. She felt him roughly massaging her nipples. She almost let out a little cry.
“Be still, my dear,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your nipples are tender and must be slightly toughened. You’ve been subjected to very little sport so far from your love-stricken master.”
Beauty was frightened by this. Her nipples felt painfully hard to her; she knew her face had colored darkly. It seemed all the feeling in her breasts swelled and pumped towards those tiny hard nipples.
Mercifully, Leon let go of her breasts with a hard squeeze. But then he parted her legs and rubbed the oil into her inner thighs, and this was even worse for her. She could feel her sex throbbing. She wondered if it gave off heat that he could feel with his hands.
She hoped he would be quick.
Yet even as she lay, red faced and trembling, he pushed her legs farther apart, and to her horror, parted the lips of her sex with his fingers as though inspecting her.
“O, please ...” she whispered, turning her head from side to side, her eyes stinging.
“Now Beauty,” he scolded gently, “you must never never plead for anything from anyone, not even from your loyal and devoted groom. I must inspect you to see if you are sore, and as I thought, you are. Your Prince has been rather ... devoted.”
Beauty bit her lip and closed her eyes as he widened the orifice and now oiled it. She felt as if she were being pulled apart, and even under the plaster that tiny knot of feeling throbbed above the opening Leon’s fingers had broadened. “If he touches it, I shall die,” she thought, but he was quite careful not to do that, though she felt his fingers entering her, and massaging the lips of her vagina.
“Poor darling slave,” he whispered to her with feeling. “Now sit up. If I were to have my way, you would rest. But Lord Gregory wants you to see the rest of the Training Hall and the Hall of Punishments. Let me finish your hair quickly.”
He began to brush Beauty’s
hair and arrange it in coils on the back of her head as she sat, still trembling, her knees drawn up, and her head bowed.
THE TRAINING HALL
BEAUTY WASN’T certain that she hated Lord Gregory. Perhaps there was something comforting in his air of command. What would it be like to be here without someone who directed her so completely? But he appeared obsessed with his duties.
As soon as he took her out of Leon’s hands, he gave her two gratuitous blows with the paddle before ordering her to her knees and to follow him. She was to keep close to the heel of his right boot, and she was to observe all that was around her.
“But you must never look at the faces of your masters and mistresses, you must never try to meet their eyes, and there is not to be a sound out of you,” he directed, “save your answers to me.”
“Yes, Lord Gregory,” she whispered. The stone floor beneath her was swept very clean and polished, but it hurt her knees nevertheless because it was stone. Yet she followed him at once past the other beds on which slaves were being groomed, and the baths in which two young men were being bathed, just as she had been bathed, their eyes flashing over her with mild curiosity as she risked a glance at each of them.
“All handsome,” she mused.
But when a stunningly beautiful young woman was driven across her path, she felt a hot flush of jealousy. This was a girl with a mane of silvery hair much fuller and curlier than Beauty’s, and as she was on her knees, her huge and magnificent breasts hung down showing their large pink nipples to great advantage. The Page who drove her with the paddle seemed very engaged with her, laughing at her little cries, and forcing her to move faster with the force of his blows as well as the mocking and cheerful commands he gave her.
Lord Gregory paused as if he, too, enjoyed the sight of this girl as she was brought up, and into the bath, her legs forced apart as Beauty’s had been. Beauty could not help but notice her breasts again, and how large were the pink nipples. The girl’s hips were ample for her size, and to Beauty’s amazement, she was not really crying as she was lowered into the water. Her moans were more complaints as the paddle still smacked her.
Lord Gregory made some approving sound. “Lovely,” he said so that Beauty could hear him. “And three months ago she was as wild and untamed as a nymph from the forest. The transformation is quite exquisite.”
Lord Gregory turned sharply to his left and when Beauty did not at once realize it, he gave her a sound spank and then another.
“Now, Beauty,” Lord Gregory said, as they passed through a doorway into a long room, “do you wonder how others are trained to show the passion you exhibit with such abandon?”
Beauty knew her cheeks were crimson. She could not bring herself to answer.
The room was dimly lit by a nearby fire, but its doors were open to the garden. And here Beauty saw that many captives were positioned on tables as she had been in the Great Hall, each with a Page in attendance. And all the Pages worked diligently taking no note of cries or commotion at any other table.
Several young men knelt with their hands strapped behind them. They were paddled steadily while at the same time their penises were also being given pleasure. Here a Page stroked the engorged penis as he worked the paddle. Here two Pages attended the same Prince mercilessly.
Beauty could understand what was happening even when Lord Gregory did not explain it to her. She saw the confusion and misery of the young Princes, their faces caught between struggle and surrender. The Prince nearest her was on all fours, his penis tormented slowly. As soon as the paddling commenced, he went soft. So the paddling ceased, and the hands attended to him again, hardening him.
Along the walls were other Princes, spread-eagled, their ankles and wrists bound to the bricks, their organs being taught obedience with touching and kisses and suckling.
ling. “O, it is worse for them, much worse,” Beauty thought, but her eyes and her mind were too filled with their exquisite endowments. She looked at the rounded buttocks of those made to kneel; she loved their polished chests, the lean muscularity of their limbs, and above all, perhaps, the nobility of suffering in their handsome faces. She thought of Prince Alexi again and she wanted to shower him with kisses. She wanted to kiss his eyelids and the nipples of his chest; she wanted to suckle his organ.
Now she saw a young Prince brought over on his hands and knees to suck the penis of another. And as he performed the act with great enthusiasm, he in turn was paddled by the Page who seemed, as all others, to take delight in inflicting torment. The Prince’s eyes were closed, he drew on the powerful sex of the other with long caresses of his lips, his own buttocks flinching with each blow, and as the poor Prince whom he suckled seemed on the edge of culminating passion, the suckler was pulled back by the Page who took his obedient slave to yet another erect penis.
“Here, as you can see, the young slave Princes are taught their manners,” Lord Gregory said, “to be ever in readiness for their masters and mistresses. A hard lesson to learn and one which you are, in general, spared. It is not that readiness isn’t required of you; it is that you are spared having to make such a display of it.”
He led her on closer to the female slaves who were being worked in a different manner. Here Beauty saw a lovely red-haired Princess with her legs held apart by two Pages who with their hands massaged that little nodule between her legs. Her hips rose and fell; it was clear she could not control her own movement. She begged to be allowed peace, and just as her face flushed and it seemed she could not control herself, she was let alone, legs held apart so that she groaned miserably.
Another very lovely girl was being spanked and stroked at the same time by a Page who used his left hand between her legs to work her.
And to Beauty’s horror several were mounted on phalluses against the wall on which they worked themselves with wild contortions while the Pages in attendance wielded merciless paddles.
“You see each slave receives simple instructions. She is to work herself on the phallus until she achieves satisfaction. Only then will the paddling cease, no matter how sore she is. She soon learns to think of the paddle and pleasure as one in the same, and she soon learns to achieve her pleasure in spite of the paddle. Or on command, I should say. Of course she shall seldom be allowed such satisfaction by her masters and mistresses.”
Beauty gazed at the row of struggling bodies. The girls’ hands were bound over their heads, their feet below. They had little room for moving on the leather phalluses. They twisted, trying to undulate as best they could, the inevitable tears spilling down their faces. Beauty felt pity for them, yet she so craved the phallus. She knew with deep shame it would not have taken her long to please the Page paddling her. As she watched the nearest Princess, a girl with red ringlets, she saw her finally achieve her goal, her face blood red, her whole body gone to violent quivering. The Page spanked her all the harder. She went limp finally as though too weary to feel shame, and the Page gave her a gentle approving pat and left her.
Everywhere Beauty looked she saw some form of training.
Here a young girl with hands clasped above her head was being taught to kneel still while her private parts were stroked and not to put her hands down to cover herself. Another was being forced to feed her breasts to the Page who suckled them, holding them for him while yet another examined her. Lessons in control, lessons in pain and pleasure.
The voices of the Pages were some of them stern, some of them tender, the dull whacking of the paddle everywhere. And there were the inevitable spread-eagled girls being now and then tormented to awaken them and teach them what they could feel if they did not know it.
“But for our little Beauty such lessons are not necessary,” Lord Gregory said. “She is too accomplished as it is. And perhaps she should see the Hall of Punishments, how those disobedient slaves are chastised using the very pleasure they have learned to feel here.”
THE HALL OF PUNISHMENTS
AT THE door of the new hall, Lord Gregory signaled
one of the busy Pages.
“Bring Princess Lizetta here,” he said raising his voice slightly. “Sit back on your heels, Beauty, with your hands behind your neck and observe all that’s presented for your benefit.”
The unfortunate Princess Lizetta was apparently just being brought in, and Beauty saw at once that she was gagged but rather simply so. A small cylinder covered with leather and shaped like a dog’s bone was forced into her mouth and back so far between her teeth that it was rather like a bit, and apparently she could not have dislodged it with her tongue if she had wanted to.
She was crying angrily and kicking, as the Page who held her hands behind her back gestured for yet another Page to take her about the waist and carry her to Lord Gregory.
She was placed on her knees right before Beauty, her black hair falling down in front of her face, her dark breasts heaving.
“Petulance, my Lord,” said the Page rather wearily. “She was to be quarry in the Hunt in the Maze when she refused to give her Lords and Ladies good sport. The usual nonsense.”
Princess Lizetta tossed her black hair over her shoulder and let out a little contemptuous growl from behind the gag, which astonished Beauty.
“Ah, and impudence as well,” said Lord Gregory. He reached down and lifted her chin. Her dark eyes evinced nothing but anger as she looked up at him and she turned her head so sharply that she was soon free of him.
The Page gave her several hard spanks but she showed no contrition. Her little buttocks looked hard in fact.
“Double her, for punishment,” said Lord Gregory. “I think a real punishment is in order.”
Princess Lizetta gave several high-pitched groans. They seemed both anger and protest. She seemed not to have bargained for this, and as she was carried ahead of Beauty and Lord Gregory into the Hall of Punishments, the Pages quickly affixed leather cuffs to her wrists and ankles, each cuff with a heavy metal hook imbedded in it.
Now she was raised, struggling, to a great low beam that spanned the room, her wrists hung from a hook above her head and then her legs brought straight up in front of her so that her ankles were fixed to the same hook. She was, in fact, bent double. Her head was then forced between her calves, so that Beauty could see her face clearly. And a leather strap was bound around her, securely pressing her upturned legs against her torso.
