by Anne Rice
He had lifted it free. It was hard. She thought of it between her legs, filling her, rough and too big for her virginal opening, and of that terrible pleasure which had suffused her and wasted her the night before, and she knew she was blushing furiously.
“Now go to the stand in the corner,” he said, “and bring back the basin with water in it.”
She almost scurried across the floor. Several times in the Inn he had told her to move fast, and though she had hated it at first, she now did it instinctively. She brought the basin in both hands and set it down. There was a cloth in the water.
“Wring out the cloth tightly,” he said, “and bathe me quickly.”
She did as she was told at once, staring in amazement at his sex, its length, its hardness, and the tip of it with its tiny opening. She had been so sore from it yesterday, yet that pleasure had paralyzed her. Never had she guessed at such a secret.
“Now, do you know what I want of you?” the Prince said gently. His hand lovingly stroked her cheek, lifting her hair back. She ached to look at him. She wished so much he would command her to look into his eyes. It terrified her, but after the first instant it was so wondrous to her, his expression, that handsome and almost delicate face, and those black eyes that seemed to accept no compromise.
“No, my Prince, but whatever it is ...” she started.
“Yes, darling ... you are being very good. I want you to take it in your mouth, stroke it with your tongue and your lips.”
She was shocked. She had never thought of this. She thought suddenly, cruelly of who she had been, a Princess, and she thought of all her young life before she had fallen asleep, and she almost gave a little whimper. But this was her Prince who was commanding her, not some dreadful person she was being given to as a wife who might have demanded this of her. She closed her eyes and took it into her mouth, feeling its huge size, its hardness.
It nudged at the back of her throat, and she pushed up and down on it as the Prince guided her.
The taste of it was almost delicious; and it seemed a salty liquid in tiny droplets came out into her mouth, and then she stopped because he had said it was enough.
She opened her eyes.
“Very good, Beauty, very good,” said the Prince.
And she could tell he was in pain with his need suddenly. It made her feel proud, and there was in her, even in her helplessness, a sense of power.
But he had risen and was guiding her to her feet. And she realized as she straightened her legs that that debilitating pleasure had caught hold of her. She felt for a moment that she couldn’t stand, but to disobey him was unthinkable. Quickly she stood straight, hands behind her neck, and she struggled to keep her hips from going into some slight humiliating movement. Could he see it? She bit her lip again and felt its soreness.
“You’ve done marvelously well today, you’ve learned so very much,” he said tenderly. His voice could be so soft and yet so firm at the same time. It made her feel almost drowsy; that pleasure was melting inside of her.
But then she saw that he was reaching for the paddle behind him. She let out a little gasp before she could stop herself, and she felt his hand on her arm, taking her hands away from the back of her neck, and turning her around. She wanted to cry out, “What have I done?”
But his voice came low, crooning in her ear.
“And I’ve learned a very important lesson myself, that pain softens you, makes it easier for you. You are infinitely more malleable from the spanking given you in the Inn than you were before it.”
She wanted to shake her head, but she didn’t dare. The thought of all those who had seen her spanked tormented her. She had been turned so those at the windows could see her buttocks and between her legs, and the soldiers could see her face, and it had been excruciating. Well, it would only be her Prince now. If only she could tell him, for him anything, but those others were such punishment ...
She knew this was wrong. It was not what he wanted her to think, what he was trying to teach her. But now she couldn’t think.
He was at her side. He held her chin in his left hand, and he had told her to fold her arms behind her back which was difficult for her. It was worse than clasping her hands behind her neck. This position arched her body, forced her breasts out, and made her breasts and face feel painfully naked. She moaned slightly as he lifted her hair and folded the great mane of it over her right shoulder, away from him.
It covered her arm, but he pushed it away from her nipples and pinched both of them hard between his finger and thumb, lifting her breasts and letting them fall naturally as he did so.
Her face was positively smarting. But she knew what was to come would be worse.
“Spread your legs ever so slightly. You must be firmly planted on the ground,” he said, “so that you can withstand the blows of the paddle.”
She wanted to cry out, and through her tightly pressed lips her sobs sounded very loud to her.
“Beauty, Beauty,” he crooned. “Do you want to please me?”
“Yes, my Prince,” she cried, her lip trembling uncontrollably.
“Then why are you crying so when you haven’t even felt the paddle yet? And your buttocks are only a little sore. Why, the Innkeeper’s daughter had little strength.”
She cried almost bitterly, as if to say in her soft wordless way that it was all true but it was so difficult.
He held her chin firmly now, bracing her whole body. And then she felt the first crack of the paddle.
It was an explosion of stinging pain on the hot surface of her flesh, and the second spank came much more swiftly than she had thought possible and then there was the third and the fourth, and in spite of herself she was crying aloud.
He stopped and gently kissed her all over her face. “Beauty, Beauty,” he said. “Now, I give you permission to speak ... tell what it is you would have me know...”
“I want to please you, my Prince,” she struggled, “but it hurts so, and I’ve tried so hard to please you.”
“But, my darling, you please me by bearing this pain. I explained to you earlier that punishment would not always be for a transgression. Sometimes it would be for my pleasure only.”
“Yes, my Prince,” she cried.
“I shall tell you a little secret about the pain. You are as a tight bowstring. And the pain loosens you, makes you soft as I want you to be. It is worth a thousand little orders and scoldings, and you must not think of resisting it. Do you know what I am saying? You must give yourself over to it. With each crack of the paddle you must think of the next and the next and that it is your Prince doing it to you, giving you this pain.”
“Yes, my Prince,” she said softly.
He lifted her chin again without further ado and spanked her hard again and again on the buttocks. She felt her buttocks growing hotter and hotter with pain, and the cracks of the paddle sounded loud and somehow shattering to her, as if the sound itself were as dreadful as the pain. She could not understand it.
When he stopped again, she was breathless and almost frantic in her tears, as if the torrent of blows had so humiliated her it was far worse than even a greater pain would have been.
But the Prince folded her in his arms. And feeling his rough clothing against her, and his hard naked chest, and the strength of his shoulders, she felt such a soothing pleasure that her sobs grew soft and open mouthed and languid against him.
His rough breeches were against her sex, and she found herself pressing against him only to have him guide her gently back as if silently reproving her.
“Kiss me,” he said, and such a shock of pleasure went through her at the closing of his open mouth over hers that she was almost unable to stand, letting her weight fall against him.
He turned her toward the bed.
“That’s enough for tonight,” he said softly. “We have a hard journey tomorrow.”
And he told her to lie down.
It occurred to her suddenly that he was not going to take her.
She heard him moving to the door, and this pleasure between her legs became suddenly an agony. But all she could do was cry softly into the pillow. She tried to keep her sex from touching the sheets because she feared that if it did she could not resist some undulating movement. And she felt sure he was watching her. Of course he’d meant her to feel pleasure. But without his permission?
She lay rigid, afraid, crying.
A moment later she heard voices behind her.
“Bathe her and put a soothing ointment on her buttocks,” the Prince was saying, “and you may talk to the Princess if you like, and she to you. You are to treat her with the utmost respect,” said the Prince and then she heard his steps dying away.
She lay too afraid to look behind her. The door was closed again. She heard steps. She heard the cloth in the basin of water.
“It’s me, dearest Princess,” said a woman’s voice, and she realized it was a young woman, a woman her own age, and could only be the Innkeeper’s daughter.
She buried her face in the pillow. “This is unbearable,” she thought, and suddenly with all her heart she hated the Prince, but she was far too humiliated to think of it. She felt the girl’s weight on the bed beside her, and just the rough cloth of her apron brushing against Beauty’s buttocks caused the sore and stinging flesh to ache more keenly.
She felt as if her buttocks must be enormous, though she knew they were not, or giving off some terrible light with their redness. The girl would feel their heat; this girl, of all girls, who had tried so hard to please the Prince by spanking her far harder than the Prince had realized.
The wet cloth stroked her shoulders, her arms, her neck. It stroked her back and then her thighs and legs and feet, the girl carefully avoiding her sex and the soreness.
But then after the girl had wrung out the cloth, she touched the buttocks lightly.
“O, I know it hurts, dearest Princess,” she confided. “I’m so sorry, but what could I do when the Prince commanded me?” The rag was rough on the soreness, and Beauty realized this time that the Prince had left her with a score of welts. She moaned, and though she loathed this girl with a violent feeling she’d never had for anyone else in her brief life, the cloth nevertheless felt good to her.
The moist cloth was cooling her; it was like the gentle massaging of an itch. And Beauty grew quiet as the girl continued to bathe her in a gentle circular motion.
“Dearest Princess,” the girl said, “I know how you suffer but he is so very handsome, and he will have his way, there’s nothing to be done about it. Please talk to me, please tell me that you don’t despise me.”
“I don’t despise you,” Beauty said in a small spiritless voice. “How could I blame you or despise you?”
“I had to do it. And what a spectacle it was. Princess, I must tell you something. You may be angry with me, but maybe it will be a consolation to you.”
Beauty closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the pillow. She did not want to hear it. But she liked the girl’s voice, its respect and gentleness. The girl did not mean to hurt her. She could feel that awe in the girl, that humility Beauty had known in all her servants all her life. It was no different, not even with this one who had held her over her knee in a tavern and spanked her in the presence of crude men and villagers. Beauty pictured her as she remembered her from the kitchen door: her dark curly hair in ringlets about her little round face, and those big eyes full of apprehension. How fierce the Prince must have seemed to her! Why she must have been terrified that at any moment, the Prince would order her stripped and humiliated! Beauty smiled to herself, thinking of it. She felt a tenderness for the girl, and for her gentle hands which were now bathing the hot, aching flesh so carefully.
“All right,” Beauty said, “what is it you want to tell me?”
“Only that you were so lovely, dearest Princess, that you have such beauty. Even as you were there, why, how many who seem beautiful could have kept their beauty in such a trial, and you were so beautiful, Princess.” Over and over she said this word, beautiful, clearly reaching for other words, better words she did not know. “You were so ... so graceful, Princess,” she said. “You bore it so well, with such obedience to his Highness, the Prince.”
Beauty said nothing. She was thinking of it again, of how it must have seemed to the girl. But it gave Beauty such a frightful sense of herself that she stopped thinking of it. This girl had seen her so closely, had seen the redness of her flesh as it was punished, and had felt her writhing uncontrollably.
Beauty would have cried again, but she didn’t want to.
For the first time, through a film of ointment, she felt the girl’s naked fingers on her. They massaged the welts.
“Oooh!” the Princess gasped.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I am trying so to be gentle.”
“No, you must go on. Rub it in well,” sighed Beauty, “it feels good, actually. Maybe it’s that moment when you take your fingers away.” How try to explain it, her buttocks flooded with this pain, itching with it, the welts little hard pebblelike bits of pain, and those fingers pinching them and then releasing them.
“Everyone adores you, Princess,” the girl whispered. “Everyone has seen your beauty, with nothing to disguise it or hide your defects, and you have no defects. And they are swooning over you, Princess.”
“Is that really so? Or do you say it to console me?” asked Beauty.
“O, it is so,” said the girl. “O, you should have heard the rich women out in the Inn yard tonight, all of them pretending they weren’t envious, but all of them knew that stripped they couldn’t hold a candle to you, Princess. And of course the Prince was so beautiful, so handsome and so ...”
“Ah, yes,” sighed Beauty.
The girl had coated the buttocks now and was putting even more ointment into the flesh. And she worked some of it into Beauty’s thighs, her fingers stopping just before the hair between Beauty’s legs, and again, with fierce annoyance and shame, Beauty felt that pleasure coming back. And with this girl!
“O, if the Prince were to know it,” she thought suddenly. She couldn’t imagine him being pleased, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might punish her any time she felt this pleasure without his giving it to her. She tried to put it out of her mind. She wished she knew where he was now.
“Tomorrow,” the girl said, “when you go on to the Prince’s castle, the road all along the way will be lined with those who want to see you. Word is spreading all through the Kingdom ...”
Beauty gave a little start at these words. “Are you sure of it?” she said fearfully. It was too much to think of suddenly. She remembered that peaceful moment in the afternoon forest. She had been alone ahead of the Prince and had some how managed to forget the soldiers following him. And suddenly to think of people all along the road waiting to see her! She remembered the crowded village streets, those inevitable moments when her naked thighs or breasts even had been brushed by an arm or the fabric of a skirt—she felt her breath halt.
“But he wants this of me,” she thought. “Not just that he see me but that all see me.”
“It gives the people such pleasure to see you,” he had said tonight as they entered this little town. He had prodded her on up ahead of him, and she had been crying so fiercely as she saw all about her those shoes and boots from which she dared not look up.
“But you are so lovely, Princess, and they will be telling their grandchildren about it,” said the tavern girl. “They cannot wait to feast their eyes upon you, and you will not disappoint them, no matter what they have heard. Imagine that, never disappointing anyone ...” The girl’s voice trailed off as though she were in thought. “O, I wish I could follow you to see it.”
“But you don’t understand,” Beauty whispered, unable suddenly to contain herself. “You don’t realize ...”
“Yes, I do,” said the girl. “Of course I do ... I’ve seen the Princesses when they come through in their magnificent gowns covered with je
wels, and I know how it must feel to be opened to the world as if you were a flower, all of their eyes like fingers prying at you, but you are so ... so splendid finally, Princess, and so rare. And you are his Princess, and he has claimed you and all know you are in his power and must do as he commands you. It is no shame to you, Princess. How could it be, with such a great Prince to command you? O, do you think that there aren’t women who would give up everything to take your place, if only they had your beauty?”
Beauty was startled by this. She thought about it. Women giving up everything, taking her place. It had not occurred to her. She remembered that moment in the forest.
But then she remembered being spanked in the Inn, and all of those others watching. She remembered sobbing helplessly, and hating her buttocks propped up in the air, and her legs open, and that paddle coming down again and again. Finally the pain was the least of it.
She thought of the crowds on the road. She tried to picture it. It would happen to her tomorrow.
She would feel this drenching humiliation, this pain, but all those people would be there to witness her humiliation, to amplify it.
The door had opened.
The Prince had come into the room. And the little tavern girl jumped up and was bowing to him.
“Your Highness,” the girl said breathlessly.
“You’ve done your work very well,” said the Prince.
“It was a great honor, your Highness,” said the girl.
The Prince came to the bed, and clasping Beauty’s right wrist, he drew her up out of the bed and stood her beside it. Obediently, Beauty looked down, and not knowing what to do with her hands, quickly brought them to the back of the neck.
She could almost feel the Prince’s satisfaction.
“Excellent, my darling,” he said. “Isn’t she lovely, your Princess?” he said to the tavern girl.
“O, yes, your Highness.”
“Did you talk to her and console her as you were bathing her?”