The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

by Anne Rice

  “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 her 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 wi
sh 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.

  “Look up, precious, with those beautiful blue eyes of yours,” said Lady Juliana, “and see what I have prepared to amuse the Queen, and further demonstrate your lovliness.” She lifted a rose which had a rather short stem, no more than eight inches. “No thorns, my pet, and this I show you so you fear only what you should fear, and not carelessness or blunders.”

  Beauty could see the basket was heaped with such carefully prepared flowers.

  The Queen gave a cheerful laugh and shifted in her chair. “Wine, Alexi,” she said, “sweet wine, this room is rather permeated with sweetness.”

  Lady Juliana burst into soft laughter as though this were a wonderful compliment, and she danced about the room, twirling her rose-colored skirts, her braids swinging.

  Beauty watched her in wonder, her vision still unclear from her crying, and the woman seemed, like the Queen, immense and powerful. She turned her smiling face on Beauty like a light. And the glare of the torches flashed in the deep red brooch she wore at her throat, and in the jewels sewn skillfully into her heavy girdle. Her pink satin slippers had silver heels and she danced up to Beauty and kissed the top of her head lovingly.

  “But you look so forlorn and that is not good. Now kneel up, fold your arms behind your back to show your exquisite breasts, that’s it, and arch your back more becomingly. Her hair, Felix, brush it.”

  And as the Page hastened to obey, gently untangling Beauty’s long locks down her back, Beauty saw the Lady Juliana take from a chest nearby a long oval paddle.

  It was very like the paddle used on the Bridle Path, but nothing as big or as heavy. In fact it was so flexible that Lady Juliana, setting down her basket of flowers, could make it vibrate when she pressed the tip of it with her thumb. It was white, smooth, and limber.

  It will sting, Beauty realized, but it will not truly hurt as badly as the Queen’s hand, and it will hurt nothing as badly as that weapon on the Bridle Path, yet she realized her buttocks were so thoroughly welted that each light blow would enkindle a certain amount of pain in her.

  Lady Juliana, laughing, whispering with the Queen in her girlish manner, turned back as Felix finished. Beauty knelt waiting.

  “And so our gracious Sovereign spanked you over her lap, did she? And you have had the Bridle Path, and you have learned something of grooming. And then there has been your Lord and Master’s temper and demands, and now and then a little routine smacking from your groom or Lord Gregory.”

  “My groom has never smacked me,” Beauty thought crossly, but she merely replied, “Yes, my Lady ...” as was expected.

  “But now you shall learn some actual discipline, for in the little game I devise your will to please is direly tested. And don’t think you shan’t profit from it. Now ...” She lifted a handful of roses from the basket. “I shall scatter these about the room, and do you know what you shall do, my precious girl, you shall run very fast to gather each one in your teeth and place in the lap of your Sovereign. And when she has quite finished with you, you shall go to fetch another, and another, and another. And you shall do that as fast as you can, and do you know why, because you are commanded to do so, and you shall be much punished if you do not rush to obey as we command you.”

  She raised her eyebrows, smiling at Beauty.

  “Yes, my Lady,” Beauty replied, unable to think, though the thought of having to hurry to obey struck a strange new note of apprehension in her. Gracelessness. She dreaded it. On the Bridle Path there had been much gracelessness when she was running so fast and out of breath.... O, but she must not think of anything save what she had to do now.

  “And on your hands and knees of course, my girl, and be very very quick!”

  Lady Juliana at once scattered the little pink rosebuds with their waxed stems everywhere.

  Beauty bent forward and was grasping the nearest in her teeth when she realized that Lady Juliana was right behind her. The handle of the oval paddle was so long, Lady Juliana did not even bend over as she spanked Beauty and with a start, Beauty dropped the flower.

  “Pick it up at once!” Lady Juliana cried out, and Beauty’s lips scraped the carpet before she had it.

  The paddle came down with a fearful zinging sound, smacking her sore welts as she rushed on her hands and knees to the Queen, and Lady Juliana managed some seven or eight good blows before Beauty had dropped the flower in the Queen’s lap obediently.

  “Now turn around at once,” commanded the Lady, “and off you go.” But she was already spanking Beauty fiercely as Beauty ran in search of another flower. As soon as she had it in her lips, she ran to the Queen, but the blows followed her. And Beauty wanted to cry out for patience as she went for another.

  She gathered a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, depositing each in the Queen’s lap, yet there was no escape from the paddle, from its persistence, nor Lady Juliana’s voice urging her on crossly.

  “Quickly, my girl, quickly, get it in your lips and back again.” It seemed her flaring pink skirt was everywhere in Beauty’s eyes, and Beauty was surrounded by the flashing of her little silver-heeled slippers. Beauty’s knees burned from the rough wool of the carpet, yet she went breathlessly on in her search seeing the tiny pink roses everywhere.

  And yet no matter how she gasped for breath, no matter how moist were her face and her limbs, she could not blot from her mind the thought of what she was doing. She could see her own buttocks splotched with white welts, her reddened thighs, and her breasts dangling between her arms as she rushed across the floor like a pitiable animal. There was no mercy for her, and the worst of it was that she could not please Lady Juliana, Lady Juliana goaded her, even kicked her now with the toe of her slipper. Beauty’s cries were wordless pleas, but Lady Juliana’s tone was angry, unsatisfied.

  It was dreadful to be struck in anger.

  “Hurry! Do you hear me!” Lady Juliana sounded almost contemptuous, spanking Beauty all the harder, and making little tisks now of impatience. Beauty’s nipples scraped the carpet as she bent to obey, and with a shock she felt the toe of Lady Juliana’s slipper in her pubis. She gave a startled cry and rushed back to the Queen with the rose as all about her it seemed was the muted laughter of the Pages and the Queen’s higher laughter. But Lady Juliana had found the tender spot again, forcing that long pointed satin slipper right into Beauty’s vagina.

  Suddenly as Beauty turned and saw yet more roses scattered before her, her sobs went into muffled shrieks and she turned to Lady Juliana even as the paddle spanked her thighs and her calves, and kissed and kissed those pink satin slippers.

  “What?” Lady Juliana said with genuine outrage. “You dare beg me for mercy before the Queen? Wretched, wretched girl!” She smacked Beauty’s buttocks, but she had Beauty by the hair with her left hand and pulled her up, snapping her head back so that Beauty’s knees went wide apart to keep her balance.

  Beauty’s open-mouthed sobs were choked and uneven. And she saw the paddle being passed to one of the Pages who offered the Lady a heavy broad leather belt immediately.

  The belt struck Beauty’s buttocks with a resounding wallop. Again it struck her. “Take another rose, another, two, three, four in your mouth at once and give them to your Queen immediately!”

  Beauty ran to obey, and it seemed for a moment all perception left her. She was frantic to obey, to outdistance Lady Juliana’s anger. It was hotter, more frenzied than the Bridle Path at its worst, and as she turned to gather more of the little roses, she felt the Queen catch her face in both hands and hold her st
ill so that Lady Juliana could beat her.

  It did not matter. She could not please. She deserved to be beaten. She quivered with every blow of the strap, yet, drenched with tears, she even lifted her buttocks to receive the punishment.

  But the Queen was not satisfied still, and she turned Beauty around, her hand on Beauty’s hair to pull her head back, as Lady Juliana now smacked Beauty’s breasts and her belly and made the wide leather strap lick at her pubis.

  The Queen held Beauty’s hair fast.

  “Open your legs!” Lady Juliana commanded.

  “Oooooh ...” Beauty sobbed aloud, but she obeyed, and desperately she thrust her hips forward to receive the angry punishment. She must please Lady Juliana, she must show her that she had tried. Her sobs came hoarse and brokenhearted.

  And the strap smacked her pubic lips again and again, and she did not know what was worse, the little shock of pain, or the violation of it.

  Her head was pulled so far back she was now resting it in the Queen’s lap, and she felt her own sobs rising up out of her chest and out of her lips almost languidly.

  “I am defenseless, I am nothing,” she found herself thinking as she had thought it on the Bridle Path in the midst of the worst exhaustion. The belt licked her breast. It was no more than she could bear, and it did not even occur to her to lift her arms, though her pubis was flooded with warm pain. Her sobs had a delicious release for her.

  She felt herself growing limp, yielding. She felt the Queen’s hand caressing her chin, and then she realized Lady Juliana had dropped down before her in a flurry of pink silk and was kissing her throat and her shoulders.

  “There, there,” said the Queen, “my brave little slave ...”

  “There, there, my girl, my virtuous, lovely girl,” said Lady Juliana at once as if given permission. The blows had stopped. Beauty’s cries filled the room. “And you were good, very good, you tried very hard, and you struggled so hard to be graceful.”

  The Queen moved Beauty forward into Lady Juliana’s arms, and Lady Juliana rose to her feet pulling Beauty up in her embrace, her hands pressed into Beauty’s enflamed buttocks.