by Anne Rice
It seemed Beauty had only just touched this marvelous machine with its whirring wheel when she fell down in a great swoon, and all about her heard the world weeping.
“... sleep, sleep for a hundred years!”
And she wanted to cry out, “Unbearable, worse than death,” for it seemed some great deepening of the ennui she had struggled against ever since she could remember, the wandering from room to room ...
But she awoke.
She was not at home.
She was lying in the bed of her Prince, and she felt the prickling of the jeweled coverlet beneath her.
The room was full of the leaping shadows of the fire, and she saw the gleam of the carved posts of the bed, and the drapery fallen about her in rich colors. She felt herself animated and flushed with desire, and she rose up, so eager was she to lose the weight and texture of her dream, and she realized that the Prince was not beside her.
But there he was, by the fire, his elbow against the stone above it which bore a great crest with crossed swords. He wore his brilliant red velvet cloak still and his high turned down leather boots with their pointed toes, and his face was sharpened with brooding.
The pulse between her legs quickened. She stirred, and gave some faint little sigh so that he awoke from his thoughts and approached her. She could not see his expression in the darkness.
“All right, there is but one answer,” he said to her. “You shall become accustomed to all the sights of the castle, and I shall become accustomed to seeing you accustomed to them.”
He pulled the bell rope by the bed. And lifting Beauty he sat her at the end of the bed so that her legs were curled under her.
A Page entered, as innocent as the boy who had so diligently punished Prince Alexi, and like all the Pages he was extremely tall with powerful arms. Beauty was certain they had all been chosen for these endowments. She had no doubt he could have held her by the ankles had he been ordered, but his face was smooth without the slightest meanness.
“Where is Prince Alexi?” The Prince demanded. He appeared angry and resolute, and he paced back and forth as he spoke.
“O, he is in frightful trouble tonight, your Highness. The Queen is much concerned with his clumsiness. You know he must be her example to others. She has had him tied in the garden, most uncomfortably.”
“Yes, well, I shall make him even more uncomfortable. Obtain my mother’s permission and bring him to me and bring Squire Felix with him.”
Beauty heard all this in quiet amazement. She tried to make her face as smooth as the Page’s face. But she was more than alarmed. She was going to see Prince Alexi again, and she could not imagine concealing her feelings from her Prince. If only she could distract him from this.
But when she made a little whispering sound, he ordered her at once to be quiet, and to sit where she was, and to cast her eyes down.
Her hair fell around her, tickling her naked arms and her thighs, and almost with pleasure she realized there was no escaping this.
Squire Felix appeared almost immediately, and as she had suspected he was the Page who had so vigorously spanked Prince Alexi earlier. He had the gold paddle fixed to his belt so it dangled at his side as he bowed to the Prince.
“All of those who serve here are picked for their gifts,” Beauty thought, looking at him, for he too was fair, and his blond hair made an excellent frame for his youthful face, though it was somewhat plainer than those of the captive Princes.
“And Prince Alexi?” the Prince demanded. His color was high, his eyes had an almost evil glitter, and Beauty became frightened again.
“We’re preparing him, your Highness,” said Squire Felix.
“And why should this take so long? How long has he served in this house that he should be so lacking in respect?”
At once Prince Alexi was brought in.
Beauty tried not to admire him. He was naked as before, of course, she’d expected no less, and in the light of the fire she could see that his face was flushed, and his auburn hair hung loose in his eyes which were cast down as if he dared not lift them to the Prince. They were of about the same age, surely, and about the same height, but here stood the darker Prince Alexi quite helpless and humble before the Prince who was striding back and forth before the fire, his face cold and merciless and slighdy agitated. Prince Alexi’s organ was rigid. He held his hands behind his neck.
“So you were not ready for me!” the Prince whispered. He drew closer, inspecting Prince Alexi. He looked at the stiffened organ and then with his hand he gave it a rough slap, so that Prince Alexi flinched in spite of himself. “Perhaps you need a little training in being ... always ... ready,” whispered the Prince. His words came slowly and with a deliberate courtesy.
He lifted Prince Alexi’s chin and looked into his eyes. Beauty caught herself staring at them both without the slightest shyness.
“My apologies, your Highness,” Prince Alexi said, and his voice was low in timbre, calm, without rebellion or shame.
The Prince’s lips spread slowly in a smile. Prince Alexi’s eyes were larger, and they possessed the same calm as the voice. It seemed to Beauty they might even drain away the Prince’s anger but this was impossible.
The Prince stroked Prince Alexi’s organ and gave it another playful slap, and then another.
The submissive Prince looked down again and there was nothing in him but the grace and dignity Beauty had witnessed before.
“I must behave like this,” she thought. “I must have this manner, this strength, to bear it all with the same dignity.” Yet she marveled. The captive Prince must at all times show his desire, his fascination, while she could conceal this craving between her legs, and she could not stop herself from wincing as she saw the Prince pinch the tiny hardened nipples on Prince Alexi’s chest, and then lift Prince Alexi’s chin again to inspect his face.
Beyond them, Squire Felix watched all with obvious pleasure. He had folded his arms, his legs rather wide apart as he stood, and his eyes moved hungrily over Prince Alexi’s body.
“How long have you been in the service of my mother?” the Prince demanded.
“Two years, your Highness,” said the humble Prince softly. Beauty was quite astonished. Two years! It seemed to her all of her life before had not been so long, but she was more rapt with the sound of his voice than with the words. The voice made him seem more palpable and visible.
His body was a little thicker than that of the Prince, and the dark brown hair between his legs was beautiful. She could see the scrotum, no more than a shadow.
“You were sent here in Tribute by your father.”
“As your mother demanded, your Highness.”
“And to serve how many years?”
“As long as it pleases your Highness, and my mistress, the Queen,” Prince Alexi answered.
“And you are what? Nineteen? And a model among the other Tributes?”
Prince Alexi blushed.
The Prince turned him towards Beauty with a rough blow on the shoulder, and steered him towards the bed.
Beauty drew herself up, feeling her face flushed and warm.
“And the favorite of my mother?” the Prince demanded.
“Not tonight, your Highness,” Prince Alexi said with the barest trace of a smile.
The Prince acknowledged this with a soft laugh. “No, you have not comported yourself very well today, have you?”
“I can only beg forgiveness, your Highness,” said Prince Alexi.
“You can do more than that,” said the Prince into his ear as he pushed him nearer to Beauty. “You can suffer for it. And you can give my Beauty a lesson in willingness and perfect submission.”
Now the Prince turned his gaze on Beauty, scrutinizing her mercilessly. She looked down, terrified of displeasing him.
“Look at Prince Alexi,” he told her, and when she raised her eyes, she saw the beautiful captive Prince only a few inches from her. His disheveled hair partially veiled his face, and his skin appear
ed deliciously smooth to her. She was trembling.
Just as she feared he would, the Prince lifted Prince Alexi’s chin again, and when Prince Alexi looked at her with his large brown eyes, he smiled very slowly and serenely at her for an instant the Prince could not have witnessed. Beauty drank her fill of him with her eyes because she had no choice and hoped the Prince would see no more than her distress.
“Kiss my new slave and welcome her to this house. Kiss her lips and her breasts,” said the Prince. And he lifted Prince Alexi’s hands from the back of his neck so they went silently and obediently to his sides.
Beauty gasped. Prince Alexi was smiling at her again, secretly as his shadow fell over her, and she felt his lips close over hers and the shock of his kiss pass through her. She could feel that misery between her legs formed into a tight knot, and when his lips touched her left breast and then her right, she bit into her lower lip so hard she might have drawn blood. Prince Alexi’s hair stroked her cheek and her breasts as he carried out the command and then he stood back with that same beguiling equanimity.
Beauty put her hands to her face before she could stop herself.
But immediately the Prince took them away.
“Look well, Beauty. Study this example of the obedient slave. Become accustomed to him so that you do not see him but rather the example he sets for you,” the Prince said. And roughly he turned Prince Alexi about so that Beauty could see the red marks on his buttocks.
Prince Alexi had received far worse punishment than Beauty. He was bruised and there were many white and pink welts on his thighs and on his calves. The Prince inspected all this almost indifferently.
“You will not look away again,” the Prince said to Beauty, “do you understand me?”
“Yes, my Prince,” Beauty said at once, only too eager to show her obedience, and in the very midst of her painful distress, an odd feeling of resignation came over her. She must look at Prince Alexi’s exquisitely muscled young body; she must look at his taut and beautifully molded buttocks. If only she could hide her fascination, feign only submission.
But the Prince was no longer looking at her. He had taken both Prince Alexi’s wrists in his left hand, and had taken from Squire Felix not the golden paddle, but rather a long flat leather-sheathed stick which appeared heavy and with which he struck Alexi several loud blows on his calves rapidly.
He pulled his captive to the center of the room. He placed his foot on the wrung of the stool as he had done earlier, and pushed Prince Alexi over his knee just as he had done Beauty. Prince Alexi’s back was to Beauty and she could see not only his buttocks but also the scrotum between his legs, and she saw the flat leather stick land its blows in red crisscrossed marks over Prince Alexi. Prince Alexi did not struggle. He made hardly a sound. His feet were planted on the floor, and nothing in his form suggested any attempt to escape the aim of the stick as Beauty might.
Yet even as she watched, amazed, wondering at his control and his endurance, she could see the signs of strain in him. He moved ever so slightly, his buttocks rising and falling, his legs quivering and then she could hear the slightest sound from him, a whispered moan which he was obviously concealing behind his closed lips. The Prince flailed at him, the skin growing a darker red with each broad stripe from the stick, and then, when his desire seemed to have reached a crest, he ordered Prince Alexi down on his hands and knees before him.
Beauty could see Prince Alexi’s face. It was stained with tears, but the composure had not broken. He knelt before the Prince, waiting.
The Prince lifted his pointed boot and thrust it under Prince Alexi, touching the tip of Prince Alexi’s penis.
Then he took Prince Alexi by the hair and lifted his head.
“Open it,” he said softly.
Immediately Prince Alexi moved to put his lips to the seam in the Prince’s breeches. With a skill that amazed Beauty he unsnapped the hooks that concealed the Prince’s bulging sex, and revealed it. The organ was enlarged and hardened, and Prince Alexi freed it from the cloth now and tenderly kissed it. But he was in great pain still and when the Prince thrust the organ into Prince Alexi’s mouth he was not prepared for it. He fell backwards a little on his knees and had to reach for the Prince, caressingly, to stop himself from falling. But immediately he sucked the Prince’s organ, and he did it with great back and forth motions that amazed Beauty, his eyes closed, his hands hovering at his sides ready for the Prince’s command.
The Prince stopped him rather quickly. It was clear he did not want his passion brought to a pinnacle. Nothing so simple would happen.
“Go to the chest in the corner,” he said to Prince Alexi, “and bring me the ring that is in it.”
Prince Alexi went on his hands and knees to obey. But obviously the Prince wasn’t satisfied. He snapped his finger, and Squire Felix at once drove Prince Alexi with his paddle. He drove him to the chest and continued to torment him with the paddle while he opened the chest and with his teeth removed a large leather ring and brought it back to the Prince.
Only then did the Prince send Squire Felix back to his corner, and Prince Alexi was out of breath and trembling.
“Put it on,” said the Prince.
Prince Alexi was holding the leather ring not by the leather itself but by some small piece of gold attached to it. And still holding it this way in his teeth, he slipped the ring over the Prince’s penis, but he did not release it.
“You serve me, you go where I go,” said the Prince, and now he proceeded to walk slowly about the room, his hands on his hips as he looked down on the Prince struggling on his knees, his teeth to the leather ring, to follow him.
It was as if Prince Alexi were kissing the Prince or tethered to him. He scrambled backwards, his hands out so as not to touch the Prince disrespectfully.
The Prince with ordinary strides that took no cognizance of the difficulty of his slave approached the bed, and then turning, made his way back to the fire, his slave struggling before him.
Suddenly he turned his body hard to the left to face Beauty, and when he did Prince Alexi had to take hold of him for balance. Prince Alexi clung to him for a moment and when he did, he pressed his forehead against the Prince’s thigh, and the Prince rather idly stroked his hair. It seemed almost affectionate.
“You so dislike the ignominious position, don’t you?” he whispered. But before Prince Alexi might have answered, he struck him a hard blow on the face that sent him backwards and away from him. Then he pushed Prince Alexi down on all fours.
“Back and forth across the room,” he said with a snap of his fingers to Squire Felix.
As always, the Squire was only too happy to oblige. Beauty hated him! He drove Prince Alexi across the floor to the far wall and then back again to the door.
“Faster!” the Prince said sharply.
Prince Alexi moved as swiftly as he could. Beauty could not bear to hear the anger in the Prince’s tone, and she raised her hands to cover her mouth. But the Prince wanted more speed. The paddle came down again and again on Prince Alexi’s buttocks and the command came again and again until he was scurrying to obey the commands, and she could see his terrible misery that he had lost all grace and dignity. Now she understood the Prince’s little taunt. Prince Alexi’s calm and grace had obviously been his consolation.
But had he really lost them? Or was he merely calmly giving this too to the Prince? She couldn’t tell. She winced with each spank of the paddle, and each time Prince Alexi turned to go back across the room, she caught a full glimpse of his tormented buttocks.
Quite suddenly, however, Squire Felix stopped. “I’ve drawn blood, your Highness,” he said.
Prince Alexi knelt with his head down, panting.
The Prince looked at him and then he nodded.
He snapped his fingers for Prince Alexi to rise, and again he lifted his chin and looked into his tear-stained face.
“So you are reprieved for the night by virtue of that all too delicate skin of yours,”
he said.
He turned him towards Beauty again. Prince Alexi’s hands were on the back of his neck, and his face, flushed and wet, was indescribably beautiful to her. It was full of unspoken emotion, and as he was led closer to her, she could feel her heart pounding. “If he kisses me again, I shall die,” she thought. “I shall never hide my feelings from the Prince.”
And if it is the rule that I can be spanked until he draws blood.... She had no real idea what that might mean, except a great deal more pain than she had already felt. But even that would be preferable to the Prince discovering how fascinated she remained with Prince Alexi. “Why does he do this,” she thought desperately.
But the Prince thrust Prince Alexi forward.
“Put your face in her lap,” he said, “and your arms about her.”
Beauty gasped and sat up, but Prince Alexi obeyed immediately. Beauty looked down to see his auburn hair covering her sex as she felt his lips against her thighs, and his arms enclose her. His body was hot and pulsing; she could feel the beating of his heart, and without meaning to, she reached out to clasp his hips with her hands.
The Prince kicked Prince Alexi’s legs wide apart and taking Beauty’s head roughly in his left hand so that he might kiss her, he drove his organ into Prince Alexi’s anus.
Prince Alexi moaned at the roughness and swiftness of the thrusts. Beauty felt the pressure against her as Prince Alexi was driven ever more quickly by it. The Prince had let her go, and she was crying. She held tight to Prince Alexi, and then the Prince gave his final thrust with a moan, his hands pressed to Prince Alexi’s back, and he stood still letting his pleasure course through him.
Beauty tried to keep herself quiet.
Prince Alexi let her go, but not without a secret little kiss between her legs right on the crest of her pubic hair, and just as he was being drawn away, again, his dark eyes narrowed in a secret smile for her.
“Mount him in the passage,” said the Prince to the Squire. “And see no one satisfies him. Keep him in torment. Every quarter of the hour remind him of his duty to his Prince, but do not satisfy him.”