The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy

by Anne Rice

  “The game grew more and more frantic. I soon glimpsed others watching from the doors. I had often to hurry past the hem of another Lady in waiting.

  “I worked harder and harder, was stuffed ever the more firmly by those strong leather-sheathed fingers. And though the tears were pouring down my face, and I was breathing rapidly and hoarsely, I managed to complete the game with no more than four cracks of the paddle at any round of it.

  “The Queen embraced me. She kissed me on the mouth and told me I was her loyal slave and her favorite. There was a ripple of approval throughout the Court, and she let me lie against her breasts for an instant as she held me.

  “Of course I was suffering. I was struggling to hold in the gold balls, and also to not let my penis rub against her gown and disgrace me.

  “She now sent for a small golden chamber pot. I knew then what was expected of me. And I know I must have blushed furiously. I had to squat over it and expel the toys I had gathered, and of course I did so.

  “The day was an endless round of tasks after that.

  “I shan’t try to tell you all of them, save I had the Queen’s absolute attention and absorption, and I intended with all my heart to keep it. I still did not know for certain that I might not be sent back to the kitchen. At any moment, I might be sent back to the kitchen.

  “I remember many things. We were in the garden for a long time, the Queen walking among her roses as she much enjoys, and driving me along with that rod with the leather phallus at the end of it. It seemed sometimes she almost lifted my buttocks on the rod. My knees badly needed the relief of the soft grass after the floors of the castle. And I was so sore and tender by this time that the slightest stroke to my buttocks brought pain. But she only walked me about. And then she came to a little summer house of lattices and vines, and drove me ahead of her onto the flagstones there.

  “She ordered me to rise, and a Page appeared, I don’t remember if it was Felix, and he manacled my hands together over my head so that my toes barely touched the ground. The Queen seated herself right in front of me. She laid the phallus rod aside and lifted yet another rod that had been chained to her girdle. It was merely a long thin strip of wood covered with leather.

  “‘Now you must talk to me,’ she said. ‘You must address me as your Highness, and you must answer my questions very respectfully.’ I felt an almost uncontrollable excitement at this. I would be allowed to speak to her. Of course I never had. In my rebelliousness I had always been gagged, and I did not know how I would feel when allowed words. I was her puppy dog, her mute slave, and now I must speak to her. She toyed with my penis; she lifted my balls on her thin leather stick and pushed them to and fro. She gave my thighs a playful smack.

  “‘Did you enjoy serving the crude Lords and Ladies of the kitchen?’ she asked me playfully, ‘or would you rather serve your Queen?’

  “‘I want to serve only you, your Highness, or as you wish.’ I answered quickly. My own voice sounded strange to me. It was mine, but I had not heard it in so long, and when I voiced this subservience it was as if I had only just discovered it. Or rather I discovered it anew, and it produced an extraordinary outpouring of emotion in me. I wept, and hoped that it did not displease her.

  “She rose then and stood very close to me. She touched my eyes and my lips. ‘All this belongs to me,’ she said, ‘and this,’ and she touched the nipples of my chest which the kitchen boys had never spared, and she touched my belly and my navel. ‘And this,’ she said, ‘this too, belongs to me,’ and she held my penis in her hand, her long nails scratching at the tip of it gently. It gave off a little fluid then and she withdrew her hand and held my scrotum in her hands and claimed that as well. ‘Spread your legs,’ she said and turned me on the chain that held me. ‘And this is mine,’ she said, touching my anus.

  “I heard myself answer her, ‘Yes, your Highness.’ She then told me she had punishments worse, for me than the kitchen should I ever try to escape her again, or rebel or in any way displease her. But for the time being, she would be more than pleased with me, she was certain, and she would work me hard as was her pleasure. She said I had great strength for her sport which Prince Gerald had not, and she would test that strength to the limit.

  “Each morning, she would spank me on the Bridle Path. At noon I would accompany her on her walks in the garden. In the late afternoons, I would play games of fetch for her. In the evening I should be spanked for her amusement while she took her supper. There were many positions for me to assume. She liked to see me opened wide in the squat, but there were even better attitudes in which she chose to study me. She squeezed my buttocks then and said these above all belonged to her, as it was her delight to punish these more than anything else. But to complete the day’s regimen in the future, I should undress her for bed, and sleep in her chamber.

  “To all this, I said ‘Yes, your Highness.’ I would have done anything to retain her favor. Now she said my buttocks would be subjected to the greatest tests to ascertain their limits.

  “She had me unshackled, and drove me herself on the phallus rod through the garden and into the castle. We went into her chambers.

  “I knew now she meant to place me over her lap and to spank me as intimately as she had done with Prince Gerald. I was in a welter of anticipation. I didn’t know how I should keep my penis from discharging its craving. But she had thought of this. She inspected me and said that the cup needed draining just now so that it might fill again. It was not that I was to be rewarded. Yet she sent for a magnificent little Princess. The girl at once took my organ in her mouth, and as soon as she began to suck it, my passion exploded in her. The Queen observed all this; she stroked my face and examined my eyes, and my lips, and then bid the Princess to awaken me again quickly.

  “This was its own form of torture. But I was soon enough as unsatisfied as before, and ready for the Queen to begin her test of endurance. I was placed over her lap, just as I had suspected I might be.

  “‘You’ve been soundly spanked by Squire Felix,’ she said. ‘You’ve been well spanked by the stable boys and the cooks in the kitchen. Do you think a woman can spank as hard as a man?’ I was weeping already. I cannot anatomize the emotion I felt. Perhaps you felt it when you were over her lap earlier tonight. Or when the Prince had laid you down in the same position. It is not worse than being slung over a Page’s knee, or tied with your hands over your head, or even pressed flat to a bed or table. I cannot explain it. But one feels so much more helpless across the lap of the master or mistress.”

  Beauty nodded. It was very true. And she had felt it when laid over the Queen’s lap. All her composure had left her.

  “In this position alone all obedience and subjugation can be taught, I think,” said Prince Alexi. “Well, so it was with me. I lay over her lap, my head dangling, my legs spread out behind me. She wanted them slightly apart, and of course I was to arch my back and keep my hands clasped in the small of my back just as you were instructed to do. I was to see that my penis did not touch the cloth of her gown, though with all my strength I wanted it to. And then she commenced her spanking. She showed me each paddle and told me its faults and virtues. Here was one that was light; it would sting; and it was fast. A heavier one, just as thin, caused more pain and must be used carefully.

  “She commenced to spank quite forcefully. And as with you, she would massage my buttocks, and pinch them when she chose. But she was steady in her work. She spanked hard and long until I was soon in terrible pain, and feeling as helpless as ever I had felt in my life.

  “It seemed I felt the shock of each blow disseminated through my limbs. My buttocks of course absorbed it first. They became the center of myself in their soreness and tenderness. But the pain passed through them and into me, and all I could do was quiver beneath each blow, shudder with each sound spank, and moan ever more louder but never with the slightest hint of asking for mercy.

  “The Queen was quite delighted with this show of suffering. As I told
you before, she had encouraged it. She often lifted my face and wiped away my tears and rewarded me with kisses. Sometimes she would have me kneel on the floor upright. She would inspect my penis and ask if it were not hers. I would say ‘Yes, your Highness, all of me is yours. I am your obedient slave.’ She praised this answer, and said I must not hesitate in giving her long, devoted answers.

  “But she was quite determined. She picked up the paddle again quickly enough, pressed me down again on her lap, and commenced the loud and forceful spanking. I was soon moaning loudly behind my clenched teeth. I had no pride, none of that dignity you still display unless it was completely without my knowledge. Finally she said that my buttocks were now a perfect color.

  “She hated having to punish me further she so admired the color she had achieved, but she must know my limits.

  “‘Are you sorry you were such a disobedient little Prince?’ she asked me. ‘Very sorry, your Highness,’ I answered through my tears. But she continued with her spanking. I could not prevent tightening my buttocks and moving as if somehow it would lessen the pain, and I could hear her laughter as though this quite delighted her.

  “I was sobbing as frantically as any young Princess when she at last finished, and forced me back on my knees, ordering me to come about and kneel facing her.

  “She wiped my face, blotted my eyes, and gave me a generous kiss with a great deal of sweet flattery. I would be her valet, she said, the master of her wardrobe. I alone would dress her, and brush her hair, and otherwise attend her. I would have much to learn, but she would instruct me herself. I should be very pure.

  “Of course, that night I thought I had endured the worst, the abuse of common soldiers on my way to the castle, the frightful abuse in the kitchen. I had been thoroughly humbled by a coarse stable boy, and was now her abject pleasure slave with a soul that belonged to her with all the parts of my body totally. But I was very foolish in this. Much worse was to come.”

  Prince Alexi paused and looked down at Beauty who lay with her head against his chest.

  She struggled to conceal her feelings. She did not truly know what she felt except that the story had aroused her. She could envision each humiliation Alexi described, and though her fear was aroused, so was her passion.

  “It has been much easier for me,” she said meekly, but this was not what she wanted to say.

  “I’m not sure that is true,” said Alexi. “You see, after the rough treatment of the kitchen when I became something less than an animal to my captors, I was liberated at once into being the Queen’s obedient slave. You have had no such immediate liberation,” he said.

  “And this is what is meant by yielding,” she murmured. “And I must come to it through a different path.”

  “Unless ... unless you do something to be vilely punished,” said Alexi, “but that might take too much courage. And it might be unnecessary, for your dignity is being stripped away from you just a little already.”

  “I had no dignity tonight,” Beauty protested.

  “O yes, you did, you had a great deal of it,” Alexi smiled. “But to continue, at this time, I had yielded only to my stable boy Lord and to the Queen. And once I was in her hands, I forgot my stable boy Lord completely. I was the Queen’s property. I thought of my limbs, my buttocks, my penis, as hers. But I to truly yield, I had to experience much greater exposure and discipline ...”

  PRINCE ALEXI’S EDUCATION CONTINUES

  I WON’T tell you the details of my training with the Queen, how I learned to be her valet, my struggles with her annoyance. All this you’ll learn in your training with the Prince for in his love for you he intends to make you his maidservant clearly. But these things are nothing when one is devoted to the master or mistress.

  “I had to learn serenity in facing humiliations that brought others into play, and this was not easy.

  “My first days with the Queen were mostly training in her bed chamber. I found myself rushing as diligently as Prince Gerald had to obey her slightest whim, and, proving very clumsy with her clothes, was often severely punished.

  “But the Queen did not want me merely for these servile tasks which other slaves had been trained to perform to perfection. She wanted to study me, to break me down and make of me a toy for her complete amusement.”

  “A toy,” Beauty whispered. She had felt like a toy in the Queen’s hands exactly.

  “And it amused her greatly in the first weeks to see me serve other Princes and Princesses for her pleasure. The first I had to serve was Prince Gerald. He was now nearing the end of his service, but he did not know that, and he was in a paroxysm of jealousy at my reformation. The Queen, however, had splendid ideas for rewarding him and soothing him, and at the same time developing me according to her wishes.

  “Daily he was brought to her chamber and bound with his hands over his head against the wall so that he might watch me struggling with my tasks, and this was a torment to him until he realized that one of my tasks would be to give him pleasure.

  “I was being driven to distraction then by the Queen’s paddle, the flat of her hand, and the struggle to learn grace and accomplishment. All day I fetched, laced shoes, bound girdles, brushed hair, polished jewels, and performed any other menial task the Queen wished, my buttocks forever sore, my thighs and calves marked from the paddle, my face stained with tears as any other slave in the castle.

  “And when the Queen could see that Prince Gerald’s jealousy had hardened his penis to extremity, when he was all but ready to discharge his passion without the aid of any stimulant, then she set me to bathing him and satisfying him.

  “I can’t tell you how degrading this was to me. His body was nothing but my enemy. And yet I was to fetch a bowl of warm water, a sea sponge, and with my teeth only to hold it, bathe his genitals.

  “He was positioned on a low table for this, kneeling obediently as I washed his buttocks, dipped the sponge again, bathed his scrotum and finally his penis. But the Queen wanted more than this. I must now use my tongue to cleanse him. I was horrified, and shedding tears like any Princess. But she was adamant. With my tongue I licked his penis, the balls, and then delved into the crack of his buttocks, even entering into his anus, which had a sour, almost salty taste to it.

  “All the while he showed his obvious pleasure and longing.

  “His buttocks were sore, of course. And it gave me great satisfaction that the Queen seldom spanked him anymore herself, but rather had it done by his groom before he was brought into her presence. So he didn’t suffer for her; rather he suffered in the Slaves’ Hall, ignored by those around him. Yet it was mortifying to me that my tongue stroking his welts and red marks gave him pleasure.

  “Finally, the Queen ordered him to kneel up, his hands behind his back, and told me I should now fully reward him. I knew what this meant, yet I pretended I did not. She told me to take his penis in my mouth and drain it.

  “I can’t explain how I felt then. I felt I could not do it. And yet within seconds I had obeyed, so afraid of displeasing her as I was, and his thick penis was pushing against the back of my throat, my lips and jaws aching as I tried to suck it properly. The Queen gave me instructions, to make my strokes long, to use my tongue, and to go faster and faster. She spanked me unmercifully as I obeyed, her smacking blows in perfect rhythm with my sucking. At last his seed filled my mouth. I was commanded to swallow it.

  “But the Queen was not at all pleased with my reticence. She said that I must show no disinclination towards anything.”

  Beauty nodded, remembering the Prince’s words to her in the Inn, that even the lowly must be served for his pleasure.

  “So she sent for all those Princes who had been tortured over a day’s time in the Hall of Punishments, and led me to a large adjoining parlor.

  “When six young men were brought in on their knees, I begged her to be merciful the only way I could, with my moans and kisses. I can’t tell you how their presence affected me. I’d been mistreated by the peasants
in the kitchen; I’d humbly, greedily, obeyed a rude stable boy. But these seemed both lower and higher than those others. They were Princes of my same rank in the world, haughty, proud in their own lands, and also they were abject slaves as lowly now as I was.

  “I couldn’t understand my own misery. I realized then that there would be endless variations in humiliation. It was not a hierarchy of punishments I faced; it was rather endless changes.

  “But I was too frightened of failing the Queen to think very much. Again I lost sight of the past and the future.

  “As I knelt at her feet weeping silently, she ordered all of these Princes who were sore and aching and starved from the torture of the Hall of Punishments to take paddles from the chest she kept for the purpose.

  “They formed a line of six to my right, each on his knees, his penis hardened as much by the sight of my suffering as by any pleasure that soon awaited them.

  “I was told to kneel up with my hands behind my back. As I ran this gauntlet I would not even be allowed the easier and more concealing position on all fours. Rather I must struggle straight-backed, my knees apart, my own organ revealed, my progress slow as I sought to escape their paddles. They could see my face as well. I felt more exposed than I had when tethered in the kitchen.

  “The Queen’s game was simple. I would be made to run the gauntlet and the Prince whose paddle pleased her the most, that is, the one whose paddle struck me the hardest and fiercest, would then be rewarded before I again commenced the gauntlet and so on.

  “I was urged by her to great speed; if I faltered, if my punishers accomplished too many blows, I should be delivered over to them for an hour of rough sport out of her sight, I was promised. This terrified me. She would not even be there. It would not be for her pleasure.