by Emily Tilton
“Nonsense,” Aliya said. “You are not here to wear any sort of clothing even you might call suitable. Get undressed this instant. Talitha, assist her. You, too, Yasmin.”
As they ‘helped’ her off with the black garments, to reveal different, immodest black garments that revealed as much as they concealed, and felt terribly shameful in the elegant beauty of the courtyard, Beatrice couldn’t suppress her little whimpers of fear. Aliya seemed so severe, and Yasmin, whom Diyab had said would be kinder, seemed completely cowed by the senior wife.
“Oh, very pretty,” Yasmin murmured. Again Aliya rebuked her in Arabic and again Yasmin answered respectfully. Beatrice suddenly wondered whether Aliya was allowed to punish her junior wife.
Aliya spoke to Talitha the housekeeper, and received a bow and a few words in return. The woman departed without another word or a glance at the nearly naked Western girl.
“So you looked Talitha in the eye?” Aliya said coldly. “That little bottom will pay a price for that, I think, and for wearing these wicked things. Yasmin, fetch the cane, please.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Half a world away, Steven watched in disbelief on the monitors, which provided two different views of the courtyard in the sheikh’s palace: one of them now on Princess Aliya’s face and the other on Beatrice’s. The permission given to the sheikh’s wives to cane their husband’s concubine had, Steven, though, been a brilliant though risky stroke. Its effectiveness, however, had depended on its never actually being put into practice—or, if the situation developed very well, only under highly controlled circumstances. A caning from Princess Aliya now, directly upon Beatrice’s arrival in her strange new home, upon a flimsy pretext and without any consultation from her master, could pose grave risks to her psyche let alone to the post-hypnotic suggestion that guarded the fate of nations.
He turned to Joe Hodges, sitting next to him, to confirm that the head of Beatrice’s assessment team found this development as surprising and alarming as Steven himself did.
Joe’s face had a grim expression, but not an astonished one. He had clearly registered Steven’s shock out of the corner of his eye, and he spoke, without taking his attention from its dual foci: the images on the monitors and the data on his laptop screen.
“Look at the last paragraph of the report on the wives,” he said to Steven, out of the corner of his mouth. Then he spoke to Fran and Zoe, the rest of Beatrice’s team, who sat at the table in front of where he and Steven sat, two feet lower in the little amphitheater of this darkened control room in the deep basement of the Institute. “What assets are available?”
In the courtyard, Yasmin had brought the cane from its hook on the wall, and had begun to lead Beatrice toward the shady spot where she and Aliya had earlier that morning commanded the servants to put the old whipping block. The third monitor showed the sheikh conferring with his ministers, unaware of how his wives had received his pretty young concubine.
Fran spoke without turning around. “The seneschal. After that there are some Guard executives downtown who could find an excuse to get into the palace. That’s twenty minutes out at a minimum, though.”
Abdullah al-Nasser, the sheikh’s seneschal, occupied his place seated behind the sheikh in the conference room. He had signed a contract with the Institute to assist in caring for Beatrice, but especially at the beginning of a placement it was hard to know exactly how he would react to an urgent request for intervention in the sheikh’s household affairs.
“Zoe, what’s the risk here, do you think?”
That represented the most important question, Steven agreed.
“Well,” Zoe replied, tapping at her keyboard, “she’s still at 7, right? And…” A few more taps. “Her underlying values are strong: pulse and humidity especially.”
Steven interjected, “But her body language…” On the left monitor, Beatrice’s reluctant feet, as Princess Yasmin tried to bring her to the block, dragged at the tiles. Her face, on the middle monitor, was traced over with the Institute’s analytic algorithms, in red—indicating that the curvature of her mouth, the nervous trembling of her chin, and the motions of her eyes all betokened the possibility of the fight-or-flight response.
“Reread the end of the report on the wives, Steven,” Joe said, a hint of anger in his voice as he repeated the injunction. “Risk, Zoe.”
Zoe spoke decisively, now. “Primary risk is that she recovers the memories. Ten percent.”
“I concur,” Joe responded. “Other risks?”
“Secondary,” Zoe answered instantly, “is a toxic household dynamic that makes it impossible for Beatrice to benefit. Five percent. Also, bodily harm. One percent.”
“I don’t have to read the fucking report to know that’s too high, Joe,” Steven said, feeling a little anger on his own part.
Princess Aliya stood to the side of the block, tapping the long cane, one inch in diameter, across her palm. Princess Yasmin had succeeded in coaxing Beatrice, whose training and progress in owning her fantasies seemed to have kicked in, over the block, where she fastened the leather straps. Beatrice, her long blond hair now free of the niqab and flowing over her right shoulder, looked utterly incongruous in her lovely lingerie atop the whipping block, but also cock-stiffeningly alluring. Her arousal had gone up to 9: if the risks hadn’t been unacceptable, the scene might have ended up allowing for erotic growth in Beatrice and even in the princesses.
“I concur,” Joe said very dryly. “Fran, mobilize the seneschal. Zoe, put the Guard on standby. Steven, read.”
Steven didn’t want to remove his attention from the images on the monitors. Princess Yasmin and Princess Aliya were speaking to each other on the left, Beatrice’s face appeared in close-up in the middle, and on the right the seneschal put his hand to his ear as Fran spoke to him in a quiet voice nearly inaudible to Steven only two feet away but clearly heard as several thousand miles’ distance, asking him to get the sheikh to the courtyard.
Beatrice had her eyes closed. Her cheeks blazed scarlet and tears squeezed from the corners of her lids. Her hands made little fists, and her wrists seemed to strain a little against the leather. She’s putting herself into the fantasy, verifying that she can’t get away, Steven saw. Good girl.
The simultaneous translator in another part of the Institute’s control complex provided the subtitles on the left monitor.
Princess Yasmin: Aliya, you can’t.
Princess Aliya: Diyab certainly seems to think I can’t. But did he give me permission or not?
Princess Yasmin: Not without him here, Aliya! Not on her first day!
Princess Aliya: She looked Talitha in the eye. You heard that. I can barely tolerate a blond whore in my home. I cannot tolerate a blond whore who doesn’t know her station.
Their voices were soft and rapid. Steven wondered how much Beatrice could pick up from the tone—probably she could tell that she had an ally in Princess Yasmin, which would at least comfort her a little.
Princess Aliya spoke in firm English. “We will inspect you now. Yasmin, pull down those disgraceful panties.”
The seneschal spoke into Sheikh Diyab’s ear, now, and the sheikh frowned. Yasmin hooked her forefingers into the waistband of Beatrice’s black lace panties, worn at her master’s instruction over the suspenders of her garter belt, and pulled them down to the middle of her thighs. The thigh straps on this block, unlike those on a standard Institute whipping block, held the legs close together. Only a mere hint of the furrow of Beatrice’s pussy peeped out to greet Princess Aliya’s disapproving gaze and Princess Yasmin’s more ambiguous one.
Feeling that at least the threat of immediate ruin had abated, Steven did open the report on the princesses. He had to admit that yes, he had only skimmed it when Joe had first sent it over, thinking that the initial read on the sheikh’s domestic situation he had gotten from his thorough perusal of the prince’s own report had given him what he needed.
Princess Aliya is not by nature a vindictive person, but two facet
Joe was right. Steven definitely should have read this report more closely. On the screen, he saw Sheikh Diyab rise, an angry look on his face, his figure imposing in the traditional white robes into which he had changed before coming to the council. Expressions of shock ran around the table as his ministers received the news, subtitled on the monitor though the sound feed was muted, that he would continue the meeting later. Arab rulers had the prerogative of eccentricity, of course, but this prince had never exercised it before, and it caused an obvious stir.
In the courtyard, the inspection proceeded. Princess Aliya and Princess Yasmin stood behind Beatrice and regarded her naked bottom, still vividly marked from the whipping at her ass night. Princess Aliya spoke in Arabic.
Princess Aliya: Look at those welts.
Princess Yasmin: He must have had her whipped for some fault in her training.
The crawl below the picture on that monitor showed the arousal of the two princesses as estimated from the available image-analysis data. Aliya: 3. Yasmin: 8.
The senior wife switched to English. “Whore, why were you whipped?”
Beatrice gave a little sob. Her arousal fell to 7. “I… your highness…”
“Answer me, slut, or I shall cane you until you cannot walk.”
“He—”
Princess Aliya interrupted in fury. “If you mean my husband, the Sheikh of Rashan, you will call him his highness or my master in my presence.”
Beatrice gave a cry of alarm. The number in the upper right of the monitor showing her face, however, rose to 8. “My master said…”
Her voice trailed off in fear. Princess Aliya stepped forward and laid the cane across Beatrice’s bottom-cheeks. “What did my husband say?” she thundered.
“I said I wanted you and Yasmin to see a properly disciplined backside.” The sheikh stood in the middle of the courtyard, having practically run from the council chamber.
Princess Yasmin gasped as she turned to him and saw the fury in her husband’s face. She sank to her knees. “Diyab, please. I didn’t want to. I tried to stop her.” The crawl now showed her arousal as 10. Steven, relaxing now at last, felt a little pity for her that she probably wouldn’t get the punishment she clearly craved for herself.
Princess Aliya had turned, the cane still in her hand but no longer in contact with Beatrice’s backside. Her face had gone pale, and her voice had a quaver in it, though it remained defiant.
She began in Arabic.
Princess Aliya: “Diyab, you—”
He cut her off angrily. “Speak in English, Aliya. You will make Beatrice feel as at home as you can, from now on.”
Aliya snorted, and began again. “Diyab, you said I may punish your ass whore as befits a Western girl who receives men in the most shameful way. She disrespected Talitha, and she was slow to take off her clothing when I told her to, and now she will pay the price. You may cane her if you like, or I can do it.” She proffered the cane to the sheikh.
“How did she disrespect Talitha?” Sheikh Diyab’s face and voice had lost none of their wrath, and now an expression of fear crept onto his senior wife’s visage.
Again, though, she did her best to speak resolutely. “She looked Talitha in the eye.”
The sheikh’s eyes narrowed. “Aliya, if you think that is sufficient to warrant a caning by you, we are going to have serious problems here. Do you somehow think I don’t see your real purpose? Unfasten Beatrice, and get over the block yourself. Yasmin will strap you down and raise your robe.”
Princess Aliya’s eyes and mouth went wide. Her arousal, according to the crawl, went to 1. Very quickly, though, she closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes as if to match her husband’s expression. “No.”
“I’m not a fool, Aliya,” the sheikh said, seeming to gain control of his anger and to convert it to an exercise in cold logic. “I know the cane won’t have the same benefit for you as it would have for a girl like Beatrice. And I’m not going to summon servants to put you over the block. But I am going to cane you, because you do need to learn a lesson about my authority, full benefit or no.”
“No, you’re not, Diyab,” the princess said. Her voice seemed to lose some of its firmness, though, as if she had an idea of where her husband’s thoughts had begun to move. “We will just pretend this never happened.”
“Aliya,” her husband replied, in the same cold tone, “you are going to unfasten Beatrice and lay yourself down because I supply your allowance, and I decide when you may and may not leave the palace, and who may and who may not enter it.”
Princess Aliya dropped the cane and knelt beside Yasmin, though without the grace and without the penitent expression. “Diyab, please. I promise I won’t cane her. Just… don’t… please…”
Steven’s own eyes narrowed, and he returned to the report on the wives, to read the final paragraph.
Together, her anti-feminist overcompensation and her anti-colonialism could make Aliya more likely to punish Beatrice, perhaps even severely. Princess Yasmin may provide something of a counterbalancing influence, but her subordinate position, in combination with her junior standing and her own submissive nature, may mean that she goes along with Aliya’s desires.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Beatrice watched her master cane his wife’s bare bottom with a mixture of sympathy, relief, and panty-soaking arousal. When she had lain strapped down over the block herself, she had tried to hate the woman, and failed, and—to her surprise—felt relieved at her failure. In Princess Aliya’s eyes, when she had stolen a peek at them as Yasmin fastened her, Beatrice had seen hurt behind the wrath. In the sheikha’s voice she had heard it, too, whether the words came out in Arabic or in English.
She could tell that Princess Aliya didn’t love Diyab—she thought perhaps she could tell that as she herself tried to hate the princess, the other woman had done her best to hate her husband, but to no avail. But when Beatrice saw the strange, primitive situation from the perspective of the sheikh’s senior wife, she understood the pain. Princess Aliya didn’t want Diyab for herself except to the extent that she didn’t want to allow him a pleasure she herself thought degrading.
For that reason Beatrice didn’t feel guilty as she instinctively knelt in the courtyard to watch Princess Yasmin fasten the senior wife to the whipping block. Nor when she saw the diaphanous robe raised to reveal a still very trim backside and the hint of the—rather surprisingly, Beatrice thought with a blush—shaved pussy where Diyab had sired two fine sons. Beatrice didn’t feel guilty even as she saw the look of helpless arousal on the younger wife’s face, and recognized that like Beatrice herself Yasmin must have submissive fantasies—was probably much more comfortable with them than Beatrice. Nor did she feel remorse—why should she? Princess Aliya had wanted to flog Beatrice, hadn’t she?—even when Princess Yasmin handed Diyab the cane and came to kneel beside Beatrice.
As her master began to thrash his senior wife Beatrice certainly felt the same sympathy she always had when she watched another girl punished at the Institute. Princess Aliya’s struggles and cries, which went from stoic grunts to wailing pleas for mercy as her bottom displayed the consequences of her attempt to cane Beatrice, also brought terrible, shameful heat between Beatrice’s thighs and into the gusset of the lacy panties she had hurriedly pulled back up when the princess had released her. She did blush at that, but not because she felt sorry for the part she had played in the princess’ earning this bare-bottom lesson.
Diyab gave her twelve slow cuts of the wicked-looking cane, at a very slow pace, making the princess count them in English. He raised his arm high, and he brought the rattan down hard, so that a vivid double line crossed his wife’s bottom almost immediately, and she strained against the leather straps after each stroke as the pain in her rump mounted, the way Beatrice knew it did. The sheikha’s bottom clenched and unclenched as the sheikh punished her, and once Beatrice could see the dark bud of her sacrosanct anus peeping out.
When Princess Aliya’s cries reached their peak, around the eighth stroke, Beatrice found to her astonishment that Princess Yasmin had taken her hand, and had given it a gentle squeeze. “Call me Yasmin,” the junior wife whispered. “I think you’re so pretty.”
Beatrice couldn’t think of anything to reply, and Yasmin fell silent, but kept holding her hand for a few moments before dropping it again, making Beatrice wonder what might lie in store for her with this unexpected friend.
Finally, when a little pool of tears had formed on the beautiful tile of the courtyard under the princess’ face, Diyab laid the cane down across her back, and said to Yasmin, “Leave her there for an hour to think about her actions, Yasmin. I am going to take Beatrice to her room.”
Beatrice didn’t dare look up from the tile. Her face felt hot at the unmistakable implication of Diyab’s words. After flogging his senior wife, he wanted time alone with his concubine.
“Yes, Diyab,” Yasmin said. Then, “May I not come and watch?”
Beatrice’s blush grew deeper. Sex while others observed had been part of her life at the Institute, but in her master’s palace, where an ancient culture did its best to keep girls’ modesty intact, the idea seemed very shameful.
“No, Yasmin. Perhaps another time. Beatrice has just arrived, and I want to enjoy her without distractions.”
“Yes, Diyab. Beatrice…” Yasmin’s voice trailed off. “Diyab, may she look at me?”
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