Beauty's Punishment - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,2

of the village lying under a blue mist far below them. There was no rising sun, no clop of the horses hooves, no soft limbs of other struggling slaves mashed against her sore buttocks. There was only this organ splitting her, lifting her, and then driving her remorselessly to a silent yet deafening explosion of pleasure. Her back arched, her legs out straight, her nipples throbbing against Tristan’s warm flesh, her mouth filled with Tristan’s tongue at the same instant.

And dimly through the ecstasy, she felt Tristan’s hips go into their final irresistible rhythm. She could not bear any more, yet the pleasure was fragmented, multiplied, washing through her over and over. In some realm beyond thought, she felt she was not human. The pleasure dissolved the humanity she had known. And she was not Princess Beauty, brought as a slave to serve in the Prince’s castle. Yet most certainly she was, because this excruciating pleasure had been learned there.

She knew only the soft wet pulse of her sex and the organ lifting her and holding her. And Tristan’s kisses growing more tender, more sweet, more lingering. A weeping slave pressed against her back, hot flesh against her own, and another warm body crushed against her right side, a great sweep of silky hair brushing her naked shoulder.

“But why, Beauty?” Tristan whispered again, his lips still touching hers. “You must have done it deliberately, run from the Crown Prince. You were too admired, too accomplished.” His deep almost-violet-blue eyes were thoughtful, meditative, reluctant to reveal him completely.

His face was a little larger than that of most men, the bones strong, perfectly symmetrical, yet the features were almost delicate, and the voice was low and more commanding than the voices of those who had been Beauty’s Masters. But there was nothing but intimacy in the voice, and that, and Tristan’s long eyelashes, gold in the light of the sun, gave him a touch of enchantment. He spoke to Beauty as though they had been slave companions forever.

“I don’t know why I did it,” Beauty whispered in answer. “I can’t explain, but yes, it must have been deliberate.” She kissed his chest, quickly finding the nipples and kissing them both and then sucking them hard one after the other so that she felt his organ thump against her again, though he begged her softly for mercy.

Of course, the punishments of the castle had been voluptuous; it had been exciting to be the playthings of a rich Court, to be the object of relentless attention. Yes, it had been infatuating and confusing, the exquisitely tooled leather paddles and straps and the welts they caused, the exacting discipline that had so often left her crying and breathless. And the warm perfumed baths afterwards, the massages with fragrant oils, the hours of half-sleep in which she dared not contemplate the tasks and trials that awaited her.

Yes, it had been heady and seductive and even terrifying.

And surely she had loved the tall, black-haired Crown Prince with his mysterious unnamed dissatisfactions, and the lovely sweet Lady Juliana with her pretty blond braids, both of whom had been such talented tormentors.

So why had Beauty thrown it all away? Why, when she had seen Tristan in the stockade with its crowd of disobedient Princes and Princesses, all condemned to be auctioned in the village, had she deliberately disobeyed in order to be sent to the village with them?

She could still remember Lady Juliana’s brief description of the fate awaiting them:

“It is wretched service. The auction itself takes place as soon as they arrive and you can well suppose that even the beggars and the common louts about town are there to witness it. Why, the whole village declares a holiday.”

And then that strange remark from Beauty’s Master, the Crown Prince, who never dreamed at that moment that Beauty would soon disgrace herself: “Ah, but for all its roughness and cruelty,” he had said, “it is sublime punishment.”

Was it those words that had undone her?

Did she long to be hurled downward, away from the high Court of ornate and clever rituals imposed upon her, into some wilderness of disregard where the humiliations and spanking blows would come just as hard and just as fast but with a greater, more savage abandon?

Of course, there would be the same limits. Not even in the village could a slave’s flesh be broken; never could a slave be burned or truly harmed. No, her punishments would all enhance. And she knew by now just