They sucked at Beauty's mouth, plump lips, while Lady Juliana's teeth bit here and there as if tasting Beauty.
And then Beauty looked into Lady Juliana's eyes, so large and innocent and full of tender concern. Beauty moaned and laid her cheek against Lady Juliana's cheek.
"That is enough," said the Queen coldly.
Slowly, slowly, Beauty felt herself being released. She was being forced down, and languidly she let herself droop, until she sat on her heels on the floor, her legs parted slightly, her sex nothing but craving and pain to her.
She bowed her head. She feared above all that she would lose control of this mounting pleasure. She would blush, she would pant, she would writhe with it, unable to disguise it from those before her. So she parted her legs, feeling her pubis open and close like a hungry little mouth desperate for satisfaction.
Yet she did not care. She had known there would be no release for her.
It was enough to feel the rough wool of the carpet against her itching, stinging bu**ocks, and all life seemed but gradations of pain and pleasure. Her br**sts seemed to be tipped with weights, ad she let her head fall to the side, and a great ripple of relaxation ran through her. What more could they do to her with their games, it did not matter. "Do it," she thought, and her eyes melted into tears, the torchlight a glare before her.
She looked up.
Lady Juliana and the Queen stood side by side, the Queen's arms about Lady Juliana's shoulder. And they were both looking down at Beauty as Lady Juliana unbraided her hair and the little rosebuds fell free at her feet unheeded.
The moment seemed to go on forever.
Beauty rose to her knees again. She moved silently forward. She bent down with great delicacy and picked up one of the tiny rosebuds in her teeth, and she lifted her head in offering.
She felt the rose taken from her. And then the gentle cool kisses of both women.
"Very good, my darling," said the Queen with the first true affection.
Beauty pressed her lips to their slippers.
She heard through her drowsiness the Queen's command that she be taken by the Pages and chained to the wall of the dressing room nearby until morning.
"Spread her, and spread her wide," said the Queen.
And Beauty knew with a sweet despair that her craving would not for a long time leave her.
Chapter 17
WITH PRINCE ALEXI
THE QUEEN slept surely. Maybe Lady Juliana slept in her arms. The whole castle slept, and beyond it the villages and the towns, the peasants in their cottages and hovels.
And through the high, narrow window of the dressing room, the sky gave a moon-white light on the wall where Beauty was shackled, her ankles far apart, her wrists spread equally wide apart above her. She lay her head to the side, gazing at the long row of magnificent gowns, the mantles on their hooks, the circlets of gold and embroidery, the beautiful ornamental chains, and heaps upon heaps of lovely slippers.
And here she was among these things as if she were but an adornment, a possession, kept with other valuable possessions.
She sighed, and she deliberately rubbed her read against the stone wall, wanting somehow to punish it more so that after a few seconds she could feel the relief when she stopped doing this.
Her sex would not stop its throbbing. It was sticky with its own wetness. Poor Princess Lizetta in the Hall of Punishments, did she suffer worse than this? At least she was not alone in the darkness, and suddenly even those who must pass her, taunting her, teasing her, stroking her swelling sex, seemed to Beauty a desirable company. She strained and twisted her hips. It was no comfort to her, and she did not understand why she felt this craving when only a little while ago her pain had been so great she had kissed Lady Juliana's slippers. She flushed to think of Lady Juliana's angry words, those reproving spanks that somehow hurt her worse than the others.
And how the Pages must have laughed when a dozen Princess had probably played the little gathering game with the roses and done it better.
But why, why had Beauty at the very end picked up that last rosebud, and why had she felt her br**sts swollen with warmth when Lady Juliana took it from her lips? It had seemed in that moment that Beauty's ni**les were cruel little caps that prevented pleasure from breaking loose in her. Strange thought. They seemed too tight for her then, her ni**les, and her sex gaped and hungered and the moisture trickled down the inside of her thighs, and when she thought of Prince Alexi's smile, and Lady Juliana's brown eye, and the Prince's beautiful face, and even the Queen, yes, even the Queen's red lips, she felt herself burning in agony.
Prince Alexi's sex was thick and dark, like all of him, and his ni**les a dark, dark rose color.
She tossed her head, rolled it against the wall. But why had she picked up the rose, offered it to pretty Lady Juliana?
She stared forward in the darkness, and hearing a creaking sound very near to her, she thought she was imagining it.
But in the darkness of the near wall, a seam of light appeared and widened. The door had been opened, and Prince Alexi slipped into the dressing room. Unbound, free, he was standing before her, and very gently, he pushed the door closed behind him.