"Yes, my Prince," she said, but she was in great distress. He stroked her br**sts, pinching them firmly now and then, and kissed her until he could feel her body struggling against him, and feel her ni**les growing hard. It seemed she wanted to speak.
"What is it, Beauty?"
"Pleasing you, my Prince, pleasing you..." she whispered, as though her thoughts had spread into a delirium.
"Yes, pleasing me, that is your life now. How many of those in the world know such clarity, such simplicity? You please me and I shall always tell you exactly how to please me."
"Yes, my Prince," she sighed. But she was crying again.
"I will treasure you all the more for it. The girl I found in the castle room was nothing to me such as you are now, my devoted Princess."
But the Prince was not entirely satisfied with the way in which he was instructing Beauty. He told her when they reached another town at nightfall that he was going to strip a little more dignity away from her to make it easier for her.
And while the townspeople pressed their faces to the leaded glass windows of the Inn, the Prince had Beauty wait on his table.
On her hands and knees she hurried across the rough boards of the Inn floor to fetch his plate from the kitchen. And though she was allowed to walk back with it, she was again on all fours to fetch his flagon. The soldiers devoured their supper, throwing silent glances at her by the light of the fire.
She wiped the table for the Prince and when a morsel of food spilled from his plate to the floor, he commanded Beauty to eat it. With tears spilling from her eyes, Beauty obeyed, and then he gathered her, still on her knees, into his arms and rewarded her with dozens of wet and loving kisses. Obediently she put her arms around his neck.
But this little morsel spilling had given him an idea. He ordered her to quickly fetch a plate from the kitchen again, and then told her to lay it on the floor at his feet.
He put food for her there from his plate, and told her to lift her heavy hair behind her shoulders and eat it only with her mouth.
"You are my kitten," he laughed gaily. "And I would forbid you all those tears if they weren't so beautiful. Do you want to please me?"
"Yes, my Prince," she said.
With his foot he pushed her plate several paces away and told her to turn her bu**ocks to him as she continued her meal. He admired it, realizing the red marks from her spanking had almost healed. With the toe of his leather boot, he nudged at the silken hair he could see between her legs, felt the moist plump lips beneath the hair, and sighed, thinking her so very beautiful.
When she had finished her meal, with her lips she pushed the plate back to his chair as he ordered her to do it, and then he wiped her lips himself and fed her some wine from his cup.
He watched her long beautiful throat as she swallowed, and kissed her eyelids.
"Now listen to me, I want you to learn from this," he said. "Everyone here can see you, all your charms, you're aware of it. But I want you to be very aware of it. Behind you, the townspeople at the windows are admiring you as they did when I brought you through the town. This should make you proud of yourself, not vain, but proud, proud that you have pleased me, and caught their admiration."
"Yes, my Prince," she said when he paused.
"Now think, you are very naked and very helpless, and you are mine completely."
"Yes, my Prince," she cried softly.
"That is your life now, and you are to think of nothing else, and regret nothing else. I want that dignity peeled away from you as if it were so many skins of the onion. I don't mean that you should ever be graceless. I mean that you should surrender to me."
"Yes, my Prince," she said.
The Prince looked up at the Innkeeper who stood at the kitchen door with his wife and his daughter. They came to attention at once. But the Prince looked only at the daughter. She was a young woman, very pretty in her own way, though nothing compared to Beauty. She had black hair and round cheeks, and a very tiny waist, and she dressed as many peasant women did, in a low-cut ruffled shirtwaist, and a short broad skirt that revealed her smart little ankles. She had an innocent face. She was watching Beauty in wonder, her big brown eyes moving anxiously to the Prince and then shyly back to Beauty who knelt at the Prince's feet in the firelight.
"Now, as I told you," the Prince said softly to Beauty, "all here admire you, and they enjoy you, the sight of you, your plump little rear, your lovely legs, those br**sts which I cannot stop myself from kissing. But there is no one here, not the lowliest, who is not better than you, my Princess, if I command you to serve him."
Beauty was frightened. She nodded quickly as she answered "Yes, my Prince," and then very impulsively she bent and kissed the Prince's boot, but then she appeared terrified.
"No, that is very good, my darling," the Prince stroking her neck, reassured her. "That is very good. If I allow you one gesture to speak your heart unbidden it is that one. You may always show me respect of your own accord in that manner."
Again Beauty pressed her lips to the leather. But she was trembling.
"These townspeople hunger for you, hunger for more of your loveliness," the Prince continued. "And I think they deserve a little taste of it that will delight them."
Beauty kissed the Prince's boot again, and let her lips rest there.