Beauty s Punishment - By Anne Rice Page 0,29

buttocks as, in a blur, I ran with the others.

We couldn't have been traveling very fast, but it seemed we were racing. Ahead of me I could see the limitless blue sky, the ramparts, and the high-seated drivers and occupants of passing carriages. And again there was that horrid sense of actuality, that we were true naked slaves here, not royal playthings. We were the groaning underbelly of a place so vast and vital and overwhelming it made the castle seem a monstrous confection.

Before me the Princes strained under their harnesses almost as if outdoing one another for speed, reddened buttocks jogging the long sleek horsetails back and forth, muscles standing out in their strong calves above the tight leather of the boots, horseshoes ringing on the cobblestones. I groaned as the reins jerked my head higher and the strap walloped the backs of my knees, and the tears flowed more freely than ever down my face so that it was almost a mercy to have the bit to cry against. The weights tugged at my nipples, knocked against my chest, sending ripples of sensation through me. I felt my nakedness perhaps as I'd never felt it before, as though the harnesses and reins and the horsetail only further revealed me.

The reins were given three jerks. The team slowed to a rhythmic trot as if it knew these commands. And winded and wet with tears, I fell into it gratefully. The strap licked at the Prince beside me now, and I saw him arch his back and lift his knees even higher.

And over the jumble of sounds, the clops of the shoes, the groans and outright cries of the other ponies, I could hear the thin rise and fall of the sound of the Master and Mistress talking together. The words weren't clear, only the unmistakable sound of a conversation.

"Head up, Tristan!" the Master said sharply, and there came that cruel jerk of the bit along with another through the ring in my anus, lifting me right off my feet for a moment, so I cried loudly behind the gag and ran fast when I was let down, the phallus seeming to enlarge inside me as if my body existed for no other purpose than to embrace it.

I sobbed against the gag, trying to catch my breath the better to measure it and weather the pace of the team. And there came the rise and fall of conversation again, and I felt utterly forsaken.

Not even the whippings in the soldiers' camp when I had tried to escape on the journey to the castle had violated me and debased me as this punishment. And the glimpse of those on the battlements above, leaning idly against the stone or pointing now and then to the passing coaches, only made my soul feel all the more frail. Something in me was being absolutely annihilated.

We rounded a turn, the road widening, the rush of horseshoes and rolling wheels growing louder. The phallus seemed to drive me, lift me, propel me forward, the long popping strap lapping my calves almost playfully. I seemed to have caught my breath, to have gotten a merciful second wind, and the tears streaming down my face felt cold in the breeze instead of scalding hot.

We were moving through the high gates, out of the village by another way than that through which I had entered with the other slaves that morning.

And I saw about me the open farmland, dotted with thatched cottages and little orchards, and the road beneath became freshly turned earth, softer under my feet. But a new sense of dread came over me. A warm sensation crawled over my naked balls, elongating and toughening my never-flagging organ.

I saw naked slaves tethered to plows or working on their hands and knees in the wheat. And the feeling of being utterly bereft intensified.

Other human ponies, rushing towards us and past us, evoked greater and greater trepidation in me. I looked like they did. I was merely one of them.

Now we were turning into a small road, trotting briskly towards a large half-timbered manor house with several chimneys rising from its high-pitched slate roof, and the strap was only flicking me now and then, stinging me and making my muscles jump.

With a fierce pull on the reins we were brought to a stop, my head snapped back as I cried out, the sound completely distorted by the thick bit, and I stood with the others panting and shivering as