clenched my teeth hard not to plead with some mortifying little cry, and then that sense of surrender returned, and I pleaded quietly with low sighs and moans. I had been a fool to think I would be let alone.
"You will wear these," she said, "until your Master sends for you. And if that weight slips from your cock, there will be only one reason for it, that your cock has gone soft and released the manacle. And your cock will be whipped for that, Tristan."
I nodded as she waited, unable to meet her gaze.
"Do you need that whipping now?" she asked.
I knew better than to answer. If I said no, she would laugh and take it as impertinence. If I said yes, I was sure she would be outraged and the whipping must follow.
But she had already lifted a little delicate white strap from beneath her dark blue apron. I gave a series of short sighs. But she whipped my penis this way and that, sending shocks through all my loins, my hips lifting towards her. All the little weights pulled at me, like fingers stretching my skin and tugging on my cock. And the organ itself was purplish red, jetting straight forward.
"That is only a little example," she said. "When on display in this household, you must be turned out properly."
Again I nodded. I bowed my head and felt the hot beads of tears at the corners of my eyes. She lifted a comb to my hair and ran it through carefully and gently, arranging the curls neatly over my ears and drawing them back from my forehead. "I must tell you," she whispered "you are easily the most beautiful Prince in the village. I warn you, young man, you're in good danger of being bought outright. But I don't know what you could do to prevent it. Misbehave and you need the village all the more. Thrash your handsome hips in charming submission and you make yourself just as seductive. Already, there may be no hope for you. Nicolas has wealth enough to purchase you for three years, should he so desire. I'd love to see the muscles in those calves after three years of pulling my coach, or Nicolas's little walks through the village."
I had lifted my head and I was staring down into her blue eyes. Surely she could see I was puzzled. Could we be made to remain here?
"O, he can make a good argument for keeping you," she said. "That you need the discipline of the village, or perhaps even only that he has at last found the slave he desires. He is no Lord, but he is the Queen's Chronicler."
There was a growing warmth in my chest, pulsing like the slow fire in my cock. But Stefan would never . . .
But then maybe Nicolas was in higher favor than Stefan!
"He has at last found the slave he desires." The words were crashing in my head.
But she left me to my own whirling, challenging thoughts in the little room and went out in the dim little hallway and up the dark steps, her burgundy skirts bright in the shadows for only a moment.
MISTRESS LOCKLEY'S DISCIPLINE
Beauty had almost completed her morning chores in the Captain's bedchamber when she remembered with a sudden shock her impertinence to Mistress Lockley.
The recollection came to her along with the faint sound of steps advancing towards the door of the Captain's room from the stairway. She was suddenly terrified. O, why had she been so insolent! All her resolve to be a bad, bad little girl abandoned her immediately.
The door opened and the pert figure of Mistress Lockley appeared, all fresh linen and lovely blue ribbons, her blouse brought down so low over her mounded breasts that Beauty could almost see the nipples. The most wicked smile was on Mistress Lockley's exquisite face, and she came right towards Beauty.
Beauty dropped the broom and shrank into the corner.
A low laughter erupted from her Mistress, and at once she had Beauty's long hair twined around her left hand and with her right hand she picked up the broom and thrust its prickly straws into Beauty's sex so that Beauty cried and tried to squeeze her legs together.
"My little slave with a tongue!" she said. And Beauty began to sob. But she couldn't free herself to kiss Mistress Lockley's boots and she didn't dare speak. All she could think of was Tristan telling her it would take a lot of courage