Beauty s Punishment - By Anne Rice Page 0,53

to be bad all the time!

Mistress Lockley forced her forward on her hands and knees, and Beauty felt the broom between her legs driving her out of the little bedchamber.

"Get down those stairs!" The Mistress said under her breath, her ferocity scorching Beauty's soul so that she broke into sobs and scurried towards the stairway. She had to stand to descend the stairs, but the broom drove her just as maliciously, plunged into her, tickling and scratching at her tender nether lips as Mistress Lock-ley came right down behind her.

The Inn was empty, quiet.

"I've sent my bad children off to the Punishment Shop for their morning licking so I could tend to you!" came the Mistress's voice between her tightly clamped jaws. "We're going to have a little session in how to properly use that tongue when it is called upon to be used! Now into the kitchen!"

Beauty fell to her hands and knees again, desperate to obey, the angry commands pushing her to panic. No one had ever flashed upon her with such withering heat before, and to make matters worse, her sex was already brimming with sensation.

Sunlight filled the large immaculate room, pouring in from the two open doors to the rear yard, striking the fine copper pots and pans that hung from the hooks above, and washing over the iron oven doors in the bricks and the giant rectangular cutting block that stood in the middle of the tile floor, as high and large as the drinking counter outside where Beauty had first been punished.

Mistress Lockley brought her to her feet, and plunging the broom hard between her legs so that its stiff straws lifted her, she forced Beauty back against the cutting block and then lifted her legs so that Beauty quickly scrambled up on the wood that was covered with a light sprinkling of flour.

It was the paddle Beauty expected, and it would be worse than ever before, she knew, with that angry voice driving it. But Mistress Lockley spread Beauty out on her back, drew her hands over her head, and quickly tied them to the edge of the board, telling Beauty to spread her legs or have them spread for her.

Beauty struggled to get her legs wide. The flour on the smooth wood felt silky under her bottom. But her body was being stretched to its full length as her ankles were now tied, and Beauty felt panic again, bouncing helplessly on the smooth unyielding wood as she realized she could not free herself.

In a flurry of soft urgent cries she tried to plead with Mistress Lockley. But the moment she saw Mistress Lock-ley smiling down at her, Beauty's voice died in her throat and she bit her lip hard, looking up into the clear black eyes that quivered ever so slightly with laughter.

"The soldiers liked those breasts, didn't they?" Mistress Lockley said. And reaching with both hands, she pinched Beauty's nipples between thumb and forefinger. "Answer me!"

"Yes, Mistress," Beauty wailed, her soul quaking with the sense of her vulnerability to those fingers, the flesh around her nipples shriveling as the nipples themselves hardened to knots. A deep pang between her legs caused her to try to close her legs, when that was quite impossible. "Mistress, please, I will never - "

"Shhhh!" Mistress Lockley clamped her hand over Beauty's mouth and Beauty arched her back, sobbing against it. O, it was worse being bound; she could not make herself be still. But she stared at Mistress Lockley with wide eyes and tried to nod, though the hand held her.

"Slaves have no voice," said the Mistress, "until the Master or Mistress asks to hear that voice, and then you answer with the proper respect." She let go of Beauty's mouth.

"Yes, Mistress," Beauty answered.

The firm fingers took hold of her nipples again. "As I was saying," Mistress Lockley went on, "the soldiers liked these breasts."

"Yes, Mistress!" Beauty answered, her voice quavering.

"And this avaricious little mouth." She reached down and pinched shut the pubic lips so that the moisture overflowed and Beauty felt an itch as it trickled.

"Yes, Mistress," she answered breathlessly.

Mistress Lockley lifted a white leather belt and showed it to Beauty, like a tongue extending from her hand. And gathering Beauty's left breast from the top in her left fingers, she bunched the flesh and plumped it as Beauty felt the warmth suffusing her bosom. Beauty couldn't keep quiet. And the moisture between her legs trickled down into the crack of her buttocks. Her