Beauty's Punishment - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,1

he couldn’t help but think of the glee of the villagers.

All year the villagers saved their money for this day, when only a few coins would purchase, for the whole summer long, a pampered slave who had been chosen for the Court, trained and groomed for the Court, and must now obey the lowliest kitchen maid or stable boy who bid high enough at the auction.

And what an enticing group they were this time, their rounded limbs still fragrant with costly perfume, pubic hair still combed and oiled, as if they went to be presented to the Queen herself and not a thousand leering and eager villagers. Cobblers, Innkeepers, merchants awaited them, determined to exact hard labor for their money as well as pretty looks and abject humility.

The cart jostled the crying slaves, tumbled them together. The distant castle was now no more than a great gray shadow against the lightening sky, its vast pleasure gardens concealed by the high walls that surrounded it.

And the Commander smiled as he rode nearer to the thicket of lovely shaped calves and high-arched feet in the cart, seeing a half dozen splendid unfortunates pressed to the very front rail with no hope at all of escaping the soldiers’ straps as the others crowded against them. All they could do was squirm under the playful assault, baring hips and backsides and bellies again to the sting of the belts as they bowed their tear-stained faces.

It was a luscious sight indeed, rendered all the more interesting, perhaps, by the fact that they didn’t really know what lay in store for them. No matter how much Court slaves were warned about the village, they were never really prepared for the shocks that awaited them. If they had really known, they would never, never have risked the Queen’s displeasure.

And the Commander couldn’t help but think ahead to the end of summer when, thoroughly chastened, these same wailing and struggling young men and women would be brought back with heads bowed and tongues silent in utter submission. What a privilege it would be then to whip them one by one to press their lips to the Queen’s slipper!

So let them wail now, the Commander mused. Let them twist and turn as the sun rose over the rolling green hills and the cart lumbered ever faster down the long road to the village. And let the pretty little Beauty and the majestic young Tristan cleave to each other in the very middle of the press. They would soon learn what they had brought upon themselves.

He might even stay for the auction this time, the Commander thought, or at least just long enough to see Beauty and Tristan separated and hoisted one after the other to that block as they deserved, and sold off to their new owners.

BEAUTY AND TRISTAN

BUT, BEAUTY, why did you do it?” Prince Tristan whispered. “Why did you disobey deliberately? Did you want to be sent to the village?”

All around them in the rolling cart the Princes and Princesses whimpered and bawled hopelessly.

But Tristan had worked loose the cruel little leather bit that had gagged him, and let it drop to the floor. And Beauty at once did the same, freeing herself of the mean device with the aid of her tongue and spitting it away from her with delicious defiance.

After all, they were condemned slaves, were they not, so what did it matter? They had been given by their parents as naked tributes to the Queen, told to obey during their years of service. But they had failed. They were now condemned to hard labor and cruel use by the common people.

“Why, Beauty?” Tristan pressed. But no sooner did he ask the question again than he covered Beauty’s open mouth with his own so that Beauty could only receive the kiss, standing on tiptoe, Tristan’s organ lifting her moist sex which hungered for him desperately. If only their hands were not bound, if only she could embrace him!

Suddenly Beauty’s feet no longer touched the floor of the cart, and she tumbled forward against Tristan’s chest, riding him, the throbbing inside her so violent that it obliterated the cries and loud wallops of the mounted soldiers’ leather straps, and Beauty felt her breath sucked up and out of her.

For eternity she seemed to float, unanchored to the real world of the immense creaking wooden cart with its high wheels, the taunting guards, the paling sky arching high over the soft dark hills and the dim prospect