said. "She is mad for Lord William, the Queen's eldest cousin, and can't bear the thought of being sent home. But there are others who are ever rebellious."
"Who are they?" Beauty asked, but before he could answer, she added quickly, though trying to sound indifferent, "Is Prince Alexi one of those who is rebellious?"
She could feel Leon's hand moving towards her buttocks, and now suddenly all those welts and sore places were brought to life as his fingers touched them. The oil burned slightly as Leon added droplets of it generously, and then those strong fingers commenced to work the flesh, with no regard for its redness. Beauty winced, but even this pain had its pleasure. She felt her buttocks shaped by his hands, lifted, separated, and then smoothed again. She blushed to think that it was Leon doing this who had been talking to her in such a civilized manner, and when his voice went on, she felt a new variant of agitation. "There is no end to it," she thought, "the ways of being humiliated."
"Prince Alexi is the Queen's favorite," said Leon. "The Queen cannot bear to be separated from him for very long, and though he is a model of good behavior and devotion, he is, in his own way, relentlessly rebellious."
"But how can that be?" Beauty asked.
"Ah, you must put your mind on the pleasing of your Lords and Ladies," Leon said, "but I shall say this: Prince Alexi appears to have surrendered his will as a fine slave must, but there is a core in Prince Alexi that no one touches."
Beauty was enthralled by this answer. She thought of Prince Alexi on his hands and knees, his strong back and the curve of his buttocks as he had been driven back and forth across the Prince's bedroom; she thought of the beauty of his face. "A core in him no one touches," she mused.
But Leon had turned her over now, and when she saw him bending down, so close to her, she felt bashful and closed her eyes. He was rubbing the oil into her belly and into her legs, and she pressed her legs together and tried to turn to the side.
"You'll become very accustomed to my ministrations, Princess," he said. "You will think nothing of being groomed in time." And firmly he pressed her shoulders to the pallet. His swift fingers smoothed the oil into her throat and into her arms.
Beauty opened her eyes cautiously to see him intent on his work. His pale eyes moved over her without passion but with an obvious absorption.
"Do you...derive pleasure from it?" she whispered, and was shocked to hear herself speak these words.
He emptied some oil into the palm of his left hand, and putting the bottle down beside him, he rubbed the oil into her breasts, lifting them and squeezing them as he had done her buttocks. She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. She felt him roughly massaging her nipples. She almost let out a little cry.
"Be still, my dear," he said matter-of-factly. "Your nipples are tender and must be slightly toughened. You've been subjected to very little sport so far from your love-stricken master."
Beauty was frightened by this. Her nipples felt painfully hard to her; she knew her face had colored darkly. It seemed all the feeling in her breasts swelled and pumped towards those tiny hard nipples.
Mercifully, Leon let go of her breasts with a hard squeeze. But then he parted her legs and rubbed the oil into her inner thighs, and this was even worse for her. She could feel her sex throbbing. She wondered if it gave off heat that he could feel with his hands.
She hoped he would be quick.
Yet even as she lay, red faced and trembling, he pushed her legs farther apart, and to her horror, parted the lips of her sex with his fingers as though inspecting her.
"O, please..." she whispered, turning her head from side to side, her eyes stinging.
"Now, Beauty," he scolded gently, "you must never never plead for anything from anyone, not even from your loyal and devoted groom. I must inspect you to see if you are sore, and as I thought, you are. Your Prince has been rather...devoted."
Beauty bit her lip and closed her eyes as he widened the orifice and now oiled it. She felt as if she were being pulled apart, and even under the plaster that tiny knot of feeling throbbed above the opening Leon's fingers had