The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty Page 0,58

Training Hall who could not endure being so examined. Yet she did not protest; her whimpers were faint and uncertain.

The Queen commanded her to turn over.

Blessed concealment, that she could hide her face in the pillows.

But those cool, commanding hands were playing with her buttocks now, opening them, touching her anus. "O, please," she thought desperately, and she knew that her shoulders shook with her silent crying. "O, this is dreadful, dreadful!"

With the Prince, finally, she had known what was wanted.

On the Bridle Path, finally, she had been told what was wanted. But what did this wicked Queen want of her, that she suffer, that she cringe, that she offer herself or merely endure? And the woman despised her!

The Queen massaged her flesh, prodding it, testing it as if for thickness, softness, resilience. She tested Beauty's thighs in the same manner, and then pushed Beauty's knees so far apart and high on the bed that Beauty's hips rose and she felt she was squatting, sprawled apart, over the coverlet, her sex protruding, hanging down, her buttocks surely split so that she resembled a ripe fruit.

The Queen's hand was under her sex as if weighing it, feeling the roundness and heaviness of the lips, pinching them.

"Arch your back," said the Queen, "and lift your buttocks, little cat, little cat in heat."

Beauty obeyed, her eyes flooded with tears of shame. She was trembling violently as she took a deep breath, and against her will felt the Queen's fingers commanding her passion, squeezing the flame so it burned hotter. Surely Beauty's pubic lips were swelling, their juices flowing, no matter how bitterly she struggled against it!

She did not want to give anything to this wicked woman, this witch of a Queen. To the Prince she would yield; to Lord Gregory, to nameless and faceless Lords and Ladies who showered her with compliments, but to this woman who despised her...!

But the Queen had sat back on the bed beside Beauty, and hastily she gathered up Beauty as if she were a floppy doll and threw her over her lap, her face away from Prince Alexi, her buttocks surely still exposed to his scrutiny.

Beauty gave an open-mouthed moan, her breasts rubbed against the coverlet, her sex throbbing against the Queen's thigh. It was as if she were some toy in the Queen's hands.

Yes, it was exactly like being a toy, only she was alive, she breathed, she suffered. She could imagine how she appeared to Prince Alexi.

The Queen lifted her hair. She ran a finger down Beauty's back to the tip of her spine.

"All the rituals," the Queen said in a low voice, "the Bridle Path, the stakes in the garden, the wheels, and then the Hunts in the Maze, and all the other clever games devised for my pleasure, but do I ever know a slave until I have this intimacy with the slave, the intimacy of the slave over my lap ready for punishment? Tell me, Alexi. Shall I spank her with my hand only to sustain this intimacy? Feel her stinging flesh, its warmth, as I watch it change color? Shall I use the silver-back mirror, or one of a dozen paddles that are all excellent for the purpose? What do you prefer, Alexi, when you are over my lap? What is it you hope for even as you are crying?"

"You may hurt your hand if you spank her that way," came Prince Alexi's calm answer. "May I get you the silver mirror?"

"Ah, but you do not answer my question," the Queen said. "And do get me the mirror. I shall not spank her with it. Rather I shall see her face with it as I spank her."

In a blur, Beauty saw Prince Alexi move to the dressing table. And then before her, propped against a silk pillow, was the mirror, tilted so she could see the Queen's smooth white face in it distinctly. The dark eyes terrified her. The Queen's smile terrified her.

"But I shall show her nothing," Beauty thought desperately, shutting her eyes, the tears squeezed out down her cheeks.

"Surely, there is something superior about the open hand," the Queen was saying, her left hand on Beauty's neck, massaging it. She slipped it down under Beauty's breasts, and pushing them closer to one another, touched both nipples with her long fingers. "Have I not spanked you with my hand as hard as any man, Alexi?"

"To be sure, your Highness," he answered softly. He was behind Beauty again. Perhaps he had