The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty Page 0,63

wordless pleas, but Lady Juliana's tone was angry, unsatisfied.

It was dreadful to be struck in anger.

"Hurry! Do you hear me!" Lady Juliana sounded almost contemptuous, spanking Beauty all the harder, and making little tisks now of impatience. Beauty's nipples scraped the carpet as she bent to obey, and with a shock she felt the toe of Lady Juliana's slipper in her pubis. She gave a startled cry and rushed back to the Queen with the rose as all about her it seemed was the muted laughter of the Pages and the Queen's higher laughter. But Lady Juliana had found the tender spot again, forcing that long pointed satin slipper right into Beauty's vagina.

Suddenly as Beauty turned and saw yet more roses scattered before her, her sobs went into muffled shrieks and she turned to Lady Juliana even as the paddle spanked her thighs and her calves, and kissed and kissed those pink satin slippers.

"What?" Lady Juliana said with genuine outrage. "You dare beg me for mercy before the Queen? Wretched, wretched girl!" She smacked Beauty's buttocks, but she had Beauty by the hair with her left hand and pulled her up, snapping her head back so that Beauty's knees went wide apart to keep her balance.

Beauty's open-mouthed sobs were choked and uneven. And she saw the paddle being passed to one of the Pages who offered the Lady a heavy broad leather belt immediately.

The belt struck Beauty's buttocks with a resounding wallop. Again it struck her. "Take another rose, another, two, three, four in your mouth at once and give them to your Queen immediately!"

Beauty ran to obey, and it seemed for a moment all perception left her. She was frantic to obey, to outdistance Lady Juliana's anger. It was hotter, more frenzied than the Bridle Path at its worst, and as she turned to gather more of the little roses, she felt the Queen catch her face in both hands and hold her still so that Lady Juliana could beat her.

It did not matter. She could not please. She deserved to be beaten. She quivered with every blow of the strap, yet, drenched with tears, she even lifted her buttocks to receive the punishment.

But the Queen was not satisfied still, and she turned Beauty around, her hand on Beauty's hair to pull her head back, as Lady Juliana now smacked Beauty's breasts and her belly and made the wide leather strap lick at her pubis.

The Queen held Beauty's hair fast.

"Open your legs!" Lady Juliana commanded.

"Oooooh..." Beauty sobbed aloud, but she obeyed, and desperately she thrust her hips forward to receive the angry punishment. She must please Lady Juliana, she must show her that she had tried. Her sobs came hoarse and brokenhearted.

And the strap smacked her pubic lips again and again, and she did not know what was worse, the little shock of pain, or the violation of it.

Her head was pulled so far back she was now resting it in the Queen's lap, and she felt her own sobs rising up out of her chest and out of her lips almost languidly.

"I am defenseless, I am nothing," she found herself thinking as she had thought it on the Bridle Path in the midst of the worst exhaustion. The belt licked her breast. It was no more than she could bear, and it did not even occur to her to lift her arms, though her pubis was flooded with warm pain. Her sobs had a delicious release for her.

She felt herself growing limp, yielding. She felt the Queen's hand caressing her chin, and then she realized Lady Juliana had dropped down before her in a flurry of pink silk and was kissing her throat and her shoulders.

"There, there," said the Queen, "my brave little slave..."

"There, there, my girl, my virtuous, lovely girl," said Lady Juliana at once as if given permission. The blows had stopped. Beauty's cries filled the room. "And you were good, very good, you tried very hard, and you struggled so hard to be graceful."

The Queen moved Beauty forward into Lady Juliana's arms, and Lady Juliana rose to her feet pulling Beauty up in her embrace, her hands pressed into Beauty's enflamed buttocks.

Lady Juliana's arms were soft and her lips were tickling Beauty, stroking her, and Beauty felt her breasts against Lady Juliana's plump breasts, and then Beauty seemed to lose all awareness of her own weight, her sense of balance.

She was drifting in Lady Juliana's arms, feeling the delicious cloth of the Lady's gown, and