We parted, and I saw Stefan on his hands and knees on the parquet floor, his reddened backside towards me. Bazile helped me off with my own dusty boots and I stepped into the cool air of the hallway.

I inspected Stefan’s position. Perfect, and his sobs were silent convulsions now. Only tiny whimpers and moans came from him. I regarded him for the longest moment, thinking consciously of how many times I’d been in this same position, and how the rigors of the village had exhausted me, how I’d knelt like that, feeling empty and hot all over, my backside blazing with pain, yet longing, positively longing, for another crack of the strap as though I could not live without it.

I drew a long staff with a leather phallus on the end of it, out of the bin for such things by the door. At once Bazile held open a jar of scented cream for me and I smoothed the cream over it.

“Did you put the other slaves to bed?” I asked. I’d sent word that he was to do this.

“Yes, my prince,” he said.

I slipped the phallus into Stefan’s little anus and forced him up the stairs on his hands and knees. This was working wonderfully. He fled before me, his chest heaving.

I could see that already he had infinitely more self-confidence and control than before. He was learning faster than I’d learned.

He was moist all over from his exertions and I could smell the warm clean scent of his pampered skin as I forced him into the bedchamber.

“Up on your feet!” I said.

He obeyed. His hands went at once to the back of his neck. I had no idea how the room must look to him, so much smaller than the great bedchambers of the castle, or the larger rooms of Tristan’s manor house, but it was finely appointed, and my three slaves were all abed belowstairs so I did not have to worry with them.

And so he stood, gleaming in the light of the oil lamps, dusty and full of ragged breaths, and I could see the glint of the light in his eyes.

I put my thumb on his chin. It appeared to quiet him.

“I like you like this,” I said placing my hand on his flat chest, loving the way it heaved under my fingers. “All nice and warm and humble from your punishments.”

I threw down the staff and the strap. I put one firm hand under his left thigh and grasped his chest with the other hand under his right arm and lifted him easily and took him to the bed and threw him down on his back. A ragdoll. A perfect ragdoll.

He struggled to keep his hands behind his neck.

Oh, how his cock was lathering, how it gleamed and how hard it was.

I opened my mouth and licked my lips and then I went down on it, feeling it hit the roof of my mouth, and I sucked it with all my skill.

He tried as all well-mannered slaves do to pull away gently before he came, but I held tight to his thighs and wouldn’t let him and finally he spent with the longest most raw groan that had yet come from him.

I lay on my elbow beside him. Bazile brought me some very cold ale, my favorite drink at this hour, and I savored quite a bit of it from the icy tankard. How costly was this ice brought down from the mountains. But it was worth whatever it cost to put it in the ice cellar. I gestured for Bazile to leave us.

This was the first time I’d seen Stefan’s cock in repose.

I leaned in close to him.

“I unseal your lips,” I said running my finger over his mouth. I love to press on lips, to feel their subtle resistance. “Now you will call me prince or sir. After all your years at Court, must I tell you that?”

“No, sir,” he said in a raw whisper. His cock was stirring again.

“Do you remember me?” I asked. “From years ago, when I served your cousin?”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

I drank another deep gulp of ale. Then I kissed him. I pressed my lips gently to his, and to my amazement he kissed me back warmly, a soft sigh coming from him.

I mounted him and held his face in my hands and kissed him ardently. His mouth opened as if his soul had opened and his body was his soul. And suddenly I was driving my tongue into him and I was hard again, hard as when I’d sucked his cock, and I felt mad for him. I was crazed with images of his rushing before me in the dark wood, of him gleaming on the Public Turntable, of him years ago at Court, so handsome, so brooding, so silky, and so like the Queen, and here he was now, beautiful in a new and astonishing way.

His cock was bumping against me, and my cock was hard in my clothes.

I stripped off the mask and threw it to the side.

He stared at me with his pale blue eyes, such an opaque blue, so beautiful, and I kissed him again. “Put your arms around me,” I said. At once I felt them enfolding me. We kissed and struggled and wrestled together, his cock against mine. Finally I could bear it no longer.

I turned him over with gruff thrusts and made him kneel up.

Bazile appeared as if by magic with the cream and I applied it to Stefan’s anus and to my cock and then I drove into him, my greased fingers closing on his cock, pulling on it, gripping it, and I rode him and brought him to climax with me.

We fell down in a heap of hot and dusty clothes and limbs. I could not stop kissing him, smoothing his hair back from his face. How handsome he was, and how fine and how much a part of all that had happened to me—because he knew those times, knew me when I was very young and used to play with me now and then, laughing when the Queen spanked and tormented me, and I had him now, had him completely. I threw him over on his face again and looked at his red bottom. He flinched when I pinched him. I had to kiss him again, had to have his face beneath me.

Suddenly his eyes welled with fresh tears and I could see him silently begging me to kiss him. And so I did, and we were at it again, the two of us, men of the same age, men of the same story.

“I think I love you,” I said, suddenly shocked to hear the words come from my lips, shocked to feel the increased heat of his kisses, the increased pressure of his embrace.

“And you, you . . . ,” I asked.

“Oh, I am yours,” he whispered. “Yours!”

Ah, what is happening here, I thought. But I didn’t stop kissing his lean exquisitely modeled face. I’m to love this one? Not beautiful Barbara or Bertram or Kiera, or Becca? But this one.

“Oh, I remember you, remember everything about you,” I said, “I remember when you sat and chatted with the Queen while I knelt at her feet, I remember your bright melancholy eyes and the way you surveyed the Court, so detached, so deeply troubled. . . .”

“Yes . . .” He cried softly. “I remember, and remember the day that you and Tristan were sent away, and I remember so many things, and then the years, the years were suddenly gone.” He opened his mouth on mine again.

This I had not planned, no, not this.

“I mean to strap you to that wall, dusty and coated in sweat as you are, and have you tormented all the long night,” I said. I gritted my teeth. “That’s what I mean to do.”

He gave no resistance.

I sat up and looked down at him. He’d closed his eyes. He lay there perfectly still. He had an elegance so like the old queen. His coloring and complexion were different, but it was from the same family mold that they came, of fine narrow features, only his eyes were larger and gentler than hers had ever been. Now he lay as if asleep, but he was not. And once again I touched his lips, marveling at how well made they were, and how softly pink, pink as the small nipples on his chest. What a fine thing he was, so much more delicately put together than Bertram, or so many other more eye-catching slaves. He was something hammered out of silver.

I called to Bazile.

“Strap him to the wall there, his backside against the wood, feet flat, legs wide, arms up, the X pose, the strap firm around his forehead to hold his head in place.”

“Yes, sir,” he said immediately.

Stefan gave no resistance at all as he was pulled off the bed. He did not look at me.

“But sir, don’t you want him bathed, groomed?” Bazile said as he carried him to the wall.

“Not tonight,” I said. “He’s to be tethered the way he is. He’s earned every particle of dust, every drop of sweat. In the morning, yes, he’ll be thoroughly scrubbed and oiled.”

I had my own attendants for this, my own bathing room for slaves belowstairs with its big bronze tub, and, of course, my own bathing chamber just down the hall on this floor.

Stefan fell against the wall without a bit of struggle. Again, he looked as if he were already asleep. And Bazile had him cuffed and locked in place within seconds. By morning, the dark shadow of his beard would be rough, sublimely rough.

“Now, call Kiera. I’m going to bathe. And after I’m asleep, you’re to wake him every three hours, spank his cock and tease him, then drain it completely. By daylight, I want him sucked at least three times. I want nothing left in him. You know what I expect of you.”

“Yes, sir.” Bazile’s lips curled in a secretive little smile, but not before I caught it. “And tease him plenty, whenever you have a mind to.”

I cannot fall in love with you, I thought as I looked at him. But I wanted his cock in my mouth now. I wanted him moaning under me. I wanted to measure the tightness of that anus again with my cock.

Now who was being punished? Who was being tortured?

All the next day, he slept, and most of the evening.

No potion needed for him. Much healing ointment was put on his sore skin. Again my grooms and slaves suckled him and emptied him of tension and vitality. By the next morning, he was restless but utterly compliant.