And then I felt a wet, firm mouth on my own organ, sucking at it hard, as another pony's tongue lapped fiercely at my balls, and I didn't care anymore about who made the decisions. I was sucking the pretty boy, and being sucked, and my backside was being ground out hard, and I was happier than I had ever been in the Sultan's garden.

As soon as I came, it seemed, I was thrown over on my back. The pretty one had had enough sucking and wanted to take me. He smiled down at me as he drove in harder even than the first pony had, and my legs went up and over his shoulders as his hands cupped me and lifted me.

"You're a pretty one, Laurent," he whispered between his panting breaths.

"You're not bad yourself," I whispered back. My head was being held by another pony, whose c**k danced just above me. "Not so loud when you talk," whispered the pretty one, and then he came, his face blood-red, his eyes squeezed shut. He was pulled off me by one of the others before he was finished. Again a mouth was on me, arms locked around my hips. And my head was straddled, a c**k dancing just above me. I lapped at it with my tongue, made it dance more, then it came down, and I opened my lips to receive it, biting it a little, stabbing the tiny hole with my tongue, then sucking it.

I lost track of how many used me. But I kept an eye out for the pretty blond one. He was on his knees at a trough, washing his c**k in the fresh, flowing water. That was the way after it had been in another's backside. You had to clean it before you could put it in another mouth, I could see that. And I decided I'd get into his backside now before he got away. He laughed loudly when I slipped my arms under his arms and pulled him back away from the trough. I stabbed him hard and lifted him on my pelvis. "Like it, you little devil?" I whispered in his ear.

He was gasping. "Go easy!"

"The hell I will," I said. I ground his ni**les between my forefingers and thumbs as I rammed him, bouncing him up and down.

After I came, I threw him forward on all fours and smacked him hard over and over with my open hand until he scrambled away under the trees. I went after him.

"Please, Laurent! Have a little respect for an older steed!" he said. He lay on the soft earth looking up at the night sky, his chest heaving. I lay down on my elbow beside him.

"What's your name, pretty boy?" I asked.

"Jerard," he said. He looked at me, and the smile broke out on his face again. He was quite lovely. "I saw you harnessed up this morning. Saw you several times on the road. You're the finest stock in the place, you and Tristan."

"Don't you forget it." I smiled down at him. "And, next time we meet in this yard, you'll introduce yourself properly to me. You won't take what you want without asking."

I slid my hand under his shoulder and hurled him over on his face. I could still see the mark of my hand on his bottom. And I rested my chest on his back and spanked him as hard as I could over and over again.

He laughed and moaned at the same time, but the laughter died out as his cries got louder and louder. He struggled and twisted in the dirt. His backside was so narrow and lean I could cup the whole span of it in my hand when I wanted to rest. But I didn't want very much to rest. I spanked him harder probably than all the straps of the drivers who had used him.

"Laurent, please, please..." he gasped.

"You'll ask for what you want--"

"I'll beg! I swear it. I'll beg!" he cried.

I sat up and rested back against the trunk of the tree. Others were resting in that manner. I could see that only standing upright was forbidden.

Jerard lifted his head, hair all tangled in his eyes, and he smiled, rather bravely, I thought, but good-naturedly. I liked him. His left hand went back timidly to his bottom and massaged the redness. That was something I had never seen before.

"Nice to have a period of rest when you can do that sort of thing," I thought. I couldn't recall any opportunity in my castle or village or palace life when I'd been able to rub my bottom after a whipping.

"Does that feel good?" I asked.

He nodded. "You're a devil, Laurent!" he whispered. And he bent forward and kissed my hand as it rested in the grass. "Do you have to be as rough as our Masters?"

"I see a bucket over there by the trough," I said. "Get it in your teeth, and come back here and wash my cock, and then wash it again with your mouth. And hurry."

As I waited for him to carry out the commands, I looked around. Several other ponies were smiling at me as they rested on their haunches. Tristan was wrapped up in the arms of an enormous black-haired steed who was covering his chest with rather tender kisses. Another pony came near them as I watched, and the black-haired steed made the smallest threatening gesture and the intruder was sent running.

I smiled. Jerard was back. He bathed my c**k slowly and thoroughly. It was coming up again under the warm water.

I said to myself, as I played with his hair, "This is paradise."

Chapter 21

BEAUTY: COURTLY LIFE IN ALL ITS GLORY

BEAUTY, PROPERLY gowned and bejeweled, walked back and forth across the room, eating an apple, only now and then tossing her long sleek mane of blond hair over her shoulder and glancing at the robust and splendidly dressed young Prince who had come to her father's dreary castle to court her.

Such an innocent face.

In a low, fervent voice he spoke the predictable words--that he adored Beauty, would be most happy to make her his Queen, that their families would be overjoyed at the union.

A half hour ago Beauty had interrupted the nauseating diatribe to ask if he had ever heard of the strange pleasure customs of Queen Eleanor's kingdom.

He had stared at her with wide eyes.

"No, My Lady," he had said.

"Pity," she had whispered with an acidic smile.

She wondered now why she hadn't sent the Prince away. She had been sending men away since she had returned to her father's house. But her father, though weary and disappointed, only continued to write letters, to receive more guests, to open his doors to more suitors.

At night Beauty lay crying against her pillow, her waking and sleeping dreams the same: of the lost pleasures of the world she had known beyond the border of her parents' land, a subject which no one broached at court, which she herself never mentioned in public or private.

She stopped and looked at this young Prince now. She threw away the half-eaten apple. Something about the young man fascinated her. Of course he was handsome. She had let it be known she would marry only a handsome man. No one thought it unusual of a Princess with such endowments.