"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 bu**ocks, 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 bu**ocks 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 bu**ocks 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 br**sts, lifting them and squeezing them as he had done her bu**ocks. She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. She felt him roughly massaging her ni**les. She almost let out a little cry.

"Be still, my dear," he said matter-of-factly. "Your ni**les 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 ni**les felt painfully hard to her; she knew her face had colored darkly. It seemed all the feeling in her br**sts swelled and pumped towards those tiny hard ni**les.

Mercifully, Leon let go of her br**sts 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 broadened. "If he touches it, I shall die," she thought, but he was quite careful not to do that, though she felt his fingers entering her, and massaging the lips of her vagina.

"Poor darling slave," he whispered to her with feeling. "Now sit up. If I were to have my way, you would rest. But Lord Gregory wants you to see the rest of the Training Hall and the Hall of Punishments. Let me finish your hair quickly."

He began to brush Beauty's hair and arrange it in coils on the back of her head as she sat, still trembling, her knees drawn up, and her head bowed.

Chapter 10

THE TRAINING HALL

BEAUTY WASN'T certain that she hated Lord Gregory. Perhaps there was something comforting in his air of command. What would it be like to be here without someone who directed her so completely? But he appeared obsessed with his duties.

As soon as he took her out of Leon's hands, he gave her two gratuitous blows with the paddle before ordering her to her knees to follow him. She was to keep close to the heel of his right boot, and she was to observe all that was around her.

"But you must never look at the faces of your masters and mistresses, you must never try to meet their eyes, and there is not to be a sound out of you," he directed, "save your answers to me."

"Yes, Lord Gregory," she whispered. The stone floor beneath her was swept very clean and polished, but it hurt her knees nevertheless because it was stone. Yet she followed him at once past the other beds on which slaves were being groomed, and the baths in which two young men were being bathed, just as she had been bathed, their eyes flashing over her with mild curiosity as she risked a glance at each of them.

"All handsome," she mused.

But when a stunningly beautiful young woman was driven across her path, she felt a hot flush of jealousy. This was a girl with a mane of silvery hair much fuller and curlier than Beauty's, and as she was on her knees, her huge magnificent br**sts hung down showing their large pink ni**les to great advantage. The Page who drove her with the paddle seemed very engaged with her, laughing at her little cries, and forcing her to move faster with the force of his blows as well as the mocking and cheerful commands he gave her.

Lord Gregory paused as if he, too, enjoyed the sight of this girl as she was brought up, and into the bath, her legs forces apart as Beauty's had been. Beauty could not help but notice her br**sts again, and how large were the pink ni**les. The girl's hips were ample for her size, and to Beauty's amazement, she was not really crying as she was lowered into the water. Her moans were more complaints as the paddle still smacked her.