Beauty gave an open-mouthed moan, her br**sts 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 br**sts, and pushing them closer to one another, touched both ni**les 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 taken his place against the bedpost.

"Now clasp your hands in the small of your back and keep them there," said the Queen. And she closed her hand over Beauty's bu**ocks just as she had closed her other hand over Beauty's br**sts. "And acknowledge my commands to you, Princess."

"Yes, your Highness," Beauty struggled to respond, but to her further shame her voice broke into sobs and she shivered trying to restrain them.

"And be quieter than that," said the Queen sharply.

The Queen commenced to spank her. One great hard slap after another fell on her bu**ocks, and if a paddle had ever been worse she could not remember it. She tried to be still, to be quiet, to show nothing, nothing, as she repeated that word over and over in her mind, but she could feel herself writhing.

It was as Leon had said with the Bridle Path; you always struggle as if you could escape the paddle, squirm away from it. And she heard herself crying out suddenly in gasps as the slaps stung her. The Queen's hand seemed immense and hard and heavier than the paddle. It shaped itself to her as it spanked her, and she realized she was frantic, full of tears, and cries, and all of this for the Queen to see in her cursed mirror. Yet she could not stop it.

And the Queen's other hand pinched her br**sts, stretched her ni**les one at a time, letting them go, and stretching them again, as the spanks went on and on until Beauty was sobbing.

Anything would have been better. Rushing through the hall at the end of Lord Gregory's paddle, the Bridle Path, even the Bridle Path, was better for there was some escape in the movement, and here there was nothing but the pain, her enflamed bu**ocks laid bare for the Queen who now sought out new spots, spanking on the left buttock and then the right, and then covering Beauty's thighs with smacks while Beauty's bu**ocks seemed to swell and throb unbearably.

"The Queen must tire. The Queen must stop," Beauty thought, but she had thought this only moments before and it went on, so that Beauty's hips were rising and falling, and she found herself squirming to the side only to be rewarded with sounder blows, more rapid blows, as if the Queen were growing ever more violent. It was as when the Prince had beaten her with the strap. It was becoming more frenzied.

Now the Queen worked on the very bottom of her bu**ocks, that portion which Lady Juliana had so deliberately lifted on her paddle, and she spanked hard and long on either side before moving up again and to the side, and then to Beauty's thighs and back again.

Beauty clenched her teeth to stifle her cries. She opened her eyes in frantic silent please seeing only the Queen's hard profile in the mirror. The Queen's eyes were narrowed, her mouth twisted, and then suddenly she gazed through the mirror at Beauty though she never ceased punishing her.

Beauty's hands broke their firm clasp and struggled to cover her bu**ocks, but the Queen at once moved them aside.

"You dare!" she whispered, and Beauty clasped them tight again, sobbing into the coverlet as the spanking continued.

Then the Queen's hand lay on the burning flesh without motion.

It seemed the fingers were still cold, yet they burned. And Beauty could not control her racing breath or her tears, and she would not open her eyes again.

"You shall tender me your apology for that little slip of decorum," said the Queen.

"I...I..." Beauty stammered.

"'I am sorry, my Queen.'"

"I am sorry, my Queen." Beauty whispered frantically.

"'I deserve only your punishment for it, my Queen.'"

"I deserve only your punishment for it, my Queen."

"Yes," the Queen whispered. "And you shall have it. But all and all..." The Queen sighed. "Was she not good, Prince Alexi?"

"Very well behaved, your Highness, I should think, but I await your judgment."

The Queen laughed.

She pulled Beauty up roughly.

"Turn around and sit in my lap," she said.

Beauty was astonished. She at once obeyed and realized she was facing Prince Alexi. But he did not matter to her in these moments. Shaken, sore, she sat shivering on the Queen's thighs, the silk of the Queen's gown cool under her burning bu**ocks, the Queen's left arm cradling her.

The Queen's right hand examined her ni**les, and Beauty looked down through her tears to see those white fingers again pulling the ni**les.

"I had not thought to find you so obedient," said the Queen, pressing Beauty to her ample br**sts, Beauty's hip against the Queen's smooth stomach. Beauty felt tiny as well as helpless, as if she were nothing in this woman's arms, nothing but something small, a child perhaps, no, not even a child.