The belt struck Beauty's bu**ocks 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 bu**ocks 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 br**sts 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 bu**ocks.

Lady Juliana's arms were soft and her lips were tickling Beauty, stroking her, and Beauty felt her br**sts against Lady Juliana's plump br**sts, 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 her rounded limbs beneath it.

"O, sweet little Beauty, my Beauty, you are so good, so very good," the Lady whispered to her. And her lips pried open Beauty's lips, and her tongue touched the inside of Beauty's mouth as her fingers pressed harder into Beauty's bu**ocks. Beauty's wet sex was pressed against Lady Juliana's gown, and she felt the hard mound of Lady Juliana's sex. "Blessed Beauty, O, you do love me, don't you, I love you dearly."

Beauty could not stop herself from throwing her arms about Lady Juliana's neck. She felt the prickling of those blond braids, but Lady Juliana's skin was plump and soft, and her lips strong and silken.

They sucked at Beauty's mouth, plump lips, while Lady Juliana's teeth bit here and there as if tasting Beauty.

And then Beauty looked into Lady Juliana's eyes, so large and innocent and full of tender concern. Beauty moaned and laid her cheek against Lady Juliana's cheek.

"That is enough," said the Queen coldly.

Slowly, slowly, Beauty felt herself being released. She was being forced down, and languidly she let herself droop, until she sat on her heels on the floor, her legs parted slightly, her sex nothing but craving and pain to her.

She bowed her head. She feared above all that she would lose control of this mounting pleasure. She would blush, she would pant, she would writhe with it, unable to disguise it from those before her. So she parted her legs, feeling her pubis open and close like a hungry little mouth desperate for satisfaction.

Yet she did not care. She had known there would be no release for her.

It was enough to feel the rough wool of the carpet against her itching, stinging bu**ocks, and all life seemed but gradations of pain and pleasure. Her br**sts seemed to be tipped with weights, ad she let her head fall to the side, and a great ripple of relaxation ran through her. What more could they do to her with their games, it did not matter. "Do it," she thought, and her eyes melted into tears, the torchlight a glare before her.

She looked up.

Lady Juliana and the Queen stood side by side, the Queen's arms about Lady Juliana's shoulder. And they were both looking down at Beauty as Lady Juliana unbraided her hair and the little rosebuds fell free at her feet unheeded.

The moment seemed to go on forever.

Beauty rose to her knees again. She moved silently forward. She bent down with great delicacy and picked up one of the tiny rosebuds in her teeth, and she lifted her head in offering.

She felt the rose taken from her. And then the gentle cool kisses of both women.

"Very good, my darling," said the Queen with the first true affection.

Beauty pressed her lips to their slippers.

She heard through her drowsiness the Queen's command that she be taken by the Pages and chained to the wall of the dressing room nearby until morning.

"Spread her, and spread her wide," said the Queen.

And Beauty knew with a sweet despair that her craving would not for a long time leave her.

Chapter 17

WITH PRINCE ALEXI

THE QUEEN slept surely. Maybe Lady Juliana slept in her arms. The whole castle slept, and beyond it the villages and the towns, the peasants in their cottages and hovels.

And through the high, narrow window of the dressing room, the sky gave a moon-white light on the wall where Beauty was shackled, her ankles far apart, her wrists spread equally wide apart above her. She lay her head to the side, gazing at the long row of magnificent gowns, the mantles on their hooks, the circlets of gold and embroidery, the beautiful ornamental chains, and heaps upon heaps of lovely slippers.

And here she was among these things as if she were but an adornment, a possession, kept with other valuable possessions.

She sighed, and she deliberately rubbed her read against the stone wall, wanting somehow to punish it more so that after a few seconds she could feel the relief when she stopped doing this.