It covered her arm, but he pushed it away from her ni**les and pinched both of them hard between his finger and thumb, lifting her br**sts and letting them fall naturally as he did so.

Her face was positively smarting. But she knew what was to come would be worse.

"Spread your legs ever so slightly. You must be firmly planted on the ground," he said, "so that you can withstand the blows of the paddle."

She wanted to cry out, and through her tightly pressed lips her sobs sounded very loud to her.

"Beauty, Beauty," he crooned. "Do you want to please me?"

"Yes, my Prince," she cried, her lip trembling uncontrollably.

"Then why are you crying so when you haven't even felt the paddle yet? And your bu**ocks are only a little sore. Why, the Innkeeper's daughter had little strength."

She cried almost bitterly, as if to say in her soft wordless way that it was all-true but it was so difficult.

It was an explosion of stinging pain on the hot surface of her flesh, and the second spank came much more swiftly than she had thought possible and then there was the third and the fourth, and in spite of herself she was crying aloud.

He stopped and gently kissed her all over her face. "Beauty, Beauty," he said. "Now, I give you permission to speak...tell what it is you would have me know..."

"I want to please you, my Prince," she struggled, "but it hurts so, and I've tried so hard to please you."

"But, my darling, you please me by bearing this pain. I explained to you earlier that punishment would not always be for a transgression. Sometimes it would be for my pleasure only."

"Yes, my Prince," she cried.

"I shall tell you a little secret about the pain. You are as a tight bowstring. And the pain loosens you, makes you soft as I want you to be. It is worth a thousand little orders and scoldings, and you must not think of resisting it. Do you know what I am saying? You must give yourself over to it. With each crack of the paddle you must think of the next and the next and that it is you Prince doing it to you, giving you this pain."

"Yes, my Prince," she said softly.

He lifted her chin again without further ado and spanked her hard again and again on the bu**ocks. She felt her bu**ocks growing hotter and hotter with pain, and the cracks of the paddle sounded loud and somehow shattering to her, as if the sound itself were as dreadful as the pain. She could not understand it.

When he stopped again, she was breathless and almost frantic in her tears, as if the torrent of blows had so humiliated her it was far worse than even a greater pain would have been.

But the Prince folded her in his arms. And feeling his rough clothing against her, and his hard naked chest, and the strength of his shoulders, she felt such a soothing pleasure that her sobs grew soft and open mouthed and languid against him.

His rough breeches were against her sex, and she found herself pressing against him only to have him guide her gently back as if silently reproving her.

"Kiss me," he said, and such a shock of pleasure went through her at the closing of his open mouth over hers that she was almost unable to stand, letting her weight fall against him.

He turned her toward the bed.

"That's enough for tonight," he said softly. "We have a hard journey tomorrow."

And he told her to lie down.

It occurred to her suddenly that he was not going to take her. She heard him moving to the door, and this pleasure between her legs became suddenly an agony. But all she could do was cry softly into the pillow. She tried to keep her sex from touching the sheets because she feared that if it did she could not resist some undulating movement. And she felt sure he was watching her. Of course he'd meant her to feel pleasure. But without his permission?

She lay rigid, afraid, crying.

A moment later she heard voices behind her.

"Bathe her and put a soothing ointment on her bu**ocks," the Prince was saying, "and you may talk to the Princess if you like, and she to you. You are to treat her with the utmost respect," said the Prince and then she heard his steps dying away.

She lay too afraid to look behind her. The door was closed again. She heard steps. She heard the cloth in the basin of water.

"It's me, dearest Princess," said a woman's voice, and she realized it was a young woman, a woman her own age, and could only be the Innkeeper's daughter.

She buried her face in the pillow. "This is unbearable," she thought, and suddenly with all her heart she hated the Prince, but she was far too humiliated to think of it. She felt the girl's weight on the bed beside her, and just the rough cloth of her apron brushing against Beauty's bu**ocks caused the sore and stinging flesh to ache more keenly.

She felt as if her bu**ocks must be enormous, though she knew they were not, or giving off some terrible light with all their redness. The girl would feel their heat; this girl, of all girls, who had tried so hard to please the Prince by spanking her far harder than the Prince had realized.

The wet cloth stroked her shoulders, her arms, her neck. It stroked her back and then her thighs and legs and feet, the girl carefully avoiding her sex and the soreness.

But then after the girl had wrung out the cloth, she touched the bu**ocks lightly.

"O, I know it hurts, dearest Princess," she confided. "I'm so sorry, but what could I do when the Prince commanded me?" The rag was rough on the soreness, and Beauty realized this time that the Prince had left her with a score of welts. She moaned, and though she loathed this girl with a violent feeling she'd never had for anyone else in her brief life, the cloth nevertheless felt good to her.

The moist cloth was cooling her; it was like the gently massaging of an itch. And Beauty grew quiet as the girl continued to bathe her in a gently circular motion.

"Dearest Princess," the girl said, "I know how you suffer but he is so very handsome, and he will have his way, there's nothing to be done about it. Please talk to me, please tell me that you don't despise me."

"I don't despise you," Beauty said in a small spiritless voice. "How could I blame you or despise you?"

"I had to do it. And what a spectacle it was. Princess, I must tell you something. You may be angry with me, but maybe it will be a consolation to you."

Beauty closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the pillow. She did not want to hear it. But she liked the girl's voice, its respect and gentleness. The girl did not mean to hurt her. She could feel that awe in the girl, that humility Beauty had known in all her servants all her life. It was no different, not even with this one who had held her over her knee in a tavern and spanked her in the presence of crude men and villagers. Beauty pictured her as she remembered her from the kitchen door: her dark curly hair in ringlets about her little round face, and those big eyes full of apprehension. How fierce the Prince must have seemed to her! Why she must have been terrified that at any moment, the Prince would order her stripped and humiliated! Beauty smiled to herself, thinking of it. She felt a tenderness for the girl, and for her gentle hands, which were now bathing the hot, aching flesh so carefully.