Beauty’s Kingdom (Sleeping Beauty #4)(30)
Author: Anne Rice

Her breasts were plump and delicious but pink as though they’d been gently spanked or whipped. I saw she had a phallus tucked into her with a large crest of flowers positioned right in front of her pubic lips, the whole held in place by thin straps leading to a belt that circled her waist.

How did I know there was a phallus there hidden inside of her? I could tell by the way she twitched and moved even as she stood still, her face flooded with a lovely blush and her eyes glazed.

She looked shyly at me as she refilled the cup.

“That is good,” I said as I drank another deep gulp.

There came more laughter from the tents behind us.

“Oh, those games!” said Alexi.

I didn’t want to see that now, though I knew I would want to see all of the tents later.

I wanted only to see the turntable, and the Captain, I realized suddenly, was blocking my view.

I stepped around him. The crowd was thickest near the turntable, possibly some fifteen or twenty deep before it thinned out.

There had been a break in the entertainment when we’d arrived, but the whipping master now motioned for a lovely princess or lady or “little girl” to come up the carpeted and gilded steps, and she did—sublimely flustered and blindingly succulent with rounded ivory limbs.

The whipping master, even with his gray-and-yellow livery, wore a great leather apron, but it was worked all over with gilding and yellow designs against a gray background.

The paddle in his hand was as I remembered, large and wooden, but it too was covered now in gold. And as he turned it this way and that for the roaring crowd, I saw that one side of the paddle was studded with what seemed tiny pearls.

The other side, thankfully for the shivering little girl, was smooth.

She had to kneel just as we had knelt—free, over from the waist with a small square pillar to support her chin. The pillar was carved and polished and had its share of gold worked into it, and there appeared to be a little cushion of some soft red stuff on the top. Not just the grainy wood.

I pressed closer, but not too close. I didn’t want the men and women to block my view. I was back far enough where I might see all.

The little girl obeyed the whipping master submissively and almost gracefully, at once clasping her hands in the small of her beautifully arched back. Her little hindquarters were exquisitely displayed, and no one came to bind her calves to the floor.

Her little upturned face was very red, however, and her eyelids were fluttering. How I remembered my eyes being so tightly shut that first time, and yet they had kept opening, no matter what I did, no matter how many times I’d closed them, opening as if I had to see the crowds as well as hear them, the hundreds of people gathered there as they were gathered around now.

A liveried groom stepped up with a large bowl in his yellow-gloved hands. Out of the bowl, he scooped a thick cream which he now applied to the hindquarters of the quivering girl, vigorously rubbing it into her flawless skin.

The whipping master had wavy white hair and a florid complexion and he cried out something I couldn’t catch that made the crowd roar. He placed his large meaty hand on the girl’s neck, her soft long bronze curls spilling down in front of her on either side of the pillar where her chin rested.

Then down came his merciless paddle, with the smooth side towards the girl, and he spanked her thighs so hard that he lifted her knees off the wood. The crowd cheered and clapped.

One blow after another came at the girl in the same way, lifting her, forcing her up and off the wood, and letting her drop again, until finally she all but lost her balance and sank to the boards.

I could hear the dark rumble of the man’s voice but not what he said.

The girl scrambled to regain her position.

And for the first time, by means of his foot pedal, the man spun the turntable to give the crowd to the far right a good look. Then back again, he turned her, as he was obviously right-handed, and down came the paddle again.

“Prince,” the Captain whispered.

It was a shock hearing his voice.

I realized that I had put my hands to my lips.

“Quiet, please, Captain, not now,” I said.

A woman’s voice near me said, “Captain, he wishes to watch!”

On went the spanking on the turntable, the girl’s tears flooding, but she did not break form. She couldn’t keep her calves still, or her feet; she was dancing, as they call it. She couldn’t help it. Dancing. But her little knees stayed in place.

The table was spun again and again.

The crowd was counting the blows aloud now and clapping loudly in time with each one.

It was a fierce paddling, and the whipping master was loving it, and I knew what the girl was feeling, I knew how time had stopped for her, how the very concept of time was now beyond her reach. But I was awestruck at her control and her form. Memories paled and vanished in the bright glare of her perfect ivory skin, her little fingers twisting, but her hands never breaking form, and her sweet delicate face awash with glistening tears.

I could scarcely breathe.

Suddenly the whipping master raised the paddle and turned it. Now the darling little bottom would get the prickly pearls.

The crowd cheered. The pearl-encrusted wood spanked her and she jumped helplessly and I thought I heard a high squeal come from her but in all the noise I couldn’t be sure. The crowd loved it, and random clapping broke out all over.

Far off to my right I saw Prince Roger watching, with a handsome lady beside him.

“And how many of you,” I whispered under my breath, “wish you were up there in her place?”

No one could hear that faint whisper or so I prayed. But in truth I didn’t care.

My memories for the moment were not present. I saw only her—jumping, dancing, struggling, but never breaking form, her breasts shivering, such tender breasts shivering. The nipples of my chest felt like they’d explode with heat. My cock might have come if I’d dare to move and risk its rubbing against my clothes.

It was over. Now would come the part, I feared, that I truly loathed.

But it didn’t happen.

As she knelt shivering and sobbing, the crowd threw only gold coins at her, pelting her with them from all sides. She was lost in a rain of glittering coins.

There was no refuse as there had been in my time, none of those rotten apples, and eggs or bits of potato or cabbage, pitched at her.

I felt myself weak suddenly with relief. I hadn’t come, no, of course not, but my body had relinquished the heights and was settling down. My nipples throbbed and my legs were weak.

“They don’t heave their garbage at the slave anymore,” I blurted out.

“No, that’s not done now,” said the woman who was near me. “The King did away with that. He thought it vulgar and unnecessary and filthy as well. But anyone can buy little gilded wood tokens for a half penny to throw, and many do.”

I glanced to my left to see her standing beside the Captain, one of those superb truly red-haired women who have clear blemish-free and creamy skin. She was very young and her fashionable gown revealed the fullness of her magnificent breasts exquisitely. Her green eyes were large and brilliant in the sun, and her lips were rouged. A peerless beauty, dressed in gaily printed silk and gold with glistening silk balloon sleeves. Even her slippers were gold, glinting in the sun.

“Let me present Lady Eva, Prince,” said Alexi.

“Ah, yes, my pleasure, my lady,” I said, but I kept glancing back to the turntable, and the incomparable Lady Eva gestured for me please to continue watching, and so I did.

The little doe on the turntable was lifted now by her wrists, the whipping master twisting and turning her as if she were on the auction block for all to see her punished bottom and legs. Her waist was small and her hips shapely, but then all of her was shapely, even her writhing fingers, and her breasts, though smaller than those of many slaves, were finely shaped.

The whipping master smacked her again forcing her hips forward, and she obviously cried out though I couldn’t hear it. But she was as dainty and graceful as ever, her head almost demure as she bent it to one side, her shimmering hair tumbling beautifully down, her eyes modest and half closed.

How unlike in every conceivable way she was from the clumsy, struggling prince I’d been on the turntable long ago, time after time to the frustration of the Captain of the Guard. “You do realize you’ll be paddled here four times a day if you don’t stop struggling, don’t you?” he’d whispered in my ear that last night.

A liveried groom, the very same who had prepared the girl’s hindquarters for spanking, rushed around gathering up all the tokens and coins.

They were pushed into a little velvet sack and this was tied about her neck.

“You see, the King will not allow anything soiled to be forced into the slave’s mouth,” said the young woman at my elbow. “In the old days, they put the sack in the mouth, did they not?”

“They certainly did,” I said. “Or in our backsides in the Punishment Shop.”

“Well, that is not done now either,” she said without hesitation. Her voice was warm, it seemed all the voices of this realm were warm, but she spoke with an easy serenity that was a marvel. Lady Eva. I was struggling to remember some context for her name from the letters that I’d received.

But a riot of memories was pressing in on me again.