The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (18 page)

Beauty cried softly, too spiritless to answer.

“But, Beauty, this is a great privilege. There are slaves here who serve years without ever being noticed by the Queen. You shall have your full opportunity to enchant her. And you shall, my dear, you shall, you cannot fail to do so. And the Prince has been clever for once. He has not worn his heart for all to see it.”

“But what will she do to me!” Beauty whimpered. “And Prince Alexi, will he see all of it? O, what will she do?”

“O, she shall only make a plaything of you, of course. And you shall try to please her.”

H
ALF THE night was gone before the Queen came.

Beauty had dozed, then awakened again and again, to find herself still chained in the ornate bedchamber as if in a nightmare. She was bound to the wall, her ankles cuffed in leather, her wrists up over her head, her buttocks pushed against the cold stone behind her.

At first the stone had felt good. Now and then she twisted to let the air touch the soreness. Of course the abraded flesh was much healed from last night’s ordeal on the Bridle Path, but she still suffered, and she knew tonight she was surely destined for more torment.

Not the least of it, however, was her own passion. What had the Prince awakened in her that after one night of no satisfaction, she should feel so wanton? It was the stirring between her legs that first brought her out of sleep in the Slaves’ Hall, and now and then she felt it as she stood waiting.

The room itself lay in shadow and unbroken stillness. Dozens of thick candles burned in their heavy gilded holders, the wax spilling in rivulets through the traceries of gold. The bed with its tapestried draperies appeared a gaping cavern.

Beauty closed her eyes. She opened them again. And when she was again on the verge of dream, she heard the heavy double doors thrown open and suddenly saw the tall, slender figure of the Queen materialized before her.

The Queen moved to the center of the carpet. Her blue velvet gown cleaved to her girdled hips before flaring gently to cover her black pointed slippers. She gazed at Beauty with narrow, black eyes tipped up at the ends to give her a cruel expression, and then she smiled, her white cheeks dimpling though an instant before they had seemed as hard as white porcelain.

Beauty had lowered her eyes at once. Petrified, she watched covertly as the Queen moved away from her and seated herself at an ornate dressing table, her back to a high mirror.

With an off-handed gesture she dismissed the Ladies who stood at the door. A figure remained there, and Beauty, afraid to look, was certain it was Prince Alexi.

So her tormentor had come, Beauty thought. Her heart pounded in her ears, becoming a roar rather than a pulse, and she felt the bonds holding her helpless so that she could not have defended herself against anyone or anything. Her breasts felt heavy, and the moisture between her legs greatly agitated her. Would the Queen discover it and use it to further punish her?

Yet mingled with her fear was some sense of her helplessness which had come over her the night before and never left her. She knew how she must appear, she was afraid, but she could do nothing and she was accepting it.

Maybe this was a new strength, this acceptance. And she needed all her strength, for she was alone with this woman who had no love for her. Without words, she evoked a memory of the Prince’s love, of Lady Juliana’s affectionate touch and warm words of praise, even of Leon’s caressing hands.

But this was the Queen, the great powerful Queen who ruled all and who felt nothing but coldness and fascination for her.

She shivered against her will. The throbbing between her legs seemed to slacken and then to grow slightly more intense. Surely the Queen was staring at her. And the Queen could make her suffer. And there would be no Prince to witness it, no Court, no one.

Only Prince Alexi.

She saw him now, moving out of the shadows, a naked form exquisitely proportioned, the dark golden skin making him seem a polished statue.

“Wine,” said the Queen. And he was moving to pour it for her.

He knelt at her side and he placed the two-handled cup in her hands, and as she drank, Beauty looked up and saw Prince Alexi smiling directly at her.

She was so startled, she almost made a little gasp. His large brown eyes were full of the same gentle affection he’d shown her last night when he passed her at the banquet table. Then he made his mouth into a silent kiss before Beauty looked away in consternation.

Could he feel affection for her, real affection, even desire, as she felt desire for him when she first saw him?

O, how she ached suddenly to touch him, to feel just once for an instant that silken skin, that hard chest, those dark, rose-colored nipples. How exquisite they were on that flat chest, those little nodules that seemed so unmasculine, giving him a touch of feminine vulnerability. How had the Queen punished them, she wondered? Were they ever clamped and adorned as her breasts had been?

They were piquant, those little nipples.

But the throbbing between her legs warned her, and it took an act of will for her not to move her hips.

“Undress me,” the Queen said.

And from beneath her half-mast lids, Beauty watched as Prince Alexi obeyed the command skillfully and deftly.

How clumsy she had been two nights ago and how patient the Prince had been with her.

He used his hands but seldom. His first duty was with his teeth to unsnap the hooks of the Queen’s dress and this he did, quickly gathering it as it fell down around her.

Beauty was astonished to see the Queen’s full white breasts naked under a thin chemise of lace. And then Prince Alexi removed her ornate mantle of white silk to show the Queen’s black hair hanging loose in ripples over her shoulders.

He took the garments away.

Then he came back to remove with his teeth the Queen’s slippers. He kissed her naked feet before he took the shoes out of sight, and then he brought back to the Queen a sheer nightgown trimmed in white lace, the fabric a lustrous cream color. It was very full and pressed into a thousand pleats.

And as the Queen rose, Prince Alexi pulled down the chemise that she wore, and rising to his full height put the nightgown over the Queen’s shoulders. She slipped her arms into the deep pleated bag sleeves, and the garment fell about her like a bell.

And then with his back to Beauty, Prince Alexi on his knees again tied a dozen little bows of white ribbon to close the front of the gown to its hem above the Queen’s naked insteps.

As he bent over for the last of these, the Queen’s hands played idly with his auburn hair, and Beauty found herself staring at his reddened buttocks where he had obviously been recently punished. His thighs, his tight, hard calves, all of this enflamed her.

“Pull back the curtains of the bed,” the Queen said. “And bring her to me.”

Beauty’s pulse deafened her. It seemed there was a pressure in her ears, in her throat. Yet she heard the tapestries being drawn back. She saw the Queen recline on the coverlet amid a nest of silk pillows. The Queen looked younger now that her hair was free, and her face was without a trace of age as she stared at Beauty. Those eyes were as placid as if they had been painted in her face with enamel.

Then with a shock of unwelcome pleasure, Beauty saw Prince Alexi before her. He obliterated the vision of the menacing Queen. He bent to untie her ankles and she felt his fingers deliberately caress her. When he rose in front of her again, his hands up to free her wrists, she smelled the perfume of his hair and skin, and there seemed something utterly lush about him. For all his hardness, the squareness of his build, he seemed some great spicy delicacy to her, and she found herself staring right into his eyes. He smiled and let his lips touch her forehead. And they stayed secretly pressed to her forehead until her wrists were entirely free and he was holding them.

Then he pushed her gently down on her knees and gestured to the bed.

“No, simply bring her,” said the Queen.

And Prince Alexi lifted Beauty and threw her over his shoulder as easily as a Page might have done, or the Prince himself when he took her from her father’s castle.

His flesh felt hot beneath her, and thrown over his back as she was, she boldly kissed his sore buttocks.

Then she was laid down on the bed and realized she was beside the Queen, looking up into her eyes, as the Queen, who rested on her elbow, looked down at her.

Beauty’s breath left her in rapid gasps. The Queen seemed quite enormous to her. And now she perceived a great resemblance to the Prince, only as always the Queen seemed infinitely colder. Yet there was about her red mouth something which might have once been called sweetness. She had thick eyelashes, a firm chin, and as she smiled dimples showed in her cheeks. Her face was heart shaped.

Flustered, Beauty closed her eyes, biting her lip so hard she might have cut it.

“Look at me,” said the Queen. “I want to see your eyes, naturally. I want no modesty from you now, do you understand me?”

“Yes, your Highness,” Beauty answered.

She wondered if the Queen might hear her heart beat. The bed was soft beneath her, the pillows soft, and she found herself staring at the Queen’s great breasts, the dark circle of a nipple beneath the gown, before she looked at the Queen’s eyes again obediently.

A shock passed through her, collecting in a knot in her belly.

The Queen merely studied her in great absorption. Her teeth showed perfectly white between her lips, and those eyes, slanted, long, were black to the core and revealed nothing.

“Sit there, Alexi,” the Queen said without looking away.

And Beauty saw him take his position at the foot of the bed, with his arms folded on his chest, and his back to the bedpost.

“Little plaything,” the Queen said under her breath to Beauty. “And now I understand perhaps why Lady Juliana is so enraptured over you.”

She ran her hand over Beauty’s face, her cheeks, her eyelids. She pinched Beauty’s mouth. She smoothed back her hair, and then she slapped Beauty’s breasts to the right and to the left and again.

Beauty’s mouth quivered but she made no sound. She kept her hands still at her sides. The Queen was like a light that threatened to blind her.

If she thought about it, lying here so near the Queen, she would be overcome with panic.

The Queen’s hand moved over her belly and her thighs. It pinched the flesh of her thighs and then the backs of her legs at the calves. And in spite of herself Beauty felt a tingling everywhere she was touched as if the hand itself had some dreadful power. She felt hatred for the Queen suddenly, more violently than she had felt it for Lady Juliana.

But then the Queen commenced to examine, slowly, Beauty’s nipples. The fingers of the Queen’s right hand turned each nipple this way and that, testing the soft circle of skin around it. Beauty’s breath became uneven, and she felt the moisture between her legs as though a grape had been squeezed there.

It seemed the Queen was monstrously bigger than she, and as strong as a man, or was it only that to struggle against the Queen was unthinkable? Beauty tried to regain some calm, to think of her feeling of release on the Bridle Path, but it eluded her. It had been fragile all along. Now it was nothing.

“Look at me,” the Queen commanded gently again, and Beauty realized as she looked up that she was crying.

“Spread your legs,” the Queen ordered.

At once Beauty obeyed. “Now she will see,” Beauty thought. “It will be as bad as when Lord Gregory saw. And Prince Alexi will see.”

The Queen laughed. “I said spread your legs,” she said, and gave Beauty’s thighs fierce stinging slaps. Beauty spread her legs much wider and felt graceless as she did so. When her knees were pressed down to the coverlet on either side, she thought she could not endure the ignominy of it. She stared at the coffered ceiling of the bed above her and realized that the Queen was opening her sex as Leon had done. Beauty bit down on her cries. And Prince Alexi witnessed all of it. She remembered his kisses, his smiles. The lights of the room shimmered, and she felt her own shuddering as the Queen’s fingers felt the moisture in this secret, exposed spot, playing with Beauty’s pubic lips, smoothing the pubic hair, and finally catching a lock of it to pull and tease idly.

It seemed the Queen took both her thumbs and wrenched Beauty open. Beauty tried to keep her hips still. She wanted to rise to escape, like some miserable Princess in the Training Hall who could not endure being so examined. Yet she did not protest; her whimpers were faint and uncertain.

The Queen commanded her to turn over.

Blessed concealment, that she could hide her face in the pillows.

But those cool, commanding hands were playing with her buttocks now, opening them, touching her anus. “O, please,” she thought desperately, and she knew that her shoulders shook with her silent crying. “O, this is dreadful, dreadful!”

With the Prince, finally, she had known what was wanted.

On the Bridle Path, finally, she had been told what was wanted. But what did this wicked Queen want of her, that she suffer, that she cringe, that she offer herself or merely endure? And the woman despised her!

The Queen massaged her flesh, prodding it, testing it as if for thickness, softness, resilience. She tested Beauty’s thighs in the same manner, and then pushed Beauty’s knees so far apart and high on the bed that Beauty’s hips rose and she felt she was squatting, sprawled apart, over the coverlet, her sex protruding, hanging down, her buttocks surely split so that she resembled a ripe fruit.

The Queen’s hand was under her sex as if weighing it, feeling the roundness and heaviness of the lips, pinching them.

“Arch your back,” said the Queen, “and lift your buttocks, little cat, little cat in heat.”