She slipped the phallus out so quickly I was pulled off-balance, glancing back at her in alarm. And then she disappeared into the rich little house, and I stood shaken, gazing up at the high-peaked roof and the fine sprinkling of stars above it, realizing I was alone with the Master, his thick strap in his hand as always.
He turned me around and had me march along the broad paved road back in the direction of the marketplace.
Soldiers’ Night at the Inn
For hours Beauty slept.
And only vaguely was she aware of the Captain jerking the bell rope. He was up and dressed without an order to her. And when she fully opened her eyes, he stood over her in the dim light of a new hearth fire, his belt still unbuckled. In one swift movement he slipped it from around his waist and snapped it beside him. Beauty couldn’t read his face. It looked hard and removed and yet there was a little smile on his lips, and her loins immediately acknowledged him. She could feel a deep stirring of passion inside, a soft discharge of fluids.
But before she could break through the languor, he had pulled her up and deposited her on the floor on her hands and knees, pressing her neck down and forcing her knees wide apart. Beauty’s face flamed as the strap walloped her between the legs, stinging her bulging pubis. Again came a hard slap to the lips, and Beauty kissed the boards, wagging her buttocks up and down in submission. The licking of the strap came again, but carefully, almost caressingly punishing the protuburant lips, and Beauty, fresh tears spilling to the floor, gave an openmouthed gasp, lifting her hips higher and higher.
The Captain stepped forward, and with his large naked hand covered Beauty’s sore bottom, rotating it slowly.
Beauty’s breath caught in her throat. She felt her hips lifted, swung, pushed down, and a little throbbing noise came out of her. She could still remember Prince Alexi at the castle telling her he had been made to swing his hips in this ghastly, ignominious fashion.
The Captain’s fingers pressed into Beauty’s flesh, squeezing her buttocks together.
“Wag those hips!” came the low command. And the hand thrust Beauty’s bottom up so high that her forehead was sealed to the floor, her breasts pulsing against the boards, a throbbing groan choked out of her.
Whatever she had thought and feared so long ago at the castle didn’t matter now. She churned her bottom in the air. The hand withdrew. The strap licked up at her sex, and in a violent orgy of movement she wagged and wagged her buttocks as she had been told to do.
Her body loosened, lengthened. If she had ever known any other posture but this she couldn’t clearly remember it. “Lord and Master,” she sighed, and the strap smacked her little mound, the leather scraping the clitoris as it thickened. Faster and faster Beauty swung her bottom in the circle, and the harder the strap licked her the more the juices in her surged, until she could not hear the sound of the strap against the slick lips, her cries coming from deep in her throat, almost unrecognizable to her.
At last the licking stopped. She saw the Captain’s shoes before her and his hand pointing to a small-handled broom beside the fireplace.
“After this day,” he said calmly, “I won’t tell you this room is to be swept and scrubbed, the bed changed, the fire built up. You will do it every morning when you rise. And you will do it now, this evening, to learn how to do it. After that you’ll be scrubbed in the Inn yard to properly serve the garrison.”
At once Beauty started to work, on her knees, with swift careful movements. The Captain left the room, and within moments Prince Roger appeared with the dustpan, scrub brush, and bucket. He showed her how she must do these little tasks, how to change the linen, build up the wood on the hearth, clear away the ashes.
And he did not seem surprised that Beauty only nodded and didn’t speak to him. It didn’t occur to her to speak to him.
The Captain had said “every day.” So he meant to keep her! She might be the property of the Sign of the Lion, but she had been chosen by its chief lodger.
She could not do her tasks well enough. She smoothed the bed, polished the table, careful to kneel at all times, and rise only when she must.
And when the door opened again, and Mistress Lockley took her by the hair and she felt the wooden paddle driving her down the steps, she was softened and carried away by thoughts of the Captain.
Within seconds, she’d been stood in the crude wooden hogshead tub. Torches flickered at the Inn door and on the side of the shed. Mistress Lockley scrubbed fast and roughly, flushing out Beauty’s sore vagina with wine mixed in water. She creamed Beauty’s buttocks.
Not a word was spoken as she bent Beauty this way and that, forcing her legs into a squat, lathering her pubic hair, and roughly drying her.
And all around Beauty saw other slaves being coarsely bathed, and she heard the loud bantering voices of the crude woman in the apron and two other strong-limbed village girls who went at the task, now and then stopping to smack the buttocks of this slave or that for no apparent reason. But all Beauty could think of was that she belonged to the Captain; she was to see the garrison. Surely the Captain would be there. And the volleys of shouts and laughter from the Inn tantalized her.
When Beauty was thoroughly dry, and her hair had been brushed, Mistress Lockley put her foot on the edge of the hogshead and threw Beauty over her knee and swatted at her thighs hard with the wooden paddle several times, and then pushed Beauty down on her hands and knees as Beauty gasped for breath and sought to steady herself.
It was positively odd not to be spoken to, not even sharp impatient commands. Beauty glanced up as Mistress Lockley came around beside her, and for one instant she saw Mistress Lockley’s cool smile, before the woman had the chance to remember herself. Quite suddenly Beauty’s head was lifted gently by the full weight of her long hair, and Mistress Lockley’s face was right above hers.
“And you were going to be my little troublemaker. I was going to cook your little buttocks so much longer than the rest for breakfast.”
“Maybe you still should,” Beauty whispered without intention or thought. “If that’s what you like for breakfast.” But she broke into violent trembling as soon as she finished. O, what had she done!
Mistress Lockley’s face lit up with the most curious expression. A half-repressed laugh escaped her lips. “I’ll see you in the morning, my dear, with all the others. When the Captain’s gone, and the Inn’s nice and quiet, and there’s no one here but the other slaves waiting in line as well for their morning whipping. I’ll teach you to open that mouth without permission.” But this was said with unusual warmth, and the color was high in Mistress Lock-ley’s cheeks. She was so very pretty. “Now trot,” she said softly.
The big room of the Inn was already packed with soldiers and other drinking men.
A fire roared on the hearth, mutton turned on the spit. And upright slaves, their heads bowed, scurried on tiptoe to pour wine and ale into dozens of pewter flagons. Everywhere Beauty glanced in the crowd of dark-clad drinkers with their heavy riding boots and swords, she saw the flash of naked bottoms and gleaming pubic hair as slaves set down plates of steaming food, bent over to wipe up spills, crawled on hands and knees to mop up the floor, or scampered to retrieve a coin playfully pitched into the sawdust.
From a dim corner came the thick, resonant strumming of a lute and the beat of a tambourine and a horn playing a slow melody. But riots of laughter drowned the sound. Broken fragments of a chorus rose in a full burst only to die away. And from everywhere came shouts for meat and drink and the call for more pretty slaves to entertain the company.