I had lifted my head and I was staring down into her blue eyes. Surely she could see I was puzzled. Could we be made to remain here?

"O, he can make a good argument for keeping you," she said. "That you need the discipline of the village, or perhaps even only that he has at last found the slave he desires. He is no Lord, but he is the Queen's Chronicler."

There was a growing warmth in my chest, pulsing like the slow fire in my cock. But Stefan would never . . .

But then maybe Nicolas was in higher favor than Stefan!

"He has at last found the slave he desires." The words were crashing in my head.

But she left me to my own whirling, challenging thoughts in the little room and went out in the dim little hallway and up the dark steps, her burgundy skirts bright in the shadows for only a moment.

MISTRESS LOCKLEY'S DISCIPLINE

Beauty had almost completed her morning chores in the Captain's bedchamber when she remembered with a sudden shock her impertinence to Mistress Lockley.

The recollection came to her along with the faint sound of steps advancing towards the door of the Captain's room from the stairway. She was suddenly terrified. O, why had she been so insolent! All her resolve to be a bad, bad little girl abandoned her immediately.

The door opened and the pert figure of Mistress Lockley appeared, all fresh linen and lovely blue ribbons, her blouse brought down so low over her mounded br**sts that Beauty could almost see the ni**les. The most wicked smile was on Mistress Lockley's exquisite face, and she came right towards Beauty.

Beauty dropped the broom and shrank into the corner.

A low laughter erupted from her Mistress, and at once she had Beauty's long hair twined around her left hand and with her right hand she picked up the broom and thrust its prickly straws into Beauty's sex so that Beauty cried and tried to squeeze her legs together.

"My little slave with a tongue!" she said. And Beauty began to sob. But she couldn't free herself to kiss Mistress Lockley's boots and she didn't dare speak. All she could think of was Tristan telling her it would take a lot of courage to be bad all the time!

Mistress Lockley forced her forward on her hands and knees, and Beauty felt the broom between her legs driving her out of the little bedchamber.

"Get down those stairs!" The Mistress said under her breath, her ferocity scorching Beauty's soul so that she broke into sobs and scurried towards the stairway. She had to stand to descend the stairs, but the broom drove her just as maliciously, plunged into her, tickling and scratching at her tender nether lips as Mistress Lock-ley came right down behind her.

The Inn was empty, quiet.

"I've sent my bad children off to the Punishment Shop for their morning licking so I could tend to you!" came the Mistress's voice between her tightly clamped jaws. "We're going to have a little session in how to properly use that tongue when it is called upon to be used! Now into the kitchen!"

Beauty fell to her hands and knees again, desperate to obey, the angry commands pushing her to panic. No one had ever flashed upon her with such withering heat before, and to make matters worse, her sex was already brimming with sensation.

Sunlight filled the large immaculate room, pouring in from the two open doors to the rear yard, striking the fine copper pots and pans that hung from the hooks above, and washing over the iron oven doors in the bricks and the giant rectangular cutting block that stood in the middle of the tile floor, as high and large as the drinking counter outside where Beauty had first been punished.

Mistress Lockley brought her to her feet, and plunging the broom hard between her legs so that its stiff straws lifted her, she forced Beauty back against the cutting block and then lifted her legs so that Beauty quickly scrambled up on the wood that was covered with a light sprinkling of flour.

It was the paddle Beauty expected, and it would be worse than ever before, she knew, with that angry voice driving it. But Mistress Lockley spread Beauty out on her back, drew her hands over her head, and quickly tied them to the edge of the board, telling Beauty to spread her legs or have them spread for her.

Beauty struggled to get her legs wide. The flour on the smooth wood felt silky under her bottom. But her body was being stretched to its full length as her ankles were now tied, and Beauty felt panic again, bouncing helplessly on the smooth unyielding wood as she realized she could not free herself.

In a flurry of soft urgent cries she tried to plead with Mistress Lockley. But the moment she saw Mistress Lock-ley smiling down at her, Beauty's voice died in her throat and she bit her lip hard, looking up into the clear black eyes that quivered ever so slightly with laughter.

"The soldiers liked those br**sts, didn't they?" Mistress Lockley said. And reaching with both hands, she pinched Beauty's ni**les between thumb and forefinger. "Answer me!"

"Yes, Mistress," Beauty wailed, her soul quaking with the sense of her vulnerability to those fingers, the flesh around her ni**les shriveling as the ni**les themselves hardened to knots. A deep pang between her legs caused her to try to close her legs, when that was quite impossible. "Mistress, please, I will never - "

"Shhhh!" Mistress Lockley clamped her hand over Beauty's mouth and Beauty arched her back, sobbing against it. O, it was worse being bound; she could not make herself be still. But she stared at Mistress Lockley with wide eyes and tried to nod, though the hand held her.

"Slaves have no voice," said the Mistress, "until the Master or Mistress asks to hear that voice, and then you answer with the proper respect." She let go of Beauty's mouth.

"Yes, Mistress," Beauty answered.

The firm fingers took hold of her ni**les again. "As I was saying," Mistress Lockley went on, "the soldiers liked these br**sts."

"Yes, Mistress!" Beauty answered, her voice quavering.

"And this avaricious little mouth." She reached down and pinched shut the pubic lips so that the moisture overflowed and Beauty felt an itch as it trickled.

"Yes, Mistress," she answered breathlessly.

Mistress Lockley lifted a white leather belt and showed it to Beauty, like a tongue extending from her hand. And gathering Beauty's left breast from the top in her left fingers, she bunched the flesh and plumped it as Beauty felt the warmth suffusing her bosom. Beauty couldn't keep quiet. And the moisture between her legs trickled down into the crack of her bu**ocks. Her spread-eagle body strained in vain to close itself.

The fingers stretched her left nipple and snapped it. And then the white tongue of the leather belt spanked her breast in a series of hard loud slaps. "O!" Beauty gasped aloud, unable to prevent it. The spanking that the Captain's large warm hands had given her bosom was nothing like this. The desire to break free and cover her br**sts, both of them, was irresistible and impossible! Yet the breast seethed with feeling as never before and Beauty's body twisted against the wood. The little strap spanked the nipple and the bulging flesh harder and harder.