She threw her arms around his neck and forced her dilated sex onto his cock, feeling him seal himself against her. Slowly, he sank back on the green satin coverlet of a little oak-paneled bed. And stretching out on the pillows, he threw back his head as she rode him.

His hands lifted her br**sts, pinched her ni**les, and held them throbbing as she bucked and reared on his sex, sliding up as high as she could without losing the shaft and plummeting down, her lips dipping to kiss him.

Tristan's face went dark with his groans, and as she felt the c**k erupt under her, she came, bucking still, until she was transfixed, her legs outstretched, shimmering with the last shocks of the pleasure.

They lay together arm in arm and slowly he wiped her hair back from her head, whispering, "My darling Beauty," as he kissed her.

"Tristan, why is your Master letting us do this?" she asked. But she was in a sweet drowsy state and she did not really care. Candles burned on the little table beside the bed. She saw the light swell and obliterate the objects of the room except for the golden surface of a large mirror.

"He's a man of mysteries and secrets and strange intensity," Tristan said. "He will do exactly as he pleases. And it pleases him to let me see you, and it will please him tomorrow probably to have me whipped through the village. And very possibly he thinks that the one will enhance the torment of the other."

The remembrance of Tristan, harnessed and horse-tailed, came back to Beauty unbidden. "I saw you," she whispered flushing suddenly. "In the procession."

"Did it seem so terrible?" he whispered comfortingly, kissing her. There was a faint blush on his cheeks that in a face so strong was irresistible.

She was amazed. "You didn't find it terrible?" she asked.

A low laugh came from deep in his chest. She pulled the golden hair that curled up from around his c**k to his belly.

"Yes, my darling," he said, "it was deliciously terrible!"

She laughed as she looked into his eyes, and she kissed him again greedily. She snuggled down, kissing and biting at his ni**les. "It tantalized me to see it," she confessed, her voice throaty and not her own. "I only prayed you were somehow resigned . . ."

"I am more than resigned, my love," he said, kissing the top of her head as he lay back under her affectionate bites. She mounted his left thigh and pressed her sex against it. He gasped as she bit at his nipple, pinching the other in time with her little bites. And then he tumbled her down on the sheets and opened her mouth again with his tongue.

"But tell me," she insisted, stopping his kiss for a moment, his organ grazing her mound, pressing the tight curling hair against its grain gently. "You must," she dropped her voice to a whisper. "How could you. . . ? The harnesses and the bit, and that horsetail. . . How have you come to this, this acceptance?" She didn't need him to tell her he was resigned. She could see it and feel it, and she had seen it today in the procession. But she remembered him in the cart when they had come down from the castle, and she had felt the fear in him then that he was too proud to reveal freely.

"I've found my Master," he said, "the one who brings me into harmony with all punishments," Tristan said. "But if you must know," he started kissing her again, his organ opening her nether lips and pushing at her clitoris. "It was, and will always be, utter mortification."

Beauty lifted her hips to receive him. They were at once rocking in unison, Tristan gazing down at her, his arms like pillars supporting his powerful shoulders above her. She lifted her head to suck from his ni**les, her hands pinching and parting his bu**ocks, feeling the hard delicious knots of the welts and measuring them and compressing them as she drew closer to the silky wrinkled lip of his anus. His motions grew swifter, rougher, more agitated as she delved. And suddenly reaching to the table beside her, she pulled one of the thick waxen candles from its silver holder, whipping out the flame and pressing the melted tip with her fingers. And then she plunged it into him, planting it

firmly inside. His eyes squeezed shut. Her own sex became a taut sheath against his organ, her clitoris toughening, exploding. And cranking the waxen candle hard she cried out, feeling his hot fluids empty into her.

They lay still, the candle discarded. And she wondered at what she had done, but Tristan only kissed her. He rose, poured a goblet of wine, and put it to Beauty's lips. Puzzled, she took it, drank it as a Lady might and wondered at the curious sensation.

"But how have you fared, Beauty?" he asked. "Have you been rebellious all the time? Tell me."

She shook her head. "I fell into the hands of a hard and wicked Master and Mistress." She laughed softly.

She described the punishments of Mistress Lockley, the kitchen, the Captain's way with her, and her evenings with the soldiers, lingering on the physical beauty of both her captors.

Tristan listened gravely.

She told about the runaway, Prince Laurent. "I know now that if I run away it will be in order to be found, to be punished like that, to spend all my years in the village," she said. "Tristan, do you think me dreadful to want to do that? I would run away rather than go back to the castle."

"But you might be taken from the Captain and Mistress Lockley," he said, "if you ran away, and sold to someone else for harder use and labor."

"That doesn't matter," she said. "It isn't the Mistress or Master really who puts me in harmony with it, as you said. It's merely the hardness, the coldness, and the re-lentlessness. I wanted to be cast down, lost among my punishments. I adore the Captain and I adore the Mistress, but there are other harsher Masters and Mistresses probably in the village."

"Ah, you surprise me," he said, offering her the wine again. "I am so totally in love with Nicolas I have no defense against him."

Tristan then explained the things that had happened to him, and how he and Nicolas had made love and talked together, and gone out up onto the hillside.

"The second time on the Public Turntable, today at noon," he said. "I was transported. The fear hadn't left me. It was worse when I was rushed up the steps, because I knew just what would happen. But I saw the whole fairgrounds more clearly under the glare of the sun than I had ever seen it by torchlight. I do not mean I saw literal things. I saw the great scheme of which I was part, and under the grueling punishment, my soul broke open. My whole existence now, be it on the turntable or in the harnesses, or in my Master's arms, is an entreaty to be used like the warmth of a fire is used, to be dissolved in the will of others. My Master's will is the guiding will, and through him I am given to all who witness or desire me."