But there were other things about him. He had violet-blue eyes, rather like those of Inanna or more truly like those of Tristan. He was blond like Tristan--dark gold hair, thick and bushy around his face, leaving the lower part of his neck bare. "Rather enticing to see the bare neck," Beauty thought. And the young man was big and broad-shouldered like the Captain of the Guard, like Laurent.

Ah, Laurent! It was Laurent she most thought of, remembered. The Captain of the Guard was a dark, faceless sentinel in her dreams. The sound of his strap rose and fell. But it was Laurent's smiling face she saw, Laurent's enormous c**k that she longed for. Laurent!

Something had changed in the room.

The Prince had stopped speaking. He was gazing at her. His courtly ardor had melted away into a rare and honest silence. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his cloak hanging off one shoulder, and a sadness came over him. "You will refuse me, too, won't you, my Lady?" he asked quietly. "And you will haunt my nights forever after."

"Is that so?" she asked. Something in her quickened. It was not a sarcastic reply. The moment was suddenly important. "I want so to please you, Princess," he whispered.

Please you, please you, please you. The words made her smile. How often she had heard them spoken in the far off world of the castle and the village, and in the even more distant fantasy world of the Sultan. How often she had spoken them herself.

"Do you, my dear Prince?" she asked gently. She was aware that her demeanor had changed, and that he realized it. He stood motionless, looking at her across the room, the afternoon sun falling in broad shafts on the stone floor between them. It glinted in his hair, on his eyebrows.

She advanced, and she thought she saw him shrink back, saw a flicker of undefined feeling in his face.

"Answer me, Prince," she said coldly. Yes, she had seen it. The wave of redness rising to his cheeks confirmed it. He was baffled. "Then bolt the doors," she said in a low voice. "All of them."

He hesitated but a moment. How virginal he looked. What was under those breeches? Her eyes passed up and down over him, and she saw it again, the inward shrinking, the vulnerability that made his size and fair countenance suddenly quite irresistible.

"Bolt the doors, Prince," she said threateningly.

And, moving like one in a dream, he went to obey, glancing back at her timidly.

There was a stool in the corner, a broad three-legged thing. Beauty's maid sat upon it when she wasn't needed.

"Set the stool in the center of the room," she said, and she felt a little catch in her chest as she watched him obey her. He glanced up at her before he righted himself, after setting down the stool, and she liked this, his body bent over, his eyes gazing up, the color in his checks. Divine color.

She folded her arms and leaned against the carved side of the fireplace. She knew it was not a ladylike position. Her velvet gown annoyed her.

"Take off your clothes," she whispered. "All of them."

For a moment he was too astonished to respond. He stared at her as if he had heard wrong.

"Off with them," she said in a monotone. "I want to see your body, see what you look like."

Again, he hesitated, and then the blush on his face deepened as he bowed his head and began to unlace the jerkin.

Lovely, the sight of his flaming cheeks, and the jerkin opening over the wrinkled shirt. He pulled the ties that laced the shirt, and there was his bare chest. Yes, more, and more. Yes, off the arms. Quite naked.

Fine ni**les, maybe just a little too pale, and each surrounded with a little blond hair, and the hair moving down the center of the chest to a curling growth on the belly.

And now the breeches were down, and he was stepping out of the boots. Nice cock. And very hard. Of course. When had it gotten hard? When she had ordered him to bolt the doors? Or to remove his clothes? Actually it didn't matter. Her own sex was moist and hot between her legs.

When he looked up at her again, he was stark naked--the only naked man she had seen since she had left the ship moored at Queen Eleanor's dock, and she felt her own face tingling and her lips moving into a smile shamelessly.

But it wasn't good to smile at him so soon. She stiffened slightly. She felt a great warmth in her br**sts. She hated the velvet gown that covered her.

"Up on the stool, Prince, so I can have a good look at you."

That was too much, or so it seemed for an instant. He opened his mouth, but then he only swallowed. O, very handsome. He would have been welcomed by Queen Eleanor and her voluptuous Court. And what an ordeal it would have been! And that fair skin, revealing everything, as Tristan's skin did. And he didn't have the cunning of Laurent.

He turned and looked at the stool. He was paralyzed.

"Up on the stool, Prince," she said stepping forward, "and put your hands on the back of your neck. That way I can see you well. Your hands and arms aren't in the way."

He stared at her. She stared back. And then he turned and in a slow, almost somnolent, fashion climbed onto the stool and put his hands behind his neck as she had commanded. He appeared astonished, astonished that he had done it.

And when he looked at her again, his face was redder than any face she had ever seen, making his eyes glitter, his hair look rather like gold, the way Tristan's hair had often looked. He swallowed again, and he looked down, but probably he did not see his erect cock. He looked past it, into his own newly awakened soul, pondering with shame that he was so defenseless.

But that did not really matter to Beauty. She looked at the cock. It would do. It wasn't Laurent's organ, but then there weren't very many that thick, were there? It was a good c**k actually, curving upwards a little sharply above the scrotum, and very red now, red as the Prince's face.

As she drew closer, the c**k became even redder. She reached out and touched it with her thumb and forefinger. The Prince shrank back.

"Hold still, Prince," she said. "I want to inspect you. And that requires your quiet compliance." How shy he looked as she pinched the flesh, glancing up at him. He couldn't meet her gaze. His lower lip was trembling exquisitely. If she had seen him at the castle, she would have been drawn to him as she'd been to Tristan. Yes--when you stripped away everything, he was a fine young sapling of a Prince who would come into full leaf under the lash quite predictably.

The lash. She looked about. His belt would have to do. But she was not ready for that, and he would have to get off the stool and hand it to her. For now she walked around behind him and looked at his bu**ocks. She felt the virginal skin, and she smiled as he shivered noticeably, as his hair shivered on the back of his naked neck rather touchingly.