"Well, I was fiercely rebellious. The more she paddled me, the more I growled and refused to obey. So she had me hung upside down and paddled on and off for hours. You can well imagine the misery of it. But understand, other slaves were looking at me in utter confusion. Being stripped, being cuffed, being ordered about with the paddle was quite enough to make them obey, coupled as it was with the knowledge that they could not escape and they must serve for several years, and they were helpless.

"Yet nothing worked its magic with me. When I was taken down I was sore from the paddle on my bu**ocks and my legs, but I did not care. And all attempts to rouse my organ had failed. I was too stubborn.

"Lord Gregory lectured me at length. The paddle was far easier to bear with an erect organ, he told me; with passion coursing through my veins, I should see the rhyme and reason of pleasing my mistress. I wouldn't listen.

"The Queen still found me amusing. She told me I was more beautiful than any other slave sent to her. She had me bound to the wall in her chambers night and day so that she might watch me. But more truly, it was so that I might watch her and desire her.

"Well, at first, I did not look at her. But by and by I grew to studying her. I learned every detail of her, her cruel eyes, and her heavy black hair, her white br**sts and her long legs, and the way that she lay abed or walked about, or ate her food so daintily. Of course, she had me paddled regularly. And a strange thing commenced to happen. The paddlings were the only things that broke the boredom of this time, aside from watching her. So that watching her and being paddled became of interest to me."

"O, she is devilish!" Beauty gasped. She could understand all this perfectly.

"Of course she is, and infinitely sure of her own beauty.

"Well, all this while, she went about the business of the Court, coming and going. I was often alone with nothing to do but struggle, and curse behind the gag. Then she would return, a vision of soft tresses and red lips. My heart started to pound when she was undressed. I loved the moment when her mantle was released from its folds and I saw her hair. Then, when she was naked and stepping into her bath, I was beside myself.

"All this was secret. I did my best to display nothing of it. I quieted my passion. But I am a man, so in a matter of days my passion commenced to build, to show itself. The Queen laughed at this. She tormented me. Then she would tell me how much less I would suffer if I were over her lap obediently accepting her paddle. This is the Queen's favorite sport, the simple spanking over the lap, as you learned painfully enough tonight. She loves the intimacy of it. All her slaves are her children."

Beauty puzzled over this, but she didn't want to interrupt Alexi, who went on.

"As I told you, she would have me paddled. And always in a most uncomfortable and cold manner. She would send for Felix, whom I then despised..."

"You don't now?" Beauty asked. But then with a flush she remembered the scene she had witnessed on the stairway, Felix suckling the Prince so tenderly.

"I don't despise him now at all," Prince Alexi answered. "He is, of all the Pages, one of the more interesting. One comes to treasure that here. But in those days, I despised him as much as I did the Queen.

"She would give the order for me to be spanked. He would have me removed from the shackles that held me to the wall, as I kicked and struggled frantically. Then I'd be thrown over his knee, my legs kicked wide apart, and the spanking would go on until the Queen was tired of it. It hurt very much as I'm sure you know, and it only further humiliated me. But as I became more and more desperately bored in my hours of solitude, I commenced to look upon it as an interlude. I began to think about the pain, the various stages of it. There were the first few cracks of the paddle, not so painful at all. Then, as they came on harder and harder, the aching, the stinging, I found myself wriggling and trying to escape the blows, though I'd sworn I wouldn't. I'd remind myself to be still only to slip into writhing again, which amused the Queen immensely. When I was very sore, I felt very tired, tired of the struggle, and the Queen knew then I was most vulnerable. She would touch me. Her hands felt very delicious on my welts though I hated her. Then she'd stroke my organ, telling me in my ear what ecstasies I might enjoy in serving her. I would receive her full attention, she said, and be bathed and babied by the grooms, instead of roughly scrubbed and hung on the wall. I would weep sometimes because I couldn't stop myself. The Pages would laugh. The Queen thought it was all quite laughable, too. Then I would be returned to the wall to be broken down by more interminable boredom.

"Now all this time, I never saw the other slaves punished by the Queen. She would carry out her pleasures and games in her many parlors. Sometimes I would hear cries and blows through the doors, but seldom.

"But, as I began to exhibit an erect and craving organ in spite of myself, and began to actually look forward to the terrible spankings...in spite of myself...these two interludes not being connected as yet in my mind...she brought in a slave now and then for her amusement.

"I can't tell you the rages of jealousy I felt the first time I had to witness a slave punished. This was a young Prince Gerald, whom she adored in those days. He was sixteen, and had the roundest, smallest bu**ocks. They were irresistible to the Pages, and the grooms, as yours are..."

Beauty blushed at this.

"Don't count yourself unlucky. Listen to what I say about the boredom," Alexi said, and he kissed her tenderly.

"As I was saying, this slave was brought in and the Queen stroked and teased him shamelessly. She placed him over her lap and proceeded to deliver a naked-handed spanking as she did to you, and I could see his erect penis, and how he tried to keep it away from her leg for fear he would spill his passion and displease her. He was utterly compliant and devoted to her. He had no dignity in his surrender at all, but scampered to obey her every command, his beautiful little face always flushed, his skin pink and white and full of blushes where he'd been punished. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I thought I can never be made to do these things. Never -- I should die first. Yet I watched him, and I watched her punish him and prod him and kiss him.

"And when he had pleased her well, how she rewarded him! She had brought in six Princes and Princesses from whom he must choose with whom he would couple. Of course his choices were to please her. He chose the Princes always.

"And as she presided over him with the paddle, he would mount one of these who knelt for it obediently enough and, receiving the Queen's blows, he would achieve ecstasy. It was a tantalizing spectacle. His own plump little bu**ocks being soundly spanked, the red-faced submissive slave on his knees to receive Prince Gerald, and the boy's erect c**k going in and out of the undefended anus. Sometimes the Queen spanked the little victim first, gave him a merry chase about the room, a chance to escape his fate if he could fetch a pair of slippers for her in his teeth before she could achieve ten good cracks of the paddle. The victim would scurry to obey. But seldom was he able to find the slippers and bring them to the proper place before the Queen had soundly paddled him. So he had to bed over for Prince Gerald, who was too well endowed for sixteen surely.