I stopped. He nodded slowly, but he didn't speak. The heat pounded silently in my temples. I sipped the wine, thinking of my own words.

"It was the same in a smaller way," I said, "when the Captain thrashed me. He was punishing me for having failed after his training. But he was also testing me to see if I was telling the truth about Stefan, if it was mastering I needed. He was calling my bluff, saying, in effect, 'I'll give it to you and we'll see if yo can endure it.' And I offered myself to his lash, or at least it seemed so. I never thought, not even in the camp when the soldiers punished me, or at the castle when the Lords and Ladies looked on, that I could, in a hot noonday village square, full of passersby, dance for a soldier's thrash like that. The soldiers trained my cock. They trained me. But they never got that from me. And though I'm terrified of what lies ahead, terrified even of the pony harnesses, I feel myself opening to all punishments instead of triumphing over them with sublime form as I did at the castle. I am being turned inside out. I belong to the Captain, and to you, to all who look. I am becoming my punishments."

Silently he moved towards me, taking the goblet and setting it aside and then taking me in his arms and kissing me.

My mouth opened wide, eagerly, and then he pulled me onto my knees and went down to put his mouth on my c**k and fold his arms around my bu**ocks. Almost savagely he sucked at the full length of my organ, enveloping me in tight wet hotness as his fingers, spreading my bu**ocks, pried open my anus. And his head went back and forth, pulling on the full length of my cock, lips tightening and then releasing as his tongue circled the tip; then the rapid, almost mad sucking continued. His fingers stretched my anus wide. My mind went clean. I whispered, "I can't hold back." And when he sucked even harder, with rougher strokes, I steadied his head with both hands and jetted hard into him.

My cries came in short bursting rhythm with the suction that seemed to want to empty me. And when I could stand it no more, and tried gently to release his head, he rose up and pushed me down on the bed on my face, shoving my thighs up and wide and flattening my bu**ocks to the sheets with the heels of his palms before he lay down and forced his c**k into me. I was spread like a frog under him. The muscles in my thighs positively sang with delicious pain. His weight pressed me down all the harder. His teeth opened lightly on the back of my neck. His hands hooked under my crooked knees and forced them up closer to the pillow. And my exhausted c**k throbbed and doubled beneath me.

My bu**ocks bobbed. I groaned from the strain. And his cock, stabbing into my wide-spread bu**ocks, seemed some inhuman instrument reaming me, coring me, and emptying me.

In a wild series of spurts I came again, unable to remain flat, bucking under him, and he bore down all the more, grinding out his low moan of climax.

I lay panting, not daring to uncramp my bent and flattened legs. Then I felt him pushing my knees down. He was lying beside me. He turned me over to face him, and in that keen high-pitched moment of exhaustion, he started kissing me.

I tried to fight the languor of sleep, my c**k begging me for a moment's respite. But he had sent his hook down into my loins again. He was bringing me up, forcing me to my knees, directing my hands to a wooden handle over our heads in the paneled canopy of the bed, and whipping my c**k with his hands as he sat with his legs crossed before me.

I watched it engorge with blood under the slaps, the pleasure slower, fuller, excruciating. I moaned aloud and twisted away almost before I could stop myself. But he tugged me forward, wrapping my balls up against my c**k with his left hand, and he continued the merciless slapping with the other.

My body was on the rack. My mind was on the rack, and now I realized, as he pinched the tip of my cock, that he meant to tease it out of me. Pinching, stroking with his curled fingers, now licking with his tongue, he had me in a frenzy. He took the cream from the jar he had used last night and greased his right hand and pulled at my cock, squeezing it as if he would destroy it. I was grunting behind my clenched teeth, my hips rocking, and then it shot forth again, the hard spurting and spurting. And I hung from the wooden handle dazed and truly empty.

A light still burned.

I didn't know how much time had passed as I opened my eyes. But it must have been early. Coaches still rolled on the road outside the window.

And I realized my Master was dressed and walking back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, his hair tousled. He wore the blue velvet doublet unlaced, his linen shirt with its long balloon sleeves open down the front also. Now and then he would pivot sharply, stop, run his fingers through his hair, and then continue pacing.

When I rose on my elbow, afraid of being ordered out, he gestured to the wine goblet and said,

"Drink if you wish."

I picked it up at once and sat back against the paneling, watching him.

He paced again, once, back and forth, and then he turned, staring at me.

"I'm in love with you!" he said. He drew close and peered into my eyes. "In love with you! Not merely with punishing you, though that I will do, or with your subservience, which I love and crave, also. I am in love with you, your secret soul that is as vulnerable as the reddened flesh under my strap, and all your strength collected under our combined governance!"

I was speechless. All I could do was look at him, lost in the heat of his voice and the look in his eyes. But my soul was soaring.

He drew away from the bed and, glancing sharply back at me, paced and paced again.

"Ever since the Queen commenced the importation of naked pleasure slaves," he said, looking at the carpet beneath his feet, "I have puzzled over what it is that makes a strong, highborn Prince of a slave obey with such complete submission. I have racked my brain to understand it." He paused, then went on, his hands loose at his sides and rising now and then with an easy gesture.

"All those I've questioned in the past have given me timid, guarded answers. You have spoken from your soul, but what is clear is that you accept your slavery as easily as they do. Of course, as the Queen has explained to me, all slaves are examined. And only the likely, as well as the beautiful, are chosen."

He looked at me. I had never realized that there had been an examination. But immediately I recalled the Queen's emissaries whom I had been sent to meet in a chamber of my father's castle. I remembered them ordering me to remove my clothes and how they had touched me and watched me as I stood still for their probing fingers. I had exhibited no sudden passion. But maybe their trained eyes had seen more than I realized. They had kneaded my flesh, asked me questions, studied my face as I blushed and tried to answer.