BEAUTY ON THE BLOCK
No, IT can’t be happening!” she thought, and she felt her legs give out from under her as the paddle smacked her. And the tears blinded her as she was almost carried to the platform and the turntable and set down. It did not matter that she had not walked in obedience.
She was there! And before her the crowd stretched in all directions, grinning faces and waving hands, short girls and boys leaping up the better to see, and those on balconies rising to get a more careful look.
Beauty felt she would collapse, yet she was standing, and when the soft rawhide boot of the auctioneer kicked her legs apart, she struggled to keep her balance, her breasts shivering with her muffled sobs.
“Lovely little Princess!” he was calling out, the turntable whirling suddenly, so that she almost fell forward. She saw behind her hundreds and hundreds crowded back to the village gates, more balconies and windows, soldiers lounging along the battlements above. “Hair like spun gold and ripe little breasts!”
The auctioneer’s arm wound round her, squeezing her bosom hard, pinching her nipples. She let out a scream behind her closed lips, yet felt the immediate surge between her legs. But if he should take her by the hair as he had done Tristan...
And even as she thought it, she felt herself forced to bow from the waist in the same fashion, her breasts seeming to swell with their own weight as they dangled beneath her. And the paddle found her buttocks again, to the screaming delight of the crowd. Claps, laughs, shouts, as the auctioneer lifted her face with the stiff black leather, though he kept her bent over, spinning the turntable faster. “Lovely endowments, fit surely for the finest household, who would waste this pretty morsel in the fields?”
“Sell her into the fields!” someone shouted. And there were more cheers and laughter. And when the paddle smacked her again, Beauty gave out a humiliating wail.
The auctioneer clamped his hand over her mouth and he forced her up with her chin in the air, letting her go to stand with her back arched. “I will collapse, I will faint,” Beauty thought, her heart pounding in her breast, but she was standing there, enduring it, even as she felt the sudden tickle of the leather-covered rod between her pubic lips. “0, not that, he cannot...” she thought, but already her wet sex was swelling, hungering for the rough stroking of the rod. She squirmed away from it.
The crowd roared.
And she realized she was twisting her hips in horrid vulgar fashion to escape the sharp prodding examination.
There was more clapping and shouting as the auctioneer forced the rod deep into her hot wet pubis, calling out all the while, “Dainty, elegant little girl, fit for the finest lady’s maid or gentleman’s diversion!” Beauty knew her face was scarlet. Never at the castle had she known such exposure. And as her legs gave out from under her again, she felt the auctioneer’s sure hand lifting her wrists above her head until she dangled above the platform, and the leather paddle slapped at her helpless calves and the soles of her feet.
Without meaning to, Beauty kicked helplessly. She lost all control.
Screaming behind her clenched teeth, she struggled madly as she hung in the man’s grip. A strange, desperate abandon came over her as the paddle licked at her sex, slapping it and stroking it, and the screams and roars deafened her. She did not know whether she was longing for the torment or wildly trying to shut it out.
Her own frantic breaths and sobs filled her ears, and she knew suddenly that she was giving the onlookers precisely the kind of show they adored. They were getting much more from her than they had from Tristan, and she did not know whether or not she cared. Tristan was gone. She was forsaken.
The paddle punished her, stinging her and driving her hips out in a wild arc, only to stroke her wet pubic hair again, inundating her with waves of pleasure as well as pain.
In pure defiance, she swung her body with all her force, almost pulling loose from the auctioneer, who gave a loud astonished laugh. The crowd was shrieking as he sought to steady her, his tight fingers biting into her wrists as he hoisted her higher, and out of the corner of her eye Beauty saw two crudely dressed varlets rushing towards the platform.
At once they bound her wrists to the leather chain that hung from the gibbet above her head. Now she dangled free, the auctioneer’s paddle turning her with his blows as she sobbed and tried to hide her face in her upstretched arm.
“We haven’t all day to amuse ourselves with the little Princess,” the auctioneer cried, though the crowd urged him on with shouts of “Spank her,” “Punish her.”
“Calling for a firm hand and severe discipline for this lovely lady, what am I bid?” He twisted Beauty, smacking the soles of her naked feet with the paddle, pushing her head through her arms so that she could not conceal her face.
“Lovely breasts, tender arms, delectable buttocks, and a sweet little pleasure cleft fit for the gods!”
But the bids were already flying, topped so quickly he did not have to repeat them, and through her swimming eyes Beauty saw the hundreds of faces gazing up at her, the young men crowded to the very edge of the platform, a pair of young women whispering and pointing, and beyond an old woman leaning on a cane as she studied Beauty, raising a withered finger now to offer a bid.
Again the sense of abandon came over her, the defiance, and she kicked and wailed behind her closed lips, wondering that she didn’t shout aloud. Was it more humiliating to admit that she could speak? Would her face have been more scarlet had she been made to demonstrate that she was a thinking, feeling creature, and not some dumb slave?
Her sobs were her only answer to herself, her legs pulled wide apart now as the bidding continued, the auctioneer spreading her buttocks with the leather rod as he had done to Tristan, stroking her anus so that she squealed and clenched her teeth, and twisted, even trying to kick him if she could.
But he was now confirming the highest bid, and then another, and trying to coax more out of the crowd until she heard him announce in that same deep voice:
“Sold to the Innkeeper, Mistress Jennifer Lockley of the Sign of the Lion, for the grand sum of twenty-seven pieces of gold, this spirited and amusing little Princess, surely to be whipped for her bread and butter as much as anything else!”