Erotic short fiction: The Queen’s Torment, Part 2

The Queen’s confession.

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The previous parts of this story can be found here.

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The sounds of her screams were like the sweetest melody to his ears.  The rattling of the heavy chain across the wooden floorboards, layered with the song of her wretched begging, made it almost difficult to do his work.  

He took a step back, outside of the flickering yellow haze of the candlelight, and considered her, for a moment.  

This woman who sobbed before him would be queen, the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor.  It brought the torture master a wash of perverse joy to imagine the welts and bruises that would lay under her finery.  He watched her struggle on the floor, her skin slick with sweat, as she wiggled and arched helplessly, trying to remove the tiny device that violated her ass.  

He had seen women move like that, under much different circumstances.  Whores, trying to entice with a clever roll of their hips, trying to sell their tarnished bodies and used up virtue.  In the dimness of the city’s brothels, their rounded curves moved in a tangled dance that reeked of desperation and falsity.

He took a thick hide whip off the hook on the wall, running his fingers over the rough, blackened animal skin.  It had been a gift from a wayward Arab trader, a means of punishing slaves in the West Indies. 

He had never found the reason to use it, before tonight.  

As much as he enjoyed tormenting her, there was an undeniable honesty to the queen’s groveling.  He doubted very much, given what he had sleuthed about her background, that she was even aware of how her naked body presented, or the sexual overtones of her movements.  Yes, she was self-serving, but it was a sin that was genuine in a way that he had not seen in a long time.  

He tapped the whip against the arc of her upturned ass, taking the moment to appreciate the bow of her spine and the creamy, unmarked skin.  

Some tension flowed out of her shoulders, as she felt the implement against her.  It was a subtle movement, but he was an expert in the subtleties of human bodies, especially under duress.  He watched her body relax and listened to her anxious, hiccuping cries become quiet.

Under the promise of pain, she relaxed.

Certainly he had heard of such a thing, but it was a new marvel to see for himself.  Truly, the woman belonged in some miserable convent somewhere, flagellating herself to commune with her God.  Catholics continued to astound him. 

But sometimes the vein of life is cruel, as it returns our spent carcasses to the source.  He would have to assist her in her worship, himself.  And being the man he was, he was going to enjoy taking that liberty. 

“Please, my lord,” she begged from her prostrate position. “I need…” Her words trailed off, as another shudder of tears wound its way down her body.  “My lord, I am sorry.  I am sorry for my… selfishness.” 

“You sin is avarice, my queen,” he said, as he brought the whip backward and brought it crashing against her offered body.  “Greed.” 

He watched a red line appear across her ass cheek, watched blood immediately pool in tiny droplets.  

There was a second where the world held its breath, as her blood oozed from the fresh wound.  There was silence, before her scream cut through the night air as easily as the whip had cut her flesh.  She pulled against her manacles, arching her back and shaking her head, her screams coming unheeded and pure in their anguish. 

He blinked, unprepared for the damage his tool had brought to her skin.  

Something weighed on his heart, and he was as unprepared to feel it as the surprise of cutting her open.  It was an emotion that he was not accustomed to feeling: doubt.  He remembered her words, accusatory, of how he had bewitched her.  Now, he wondered if he too, had become likewise an unwilling victim.  Never before had he erred in his vocation, but never before had he had a queen at his feet.  Never before had he brought such grievous injury to a woman.  

The doubt itself was like acid under his skin.  It burned like a real thing.  

She had bewitched him. 

He took a step back, and she must have heard his retreating footfalls, because then her begging began in earnest.  “No, do not leave me, my lord.  My sin is too great to be spared as an innocent.”  Her voice broke.  “Please, I beg you – purge my body of my sin, and I will do whatever penance you prescribe.” 

He stopped, and marveled.  “Eleonore…” 

“Do not defile me with my Christian name,” she hissed, planting her shoulders against the floor once more, offering herself again to his ministrations.  

He watched as blood dripped down over the curve of her white skin, transfixed.  

“I will be your queen.”  Even in her position, there was a power behind her words.  “Beat me, for I have sinned against you and God, and I deserve the pain only you can give me.”

He narrowed his eyes.  “I am nothing but a tool to you.  An object for your use, the same as the whip or the bulb that violates you, even as we speak.”

Again, he watched as some tightness eased from her muscles, as if him speaking her transgression was the first course of her atonement.  It was as if the words themselves were something solid in the dim light around them, and showing them to the light was a necessary mortification.  

“Please, my lord, I beg you.”  Her voice was softer now.  “Leave your indelible mark on me, so I may be reminded of my lowliness.  Please, rid me of the sin that blackens my soul.” 

Genuine.  Of all the years he had spent torturing criminals and prisoners, he had heard many things, many words fall from the lips of his victims.  He had spent a lifetime honing his ability to disseminate the truth from lies, and he had an arsenal with which to dissect them.  

Despite his admonishments to her, he only heard the ring of truth in her voice.  

She wanted this.  Whatever explanation lay dormant underneath the surface of her piety, he promised himself he would find it.  But there was truth that underpinned her words.  

He knelt down and twisted the screw that lay nestled between her ass cheeks, one half turn. 

A desperate hiss escaped her lips, as she tried plaintively to slither her body away from its torturous intruder.  Her chains clinked and groaned against their bolts as she pulled them, scratching at the wooden floorboards. He listened to her quiet, pained breaths, and watched her shaking fingers.  Droplets of sweat beaded along the curve of her spine, catching the yellow light like dew on a shivering blade of grass.  

He slipped a hand underneath her, caressing the womanly swell of her abdomen, where he imagined that the bulb invaded her intestines.  

She groaned. “Please, my lord.  Take it out.  It –”  Her words devolved into a spill of tears.   

“Confess, then.  Confess your sin and convince me of your contrition.”  

“I am… greedy, my lord.”  The string of syllables was punctuated with her broken sobs and the useless arching of her body, in a vain attempt at some semblance of comfort.  “There is… lust in my heart.” 

This made him raise his eyebrows.  “Lust, my queen?  Do tell.” 

Even in the dim light, he could see the blush crawl over her exposed skin.

The moment dragged on in silence, before he made a fist with the soft skin of her belly, digging his nails into her unprotected flesh.  

If he was as truthful with himself as he was demanding of her, he would have admitted that her ragged scream transfixed him.

Her agonized writhing underneath him was as beguiling as any woman of the night.  He swallowed dryly, as he thought about how easy it would be to take her, as she was.  How easy it would be to steal that sweet virginity from the king.  

He closed his eyes.  Not yet.  Not nearly yet.  Her suffering for him was too delicious for him to give into his carnal desires tonight.  He’d have to find some way of sating himself, but that was a problem for later.  For right now, the weeping, prostate form of his pious queen would demand his full attention.  

“You have bewitched me, my lord,” she whispered through gritted teeth.  “I… my body aches for your touch.  I ache… for you to fill me, as a man does a woman.”  The words were spoken, pained, into the dirty-encrusted grain of the wood beneath her lips.  

He pushed her hair to one side of her head, almost gently, so he could see the tops of her ears, red and hot with her admission.  He dragged a finger through her untouched virtue, bisecting her body with her slickness.  She did not lie.  

Later, he would think about what this meant.  Later, when a queen was not shackled to the floor of his torture chamber.  

He stood up, trying not to feel the lightness in his own heart, at her exposure.  Later, he would allow himself the leisure to decide what this confession would mean.

He picked up the whip, the rough hide whistling with evil intent over the ground.

“Avarice and lust, my queen.”  He brought the whip down against her upturned ass, adding another slash to the first.  When her scream died, he continued.  “Although I still hear no penitence for your grievous misdeeds.”  A third cut was added to her skin, blood blooming stark and red.  “You, of all people, should understand that to confess without feeling repentance damns one doubly to hellish punishment.”  A fourth mark, so she was branded with the bloody letter M.  

Her cries were like music, as the wounds seeped dark red.  His initial marked against her body.

He would think, later, about why he had done it.  Later.

“Your penance, my queen, should you be able to show correct remorse for your actions, is to return here henceforth, each week before you drag your vile body to your Mass on Sunday.  You will be on your knees, as I cleanse the sin from your soul.” 

He knelt down again, and gave the bulb one last eighth of a turn.  “And you will thank me for the privilege.” 

She shrieked as the petals of the bulb inflated her further.  “Yes – yes, my lord!  I submit… myself to your tender… care.”

Photo by Jared Subia on Unsplash