Page 1 of Punished and Trained
CHAPTER 1
Viola
“Sire,” I said, as always hating how the word sounded in my ears and felt in my body, “please?”
Prince Hendren, the heir to the Magisterian throne and the man who for all intents and purposes owned me, looked down at me from his considerable height. The physical distance between us was greatly enhanced by my kneeling in front of him, but that disparity didn’t come close to the weight of the other difference: my master had his Magisterian uniform on, and I was naked.
“No, Viola. The fact that you were once the warmongering president of Artemisia makes it more important, rather than less, that your submission to me be fully visible at the reception. You will be naked except for your collar.”
I still couldn’t get used to it, the collar—probably, paradoxically, because of how slender and light it was. I could go long minutes without even remembering that Prince Hendren had marked me as his property that way, what I now wore at all times the sign of my precipitous fall from power.
“You still haven’t accepted your position, Viola,” Prince Hendren said, his voice carrying that aristocratic certainty that had from the beginning—even when Magisteria and Artemisia had negotiated the disastrous treaty—both captivated and terrified me. “You speak the words, you kneel, but in your mind, you still cling to the woman you thought you were.” He ran a finger along my jawline, tilting my face up. “This trip to Euporia will change that. By the time we return to Magisterian space, you will understand what it truly means to be my concubine.”
I lowered my eyes, feeling the familiar heat spreading through my core even as my cheeks burned with humiliation. That was the worst part—not the nakedness, not even the collar, but the way my body betrayed me at every turn. My nipples hardened at his touch, my sex grew wet at his commands. The transition from President Herranofar to royal plaything had been brutal, each day a new lesson in degradation. I had signed the surrender documents to save my world, but I hadn’t understood the personal price I would pay.
“Stand up and turn around,” he ordered suddenly. “Bend over and show me your anus.”
My breath caught. Something in me lurched forward, eager to please him, to earn his approval. My thighs trembled, my heart raced with the desire to obey—but my mind rebelled, locking my muscles in place. I couldn’t do it. Not this. The last vestige of presidential dignity screamed inside me.
“Please, Sire,” I whispered, hating the pleading tone that had replaced my once-commanding voice. “I’ll please you in other ways. Let me take you in my mouth, or—” I swallowed hard “—you could fuck me. Take me like… like that?”
His eyes hardened. “That isn’t what I commanded, Viola. Your body is mine to use as I see fit, and right now, I wish to see you display your sweet little bottom hole to me. Your continued resistance only proves my point.” He walked to the cabinet built into the stateroom wall and removed a leather whip. “You will show me your anus, and I will whip you for this reluctance, or you will be whipped until you obey, and then punished further afterward. The choice is yours, but there will be consequences either way, now.”
I stared at the whip, remembering the pain of my previous punishments, all given merely with the prince’s open hand. My right hand crept behind me almost unconsciously to clutch at my bottom cheeks, as if I could defend myself that way. The rational part of my brain—the part that had commanded the Artemisian defense force, negotiated interplanetary treaties, and managed economic crises—told me to simply obey and avoid the greater amount of pain. But something deeper, something I couldn’t explain even to myself, kept me frozen.
“Five seconds to decide,” he said, uncoiling the whip with obvious relish. “Five… four…”
“I can’t,” I whispered, the words escaping before I could stop them.
His smile was cold. “Three… two… one.” He gestured toward the punishment bench that represented a constant fixture of a stateroom on a Magisterian vessel. “You know the position.”
My legs carried me to the bench automatically, my body already having learned the routine of punishment over the terrible few days since Prince Hendren had taken me as his concubine.
I bent over the leather-padded surface, my heart hammering against my ribs. The prince’s hands were efficient and impersonal as he secured the restraints around my wrists and ankles, checking each one with a precise tug. The webbing cuffs bit into my skin, not painfully, but with enough pressure to remind me of my helplessness. I felt the cool air of the stateroom against my exposed sex, my bottom raised and vulnerable, my face burning with shame.
“This is a naval cat,” he said, letting the tails of the whip brush against my naked buttocks. “Nine strands of knotted leather. Traditionally used for discipline on Federation warships.”
The first lash came without warning, a swarm of fire across my bottom that made me cry out. I jerked against the restraints, my body instinctively trying to escape the pain.
“Euporia,” Prince Hendren said conversationally, as if we were discussing the weather over tea, “is perhaps the most fascinating planet in the outer systems.”
Another lash fell, deliberately placed just below the first. I gasped, tears springing to my eyes.
“The society there developed along unique lines after the colony ships landed.” The prince paused, letting me feel the burning aftermath of the strokes. “Parallel lines, in certain essential respects, to the ones we followed on Magisteria—but also very different. From the beginning, however, just like our own founders, they understood something fundamental about human nature that your Artemisian democracy pretended didn’t exist.”
The third stroke landed with precise aim, and I whimpered, my fingers clutching uselessly at air.
“On Euporia, they embrace what they call the Good Way.” He traced the welts forming on my skin with a cool finger. “Girls are raised in an all-female milieu. Many are identified early for their submissive tendencies. At eighteen, those lucky young women enter the Girls’ Training Academy.”
Another stroke, another cry torn from my throat. He was spacing them perfectly—just enough time between each lash for the pain to crest and begin to transform into the need I seemed completely unable to push away.
“At the Academy, they learn not just academic subjects, but how to serve. How to please. How to surrender.” His voice lowered, becoming almost hypnotic as the fifth stroke landed. “They sleep in special restraints called virtue-keepers to ensure their purity. On the classroom walls are educational posters that show proper submissive positions, proper behavior.”
I bit my lip, tasting blood as the sixth stroke fell across the tender underside of my buttocks. My tears were flowing freely now, but beneath the pain, something much more shameful had begun not just to happen but to grow impossible to deny—warmth spreading from my core, wetness gathering between my thighs.
“After their first few days at the Academy, they’re assigned to Guardians and Mistresses—married couples who complete their training. The Guardian takes the girl to his bed while his wife supervises, corrects, guides.” Another stroke, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Eventually, the girls are presented at a Suitors’ Meeting, where men select their future wives.”
The eighth stroke made me sob openly, my body shaking. But pain alone couldn’t account for the shudders that racked my limbs. As the ninth stroke fell, I had a thought so shocking itnearly made me gasp louder than the pain itself. For a terrible, bewildering moment, I wished I had been born on Euporia instead of Artemisia. To have grown up knowing my place, trained from the beginning to accept what seemed increasingly inevitable. Never to have tasted power, since I had done so only to have it stripped away. To have learned submission not as humiliation, but as purpose.
