Page 2 of Punished and Trained
“The most beautiful thing about Euporian society,” Prince Hendren continued, his voice almost gentle now, “is how the women there embrace their nature. No resistance. No political careers pretending to be something they’re not.”
The tenth stroke landed, and I moaned, recognizing with horrifying clarity exactly what he was doing. Each word, each lash was designed to drill deeper into my psyche, to force me to confront the yearning I’d buried beneath layers of ambition and power. The need that had always been there, even as I’d signed treaties and addressed the Artemisian Congress.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Your body knows what it wants, Viola. Why do you fight it?” His hand slid between my thighs, fingers finding the wetness there. “Your presidential mind says one thing, but your sweet cunny says another.”
I tried to focus on my breathing, on the burning welts across my bottom, on anything but the growing arousal that seemed to weave itself through the pain like golden threads through dark fabric. Each stroke of the whip now sent dual signals—agony and need—creating a tapestry of sensation I couldn’t untangle.
“You’re getting wetter with each stroke,” he observed. “How gratifying.”
The eleventh and twelfth strokes came in quick succession, and I screamed, my body jerking against the restraints. Still the shameful heat between my legs only intensified.
“On Euporia, a girl would be praised for such a response. Her Guardian would be pleased with her progress. I’ve been quite patient with you, Viola. I’ve allowed your little rebellions, your moments of defiance. They amused me.” His fingers pressed lightly against my sex. “But I think the time has come to remind you of certain realities.”
“What realities?” I managed, my voice barely above a whisper.
“This, for one.” His hand moved away from my pussy, reaching instead for his handheld, clipped to his belt. “Do you remember your Prosperian governor?”
My blood ran cold. The governor—a bioelectronic device surgically implanted on my clitoris during my initial processing. Prince Hendren had demonstrated its capabilities only once, first suppressing all feeling in my pussy, then activating the governor’s stimulation function and sending me into an orgasm so powerful I’d nearly lost consciousness. Since then, he’d merely kept it as a threat, a reminder of his complete control over my body.
“I see you do,” he said, noting my expression in the mirror. “I haven’t really used it yet, have I? I wanted you to come to your submission naturally.” He pressed a button on the handheld’s screen, and immediately I felt… nothing.
No, not nothing. An absence. The constant, low-level arousal that had plagued me since my capture was suddenly gone, leaving a strange emptiness in its place.
“I’ve adjusted the setting,” Prince Hendren explained, his voice clinical. “You can no longer feel pleasure in your sweet little cunt. Not until I decide otherwise.”
I gasped, instinctively pressing my thighs together, and found none of the soothing little thrill I had expected.
“It may help you to remember that I can exert my will this way, whenever I please.”
I closed my eyes, trying to shut out his words, but they penetrated just as surely as the pain of the lash. It was becoming harder to remember why I should resist. The Magisterians controlled Artemisia now. My presidential office was just a memory, my authority dissolved by the treaty I’d signed myself, after my foolish strategy had resulted in my military’s crushing defeat. Even if I could somehow escape this ship, where would I go? Who would hide the disgraced former president who’d surrendered her world? The Federation’s reach extended across systems; I had nowhere to run.
Perhaps surrender was the only logical option left. Not just political surrender—I’d already signed those papers—but personal surrender, too. Complete surrender.
The thought brought an unexpected wave of relief.
“Perhaps,” Prince Hendren said, as if he had sensed a change in the tension in my limbs, “you’re beginning to understand.” His hand stroked my hair almost tenderly. “Tell me what you want, Viola.”
Sobbing with mingled pain and frustrated need, I broke. “Please, Sire—let me show you. Let me show you my… my anus. I want to. Please.”
The words tore from my throat, emerging in a voice I barely recognized as my own. The rational part of my mind—the diplomat, the president, the woman who had once commanded respect across the Artemisian Republic—screamed in protest. I tried to focus on that voice, to remind myself that this was coercion, that I had only spoken these words to avoid more pain.
“Very good,” Prince Hendren said. “I’ll reward you for that.” I heard a soft beep, and I gasped as the helpless pleasure and the need suddenly returned between my thighs.
No. I only said it… I only said it because I didn’t want another lash.
But the terrible truth hammered against that rationalization. My sex was throbbing, aching with a need that had nothing to do with avoiding punishment. Something deep within me wanted this degradation, craved it even. I told myself it represented a purely physical response, just nerves and endorphins and adrenaline creating false signals. I told myself I had only played along to survive. I told myself a dozen different lies, each one more desperate than the last.
None of them could explain away the wetness between my thighs or the way my heart raced with anticipation rather than fear.
The prince’s hands moved to my restraints, methodically releasing first my ankles, then my wrists. He put the horrible naval cat on my back, as if to remind me of what I had just endured. I whimpered at the sensation of having it there, the utter degradation of the idea behind it. Then, much realer and more solid than any idea, the prince walked around to stand in front of the bench.
“Now,” he said, his sea-blue eyes boring into mine, “you’re going to show me what, if anything, you’ve learned.”
I watched, transfixed, as his fingers moved to the fastening of his uniform trousers. The sound of the zipper seemed impossibly loud in the quiet stateroom. When his cock sprang free, thick and hard and intimidating in its size, I couldn’t help the small whimper that escaped my lips.
CHAPTER 2
