Page 53 of Punished and Trained
Instead, in my mind’s eye, I ended up in my dorm room, shared with another aspiring politician, trying to keep my hand from drifting down between my legs as I remembered the president’s speech. How handsome and confident he had seemed, full of wisdom and trust in the future. How mortifyingly needy I hadgotten, right there in the splendid lecture hall, as I imagined him claiming my virginity.
When the sergeant-at-arms had bound my hands to the wall I had thought it an absurd, empty gesture—a little over-the-top display of masculinist power, ensuring that women soon to be punished couldn’t play with themselves when no woman in this position could ever even think of doing that. Ten minutes into this terrible night, I realized that at least for a woman like me—my master’s trained concubine… His Royal Highness’ dirty little slut… the prince’s naughty whore—the restraint represented a serious interdiction of satisfying a need I suddenly felt desperate to yield to, degrading as it might be.
My memories began to blur together in the dim light of the cell, exhaustion making the boundaries between past and future dissolve. The handsome president from my youth transformed in my mind’s eye, his features shifting and blending until he became someone else entirely—older, more distinguished, with the bearing of authority I recognized from diplomatic functions.
President Marcan Valerrar. My immediate predecessor. The man who had led Artemisia before me, who had retired to write his memoirs just as the Federation began its expansion into our sector. In my fevered imagination, he stood beside Prince Hendren in some vast chamber, nodding gravely as my master explained my failures.
“She never understood the weight of true leadership,” the phantom Valerrar said, his voice carrying the disappointment I had always feared to hear from him. “Perhaps if she had accepted guidance from her elders, Artemisia might have been spared.”
Prince Hendren’s eyes fixed on my imagined naked form, bound helplessly before them both. “Then you’ll assist in her correction? Show her what proper submission to masculine authority looks like?”
The fantasy unfolded with terrible vividness. I saw myself positioned over some brutal apparatus, my bottom raised high and vulnerable, while both men examined the implements of my punishment. Valerrar selected a cane with the same careful consideration he had once used to choose his words in council meetings.
“Six strokes from me,” he said, testing the flexible rod with practiced expertise. “For the failures of leadership I should have prevented by training her properly. Then she’s yours to finish, Your Royal Highness.”
The first imaginary stroke sent fire across my phantom flesh, and I bit my lip to stifle the whimper that wanted to escape. But in the twisted logic of my exhausted mind, the pain transformed almost immediately into something else. After Valerrar delivered his measured punishment, he moved to stand before my bound form, his hands working at his ceremonial robes.
“A president must learn to serve those wiser than herself,” he murmured, guiding his hardened length to my lips. “Take this as the instruction you never received.”
My hips began moving involuntarily against the thin padding of the cell’s bed, seeking friction as the fantasy consumed me. I squeezed my thighs together, clenching the muscles of my core as I imagined serving both men with desperate enthusiasm. The restraints on my wrists made the sensation more intensesomehow, the vanity of any resistance feeding the shameful arousal that flooded my system.
In my mind, Valerrar claimed my mouth with the same authority he had once wielded in the council chamber, while Prince Hendren positioned himself behind me. “Your predecessor is quite right,” my master’s voice echoed in my imagination. “You need to understand your place completely.”
I pressed my face into the padding to muffle my breathing as I worked my hips more frantically, chasing the building pressure between my legs. The fantasy shifted and changed—now Prince Hendren was taking my mouth while Valerrar claimed my bottom with brutal force, his hands gripping my hips as he drove into me with punishing intensity.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasting copper as I fought to keep from crying out with desperate need. The fantasy was consuming me completely, my body writhing against the thin mattress as I chased the building ecstasy. Just as the pleasure threatened to overwhelm me entirely, I felt the familiar sensation of the governor activating between my thighs.
But this time, instead of the surge of stimulation I had wildly supposed my master might give me, there was nothing. The suppressive function. Worse than nothing—a cold, neutering repression that drained away every trace of physical arousal with ruthless efficiency. The wet heat between my legs simply vanished, my swollen flesh returning to the same kind of sensation I might get from my elbow or my heel, as if someone had thrown a switch.
A sob escaped my throat despite my bitten lip, the sound echoing off the stone walls of my cell. The abrupt transition from desperate stimulation to relative numbness felt like a smalldeath, my body suddenly foreign and unresponsive. But even as tears pricked at my eyes, I felt a strange wash of gratitude flood through me.
He was watching. Even now, even here in this terrible place, Prince Hendren was monitoring my responses and protecting me from my own shameful needs. The governor’s suppression had saved me from the mortifying experience of climaxing while tied up and utterly revealed in a prison cell, my cries echoing through the corridors for any guard to hear.
Yet as the physical sensations faded to nothing, I discovered something remarkable. My mind refused to release the fantasy that had consumed me. The images of Valerrar and Prince Hendren using my body continued to play behind my closed eyelids with vivid intensity, and I found that the mental arousal remained completely intact despite the governor’s intervention.
I could still feel the phantom weight of Valerrar’s authority as he claimed my mouth, still imagine the devastating stretch as Prince Hendren took my bottom with merciless precision. The shame of serving both men, of being reduced to nothing more than holes for their pleasure, sent waves of psychological arousal through me that the governor couldn’t touch.
The realization struck me with startling clarity: it was possible to be aroused mentally even when every nerve ending had been electrochemically silenced. My mind could crave degradation and surrender even when my body felt nothing at all. The discovery should have disturbed me, but instead it filled me with an odd sense of relief.
Tomorrow morning, when Prince Hendren raised the judicial cane above my bound form, the governor would suppress every trace of physical pleasure just as it was doing now. I would feelnothing but pure agony as the rod whistled down to stripe my flesh—no chemical cushion, no treacherous arousal to confuse punishment with reward.
But my mind would still be mine. In the depths of that brutal correction, as pain tore through my nervous system with clinical precision, I could still retreat into the psychological need that had brought me to this cell. I could find refuge in the way that—thanks to be sure to my careful master’s training—I had finally embraced my body’s craving to submit.
CHAPTER 26
Viola
So sure I had been that I could never fall asleep in the holding cell that, when a bell woke me, I thought it must only be the sounding of the night watch, with many hours still to come before morning. Then I heard the lock on the cell door click, I felt the relaxation in my limbs, and I understood that I had managed not only to sleep, but somehow even to sleep well.
The door swung open and I heard footsteps approaching. I craned my face back over my shoulder to see Prince Hendren come into my field of vision. He wore his formal diplomatic attire, his lovely eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made my heart skip. Behind him stood the sergeant-at-arms, his bearing rigid with military precision. My master’s presence filled the small cell completely, transforming the sterile space into something that felt both more intimate and more terrifying.
“Good morning, Viola,” Prince Hendren said, his voice carrying that familiar authority that sent shivers through my restrained form. “I trust you slept well?”
I struggled to find my voice, my throat dry from the night’s anxious dreams. “Yes, Your Royal Highness. Thank you.”
He stepped closer, and I caught sight of something that made my blood freeze. In his hands, he carried a long, thick length of a wood I recognized from pictures as bamboo, its surface gleaming under the cell’s harsh lighting. The judicial cane. The instrument that would soon mark my flesh with brutal precision before the watching galaxy.
“The microdrone cameras are already active,” he continued, his tone conversational despite the gravity of his words. “Federation News Services is broadcasting live to all inhabited worlds. Millions are watching as we speak.”
