"I have something for you," Crown Prince Veryl whispered to his betrothed, Lord Drake.
"But it's your eighteenth birthday," Drake responded, absently caressing the other man's bare shoulders. "Am I not supposed to be giving the gifts?"
"Perhaps this will be a gift for both of us." Flushing deeply, Veryl leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled under the mattress, producing finally an old book with worn binding. "I found this in the old library," he whispered. "Perhaps, if it appeals to you....? I confess I have been able to think of little else."
Drake opened the book carefully, and blinked in surprise at the first illustration—a man stretched across another man's lap. The second man had his hand in the air, clearly about to strike a hard blow to the first man's upturned and bared bottom.
"I see," said Drake. His heart was pounding, but he was a statesman with much experience commanding his features. He did so now. "And you wish to try this?"
"Aye," said Veryl, turning even redder.
"It does appeal. After dinner, I shall oblige you."
"Why after dinner? Why not....now?"
"Because tongues would wag were the Crown Prince unable to sit at his birthday banquet."
Veryl's eyes widened slightly, and he passed one hand over his backside.
During the feast, which lasted into the wee hours of the morning, Veryl found himself unable to tear his eyes away from Drake's large hands and well-muscled arms. He squirmed, trying to anticipate the smart he would endure later. He was unable to do so; he had never been struck in his life.
When at last they withdrew to Veryl's bedchamber, Drake wasted no time drawing a large, straight-backed chair to the center of the room and seating himself upon it. He held out his hand. Swallowing hard, Veryl took it and allowed himself to be guided over Drake's muscular thighs. He could scarcely suppress his instinct to jump up and end the game; he had not counted on how utterly humiliating this position would feel.
Drake patted the trousered buttocks. He would far have preferred them bare, as the illustration in the book had suggested, but he had read the apprehension—even fear—in his betrothed's face, and he could not bring himself to ask Veryl to disrobe.
He raised his arm and brought his right hand down with a sharp smack on Veryl's left cheek. The impact burned his hand.
Veryl jerked and cried out. "That hurt!"
"It is supposed to hurt, I believe," Drake said, and delivered another hard smack. He could see the imprint of his hand against the gold fabric. "Since this is your eighteenth birthday, I'm going to deliver eighteen strokes. You have sixteen left."
"And if I want you to stop sooner?" Veryl demanded, wincing as he received another burning crack of Drake's hand. His bottom stung, and he felt a child-like urge to burst into tears.
Drake's only answer was another slap, low down where buttocks met thighs. And then another. And another.
Veryl tried to put a hand back to protect his buttocks, but Drake caught it effortlessly and put extra energy into his next three whacks as punishment. Then he stopped, running a soothing hand over Veryl's tensed bottom.
"Is it over?" Veryl gasped. His bottom hurt, even though he knew the punishment had been mild.
"Of course not. We're but halfway through." Drake continued stroking. "Your breeches are not thick enough to provide much protection. Your father should dismiss the seamstress."
Veryl shuddered, caught in an odd state between relaxation and anticipation. "There is no seamstress—tell me before you're going to start smacking again, please. There are no sewing materials in the palace. All of our clothes are made by peasants."
"Why?"
"A curse. At my christening. Father forgot to invite an old wizard with a bad temper."
"I'm going to give you two more now," Drake said, and did. Veryl gasped. "What curse did the wizard put on you? If we're to be married, I should know these things." He emphasized this remark with another slap, the hardest so far, to the crowns of Veryl's buttocks.
It was a few moments before Veryl could trust his voice to answer. Then, he said, "I'm to prick my finger with a needle before my twenty-first birthday and fall into a deep sleep. If my true love comes to awaken me before the year is out, I live. If not, I die. Father doesn't believe in true love, so he decided to keep me away from needles." Veryl yelped at another hard smack.
"You fool. And I saw you mending a rip in your shirt not a fortnight ago." Drake smacked twice more, grimly, ignoring the cry of protest that rose from Veryl's throat. He delivered the last three smacks with strength enough to bring tears to Veryl's eyes.
Veryl swore afterwards that he would never allow himself to be spanked again, though Drake noticed that later, in bed, he aroused even more quickly than usual.
Drake himself was brought to the height of excitement at the sight of his own faint pink handprints on Veryl's bottom.
On his twenty-first birthday, Veryl went to the royal library to study the book he had shown to Drake three years before. The idea of a spanking still held much appeal, but he feared the pain, and his own reaction to it. Suppose he wept? What would Drake think of him if he were brought to tears by no more than a man's hand across his backside? Truly shameful for a future king.
"Oh, _d_a_m_n_ and double _d_a_m_n_," a small voice behind him said.
He turned and found a little old man who truly had no business in the royal library. But Veryl had been raised to be polite, so he said, "Good sir, what vexes you?"
"_d_a_m_n_ if this isn't my only good shirt, the shirt I was to wear to the prince's wedding. And _d_a_m_n_ if I haven't lost a button. If I were ten years younger, I could sew it back on, but my eyesight, you see....I can't thread the needle."
"Let me try," Veryl suggested, for in spite of his father's orders, he was quite an accomplished tailor. But the old man was the evil wizard who had cursed him years ago, and this of course was a magical needle. When Veryl touched it, the sharp point pricked his skin, and he fell down in a faint. And so the curse was fulfilled.
Drake, when he arrived for the wedding, found the castle surrounded by layer upon layer of thorny branches. He drew his sword and struck at a branch which in turn lashed his arm, all but flaying skin and muscle. Drake uttered an unlordly oath.
But he truly loved Veryl, so he did not give up. Inch by inch, he battled his way through the enchanted forest. Some of the thorns responded to his sharp blade. Others wanted fire or poison. Still others took hours of complicated chants and spells before they gave way. All tore his flesh and left their mark on him. It must have been a year by now, he thought in despair. I'll reach the palace and find nothing left of Veryl but a skeleton.
But he continued the battle, and it came to pass that three-hundred sixty-four days and twenty-three and a half hours after Veryl had fallen prey to the wizard's treachery, Drake reached the castle and found Veryl in the library.
Veryl had not said how the spell was to be broken, but from everything Drake had learned of spells and of true love, there was only one way. He took Veryl in his arms and kissed him. He did not know how much time passed before he realized Veryl was awake and kissing him back.
The wedding was postponed until Drake, lacerated and feverish from battling the enchanted forest, regained his health. Veryl nursed him night and day with an attentiveness far more healing than any potion prescribed by the court physicians.
But Drake noted a change in Veryl's usually light-hearted demeanor. At first he feared the enchantment had dulled Veryl's feelings for him, but in truth, Veryl could not have been more loving. He cuddled close to Drake and held cold cloths to his face when the fevers ran high. But he spoke little, and laughed not at all. Nor did he regain the weight he had lost during his enchanted sleep.
He will be a skeleton at that, Drake thought grimly, and as he grew stronger, he put all his energy into teasing and coaxing Veryl into a better humor.
Then one day, when he felt quite himself again, he cornered Veryl in his bedchamber and asked forthrightly, "What is the matter with you?"
Veryl looked at him with haunted eyes. "How can you ask that, after I almost killed the both of us!"
He would have fled the room had not Drake detained him with an iron grip. "Enough. It is over now. You are well. I am mending. Do not dwell upon it."
"I shall never forgive myself."
Unbidden, Drake recalled how pink Veryl's buttocks had been the night of his eighteenth birthday, and his _c_o_c_k_ stirred for the first time since he had won free of the forest. "It seems," he said, afraid he would only deepen Veryl's melancholy, but unable to hold the words back, "you realize you have done a foolish thing in falling prey to the wizard's trickery. Perhaps punishment is called for."
"Punishment?"
"You once had a book that made some valuable suggestions."
Veryl swallowed hard and licked his lips. Color rose in his face. "You may have the right of it," he said faintly.
"I'm sure I do. And it is easily taken care of. Move the chair to the center of the room, as we had it before."
The haste with which Veryl scrambled to obey convinced Drake that his instincts had been sound, if somewhat selfish. He seated himself upon the chair. "Now, bring me your golden hairbrush."
Veryl lifted the hairbrush and slapped it experimentally against the palm of his hand. His eyes widened when he felt the sting. "Drake....?"
"Bring it to me, Veryl. And then remove your breeches. I have not yet fully regained my strength, and you will feel more if you are bare."
Veryl did as he was told, wondering how something so humiliating and frightening could also be so exciting. He was fully erect. Cool air stroked his buttocks.
"Bend over my lap, Veryl," Drake said.
For an instant, he considered fleeing the room. Drake would not chase him down and force him. If he ran, no more words about the almost-punishment would pass between them.
But the guilt about the agony Drake had suffered in the enchanted forest would remain. As would his own curiosity and desire.
Awkwardly, he stretched himself out across Drake's lap, clinging to the legs of the chair to keep his balance. The last time he'd been in this humiliating position, he'd at least had breeches—if only thin ones—for protection. Now, completely displayed and vulnerable, he shuddered, blinked back tears of shame, and again fought the urge to run.
Drake stroked his buttocks soothingly. "Rest easy, prince," he said kindly, and then, as if reading his mind. "There is no dishonor in this, or in any tears you shed while being punished. 'Tis expected."
His hand lifted and Veryl tensed in spite of himself.
A slap, hard and stinging, on the right cheek. Another on the left. Much harder than the spanks he'd received on his birthday, unless time had dulled the memory. Veryl gasped and shifted his weight as Drake continued to spank hard and steadily. Fifteen smacks. Twenty. The crowns of his buttocks were on fire. Drake started spanking the sides, awakening new pain. Thirty smacks. Forty.
"Ow.....ow....Drake....!" Veryl protested, wriggling.
The worst pain of all, as Drake began slapping the sensitive area where buttocks met thighs. Fifty slaps. Sixty.
Veryl twisted and cried out, vaguely aware of hot tears on his face, but too focused on the pain to feel any shame for it. More spanks all over his buttocks, loud, burning slaps that echoed off the walls of the room and threatened what little control he had left. There was no way to escape, no shift in position which lessened the fire in his backside, nothing to do but cling to Drake's leg and endure. Each time he was sure he had reached the edge of his tolerance and could take no more, Drake would deliver another blow, and another after that, until it seemed the spanking must go on forever.
Drake raised his hand yet again, noting that his arm was becoming tired and his palm was red. He held his hand in the air for a second as Veryl shuddered in anticipation. Cool air soothed his sore palm as he brought it down hard on Veryl's reddened bottom with a loud smack. The tender flesh trembled beneath his hand. Veryl cried harder.
Guiltily, Drake realized he had been spanking for close on ten minutes. Veryl's buttocks and thighs were shaded in deep pinks and reds, with a few purple finger marks where Drake had slapped especially hard. He stroked the flesh, felt the burning heat. Veryl tensed at the touch, then relaxed as he realized it was a caress and not a blow.
"Do you think I can trust you to use good sense in dealing with wizards and curses from now on?" Drake demanded, still stroking the quivering backside. "If you're to be king one day, you really should have better judgment."
Veryl nodded so hard his whole body vibrated.
"I believe I shall allow ten strokes of your hairbrush to reinforce the lesson."
Veryl tensed in horror. Drake tested the weight of the golden hairbrush in his hand. He lifted it high and after allowing a moment for anticipation, brought it down hard on the already tender flesh of Veryl's right buttock. The brush struck with an anti-climactic splat. But the blow produced a howl of pain from Veryl. The skin puckered, then flared redder than before. Drake delivered the second blow just as hard to the left cheek, with the same result.
Veryl clung to the legs of the chair, and ground his teeth. He had thought it impossible that anything could hurt as much as Drake's hard, punishing hand, but the brush was heavier and produced a bruising force as well as a keen sting. He could not control his cries as Drake delivered two more resounding splats to the lower slopes of his buttocks.
He felt Drake caressing the burning flesh, heard him say gently, "Poor prince. I had no idea the brush would redden you so. However, I must keep my word, so six more you shall have." Veryl sobbed a protest.
The next stroke was light, more a sharp tap than a blow. It stung, all the more since Veryl was already so sore, but it did not truly hurt. "Three more like that, then two hard ones to drive the lesson home," Drake suggested.
Slowly and deliberately, he delivered the three light strokes. Then, stealing himself against Veryl's renewed sobs, he placed the full strength of his arm into the final two blows.
When the full punishment had been delivered, and Veryl had had sufficient time to bring his sobs under control, Drake lifted Veryl in his arms and cradled him gently, kissing away the drying tears. "This episode is now behind us, Veryl," he said. "The curse is broken, and you have bravely born the punishment for your foolishness. I believe, as the old stories say, we shall live happily ever after."
Veryl laughed shakily, and Drake, lifting his betrothed's chin with one finger, saw the old smile he knew so well. "Our lives may not be as peaceful as you project," Veryl said. "You see, I neglected to tell you about a particularly odious prophecy involving our first adopted child. And then, there was the curse of succession....I forgot to mention that, too, I believe. And after that...."
He broke off with a gasp as Drake gave him a playful swat across his bare, still throbbing, backside. "Perhaps," Drake said dryly, "Given that I shall be married to you, I should have said we shall live interestingly ever after."