The Matron's Palace

Written in honor of an all-too-vivid dream, and of the sick fuck who began this genre when he had a bit too much time on his hands. Sort of like I do now.

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The Matron's Palace

I love you, but I can't escape these chains and save you. We're both slaves of the same condition, of the same affliction, of the same heartless master. So I can only love you from a distance while we suffer.

------

I couldn't help myself. It was too beautiful to resist, so I ran inside. I knew I was only a peasant girl, but it was the chance of a lifetime, never mind the punishment if I were to be caught.

My skirts went flying as I dashed in through the golden gates to the vast practice room, past a bewildered man teaching teenage girls ballet. I ran down the long corridor decorated with myriad paintings and gold trim and filtered light from the tall windows, past marble statues, with my moccasins pounding through the marble floor as quietly as they could.

I stopped at a window so wide that it engulfed the small room it was in, realizing I was in a loft room overlooking the stage. I could see the ballerina who was to perform tonight-- Anna Ykaterina, the world-famous ballerina, so beautiful and covered in pink and lace.

"Who's there?!"

My breath caught in my throat. There was a stage in that tiny room, too, and on it happened to be the Matron, the Matron of the whole Opera and all its dancers. At her side was her young crony, Alexandra Bastiat. I only knew them from pictures. I couldn't speak, only struggle to keep myself from fainting.

"We have a trespasser now, do we?" The Matron's rouged lips curled into a wicked smile. "Alexandra, get the Keeper." She stepped down to examine me. "You're quite a treat."

The Matron perused my ragged clothing with nimble fingers, pinching here and there, grabbing my breasts as if to test their firmness. "Young and supple, eh," she remarked, pinching the inside of my thigh through my skirts. I gasped without thinking. "More new flesh for us to play with."

At that moment, a woman in executioner's dress entered the room, carrying a leather tray of steel instruments. I almost passed out then and there. Alexandra yanked off almost all of my clothing while I stood there, completely frozen. She left my last layer on as I cried, "Can I go to the bathroom?"

The Matron laughed out loud and pointed the way, but as I locked the door, she rapped loudly and I foolishly unlocked it without thinking to escape.

"God, what an idiotic girl," she muttered as she walked back to the stage.

I could barely pee into the porcelain bowl when I heard another laugh-- a man's laugh-- behind me. I jerked around and found the young dance instructor in the shadows; he'd been watching me the whole time, it seemed.

Before I could say anything, he smiled at me with a bit of wistfulness and said, "I'll be waiting for you outside."

I finished up and found myself outside, in my white corset and dress, facing a strange scene. The man was naked, tied up and sitting on his legs, gagged with his head on a table, turned towards me. His eyes were apologetic, but his erection was clearly not, slipped through a cold-looking metal ring around his base.

The Matron watched with glee as Alexandra stepped up to him with one of the steel instruments in her hand and proceeded to run it down his back, scraping him so deeply that it drew blood. Through the bandanna gag, he screamed in pain. Alexandra, now dressed in nothing but black boots and a swimsuit-like red and black lace corset, reached for a scalpel and a handful of salt.

I couldn't help but scream as she sliced down the man's back, then rubbed the salt into the gushing wound. The Matron, now behind me, grabbed me by the waist and felt for my virginal mound through my skirt, fingers pressing into the spot. She pressed my head against her neck.

"Do you like it, dear?" she sneered into my ear, tickling it in such a way that I shuddered against her touch. The man lifted his head; Alexandra pushed it back down onto the wooden table it was perched on.

"Madame, I think he is trying to speak," she called out.

"Remove the gag, then," said the Matron, whose words were quickly followed.

"Don't touch her," the man gasped, and I immediately winced at how much pain he seemed to be in. His cock was still stiff, and a deep red like his mutilated back. His dark hair was damp with blood and sweat. "Leave her be."

The Matron sashayed up to him in her stiletto boots and kicked him in the side, making him howl with pain.

"You want her to yourself, do you, Walter?" she muttered, then came back to grab my arm and roughly shove me towards the man. "Here, then. Fuck her first."

I cried out, but Alexandra slapped me across the face. Tears were streaming down my face, but after that I kept quiet until Walter had gathered the strength to stand up and walk towards me.

The Matron shoved me down to my knees, then grabbed a handful of my hair and roughly guided my head to Walter's cock. I couldn't do it; I struggled against her hold.

"DO IT," she ordered, and his stiff penis parted my lips and thrusted in so far that I choked on it.

"She's completely clean, Madame," Walter said with difficulty. Alexandra wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her back against his, so she was the one doing all the thrusting into my mouth.

"She may not be experienced, but she won't bite your precious little prick off or I'll slit her throat," the Matron sneered. She yanked on my hair harder, which squeezed more tears from my eyes. "Right, dear?"

Still choking on Walter's cock, I nodded obediently and wrapped my lips around his base.

"Use more saliva." Alexandra spit on the cock herself to show me. I followed.

With a few more thrusts, the Matron stopped and yanked my head away. Walter groaned, almost in protest. Alexandra wrapped a hand around his hardness, making him cry out.

"He's ready, Madame," she said, lips bent into an ugly smile, The Matron pushed me down onto the cushion on the stage.

"Spread your legs, then," she ordered. I was too bewildered to listen; she shoved them apart herself.

"Fucking stupid girl," she noted, feeling for my underpants and yanking them off my legs. In my confusion, I kicked her in the face, and immediately held my breath for a retaliatory slap. Instead, she grinned and spread me apart even wider.

"Stupid *and* insolent," she said, reaching in and pinching SOMETHING that made me scream in pain. I learned later that it was my labia. "I think I might enjoy watching you get torn senseless."

Walter was made to kneel in front of me, and put his face to my vagina, licking until I was wet, despite all my cries for him to stop. They ended up gagging me because I was "so irritating". He licked and sucked until his mouth was full of my fluid, clear and sticky.

"Alexandra, is he still hard?" asked the Matron, sounding almost bored. Alexandra, still pressed against his back, reached forward and touched Walter's throbbing dick, which twitched in response. Walter looked away in shame.

"Put it in."

The rope binding Walter's wrists was cut so he could climb on top of me properly. Dried blood stained his face and hands, which ran over my porcelain thighs and pressed between them, inside to where I was ready and waiting. I'd stopped crying.

"I'm sorry," he whispered in my ear, surprising me, before he thrust in completely.

The pain that I felt from the tearing tissue was overcome by a strange pleasure, warmth spreading from my middle up to my chest. I tilted my head back and was filled with a pleasant bursting blankness, punctuated only by Walter's thrusting, which pounded me against the soft cushion on the wooden floor.

"Harder," the Matron ordered. "Make her come while she bleeds."

I couldn't hear these words, but with them Walter pushed me into the cushion faster and with more force.

My body, though it never encountered a situation like this before, knew how to respond. My vagina tightened around Walter's warm cock as my thighs tightened even more. He rested his hands against my breasts as he kept pushing me into the warm cushion, now slick with sweat. My breathing came faster; so did his.

"Breathe regularly," he told me as he untied my gag, panting himself. I did, and was promptly rewarded with an overwhelming, breathtaking cascade of release. With the first wave, I didn't know what hit me, but as it subsided I automatically tensed my entire body again, trying frantically to make it return. I could feel Walter's cock get even larger inside me, as he finally finished with his base against my clit, rocking back and forth so I could reach the same heights I did in the first wave as he finished. As I came back down to Earth I could feel warmth being flooded into me. Walter pulled out, and I groaned without thinking, wanting to come some more.

We both finished, then Walter knelt back up shamefully and looked at the Matron. She had one hand on her pussy; the other hand held a cigarette. Alexandra was at her side, a small bulletlike vibrator in her grasp, squealing with pleasure as she fingered herself.

"Bravo," said the Matron in a low voice. "I wish you could do that more often with *me*, Walter. But I'll let you keep her if you two continue with more of the same before me.

"And she will be made to love pain as much as you do."

------

Walter carried me through the myriad corridors for what seemed like forever. It all became a dark blur of gleaming gold chandeliers and tall windows and stained glass, most dark from the dark cloudy sky outside. I remember pressing my face to his blood-stained white shirt and sobbing until I could do so no longer. I knew that once one faced the Matron and fell under her good graces, they could never return to their old world; she would keep their families well-cared for, but they were never to be reunited. If they did, she would have both slave and family executed.

She ran the Opera. She ran this town.

We arrived at a set of white doors with a gold Rococco trim. Walter rapped at the door, then looked at my tear-stained face.

"Are you feeling any better, my lady?" he asked softly. I almost shook my head, but his concerned face drew me in immediately, and all I could do was stare at him blankly.

The door opened, revealing a tuxedoed butler with a kind face.

"My lord," he said, ushering him in without another word. The room that the doors led to was more magnificent than anything I'd ever seen in my short, penniless life. Everything was made of wood, a priceless commodity in a world where plants no longer grew in the earth of their own accord. On the opposite end of the room was a large bed with many cushions, hidden by a velvet canopy and curtains. It was on this bed that Walter gently placed me and tucked me in.

"Get the doctor," he ordered to the butler, who disappeared through another set of double doors-- yes, the room had enough room for another set of double doors-- as Walter turned back to me, towering over me from my place on the pillows, and brushed some hair from my face.

"I'm really sorry," he said, and I didn't know whether he was being sincere. "I saw you running into the Palace, but I didn't stop you, even though I knew what was waiting for you inside."

"Why?" I asked, not feeling tired or injured at all. Walter smiled, a little wistfully.

"I'm selfish," he said simply, running a finger along my cheekbone, sighing. "Don't worry, your family will be well taken care of, as you may have heard from the rumours."

"I have no family," I retorted, brushing his hand away in spite of myself. "I am an orphan."

"Even better," he said. "Anyone you care about?"

His eyes burned into mine. I could only shiver, believing that his eyes could see right into the deepest reaches of my mind. A warm hand cupped itself over mine. I would have been scared, but Walter was too beautiful a creature to be afraid of.

"No," I said, though I wasn't entirely telling the truth.

The doctor came and first bandaged Walter's back, then checked me down there. Walter stood there, watching, eyes still burning into mine.

"She's in good health, for a peasant," the doctor finally announced. "She might need a bath, but otherwise, nothing." He sighed as he got up. "Try not to be too rough on her, my lord."

Walter nodded him out, closing the door behind him. He walked back to the bed; I could feel my body trembling as he got closer and sat back down next to me.

"From now on, I won't touch you without your permission when I don't have to," he explained to me, carefully keeping his distance. "The Matron will order me to do things to you, some horrible things, but outside of that you are free to do as you wish. Just ask me if you need anything."

He got up to leave, but I took his wrist. He looked back, eyes staring into mine, almost blankly. I almost faltered.

"I-- I can't sleep like this," I said in a trembling voice. "It's too cold."

Without hearing anything more, Walter ignored his own wounds and climbed into the bed with me. He wrapped his arms a little awkwardly but gently around my waist.

"Is that better?" he asked softly into my ear. I turned around to face him; our noses almost touched. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes of their own accord.

"Thank you," I said, almost weeping. I didn't give it a second thought when I leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth for the first time. He jerked away in surprise; I was hurt for a second, but remembered the things we had done.

"I can't get too attached to you," he told me apologetically. "You shouldn't either. I didn't think warming the bed for you could cause this."

"That's okay," I replied, though it wasn't okay at all. "I know that you'll hurt me soon. But it's not your fault."

Walter shook his head. "No, it *is* my fault," he confessed, looking away. "I am a sado-masochist. That means I enjoy pain, and I enjoy inflicting pain on others. I don't know why, but it's the only way I have ever found pleasure. It's the reason why I agreed to becoming the Matron's apprentice. She is a sadist."

"So this, this doesn't excite you at all?" I thrust myself against his flaccid penis for good measure. He shook his head with a sad smile.

"But you weren't hurting me at all when you had sex with me," I protested. He shrugged.

"I was in so much pain I could barely see," he replied, holding me closer. "That made up for you enjoying yourself. The Matron won't let me get that injured all the time, so expect a lot of pain the next time around."

"Can't you make yourself stop liking pain?" I asked him, snuggling closer in spite of my slight discomfort at his confession. "Isn't it just psychological?"

"I've tried everything," he said in resignation. "Trust me, if I could have, I would have stopped a long, long time ago. I've been doing this for so long-- the Matron found me when I was nine, at the point of orgasm as I was slitting my throat."

One of his hands touched his neck, tracing the faint scar on his Adam's apple that I could barely make out in the stormy light from the windows. I found it and licked it as if I had done it a thousand times before, then kissed him again. He patiently responded to my kisses and caresses, but even though I was getting excited, he was completely calm. This excited me even more. I had only been violated once, but I was tightening soon enough.

"Do you..." I gasped, unable to finish my sentence as he slipped his hands under my blood-stained skirts and touched me. He perked up in surprise.

"You're completely wet," he said, pressing in a bit further to make me cry out softly. "Have you done this before?"

"N--no, I'm really serious, no," I said, grunting every time he moved his fingers inside me. He thrust them in and out quickly, rubbing his thumb against my clitoris expertly. But no matter how close he got me to orgasm, I shook my head and couldn't reach it, straddling him like a puppy, hands on his shoulders as he sat against the lush pillows and bounced me up and down on his lap, laughing.

I finally couldn't take it and scratched his chest with my fingernails as slowly and forcefully as I could. Underneath me, Walter's penis immediately rose to attention through the thin material of his pants. He pressed my clothed body to his bare chest.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, dragging his fingertips heavily across my back, underneath my untied corset. "I could just reopen my wounds."

"Would you like that?"

I pushed my fingertips into the bandages on his back. Walter winced with a sharp intake of breath, then looked at me and nodded.

I peeled the bandages off him one by one, then straddled him closely and released his cock from its loose bindings. I felt the warm metal ring around its base and looked up at him quizzically. He breathed in and out with difficulty, he was so turned on.

"A birthday-- present-- from Alexandra," he gasped, grabbing my hand to make it stay on the spot as I tried to withdraw. "I'm betrothed to her."

"Betrothed? You're going to marry her?"

"Yes--"

I cut the reply short by sitting right on his erection. Its head parted my lips and pushed into my own wetness, sliding in right up until the hilt. I grinded my pubic bone against him instinctively, brought to the edge of orgasm as I felt my clit being stimulated and his penis, hard as a rock, pushing in as deep as it could go.

"Wait," he said, as I tore at his back while I rode him. "Plant your legs on the bed firmly, like this..."

He made me squat on the bed on top of his penis, which allowed for the deepest thrusting possible. The bed's springiness let me hop up and down on him as much as I wanted, practically falling on top of his hard cock each time, threatening to injure it. He smiled as blood trickled onto the bed.

"Don't overdo yourself," he said weakly as I tossed my head back, that breathtaking feeling overwhelming me once more. I felt like I was about to scream, it felt so good.

I fell on top of him, spent and exhausted. He wasn't satisfied at all, but smiled nonetheless and wrapped his bloody arms around me.

------

The whole Palace seemed to burst into applause as I leaned into his embrace.

"Has the ballet begun?" I asked Walter. He shook his head. I could feel his body going cold, as if it realized something terrible.

The Matron strode in with her fan and stilettos, an aura of cigarette smoke surrounding her.

"I should have reminded you two that we have cameras all over the Palace Opera," she said sweetly, biting into a candy bar provided on a silver platter by a waiting servant. "That was quite a show you put on for us just now."

Suddenly I felt very dirty. Disgusting. I wanted to throw up, but hadn't eaten anything to vomit out. The Matron took the candy bar from its platter and proceeded to trace it stickily over Walter's wounds. He glanced at me sideways, almost apologetically, before closing his eyes in ecstasy.

She soon straddled him while he sat at an edge of the bed, hopping on him up and down on her knees while clawing at his back as hard as she could. The two rocked back and forth like I had while I could only look on jealously. Walter finally came with a low groan; the Matron dragged a blood-stained finger along his jaw, then licked his jawline clean and got up, not bothering to mop up the cum that trailed down her thigh and leg.

"If you two have another tryst," the Matron sang sweetly, "next time, please tell me about it so I can come rushing in as soon as possible to see you two fucking like the little whores you are.

"Don't worry," she added on her way out. "That wasn't an insult. I'm the biggest whore in town."

------

"Alexandra Bastiat is her niece," Walter explained a few days later as we sat down at the cafe in the Palace's main square with our ice cream cones. I couldn't eat anything else without throwing up, so the Palace chef had gotten creative in making new flavors for me to sample. "The Matron adopted her when she was thirteen. Alexandra was kicked out of the Matron's sister's house when it was discovered that she began an apprenticeship to the mistress of a play dungeon on the other side of town."

"And you're marrying her for political gain," I said, licking my poppy and lavender-flavored ice cream cone, in which the ice cream was arranged in the form of petals. "Are you attracted to her at all?"

"Of course," said Walter, to my unhappy surprise. He bit into his ice cream cone, which was a flower of rose and blood-- yes, blood. His own. "She knows exactly where to cut me to make me come as strongly as possible."

As we sat there eating, I realized my mistake and reworded the question.

"Do you love her, though?"

He turned to me, eyes glinting, and grinned before biting into his cone.

"Of course not."

------

We entered the room where Walter taught ballet. It was the same room that Degas painted full of bored ballet dancers hundreds of years ago. I was spared no introduction; he simply launched right into the lesson.

As I watched him, I noticed all the small gestures he made to comfort me being used to comfort other people. I suppressed my jealousy since I understood that Walter would never be completely mine. But I was jealous all the same.

However, when we held each other's gaze from across the room, my jealousy disappeared.

It was then I understood: Walter had been mine since the day we met. He hadn't stopped me when I snuck into the Opera because he'd *wanted* me to be caught, so I could be with him forever. In fact, he was the one who alerted the Matron of my presence.

I didn't know whether to feel relieved or enraged.

But I became worried. I couldn't even hold his attention while we made love.

How long would his infatuation last?

------

Walter came into my room one day wearing a collar. He was led on a leash by Alexandra and the Matron, who was holding a leather platter full of steel instruments like the one I'd seen the first time. I knew I couldn't prevent it from happening forever, so I waited patiently and held my breath.

The Matron roughly pulled back the velvet curtains that shielded me from the sunlight outside, bathing my pale visage in the light.

"Take off her clothes," she ordered Walter, who got on the bed and wordlessly took my hand. He took me into an embrace while I was still lying down, then turned me onto my side to untie my corset with shaking, burned fingers. I noticed that he was very hard.

"Are you all right?" I murmured into his ear, knowing that the only way he could be that hard was if he were in a lot of pain.

"I've stopped bleeding, so I think I should be fine," he grunted while the Matron pressed a finger to his thighs, which I noticed were covered in dark blood. With one of her long red fingernails, she scraped up the side, removing the dried blood and reopening the wound slightly.

"Feels good, huh," she said as if trying to sound nonchalant, but her eyes could barely hide their glee. "Now here, take this." She pressed a scalpel into Walter's burned and blistered hand. "Make her scream as loud as you can."

Walter's eyes looked into mine in apology before taking me into a full-body hold while sitting at the edge of the bed. He held my head still by nuzzling into my neck firmly, and he wrapped his arms around me to trap my arms against their sides. I winced, waiting for the first cut to be made.

He pushed the blade gently but firmly into my right arm, drawing a line of blood just underneath my shoulders. I cried out a sharp "shh--!" of pain, but it was better than what I'd expected. However, he pressed the blade in deeper, making me writhe against him.

I soon felt the stinging burst of pain across my legs and his. It was Alexandra, wielding a whip, who smiled wickedly as she flicked it again. Soon I could see nothing but black. Walter had removed my dress completely and pressed two fingers against my dry clit. I cried out in pain, but he removed the blade from my arm for a minute to stimulate my clitoris fully. Soon I was crying out in pleasure, ignoring the dull throbbing of my arm and my legs.

"Come on already," said the Matron, fanning herself in boredom. Walter took my hips and pushed me against his unsheathed penis, so he filled me up in an instant, not even leaving me a second to catch my breath. There I sat, facing the Matron while being fucked on Walter's lap and whipped by Alexandra. My mind couldn't decide between whether what it was feeling was pleasure or torture, so my orgasm never came.

He pushed the blade in again, this time into my inner thigh. I was too focused on bouncing up and down in his lap to fully feel the effects, but the loss of blood became too much for me and I soon lost consciousness as well.

------

I woke underneath a canopy bed, but it wasn't mine. I tried moving, but I was covered in bandages and my entire body stung so badly that I decided to stay still and try to go back to sleep while I was still surrounded by a dreamy fog.

Then I noticed Walter at the edge of my bed, sitting on a stool and sleeping with his head buried in his arms on the sheets. I smiled, wondering how long he'd been by my side.

"Are you awake?" I tried asking, and was rewarded with a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest, making me howl. Walter awoke with a start and automatically grabbed a towel that was being soaked in a gold bucket of ice water on the nightstand. He pressed it to my forehead, then realized quickly that I was awake. His sleepy face immediately disappeared, replaced by a smile.

"You're awake," he said simply. I nodded, shrugging, both gestures that threw me into another fit of pain. Walter removed two white pills from his vest pocket and slipped his fingers into my mouth to make me swallow them.

"They're painkillers," he told me, handing me a glass of water. I swallowed with difficulty; everything was so hard to do. We waited for twenty minutes for the medicine to set in; until then, Walter spoke to me in his soothing baritone voice.

"You've been asleep for three days," he said. "I thought you might not make it, but the Palace doctors are very good." Walter sighed at this point. "Alexandra insisted that we keep going even after you fainted in my arms. I couldn't bring myself to, so she did it herself."

I finally had the strength to speak again without being impeded by the blinding pain.

"But doesn't that bring you pleasure?" I asked, looking into his troubled eyes. Walter shrugged.

"I'm not sure what happened," he whispered, tracing the outline of the silken sheets. I realized it was *his* bedroom that I was in. "Normally I would have been glad to keep going, but I was too concerned that you might be permanently injured. I even got soft."

He looked up at me, trying to gauge my reaction. I was stunned and touched at the same time.

"This has never happened before?" I found myself asking. Walter shook his head full of dark hair.

"Never," he replied. "Never with every servant girl we've done it with."

"How many?" I asked, voice cracking.

"Hundreds," he said quietly. "Some of them died because Alexandra was too cruel."

My entire body froze. Walter looked away.

"I'm sorry that I brought you into this world," he said, gripping the edge of my bed. "I will protect you as best I can, but as long as the Matron is still alive, I am powerless to stop her."

My bandages suddenly felt light and airy compared to the heaviness weighing on my heart.

"Is that why you're trying to distance yourself from me?" I asked, a touch of anger in my voice. "Because you know I may well die?"

"As I said, I'm selfish," he said, but leaned forward and kissed me anyway. He was hard just from watching me writhe in pain.

------

I healed in a few weeks' time. Since I was not viable for sex during the healing period, Walter filled my days by teaching me things. Peasants knew basic things like reading and writing back then, so he taught me more refined things, like how to play chess and identify the constellations at night. When he wasn't serving the Matron and Alexandra, he was by my side.

I fell in love with him, but I didn't really understand that he forced himself not to get attached to *me*. I held out hope for his turning though I knew it would probably never come.

As long as he was addicted to pain, he would never come.

I still wasn't able to eat much because I vomited out anything that was fed to me by anyone else besides Walter. I relied on him more and more, to each spoonful, without knowing why. Maybe because I never wanted him to leave my side.

"More?" he asked me, spoon poised after inserting it into my mouth. I shook my head.

"I'm full," I told him, though I wasn't. He put the silver tray aside and climbed into his bed with me. My bed, I was told, was being replaced because of all the blood. But I knew he wanted me there. He slept with me every night, keeping me warm, because he knew I got easily cold.

My bandages were still on, but it no longer hurt to press on them or move around. Walter sat up while kneeling on the mattress, moving to remove my bandages and change them like he always did.

This time, however, he slowly kissed the new skin underneath the bandages as he removed them. I yelped in surprise; it was still sensitive.

He met my eyes.

"May I?" he asked with a soft exhale on my lips. "Please?"

I nodded. That was all he needed to kiss me, slipping his tongue inside me so forcefully that it made my entire body shudder. He pressed the length of his body against mine. It was then that I felt him hard underneath his silken pants. The thought of his cock pulsing between my legs made me moist for the first time since the day he cut me.

I pushed my skirts aside and wrapped my legs around his waist tightly, pulling him closer and closer to me until my bandages bled once more. With a sharp intake of breath, he whispered, "Scratch me as hard as you can."

I smiled.

"No, just kiss me again," I breathed into his ear. He did, and I was rewarded with a fullness so hard that I came just by having him enter me. He pounded into me so hard that my bandages were being knocked off. I was still completely wet, but he was losing his erection fast. I tightened all around him and finally complied with his request, running a single finger down the center of his chest, scratching him as lightly as I could.

"Harder," he begged, using the last of his strength to push his loins into mine so I was engulfed in the sheets. I deepened the scratch a bit more, but didn't dare draw blood.

"You're already hard," I whispered. I was in awe.

"Yeah," he said, equally surprised. He pushed into me a bit more before stopping. "What's going on...?"

I grabbed him by the hips and brought him into me, a sense of urgency filling me. "Just keep going," I gasped, distracted by an oncoming orgasm.

"I don't know if I--"

His sentence was interrupted by his own soft moan. We came at the same time; my vagina welcomed his cock's sudden tension before it released warmth into me, wrapping tightly around Walter and pulling him in further. I kept seeing bursts of stars as he kept thrusting himself into me, over and over, even after the fact, until he was completely spent and soft again.

After one last thrust, he paused, then I felt a small aftershock of ecstasy when he pulled his penis out of me. A string of cum lazily lengthened as it refused to part from my thigh. Walter looked at it with worry.

"I came," he said in disbelief. The slow smile that had spread on my face after the flush of orgasm quickly disappeared.

"What's she going to do to you?" I whispered, remembering the cameras all around us. Walter put his lips to my ear.

"I may need to kill her," he said, even as he pushed two fingers into me and pulled them out, spreading more of his own cum to wet my labia for another round of bloodless sex.

------

There had already been a secret movement to overthrow the Matron and Alexandra Bastiat before I entered the palace, but Walter dared not contact them for fear of getting them all executed. However, he had an idea of who the leaders were just by talking to them normally; the Palace chef seemed to be one of them.

The workers in the Palace all knew that of the three abominations, Walter was the most likely to be sympathetic to their cause. They'd seen the Matron dragging him into the Palace by the hair, bleeding, when he was nine years old, and they knew he had only accepted being her sex slave because it granted him an influence that he didn't want to see in the hands of another, more cruel man. But to communicate with him was suicide.

------

I came back from a short walk in the Palace gardens one day to find Walter and Alexandra Bastiat on my large canopy bed, the latter in a blood-red corset, fucking the former while he writhed in pain. Alexandra turned around and smiled devilishly at me as she dug her long red nails into Walter's still-healing thighs. His bandages were off, making him scream-- and making blood spill onto my sheets once more.

I closed my eyes and turned away, but her breathy voice caught me.

"Join us," she ordered. I moved forward as if pulled by an invisible thread and rested at the foot of my bed.

"Chef, come in."

Walter's and my eyes widened as the young Palace chef stepped into my room, naked, with a blindfold over his short brown hair. There was a noose hanging from his neck.

Alexandra laughed as she saw my shocked face.

"He was caught trying to get a delivery boy to pass a message onto someone outside the Palace," she said, pulling on the rope from his noose to bring him closer to her. "Since I liked his food so much, I decided to give him a merciful death."

But even as she said those words, she brought her hand to his face and gave him a hard slap, accentuated by those long fingernails that drew blood in horizontal lines across the chef's face. Tears were running down his cheeks, but otherwise his expression was cold and resigned. Brave, almost.

"Suck him off to get him hard, will you?"

The order was directed to me. Tears were running down my own cheeks, but I knelt down to meet the chef's penis and took it into my mouth in the manner that I was now used to. Despite himself, the chef quickly became aroused.

I felt Alexandra's hands on me, pulling off my dress and untying my corset to release my small breasts. She scraped her fingernails lightly up and down my sides before digging them in. I inhaled sharply, mouth filled with the chef's hard, pre-cumming cock.

"You can fuck her now," said Miss Bastiat, leading the chef by one hand to the bed, next to where Walter was breathing hard and bleeding out. At her command, I laid myself back on the sheets and spread my legs. The chef blindly felt his way up my legs and mounted himself on top of me, resting his arms on the lush pillows behind me.

As the chef's penis lubricated me and slowly slid in, I glanced at Walter. He met my gaze sadly as Alexandra pinched his nipples hard and took him in her dripping wet pussy up to the hilt; he then gave a sharp gasp of pleasure.

"We will move in seven days."

I looked up in surprise to see the chef whispering into my ear as he fucked me harder and harder. His lips tickled me, and his breath caressing the most sensitive spot on my ear made me cry out.

"We-- we will disable the cameras at eight o'clock," he said urgently, cock softening a little inside me. I let out a cry to distract Alexandra, who was currently reaching over on the nightstand next to Walter to find a knife. "Someone will murder Alexandra, but Walter must kill the Matron."

"Will--"

I couldn't say more; Alexandra appeared on her hands and knees behind the chef, and Walter had moved to continue fucking her from behind. She reached out and caressed the blinded chef's back, thrusted herself against his ass, then covered it in soft bite marks. The chef pushed in and pulled out of me faster and faster, his erection growing ever harder, before he finally grunted loudly and came into me.

But the moment was lost as Alexandra, moaning in orgasm herself, reached around with a jeweled knife and slit his throat.

I saw the chef's blood spraying all over me from the deep gash in his neck, but I didn't see much more because I was screaming too hard. He pulsed cum into me a few more times before Alexandra released him; he fell on top of me, already dead, soaking my skin in blood.

------

That night, I wept in Walter's bed until I could do so no longer. Through my pained cries, I whispered the chef's words. Walter could only nod silently, guiltily; he had reached orgasm while the chef died in my arms.

We couldn't tell anyone of the chef's sacrifice, terrible and great; but from the looks on our faces from that point on, the rest of the Palace understood what had happened when the chef disappeared, and knew that we would not let the man's sacrifice go to waste.

Once a week at eight o'clock, the Matron came down into Walter's room to "have fun with her toy," as she called him. This was her own private session with the man; no one disturbed them under pain of death. Not even Miss Bastiat was allowed inside.

Walter never spoke to me about what went on during those nights when the Matron did with him as she pleased. He was always unharmed the next day, but there was always a melancholy, sinister air about him afterward.

It was on one of these Matron nights that the chef said the coup had been planned. Walter's eyes looked away when I asked him if he was prepared for doing it on that particular day, but he seemed determined.

-------

The week passed swiftly. The food quality in the Palace had fallen a bit with the new Palace chef, but the Matron never noticed because she always gorged herself on it, never really tasting anything. I shared Walter's bed every night, with the blood-soaked sheets of my own bed haunting my dreams.

The night before the seventh day, Walter and I made love. I didn't even need to harm him. He was close behind me, with his arms wrapped around me; I lifted my long nightgown to feel his cock pushing into me from underneath his silk pajamas, hard against my bare ass.

I leaned backwards into his warmth, thrusting quietly into his clothed genitals until his dick found its way through the fabric of his pajamas and into me, plunging through the opening of my legs from behind. I had been moist for quite some time, and gasped aloud when Walter's engorged cock filled me up in an instant as he frantically thrust into me, grabbing my ass and slamming it hard against himself, plunging ever deeper inside my tightening cunt.

It was over almost too quickly. We'd gone at the same time, and I soon found myself panting as quietly as I could, feeling Walter's strained gasps matching mine, chest pressed to my back.

"I love you," he finally murmured, gripping me tightly as I felt the last of his tremors inside me end with his soft grunt. "Whatever may happen, please believe me when I say that."

------

He was missing from my arms when I awoke the next morning. I didn't see him again for the rest of the day, so I could only sit and wait, hoping, staring out the window to the manicured garden and fortress walls beyond.

Today was the day the chef had divined; today was the day Walter had sworn he was mine.

I waited in his room until the sun set, then silently stepped out and hid in a hallway to watch the clock chime eight and see the Matron leading Walter to his door. I didn't know what else to do, but I didn't need to; at the final chime, a hand clamped over my mouth and a strong arm pulled me into the shadows.

"Don't say a word," a girl's voice whispered into my ear. I could barely hear her, but we walked along without a sound, the only light coming from the full moon outside falling through the enormous windows of the long hall.

We disappeared into a secret door in the wall that the girl pushed open, and ran silently through a crudely-hewn passageway that led to the world beyond. The moonlight caressed me like an old friend I hadn't seen in months; I chased the girl into a waiting horseless carriage, trusting her completely.

The carriage took off almost as soon as I got in; it was large and roomy inside, and filled with antennae and video screens. All of the screens were black, except for one-- for the camera trained on Walter's bed. The sound was amplified a thousand times more than it had been for the regular security cameras; I heard the Matron's chilling voice ring through the car.

"So, my love," she said, as she removed her dress to reveal her large, ample breasts, "I feel as if you are about to betray me."

Walter, who was sitting on the bed and leaning against his pillows, had kept his visage completely calm.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" he asked nonchalantly, shamelessly running a hand over the erection he couldn't hide in his lap; blood was trailing down his arms from two gashes in his shoulders.

"I understand that the chef was executed for attempting to pass a message on to you," the Matron murmured as she crawled towards Walter's legs. He sighed deeply when she bit the inside of one of his thighs. "I never trusted that boy."

"To me?" Walter repeated curiously. "I knew nothing of it."

"Well, before you kill me with that knife hidden underneath your pillow," continued the Matron, the smile now gone from her face, "you must know that your goal has finally been reached."

Walter smiled slowly this time, making the Matron's lips twist into a new smirk to match him.

"Which goal?" he whispered softly.

"Your child, Walter," breathed the Matron into his ear. "Your child grows inside me."

Upon hearing this, I and the others in the carriage drew a sharp breath as one.

"All of these years," said Walter, pulling the Matron closer, "all these years, they thought you were barren..."

"We proved them wrong, didn't we?" said the Matron, kissing Walter lovingly. I looked away when he returned the kiss with relish. She straddled him and ran a sharp fingernail across his neck, lips still on his, then sat straight down on him and fucked him hard. Walter closed his eyes, surrendering for a moment to the waves of pleasure that had him in their grip.

"But I must apologize," he said when the kiss ended, still inside the Matron. "I apologize to both of you."

The Matron's screams pierced the carriage and the night after Walter drew the jeweled knife that Alexandra had used to kill the chef and used it to stab the Matron. She shielded herself with her arms, but Walter pushed off the bed, making her land on the marble floor with a sickening plop. He jumped off and continued to stab her in the arms, the face, the chest, the legs, and, finally, her stomach, plunging the blade in and turning it with a yank to carve a hole. I couldn't see Walter's expression from the screen because he was already covered in blood, but his voice rang out after the Matron's body stopped moving.

"I'm sorry," he said to his unborn child, as his knife dripped blood, as cheers erupted through the carriage and the Palace. "I'm sure I would have loved you."

------

They dragged Alexandra's body into the room to join the Matron's, then ushered Walter out of the Palace into the night. He received a hero's welcome in the streets, where peasants and the bourgeois alike poured into the night to celebrate his rise to power and inheritance of the Palace. All the Palace guards who tried to arrest him were thrown to the insane crowd to be ripped apart, their genitals and heads cut from their bodies, placed on pikes and paraded throughout the town.

It took a week before I could finally see him again. He was still in the familiar white bandages I was used to seeing on him, but there were much fewer of them than usual, and he was wearing the white high collar and royal violet vestments of the Palace master on top. We were surrounded by people celebrating the Matron's death, but he saw me from across the great hall and immediately pulled me aside.

"I've been searching for you," he said while we walked into the shadows. "Where have you been?"

"Trapped in the crowd, trying to reach you," I murmured, tears spilling from my cheeks for no good reason. Walter drew me closer and kissed me for the first time since that night a week before. I choked on it, remembering where his lips had been, and pulled him into an embrace instead. He sighed into my blond head of hair, mingling it with his lengthening dark brown locks.

"You should find someone else to love," he said simply. "You deserve someone better. Not a murderer. Not a sick, selfish man."

"A sick, selfish man who overcame it all for me? I can't think of anyone more worthy of my love," I replied, finally gathering the courage to kiss him again.

------

We were married that night, and he finally took me hungrily in a hidden part of the vast garden, with all the happiness he couldn't show while the Matron and Miss Bastiat were still alive. We stayed low on the grass and made love again and again until the sun rose. Our shudders and sighs, our moans and our cries, they all echoed in the night and were muffled by the dew in the morning. We lay naked, hand in hand, as the rising rays of warmth echoed the warmth that flooded our bodies the night before.

I discovered I was pregnant a month later. Though Walter was pleasantly surprised at the turn of events, the child was found not to be his. It was the chef's.

Walter swore that he would love the child as his own, but they have found too many serious complications as a result of the torture I endured at the hands of the Matron and Alexandra Bastiat. The complications will result in my death if I deliver the child, and the child's death if I were to be saved.

Walter, of course, would like me to live. However, he does not know that I have already made my decision.

The operation is to begin in fifteen minutes.

My story ends here.

My child will live, and Walter will love her as much as he has loved me. I know he will because of the loving gaze he left me in this room with.

Please understand that I loved you both.