The Emperor's New Pony (20 page)

“Ranin, I’m here… I’m…” She seemed to be above him and to the left—perhaps still on the track and hopefully out of danger.

But what was Haq doing? What did he have in his hand? And Qartin… was Haq going to kill Qartin?

Then, as if from very far away, he heard Haq’s voice. “Comnar, I am going to kill you now.” Ranin’s mind whirled.

Then the emperor’s voice, weakly, “You? Qartin… what…”

“Did you think that letting me fuck Salana would keep me happy? I love her, Comnar, and I will give her a son no matter your wishes.”

Oh, gods. That was it. Comnar had forbidden Haq an heir, because that heir would have continued the succession of Haq’s rival house. And Ropiq and Qartin had kept Ranin in the dark so that Haq could pursue the plan. The final masterstroke was Haq calling out to him, so that Ranin would keep the chariots close, hoping to cause a crash himself but never expecting that Haq would cause one.

There was a sickening sound, and then Haq was pulling Ranin out of the wreckage and standing him up on what was left of the emperor’s island. “Behold the hero!” Haq shouted to the crowd. “Behold the man who has slain the cruel Comnar! Ranin Versal, lord chief marshal of Amidia!”

Of course. Of course, so that Haq’s hands would be clean of imperial blood—the blood of his kinsman. Ranin was the regicide, as he had good cause to be, the chronicles would tell—if the chroniclers could make anything of this strange mess.

Ranin turned and saw Edera looking at him, sitting on the track in her harness, clearly all but unharmed, like all the fillies as it now appeared. Such a collision could result in bruises and perhaps a cracked rib or two, but Comnar was the only one truly to suffer for his cruelty there on the race course. The crowd was roaring its approval, so Ranin risked putting out his hand to his princess, who rose and came to him on tentative, limping steps, looking heartbreakingly adorable in the harness that had once seemed so humiliating.

Ranin reached behind her head, unbuckled her bridle, and gently took it off. The crowd cheered to see it. He heard Haq say behind him and over his shoulder, “Your royal highness, I free you, and restore you to your throne.” Then Ranin took her in his arms and held her tightly to him, while Edera cried in joy.

“Take my tail out,” she said into his ear.

“Oh, but…”

“Please, my lord?”

Ranin reached down to her bottom and heard the crowd gasp, and then cheer all the louder, as with her help he pulled the tail free and threw it to the dirt of the race course.

* * *

Somewhere in the crash at the Moon Festival race occurred the death of the emperor who would be known forever after as Comnar the Impotent, whether by a broken neck, as the official story told, or by garrote, as some said—whether by the hands of Ranin Versal or by someone else’s. When it was revealed that the emperor could not have sired an heir, Qolana and her sons were quietly forgotten, though Haq took care of them in imperial style. Lord Haq, now Emperor Haq, freed the fillies of the imperial stable, and moved the equine horses back into the grand stable block of the palace. The kingdoms of Muad, Hada, and Amidia had their sovereignty restored and their hostages returned.

The marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Edera of Amidia and Lord Ranin Versal took place in the great hall of the palace of Amidia on the eve of the Amidian Mountain Feast at the spring equinox. The happy couple paid a state visit to Hada the following year, where Edera surprised Ranin by demanding to go to the eighteenth birthday party of Queen Me’kor’s niece, where Ranin was even more surprised to see the birthday girl betrothed in a remarkable ceremony, the like of which he had never imagined.

That night, in the sumptuous guest suite of the royal palace of the capital of Hada, when they were in their night shifts and almost ready for bed, Edera said, “Ranin, say you’ll do what I tell you?”

It was a joke now, between them.

“Not unless you tell me to spank you, my love.”

She pouted, as she always did, and then she whispered her real request. “I want to play filly.” Since the day they had gone free from the imperial stables, they had not mentioned those strange months, and Ranin felt his eyes widen in surprise at the thought that Edera might actually want to relive them, even in play.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play Hadian birthday?” he teased, thinking she must be jesting.

“May we do both, Master Ranin?” Edera wasn’t jesting: she was as frisky as he had ever seen her—as frisky as she had been in those days in the stables. Ranin smiled, realizing yet again how very hard his filly’s friskiness got him.

“Yes, filly Edera. I think that would be fine. But what shall we do for a harness?”

Then Princess Edera blushed prettily and went to open a chest Ranin did not think he had seen before.

“I saved it,” she said, giggling.

Out of the chest came the chest harness, and then the bridle, and then the tail, with its snow-white plume of purebred Amidian horsehair. Last came a little vial.

“Saddle oil?” Ranin said wonderingly.

Edera nodded, smiling saucily. “Don’t you miss it?” she said. “You haven’t spanked me in months.”

“You haven’t done anything naughty!”

Edera pouted. “No one will let me. I have to rule my principality and maintain good relations with Emperor Haq. But being here in Hada, so far away…”

“What? What does it do?”

“It makes me feel like a frisky filly! Are you sure there isn’t anything you need to spank me for?”

Ranin laughed. “Well, you were a little too excited by the betrothal, weren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I most certainly was. When her betrothed was inspecting her, I think I definitely tried to rub up against your leg.”

“Well then, we had better teach you a lesson. Let’s start by getting you into your harness.”

“Then Hadian birthday?”

Ranin smiled. “Yes, Hadian birthday, but I am afraid that the Amidian version is going to be rather different. If my filly is wet, I’m going to spank her.”

Edera tried to hide her smile at that, pretending to bite her lip in distress. “Oh, you mustn’t, my lord husband.”

“Do not try to tell me what I must and mustn’t do, filly Edera. Let’s get you back into the state in which you belong, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Ranin… when you call me that… it’s like it all comes back.”

“For me, too, sweetheart. The good parts along with the bad.”

“We would never have been together without the stables, would we?”

“No, my love. Never.”

So Edera stood before her trainer, while he stripped off her night shift and strapped her into her old harness. As he fastened her bridle around her face, he remembered how his shame had warred with his desire the very first time he had seen Edera thus arrayed, in front of the gates of the imperial palace. Now Edera belonged to him, and she belonged in her bridle, with her bit in her mouth, because she wanted it, and because he wanted it. The mysteries of his desire—of their desires together—to have her in harness this way, to put a tail in her bottom and make her present it to him… Ranin did not suppose he would ever fathom them.

But the hardness of his cock when he bent her over in front of him and lifted the tail out of the way, to reveal and to inspect the sweetest little cunt he could ever imagine, which he noted she had kept bare for him though months had passed since they left Maq—that hardness was as undeniable as the return of winter to the mountains of Amidia. He leaned his head forward and gave her the same kind of betrothal kiss the Hadian princess had received at her birthday party, from her betrothed. The hair of her tail tickled his cheek as Edera cried out charmingly around the bit in her mouth.

Then Ranin started to spank his filly, for truly she was very wet, and he could tell she needed a spanking very badly. He stood up from the stool where he had been sitting to inspect her cunt from the rear, with his filly bending in harness in front of him, the crisscrossing leather accentuating the creaminess of her skin and the lovely roundness of her bottom. He took hold of the leather straps on her back, and used them to hold her steady while he brought his hand hard against her naughty rump. Edera gave a little yelp, and then another, as Ranin alternated between her right and left cheeks, on either side of the tail.

“You, my princess,” he said, “must remain in training, I fear.” Edera whimpered, hearing his judgment. “Just as I was wrong to let you go so long without a spanking, I was wrong to let you avoid my quirt, once you had left the stable.” Ranin moved his fingers to her soaking-wet cunt now, and Edera moaned and moved against his hand as if she were in heat.

Ranin for his part lifted his shift and entered her swiftly, moving the tail aside and taking firm hold of her harness once again. “You, Edera, my love, may be my princess, but I can promise also that you will never stop being my filly.”

The End

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More Stormy Night Books by Emily Tilton

The Count’s Discipline

When Robert de Lourcy’s wife spurns his desire to spank her, the young count contents himself with disciplining other women of the court, until a rash decision to chastise the women of a captured castle arouses the ire of the local bishop and Robert is forced to seek absolution. In an act of penance, he visits a cathedral and stumbles upon a young girl named Sophia who has been set upon by robbers. Remembering his promise make amends for his sins, Robert takes pity on the destitute child, placing her in a convent so that she may be properly educated.

When Sophia comes of age, the nuns at the convent grow more firm with her. The young woman is simultaneously drawn to their discipline but also unconvinced that their motivations are particularly noble. After Sophia’s education is complete, Robert brings her into his household to serve as his secretary. Though he has decided to never spank another woman again, when Sophia begs him to chastise her as the nuns did he cannot resist the opportunity to take her over his knee.

The two begin a happy relationship based on Sophia’s acceptance of the count’s discipline, but he remains devoted to his wife until she dies tragically in childbirth. After that sad event, Sophia expects the count to marry another noblewoman, but will that new wife be jealous and send her away? Is she doomed to be cast back onto the streets from whence she came, or will Robert break the shackles of society and wed a commoner?

Geoffrey’s Rules

For as long as she can remember, Chloe has imagined what it would be like to be utterly and completely dominated by a man. When she meets Geoffrey—a man who can make her blush red with shame and quiver with lust at the same time with nothing more than a word or a glance—Chloe begins to wonder if her fantasy could become reality.

As hot as her desire burns, though, Chloe struggles with herself. How can a modern woman feel this way? Should she not berate herself for longing to be taken over her man’s knee for a bare-bottom spanking? No matter how she yearns for it, does she really belong on her knees at Geoffrey’s feet, naked and waiting for him to take her any way he pleases?

When Geoffrey offers her what she knows deep down she has always wanted, will she turn him away, or will she submit to his rules and allow her new master to take her fully in hand?

Tamed by the Highlander

When raiders fall upon Urquhart Castle, Elisabeth Grant, the daughter of the castle’s lord—a highlander by birth, but educated in the lowlands—is left defenseless when her cowardly father abandons her. At the last moment, her life and her maidenhead are saved from the raiders by Angus MacGregor, the proud highlander she had only hours earlier ordered locked in the pillory for his insolence toward her.

Vowing that she will see her home rise from the ruins after the attack, Elisabeth resolves to stay as close to the castle as possible. With her father and his soldiers gone, however, she has nowhere to turn for protection except to the highlander who so recently rescued her. When Angus informs her that he has no interest in a ward or a servant, she impetuously offers to wed the uncouth, yet undeniably brave and handsome highlander whose firm words and strong arms both terrify and excite her.

Angus agrees to marry Elisabeth on one condition: she will serve and obey him as a proper wife should, and if she fails in her duties, she will be soundly spanked. She agrees to his condition, but when she surrenders to his touch one moment and defies him the next, his desire for her only grows fiercer. Though it quickly becomes clear she will not yield without a fight—and a taste of his leather strap upon her bare bottom—he soon discovers she is like no woman he has ever known, as being chastised until she is writhing and begging only increases her lust for him.

But when her father returns to rebuild the ruins of Urquhart even as the threat of another assault on the castle looms, Angus wonders whether Elisabeth will abandon him and return to the life of a noble lady. Even if she stays by his side, will their newly forged bond be shattered in the heat of battle, or will their love and courage be enough to withstand the swords of the marauders?