Prince Sol's Soles
By Musuko

Wolf was singing again. His voice echoed down the dark stairs and grated on Sol's nerves. It was a song that he had heard over and over, and it was being sung in a voice that was making no attempt whatsoever to carry the tune.
	“Prince Sol's soles,” sang Wolf. “Prince Sol's soles! Tickle toesies, spanky toesies, Prince Sol's soles!”
	Sol ground his teeth together. Or, at least, he tried to. The thick leather strap gagging him kept his teeth apart, and turned his protests into noises that were marginally more musical than the noise assaulting his ears.
	“Don't listen to his whimpers, don't listen to his pleas! Tickle toesies, spanky toesies, Prince Sol's soles!”
	Wolf stepped into view, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. Sol glared at him, but Wolf's smile withstood the storm of anger without a scratch.
	“Good morning,” he said.
	Sol said nothing.
	Still smiling, sweet and charming, Wolf cupped a hand around his ear and leaned forward. “Sorry, I didn't catch that?”
	Sol grunted. Then he pulled at the iron shackles holding his wrists to the wall above his head. Then he pushed his heels through the dirty straw on the stone floor. Then, with his head down, he mumbled, “good morning.” The gag turned the words into an animal noise, drenched in saliva.
	“Perfect,” said Wolf. He sat down in the chair facing Sol and rested his elbows on his knees, his muzzle on his hands. “Hmm,” he said. “I have a small problem.”
	Sol communicated the depths of his sympathy by grumbling into the gag and pulling against the shackles.
	“...and you're going to help me solve it.”
	Sol closed his eyes, and groaned.

It had been difficult to count the days. The dungeon saw no natural light, and it was underground, so the air stayed consistently cool and damp, insulated from the heat and cold of day and night. He knew it lay beneath a ruined shack somewhere deep in the woods; he had escaped up those stairs and out to freedom four times before. But each time he had lost his way in the woods, eventually reaching a road or village, and thence to home, but never able to retrace that path when he returned with his father's best men to hunt down that rascally Wolf, with his wicked eyes and his devilish fingers and his broad, strong chest and...
	So...there was no way to count the days by listening for outside noises. There would be no carts rumbling past, or merchants crying their wares on market day. Sometimes he would sleep, and that gave him a rough notion of time. Wolf's comings and goings also gave a little clue. As did his own hunger, and the counting of his irregularly-timed mealtimes. A week, perhaps, was his estimate. Maybe ten days.
	Wolf, however, revealed that sixteen days had passed. Sixteen days without rescue, without hope of rescue, and without hope of freeing himself. Sixteen days locked in the chastity pouched. Sixteen days of the brain-fogging stupor of frustrated arousal.
	And, as Wolf grumbled, “sixteen days without a penny of ransom from your cheapskate father! Do I need to start cutting bits off and sending them to him? No, I would never do that. Your bits are all far too lovely to divide up.” He flashed a smile. “And it is your bits that I need to help me solve this problem! You see, sixteen days is a long time for this little scheme to go on without any sort of payout. And so...”
	He swung a large canvas bag off of his back and dropped it on the floor between Sol's feet. It clinked.
	“...we're going to go earn me some money!”
	Sol watched as Wolf pulled...items...out of the bag. He tried to keep a fixed, aloof expression, such as the one that his father would wear when visited at court by strangers with strange ways from faraway lands. But he was not his father. He could not keep his resolve stiff against these sights...against the sheer fabric and delicate lace that Wolf pulled out of the bag and laid out on the straw, against the delicate, silvery chains, starkly contrasting the brutal iron that held him to the wall, against the fine embroidery that spelled out, in elegant, flowing letters, the word “bitch”.
	Sol pushed his knees together and bent them upwards, but Wolf leaned over and placed a hand on his ankles, pulling them back down, straightening his legs, and exposing what Sol was trying to hide; the visibly-swelling bulge of the chastity pouch. Wolf smiled, and Sol looked away.
	“I see you like what you see,” said Wolf. He lifted a slip of material, stretching it between two fingertips. “It's not as rich as a prince's garb, perhaps. But it's much more suited to you, don't you think?”
	Sol's eyes kept sliding back towards the silk and silver. Once or twice, he had walked in on visitors to his father's court; visitors who had worn clothing like that, hailing from a country where such lasciviousness was more commonplace. His father had looked upon his visitors with a face of iron, as if he could not or would not see the display before him. Sol, though, had spent many solitary nights with those memories painted on the inside of his eyelids, and with his hand down...
	Wolf slid out of the chair and knelt beside Sol. His hot breath warmed Sol's ear. His scent filled Sol's nose. Sol closed his eyes and groaned, trying not to think of silk and silver and lace and leather and sweat and dirt and the shape of Wolf's body beneath those rough, masculine clothes. His body moved by itself, pushing his hips and the achingly-tight chastity pouch up towards Wolf, a silent plea. Wolf's fingers touched Sol's chest and walked over his collarbone, shoulder, arm. Sol trembled. He heard a soft, sliding sound, and then felt the point of a dagger against his cheek, as the roaming hand reached the shackles on his wrists.
	“Stay still,” whispered Wolf, “and move only when I tell you.”
	The lock on the shackles clicked.

It was late evening, and the trees were thick with leaves, but the sun still shone through strongly enough to burn Sol's eyes, after the torch-lit darkness of the dungeon. Wet leaves squished under his toes, and Sol couldn't help but curl them, exploring the long-forgotten sensation of having clothing on them. Silk socks. Almost as high-quality as the ones he used to wear at home. The fresh air blew through his fur and washed away some of the damp memory of the dungeon. He turned his face up to the sky and sighed.
	But this was not yet freedom; the shackles remained on his wrists, their chain now pulled like a leash by Wolf, and the leather still gagged him, and when he tried to lift his hands up to tug at it, Wolf yanked on the chain to dissuade him. And no free prince would wear these clothes. Silk socks, perhaps, but not ones that reached up to his thighs. Not ones that were black with pink lace. No prince would wear lace panties, barely stretching over the swollen lump of a silvery chain-mesh chastity pouch. And the upper body...Sol didn't even know what to call it. It was like a cloak, but made by someone who had never stepped outdoors. It reached halfway down his back, and nowhere near as far down his front, and made out of a sheer fabric he could see all the way through. It only served to add a pink highlight to the fur underneath. And the chains...the chains criss-crossed back and forth, linking the socks, the panties, the cloak, wrapping his body in the clinking, tinkling, delightfully-sparkling richness of their suggestive bondage. They marked the wearer as one who was under control of another. They were the mark...of a courtesan.
	Sol shivered, and tried not to think of the word “bitch” stitched across the thin fabric that barely provided modesty for his butt.
	Standing in the small clearing next to the ruined shack and the dungeon's staircase was a two-axle cart, hitched to a sulky-looking pony. In the back of the cart were what looked like a stack of crates, three high. But when they got closer, Sol could see down the side of the cart, where the true depth of the crates was evident. They weren't crates; they were coffins. Cheaply-made, out of rough wood planks and second-hand nails. Sol's expression must have betrayed his sudden fear and confusion, because Wolf stopped and smiled in a way that he probably mistakenly thought was reassuring.
	“I'm not killing you,” he said. “Where'd be the profit in that. Stand here a moment.”
	Wolf threaded his end of the chain through the nearest cartwheel and wrapped it around a few times, effectively hitching Sol to it. He clambered up onto the back of the cart and hefted aside one of the coffins. For a fleeting moment, Sol considered freedom. The chain was right there in front of his hands. But could he get it unwrapped from the wheel and get himself far away enough through the woods in the time it'd take Wolf to jump down and catch him?
	If he could have, he'd never find out, because Wolf had already jumped down from the cart and retaken the chain before Sol could finish deliberating.
	“Come on,” he said. “Climb up. Your legs still work, don't they?”
	There was no resisting the pull, unless he wanted to break an arm. Sol's toes slipped on the wood before he found purchase. He teetered on the edge, his fingers grasping the chain for support. Below him lay an open coffin, lined with straw. At the far end the wood had been cut to form two holes. Two u-shapes, up against the top edge of the coffin. When the lid was put back into place...
	“In you get,” said Wolf, with a hand settling on the small of Sol's back, gently pushing him forward.
	“I don't like small spaces,” whimpered Sol, the words only partially intelligible through the gag, but Wolf was well-practiced in understanding gag-speak.
	“That's alright. You'll have plenty to take your mind off it!”
	The hand pushed more insistently now. Sol cast one last despairing look around the forest, where animals roamed free and happy, and climbed into the box, and his continued imprisonment. The dry straw scratched and itched against him, against every part of his body that wasn't covered by the questionable protection of his new and shameful outfit. The straw was utterly unlike the damp and soft straw of the dungeon. This was fresh. Fresh and sharp. Wolf coiled the chain and laid it on Sol's tummy, making him yelp from the coldness and the weight.
	“Now now, my prince,” said Wolf. “You know full well that's not where I want you. Slide down, just a little bit.”
	Sol bent his legs, dug in his heels, and pulled himself down through the itchy straw. He straightened his legs and rested his ankles in the twin grooves cut into the bottom board of the coffin. They fitted snugly. Of course they did. Almost as if they were made exactly for this purpose. Sol aimed a pleading look at Wolf, knowing that it was pointless. Wolf smiled back, waving his fingers, and then the world went dark as the lid lowered into place.
	Then came the thuds, ringing loudly in his ears. Hard hammering as Wolf pounded the nails into the wood of the lid. The thin line of light at the crack between the coffin and the lid closed to a hair's thickness, and then disappeared entirely. Sol bit down onto the gag and tried in vain to suppress a whimper. The rough wood of the lid was barely an inch away from his nose. He could feel the sides of the coffin pressing against his shoulders. The straw poked at him all down his back and legs. Each breath made it scratch and itch. But he didn't have enough room to twist around, to reach and scratch. And when he tried, it just made the straw itch even more.
	More thuds, unidentifiable. The coffin lurched, then settled back to a level. He felt something brush against his left foot, and he flinched and curled his toes. The coffin rocked again, and then Sol felt movement. The pony was walking, and the cart was rolling, bumping, transferring every jolt and vibration into his itchy prison. Sol clenched his eyes shut and whined.
	Before long, he felt the familiar sensation of Wolf's fingertips on his soles. The position of the coffin, and the fact that his feet were sticking out of the end of it, meant that they must be positioned right by Wolf, up on the bench at the front of the cart. Holding the reins was only really a job for one hand, which meant that Wolf's other hand was free to idly stroke and caress and tickle his captive passenger, as a little bit of light entertainment for the journey.
	As his laughter filled the tiny confines of the coffin, Sol reflected on how the forest stretched on, without roads or villages or cities or any other likely destination where a horse and cart might journey to, for mile after mile after mile...

The cart jolted to a stop, and Sol jolted awake. He groaned into the gag, panting, sweating, and gasping on hot, stifling air. He flexed his toes. His soles tingled. Had Wolf continued to tickle him even while he was passed out?
	There was movement outside the box. He strained his ears. But before he could pick out details, an almighty 'crack' sounded just beside his head, making him jump. Then came the sound of splintering wood, and a widening slit of orange light as the lid lifted up against the protesting sounds of wood and metal. Wolf smiled down at him, then cocked his head. “Come on, out.”
	They were in a stable. Sol could smell the rich stink of manure. There were stalls, some occupied, and the pony was unhitched and munching on hay. Outside of the box, Sol could hear voices in the distance, cheering and happy. He stumbled as he clambered down off the cart. His feet landed in something that squelched. Disconcertingly-warm wetness soaked in through the silk and between his toes. Wolf roared with laughter.
	“Don't think a little muck's gonna make you any less popular!”
	Wolf grabbed the chain hanging from Sol's wrist shackles and pulled him towards the doors. The warm air and flickering torchlight of the stables gave way to biting cold and moonlight. Sol hissed and hunched his arms in close. Across a small courtyard was an inn, and all around was the forest, disturbed only by the dirt track leading away in two directions. Sol stared, eyes wide. There were people in there! His pace started to pick up, almost running him into the back of Wolf. People would see him! There would be help!
	They pushed into the noise and heat of the inn. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned towards them. The place was full of rogues and criminals of the roughest kind. The kind that Sol's father's men would hunt down and drag to the stockade. The kind who wore leather, and stank of the sweat and musk of the wild road. The kind whose muscular bodies were built and honed by their lives of adventure and danger. Sol's cry for help died in his throat instead of in the gag, and he suddenly felt naked all the way down to the core of his soul. Naked...except for the silks and silver, which did nothing to lessen his feelings of exposure, and the chastity pouch, shamefully swollen, dripping through the fine metal mesh, dripping onto his dirty feet.
	Wolf raised his hands, pulling Sol's shackles up above his head, and cheered. The inebriated crowd returned the cheer, drinks raised. There would be no rescue here. It was an inn full of Wolves.
	“Well well well,” grunted a voice made of gravel and smoke. “That's the prince, ain't it?”
	“Don't look like no prince to me.”
	“More like a slave!”
	“Here, he's got 'bitch' written back here!”
	“Don't you mean 'she'?”
	Laughter replaced silence. Roaring, merry laughter, and Sol shrank down into himself, eyes tightly clenched against the shame. Hands started to touch him, thick fingers prodding at him, tugging at the chains and silk, jostling his body from side to side.
	“Hey now fellas,” said Wolf. “Gentle now. That outfit cost a lot.”
	“Not like you paid anything for it, ya dog!” More laughter. Something small and hard struck Sol's hip.
	“Here! A coin to pay for this!” Rough, calloused fingers, each one feeling to Sol like they were thicker and stronger than his wrists, stuffed themselves down the back of the panties. With a sharp yank, the silk tore, and 'bitch' and the silk it was written on ripped away from Sol's hips. He staggered backwards from the force of it, and opened his eyes to see a wall of muscle and fur and leather and steel, standing tall and triumphant, with the delicate and shredded garment held high, like a trophy.
	“I got me a royal trinket, lads!” He held it over his nose and inhaled deeply, theatrically, to the laughter and cheers of his friends. “Smells like the royal trinket's trinket too!”
	Fingers pointed to Sol's dripping chastity pouch, now on show for all to see. He tried to tug his hands down to hide it, but Wolf yanked at the chain and kept them raised. More coins rained in, hitting Sol and bouncing to the floor by his feet. Wolf shrugged, and bent to scoop them up.
	“Alright boys, have at him,” he said. “Just don't bruise him too much, alright?”
	The pack closed in, eyes flashing with predatory evil, teeth showing in wide grins, hands raised, claws curled towards him. Sol wailed into the gag and cowered against Wolf's side. Wolf pulled away, placing a hand on Sol's shoulder-blades and shoving him forward, stumbling towards the evil, grabby hands.
	He span in a dizzying whirl, jarred and jolted by the hands, unable to see past the wall of bodies surrounding him, past the grinning, leering faces, his ears filled by the jeers and laughter. The hands that weren't stripping off the silks and the chains were busy groping him, cupping and squeezing his butt cheeks, or tugging at the chastity pouch, making him moan and encouraging them to do it again. A strong arm closed around his waist and pulled him against a wall of sweaty fur and muscle.
	“Yer cute,” rumbled a voice, far above. “For a royal brat.”
	A smack against his rear made him jump, rubbing up against the big guy. A moan escaped his lips, and from behind him, a thin, mocking voice snickered and said “he's got a nice big butt. Must be all that sitting on thrones and stuff. A big princely jiggle pillow.”
	“Hurr hurr hurr,” laughed the great big guy holding him. “That made him leak! Felt it on my leg. He must like it! Hurr hurr hurr!”
	Another hand gripped his tail and tugged. Sol yowled into his gag. Someone else pulled at the chain, dragging his hands out. Another grabbed his ankle, lifting his foot up, and fingers pulled at the wet socks.
	“Wait!” came Wolf's voice, loud enough to cut through the chaos. “Leave the socks on. I've got a plan.”
	Sol looked over to see Wolf jerking a thumb towards a door in the corner. Whatever it meant, it made the men cheer. His foot was lowered back to the floor, and the hands instead moved up to join the others kneading his rear.
	“We get to fuck him after, right?” growled a voice.
	“Well sure,” said Wolf. “So long as you can pay.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at the small, lithe rabbit who was holding the chain attached to Sol's wrist shackles. “May I have my toy back?”
	The rabbit frowned. And, for a moment, his free hand hovered near the sheathed knife on his hip. Sol held his breath.
	“Yeah, alright,” said the rabbit, who then flashed a bright, cheerful smile. “But I get the first go.” He tossed the chain over to Wolf, who caught it easily. The rabbit clinked a pair of coins in his hand, with his eyebrow raised.
	“You got it,” said Wolf. “Come along, prince!”
	Sol looked down at the floor and stayed silent as Wolf walked him through the room, trying to ignore the bombardment of lascivious comments that made his ears burn. He saw the straw-strewn wood change over to rough stone. The voices faded, muffled. The air grew cold again. Sol sighed, the tension washing out of his shoulders. He dared to lift his head again...and immediately wished he hadn't.
	This was no ordinary inn. But perhaps he should have expected this, considering the customers. This room was near copy of Wolf's dungeon; some of the implements hanging from the walls could even have come from the same craftsmen. Wolf placed a hand on the small of his back, almost tenderly, and nodded towards something in the shadows at the far end of the room.
	“Just over there,” said Wolf, with wickedness dripping from his voice. The hand became a push, leading Sol past the whips and shackles and strange wooden frames whose purposes Sol didn't want to guess at. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The horrors that filled his imagination gave way to the reality that formed in the gloom; a long, waist-high wooden bench, standing perpendicular to a wall, in which was a small wooden hatch, barely large enough to push a head through.
	“Mmmh?” said Sol.
	Wolf said nothing. His intention was obvious, though; with guiding hands, he manoeuvred Sol into laying down on the bench, his feet towards the wall. A sinking feeling of familiarity set in. It must have shown in his face, because Wolf grinned at him.
	“Slide down,” he said. “Just a little bit.”
	Wolf opened the hatch as Sol's feet approached it. Through the hole came the heat and light and roaring noise of the inn, fading again as Sol's feet pushed through into the room beyond, partially blocking the hole.
	“Pleath,” said Sol, into the gag. Wolf ignored him. From the underside of the bench came leather straps, which Wolf pulled across Sol's body, over his ankles, his knees, his chest. Taking up the chain, Wolf pulled Sol's arms above his head and secured them somewhere out of sight at the end of the bench. Throughout all this, Sol stayed statue-still. He didn't even move his toes. His breaths came in pants, and his heartbeat thumped in his ears. And between his thighs, he felt the warm trickle of precum leaking out through the chastity mesh. Tears pricked in his eyes, and he looked up at Wolf with an expression that communicated better than any words could; 'I can't believe this is happening', it said.
	Wolf's grin gave the response. 'You better believe it, my prince.'
	And then Sol was alone, listening to Wolf's retreating footsteps on the stone floor, the creak of a door. What came next wasn't silence; the hubbub of the inn came through the hatch. But it was muffled, sounding further away than it was, making the cold and empty loneliness of this dungeon room feel more acute than it would have if there was silence. Even more so than Wolf's dungeon in the woods. Mere feet away from a crowd of laughing, merrily-drinking men and women, Sol was completely, utterly alone.
	And then, so gently that he almost thought he'd imagined it, came the first touch against his foot.

Wolf came to sit alongside him, later that night. And with his storytelling, Sol was able to recreate in his imagination the activities of the other side of the wall, matching them up with the things he felt, and the muffled voices he could hear.
	His feet protruded above a table, upon which lay an array of implements that could equip a small army...if the soldiers were six-inches tall. The various spikes and points of gleaming steel would bring terror to enemies if they were larger. At that size...the only real threat was to Prince Sol's soles.
	“I don't know if you've ever heard of Ripsunder and Tiny,” said Wolf. “They're pretty famous in the south. And you'd probably get them mixed up. See, it's Ripsunder who's the rabbit.” He held a hand out about three feet from the floor. “And Tiny's the rhino.” And now he reached up, waving vaguely towards the ceiling. “A good seven or eight feet of muscle. They were the first two customers. I wonder if you can guess which one was on which foot.”
	Sol groaned and closed his eyes, trying to think back through the muddled memories of torment, right back to the beginning...

“I say we cut off his toes,” rumbled Tiny.
	Ripsunder sighed, shaking his head. “You don't quite get it, do you?” He snatched up  one of the tools that, in a past life, might have once been used to prise stones out of crevices, or do something complicated with stitching and leather; a slender hook, curved at the tip. He waved it under Tiny's nose. “You see this? This is what we're gonna use.”
	Tiny snorted. “Don't even look like it'll break the skin!”
	“We don't want to break the skin.” Ripsunder thrust up a warning finger as Tiny opened his mouth to speak. “Just shut up and watch, will you?”
	Tiny leaned in, his leather clothes creaking, the wooden bench beneath him creaking, the table groaning where his hand rested. Ripsunder rolled his shoulders, put a finger to his lips to request silence, and then closed in on Sol's unsuspecting soles.
	The metal hook touched against the pad of Sol's left foot, on the wet silk. Sol's toes flinched, then rested, still. He barely felt it. It was like a fly had landed there. A loud groan of wood announced that Tiny had shifted, and Ripsunder waved a warning at him to shut the fuck up. The rabbit returned his attention to his work, his nose so close to the silk that he could smell the mud, the fine material, and the even finer musk of the feline beneath. Gently, slowly, and with infinite precision and care, he dragged the point of the hook down Sol's sole. The silk bunched up around the tip of the hook, then slipped, then bunched up again. The hook traced a thin line of sensation. Sol's toes twitched again, and then splayed wide. Ripsunder's ears caught the sound from the other side of the wall; a mournful moan, muffled twice by the wall and by a gag, the sound of someone who knows what is coming, and dreads it.
	“Do you hear that?” asked Ripsunder. “No, of course you don't. All you can hear up there is passing birds. That's the sound of subtlety at work. Sutt-ell-tee. You know that word, dingus? You give it a try.”
	Tiny's thick fingers levered a delicate tool up from the table and grasped it between two fingertips, like a toothpick held between two tree trunks. With an expression of intense concentration, he pressed the point of the tool to Sol's other sole and dragged it down towards the heel.
	Ripsunder winced. “Well...almost,” he said, over the sounds of muffled howling from the other side of the wall. He stuck a finger into the fresh slit cut into the silk sock and wiggled it. The muffled howling became muffled laughter. “No blood. Good thing it wasn't too sharp. How about you just watch the master work, eh?”
	Ripsunder flexed his fingers, then cracked his knuckles, and eyed the quivering feline soles with a predatory stare. He licked his lips...and attacked.

Sol remembered this moment. He had imagined the owner of those fingers, but he had been nowhere near the reality of the rabbit's evil expression as his nimble, lock-picking fingers danced across Sol's struggling soles. In his distress, screaming with laughter, begging for mercy, he had been unable to appreciate the way those fingers kept position with those mobile feet, or the moments where they slipped into the gash in the silk to dig into the sensitive sweet spots along the edges of Sol's pads. When the desperate flexing of Sol's toes rubbed fresh holes in the toes of the socks, Ripsunder's fingers were there, ready to tear them wider, exposing first one toe, then another, then another, and the tender spots between them that made Sol shriek and slam his body against the bench when the rabbit tickled them with the tips of his delicate fingers.
	“You should have seen him,” mused Wolf. “He was a master. I learned so many new things from watching him.”
	Sol groaned.

	Ripsunder continued to live up to his name; he slid his fingers into the holes in the wet silk, wiggling them, ripping them wider with the soft tearing sound of destroyed silk. Sol could feel the tugging sensation, and the shiver-inducing touch of those fingers as they brushed against fur. At any moment they could strike again, to send Sol into fresh, dizzying laughter.
	“Here,” said Ripsunder, prodding the arch of Sol's left sole, right in the middle of a gaping hole that reached from his heel at the bottom, and almost up to the toes at the top. “You have a go, right here. Push your thumb in, right there, and wiggle it in a circle. Gently! Not like you were with the...oh dear.”
	Sol screamed into his gag, loud enough to turn heads over on the other side of the inn. His toes banged against the wall in their desperate effort to pull away from the thick fingers now drilling into the middle of both feet.
	It wasn't pain. At least, not in the normal sense. It was pressure, pushed to the upper limit, to the point where the discomfort impinges on pain's territory. It was a nuance that was lost on Sol as he screamed and kicked and sobbed and begged.
	“That...actually works pretty well,” admitted Ripsunder.
	Tiny grunted. “Hardly even touching him.”
	“Well, don't press any harder. Now, if I do this at the same time...”
	Sol howled, his whole body shaking, as the strong, grinding, painful discomfort of Tiny's thumbs gained a counterbalance of delicate, feather-light fingertip tickles, down in the sensitive fluff between his splayed and struggling toes. He tried to clench them tightly together, but that just trapped the slim fingers in place. He tried to thrash his feet from side to side to dislodge them, but the fingers just moved with them, and the movement just ground his soles harder against Tiny's thumbs.

“And then,” said Wolf, “came Crusher, and Sideways Sam, and that one guy we always called 'the stranger'. He was always a bit creepy. Never talked to anyone. Seemed to like your toes, though. He was the one that licked them. Remember that raspy tongue?”
	Sol groaned at the memory. He tugged at the chains, giving Wolf a hopeful look, but Wolf wasn't looking at him. He was counting out coins from a leather bag, laying them out in a row on his thigh. Once he had filled all the available space, he started to double-stack the coins, then triple-stack them. They didn't all appear to be the same type of coin, some of them hailing from distant and exotic lands, but all of them were bright and shiny and gold.
	“I should have done this much earlier,” said Wolf as he clinked down the last coin, and then swept them all back into the bag. “Screw getting the ransom. I've got an ongoing earner now. I can even invest in getting a few more outfits for you to wear and for those animals to...” he swept a hand over Sol's naked body “...destroy.”
	Sol whined into the gag and pushed his hips upwards. The chastity pouch glistened. His inner thighs were slick from the leakage of so many hours of torturous tickling.
	“What's this?” said Wolf, making a show of leaning in and inspecting the straining pouch. “You think you deserve a reward, hmm?”
	Pitifully, Sol nodded.
	“Hmm,” said Wolf, hefting the bag of coins. “How about this; tomorrow, I'll let you decide which body part gets to go through the wall. There are different hatches.” He pointed into the darkness, where faint shapes of other benches were just visible. “How does that sound?”
	Sol moaned and nodded frantically.

If only he had been able to speak.
	If only he had been a little more precise in his frantic pointing, when Wolf asked him which body part he had chosen.
	If only he had heeded the warning in Wolf's laughter, and his comment of “are you sure?”
	There were so many if onlys that could have diverted Sol's fate away from this. Kneeling on a bench, his ankles and knees strapped to it, his body upright and facing the wall, front pressed to the wood, more straps holding him there, with his crotch lined up perfectly to the small hatch.
	Too perfectly. He had pointed, with his chained hands, to the silvery chastity pouch. And to his delight, Wolf had removed it, and Sol's cock had felt the wonderful freedom of erection for the first time in weeks. He had happily allowed himself to be strapped into place, expecting at any moment for his cock to be pushed through the hole, to be played with by the patrons, who would surely tease and torture it, but there was the hope that one of them might accidentally stroke a little too firmly, or outright ignore Wolf's inevitable warnings to keep the prince pent up and denied. They were outlaws, right? Surely they were known for their disobedience.
	Sol sobbed as he thought back to his naïve hope. Sure, his cock was free from the chastity, and it felt so good to be hard again. To have the toe-curling pleasure of someone, anyone, stroking it. He'd even happily accept pain and teasing; anything would be better than the constant denial.
	But it wasn't his cock that was threaded through the small hatch and then held in place by the wooden shutters...
	...it was his balls. Exposed and trapped. Utterly vulnerable. And with a table laid out with tickle torture implements, most of which he had intimately 'enjoyed' the night before.
	And now the inn was opening. And Sol could hear the first of them as they found the entertainment awaiting them.