Lovers and Beloveds

by MeiLin Miranda

  The gardens contained many little nooks and niches; tucked away in more than one were passionate couples--or more than couples. Deeply embarrassed, Temmin didn't know whether to stare or look away, but neither Allis nor Issak seemed to care, sometimes ignoring the lovemakers, sometimes stopping to observe and even comment, and then moving on. "Were those Lovers and Beloveds, or...?" asked Temmin.

  "Most of them," said Issak absently.

  They entered the sculpture garden. The statues portrayed Neya and Nerr: alone; together; with Their Sisters or Brothers; or with any number of the human lovers They took in Their Sagas. Temmin found staring at statues less embarrassing, and he studied them with real curiosity. At times he wondered if the statues' positions were even possible.

  "Ah--I knew we'd find someone using 'Nerr in Repose,'" Issak said, stopping before what resembled a bench, but turned out to be a life-sized statue of Nerr, lying on His back. His erection rose into the air, or so Temmin assumed; a young postulant Beloved straddled the statue, hiding it completely. The girl blushed and stammered, lifting one long leg as if to dismount, but Issak stopped her. "Your teacher sent you out here, didn't he? Then finish your assignment."

  The girl sank back down on the phallus, her brown hair half-covering her face. But as it filled her, she let her head fall back; her mouth opened. She let out a tiny grunt and closed her eyes. She rose up, and Temmin could see the phallus now, thick and curving. She lowered herself onto it again. A flush bloomed across her skin, and her breasts bounced as she rocked in earnest, one hand between her legs. Temmin forgot his embarrassment. Though he'd seen Emmae's body in the Intimate History, he'd never seen a woman's body with his own eyes. He remembered the way Emmae's crisis would build inside her, and just as he wondered if the girl experienced the same pressure, pushing against some invisible wall until it burst through, she cried out, one hand working between her legs, the fingers of the other pinching a nipple. Her movements on the phallus slowed, and she braced herself on the statue's chest as she caught her breath. Temmin realized he'd been holding his own, and let it out in a small whoosh.

  Issak helped the still-shaking postulant off the statue; she laughed, thanked him, and then kissed him, a long, full kiss Temmin could feel from ten feet away. He wanted to kiss the girl himself, kiss Issak, kiss Allis, kiss someone, or at least get a few minutes to himself to recover his equilibrium. Instead, he shifted on his feet and hoped his erection wasn't too visible. The postulant cleaned the phallus, and Issak shooed her back toward her classroom, arms full of clothes. "That was an assignment?" said Temmin.

  "I would imagine lessons here are quite different from your lessons with Teacher," said Allis as they resumed walking.

  Not as different as one might think, reflected Temmin.

  They strolled back inside the Temple. "Now we'll show you the petitioning rooms," said Allis. "Few visitors get to see them from the gallery--the only reason we're showing you is that you're considering Supplicancy."

  "What's a petitioning room?" said Temmin.

  "It's where we meet with petitioners to the Temple," said Allis. "People asking for a blessing."

  "I know what a petitioner is. I've made a few petitions myself, mostly to Amma to help my foaling mares--to Venna, when someone's been sick, but that was always done in private, at home." That was how Ibbit wormed her way in, he thought. "Why do you need rooms for it? I thought that's what all the people in the Great Hall of the Temple were doing--petitioning the Gods."

  "These are rather more personal requests," answered Issak. "Blessings, the laying on of hands."

  "I thought healing was more in Venna's line," said Temmin.

  Allis squeezed his arm. "It's not that kind of healing." They came to a vast warren of little rooms, a steady stream of people moving among them. "The ones wearing Temple garb--what we've got on--are clergy and lay devotees. The rest are petitioners," she continued. She opened a door set between two ranks of rooms. "This is an observation gallery--there's one between each row. When we're by a window, keep silent. If you have a question, write it down." She handed Temmin a little pad of foolscap and a pencil from a pocket on the wall.

  Walking inside, Temmin saw little, screened windows set into the walls. Each let into a room, staggered so the rooms could not see into one another. The odor of sex, quite fresh, filled the small, warm corridor; the pierced screens cast stars onto its walls, the only light.

  Temmin peered into the first room. It held a low, wide Temple couch piled with pillows, a dressing screen, and no other furnishings. A middle-aged woman reclined into the pillows, feet on the floor, Temple skirt rucked up around her waist; all her attention focused on the man in street clothes kneeling before her. The man gave a muffled groan, his face buried so deep in the woman's sex he seemed to be pushing his way inside her. "Can they see us?" he whispered.

  Issak took the pad and pencil. He wrote in big block letters, "NO BUT THEY CAN HEAR BE QUIET!!!" Temmin made an apologetic face and turned back to the room, fascinated. Neither the man nor the woman was beautiful, but watching such an intimate moment drew him in; the man seemed so desperate, and the woman watched him with such intense serenity, stroking his hair. The man held his cock in one hand, and she murmured encouragement as he pumped it: she could see how much he needed her, how hard he was for her, how good he made her feel, how close she was-- The woman curved her back, hips rising off the couch; the man's smothered cries became louder and more pleading in response until his seed spurted from him in a stuttering arc. He laid his balding head on her thigh, gasping, face glistening, and sobbed like a child as she soothed him with comforting nonsense. Just before Allis tugged him away from the window, Temmin thought he saw movement behind the dressing screen, as if someone watched.

  "What was that all about?" whispered Temmin in her ear. "Should we have been watching?"

  "They know staff may watch them," she whispered. "I don't know the story, and I'd wager he doesn't either, poor soul."

  They came to the next inhabited room. Inside, the fat young woman who'd served them tea lay on the couch, large breasts exposed. She cradled a dark-haired woman in her arms. Temmin thought they might be asleep until he realized the dark-haired woman was suckling like a baby, softly playing with the other nipple as she nursed; the fat girl gently rocked her, a somnolent ecstasy playing over her face, her mouth just open. She opened her eyes, looked straight through the screen at Temmin, and gave him a smile that went directly between his legs.

  Before he could think much more about it, Allis pulled him down the hall again to a window where a burly young man already stood, watching through the screen. He ran a quick, appreciative eye over Temmin, nodded a greeting, and returned to his watch. "NECESSARY OBSERVER," Issak wrote on the pad.

  A smack and a cry: Temmin's eyes followed the sound. A naked man lay sprawled across a heavyset older man's lap. His knees trapped the younger man's legs, arms pinned down with one beefy hand. An angry red handprint already branded the young man's flank; his captor ran light fingers over the mark, and the young man writhed. "Be still!" hissed the older man. The young man fought to stay motionless, wailing as the spanking continued.

  To his shock, Temmin noticed the young man's hard length forced down against the other's thigh. He liked it? Why would he like it? Why would anyone like it? But the more the young man begged, the more Temmin himself stiffened.

  The big man settled the smaller one's legs so that his cock dangled freely; the man reached down between them to take it, slowly stroking as the other hand circled the already-red ass. "Not till I say," he growled, and rained down slaps.

  "Please!" the young man begged again. "Please, sir, please!"

  "Shoot for me." He squeezed his partner's crimson ass with one huge hand as the prick in his other visibly throbbed. The young man let out an agonized scream, half pain, half pleasure, and came.

  As soon as the throes ended, the older man swept him up in a crushing embrace. "Oh, you were so, so good, such a good boy, you to
ok it so well," he crooned, tears in his own eyes as the other man sobbed in his arms. "Now here--" He unbuttoned his trousers, revealing a purple enormity. "That's what you want, eh? Take it." The crying man dropped to his knees and swallowed the giant prick down to its root.

  Allis tugged Temmin away again, nodding to the observer as they moved away. "We set a watcher in those kinds of cases," she whispered. "We can't let the petitioners hurt the staff."

  Down the row they went, looking in on men and women, men and men, women and women, threesomes and more--dizzying and confusing.

  They came upon another stocky observer; inside the room, a woman lay tied to the couch, her head dangling from one end. One man drove in and out between her legs, another thrust into her mouth as he squeezed her breasts. Thoughts of Hildin and Gian raping Emmae, flashed through him, his body reacting just as before. He glanced at the dispassionate twins. The woman thrashing against her bonds aroused him, a horrible, inescapable arousal; what kind of man was he, to feel his blood surge like this? When the men finished, they untied her. To Temmin's confusion, she fell into their arms and covered them with kisses.

  It wasn't all sex. Some sat side by side, or reclined in one another's arms, talking, sleeping, or just touching one another. One blissful woman slept, dangling naked from the ceiling in an elaborate rope harness; a second woman watched over her. In another room, a man scribbled in a notebook while another man made love to a woman. In time, Temmin realized the woman was the note-taker's wife.

  As they left the gallery, none of what Temmin had seen stayed so clearly in his mind's eye as the fat girl's smile, the woman tied to the couch, and the older man and the younger man. The images left him flushed, flustered and somehow angry.

  They walked into the Great Hall, an enclosed courtyard where entwined statues of Neya and Nerr rose three stories high. In niches along the wall stood individual statues of the Twins in all Their various aspects; hundreds of flickering candles stood before each one. Elaborate offerings lay before the giant statues spilling onto their feet: towers of sweets, a profusion of flowers.

  Allis and Issak led Temmin through a door peeping out from the great statues' legs. Inside, the room held several of the low, wide couches, and two large beds recessed into rose silk-covered walls. Braziers warmed the already-overheated room, and Temmin once again longed to remove at least his cravat. The fat young woman he'd last seen suckling a petitioner had regained her clothing and now glided around the room with the tea things.

  "This is the Supplicants Chamber," said Issak. "It's where you'd be spending a good part of your time. Supplicants live with us, but I can't imagine His Majesty letting you live outside the Keep."

  "My father has nothing to do with it," said Temmin, pulling away from their hands and pacing off. "I live where I please."

  "Do you, now?" said Issak, folding his arms. "So will you be living here?"

  "Yes! No! What?" said Temmin. "I need to use the--the facilities!"

  "The facilities," said Issak. "Yes. Anda? Please show His Highness the lavatory." The fat girl led Temmin through a hidden door past a modesty wall to a room with a urinal, sink and toilet, and left him standing before the urinal, but he found himself too hard to piss. None of his usual methods to ease his erection seemed to work. Did he have time? It shouldn't take long in this state, and who'd bother him in here? He put one hand against the wall, and stroked his almost-painful cock.

  "No," said Issak from the doorway. "Not here. If you need to come, you'll do it in the other room." Before Temmin could tuck himself in, Issak seized him and shoved him back into the Supplicants Chamber, where Allis waited. Issak stood behind him; he pinned Temmin's arms to his sides, his cock twitching in the air.

  Temmin turned crimson. "I would advise you to let me go. I am the Heir."

  "And here that means nothing," Issak murmured in his ear.

  "Why are you so angry?" said Allis. She slipped his already-unfastened trousers and pants from his hips. "Tell us." Her hand slid down the band of muscle from his hip to his groin.

  He flinched under her fingers. "I'm not angry!"

  "You are," said Issak. "Why? I think I know. You watched the rooms, and we watched you."

  Temmin flexed his arms, but Issak kept him pinned. "And so?" Temmin began; Allis lifted his balls with gentle fingers, and speech left him.

  "It was easy to see which rooms fascinated you the most," she said. "Were you the powerful or the powerless, Temmin? You like Issak holding you like this."

  She rolled his balls deftly, and he choked out, "I--I can't think with you doing that--"

  "Don't think," she said; her fingers squeezed, and for a moment the world vanished. "Just tell us, without thinking."

  When the world returned, he whimpered, "I don't know, I just don't know!"

  "I think you do," said Issak.

  "Why would anyone want to hurt someone else, why would anyone want to be hurt?" Temmin managed to get out.

  "You wanted it," said Issak. "Your cock jumped every time that big hand landed on that red ass."

  "It wasn't the pain," said Allis. "Any time one had power over another, you were interested."

  "I don't understand."

  "Who was in control in those scenes that captivated you so much?"

  "That's obvious! Those petitioners raping that woman, the man spanking that boy!"

  "He isn't a boy. He's a Lover," said Allis. "And why did you think the woman was a Beloved?"

  "What woman could want that?"

  "She was a woman who wanted that," said Issak.

  It hadn't even crossed Temmin's mind that the woman was the petitioner; he'd just assumed the men were. "She was the one with the power," said Issak. "She gave it to them. She trusted them not to hurt her, and to give her power back in time. If she had signaled she wanted to stop, it would have ended immediately."

  "You didn't stop when I told you to let me go," said Temmin.

  "You said you would advise me to let you go, not that you wanted me to let you go. Do you want me to let you go?" said Issak.

  Temmin didn't answer him. Allis poured something slippery over her hand, and he groaned as she stroked him. "No one wants to be raped," he managed to say.

  "It wasn't rape," said Issak. "It was about power, and trust. Rape is also about power, but trust is absent. Sex is absent, for that matter." Issak took Temmin's earlobe into his mouth and sucked on it; a burst of feathery shivers spread from his mouth down Temmin's side.

  "Power is a king's stock-in-trade," said Allis. "And so is trust. Who will take your power? Whose power will you take? Who will you trust? And can you be trusted with power?"

  Temmin felt Allis's breasts against him; Issak's arousal pushed against him from behind. Too much, and not enough. He thrust helplessly into Allis's hand as a jumble of images came to him: Hildin and Gian; the young man begging to be spanked as he came; Issak's commanding eyes; tears running down Alvo's face as he knelt between Temmin's legs; the woman tied to the couch; Mattie in the hedge; Arta in the forest; Emmae enchanted-- Issak bit his neck.

  A long, strangled cry, and Temmin came. He sagged in Issak's arms, near swooning.

  When he'd recovered himself somewhat, he found he'd been deposited on the couch. The anger left him, replaced with fear and shame. Tears filled his eyes. The twins held him, soothing him like a child. Was he the powerful or the powerless? Powerful, he supposed--he was the Heir to an empire, but he hadn't thought much about it until recently. Did his soul really crave power? If not, why did it attract him so? Ibbit was right; men were inherently depraved, or at least he was. What had Fennows said about patronizing whores--"the Lovers' Temple makes you think about it."

  "I don't want to think about it, I don't want to be like that," he sniffled as his tears subsided.

  "Tem, you already are 'like that,'" soothed Allis. "You know so little about yourself, but you told me everything on our ride."

  "Did I? Then tell me how evil a man I am."

  Issak raise
d up on one elbow and handed him a damp towel from a bowl on the table. "Why do you think you're evil? What does 'like that' mean to you?"

  Temmin wiped his face, his swollen eyes grateful for the towel's coolness. "I have this ancestor--a sort of ancestor--" He started again. "I assume you've told Issak everything? Well, then. You remember the girl at the Estate--the maid I kissed? It never even dawned on me that she didn't want to kiss me, not until I was well into it. If I hadn't gotten sick, I think I might have kept on going. I might have raped her."

  "But you didn't," said Allis. "You stopped."

  "That's not the point, I had to stop--I didn't want to! And it took...it took me some time to understand I was wrong to have kissed her at all."

  "Temmin, it hasn't even been a spoke since you came to the Keep," said Issak.

  Temmin's stomach lurched. "I changed my mind about it because I found something out. I found out...I found out she's my sister. Half-sister--I didn't know. My father told me when I got here. It changed everything about the way I saw it. She was my sister!"

  Allis pushed an errant lock of hair behind his ear. "She became a person to you when you found out who she was. The next girl--the one in the forest?" she added at his confused look.

  "Arta?"

  "You were in a fine position to take her whether she wanted you or not. What could she have done?" said Allis. "Nothing. She even invited a kiss, to hear you tell it. But you knew her. She was a person to you already. And so, when she made it clear she wanted you to stop, you did."

  "So it means I'm only a danger to girls I don't know," said Temmin.

  "In the simplest of terms, it means you need time in an atmosphere where you can't be indulged," answered Issak.

  Indulged. The word sat heavy in his ear. Inside, he knew he was indulged and even petted, but his conscious mind preferred to think of himself as rather put-upon. "I am not 'indulged,'" he said.