The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy

by Anne Rice

  Finally Mistress Lockley stood upright and, turning, wrapped her arms around Richard. She kissed him and churned her hips as she rubbed against him.

  It was painful for Beauty to watch, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the two towering figures. Richard’s red hair fell down over his forehead and his muscular arm squeezed the narrow back of the Mistress against him.

  But then Mistress Lockley turned and, gathering Beauty by the hand, led her to the bed. “Get up on your knees on the bed and face the wall,” she said, the color dancing in her cheeks exquisitely. “And spread those gorgeous little legs wide apart,” she added. “No one should have to tell you that by now.”

  Beauty obeyed at once, crawling to the far side against the wall, her back to the room, as she had been told. The passion in her was so furious she couldn’t quiet her hips. Again, in a flash she saw the tortures of the kitchen, that smiling face and the little white tongue of the spanking belt coming down on her nipple.

  “0, wicked love,” she thought, “that has so many unnamed components.”

  But Mistress Lockley was lying down on the bed beneath Beauty’s spread legs and looking up at her.

  Her arms wound round Beauty’s thighs and pulled them lower, as Beauty straddled her.

  Beauty peered down into the Mistress’s eyes as her legs stretched wider and wider apart until her sex was just above Mistress Lockley’s face, and suddenly she feared the red mouth below her as much as she had feared the mouth of the white cat in the kitchen. The eyes, so large and glassy, were like the eyes of the cat.

  “It will devour me,” she thought, “it will eat me alive!” But her sex opened in silent ravenous convulsions.

  From behind, Richard’s hands caught Beauty, caught her sore breasts just as he had caught Mistress Lockley’s breasts, and at the same time Beauty felt a jolt to the frame of the bed and saw Mistress Lockley stiffen and shut her eyes.

  Richard had entered Mistress Lockley below, standing beside the bed between her spread legs, and Beauty shook with the rapid jamming rhythm.

  But immediately the hot delicate tongue had licked up at Beauty. It lapped in long slow strokes at her pubic lips and she gasped at the incredible sweetness of the shrill sensation.

  She jumped, afraid of the wet mouth even as she craved it. But her clitoris had been caught in Mistress Lockley’s teeth and Mistress Lockley nibbled at it, sucked at it, licked at it with a fierceness that astonished Beauty. The tongue stabbed into her, filling her, and the teeth gnawed at her, and Richard caught up all of Beauty’s weight in his slender, powerful arms, while his thrusts shook the bed in the never-faltering rhythm. “0, she knows how to do it!” Beauty thought. But she lost the thread of her thoughts, her breaths coming long and low, Richard’s gentle hands massaging her hurt breasts, the face beneath her pressed into her vagina, the tongue flushing her, the lips clamping onto her whole nether mouth and drawing on it in an orgy of sucking that sent the orgasm searing through her.

  It broke in bright waves, causing her almost to collapse, as the strong driving thrusts of the Prince came faster and faster and Mistress Lockley moaned against Beauty and the Prince gave the same deep guttural cry behind her.

  Beauty hung exhausted in his arms.

  Released, she fell languidly to the side, and for a long time lay with her limbs nestled beside Mistress Lockley. Richard, too, was tumbled in the bed, and Beauty lay in a half-sleep, hearing the dim sounds from below, the voices in the drinking room, the occasional shouts from the square, the sounds of night descending on the village.

  When she opened her eyes, Richard was on his knees and just tying the Mistress’s apron strings. The Mistress brushed her long dark hair.

  She snapped her fingers for Beauty to rise, and Beauty tumbled out of the bed and quickly straightened the coverlet.

  She turned and looked up at the Mistress. Richard was already kneeling before the snow-white apron. And Beauty took her place at his side, and the Mistress smiled down at them.

  She studied both her slaves. Then she reached down and clasped Beauty’s sex. She kept her warm hand there until Beauty’s pubic lips enlarged ever so slightly, and the shrill throb commenced again. With the other hand the Mistress wakened the Prince’s cock, pinching the tip, bat-ting gently, playfully at the balls, and whispering, “Come now, young man, no time for resting.”

  He gave a faint moan, but the cock was obedient. The warm fingers tested the moisture between Beauty’s engorging lips. “See, this good little girl is already prepared for service.”

  She lifted their chins now and smiled down at both of them. Beauty felt dizzy and weak and totally without resistance. She stared up into the lovely dark eyes meekly.

  “And in the morning, she will paddle me on the counter,” Beauty thought, “as she does the others.” And her weakness only increased. Richard’s brief story melted over her with lurid vividness: the Punishment Shop, the Public Turntable. The village blazed in her mind and she felt stricken and bedazzled and unable to think whether she was good or bad or should be either.

  “Stand up,” came the soft low voice, “and march fast. It’s already dark and you haven’t been bathed yet.”

  Beauty rose and so did the Prince, and she gave a little cry when she felt the wooden paddle smack her buttocks. “Knees high,” came the gentle whisper. “Young man”—another smack—“did you hear me?”

  They were paddled fiercely down the steps, Beauty shaken and red-faced and shivering with the passion that was kindled anew, and driven into the yard, there to be bathed in the wooden tubs by the kitchen girls, who went to work with their rough brushes and towels.

  SECRETS IN THE INNER CHAMBER

  Tristan:

  THE MASTER’S bedroom was immaculate as I entered, just as it had been the night before, the green satin-lined bed gleaming in the candlelight. And when I saw my Master seated at the desk, pen in hand, I went as quietly as I could across the polished oak floor and kissed his boots, not in the old decorous way, but with total affection.

  I feared he would stop me as I licked at his ankles and even dared to kiss the smooth leather over his calves, but he did not. He did not even seem to notice me.My cock was hurting. The little Princess in the Public Tent had been only the first course. And the mere act of entering this room redoubled the hunger. But as before, I didn’t dare to beg with any vulgar, pleading movement. I would not have displeased the Master for anything.

  I stole a glance upwards at his intent face, his white hair shimmering around it. And he turned, looking down at me, and timidly I looked away, though it took all my control to do it.

  “You’re well bathed?” he asked.

  I nodded and kissed his boots again.

  “Get on the bed,” he said, “and sit to the foot of the bed in the corner nearest the wall.”

  I was in ecstasy. I tried to compose myself, the satin coverlet like ice soothing my welts. The two days of constant licking caused even the flinching of a muscle to have endless reverberations.

  My Master was getting undressed, I knew, but I didn’t dare to look. Then he snuffed all the candles except those by the head of the bed, where an open wine bottle sat beside two jewel-encrusted goblets.

  He must be the richest man in the village, I thought, to have so much light. And I felt a slave’s pure pride in having a rich Master. Any thought of the Prince I had been in my own land was simply gone from me.

  He climbed into bed and sat against the pillows, with one knee up, his left arm resting on it. He reached over and filled the two goblets and then he extended one to me.

  I was baffled. Did he mean for me to drink from it as he would? I took it at once and sat back holding it. I was looking unabashedly at him now; he had not commanded me not to. And his lean hard chest with its curling bits of white hair around the nipples and down the center to his belly caught the light of the candle beautifully. His cock was not as hard as mine yet. I wanted to remedy that.

  “You may drink the wine as I do,”
he said, as if he’d read my thoughts. And, quite astonished, I drank as a man for the first time in half a year, feeling a little awkward about it. I gulped too much and had to stop. But it was well-aged burgundy and without equal in my memory.

  “Tristan,” he said softly.

  I looked him straight in the eye and slowly lowered the cup.

  “You’re to speak to me now,” he said, “to answer me.”

  More amazement. “Yes, Master,” I said softly.

  “Did you hate me last night when I had you whipped on the turntable?” he asked.

  I was shocked.

  He took another drink of the wine but without taking his eyes off me. He looked ominous suddenly, though I didn’t know why.

  “No, Master,” I whispered.

  “Louder,” he said. “I can’t hear you.”

  “No, Master,” I answered. I flushed as deeply as I ever had. It wasn’t really necessary to recall the turntable. I’d never truly stopped thinking about it.

  “ ‘Sir’ will do now and then as well as ‘Master,’ ” he said. “I like both. Did you hate Julia when she stretched your anus with the horsetail phallus?”

  “No, Sir,” I said, the blush getting hotter.

  “Did you hate me when I tethered you with the ponies and made you pull the coach to the manor house? I don’t mean today after you had been so well worked and tempered. I mean yesterday when you were staring with such horror at the harnesses.”

  “No, Sir,” I protested.

  “Then what did you feel when all those things happened?”

  I was too stupefied to answer.

  “What did I want from you today when I tethered you behind that pair of ponies, when I plugged your mouth and your anus and made you march in your bare feet?”

  “Submission,” I said, my mouth dry. My voice sounded unfamiliar to me.

  “And ... in more precise detail?”

  “That I ... I march briskly. And that I be taken through the village in ... in that fashion....” I was trembling. I tried to steady the goblet with the other hand as if it were a thoughtless gesture.

  “In what fashion?” he pressed.

  “Harnessed, gagged.”

  “Yes ... ?”

  “And impaled on a phallus and barefoot.” I swallowed, but I didn’t look away from him.

  “And what do I want from you now?” he said.

  I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I ... That I answer your questions.”

  “Exactly. So you will answer them, fully,” he said politely with a slight lift of his eyebrows, “and with deep descriptive passages, concealing nothing and without so much coaxing. You will give long answers. In fact you will continue your answer until I put another question.” He reached for the bottle and filled my goblet.

  “And drink your wine whenever you like,” he said, “there is plenty of it.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” I murmured, staring at the cup.

  “That’s a little better!” he said, marking my response. “Now, we’ll start again. When you first saw the team of ponies and you realized you were being made to join them, what went through your mind? Let me remind you, you had a stout phallus in your backside with a good horsetail attached to it. But then came the boots and the harness. You are blushing. What did you think?”

  “That I couldn’t bear it,” I said, not daring to pause, my voice quavering. “That I couldn’t be made to do it. That I, I would fail somehow. That I couldn’t be lashed to a coach and made to pull it like an animal, and the tail, it seemed a dreadful decoration, a stigma.” My face was in a fever. I sipped at the wine, but he had not spoken and this meant I had to go on answering him! “I think it was better as the harnesses were tightened and I couldn’t get away.”

  “But you made no move to get away before that. When I strapped you home through the street, I was alone with you. You didn’t try to run then, not even when the village toughs whipped you.”

  “Well, what good would it have done to run?” I asked in consternation. “I’d been taught not to run! I would only have been trussed up somewhere, beaten, maybe my cock whipped—” I stopped, shocked at my own words. “Or maybe I would only have been caught and harnessed anyway, and pulled along truckling by the other ponies. And the mortification would have been greater because all would have known that I was so afraid, out of control, and being so violently forced to it.”

  I drank from the goblet and shoved my hair out of my eyes. “No, if it was to be done, then it was better to submit; it was inescapable, so it had to be accepted.”

  I shut my eyes tight for a second. The heat and torrent of my words amazed me.

  “But you’d been taught to submit to Lord Stefan, and you did not,” he said.

  “I tried!” I burst out. “But Lord Stefan ...”

  “Yes...”

  “It was what the Captain said,” I faltered. My voice sounded frail to me now. The words were too rapid. “He had been my lover before, and instead of using that intimacy to his advantage as Master, he allowed it to weaken him.”

  “What an interesting statement. Did he talk to you as I’m talking to you now?”

  “No! No one has ever done that!” I laughed shortly, dryly. “That is, not with me talking back. He ordered me about like any castle Lord. He ordered me stiffly, but he was in a terrible state of agitation. It excited him beyond words to see me erect and bowing to his wishes and yet he couldn’t endure it. I think, well, I think sometimes that if our positions had been reversed by fate, I might have showed him how to do it.”

  My Master laughed, and his laugh was free and slow. He drank from his cup. His face was animated and a little warmer now. I felt some terrible sense of danger to my soul, looking at him.

  “0, that is probably too true,” he said. “The best slaves sometimes make the best Masters. But you may never have the opportunity to prove it. I spoke to the Captain about you this afternoon. I made thorough inquiries. When you were free years ago, you bested Lord Stefan in all ways, didn’t you? Better rider, swordsman, archer. And he loved you and admired you.”

  “I tried to shine as his slave,” I said. “I journeyed through excruciating humiliations. The Bridle Path, the other games of Festival Night in her Majesty’s gardens; I was the Queen’s toy now and then; Lord Gregory, the Master of the slaves, incited the most exquisite fear in me. But I never pleased Lord Stefan because he himself did not know how to be pleased! He did not know how to command! I was always distracted by other Lords.”

  My voice stopped in my throat. Why must I tell these secrets? Why must I lay it all out and amplify my revelation to the Captain? But my Master didn’t speak. It was the silence again and I was falling into it.

  “I kept thinking of the soldiers’ camp,” I went on, the silence pulsing in my ears. “And I felt no love for Lord Stefan.” I looked into my Master’s eyes. The blue was only a glimmer of blue, the dark centers large and almost glittering.

  “One has to love the Master or Mistress,” I said. “Even the slaves in the village cottages, they can love their gruff and busy Masters or Mistresses, can’t they, as I loved ... the soldiers in the camp who whipped me daily. As I loved for one moment—”

  “Yes?” he demanded.

  “As I even loved the Whipping Master on the turntable last night. For one moment.” That hand lifting my chin, squeezing my cheeks, that smile looming over me. The power in that thick arm ...

  I was trembling as badly as I had then. But still the silence ...

  “Even those toughs, as you called them, who whipped me in the street while you watched,” I said, veering away from the image of the turntable. “They had their shabby power.”

  I had only thought I was blushing before. I tried to cool myself with the wine, strengthen my voice, the silence stretching again as I drank.

  I put up my left hand to shield my eyes.

  “Take down your hand,” he said, “and tell me what you felt when you were made to march, after you were properly
harnessed.”

  The word “properly,” pierced me.

  “It was what I needed,” I said. I tried not to look at him, but I failed. His eyes were wide, and in the candlelight his face was almost too perfect for a man’s face, too fine. I felt a knot in my chest loosening, breaking. “I ... mean, if I’m to be a slave, it was what I needed. And tonight—when I did it again—I had pride in it.”

  My shame was too much. My face throbbed.

  “I liked it!” I whispered. “That is, this evening when we went out to the manor house, I liked it. I had already been shown by the early barefoot run through the village that one could take pride in being harnessed like that, instead of the other way. And I wanted to please you. I took pleasure in pleasing you.”

  I drained the cup and I lowered it. There was the wine pouring into it again, and his eyes never letting me go as he put the bottle back on the table.

  I felt as if I were falling; I was being opened by my own confessions as surely as the phalluses had opened me.

  “But maybe that’s not the whole truth,” I said, looking at him intently. “Even if I had not been run barefoot through the village, I might have liked the pony harnesses anyway. And maybe, despite all the pain and the misery of it, I liked the barefoot run through the village because you were driving me and you were watching me. I felt sorry for the slaves I saw whom no one seemed to watch.”

  “In the village someone is always watching,” he said. “If I strap you to a wall outside, and I will, there will be those who will notice you. The village toughs will come round to torment you again, grateful for an unattended slave they can torture for nothing. They’d whip you raw in less than half an hour. Someone always sees, comes to punish. And as you said, they have their shabby charm. For a well-tuned slave, the crudest cleaning woman or chimney sweep can have an overwhelming charm if the discipline is engulfing.”