by Anne Rice
She tried not to cry.
And then firmly and confidently he pushed her buttocks forward, his hand very strong and hot against the thin streaks of warmth left by the weak and delicate thong, and she struggled to obey, sobbing silently with the little gag of the handles in her teeth.
There was no choice. Had he not told her what was expected? And, once she entered the passage, she could not stop. It would be too utterly disgraceful.
But just when her courage did fail her again, when a particularly loud volley of noise rolled through the passage, she felt his lips against her cheek. He was kneeling beside her himself. He slid his hand beneath her breasts, gathering them tenderly in his long fingers. And he whispered in her ear.
“Do not fail me, lovely one.”
And breaking from the warmth of his touch, she went at once into the opening. Her cheeks were stinging with humiliation as she realized she carried her own leashes in her mouth, that she was crawling of her own will through this hollow passage of polished stone—polished by other hands and knees, surely—that she must emerge in this abject manner.
But faster and faster she moved, towards the light and towards the voices. And there was some faint hope in her that, no matter how dreadful this might be, the passion in her might somehow be used to advantage. Her sex swelled, pumped with life. If only there weren’t so many, so very many.... When had she ever been given to so many?
Within seconds she emerged into the light.
She crept out onto the floor and into the dizzying ring of chatter and laughter.
On all sides bare feet approached her. And the long veils that fell down around them were gossamer and shimmering, the sunlight exploding on golden anklets and toe rings set with emeralds and rubies.
Beauty crouched low, fearful of the commotion, the frenzy, but instantly a dozen small hands had hold of her and lifted her until she was standing. All around her were gorgeous women. She glimpsed olive-skinned faces with kohl-rimmed eyes, tresses tumbling over bare shoulders. The billowing pantaloons they wore were almost transparent, only the lower part of the crotch covered in darker, thicker fabric. And the fitted bodices of heavier silk only thinly veiled their full breasts, their dark nipples. But the most enticing parts of their costumes were the broad tight girdles that seemed to imprison their tiny waists, and to rein in all the sensuality that smoldered beneath the colorful diaphanous wrapping.
Beautifully shaped arms they had, enhanced with winding snake bracelets, and there were rings on their fingers as well as their toes, and here, a brilliant glittering jewel embedded behind the delicate curve of a tiny nostril.
How enchantingly lovely these creatures were—sav—age-eyed counterparts of the lean and graceful men. But this made them seem all the more treacherous and frightening to Beauty. They looked wildly licentious compared to the heavily draped women of Europe. Ready for the bed, they seemed, and yet Beauty felt purely, stunningly naked as she stood at their mercy.
They closed in upon her.
Her wrists were pinioned behind her back, her head turned this way, her legs pried apart, as riffs of laughter and shrieking deafened her.
And everywhere she glanced she saw the large black eyes, thick eyelashes, long curls unwinding on half-naked shoulders.
But there was not a moment even for her to get her bearings. She winced and shivered as they poked at her ears, touched her breasts, her belly.
And she was panting and sobbing under her breath as the group rushed her forward, their long pantaloons tickling her legs, into the center of the room where the sunlight poured in upon heaps of silk-covered pillows and low, padded couches.
It was an opulent pleasure den, this room. Why did they need her to torment?
But immediately, she was thrown down on her back upon one of these couches, her arms stretched above her. And the women gathered on their knees, surrounding her. Once again, her legs were pried apart, and a cushion was thrust under her buttocks to raise her for examination.
She was as powerless as she had been in the hands of the grooms before, but the feminine faces that peered down at her were full of wild jubilation. Excited words flew back and forth. Fingers stroked her breasts. She looked up into the expectant eyes, panic-stricken, unable to shield herself.
And as her legs were turned out, knees pressed flat, she felt fingers pulling at her sex, once again opening it, widening it.
She struggled to be quiet, but her tortured sex was brimming. As she pumped her hips on the scarlet cushion, the women only squealed louder. She could not count the hands that grasped her inner thighs, each stroke of a finger further maddening her. Long hair spilled down on her naked breasts, on her belly.
And it seemed that even the light lyrical voices stroked her and heightened her suffering.
But why did they stare at her, she wondered. Had they never seen a woman’s organs before? Had they never seen their own organs? Useless to try to understand. Those who could not get a close look stood up and leaned over the shoulders of the others.
And as she writhed in the hands that held her, she saw that some one of them had placed a mirror before her sex, and the reflection of her private, secret parts shocked her.
But now one of the women forced aside the others, and, as she took hold of Beauty’s nether lips, she peeled them back harshly. Beauty twisted and arched her back. She felt she was being turned inside out. And she moaned as the fingers pinched at her clitoris, folding back the little hood of flesh that covered it. Beauty could hardly control herself any longer. She sobbed, and her hips rode up off the silk of the pillow and remained suspended in the air by virtue of the tension in her.
The crowd of women seemed to grow quieter, more fascinated. Suddenly one of the wives took Beauty’s left breast in her hand and removed the little gold clamp, and scratched at the marks left in the skin and then played with the nipple roughly.
Beauty shut her eyes. Her body had no weight. It had become pure sensation. She worked her limbs in the hands that held her, but this was not true motion. It was pure feeling.
She felt the woman’s hair fall down on her naked chest. Then another woman had taken the clamp from her right breast, and she felt hot playful fingers examining her there also.
Meanwhile the hand that widened her vagina continued to probe, to feel beneath the clitoris, to pull upon it. The juices exploded inside, and Beauty felt them trickling out, and she felt the hot fingers examining the moisture.
Suddenly a wet mouth closed on her left breast. And another on her right. And both women sucked hard as the fingers pinched at her pubic lips. And Beauty was no longer conscious of anything but exquisite desire rolling up towards the long-awaited orgasm.
At last, she went over the edge, her face and breasts throbbing with fire, and she felt her hips go rigid in the air, her vagina convulsing on the emptiness, grasping for the fingers that stroked her clitoris as she felt it grow harder and harder.
She cried out—a long hoarse cry. And the orgasm went on and on, the mouths suckling her, the fingers stroking her.
It seemed she would float forever in this sea of tenderness, this sea cf delicate violation. And as she sobbed shamelessly, not conscious now of any injunction to be quiet, she felt a mouth close on hers, she felt the cries taken into another.
Yes, yes, she said mutely with her whole body, the woman’s tongue going into her mouth, her breasts exploding as they were bitten and licked, her hips lunging as if to swallow the probing fingers.
And then as it overflowed, as it passed out of her with a thousand rippling reverberations, she felt herself embraced by the softest arms, kissed by the softest lips, the long delicate tresses veiling her.
She breathed deeply, whispered aloud, “Yes, Yes, I love you, love you all.” But the mouth was still kissing her, and no one heard these words; they, like all else, were mere glorious, sensual reverberation.
But her Mistresses were not satisfied. They would not let her rest.
They took the pins out
of her hair and they lifted her.
“Where are you taking me?” she cried out before she could stop herself. She looked up, trying frantically to catch the lips that had just withdrawn from her mouth. But she saw only smiling faces.
She was carried across the chamber, her body shocked and throbbing still, her breasts aching to be suckled again.
And in a moment, she saw the answer to her question. A finely made bronze statue stood gleaming in the center of the garden: the statue of a god, it seemed, with knees bent and arms outstretched to the side, and head thrown back in laughter. From its naked loins jutted a cock, and Beauty knew that they meant to impale her on it.
She almost laughed in her happiness. She felt herself placed on the hard, smooth, sun-warmed bronze, dozens of soft little hands supporting her. She felt the cock enter her wet vagina, her legs winding over the bronze thighs, her arms up to go around the neck of the deity. The cock filled her, stabbed at the mouth of her uterus sending a new contraction of pleasure through her. She pushed down, her vulva sealed against the bronze, and rocked on the cock, the orgasm rising again.
“Yes, Yes,” she cried out, seeing everywhere their rapt faces. She threw back her head. “Kiss me!” she cried. And she opened her mouth hungrily. At once, they responded as if they understood. The lips found her mouth, her breasts, the curls again tickling her, and she flung herself back into their arms away from the god, only her pubis still sealed to him, needing only his cock as they suckled her.
The orgasm was blinding, obliterating. Her hands held tight to soft, silken arms, to warm, tender necks. Her fingers were tangled in the long, fine hair. She was smothered in flesh and smothered in happiness.
And when it was finished, when she could stand it no longer and she was withdrawn from the god, she fell back on silken pillows, her body wet and feverish, her vision dazed, the creatures of the harem purring and whispering as they continued to kiss her and stroke her.
LAURENT: FOR THE LOVE OF THE MASTER
TRISTAN AND I had seen them give the purge to Beauty and Elena. And I had thought, “They cannot do that to us.” But they did it.
When they had shaved the hair from our faces and our legs, they took Tristan and me into the bath chamber together. Beauty was already gone. The Master had taken her away.
And Tristan and I knew what was coming. But I wondered if they didn’t delight in tormenting us more than the women. They made us kneel facing each other and made us put our arms around each other, as if they liked the picture of it. As if it wasn’t necessary to separate us for the sake of delicacy. They wouldn’t let our cocks touch. When we tried that, they whipped us with those humiliating little thongs that couldn’t have struck a decent blow on a gnat. All the thongs did was remind me of what it was like to be really beaten.
And yet they helped to keep the fires burning, as if holding Tristan wasn’t enough.
Over Tristan’s shoulder, I watched the groom lower the brass pipe and insert the end of it into his backside. And, at the same moment, I felt the nozzle enter me. Tristan tensed, his bowels filling as mine were filled, and I held to him, trying to steady him.
I wanted to tell him I had had it done before, once, at the castle, at the request of a royal guest before a night of the most humiliating games, and, though it was unnerving, it was not so terrible. But of course I didn’t dare to whisper even in his ear. I just held him and waited, the warm water jetting into me, the grooms busy washing us all over as if this other thing, this cleansing of our insides, wasn’t happening.
I stroked Tristan’s neck and kissed him below the ear when the worst moment came and the nozzles were withdrawn and we were emptied. His whole body went rigid against me, but he was kissing my neck too, gnawing at my flesh a little, and our cocks brushed each other, stroked each other.
But the grooms were so busy pouring the warm water over our backsides and washing away the waste that for a moment they didn’t see what we were doing. I pressed Tristan to me, feeling his belly against mine, his cock bulging against me, and I almost came then, not caring anymore what any of them wanted of us.
But they separated us. They forced us apart and held us back away from each other as the emptying went on, and the water flowed over us. And I was weak all over, belonging to them inside and out, belonging to the roar of the water in this echo chamber of a room, to their hands, to the whole procedure and the way it was done, as if it had been done to thousands before us.
If they punished us for touching, well, that would be my fault. And I wished there was a way to tell Tristan that I regretted getting him into trouble.
But they were too busy, apparently, to punish us.
One purge was not enough, as it had been for the women. We had to have another, and once again they let us hold each other, and the nozzles went in and the water was pumping up into me, and one of the grooms whipped my cock a little with the thong as the purge continued.
My mouth was next to Tristan’s ear. And he was kissing me again, which was lovely.
I thought, “I cannot stand this deprivation much longer. It’s worse than anything else they’ve done to us.” And I might well have done something indiscreet again, just pushed my cock against his belly, anything.
But then our new Lord and Master, Lexius, appeared, and I felt a little shock when I saw him in the doorway.
Fear. When had anyone at the castle ever made me feel the wallop of it like this? It was maddening. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, surveying us as they finished with the towels, and his face had a cold cheerfulness to it, as if he was proud of his selections.
When I looked right at him, he didn’t show the slightest disapproval. And looking up into his eyes, I thought of that glove going up into my rear—the sensation of being widened and impaled on his arm, and the others watching.
And that, mixed with the shame of having been purged, was almost too much for me.
It wasn’t just fear, fear that he would put on the glove again and do that; it was damnable pride that he had done it only to me, and that only I had been tethered to his slipper.
I wanted to please the devil, that was the horror of it. And it made it worse that he had worked the same spell on the others. Elena he had made into a trembling virgin at his command. Beauty he had reduced to obvious adoration.
Now, if the grooms told him that Tristan and I had touched.... But they didn’t. They dried us off. They brushed our hair. The Master gave some little command, and we were put down on our hands and knees and made to follow him into the main bath again. He gestured for us to kneel up in front of him.
I could feel his eyes moving over me, see him looking over Tristan. Then came another command—his voice like a whip itself stroking my nesh—and the grooms quickly brought out the leather and gold ornaments. They lifted my balls and buckled a broad jeweled ring around my cock, keeping my balls pushed forward.
It had been done before at the castle, but never had I been so hungry.
And then the clamps for the nipples again, only this time they didn’t have leashes attached. They were small and tight, and little weights dangled from them.
I couldn’t help but wince when they were put on. And Lexius saw it, heard it. I didn’t dare look up, but I saw him turn towards me and I felt his hand suddenly on my head. He stroked my hair. Then he tapped the weight dangling from my left nipple and made it swing on its hook, and I winced again, and blushed again, remembering what he had said about silently showing our passion.
It wasn’t hard to do. I felt clean and polished inside and out and with no means of combating his power over me. The passion gnawed in my loins and the tears rolled down my face, suddenly.
He pressed the back of his hand against my lips, and I kissed it immediately. Then he did the same to Tristan, and it seemed Tristan made a more graceful art of the kiss, his whole body yielding to it. I felt my tears get thicker, come faster and hotter.
What was happening to me in this strange palace? Why in these
simple preliminaries was I reduced to this? After all, I was the runaway, the rebel.
But here I was, dropping on silent command to my hands and knees beside Tristan, our foreheads to the floor, and we were both following Lexius out of the bath into the corridor.
We came to a large garden full of low fig trees and flower beds, and I saw immediately what was going to happen to us. But to make certain we understood, Lexius touched us under our chins with the thong to make us raise our heads and look in front of us, and then he took us, still on our hands and knees, on a little journey along the path so that we could study more thoroughly the slaves who decorated the garden.
They were male slaves, at least twenty of them, their natural skin color unchanged, each mounted on a smooth wooden cross that was planted in the earth amid the flowers and the grass, under the low tree branches.
But the crosses weren’t like the village Punishment Cross. They had high crossbars that went under the arms of the slaves which were tied behind them. Wide, curved hooks of polished brass held the weight of the spread-apart thighs, and the soles of the feet of each slave were pressed together, ankles tethered.
Their heads hung forward so that they could see their own erect cocks, and their wrists were bound to the cross in back by chains connected to the large gilded phalluses protruding from their backsides. Not a one looked up or dared to move as we made our little walk in the garden.
And I saw that silent servants, heavily robed and moving with obsequious speed, were spreading brightly colored carpets on the grass and setting low tables upon them, as if for a banquet. Brass lamps were being hung in the trees and torches placed along the walls that enclosed the place.
Cushions were laid all about. And silver and gold jugs of wine were already set in place, and on the tables were trays of goblets. It was clear a meal would be served here at nightfall.
I could imagine the feel of the crossbar under my arms, imagine the smooth cold brass of the hooks curving around my legs, the penetration of the phallus. In the lamplight the vision of the mounted slaves would be stunning. And here the Lords would dine with these sculptures to delight them if they chanced to look up—and what might follow? Would we be taken down, raped?
