by Ann Rice
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."
"Engulfing." I repeated the word. It was perfect.
My vision blurred. I started to raise my hand again but put it down.
"So you needed it," he said. "You needed to be well harnessed and bitted and shod and driven hard."
I nodded. My throat was so thick I couldn't speak.
"And you wanted to please me," he said. "But why?"
"I don't know!"
"You do know!"
"Because... you're my Master. You own me. You are my only hope."
"Hope for what? To be punished all the more?"
"I don't know."
"You do know!"
"My only hope for a deep love, a loss of myself to someone, not merely a loss amid all that strives to break me down and remake me. But a loss to someone who is sublimely cruel, sublimely good at mastering. Someone who might somehow, in the blaze of my suffering, see the depth of submission and love me also." It was too much of an admission. I stopped, crushed, certain I couldn't continue.
But I did go on, slowly.
"I could have loved many Masters or Mistresses perhaps. But you have an eerie beauty that debilitates me and absorbs me. You illuminate the punishments. I don't... I don't understand it."
"What did you feel when you realized you were in line for the Public Turntable," he asked, "when you implored me with all those kisses to my boots and the crowd laughed at you?"
The words stung. Again, it was too real for memory. I swallowed hard.
"I felt panic. I cried, to be punished so soon like that, after trying so hard. Not as a spectacle, I thought, for a crowd of common people, and such a crowd, all there to preside over the chastisement. And when you reprimanded me for begging, I was... ashamed that I had ever thought I could escape it. I remembered that it wasn't necessary for me to have earned the punishment. I deserved it by being here, and being what I was. I was filled with remorse that I had pleaded with you. I will never do it again, I swear it."
"And then?" he asked. "When you were taken up and mounted without fetters? Did you learn from it?"
"Yes, enormously." I gave another low, harsh laugh. Hardly more than a single syllable. "It was devastating! First there was that fear of losing control when you told the guard, 'No fetters.' "
"But why? What would have happened if you had struggled?"
"I would have been bound down, I knew it. Tonight I saw a slave bound like that. Last night I simply assumed it would happen. I would have resisted with my whole body, bridling the way the Prince was tonight, bucking, the terror crashing against me and washing away from me."
I stopped. Engulfing yes, it had become engulfing.
"But I held still," I said, "and when I realized I wouldn't slip or slide under the blows, all the tension was released. I knew this remarkable exhilaration. I was being offered up to the crowd and I submitted to it. I collected all the crowd's frenzy to myself, and the crowd enlarged my punishment as they enjoyed it, and I belonged to the crowd, to hundreds and hundreds of Masters and Mistresses. I yielded to their lust. I held back nothing, resisted nothing."
I stopped. He nodded slowly, but he didn't speak. The heat pounded silently in my temples. I sipped the wine, thinking of my own words.
"It was the same in a smaller way," I said, "when the Captain thrashed me. He was punishing me for having failed after his training. But he was also testing me to see if I was telling the truth about Stefan, if it was mastering I needed. He was calling my bluff, saying, in effect, 'I'll give it to you and we'll see if you can endure it.' And I offered myself to his lash, or at least it seemed so. I never thought, not even in the camp when the soldiers punished me, or at the castle when the Lords and Ladies looked on, that I could, in a hot noonday village square, full of passersby, dance for a soldier's thrash like that. The soldiers trained my cock. They trained me. But they never got that from me. And though I'm terrified of what lies ahead, terrified even of the pony harnesses, I feel myself opening to all punishments instead of triumphing over them with sublime form as I did at the castle. I am being turned inside out. I belong to the Captain, and to you, to all who look. I am becoming my punishments."
Silently he moved towards me, taking the goblet and setting it aside and then taking me in his arms and kissing me.
My mouth opened wide, eagerly, and then he pulled me onto my knees and went down to put his mouth on my cock and fold his arms around my buttocks. Almost savagely he sucked at the full length of my organ, enveloping me in tight wet hotness as his fingers, spreading my buttocks, pried open my anus. And his head went back and forth, pulling on the full length of my cock, lips tightening and then releasing as his tongue circled the tip; then the rapid, almost mad sucking continued. His fingers stretched my anus wide. My mind went clean. I whispered, "I can't hold back." And when he sucked even harder, with rougher strokes, I steadied his head with both hands and jetted hard into him.
My cries came in short bursting rhythm with the suction that seemed to want to empty me. And when I could stand it no more, and tried gently to release his head, he rose up and pushed me down on the bed on my face, shoving my thighs up and wide and flattening my buttocks to the sheets with the heels of his palms before he lay down and forced his cock into me. I was spread like a frog under him. The muscles in my thighs positively sang with delicious pain. His weight pressed me down all the harder. His teeth opened lightly on the back of my neck. His hands hooked under my crooked knees and forced them up closer to the pillow. And my exhausted cock throbbed and doubled beneath me.
My buttocks bobbed. I groaned from the strain. And his cock, stabbing into my wide-spread buttocks, seemed some inhuman instrument reaming me, coring me, and emptying me.
In a wild series of spurts I came again, unable to remain flat, bucking under him, and he bore down all the more, grinding out his low moan of climax.
I lay panting, not daring to uncramp my bent and flattened legs. Then I felt him pushing my knees down. He was lying beside me. He turned me over to face him, and in that keen high-pitched moment of exhaustion, he started kissing me.
I tried to fight the languor of sleep, my cock begging me for a moment's respite. But he had sent his hook down into my loins again. He was bringing me up, forcing me to my knees, directing my hands to a wooden handle over our heads in the paneled canopy of the bed, and whipping my cock with his hands as he sat with his legs crossed before me.
I watched it engorge with blood under the slaps, the pleasure slower, fuller, excruciating. I moaned aloud and twisted away almost before I could sto
p myself. But he tugged me forward, wrapping my balls up against my cock with his left hand, and he continued the merciless slapping with the other.
My body was on the rack. My mind was on the rack, and now I realized, as he pinched the tip of my cock, that he meant to tease it out of me. Pinching, stroking with his curled fingers, now licking with his tongue, he had me in a frenzy. He took the cream from the jar he had used last night and greased his right hand and pulled at my cock, squeezing it as if he would destroy it. I was grunting behind my clenched teeth, my hips rocking, and then it shot forth again, the hard spurting and spurting. And I hung from the wooden handle dazed and truly empty.
A light still burned.
I didn't know how much time had passed as I opened my eyes. But it must have been early. Coaches still rolled on the road outside the window.
And I realized my Master was dressed and walking back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, his hair tousled. He wore the blue velvet doublet unlaced, his linen shirt with its long balloon sleeves open down the front also. Now and then he would pivot sharply, stop, run his fingers through his hair, and then continue pacing.
When I rose on my elbow, afraid of being ordered out, he gestured to the wine goblet and said, "Drink if you wish."
I picked it up at once and sat back against the paneling, watching him.
He paced again, once, back and forth, and then he turned, staring at me.
"I'm in love with you!" he said. He drew close and peered into my eyes. "In love with you! Not merely with punishing you, though that I will do, or with your subservience, which I love and crave, also. I am in love with you, your secret soul that is as vulnerable as the reddened flesh under my strap, and all your strength collected under our combined governance!"
I was speechless. All I could do was look at him, lost in the heat of his voice and the look in his eyes. But my soul was soaring.
He drew away from the bed and, glancing sharply back at me, paced and paced again.
"Ever since the Queen commenced the importation of naked pleasure slaves," he said, looking at the carpet beneath his feet, "I have puzzled over what it is that makes a strong, highborn Prince of a slave obey with such complete submission. I have racked my brain to understand it." He paused, then went on, his hands loose at his sides and rising now and then with an easy gesture.
"All those I've questioned in the past have given me timid, guarded answers. You have spoken from your soul, but what is clear is that you accept your slavery as easily as they do. Of course, as the Queen has explained to me, all slaves are examined. And only the likely, as well as the beautiful, are chosen."
He looked at me. I had never realized that there had been an examination. But immediately I recalled the Queen's emissaries whom I had been sent to meet in a chamber of my father's castle. I remembered them ordering me to remove my clothes and how they had touched me and watched me as I stood still for their probing fingers. I had exhibited no sudden passion. But maybe their trained eyes had seen more than I realized. They had kneaded my flesh, asked me questions, studied my face as I blushed and tried to answer.
"Rarely, if ever, does a slave run away," my Master continued. "And most of those who run wish to be caught. It's obvious. Defiance is the motive, boredom the incentive. The few who take the time to steal the Mistress's or Master's clothes succeed in their escape."
"But doesn't the Queen take out her wrath on their Kingdoms?" I asked. "My father himself told me the Queen was all-powerful, fearsome. Her request for slave Tributes couldn't be denied."
"Nonsense," he said. "The Queen isn't going to send her armies into war over one naked slave. All that happens is that the slave reaches his native country somewhat in disgrace. His parents are asked to send him back. If they don't, then the slave earns no great reward. That's all. No bag of gold. Obedient slaves are sent home with a great deal of gold. And of course there's often the parents' shame that their lovely has proved soft and inconstant. Brothers and sisters at home who have served as slaves resent the deserter. But what's all that to a strong young Prince who finds service intolerable?"
He stopped his pacing and stared at me.
"A slave escaped yesterday," he said "It was a Princess, and they have now almost given up the search. She wasn't caught by the loyal peasants or any other village. She's reached the bordering Kingdom of King Lysius, where slaves are always given safe passage."
So what the slave pony Jerard had said was true! I sat, stunned, thinking about this. But I was even more stunned by the fact that the words had so little impact. My mind was in chaos.
He started to pace again, slowly, deep in his thoughts.
"Of course, there are slaves who would never take such a risk," he started up suddenly. "They cannot endure the thought of the search parties, the capture, the public humiliation and even worse punishment. And over and over again their passions are roused, fed, roused again, and fed again so they can no longer tell punishment from pleasure. That is what the Queen wants. And these slaves probably cannot endure the thought of reaching home only to try to convince an ignorant father or mother that service here was unendurable. How to describe what had been done? How to describe that they bore as much of it as they did, or the pleasure that was inevitably incited in them? Nevertheless, why do they accept it so readily? Why do they strain to please? Why are they caught up in the vision of the Queen, the visions of their Masters and Mistresses?"
My head was swimming. And it wasn't the wine that caused it.
"But you've shed much light upon the mind of the slave," he said looking at me again, his face earnest and simple and beautiful in the glow of the candles. "You've shown me that for the true slave, the rigors of the castle and the village become a great adventure. There is something undeniable in the true slave who worships those of unquestioned power. He or she longs for perfection even in the slave state, and perfection for a naked pleasure slave must be yielding to the most extreme punishments. The slave spiritualizes these ordeals, no matter how crude and painful. And all the torments of the village, even more than the more decorous humiliations of the castle, tumble fast one upon the other in an endless current of excitement."
He approached the bed. I think he could see the fear in my face as I looked up.
"And who understands power, worships it, more than those who have had it?" he said. "You who have had power understood it as you knelt at Lord Stefan's foot. Poor Lord Stefan."
I rose and he took me in his arms.
"Tristan," he whispered, "my beautiful Tristan." Our passions had been purged, but we kissed in a fever, our arms tight around each other, the affection overflowing.
"But there is more," I whispered in his ear as he kissed my face almost hungrily. "In this descent, it is the Master who creates the order, the Master who lifts the slave out of the engulfing chaos of abuse, and disciplines the slave, refines him, drives him further in ways that random punishments might never provide. It is the Master, not the punishments, who perfects him."
"Then it is not engulfing," he said, kissing me still. "It is embracing."
"Over and over we are lost," I said, "only to be retrieved by the Master."
"But even without that one all-powerful love," he insisted, "you are enfolded in a womb of relentless attention and pleasure."
"Yes," I agreed. I nodded, kissing his throat, his lips. "But it's glorious," I whispered, "if one adores one's Master, if the mystery is intensified by an irresistible figure at the core of it."
Our embrace was so rough and sweet, it didn't seem that passion could have been any better.
Very slowly, gently, he drew back.
"Get up," he said. "It's only midnight and the spring air is warm outside. I want to walk in the country."
UNDER THE STARS
Unfastening his breeches, he tucked in his shirt, laced it and laced his doublet. I hastened to lace his boots for him, but he did not acknowledge it. He gestured for me to rise again and follow him.
With
in moments we were outside, and the air was warm and we were walking silently through the intertwining lanes, west, out of the village. I walked at his side with my hands clasped behind my back, and when we passed other dark figures, most often lone Masters with a single marching slave, I dropped my eyes, as seemed respectful.
Many lights burned in the little windows of the close-peaked-roofed houses. And when we turned into a broad street, I could see far away to the east the lights of the marketplace and hear the dull roar of the crowd in the Place of Public Punishment.
Even the sight of my Master's profile in the dark, the dull luminosity of his hair, excited me. My spent cock was ready to come back to life. A touch, even a command, would have done it. And the concealed state of readiness heightened all of my senses.
We had come to the square of the Inns. There were suddenly bright lights all around us. Torches flared beneath the high painted Sign of the Lion, and the noise of a large crowd swelled through the open doorway.
I followed my Master to the entrance, and he gestured for me to kneel as he went inside, leaving me there. I rested back on my heels and peered into the gloom. Everywhere men laughed, talked, drank from their flagons. My Master was at the counter purchasing a full wineskin, which he already had in his hands as he spoke to the beautiful dark-haired woman with the red skirts whom I had seen that morning punishing Beauty.
And then, high on the wall behind the counter, I saw Beauty. She was bound to the wall, her hands above her head, her beautiful gold hair falling down behind her shoulders, and her legs were straddling the immense keg on which she sat, her eyes closed in pleasant sleep, it seemed, her luscious pink mouth half open. And on either side of her were other such slaves all dozing as if in deep fatigue, their whole attitude one of hopeless contentment.
O, if Beauty and I could only be alone for a moment. If I could only talk to her, tell her what I had learned and the feelings that had been aroused in me.
