Beauty's Release

by Ann Rice

  LAURENT: THE ROYAL BEDCHAMBER

  IT SEEMED an hour that we were in the garden. But it could not have been a quarter of that time. And, when we reached the doors of the palace again, I was astonished because no other slaves had been chosen. Of course, we were new to the palace. Perhaps it was inevitable that we be observed. I didn't know. I was only relieved that it had happened.

  And as we followed the Lord down the corridor, the canopy still over his head, a score of attendants coming behind, I felt the relief more profoundly than fear of what would now be asked of us.

  My thighs were aching and the muscles twitching uncontrollably from the squatting position as we came into a large and grandly decorated bedchamber. And at once, the subdued moans of the slaves who decorated the room rose to greet the Master. They were in niches in the walls. And bound to the posts of the bed. And, in the distant bath, their bodies circled the stone jet of a high fountain.

  We were made to stop and remain in the center of the room. Lexius moved to the far wall and stood with his hands behind his back and his head bowed.

  The grooms of the Sultan removed his cloak and his slippers, and he visibly relaxed, sending his servants away with an off-hand gesture. He turned and walked about as though taking a deep breath after the weight of the ceremonial procession. And he took not the slightest notice of the slaves whose moans grew softer, more unobtrusive, as though there were an etiquette to it.

  The bed behind him stood upon a dais and was draped in white and purple veils and covered with thickly tapestried covers. And those bound to the pillars were standing with arms tied high above them, some facing out, others facing in where obviously they might see the Master as he slept. In my dim vision, they looked as they had in the corridors – like statues. As I didn't dare to turn my head or to look at any one particular thing, I could not even tell whether or not these slaves were men or women.

  As for the bath, all I could see was an immense pool of water beyond a row of thin, enameled columns, and the circle of slaves standing in the pool, the water spurting upwards and coming down quietly over their shoulders and bellies. Men and women there were in that circle, I could see, their wet bodies reflecting the torchlight becomingly.

  Beyond, the arched windows were open to the moon and to soft breezes and quiet night sounds.

  I felt hot all over and taut as a bowstring. In fact, I gradually realized I was terrified. And I knew that all such intimate scenes as this had always terrified me. I preferred the garden, the cross, even the procession with its horrid scrutiny. Not this silence in the bedroom which precursed the rawest and most heartfelt disasters of the soul, the most thorough subjugation.

  What if I did not understand the Lord's commands, his obvious wishes? Waves of excitement passed over me, further heating me, and confusing me.

  The Lord meantime spoke to Lexius. And his voice sounded familiar and pleasant. Lexius answered with obvious respect but the same air of pleasantness. He pointed to us, but which of us I couldn't know, and seemed to be explaining something.

  The Lord was amused and he drew near again, and put out his hands, touching our heads simultaneously. He rubbed my hair hard and affectionately, as if I was a good little animal that pleased him. The pain in my thighs worsened. And my heart seemed to open. I held steady, smelling the perfume that rose from his robes and knowing exquisitely that Lexius was pleased, Lexius was here, it was as he wanted. Our other games seemed embarrassingly insignificant. He was right about my destiny, right about destiny itself. And I was fortunate I had not ruined it.

  Lexius had come round behind me, and at the Lord's command he gripped my collar and lifted me until I was in a straight standing position. Lovely relief to my legs, though Tristan was left as he was, but I felt suddenly more vulnerable and visible.

  I was turned around and I heard the Sultan laugh as he spoke, and I felt a hand touch my sore bottom. It played with the round rim of the wide phallus. And a sense of shame surprised me and inundated me. Lexius whipped the front of my knees as he bent my head down. I kept my legs ramrod straight and lowered my head and chest as far as I could. But having my arms bound to the phallus made it impossible for me to bend low. I was merely bent over.

  The hands examined the welts. My sense of shame deepened. But it didn't mean I had been disobedient, did it, the redness, the evidence of the whipping? Other slaves had been whipped just for pleasure. And it pleased him obviously. Why else would he touch, comment? Nevertheless, I felt small and miserable, and my tears came again, and when I felt a little sob inside me, my chest tensed and all the straps pulled tight and my manacled arms pulled at the phallus. It made me sob a little harder, silently, feeling all of it, and his fingers dividing my buttocks as if to see my anus and then touching the hair there, smoothing it.

  He talked rapidly and pleasantly still to Lexius. I realized that at the palace at least the slave would have known what was said. This foreign tongue utterly dismissed us. I might have been the subject of their discourse. Or maybe it was about something else altogether.

  Whatever the case, Lexius whipped my chin teasingly with the thong. I straightened. He turned me by the hook in the phallus until I was facing the bath. I saw the Sultan to my right, though I didn't look at him.

  Lexius whipped my calves sharply and quickly with four or five strokes, and I started to march, hoping this was correct, and then I saw him point the thong to the far row of columns, and I marched quickly towards the columns, feeling again a weird mixture of dignity and humiliation due to the straps and manacles.

  I heard the snap of his fingers when I had reached the columns, and I turned around, my face coloring, and I marched back, seeing the dim, blurred outline of the two robed figures watching me.

  I stepped high and fast, and the whole little procedure had its predictable effect. I felt more the slave than I had even moments ago, more than I had on the path. Lexius whipped me and pointed for me to turn again and repeat the march. And as I did so, weeping heavily and silently. I hoped that pleased them. It occurred to me as I came back across the room that it would be terrible if my tears were construed as impertinence, as a lack of submission. And this thought so frightened me that I was crying worse than before as I stopped before them. I stared forward, seeing nothing but the carvings on the far walls, the spirals, the leaves, tracery of pattern and color.

  The Sultan's hand went up to my face and felt the tears as it had on the path. My throat was moving under the high collar with repeated sobs. And I felt I could hardly endure the sweetness of it, the maddening increase of tension, as he touched my naked chest, as he moved his hand away from my stinging nipples and down to touch my navel. If he touched my cock, I knew I might lose control. And this produced helpless moans.

  But the thong quickly pushed me to the side. I was directed to squat again, and now Tristan was made to rise, to bend over.

  And I was slightly amazed to realize I might look right at the Sultan without his noticing it. I couldn't lower my head because of the collar. And there he was, standing to my left and quite absorbed with Tristan. I decided, or rather couldn't resist the temptation, to study him.

  I saw a youthful face, just as I had suspected I would, and one that was nothing as formidable or mysterious as that of Lexius. His power did not represent itself in obvious pride or haughtiness. This was for lesser men. Rather, he exuded an extraordinary presence, a radiance. He was smiling as he kneaded Tristan's buttocks and played with the bronze phallus, obviously rocking it with the hook as Tristan bent over.

  Then Tristan was made to stand up, and the Sultan's face took on a charming air of appreciation of Tristan's beauty. In sum, he seemed a pleasant, handsome man, quick-witted, and enjoying his slaves casually. His short, full hair was beautiful, more lustrous than that of most of the men here, and it grew back from his temples in thick, lovely waves. His eyes were brown and, for all their quickness, just a tittle thoughtful.

  He was a being I might have liked instantly in some harm
less place. But now, this cheerfulness, this obvious good nature, made me feel weaker, more abandoned. I didn't fully understand it. But I knew it had to do with his expression, that he so thoroughly enjoyed us, and it seemed so natural.

  At the castle, there had been a deliberate quality to everything that was done. We were royalty. We were to be enhanced by our service. Here, we were nameless and nothing.

  The Sultan's face brightened as Tristan was made to march, and it seemed that Tristan did so infinitely better than I did. He had more dignity, more spirit. His shoulders were more cruelly bent back, it seemed, because his arms were a little shorter than mine and laced more tightly to the phallus.

  I tried not to see. He was doing it all too well. And my desire rose and fell in awesome and tormenting rhythm.

  Tristan was soon enough made to squat beside And now we were turned to face the distant row of columns and the bath and then made to kneel together.

  My heart shrank when Lexius showed us a gilded ball. I understood the game. But how would we ever manage to retrieve it when we could not use our hands? I shuddered at the thought of our awkwardness. The game was precisely the kind of intimacy I had dreaded when we entered the bedchamber. It was bad enough to be scrutinized; now we must strive to give amusement.

  Instantly, Lexius sent the ball rolling across the floor, and, an our knees, Tristan and I struggled after it. Tristan pulled ahead of me and dipped to catch it in his teeth. He managed it without failing. And I realized suddenly that I had failed. Tristan had won. There was nothing to do but struggle back to our Masters, where Lexius was already taking the ball from Tristan's mouth as he stroked Tristan's hair approvingly.

  He glared at me, and his thong whipped my bare belly as I knelt before him. I could hear the Sultan's laughter, though I looked down and saw nothing but the floor gleaming before me. Lexius whipped my chest, my legs. I winced, the tears spilling again. He forced us around, in position to compete with each other again, and once more the ball was thrown. And this time I really went after it.

  Tristan and I struggled against each other, trying to push each other to the side as the ball came to rest before us. I managed to get hold of it, but he confounded me by snatching it right from my mouth and turning at once to take it back to the Master.

  I was in a silent rage. Both of us had been commanded to please the Sultan, and now we had to fight each other to do so, and one would win and one would lose. It seemed beastly unfair.

  But all I could do was return to our Lords and be whipped again by that hated little thong, the thing finding the sore flesh in back this time as I knelt still, weeping.

  The third time I got the ball and shoved Tristan over when he tried to take it. And the fourth time Tristan got it again, and I was frantic. By the fifth race, we were both out of breath and had forgotten all about grace of any sort, and I could hear the Sultan laughing lightly as he watched Tristan steal the ball from me, and me stumble after him. I dreaded the thong this time as it cut at my welts, and I wept miserably as it came whistling down through the air, the strokes long and hard and fast as Tristan knelt receiving approval.

  But the Sultan shocked me suddenly because he drew near and he touched my face again. The thong stopped. And, in a moment of exquisite stillness, his silken fingers wiped my tears once more, as if he liked the feel of them. And there came the lovely warm feeling of my heart opening again, as it had on the garden path, the feeling that I belonged to him. I felt I had tried to please. I was simply slower, less agile, than Tristan. His fingers lingered. And when his voice rose, speaking rapidly to Lexius, I felt that it was touching me too, stroking me, possessing me and tormenting me with perfect authority.

  In a blur I saw Lexius's thong tapping Tristan, directing him to turn and approach the bed on his knees. I was ordered to follow, but the Sultan walked along beside me, and I felt his hand playing with my hair still, lifting it above the collar.

  I was in a low ache of desire. My faculties were drowning in it. I saw the bodies tethered to the four posts of the bed – beauties all, women turned in to face the Lord as he slept, men turned out, and all of them moving under their bonds as if to acknowledge the Master's approach – and my vision seemed to dim even more, so that the bed looked not like a bed but rather like an altar. The tapestried covers blazed with tiny configurations.

  We knelt at the foot of the dais. And Lexius and the Sultan were behind us. There was the soft sound of cloth falling, of fabric untied, bits of metal unclasped.

  Then the naked figure of the Sultan moved into my vision. He stepped up on the dais, his body shimmering in its cleanliness and smoothness, its lack of any mark, and he sat down on the side of the bed, facing us.

  I tried not to look into his face. But I could see he was smiling. His organ was erect, and it seemed a momentous thing to see it, in this world where so many underlings were naked. The thong tapped Tristan, directed him to stand and to go up on the dais, and then to stretch out on the bed. The Sultan turned to watch him, and I burned with envy, with terror. But, immediately, the thong summoned me too, and I rose from my knees and made the step and then looked down on the covers where Tristan lay, still manacled, as if he were a gorgeous victim to be slaughtered in blood offering. My heart was beating hard and loud in my ears. I looked at his cock and let my eyes move timidly to the right until I could see the naked lap of the Master, and his organ rising from its shadow of black hair, a fine enough endowment.

  The thong tapped my shoulder. It tapped my chin and pointed to the bed, to the spot before Tristan's cock. I moved slowly, tentatively, but the directions were clear. I was to lie beside him, facing him, but with my head at his cock, and my cock at his head. My heart was racing now.

  The cover felt rough beneath me, the thick embroidery oddly like sand under my skin. And I felt the manacles cruelly. I had to struggle like an armless thing to assume the correct position, and lying on my side was awkward, and I felt like the bound victim now. And there was Tristan's cock right near my lips. And I knew that his lips were near my organ as well. I twisted against the manacles, against the abrasive cover, and I felt my cock touch Tristan, but, before I could move away, a hand on the back of my head urged me forward. I took the gleaming cock into my mouth and felt Tristan's mouth close on me in the same moment.

  The pleasure engulfed me completely. I moved down on the cock, my lips tight, my tongue playing with the length of it, my mouth savoring it, and felt the hard sucking on my own cock carry me up and out of the divine penance of the last few hours.

  I knew that I was undulating, straining against the manacles, that each motion of my head on the cock made me look all the more like a lost soul struggling vainly on the altar of the bed, but it did not matter. What mattered was to suck the cock and to be suckled by Tristan's firm, delicious mouth, to have all my spirit dragged out of me. And when at last I came, thrusting uncontrollably into him, I felt his fluids feeding me as if I had been starving forever for them. It seemed we rocked each other's bodies with our strength, our muffled moans.

  And then I felt the hands separating us. I was made to lie on my back, my bound arms under me, forcing my chest up as my head fell back, my eyes half closing. I couldn't see the nipple clamps, of course. But I could feel them, and feel the chains against my chest, and it seemed these were mountain peaks of exposure.

  Then I realized that the Sultan was smiling down on me. Brown eyes, smooth lips, drawing closer and closer. It seemed a deity descending, who only accidentally bore a resemblance to an ordinary man. He knelt on all fours above me.

  And his lips touched mine. Or, to be more truthful, they touched the wetness on my lips. Then he opened my mouth and his tongue dipped deep inside and lapped at Tristan's semen, which was still on my tongue, still in my throat. And realizing what he wanted, I opened my mouth to him, kissing and being kissed, and wishing I could feel his whole weight, even if it did hurt my clamped nipples. But that he denied me as he hovered over me.

  I knew that Tr
istan was being moved. That Lexius was near. But I could think of nothing but this kissing, the desire ebbing as it had to do after the climax, and then coming back painfully and exquisitely soon.

  And now it was not really kissing. My mouth was pushed open wider by his tongue, and he lapped the semen out of my mouth, cleaning my mouth with his tongue, as it were, as each prod of it aroused me.

  And slowly, through the haze of rekindled feeling, I saw that Tristan was behind him, above him. I felt him press down against me. His body felt like Lexius's body had felt, pampered and silken, strong but lean. His fingers moved over my chest, released the nipple clamps. They slipped to the side with their chains, were taken away. And his chest rested against my sore skin, making it throb deliciously.

  Tristan was above him, looking down into my face. Radiant blue eyes. And, when the Sultan groaned, I realized that Tristan had entered him. I felt the weight.

  But the Sultan went on searching my mouth with his tongue, forcing my jaws wider. Tristan thudded against him, pushing him against me, and my cock rose between the Sultan's thighs, feeling the sweet, hairless, protected flesh there.

  When Tristan came I bucked, stroking the tight thighs with my thrusts, pushing again to climax, and I felt the thighs press together to take me. I came, moaning, even as the Sultan's tongue went on with its work, lapping at my teeth, lapping under my tongue, licking my lips slowly.

  He rested then for a little while, his arm under my neck. I lay bound and helpless beneath him and let the pleasure die away slowly.

  Then he stirred. He rose up, refreshed, ready for more, and then straddled me. His face was almost boyish as we looked at each other, a bit of dark hair fallen in his eyes. I saw Tristan sitting on the left, looking at us. The Sultan pushed me firmly to mean I must turn over on my face. And I struggled to move myself.