Beauty's Release

by Ann Rice

  "You're a slave, and you will do as I say!" Nicolas hissed in anger. "Lie down at once and be quiet, lest we're all discovered!" And he flung Tristan forward on his face and quickly rolled him over and over in the carpet, until no one could have told a man was hidden there.

  "And you, Prince, must I bind you!" he demanded of me, pointing to the other carpet. The Captain of the Guard, who held Lexius in his firm grip, glared at me.

  "Get down on that carpet and lie quiet, Laurent!" the Captain said. "We're in danger, all of us!"

  "Are we?" I asked. "What will happen if your little plan is discovered?" I stared at Lexius. He was frantic. And he had never looked so charming and beautiful as he did now, with the Captain's hand over his mouth, his black hair tumbled into his enormous eyes, his slender body straining under its sleek robe. So I was never to see him again, and I wondered if he would be blamed for this! Who knew what would happen to him if he was blamed?

  "Do as I say at once, Prince!" the Captain said, his face now twisted with the same desperate anger that disfigured Nicolas. Nicolas had the rope ready for me, and the two other men waited to assist him. But they could never have taken me against my will. And I was not as easily overwhelmed as Tristan.

  "Hmmm.... Leave this place," I said slowly, looking Lexius up and down, "and go back to the punishment of the village...." I puzzled over it as if I had all the time in the world, seeing them become more anxious, more fearful of discovery by the second.

  Behind them the garden lay quiet. Behind me was the corridor where anyone might approach at any moment.

  "Very well," I said, "I'll come, but only if this one comes with me!" And I reached out and tore open Lexius's robe, revealing his naked chest down to the waist. I yanked him out of the Captain's grasp and shucked the robe off him completely. He stood trembling, but he did not raise a finger to help himself.

  "What are you doing?" the Captain demanded.

  "We're taking him with us," I said. "Or I don't go."

  I threw Lexius forward onto the carpet. He gasped and lay still, his hair covering his face, his hands pressed against the rug as if he might suddenly rise and run. But he did not. And the welts and marks gleamed on his quivering backside.

  I waited one second more, and then I lay down alongside him and placed my arm over his shoulder, bracing myself for the hot, stuffy wool to enclose me.

  "Very well, then! Come on!" I heard Nicolas say desperately. "Hurry." He dropped down on his knees and reached for the edges of the rug.

  But the Captain of the Guard stepped up and put his foot squarely on my back.

  "Get up," he said to Lexius. "Or we'll take you, I swear it."

  And I laughed softly as I saw Lexius lie motionless and silent, unable to save himself.

  In an instant, they had us both wrapped in the rug, bound tightly together, and they were running with their heavy bundles. I had my arm around Lexius's neck, and he cried softly against my shoulder.

  "How could you do this to me!" he pleaded, but it had a low dignified sound to it that I liked.

  "Don't play games with me," I said in his ear. "You came of your own free will, my melancholy Lord."

  "Laurent, I'm frightened," he whispered.

  "Don't be," I said, softening, just a little regretful of my ominous tone. "You were born to be a slave, Lexius. And you know it. But you can forget what you know of Sultans and gilded manacles and jeweled leather and grand palaces."

  BEAUTY: REVELATIONS AT SEA

  BEAUTY SAT sobbing in the middle of the open carpet. The hold of the ship was very small and the lantern creeked on its hook, the ship traveling fast over the open sea, the windows pounded with spray, the whole craft listing slightly.

  Now and then, she looked up at the baffled Captain of the Guard and at the angry Nicolas, who stared back at her.

  Tristan sat in the corner with his knees drawn up and his head resting on his knees. And Laurent lay, smiling, on the bunk, watching everything as though it were very amusing.

  And Lexius, poor beautiful Lexius, lay against the far wall, his face buried in the crook of his arm, his naked body seeming infinitely more vulnerable than her own. She could not understand why he had been recently whipped, why he had been brought with them.

  "You can't mean, Princess, that you actually wished to remain in this strange land," Nicolas pleaded with her.

  "But my Lord, it was such an elegant place, and so full of new delights and new intrigues. Why did you have to come? Why didn't you rescue Dmitri or Rosalynd or Elena?"

  "Because we were not sent to rescue Rosalynd, or Dmitri or Elena," Nicolas replied angrily. "By all reports they are content in the Sultan's land and we were told to leave them there."

  "And so was I content in the Sultan's land!" Beauty raged. "Why did you do this to me!"

  "I too was content," said Laurent quietly. "Why didn't you leave us with the others?"

  "Must I remind you that you are the Queen's slaves?" Nicolas stormed, glaring at Laurent and then at the silent Tristan. "It is Her Majesty who decides where and how her slaves will serve her. Your insolence is intolerable!" Beauty could only break into helpless sobs again.

  "Come," said the Captain of the Guard finally. "We have a long time to spend at sea. And you must not spend it weeping." He helped Beauty to her feet.

  And unable to resist the urge to lean upon him, she pressed her face against his leather jerkin.

  "There, there, my sweet," he said. "You haven't forgotten your Master, have you?" He led her out of the room and into a small adjacent cabin. The low wooden roof sloped down over the shelf bed. A bit of sun shone bright through the wet little porthole.

  The Captain sat down on the side of the bed, and he put Beauty on his lap, his fingers inspecting her body – her breasts, her sex, her thighs.

  She had to admit to herself that she was soothed by his touch. She leaned against his shoulder, and the feel of his rough beard delighted her, the smell of his leather clothes delighted her. It seemed in his hair she could smell the fresh country winds of Europe, and even the smell of the fresh cut grass in the fields of the village manor houses.

  But still she cried. She would never see her beloved Inanna again. And would Inanna remember the lessons Beauty had taught her? Would she find some shared passion with the other women of the harem? Beauty could only hope so. What Beauty herself had learned, of the sweetness and intensity of such love, would always be with her.

  Yet even now, in the Captain's arms, she thought of other kinds of love, of Mistress Lockley's rough wooden paddle that had punished her so well in the village, of the Captain's leather strap, and his hard cock which was pushing against her naked thigh now, the rough cloth of his breeches cruelly imprisoning it. She let her fingers touch it through the cloth. She felt it move, like a being unto itself.

  And her nipples became two stiff little points as she sighed, her mouth opening as she looked up at the Captain. He was smiling and studying her. And he let her kiss the crust of beard on his chin and chew on his lower lip. She squirmed on his lap, pressing her breasts to his jerkin. His hand moved under her bottom, squeezing the flesh.

  "No marks, no welts," he whispered in her ear.

  "No, My Lord," she said. Just those delicate little thongs lashing at her. How she hated them. She slipped her arms tightly around his neck, her mouth covering his. She pushed her tongue between his lips.

  "And we have become so forward," he said.

  "Do you dislike it, My Lord?" she whispered, feeding on his lower lip, licking at his tongue and his teeth as she had done with Inanna.

  "No, I can't say that I do," he said. "You don't know how I've missed you." He kissed her hard in response, his large roughened hand rising to squeeze her breast, to pull it towards him.

  The sheer size of him aroused her.

  "But I want your little bottom nicely pink and warm when I take you," he said.

  "Anything to please you, My Lord," she said. "It's been so long. I'm ... I'm a little afr
aid. I want so to please you."

  "Of course you do," he said. He slid his hand between her legs and lifted her by her sex. And her legs felt weak, as if they could not actually support her. Returning to the village was like returning to a dream she could not shake off, could not wake from. She would cry again if she thought too much about it. Lovely Inanna.

  But her Captain looked like a golden god to her in the sunlight from the tiny window, his crude-shaven beard glittering in the shadows, his eyes burning in the deep, tanned creases of his handsome face.

  As he flung her over his lap, something snapped inside her head, some last little bit of resistance. As his enormous hand closed on her bottom, she rose up to fit herself into it, moaning with the hard pinch that came, the fingers stroking her flesh.

  "Too smooth, too fine," he whispered above her. "Don't these little Arabs know how to punish properly?"

  And with the first hard wallops, her sex pumped with juices against the Captain's thigh, her heart racing. The spanks echoed loudly in the tiny cabin, her flesh tingling, then burning, then flooded with delicious pain, her tears rising and quickly spilling.

  "I am yours, my Lord," she whispered, half in love, half in supplication, the blows coming faster and harder on her bottom. He gathered her chin in his left hand and lifted her head. But he did not stop the punishment. "O, My Lord, I belong to you," she whimpered and cried, and it seemed all the memories of the village came back to her. "I will be yours again, won't I? I beg you!" she cried out.

  "Shh, stop your impertinence," he said softly. And she was quickly rewarded with a new volley of hard spanks as she rocked and undulated under them without shame or modulation.

  As it went on and on, it seemed the hardest punishment she had ever received. And she bit down on her lip not to beg for mercy. Yet she felt it was what she needed, what she deserved, what was wanted to clear away her doubts and fears.

  And when the Captain flung her back on the bed, she was ready for his cock and lifted her hips to receive it. The small shelf bed seemed to shake under his thrusts. She bounced on the coverlet, her sore bottom slamming against the rough cloth, his weight riding her, crushing her, the cock stretching her and filling her divinely. Finally she climaxed, screaming against her sealed lips, and in the white-hot flashes of pleasure she saw both the Captain and Inanna. She thought of Inanna's gorgeous breasts, her wet little vagina; she thought of the Captain's thick organ and his semen spilling into her with his most violent thrusts; and she was crying for joy and for pain, the Captain's hand over her mouth, muffling her cries, which gave her the freedom to let them go from her whole being.

  She lay still under him when it was done, her whole body gasping. And she was slightly dismayed when he lifted her. He was taking off his belt.

  "But what have I done, My Lord?" she whispered.

  "Nothing, my love. I want that bottom and those legs in good color, as they used to be." He stood her before him as he sat again on the side of the bed, his breeches still open, his cock still erect.

  "O, My Lord," she begged, dissolving in weakness, the aftershocks of the pleasure growing stronger instead of fainter. He was doubling the strap.

  "Now, every morning at sea, we will begin with a nice whipping, do you hear me, Princess?"

  "Yes, My Lord," she whispered. So it was all as it should be again. So simple. She placed her hands on the back of her neck. And what had she dreamed in the ship before, about finding love? Well, there had been that heavenly taste. And it would come again. For now she had her Captain.

  "Spread your legs," he said. "And now I want you to dance as you're whipped. Move those hips!" And the strap came down as she moaned and swung her bottom from side to side, the movement seeming to ease the pain, her sex throbbing. Her heart was gripped with fear and happiness.

  It was almost dark. Beauty was lying on the carpet beside Laurent, their heads together on a pillow. The Captain and Nicolas and the others who had helped in the "rescue" had gone to take their evening meal together. The slaves had been fed, and Tristan was asleep in the corner. And so was Lexius. The ship was small and ill-equipped. No cages, no shackles.

  It still puzzled Beauty that only she and Laurent and Tristan had been rescued. Had the Queen some new and special use for them? It was an agony not to know, and to suffer such envy of Dmitri, Elena, and Rosalynd.

  And Beauty was also worried about Tristan. Nicolas, his former Master, had not spoken a word to Tristan since they had put to sea. He could not forgive Tristan for not wanting to be rescued.

  "O, why can't he just punish Tristan and be done with it," Beauty thought. All through the evening meal, she had admired Laurent's strictness with Lexius. Laurent had forced him to eat his supper and to drink some wine, though Lexius insisted he wanted none, and then Laurent had made love to him slowly and deliberately, in spite of Lexius's obvious shame at being taken in front of others. Lexius was the most polite and demure slave Beauty had ever seen.

  "He is almost too fine for you," she whispered to Laurent now as they rested together, the cabin warm and silent around them. "He's more of a Lady's slave, I think."

  "You may use him if you like," Laurent said. "You may whip him, too, if you think he needs it."

  Beauty laughed. She had never whipped another slave and did not really want – o, well, maybe....

  "How did you manage it," she asked, "the transformation from slave to Master, so easily?" She was glad of a chance to talk to Laurent. Laurent had always fascinated her. She could not get rid of the image in her memory of Laurent in the village strapped to the Punishment Cross. There was something insolent and wondrous about Laurent. She could not fully define it. He seemed to have an understanding of things which others did not possess.

  "It has never been one or the other for me," Laurent said. "In my dreams, I liked both parts of the drama. And when I saw the opportunity I became the Master. Moving back and forth only sharpens the whole experience somewhat."

  Beauty felt a little tumult in her loins at the confident sound of his voice, the soft ironic tone it had – ever on the edge of laughter. She turned to look at him in the shadows. His body was so large, so full of dormant power even as he lay there. He was taller even than her Captain. And his cock was still a little stiff, ready enough to be awakened. She looked into his dark brown eyes and saw he was watching her, smiling at her. Probably knowing her thoughts.

  She blushed with sudden shyness. She couldn't fall in love with Laurent. No, that was impossible, quite.

  But she didn't move when she felt his lips against her cheek. "Divine little brat," he growled in her ear. "You know, this might be our only chance...." And his voice died away into a lower growl, the purr of a lion, his lips grazing her shoulder hotly.

  "But the Captain – "

  "Yes, he'll be so angry," Laurent said. He laughed. He rolled over and mounted her. Beauty ran her arms up and around his back. His sheer size astonished her and weakened her. If he kissed her again, she would not, could not, resist.

  "He'll punish us," she said.

  "Well, I should hope so!" Laurent said, eyebrows raised in mock indignation, and he kissed her, his mouth harsher and more demanding than that of the Captain.

  His kiss seemed to open her soul more profoundly, more deliberately. She yielded, her breasts like two beating hearts against his chest. And she felt the massive cock moving into her wet cleft, almost bruising her with its careless speed, its necessity.

  It lifted her hips off the bare floor and plunged them back down again, its width so punishing that she was overcome with the heat of her spasms, her climax rendering her perfectly without will, her arms and legs flopping beneath Laurent. And when he came in her, she felt her body battered by him, ridden by him and his tempestuous and enigmatic spirit.

  They lay quiet and undisturbed afterwards. She half-wished she had not done it. Why could she never love her Masters? Why was this strange and ironic slave so interesting to her? She could have wept inwardly. Would she never ha
ve anyone to love? She had loved Inanna, and now Inanna was beyond reach; and, of course, the Captain was her precious darling, the big brute, but.... She did weep, her eyes now and then moving to Laurent's sleeping form beside her. But she was very quiet.

  When the Captain came to take her to bed, Beauty gave Laurent's hand a little squeeze, which Laurent silently answered.

  As she lay beside the Captain, she wondered what would happen to her when they reached the Queen's shores. Surely she would have to work out her time in the village; it was only fair. They couldn't make her go back to the castle. And Laurent and Tristan would be in the village, surely. But if she were made to return to the Queen, she could always run away as Laurent had. And she saw him again in her memory, tethered to the Punishment Cross.

  The days at sea passed in a swoon for Beauty. The Captain was strict with her and worked her constantly. But still she found opportunities to couple with Laurent again. And each time it was quiet and furtive and wrenched her soul.

  Tristan, meantime, insisted he did not care that Nicolas was angry with him. It was to the village he would give himself when he returned, as he had given himself to the Sultan's palace. He said his brief time in this alien land had taught him new things.

  "You were right, Beauty," he said, "when you asked only for harsh punishments."

  But Beauty couldn't help but know that Laurent had been busily mastering both Tristan and Lexius, taking either when he chose, and that Tristan worshiped Laurent in a way that was clearly individual and personal.

  Laurent even borrowed the Captain's belt to whip his two slaves, to which both of them responded beautifully. Beauty wondered how on earth Laurent would ever manage to be a slave again when they reached the village. The sound of him whipping the other two penetrated the bedchamber where she slept with the Captain. It would not let her sleep.

  It was a wonder Laurent didn't somehow master the Captain, she thought. In truth, the Captain admired Laurent – they were good friends – though the Captain frequently reminded Laurent that he was a punished runaway and might expect the worst in the village.