Beauty's Release

by Anne Rice

  He rose up to give me space to do it, and I felt Lexius's hands assisting me. Then I was on my chest, and I felt the leather bracelets being taken off. My shoulders relaxed. My whole body softened against the cover. The hard, bronze phallus was drawn out, and as I lay still, my anus burning like a ring of fire, his all too human cock slipped inside, stoking the fire and increasing it. How good that felt after the cold bronze, that human thing inside me. I kept my hands at my sides. I closed my eyes. My own cock was pressed to the rough tapestry cover. And my sore backside rose to feel his weight, feel his rocking cadence.

  I was in a daze more pure than any that I'd known earlier. And it was a gratuitous sweetness that he was using me, would empty into me, and I knew something about him now, something interesting, though it did not really matter. He wanted the fluids of other men. That was why those Lords in the garden had been allowed to use us, why the grooms had not washed us before they put in the phalluses.

  It amused me. We'd been purged, then filled with masculine juices. And now he had eaten from my mouth and he reamed out my backside slowly as he worked towards the pinnacle, his body sealed to the abraded, welted flesh. He took his time, and I saw in lovely blurred images the garden again, the procession, his smiling face, all the bits and pieces of this mosaic that was life in the palace of the Sultan.

  Before he was finished with me, Tristan had mounted him again. I felt the added weight and heard the Sultan moan with a slight, supplicating sound.

  LAURENT: MORE SECRET LESSONS

  TRISTAN AND the Sultan lay in an embrace on the bed, both of them naked, and they were kissing, their mouths feeding slowly upon each other.

  In silence, Lexius motioned for me to withdraw. I watched him pull the curtains round the bed and lower the lamps.

  Then I proceeded on hands and knees out of the room, wondering why I so much feared Lexius's disappointment that I had not been chosen to remain instead of Tristan.

  It seemed an impossible thing. Tristan and I had both been ordered to please, and then pitted against each other. Could there have been two chosen to remain?

  In the shadowy corridor, Lexius snapped his fingers for me to move quickly ahead. All the way back to the bath, he whipped me hard and in silence. At every turn in the corridors, I hoped he might slack off. But he did not. And, by the time I was given over to the grooms, I was throbbing with pain again and weeping softly.

  But then it was all gentleness, except for the purge itself, which was quite thorough. And as the oil was being rubbed in, as the massage soothed my aching arms and legs, I slipped into a deep sleep away from all dreams and thoughts of the future.

  When I awoke, I was lying on a pallet on the floor. Lamps were lighted in the room. I knew I was in Lexius's chamber. I rolled over and rested my head in my hands, looking about me. Lexius was standing at the window, looking out into the darkened garden. He wore his robe, but I could see it was loose, ungirdled, probably open in front. It seemed he was whispering with his thoughts, or murmuring. I couldn't make out the words he said. He might as well have been singing.

  He turned and was startled when he saw me looking at him. I was resting my head on my right elbow. His robe was open, and he was naked under it. He came closer, his back to the pale illumination seeping through the window.

  "No one has ever done to me what you did," he whispered.

  I laughed softly. Here I was in his rooms, unmanacled, and he naked, and he was saying this to me.

  "How unfortunate for you," I said. "Beg me and I might do it again." I didn't wait for him to answer. I stood up. "But tell me first – did we please the Sultan? Are you satisfied?"

  He took a step backwards. I realized I could drive him right to the wall merely by advancing towards him. It was too amusing.

  "You pleased him!" he said a little breathlessly.

  And he was so handsome in a fragile sort of way, a feline man, something like the sword with which the desert people fight – gracefully shaped and light yet deadly.

  "And you, were you pleased?" I stepped a little closer, and again he backed away.

  "You ask foolish questions," he said. "There were a hundred new slaves on the garden path. He might have passed us over completely. As it was, he chose both of you."

  "And now I choose you," I said. "Aren't you flattered?" I reached out and took a lock of his hair.

  He shuddered.

  "Please..." he said softly. He looked down, rather irresistibly, I thought.

  "Please what?" I asked. I kissed the hollow of his cheek, and then his eyes, forcing them closed with my kisses. It was as if he were bound and manacled and couldn't move.

  "Please be gentle," he answered. Then he opened his eyes, and his arms wound round me as if he couldn't control himself. He embraced me and held me tightly as if he were a lost child. I kissed his neck, his lips. I ran my hands under his robe and along his narrow back, loving the feel of his skin, his smell, the floss of his hair against me.

  "Of course, I'll be gentle," I purred into his ear. "I will be very gentle ... when it suits me."

  He broke away and dropped down on his knees, and took my cock in his mouth, his whole body hungry for it, starving for it. I stood motionless, letting him move up and down on it, letting his tongue and his teeth do their work, my hand on his shoulders.

  "Not so quickly, young one," I said softly. It was excruciating to move his mouth away. He kissed the tip. I pushed off his robe and lifted him up. "Put your arms around my neck and hold tight," I said. I lifted his legs as he obeyed, and I wound them around my waist. My cock was bumping under his spread backside, and then I shoved into him, my hands cupping his buttocks, his arms grasping tighter to me, his head bent on my shoulder. I stood with legs apart and thrust into him with all my strength, and his body rode the thrusts, my fingers pinching, clawing at the flesh I'd whipped earlier.

  "After I come," I whispered in his ear, squeezing his backside, "I am going to take that strap of yours and whip you again, whip you so hard that all day long under your beautiful robes you'll feel the marks I put on you, you'll know you're as much a slave as those beings you command, and you'll know who your Master is."

  The only answer was another lingering kiss as I spent into him.

  I didn't whip him so hard. After all, he was a mere fledgling. But I made him crawl about the room, I made him bathe my feet with his tongue, and I made him arrange the pillows for me on the bed. Then I seated myself and made him kneel beside me, with his hands behind his neck as slaves at the castle had been trained to do.

  I inspected what I had done, and I played with his cock a little, wondering how he liked the teasing, the hunger. I whipped his cock with the strap. It was so blood dark that it was almost purple in the lamplight. His face was beautifully tormented, eyes full of suffering and absorption in what was happening to him. I felt a peculiar stirring inside me when I looked at his eyes, something rare, and strong, and unlike the overall weakness I had felt when I looked at the Sultan.

  "Now we will talk," I said. "And you will tell me first, where is Tristan?"

  This startled him, naturally.

  "Sleeping," he answered. "The Sultan released him an hour or so ago."

  "I want you to send for him. I want to talk to him, and I want to see him take you."

  "O, please, no..." he said. He went down to kiss my feet.

  I doubled up the strap and smacked his face with it. "Do you want marks on your face, Lexius?" I asked. "Put your hands behind your neck, and keep your form when I'm talking to you."

  "Why do you do this to me?" he whispered. "Why must the revenge be taken out on me?" His eyes were so large, so beautiful. I couldn't keep myself from leaning over and kissing him, feeling his hot mouth suck at my mouth.

  It was unlike kissing any other man, kissing him. He pumped a molten spirit into his kisses. He said things with them – more than he knew, I suspected. I could have kissed him for a long time, that alone giving him surges of pleasure.

  "I
don't do it for revenge," I said. "I do it because I like to do these things to you, and you need it. You positively require it. You wish you were on your hands and knees with us. You know you do."

  He burst into tears, silently, biting his lip. "If I could serve you always...."

  "Yes, I know. But you can't pick whom you serve. That's the trick. You must give yourself over to the idea of service. You must surrender to that.... And each true Master or Mistress becomes all Masters and Mistresses."

  "No, I cannot believe that."

  I laughed softly. "I should run away and take you with me. I should put on your handsome robes, darken my face and hair, and take you with me, naked over my saddle, as I said before."

  He was shuddering, eating the language, and being intoxicated by it. He knew everything about training and punishing and disciplining, and absolutely nothing about being on the other end of it.

  I lifted his chin. He wanted me to kiss him again, and I did, taking my time with it, wishing it didn't make me feel so much his slave suddenly. I ran my tongue down along the inside of his tower lip.

  "Get Tristan," I said. "Bring him here. And, if you speak another word in protest, I'll let Tristan whip you also."

  If he didn't see through that little ploy, he was not only beautiful but brainless.

  After he rang the bell, he went to the door and waited. Without opening it, he gave the order. And he stood with his arms folded and head bowed, looking lost, as if he needed some fine, strong Prince to fight the dragons of his passion and rescue him from destruction. How touching. I sat on the bed, devouring him with my eyes. I loved the curve of his cheekbones, the fine line of his jaw, the way that he passed through the attitudes of man, boy, woman, and angel with varying gestures and little changes in his expression.

  A knock on the door startled him. Again he spoke. He listened. Then he unbolted the door and beckoned, and Tristan came in on his knees, eyes down demurely. Lexius bolted the door behind him.

  "Now I have two slaves," I said, sitting up. "Or you have two Masters, Lexius. It's difficult to judge the situation one way or the other."

  Tristan looked up at me, saw me naked on the bed, and then glanced in perfect bewilderment at Lexius. "Come here, come sit with me. I want to talk to you," I said to Tristan. "And you, Lexius, kneel here as you were before and be quiet."

  That summed it up, I thought. Tristan took a moment to absorb it, however. He took in the naked body of our Master, and then he looked at me. He rose and came over to the bed, and sat down beside me.

  "Kiss me," I said. I put my hand up to guide his face. Nice kiss, more robust but less intense than the kisses of Lexius, who was kneeling right behind Tristan. "Now turn and kiss our forlorn Master there," I said.

  Tristan obeyed, slipping his arm around Lexius, and Lexius gave himself to the kiss a little too completely to suit me. And maybe to spite me.

  When Tristan turned back, his eyes questioned me directly.

  I ignored the question.

  "Tell me what happened after I was dismissed. Did you continue to please the Sultan?"

  "Yes," Tristan answered. "It was rather like a dream – being chosen, lying with him finally. There was something so tender in him. He isn't our Master really. He's our Sovereign. There's quite a difference."

  "True," I said, smiling.

  He wanted to say more, but again he glanced at Lexius.

  "Let him alone," I said. "He's my slave, and he awaits my will, and I'll let you have him in a moment. But talk to me first. Are you content, or are you still grieving for your old Master in the village?"

  "Not grieving anymore," he said, then he broke off. "Laurent, I was sorry that I had to win over you – "

  "Don't be foolish, Tristan. It was what we were made to do, and I lost because I couldn't win. It's as simple as that."

  He looked again at Lexius.

  "Why are you tormenting him, Laurent?" he asked, his tone slightly accusatory.

  "I'm glad you're content," I said. "I couldn't tell. But what if the Sultan never asks for you again?"

  "That doesn't matter, really," he answered. "Unless, of course, it matters to Lexius. But Lexius won't ask the impossible of us. We've been noticed, that's what Lexius wanted."

  "And you'll be just as happy?" I asked.

  Tristan thought for a moment before he answered.

  "There's something very different here," he said, finally. "The atmosphere is charged with a different sense of things. I'm not lost as I was so long ago at the castle when I served a timid Master who didn't know how to discipline me. And I am not condemned in shame to the village where I need my Master, Nicolas to retrieve me from chaos and shape my suffering for me. I am a part of a finer, more sacrosanct order." He studied me. "Do you see my meaning?"

  I nodded and gestured for him to continue. It was clear he had more to say, and his expression let me know that he was telling the truth. The misery I'd seen in his face all the time we were at sea was truly gone now.

  "The palace is engulfing," he said, "as the village was. In fact, it is infinitely more so. But we are not bad slaves here. We are merely part of an immense world in which our suffering is offered up to our Lord and his Court whether or not he ever deigns to acknowledge it. I find something sublime in this. It is as if I have advanced to another stage of understanding."

  Again, I nodded. I remembered my feelings in the garden when the Sultan had picked me from the ranks. But this was only part of the many things I could and did feel about this place and what had happened to us. In this room, with Lexius, something different was occurring.

  "I began to understand it," Tristan said, "when we were first taken from the ship and carried through the streets to be viewed by the common people. And it came fully clear to me when I was blindfolded and bound in the garden. In this place we are nothing but our bodies, nothing but the pleasure we give, nothing but our capacity for evincing feeling. All else is gone, and it is quite impossible to think of something as personal as whippings on the Public Turntable of the village or the constant education in passivity and submissiveness we knew at the castle."

  "True," I said. "But without your old Master, Nicolas, without his love as you described, isn't there a terrible loneliness – "

  "No," he said candidly. "Since we are nothing here, we are all connected to each other. In the village and the castle, we were divided by shame, by individual humiliations and punishments. Here we are joined in the indifference of the Master. And we are all cared for in that indifference and used rather well, I think. It is like the designs on the walls here. There are no pictures of men and women, as you find in Europe. There are only flowers, spirals, repetitive designs that suggest a continuum. And we are part of that continuum. To be noticed by the Sultan for a night, to be valued now and then – that is all we can and should hope for. It is as if he paused in the corridor and he touched the mosaic on the wall. He touched the design as the sun hits it. But it is a design like all the other designs, and, when he moves on, it lapses back into the overall pattern."

  "You're such a philosopher, Tristan," I whispered. "You overawe me."

  "Don't you feel the same? That there is a great order of things here that is in itself rather exciting?"

  "Yes, I can feel this," I said.

  His face clouded. "Then why do you upset the order, Laurent?" He asked. He looked at Lexius. "Why have you done this to Lexius?"

  I smiled. "I don't upset the order," I said. "I merely give it a secret dimension that makes it more interesting to me. Do you think our Lord Lexius couldn't defend himself if he chose to? He could summon his army of grooms, but he doesn't."

  I climbed off the bed. I took Lexius's hands from behind his neck and twisted his arms back so his wrists were firmly held right at his backside. In sum, I trussed him much as we had been trussed with the bracelets and the phallus. I stood him up and forced him to bend over. He was absolutely pliant in all this, though he was crying. I kissed his cheek, and he softened gratefu
lly, but his cock didn't soften.

  "Now, our Lord needs to be punished," I said to Tristan. "Have you never felt that need? Have a little compassion. He is a mere beginner in this realm. It's hard for him."

  The tears streamed down Lexius's face beautifully. The light caught the tears. But another light suffused Tristan's face as he looked up at Lexius. He rose on his knees on the bed and put his hands on the sides of Lexius's face. There was love and understanding in Tristan's expression.

  "Look at his body," I said softly. "You've seen stronger slaves, slaves more well muscled, but look at the quality of his skin."

  Tristan's eyes moved over him slowly, and Lexius cried softly.

  "The nipples," I said. "They're virginal. Never been whipped, clamped."

  Tristan examined them. "Very lovely," he said. He watched Lexius carefully. He played with Lexius's nipples just a little roughly.

  I could feel the tension shoot through Lexius, his arms stiffening in my grasp. I pulled them back harder, forcing his chest out.

  "And the cock. It's a good size, a good length, wouldn't you say?"

  Tristan inspected it with his fingers as he had the nipples. He pinched the tip, scratched at it a little with his nails, ran his hand down the length of it.

  "I would say he's as fine a quality as we are," I murmured, drawing near to Lexius's ear.

  "True," Tristan said very earnestly. "But he's too virginal. When a slave's been used, really well worked, the body is enhanced in some way."

  "I know. If we work on him every time there is the opportunity, we can make him perfect. By the time we are sent home, he will be as good a slave as we are."

  Tristan smiled. "What a lovely thought. What a lovely secret aspect to things." He kissed Lexius on the cheek. I could see the gratitude in Lexius's manner, and see Tristan drawn to him, see and feel the current that passed between them.