Beauty’s Kingdom (Sleeping Beauty #4)(67)
Author: Anne Rice

A thick healing plaster was applied to the skin which needed more time under protection, and he was then placed outside the door of the house, back to the wall, hands tethered above to be the fabled Herm for the residence. His mask has been cleaned and refitted to his face. His hair was a shining mane, and his cock was alert.

I stopped to inspect him before I set out for the day’s work. No shuddering, no weeping, just the silent helpless tears to be expected, and an obvious pride in his naked body, a tendency to straighten his posture periodically and to thrust his hips out as any well-trained slave should.

I felt crazed as I kissed him. I would go to the shop on the high street to order even more beautiful masks to be made for him to wear. Gold, silver, black leather painted with woodland designs. The shop sold everything a master could desire in the way of adornments. Surely they could make masks, elaborate masks, exquisite masks.

“By tomorrow, you’ll be ready for the Public Turntable again,” I said to him, kissing his ear. “And seldom will you ever be punished so harshly that you can’t be taken there three times a day. Now I want you to pay attention when you go there.”

He lifted his chin. He was listening with every fiber of his being. His nipples were as hard as his cock.

“In the old days whipping masters were not the colorful popular figures they are today,” I told him as I pinched his nipples. “They’re now in competition with one another to be remembered by the crowds. They are forming their own guild. Now, I’ll see that you’re spanked by three different whipping masters a day on the Public Turntable and I want to know later which of them you think has done the best job of it and why. Now answer: do you understand?”

“Yes, my prince,” he said softly. No slave ever had a better demeanor.

But I was almost in tears as I left him. Because I wanted to be with him, wrestling with him again on the bed, and suckling his cock until he cried out for mercy, and I knew that he now had a permanent place in my heart.

It was bound to happen, I told myself as I went off to see to Becca, to take her to the Punishment Shop for her first taste of the gentle and loving old whipping master there. Such was bound to happen. And I would write to Tristan, of course, and tell him the truth. And so the course of my life spread out before me and torn as I was, suffering as I was, I could not help but be grateful and glad.

i

I awoke before dawn. Something had changed in the room. Something had alerted me that I must wake.

I sat up searching the airy gloom for some sign of Severin, who should have been asleep on his pallet at the foot of the bed. Not there. And where was he and was it his disobedient comings and goings that had roused me before the rising of the sun?

Beyond the arches of the open windows, the sky was lightening and slowly giving up its great sweep of fading stars.

A man stood there, a man in a long belted robe with flowing hair.

I reached for the silver cover over the little night lamp and lifted it so that the struggling flame might show me just who this was—who had dared to come into my chambers without my welcome. It was not the King who might do so anytime he wished, that much I could see.

The light brightened and I made out the details of his face and form.

Skin like bronze, and great dark eyes, and curling waves that fell to his shoulders and a belted robe covered in embroidered gold and tiny twinkling jewels.

I rose from the bed and stood before him. I wore only a sheer white lace chemise but my appearance meant nothing to me just now. I picked up the small lamp and raised it so that I could better see his face.

His expression was one of awe as he gazed at me—of something beyond fascination.

His beauty was breathtaking, his dark skin flawless, and his jaw firm and strong. Set at the high border of his ornate tunic was a huge sapphire, perhaps the largest gem I’d ever beheld.

“How dare you come into my quarters like this!” I said. “Who are you?”

He shrank back as if I’d struck him and with his hands up imploring me he dropped to his knees.

His eyes feasted on me as before, boldly running over my face and my body and my bare feet.

Then he came forward with amazing ease for one so heavily clothed and he kissed my feet.

“Get out of here!” I declared. I moved to pull the bell rope.

“My lady, I beg you, don’t send for anyone!” he pleaded. He had a sharp accent that gave his words a lovely resonant power. “I beg you to forgive me. I beg you, please!”

“Well, then, what are you doing here?”

“I dazzled and confused your servants,” he confessed. His black eyes were almost too big for my taste, too powerfully etched by his thick black lashes, and his mouth was a dark rose color, natural, full, sensual, but not out of keeping with the general symmetry of his face.

“I’m Lexius, my lady. You have my many letters and I have yours,” he said.

He knelt as before, hands raised, his heavy sleeves revealing a tight-fitting shirt of shimmering silk, and his fingers were covered in jeweled rings.

“I invite you to this kingdom, you a slave banished in disgrace, and this is how you repay my invitation!” I said furiously. “You dare to talk your way into my quarters at this hour and unannounced?”

“I felt my heart would break if I didn’t see you,” he said. “I arrived after you and the King and Queen had retired. I was going mad in my rooms. I had to see you, lay eyes upon, lay eyes upon the legendary Lady Eva who carries out the instructions of the great queen.”

All this was said with apparent sincerity and the greatest politeness, but there was nothing obsequious in his manner. He was imploring me with the confidence of a highborn prince which is exactly what he was.

Now all the gossip, all the talk, all of the King’s interest, made some new sense to me. He was magnetic, powerful. I could see this, and feel it. What a spectacular naked slave he must have been. And as the old steward of the Sultan, assessing and commanding slaves, well, he must have been a chilling wonder just as the Queen had said.

I pondered this, pondered him as he knelt there looking up at me with a steady gaze, and then allowed his eyes once more to take my measure down to my painted toenails.

“I could worship you, my lady,” he said in a low voice, his eyelids quivering. “You are as everyone has said, a magnificent lady.”

“In my chambers, I choose who offers me worship, Lexius,” I said. “Stand up now.”

He obeyed quickly as Severin might have done. And was Severin ever going to be punished for allowing this! I wondered where he was lurking and no doubt quavering in fear just now.

Lexius stepped back against the open windows. The sky was paling and the stars were gone. The soft silent rosy light of morning was rising.

“Oh, I have dreamed of this moment,” he said again in that low secretive voice.

“And how so, my lord, and why?” I asked. “Why isn’t the King or the Queen the object of your abject devotion? Are they not the ones who have drawn you here over land and sea?”

He didn’t choose to answer. I felt a great desire to see the King discipline him for his outrageous behavior. But he was a returning prince.

“In time I will make all my secrets known to you,” he said. “Will you forgive me that I’ve offended you, that in my zeal I’ve entered the temple as a clumsy pilgrim? Please don’t close your heart against me!”

I moved towards him and closer to the window, causing him to turn to his right. Now the morning light fully illuminated him, and I saw the superb texture of his skin, and the taut perfect flesh of his face. Timeless, he seemed, timeless in the ways of Asian peoples, and with a regal air that suggested old Persian paintings of splendid courts and emperors of yore.

His hair was almost too long, spilling over his shoulders in serpentine waves and curls. And the rich colors of his beaded robe were visible now, the brilliant blue shining in myriad fragments behind thick golden and silver thread and emeralds and rubies and sapphires, sapphires like the magnificent sapphire at his throat.

He seemed to read my thoughts. Suddenly, he tore the giant sapphire from his collar and held it out to me, glittering like something made of water, in his hand. The sunlight found it and it became a light unto itself.

He fell hard on his knees and still held it up to me. “My gift to you, please, my lady.”

“Save it for the King and Queen.”

“Ah, but I have treasures aplenty for them, and wealth in other forms. This I give to you from my person. And I offer you my soul as well.”

What did this mean, I wondered.

I took the sapphire in my left hand and gazed at it. I didn’t need the lamp now so I put it back on the table and then took the sapphire to the windowsill and studied it, not because I wanted it or needed it, but because I hadn’t seen anything quite like it. Stories came back to me of the jewels of India.

When I turned, I realized that he had prostrated himself full length on the floor. It had a ceremonial quality to it, the way that he lay there, his forehead touching the stone. Without a command from me he rose, sinking back on his heels, and then stood without the aid of his hands. His grace was like that of a dancer. And coming to his full height, he gazed down at me with the same rapt expression as before.

“Beautiful Lady Eva,” he said.