Beauty’s Punishment (Sleeping Beauty #2)(54)
Author: Anne Rice

The door opened and the young silk-clad attendants came in – six of them, one for each slave, it seemed –  and they approached the cages, offering, as they unlocked the doors, a warm, aromatic drink, which surely contained another welcome sleeping potion.

VOLUPTUOUS CAPTIVITY

It was night when Beauty awoke. Turning on her belly she saw stars through a tiny grated window. The great craft creaked and hummed as it rode the waves.

But she was being gathered up, taken from the cage, her dreams not yet dissipated, and laid down upon a giant cushion again, this time atop a long table.

Candles blazed. She could smell the heavy perfume of incense. And from far away came a rich and vibrant music. The lovely young men surrounded her, rubbing the golden oil into her skin, smiling down at her as they worked, stretching her arms up and back, training her fingers to hold tight again to the edge of the cushion. And she saw a brush dipping down to color her ni**les carefully with glittering gold pigment. She was too shocked to make a sound. She lay still as her lips were also painted. Then the soft hairs of the brush skillfully lined her eyes with the gold, stroking it onto her eyelashes. Great jeweled earrings were shown to her and, with a little gasp, she felt her earlobes stabbed, but her silent smiling captors hastened to shush and console her. The earrings dangled from the tiny burning wounds and the pain dissolved as she felt her legs drawn apart and a bowl of brightly colored, glistening fruits was held above her. The little armor of mesh was removed from her sex and tender fingers patted and stroked her until her sex awakened. Then she gazed into the same lovely olive-skinned face of the man who had first greeted her. Her attendant, he must be. And she saw that he was taking the fruit from the bowl – dates, pieces of melon and peach, tiny pears, dark red berries – and that he was carefully dipping each piece in a silver cup of honey.

Her legs were stretched wide apart and she realized the honeyed fruit was being placed inside of her. Her well-taught sex tightened irresistibly as the silky fingers forced the quartered melon deep within, and the next piece, and the next, bringing stronger and stronger flushes and sighs from her.

She couldn’t keep from moaning, but this her captors seemed to approve. They nodded, their smiles growing ever brighter. She was filled with the fruit. She felt it bulging from her. And now she was shown the glistening bunch of ripe grapes that was laid between her legs. And a lovely sprig of white flowers was dangled over her face, and her mouth was opened and the sprig laid between her teeth, the waxy petals fluttering against her cheeks and chin every so slightly.

She tried not to bite down on the stem, merely to hold it firmly. Her underarms were being painted thickly with honey. And something, a plump date perhaps, was being pressed into her naval. Jeweled bracelets went about her wrists. She was being fitted with heavy anklets. She undulated almost irresistibly on the pillow as the tension mounted in her, the vague infatuation with the smiling faces. And she knew fear, too, as she felt herself slowly transformed into an astonishing ornament.

But she was left alone with the urgent caution to be very still and silent.

And she heard other quick preparations in the room, heard other soft sighs, and she could almost make out the tempo of a heart beating anxiously near her.

Finally her captors appeared again. She was lifted on the great thick cushion, like a treasure. The music grew louder as she was carried up the steps, the walls of her sex clamping against the enormous filling of fruit, the honey and the juices trickling out of her. The gold paint dried on her ni**les, tightening the skin. On every inch of her flesh she felt some new stimulation.

Into a large chamber she was brought, the light soft and shimmering. The incense was intoxicating. The air pulsed with the rhythm of tambourines, the strumming of harps, the high metallic notes of other instruments. Over her head the draped cloth of the ceiling came alive with its hundreds of tiny fragments of mirrored glass, glittering beads, intricate gold patterns.

She was set down on the floor again and, turning her head helplessly, saw the musicians far to her left and, directly beside her on her right, her new Masters sitting cross-legged as they banqueted from large dishes of delicious-smelling food, their robes and turbans of ornately embroidered silk, their eyes darting to her now and then as they spoke to one another in rapid muted voices.

She writhed on the pillow, holding the edges tight, keeping her legs well apart as she had been taught so well to do at the village and the castle. And her silent fearful attendants, cautioning her, imploring her, with dire looks and fingers to the lips, again withdrew to the shadows where they stood to watch over her unnoticed by those who feasted.

"Ah, what is this strange world into which I’ve been reborn?" she thought, the fruit swelling against the stricture of her heated vagina. She felt her hips ride up from the silk, the earrings throb in her ears. The conversation went on in a natural current, now and then one of the dark-turbaned Lords smiling at her before he spoke again to the others.

But another figure had appeared. Something in the corner of her eye, to the left. She saw it was Tristan.

He was being brought in on his hands and knees, by a long gold chain affixed to a jewel-encrusted collar. And he too was polished with gold oil, his ni**les gilded. His thick bush of pubic hair was dotted with tiny sparkling jewels and his erect c**k glistened under its thin gold burnishing. His ears were pierced not with dangling earrings but with single rubies. And the hair of his head was parted in the middle and had been beautifully brushed with gold dust. Gilt paint lined his eyes, thickened his lashes, defined the startling perfection of his mouth. And his violet-blue eyes burned with an iridescent radiance.

His lips moved in a half-smile as he was led towards her. He didn’t seem sad or afraid, rather lost in his desire to do the bidding of the pretty black-haired angel who led him. And as the dark-skinned one guided him to straddle Beauty, pressing his head down to her left underarm until his face touched the honey, he began to lap it.

Beauty sighed, feeling the hard wet pressure of his licking tongue on the rounded curve of her flesh. And her eyes grew wide as he cleaned away the liquid, his hair tickling her face, and then bent to feed upon the right underarm just as greedily.

He seemed an alien god leaning over her, his painted face like something from the very depth of her unavowed dreams, his powerful arms and shoulders polished to a magnificent luster.

With a tug of the fragile gold chain, the lithe, long-fingered guide drew him down now, lowering his gleaming head until, eagerly, he took the honeyed date from her naval.

Beauty’s hips and belly rose sharply at the touch of his lips and teeth, the moan breaking from her, the flowers in her mouth shuddering against her cheeks. And as if through a haze, she saw her distant attendants smiling, nodding, coaxing.