Beauty’s Release (Sleeping Beauty #3)(21)
Author: Anne Rice

"Keep your mouth still!" And he went silent with amazing ease. He gathered his forces again and pushed at the bed.

I rose up just enough to fling him over on his back. I was straddling him and, when he tried to rise, I smacked him as he had smacked me. And in that second, while he lay stunned, I picked up one of the pillows and ripped the silk covering off it.

It was a nice long piece of red silk, enough to tie his hands. I caught them, slapping him twice again, and tied his wrists, the silk so sheer that it made powerful little knots that all his struggling only strengthened.

Another ripped cover and I had a gag for him. He opened his mouth in another volley of curses trying to hit me with his bound hands, and I flung his hands back and ran the silk gag right across his open mouth before I tied it behind his head. The open mouth made it easier to tighten, keep in place, and when he tried to hit me again I slapped him over and over slowly until he stopped.

Of course, none of these were terribly hard slaps. They wouldn’t have affected me much at all. But they were working on him exquisitely. I knew how his head was swimming from them. After all, he had whipped me only moments before in the garden.

He lay still, his bound hands up above his head. His face was dark red, and the silk gag was a slash of brighter red, with his lips closing on it. But the truly exquisite part was his eyes, his immense black eyes staring at me.

"You are a beautiful creature, you know," I said. I could feel his c**k nudging my balls. I was still straddling him. I reached down and felt its hard hot length, the wetness at the tip. "You’re almost too beautiful," I said. "Makes me want to sneak out of this place, with you naked, strapped over my saddle, the way your Sultan’s soldiers stole me. I’d take you out to the desert, make you my servant, beat you with that thick belt of yours, as you watered the horse, fed the fire, made my supper."

His body quivered all over. His cheeks teemed with color, despite his dark skin. I could almost hear his heart.

I moved down and knelt between his legs. He was not moving a muscle now to resist me. His c**k was bobbing. But I was finished playing with him. I had to have him now. Then the other spices might be mine–punishing his bu**ocks.

I lifted his thighs, hooking my arms under them, and then forced his legs up over my shoulders, lifting his pelvis off the bed.

He moaned, and his eyes flickered like two fires as he glared at me. I felt the little anus, nice and dry, and I touched my cock, touched it for the first time in all these days of torture, and smeared the moisture seeping from it all over the tip until it was very wet, and then I went into him.

He was tight but not too tight. He couldn’t lock me out. He moaned again and I went deeper, through the ring of muscle that scraped me and maddened me, until I was well into him. Then I pressed down on him, forcing his legs back against him until he bent his knees over my shoulders, and then I started driving in him, hard. I let my c**k slide almost out, then plunge forward, then almost out again, and he sighed against the gag, the silk becoming wet, his eyes glazing over, his beautifully drawn eyebrows contracting. My hand groped for his cock, found it, started stroking it in time with my thrusts.

"This is what you deserve," I said through my teeth. "This is what you really deserve. You are my slave here and now, and damn the rest of them, damn the Sultan, the entire palace."

He was breathing faster and faster, and then I came, deep inside of him, my fingers closing tight on his c**k and feeling the liquid squeeze out, bubble out in spurts as he moaned loudly. It seemed to go on, all the misery of the nights at sea emptied into him. I pressed my thumb into the head of his cock. I squeezed it harder and harder, until all the pleasure had leaked out of me, until I was truly spent, and then I pulled out of him.

I rolled over and lay back, and closed my eyes for a long moment. I wasn’t finished with him.

The room was wonderfully warm. No fire can do what the afternoon sun can do in a closed place. And he lay with his eyes shut, his hands above his head still, breathing deeply and quietly.

He had relaxed his leg and his thigh was against mine.

After a long moment I said:

"Yes, what a good slave you’d make." I gave a little laugh.

He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. Then he went to move, all at once, and I was on top of him again, pinioning his hands.

He didn’t try to fight. I got up and stood beside the bed and told him to turn over on his face. He hesitated for a moment. Then he obeyed.

I picked up the long strap. I looked at his bu**ocks, and the muscles tightened hard, as if he knew I was looking at him. He shifted his hips slightly on the silk. His head was turned towards me, and he was staring straight past me.

"Get up on your hands and knees," I said.

He obeyed with a certain deliberate grace, and he knelt with his head up and his hands still bound, his body quite a lovely picture. Much leaner than mine. But the grace was marvelous. He was like a fine horse for running, not the steed that could carry a knight, but the more high-strung animal for carrying a courier. The red silk gag seemed such a gorgeous insult to him. Yet he knelt quietly, not resisting. Not trying to tear it loose, which he could have done even with his wrists tied.

I doubled up the strap and walloped his bu**ocks. He tensed. I walloped him again. He closed his legs together tightly.

That was permissible I thought. As long as he was obedient to all the rest.

I whipped him hard over and over again, marveling at the way the lovely olive-toned flesh still managed to show the color.

He didn’t make a sound. And I went to the foot of the bed so I could swing the strap harder. In a moment, I had nice crisscrosses of dark pink on his flesh. And I swung harder and harder. I was remembering my first whipping at the castle, how it had smarted, how I had struggled and whimpered without ever really moving. How I had tried to divine the meaning of the pain, that I must remain in a lowly position to be whipped for the pleasure of another.

There was an ecstatic freedom in whipping him, not for revenge or anything so foolish or thoughtful. It was merely the completion of a cycle. I loved the sound of the strap smacking him, loved the way his bu**ocks had begun to dance a little in spite of his efforts to still himself.

He was beginning to change all over. With another series of smacks, his head went down and his back arched as though he was trying to draw his bu**ocks in. Absolutely useless. And then they danced out again, swayed. He moaned. He couldn’t help it any longer. His whole body was swaying, dancing, an overall undulating in response to the strap.

I knew I must have done that when I was whipped, a thousand times without realizing I was doing it. I’d always been lost in the sound, the sweet, hot explosions of pain, the sudden itching right before the strap hit. I gave him a quick volley of really hard licks, and he moaned in time with each of them. In fact, he wasn’t even trying to rein himself in. His body was glistening with moisture, the redness alive on the surface of his skin, and he was in constant elegant movement.