Beauty s Punishment - By Anne Rice Page 0,18

of the ecstasy of the embrace, further softened her and quieted her. But the lips were so wide apart they were almost aching.

"And the clitoris," he said, "lift it."

It burned against her finger as she obeyed.

"Move your finger to the side so that I can see," he said.

And quickly, as gracefully as she could, she did.

"Now stretch the little mouth wide again and thrust your hips forward."

She obeyed, but with the movement of her hips there came another wave of pleasure. She could feel the blush in her face and in her throat and her breasts. She heard herself moaning. Her hips rose higher, moved ever more forward. She could see the nipples of her breasts contracted to tiny bits of hard pink stone. She heard her own moan become louder and supplicating.

It would begin any moment, the desire that was so sweetly waning. Even now she could feel the lips thickening against her fingers and the clitoris beating hard like a little heart and the pink flesh around her nipples tingling.

She could hardly stand the desire, and then she felt the Captain's hand on her neck. He had swung her forward and around and into his lap, with her head back over the crook of his right arm, his left hand forcing her right leg widely apart from the left, and she felt the smooth calfskin jerkin against her naked side, the leather of the high boots under her thighs, and she saw his face above her. His eyes were boring into her. He kissed her slowly, and she felt her hips lift. She shuddered.

He held something dazzling and beautiful in the light before her, and she blinked to see it. It was the handle of his dagger, thick, encrusted with gold and emeralds and rubies.

It disappeared and quite suddenly she felt the cold metal against her wet vagina. "Ooooooh, yes . . ." she moaned and felt the handle slide in, a thousand times harder and crueler than the largest organ, it seemed, as it lifted her, crushing against her smoldering clitoris.

She almost screamed with desire, her head falling back, her eyes blind except for the Captain's eyes looking down at her. Her hips undulated wildly against his lap, the dagger handle going back and forth, back and forth,

until she could not endure it and the ecstasy came again paralyzing her and silencing her open mouth, the vision of the Captain vanishing in a moment of total deliverance.

When she came back to herself, there was still the wild tremor in her hips, the vagina giving quiet gasps, but Beauty was sitting up, and the Captain was holding her face in his hand, and he was kissing her eyelids.

"You're my slave," he said.

She nodded.

"When I come to the Inn, you belong to me. From wherever you are, you come to me and you kiss my boots," he said.

She nodded.

He lifted her to her feet, and before she quite understood what was happening, she had been forced out of the little room again, her wrists behind her back, and she was being marched down the little winding stairs as she had come up.

Her head was spinning. He would leave her now, and she couldn't bear the thought of it. "O, no, no, please don't leave," she thought desperately. He gave her buttocks warm spanks with his large, soft leather-gloved hand and forced her into the cool darkness of the Inn again where six or seven men were already drinking.

Beauty caught the laughter, the talk, the sound somewhere of the paddle coming down and some poor slave groaning and sobbing.

But she was being forced into the open square before the Inn.

"Fold your arms behind your back," said the Captain. "You're to march before me with your knees high and you are to look straight ahead."
THE PLACE OF PUBLIC PUNISHMENT
The sunlight was too bright for a moment. But Beauty was busy folding her arms and marching, lifting her legs as high as she could, and finally the square became visible as they entered it. She saw its shifting crowds of idlers and gossips, several youths sitting on the broad stone rim of the well, horses tethered at the gates of the Inns, and then other naked slaves here and there, some on their knees, some marching as she was.

The Captain turned her with another one of those large soft spanks, squeezing her right buttock a little as he did it.

Half in a dream it seemed, Beauty found herself in a broad street,