Beauty s Punishment - By Anne Rice Page 0,22
off all his clothes and was slipping into the bad naked beside her.
His warm hand lay on her drenched sex, his fingers parting the lips ever so gently. She drew close to his naked limbs, his powerful arms and legs covered with soft curly golden down, his smooth clean chest pressed against her arm and her hip. His roughly shaven chin grazed her cheek. Then his lips kissed her.
She closed her eyes against the deepening afternoon light from the little window. The dim noises of the village, thin voices from the street, the dull bursts of laughter from the Inn below, all merged into a low hum that lulled her. The light grew bright before it began to fade. The little fire leapt on the hearth, and the Captain covered Beauty with his limbs and breathed in deep sleep against her.
TRISTAN IN THE HOUSE OF NICOLAS, THE QUEEN'S CHRON
Tristan:
In a near daze, I thought of Beauty's words, even as the auctioneer called for the bids, my eyes half closed, the screaming crowd a swirling current around me. Why should we obey? If we were bad, if we had been sentenced to this penitential place, why must we comply with anything?
Her questions echoed through the cries and jeers, the great inarticulate din that was the crowd's true voice, purely brutal, endlessly renewing its own vigor. I clung to the silver memory of her exquisite little oval face, eyes flashing with irrepressible independence, as all the while I was poked, slapped, turned round, examined.
Maybe I took refuge in the strange inner dialogue, because it was too excruciating to bear the blazing actuality of the auction. I was on the block, just as they had threatened I would be. And the bids were rising from everywhere.
It seemed I saw everything and nothing, and in a dim moment of excruciating remorse, I pitied the foolish slave whom I had been, dreaming in the castle gardens of disobedience and the village.
"Sold to Nicolas, the Queen's Chronicler."
Then I was being roughly shuffled down the steps, and the man who had bought me stood before me. He seemed a silent flame in the midst of the press, the rough hands slapping at my erect cock, pinching me, tugging at locks of my hair. Wrapped in a perfect stillness all his own, he lifted my chin, and our eyes met, and with an exquisite shock, I thought, yes, this is my Master!
Exquisite.
If not the man himself, robust enough for all his slender height, then the manner of it.
Beauty's question thudded in my ears. I think I closed my eyes for a moment.
I was being pushed and shoved through the crowd, told by a hundred taskmasters to march, to lift my knees, lift my chin, to keep that cock erect, while the auctioneer's loud bark called the next slave behind me to the platform. The roaring din enveloped me.
I had only glimpsed my Master, but in the glimpse all the details of his being were fixed perfectly. Taller than I by only an inch, he had a square but lean face and a wealth of white hair curling thickly well above his shoulders. He was much too young for the white hair, almost boyish despite his great height and the pure ice of his gaze, his blue eyes full of darkness at the very centers. He seemed much too finely dressed for the village, but there were others like him on the balconies over the square, watching from high-backed chairs set in the open windows. Well-to-do shopkeepers and their wives, surely, but they had called him Nicolas, the Queen's Chronicler.
He had long hands, beautiful hands that had almost languidly gestured for me to precede him.
At last I reached the end of the square, felt the last rough slaps and pinches. I found myself marching with low panting breaths in an empty street walled on either side with little taverns and stalls and bolted doorways. Everyone was at the auction, I saw with relief. And it was quiet here.
Nothing but the sound of my feet on the stones and the crisp click of my Master's boots behind me. He was very close. So close I almost felt him brush against my buttocks. And then with a shock I felt the wallop of a stout strap and his voice very low near my ear: "Pick up those knees, and hold your head high and back." At once I straightened, alarmed that I had let myself lose any measure of dignity. My