Beauty's Punishment - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,81
always be, utter mortification.”
Beauty lifted her hips to receive him. They were at once rocking in unison, Tristan gazing down at her, his arms like pillars supporting his powerful shoulders above her. She lifted her head to suck from his nipples, her hands pinching and parting his buttocks, feeling the hard delicious knots of the welts and measuring them and compressing them as she drew closer to the silky wrinkled lip of his anus. His motions grew swifter, rougher, more agitated as she delved. And suddenly reaching to the table beside her, she pulled one of the thick waxen candles from its silver holder, whipping out the flame and pressing the melted tip with her fingers. And then she plunged it into him, planting it firmly inside. His eyes squeezed shut. Her own sex became a taut sheath against his organ, her clitoris toughening, exploding. And cranking the waxen candle hard she cried out, feeling his hot fluids empty into her.
They lay still, the candle discarded. And she wondered at what she had done, but Tristan only kissed her.
He rose, poured a goblet of wine, and put it to Beauty’s lips. Puzzled, she took it, drank it as a Lady might and wondered at the curious sensation.
“But how have you fared, Beauty?” he asked. “Have you been rebellious all the time? Tell me.”
She shook her head. “I fell into the hands of a hard and wicked Master and Mistress.” She laughed softly.
She described the punishments of Mistress Lockley, the kitchen, the Captain’s way with her, and her evenings with the soldiers, lingering on the physical beauty of both her captors.
Tristan listened gravely.
She told about the runaway, Prince Laurent. “I know now that if I run away it will be in order to be found, to be punished like that, to spend all my years in the village,” she said. “Tristan, do you think me dreadful to want to do that? I would run away rather than go back to the castle.”
“But you might be taken from the Captain and Mistress Lockley,” he said, “if you ran away, and sold to someone else for harder use and labor.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “It isn’t the Mistress or Master really who puts me in harmony with it, as you said. It’s merely the hardness, the coldness, and the relentlessness. I wanted to be cast down, lost among my punishments. I adore the Captain and I adore the Mistress, but there are other harsher Masters and Mistresses probably in the village.”
“Ah, you surprise me,” he said, offering her the wine again. “I am so totally in love with Nicolas I have no defense against him.”
Tristan then explained the things that had happened to him, and how he and Nicolas had made love and talked together, and gone out up onto the hillside.
“The second time on the Public Turntable, today at noon,” he said. “I was transported. The fear hadn’t left me. It was worse when I was rushed up the steps, because I knew just what would happen. But I saw the whole fairgrounds more clearly under the glare of the sun than I had ever seen it by torchlight. I do not mean I saw literal things. I saw the great scheme of which I was part, and under the grueling punishment, my soul broke open. My whole existence now, be it on the turntable or in the harnesses, or in my Master’s arms, is an entreaty to be used like the warmth of a fire is used, to be dissolved in the will of others. My Master’s will is the guiding will, and through him I am given to all who witness or desire me.”
Beauty was quiet, gazing at him.
“Then you have given over your soul,” she said. “You’ve given it to your Master. That I haven’t done, Tristan. My soul is still mine and the only thing a slave can truly possess. And I’m not ready yet to give it. I give my whole body to the Captain, to the soldiers, to Mistress Lockley. But in my soul, I think I belong to no one. I left the castle, not to find the love I had not found there. I left to be tossed and tumbled among harsher and more indifferent Masters.”
“And you are indifferent to them?” he asked.
“I am as interested in them as they are in me,” she said, reflecting. “No more, no less. But my soul may change in time. Perhaps it’s only that I have met