Beauty's Release - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,26

gnat. All the thongs did was remind me of what it was like to be really beaten.

And yet they helped to keep the fires burning, as if holding Tristan wasn’t enough.

Over Tristan’s shoulder, I watched the groom lower the brass pipe and insert the end of it into his backside. And, at the same moment, I felt the nozzle enter me. Tristan tensed, his bowels filling as mine were filled, and I held to him, trying to steady him.

I wanted to tell him I had had it done before, once, at the castle, at the request of a royal guest before a night of the most humiliating games, and, though it was unnerving, it was not so terrible. But of course I didn’t dare to whisper even in his ear. I just held him and waited, the warm water jetting into me, the grooms busy washing us all over as if this other thing, this cleansing of our insides, wasn’t happening.

I stroked Tristan’s neck and kissed him below the ear when the worst moment came and the nozzles were withdrawn and we were emptied. His whole body went rigid against me, but he was kissing my neck too, gnawing at my flesh a little, and our cocks brushed each other, stroked each other.

But the grooms were so busy pouring the warm water over our backsides and washing away the waste that for a moment they didn’t see what we were doing. I pressed Tristan to me, feeling his belly against mine, his cock bulging against me, and I almost came then, not caring anymore what any of them wanted of us.

But they separated us. They forced us apart and held us back away from each other as the emptying went on, and the water flowed over us. And I was weak all over, belonging to them inside and out, belonging to the roar of the water in this echo chamber of a room, to their hands, to the whole procedure and the way it was done, as if it had been done to thousands before us.

If they punished us for touching, well, that would be my fault. And I wished there was a way to tell Tristan that I regretted getting him into trouble.

But they were too busy, apparently, to punish us.

One purge was not enough, as it had been for the women. We had to have another, and once again they let us hold each other, and the nozzles went in and the water was pumping up into me, and one of the grooms whipped my cock a little with the thong as the purge continued.

My mouth was next to Tristan’s ear. And he was kissing me again, which was lovely.

I thought, “I cannot stand this deprivation much longer. It’s worse than anything else they’ve done to us.” And I might well have done something indiscreet again, just pushed my cock against his belly, anything.

But then our new Lord and Master, Lexius, appeared, and I felt a little shock when I saw him in the doorway.

Fear. When had anyone at the castle ever made me feel the wallop of it like this? It was maddening. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, surveying us as they finished with the towels, and his face had a cold cheerfulness to it, as if he was proud of his selections.

When I looked right at him, he didn’t show the slightest disapproval. And looking up into his eyes, I thought of that glove going up into my rear—the sensation of being widened and impaled on his arm, and the others watching.

And that, mixed with the shame of having been purged, was almost too much for me.

It wasn’t just fear, fear that he would put on the glove again and do that; it was damnable pride that he had done it only to me, and that only I had been tethered to his slipper.

I wanted to please the devil, that was the horror of it. And it made it worse that he had worked the same spell on the others. Elena he had made into a trembling virgin at his command. Beauty he had reduced to obvious adoration.

Now, if the grooms told him that Tristan and I had touched.... But they didn’t. They dried us off. They brushed our hair. The Master gave some little command, and we were put down on our hands and knees and made to follow him into the main bath again. He gestured for us to kneel