Beauty's Release - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,55

as slaves at the castle had been trained to do.

I inspected what I had done, and I played with his cock a little, wondering how he liked the teasing, the hunger. I whipped his cock with the strap. It was so blood dark that it was almost purple in the lamplight. His face was beautifully tormented, eyes full of suffering and absorption in what was happening to him. I felt a peculiar stirring inside me when I looked at his eyes, something rare, and strong, and unlike the overall weakness I had felt when I looked at the Sultan.

“Now we will talk,” I said. “And you will tell me first, where is Tristan?”

This startled him, naturally.

“Sleeping,” he answered. “The Sultan released him an hour or so ago.”

“I want you to send for him. I want to talk to him, and I want to see him take you.”

“O, please, no ...” he said. He went down to kiss my feet.

I doubled up the strap and smacked his face with it. “Do you want marks on your face, Lexius?” I asked. “Put your hands behind your neck, and keep your form when I’m talking to you.”

“Why do you do this to me?” he whispered. “Why must the revenge be taken out on me?” His eyes were so large, so beautiful. I couldn’t keep myself from leaning over and kissing him, feeling his hot mouth suck at my mouth.

It was unlike kissing any other man, kissing him. He pumped a molten spirit into his kisses. He said things with them—more than he knew, I suspected. I could have kissed him for a long time, that alone giving him surges of pleasure.

“I don’t do it for revenge,” I said. “I do it because I like to do these things to you, and you need it. You positively require it. You wish you were on your hands and knees with us. You know you do.”

He burst into tears, silently, biting his lip. “If I could serve you always....”

“Yes, I know. But you can’t pick whom you serve. That’s the trick. You must give yourself over to the idea of service. You must surrender to that.... And each true Master or Mistress becomes all Masters and Mistresses.”

“No, I cannot believe that.”

I laughed softly. “I should run away and take you with me. I should put on your handsome robes, darken my face and hair, and take you with me, naked over my saddle, as I said before.”

He was shuddering, eating the language, and being intoxicated by it. He knew everything about training and punishing and disciplining, and absolutely nothing about being on the other end of it.

I lifted his chin. He wanted me to kiss him again, and I did, taking my time with it, wishing it didn’t make me feel so much his slave suddenly. I ran my tongue down along the inside of his lower lip.

“Get Tristan,” I said. “Bring him here. And, if you speak another word in protest, I’ll let Tristan whip you also.”

If he didn’t see through that little ploy, he was not only beautiful but brainless.

After he rang the bell, he went to the door and waited. Without opening it, he gave the order. And he stood with his arms folded and head bowed, looking lost, as if he needed some fine, strong Prince to fight the dragons of his passion and rescue him from destruction. How touching. I sat on the bed, devouring him with my eyes. I loved the curve of his cheekbones, the fine line of his jaw, the way that he passed through the attitudes of man, boy, woman, and angel with varying gestures and little changes in his expression.

A knock on the door startled him. Again he spoke. He listened. Then he unbolted the door and beckoned, and Tristan came in on his knees, eyes down demurely. Lexius bolted the door behind him.

“Now I have two slaves,” I said, sitting up. “Or you have two Masters, Lexius. It’s difficult to judge the situation one way or the other.”

Tristan looked up at me, saw me naked on the bed, and then glanced in perfect bewilderment at Lexius.

“Come here, come sit with me. I want to talk to you,” I said to Tristan. “And you, Lexius, kneel here as you were before and be quiet.”

That summed it up, I thought. Tristan took a moment to absorb it, however. He took in the naked body of our Master, and then he looked at me. He rose and came