Beauty's Release - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,60

turned to terror.

Beauty wasn’t unprepared for this moment. She knew what she had to do—slip out of Inanna’s bedroom and somehow get back to the grooms without getting Inanna into trouble. Fighting the desire to embrace and kiss Inanna, she climbed off the bed and went to the door and listened. Then she turned to Inanna and made a gesture of farewell, blowing a kiss to Inanna, who burst into silent tears immediately.

Inanna came fast across the room and threw her arms around Beauty, and for a long moment they kissed again, the long luxurious kisses Beauty so loved. Inanna’s tender, hot little sex was pressed against Beauty’s legs, her breasts shivering against Beauty. When she bowed her head, her hair falling down to veil her face, Beauty lifted her chin and opened her mouth again, drinking the sweetness from it. Inanna was like a bird in a cage in Beauty’s arms, her violet eyes magnified by their tears, her lips moist and beautifully reddened it seemed by her crying.

“Lovely, ripe creature,” Beauty whispered, feeling of Inanna’s plump little arms, pressing her thumb against Inanna’s rounded chin as Inanna’s mouth quivered hungrily. But there was no time now for lovemaking.

Beauty made the gesture for Inanna to be quiet and still, and she listened at the door again.

Inanna’s face was full of misery. She seemed suddenly frantic, no doubt blaming herself for what might now happen to Beauty. But Beauty smiled again to reassure her and motioned for her to stay where she was. Then she opened the door and slipped into the corridor.

Inanna, her eyes swimming with tears again, crept out after her and pointed to a far door, in the opposite direction from that through which they’d come earlier.

As she removed the bolt, Beauty glanced back one more time, and her heart went out to Inanna. She thought of all the things that had befallen her since her passions had been awakened, and this last night seemed unlike any other. She wished she could tell Inanna that it would not be their last, that somehow they would manage to be together again. And it seemed Inanna did understand. She could see the determination in Inanna’s eyes. There would be nights ahead to rival this one, no matter what the danger. And the thought that this inviting body with its luscious endowments belonged to Beauty as it did to no one else absolutely inflamed Beauty. She had many more things to teach Inanna....

Inanna touched her hand to her lips and sent an urgent kiss to Beauty and, as Beauty nodded, Inanna nodded.

Then Beauty opened the door and ran fast and silently through the small empty passageway, rounding corner after corner, until she saw the massive double doors that most certainly would admit her again to the main corridors of the palace.

She paused for a moment to catch her breath. She did not know where to go, how to give herself up to those who must certainly be already searching for her. But it was a comfort to her that they could not question her. Only Lexius could do that. And if she did not lie to him at once, say some brute of a Lord had stolen her from the niche, how Lexius might punish her.

The thought chilled her, and yet it aroused her. She did not know whether she could lie. But she did know she would never betray Inanna. And she had never really been punished for serious wickedness, never been mercilessly questioned about any important or secret disobedience.

Now she was in possession of this wondrous intrigue, and she would know undreamed-of tortures when she heard Lexius’s angry voice, when he became maddened by her silence.

Yet silence it must be. Disgrace and punishment it must be. And surely he would never dare to assume....

But no matter. Beauty was ready. And her task now was to get through those doors and as far away from them as quickly as she could, so that no one could guess where she had been during her long absence.

Trembling, she stepped out into the wide marble hall with its all too familiar torchlight and silent, bound slaves in their niches. Without even glancing to the right or the left, she ran to the very end of the hall and turned into another empty corridor.

On and on she ran, knowing that surely the slaves saw her. But who would question them as to what they had seen? She must get as far as she