Greg pulled the robe round him. Annie left the bathroom. Greg started to dry himself. Keep calm, he told himself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He had imagined a woman and now she had come to life. Now he had a different role, always provided that he stayed on in the flat. Would there be room for him? Or would he go the way of Rick and Alec?
Annie came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside Kate. They yawned simultaneously and laughed together. Greg loved the way their breasts wobbled when they laughed. It was strange that he hadn’t seen or heard Kate come back to the flat. She was just there. Ah well, he would sleep on the sofa. He had nowhere else to go.
“He’s asleep.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“We’ll have to give him a name.”
“Who’s going to talk to him?”
Kate took a coin and spun it.
“Tails,” called Annie.
It was heads.
“That’s appropriate,” said Kate.
She went into the dark sitting room. Greg was asleep on the sofa wearing Annie’s bathrobe. He snored faintly. Kate knelt down. She parted the robe without untying it. She smiled. Greg was semi-erect. The tip glistened.
“Halfway house,” Kate whispered. “Unformed, but you’ve got the makings of an interesting character.” She licked him with the tongue of a cat.
Greg awoke.
BEAUTY’S RELEASE by Anne Rice
1 Through the City and into the Palace
BEAUTY OPENED HER eyes. She had not been sleeping, and she knew without having to see through a window that it was morning. The air in the cabin was unusually warm.
An hour ago she had heard Tristan and Laurent whispering in the dark, and she had known the ship was at anchor. And she had been only slightly afraid.
After that, she had slipped in and out of thin erotic dreams, her body wakening all over like a landscape under the rising sun. She was impatient to be ashore, impatient to know the full extent of what was to happen to her, to be threatened in ways that she could understand.
Now, when she saw the lean, comely little attendants flooding into the room, she knew for certain that they had come to the Sultanate. All would be realized soon enough.
The precious little boys – they could be no more than fourteen or fifteen, despite their height – had always been richly dressed, but this morning they wore embroidered silk robes, and their tight waist sashes were made of rich striped cloth, and their black hair gleamed with oil, and their innocent faces were dark with an unusual air of anxiety.
At once, the other royal captives were roused, and each slave was taken from the cage and led to the proper grooming table.
Beauty stretched herself out on the silk, enjoying her sudden freedom from confinement, the muscles in her legs tingling. She glanced at Tristan and then at Laurent. Tristan was suffering too much still. Laurent, as always, looked faintly amused. But there was not even time now to say farewell. She prayed they would not be separated, that whatever happened they would come to know it together, and that somehow their new captivity would yield moments when they might be able to talk.
At once the attendants rubbed the gold pigmented oil into Beauty’s skin, strong fingers working it well into her thighs and buttocks. Her long hair was lifted and brushed with gold dust, and then she was turned on her back gently.
Skilled fingers opened her mouth. Her teeth were polished with a soft cloth. Waxen gold was applied to her lips. And then gold paint was brushed onto her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Not since the first day of the journey had she or any of the slaves been so thoroughly decorated. And her body steamed with familiar sensations.
She thought hazily of her divinely crude Captain of the Guard, of the elegant but distantly remembered tormentors of the Queen’s Court, and she felt desperate to belong to someone again, to be punished for someone, to be possessed as well as chastised.
It was worth any humiliation, that, to be possessed by another. In retrospect, it seemed she had only been a flower in a full bloom when she was thoroughly violated by the will of another, that in suffering for the will of another she had discovered her true self.
But she had a new and slowly deepening dream, one that had begun to flame in her mind during the time at sea, and that she had confided only to Laurent: the dream that she might somehow find in this strange land what she had not found before; someone whom she might truly love.
In the village, she told Tristan that she did not want this, that it was harshness and severity alone she craved. But the truth was that Tristan’s love for his Master had deeply affected her. His words had swayed her, even as she had spoken her contradictions.
And then had come these lonely nights at sea of unfulfilled yearning, of pondering too much all the twists of fate and fortune. And she had felt strangely fragile thinking of love, of giving her secret soul to a Master or Mistress, more than ever off balance.
The groom combed gold paint into her pubic hair, tugging each curl to make it spring. Beauty could hardly keep her hips still. Then she saw a handful of fine pearls held out for her inspection. And into her pubic hair these went, to be affixed to the skin with powerful adhesive. Such lovely decorations. She smiled.
She closed her eyes for a second, her sex aching in its emptiness. Then she glanced at Laurent to see that his face had taken on an Oriental cast with the gold paint, his nipples beautifully erect like his thick cock. And his body was being ornamented, as befitted its size and power, with rather large emeralds instead of pearls.
Laurent was smiling at the little boy who did the work, as if in his mind he was peeling away the boy’s fancy clothes. But then he turned to Beauty, and, lifting his hand languidly to his lips, he blew her a little kiss, unnoticed by the others.
He winked and Beauty felt the desire in her burning hotter. He was so beautiful, Laurent.
“O, please don’t let us be separated,” she prayed. Not because she ever thought she would possess Laurent – that would be too interesting – but because she would be lost without the others, lost…
And then it hit her with full force: she had no idea what would happen to her in the Sultanate, and absolutely no control over it. Going into the village, she had known. She had been told. Even coming into the castle, she had known. The Crown Prince had prepared her. But this was beyond her imagining, this place. And beneath her concealing gold paint she grew pale.
The grooms were gesturing for their charges to rise. There were the usual exaggerated and urgent signs for them to be silent, still, obedient, as they stood in a circle facing each other.
And Beauty felt her hands lifted and clasped behind her back as if she were a senseless little being who could not even do that much herself. Her groom touched the back of her neck and then kissed her cheek softly as she compliantly bowed her head.
Still, she could see the others clearly. Tristan’s genitals had also been decorated with pearls, and he gleamed from head to toe, his blond locks even more golden than his burnished skin.
And, glancing at Dmitri and Rosalynd, she saw that they had both been decorated with red rubies. Their black hair was in magnificent contrast to their polished skin. Rosalynd’s enormous blue eyes looked drowsy under their fringe of painted lashes. Dmitri’s broad chest was tightened like that of a statue, though his strongly muscled thighs quivered uncontrollably.
