The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy

by Anne Rice

  I didn’t speak. My body was speaking, however. I looked him up and down, the slender reed of a man that he was, the way his fine, supple skin wrinkled delicately at the edges of his mouth.

  His hand moved. It went to his girdle and unfastened it. The thing dropped and his robe opened, the fabric very heavy, the two sides of the robe standing open, and underneath I saw his naked chest, the black curly hair between his legs, and his cock rising like a spike, curving slightly. And the scrotum, quite large, swathed in fine, lacy, dark curls.

  “Come here,” he said. “On your hands and knees.”

  I waited a heartbeat or two before I responded. Then I went down on all fours again, my eyes still on him, and I crossed the distance between us. I sat back again without his telling me that I could, and 1 smelled the cedar and spice perfume rising from his robes, I smelled his dark male smell, and looked up to see the wine-colored nipples under the flap of the robe. I thought about the clamps the grooms had put on me, the way the leashes had pulled them.

  “Now we’ll see if your tongue can do anything except spout impertinence,” he said. He couldn’t keep his chest from heaving, couldn’t keep his body from giving him away, though the voice was flinty. “Lick it,” he said softly.

  I gave a secretive laugh. And I knelt up again, careful not to touch his clothes, and I drew in close and licked not the cock, but the scrotum. I licked it closely underneath, pushing the balls up a little with my tongue, stabbing at them with my tongue, then I licked under them to the flesh right behind them. I felt him push forward a little. I felt him sigh. I knew he wanted me to take the balls in my mouth, or to go at them with more pressure, but I did exactly what he had told me to do. If he wanted more, he would have to ask for it.

  “Mouth them,” he said.

  I laughed to myself again.

  “Gladly, Master,” I said. He tensed at the impertinence. But I had my open mouth against his scrotum and I was sucking at the balls, one and then the other, trying to get both of them into my mouth, but they were too big. And my own cock was on the edge of agony. I twisted my hips, rotated them, and the pleasure pumped through me, thudding into pain. I opened my mouth wider and pulled at the scrotum.

  “The cock,” he whispered.

  And then I had what I wanted. He pushed it against the roof of my mouth, then down deep into my throat, and I sucked it in long powerful strokes, running my tongue along it, and letting my teeth scrape it lightly. My head swam. My own pelvis was stiff, and the muscles in my legs were so tense they would ache after. He moved forward pressing his crotch into my face, and I felt his hand on the back of my head. He was going to come any second. I backed off, and licked at the tip of the cock, deliberately teasing him. His hand tightened, but he didn’t say anything. I licked his cock slowly, playing with the tip. I moved my hands into his robe. The fabric was cool and soft, but the real silk was the flesh of his backside. I closed my hands on it, pinching the flesh, and let my little fingers curl towards his anus.

  He reached down to pull my arms out of his robe. He dropped the strap.

  And I stood up and flung him back towards the bed, tripping him so that he lost his balance. I jerked him around by the right arm so that he fell on his face, and I started to tear the robe off him.

  He was strong, very strong, and he struggled violently. But I was much stronger and considerably bigger. And he had his arms caught in the robe, and, in a moment, I had it torn off him and thrown aside.

  “Damn you! Stop this. Damn you!” he said and then came a nice string of threats or curses in his own tongue, but he didn’t dare to shout aloud. And the door was bolted. How would anyone get in to help him?

  I was laughing. I shoved him down into the silk mattress and held him with my hands and my bent knee and looked at him, his long smooth back, the purest skin, and this backside, this muscular unpunished backside, just waiting for me.

  He was struggling like mad. I almost went right into him. But I wanted to do it differently.

  “You’ll be punished for this, you mad and stupid Prince,” he said. And it had conviction, and I liked the sound of it. But I said:

  “Keep your mouth still!” And he went silent with amazing ease. He gathered his forces again and pushed at the bed.

  I rose up just enough to fling him over on his back. I was straddling him and, when he tried to rise, I smacked him as he had smacked me. And in that second, while he lay stunned, I picked up one of the pillows and ripped the silk covering off it.

  It was a nice long piece of red silk, enough to tie his hands. I caught them, slapping him twice again, and tied his wrists, the silk so sheer that it made powerful little knots that all his struggling only strengthened.

  Another ripped cover and I had a gag for him. He opened his mouth in another volley of curses trying to hit me with his bound hands, and I flung his hands back and ran the silk gag right across his open mouth before I tied it behind his head. The open mouth made it easier to tighten, keep in place, and when he tried to hit me again I slapped him over and over slowly until he stopped.

  Of course, none of these were terribly hard slaps. They wouldn’t have affected me much at all. But they were working on him exquisitely. I knew how his head was swimming from them. After all, he had whipped me only moments before in the garden.

  He lay still, his bound hands up above his head. His face was dark red, and the silk gag was a slash of brighter red, with his lips closing on it. But the truly exquisite part was his eyes, his immense black eyes staring at me.

  “You are a beautiful creature, you know,” I said. I could feel his cock nudging my balls. I was still straddling him. I reached down and felt its hard hot length, the wetness at the tip. “You’re almost too beautiful,” I said. “Makes me want to sneak out of this place, with you naked, strapped over my saddle, the way your Sultan’s soldiers stole me. I’d take you out to the desert, make you my servant, beat you with that thick belt of yours, as you watered the horse, fed the fire, made my supper.”

  His body quivered all over. His cheeks teemed with color, despite his dark skin. I could almost hear his heart.

  I moved down and knelt between his legs. He was not moving a muscle now to resist me. His cock was bobbing. But I was finished playing with him. I had to have him now. Then the other spices might be mine—punishing his buttocks.

  I lifted his thighs, hooking my arms under them, and then forced his legs up over my shoulders, lifting his pelvis off the bed.

  He moaned, and his eyes flickered like two fires as he glared at me. I felt the little anus, nice and dry, and I touched my cock, touched it for the first time in all these days of torture, and smeared the moisture seeping from it all over the tip until it was very wet, and then I went into him.

  He was tight but not too tight. He couldn’t lock me out. He moaned again and I went deeper, through the ring of muscle that scraped me and maddened me, until I was well into him. Then I pressed down on him, forcing his legs back against him until he bent his knees over my shoulders, and then I started driving in him, hard. I let my cock slide almost out, then plunge forward, then almost out again, and he sighed against the gag, the silk becoming wet, his eyes glazing over, his beautifully drawn eyebrows contracting. My hand groped for his cock, found it, started stroking it in time with my thrusts.

  “This is what you deserve,” I said through my teeth. “This is what you really deserve. You are my slave here and now, and damn the rest of them, damn the Sultan, the entire palace.”

  He was breathing faster and faster, and then I came, deep inside of him, my fingers closing tight on his cock and feeling the liquid squeeze out, bubble out in spurts as he moaned loudly. It seemed to go on, all the misery of the nights at sea emptied into him. I pressed my thumb into the head of his cock. I squeezed it harder and harder, until all the pleasure had leaked out of me, until I was truly spent, and then I pulled out of him.

  I rolled over and lay back, and closed my eyes for a long moment. I wasn’t finished wi
th him.

  The room was wonderfully warm. No fire can do what the afternoon sun can do in a closed place. And he lay with his eyes shut, his hands above his head still, breathing deeply and quietly.

  He had relaxed his leg and his thigh was against mine.

  After a long moment I said:

  “Yes, what a good slave you’d make.” I gave a little laugh.

  He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. Then he went to move, all at once, and I was on top of him again, pinioning his hands.

  He didn’t try to fight. I got up and stood beside the bed and told him to turn over on his face. He hesitated for a moment. Then he obeyed.

  I picked up the long strap. I looked at his buttocks, and the muscles tightened hard, as if he knew I was looking at him. He shifted his hips slightly on the silk. His head was turned towards me, and he was staring straight past me.

  “Get up on your hands and knees,” I said.

  He obeyed with a certain deliberate grace, and he knelt with his head up and his hands still bound, his body quite a lovely picture. Much leaner than mine. But the grace was marvelous. He was like a fine horse for running, not the steed that could carry a knight, but the more high-strung animal for carrying a courier. The red silk gag seemed such a gorgeous insult to him. Yet he knelt quietly, not resisting. Not trying to tear it loose, which he could have done even with his wrists tied.

  I doubled up the strap and walloped his buttocks. He tensed. I walloped him again. He closed his legs together tightly. That was permissible I thought. As long as he was obedient to all the rest.

  I whipped him hard over and over again, marveling at the way the lovely olive-toned flesh still managed to show the color. He didn’t make a sound. And I went to the foot of the bed so I could swing the strap harder. In a moment, I had nice crisscrosses of dark pink on his flesh. And I swung harder and harder. I was remembering my first whipping at the castle, how it had smarted, how I had struggled and whimpered without ever really moving. How I had tried to divine the meaning of the pain, that I must remain in a lowly position to be whipped for the pleasure of another.

  There was an ecstatic freedom in whipping him, not for revenge or anything so foolish or thoughtful. It was merely the completion of a cycle. I loved the sound of the strap smacking him, loved the way his buttocks had begun to dance a little in spite of his efforts to still himself.

  He was beginning to change all over. With another series of smacks, his head went down and his back arched as though he was trying to draw his buttocks in. Absolutely useless. And then they danced out again, swayed. He moaned. He couldn’t help it any longer. His whole body was swaying, dancing, an overall undulating in response to the strap.

  I knew I must have done that when I was whipped, a thousand times without realizing I was doing it. I’d always been lost in the sound, the sweet, hot explosions of pain, the sudden itching right before the strap hit. I gave him a quick volley of really hard licks, and he moaned in time with each of them. In fact, he wasn’t even trying to rein himself in. His body was glistening with moisture, the redness alive on the surface of his skin, and he was in constant elegant movement.

  I heard a sob against the gag. Good enough. I stopped and went round to the head of the bed and looked at his face. Nice show of tears. But there was no impertinence. I untied his hands.

  “Get off onto the floor with your hands down in front of you and straighten your legs,” I said.

  Slowly, with head bowed, he obeyed. I loved the way his hair fell down in his eyes, the way the gag bound the rest of it. He was thoroughly chastised now. And his backside was nice and hot, burning hot.

  I lifted it high with both hands and I made him walk on all fours that way, buttocks up to my pelvis as I walked behind him. I stepped back and whipped him hard in a good circle around the room, made him go quickly. The sweat poured down his arms. His reddened backside would have gotten compliments at the castle.

  “Come here, stand still.” I said. And I went between his legs again and entered him, startling him, so that he cried out behind the gag.

  I reached out and untied the knot behind his head, but I held the two pieces of silk like horses’s reins, pulling his head up, and I pumped into him, shoving him forward, his head nice and high, the reins holding him. He was sobbing, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from humiliation or pain or both. His backside felt so hot against me, so delicious, and he was so tight.

  I came again, spurting into him in violent jerks. And he bore it, not daring to lower his head, the silk taut in my hands.

  When it was done, I reached under his belly and felt his cock. Hard. He was a good slave.

  I laughed softly. I let the gag drop away. And I went round in front of him.

  “Stand up,” I said. “I’ve finished with you.”

  He obeyed. He was glistening all over. Even his jet-black hair gave off a shimmer. The look in his eyes was mellow and profound, and his mouth looked luscious. We stared into each other’s eyes.

  “You may do what you like with me now,” I said. “I suppose you’ve earned the privilege.” But the mouth— why hadn’t I kissed him? I bent forward—we were the same height—and I did kiss him. I kissed him very tenderly, and he didn’t move to resist me. He opened his mouth to me.

  My cock came up again. In fact, the pleasure washed through me. It started grinding in me. But it didn’t hurt anymore. It was sweet, getting harder and harder and kissing him, this silken giant.

  I let him go. I reached up and felt the line of his jaw where the well-shaven hair was just coming out as it does late in the day. I felt the bristle over his lip, on his chin.

  His eyes had an indescribable luster. It was the soul but the soul through a veil of beauty that was distracting.

  I folded my arms, and I walked over close to the door, and I knelt down there.

  So let all hell break loose, I thought. I heard him moving about, saw out of the corner of my eye that he was dressing, running a comb through his hair, straightening his clothes with quick, angry gestures.

  I knew he was confused. But so was 1. I had never done such things before to anyone, and I had never dreamed how much I would love it, how much I had wanted to do it. I wanted suddenly to cry. And I felt terrified and sad; and half in love with him; and I hated him because he had shown all this to me; and I felt triumphant—all at the same time.

  BEAUTY: MYSTERIOUS CUSTOMS

  IT SEEMED a quarter of an hour had passed, and still the double doors had not closed. Now and then they had moved, creaked on their hinges a little, the opening narrowing, then widening. Beauty, shivering and weeping in the tight gold wrappings, knew that someone was watching her. She tried to still the tumult in her mind, but she could not. And, when panic swept over her again, she struggled violently and uselessly, the bonds holding her quite firmly.

  The door opened wider. And it seemed her heart stopped altogether. She lowered her gaze as best she could with her chin thrust up by the collar. And her tears melted everything into a golden glow through which she saw a richly dressed Lord approaching her. His head was covered by an emerald-green velvet hood embroidered in gold, and his cloak covered him to the floor, his face completely veiled in shadow.

  Quite suddenly Beauty felt a hand on her wet sex, and she swallowed a sob as the hand pulled at her pubic hair and pinched her lips, and then parted them with two fingers. She gasped, biting into her lip, trying to be quiet. The fingers pinched her clitoris and pulled on it, as if to stretch it. She moaned aloud, forgetting to close her lips, and the tears slid down her cheeks faster than before, as a gasp caught in her throat with a low, strangled sound.

  The hand withdrew. She shut her eyes, waiting for the man to move on, to go down the corridor as the others had towards the distant sound of the music. But he remained there, right in front of her, looking at her. And her soft cries echoed abominably in the marble alcove.

  Never before had she been so tightly bound, so helpless. And never had she known s
uch silent tension, as the figure stood before her doing nothing.

  But quite suddenly she heard a small voice, a timid voice, speak to her. It said words she couldn’t understand and the name “Inanna.” With a shock, Beauty realized this was a woman’s voice. It was a woman saying her own name, and Beauty saw that this was no Lord at all, this creature in the emerald cloak. Rather it was the violet-eyed woman from the harem.

  “Inanna,” the woman said again. And she lifted her finger to her lips, gesturing for silence. Her expression wasn’t fearful, however. It was determined.

  And the sight of the woman covered in the splendid green robe subdued Beauty and strangely aroused her. “Inanna,” she thought. “What a lovely name. But what does this creature, Inanna, want of me?” She stared back unabashedly as Inanna looked up at her. Ferocious eyes, they seemed now, and the mouth bittersweet, and the blood dancing underneath the olive skin as it must have danced in Beauty’s face. The silence between them was charged with emotion.

  Then Inanna moved her hand inside her robes and she drew out a large pair of golden scissors. At once, she opened the scissors and slipped them under the silk wrappings that crossed over Beauty’s belly, and she cut the cloth in big slow strokes, easing the cold metal up Beauty’s flesh as the cloth fell away quickly.

  Beauty could not see this happening because of the high collar. But she felt it keenly, felt the scissors’s blade crawling down her left leg and then her right and the tight cloth falling away without a sound to release her. In an instant, she was free of all covering and she could move her arms; and only the collar held her. But Inanna stepped up into the niche and released the hook, and, freeing Beauty from the collar, she took her down out of the niche and towards the doorway.

  Beauty glanced back at the open collar and the abandoned silk. Surely others would discover this. But what could she do? This woman was her Mistress, wasn’t she? She hesitated, but Inanna opened her cloak and covered Beauty with it and took her through the doors and into a large chamber.