Beauty's Release (18 page)

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 over to the bed, and sat down beside me.

“Kiss me,” I said. I put my hand up to guide his face. Nice kiss, more robust but less intense than the kisses of Lexius, who was kneeling right behind Tristan. “Now turn and kiss our forlorn Master there,” I said.

Tristan obeyed, slipping his arm around Lexius, and Lexius gave himself to the kiss a little too completely to suit me. And maybe to spite me.

When Tristan turned back, his eyes questioned me directly.

I ignored the question.

“Tell me what happened after I was dismissed. Did you continue to please the Sultan?”

“Yes,” Tristan answered. “It was rather like a dream—being chosen, lying with him finally. There was something so tender in him. He isn’t our Master really. He’s our Sovereign. There’s quite a difference.”

“True,” I said, smiling.

He wanted to say more, but again he glanced at Lexius.

“Let him alone,” I said. “He’s my slave, and he awaits my will, and I’ll let you have him in a moment. But talk to me first. Are you content, or are you still grieving for your old Master in the village?”

“Not grieving anymore,” he said, then he broke off. “Laurent, I was sorry that I had to win over you—”

“Don’t be foolish, Tristan. It was what we were made to do, and I lost because I couldn’t win. It’s as simple as that.”

He looked again at Lexius.

“Why are you tormenting him, Laurent?” he asked, his tone slightly accusatory.

“I’m glad you’re content,” I said. “I couldn’t tell. But what if the Sultan never asks for you again?”

“That doesn’t matter, really,” he answered. “Unless, of course, it matters to Lexius. But Lexius won’t ask the impossible of us. We’ve been noticed, that’s what Lexius wanted.”

“And you’ll be just as happy?” I asked.

Tristan thought for a moment before he answered.

“There’s something very different here,” he said, finally. “The atmosphere is charged with a different sense of things. I’m not lost as I was so long ago at the castle when I served a timid Master who didn’t know how to discipline me. And I am not condemned in shame to the village where I need my Master, Nicolas to retrieve me from chaos and shape my suffering for me. I am a part of a finer, more sacrosanct order.” He studied me. “Do you see my meaning?”

I nodded and gestured for him to continue. It was clear he had more to say, and his expression let me know that he was telling the truth. The misery I’d seen in his face all the time we were at sea was truly gone now.

“The palace is engulfing,” he said, “as the village was. In fact, it is infinitely more so. But we are not bad slaves here. We are merely part of an immense world in which our suffering is offered up to our Lord and his Court whether or not he ever deigns to acknowledge it. I find something sublime in this. It is as if I have advanced to another stage of understanding.”

Again, I nodded. I remembered my feelings in the garden when the Sultan had picked me from the ranks. But this was only part of the many things I could and did feel about this place and what had happened to us. In this room, with Lexius, something different was occurring.

“I began to understand it,” Tristan said, “when we were first taken from the ship and carried through the streets to be viewed by the common people. And it came fully clear to me when I was blindfolded and bound in the garden. In this place we are
nothing
but our bodies,
nothing
but the pleasure we give,
nothing
but our capacity for evincing feeling. All else is gone, and it is quite impossible to think of something as
personal
as whippings on the Public Turntable of the village or the constant education in passivity and submissiveness we knew at the castle.”

“True,” I said. “But without your old Master, Nicolas, without his love as you described, isn’t there a terrible loneliness—”

“No,” he said candidly. “Since we are nothing here, we are all connected to each other. In the village and the castle, we were divided by shame, by individual humiliations and punishments. Here we are joined in the indifference of the Master. And we are all cared for in that indifference and used rather well, I think. It is like the designs on the walls here. There are no pictures of men and women, as you find in Europe. There are only flowers, spirals, repetitive designs that suggest a continuum. And we are part of that continuum. To be noticed by the Sultan for a night, to be valued now and then—that is all we can and should hope for. It is as if he paused in the corridor and he touched the mosaic on the wall. He touched the design as the sun hits it. But it is a design like all the other designs, and, when he moves on, it lapses back into the overall pattern.”

“You’re such a philosopher, Tristan,” I whispered. “You overawe me.”

“Don’t you feel the same? That there is a great order of things here that is in itself rather exciting?”

“Yes, I can feel this,” I said.

His face clouded. “Then why do you upset the order, Laurent?” He asked. He looked at Lexius. “Why have you done this to Lexius?”

I smiled. “I don’t upset the order,” I said. “I merely give it a secret dimension that makes it more interesting to me. Do you think our Lord Lexius couldn’t defend himself if he chose to? He could summon his army of grooms, but he doesn’t.”

I climbed off the bed. I took Lexius’s hands from behind his neck and twisted his arms back so his wrists were firmly held right at his backside. In sum, I trussed him much as we had been trussed with the bracelets and the phallus. I stood him up and forced him to bend over. He was absolutely pliant in all this, though he was crying. I kissed his cheek, and he softened gratefully, but his cock didn’t soften.

“Now, our Lord needs to be punished,” I said to Tristan. “Have you never felt that need? Have a little compassion. He is a mere beginner in this realm. It’s hard for him.”

The tears streamed down Lexius’s face beautifully. The light caught the tears. But another light suffused Tristan’s face as he looked up at Lexius. He rose on his knees on the bed and put his hands on the sides of Lexius’s face. There was love and understanding in Tristan’s expression.

“Look at his body,” I said softly. “You’ve seen stronger slaves, slaves more well muscled, but look at the quality of his skin.”

Tristan’s eyes moved over him slowly, and Lexius cried softly.

“The nipples,” I said. “They’re virginal. Never been whipped, clamped.”

Tristan examined them. “Very lovely,” he said. He watched Lexius carefully. He played with Lexius’s nipples just a little roughly.

I could feel the tension shoot through Lexius, his arms stiffening in my grasp. I pulled them back harder, forcing his chest out.

“And the cock. It’s a good size, a good length, wouldn’t you say?”

Tristan inspected it with his fingers as he had the nipples. He pinched the tip, scratched at it a little with his nails, ran his hand down the length of it.

“I would say he’s as fine a quality as we are,” I murmured, drawing near to Lexius’s ear.

“True,” Tristan said very earnestly. “But he’s too virginal. When a slave’s been used, really well worked, the body is enhanced in some way.”

“I know. If we work on him every time there is the opportunity, we can make him perfect. By the time we are sent home, he will be as good a slave as we are.”

Tristan smiled. “What a lovely thought. What a lovely secret aspect to things.” He kissed Lexius on the cheek. I could see the gratitude in Lexius’s manner, and see Tristan drawn to him, see and feel the current that passed between them.

“Yes,” I answered. “A lovely secret aspect to things. I have found my lover here, as you did in the village. And my lover is Lexius. And I think I will love him all the more in a little while when he punishes me or trains me as he must, when another day dawns here in which he is again the Master.”

Tristan’s cock was hard, his eyes a bit feverish as they moved over Lexius.

“I would like to whip him,” he said quietly.

“Of course,” I said. “Turn around, Lexius.” I let his arms go.

“Bend over and put your hands down between your legs,” Tristan said. He got off the bed so that he could stand behind Lexius, turning him to just the right position. “Gather your balls and keep them covered with your hands and brought forward.”

Lexius obeyed, bending from the waist. I stood beside him. Tristan adjusted the position of his backside, then spread his legs a little wider. He took the strap from me, and then he swung it hard, whipping Lexius right in the crack of his backside.

Lexius winced. I was a little surprised myself at the deliberation of it. But Tristan was clearly not going to waste this opportunity. He seemed the very opposite of the weak Master he had once had who couldn’t work him.

He whipped Lexius again in the same manner, and, moving even farther back, he swung the strap up, smacking the anus and the crack and even the fingers with which Lexius protected his scrotum. Lexius couldn’t keep still. But the whipping went on, moving into a nice cadence. And Lexius wept, his rear rising and falling with his struggles, the strap cracking again and again on the tender flesh between his anus and his lifted scrotum.

I went round to the front and lifted Lexius’s chin. “Look into my eyes,” I said. The whipping continued in very thorough style. This was better than I had hoped it might be. Lexius was biting his lip, gasping. I felt that stirring of feeling again, that fount of affection and love. I was frightened suddenly.

I went down on my knees and kissed him again, and it was just as powerful as before, the strap sending the shudders through him, his tears spilling onto my face.

“Tristan,” I said. Kisses, wet sucking kisses. “Don’t you want him? Don’t you want to show him how it is done properly, give him a good coring?”

Tristan was more than ready.

“Straighten up. I want you standing to take it,” I said.

Lexius obeyed, still holding his scrotum. I was still on my knees looking up at him.

Tristan put his arms around Lexius’s chest, and his fingers found the little virginal nipples.

“Spread your legs,” I said to Lexius. I held his hips as Tristan entered him. And I let my lips touch the hungry, obedient cock, the poor, mastered cock right in front of me.

Then I went down on it to the hairy root, and, just before Tristan came, Lexius came, utterly dissolved in cries and release, so that we both supported him.

 

 

When it was finished and every last vibration of it was gone, he moved sluggishly to the bed, not waiting for any command or permission, and he lay there weeping uncontrollably.

I lay down beside him, and Tristan lay on the other side. I was still hard, but I could save it for the morning, save it for the next round of torment. It was nice just to be next to him and to kiss his neck.

“Don’t weep so, Lexius,” I said. “You know you needed it, you wanted it.”

Tristan reached down between his legs and felt the reddened flesh below the anus.

“It’s true, Master,” he said softly. “How long have you wanted it?”

Lexius quieted a little. He moved his arm around my chest, drawing me even closer to him. He reached out for Tristan in the same way.

“I’m frightened,” he whispered. “Desperately frightened.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “You have us to master you, train you. And we will do it lovingly, at every opportunity.”

We both kissed him and caressed him until he was still. He turned over. I wiped his tears.

“There are so many things I am going to do to you,” I said. “So many things I mean to teach you.”

He nodded, lowering his eyes.

“Do you ... do you feel love for me?” he asked softly, but his eyes were brilliant and clear as they looked up at me.

I was about to answer, of course, that I did, when my voice caught in my throat. I was looking down at him, and I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came. Then I heard myself answer:

“Yes, I do feel love for you.”

And something passed between us, something silent, something locking us together. And this time when I kissed him I claimed him utterly. I shut out Tristan. I shut out the palace. I shut out our distant Lord the Sultan.

And when I drew back I was puzzled. I was the one who was frightened.

Tristan’s face was calm and wistful.

A long moment passed.

“It’s such an irony,” Lexius said under his breath.

“No, it isn’t really. There are Lords in the Queen’s Court who give themselves over to slavery. It happens....”

“No, I didn’t mean that, that I should be so easily mastered,” he answered. “The irony is that it should be you and that the Sultan should find both of you so pleasing. He’s ordered you for the games in his garden tomorrow. You’ll fetch the ball and bring it back to his feet. He’ll pit you against each other in many games for his amusement and the amusement of his men. He’s never chosen my slaves for that before. And he chooses you, and you choose me for this. That is the irony.”

I shook my head. “Again, not really.” I laughed softly. Tristan and I exchanged glances.

“We should rest now for the games, shouldn’t we, Master?” Tristan asked.

“Yes,” Lexius said. He sat up. He kissed us both again. “Please the Sultan and try not to be too cruel to me.” He stood up and he put on his robe, and wound the girdle around it. I got his slippers for him and put them on his feet. He stood waiting for me to finish and then he gave his comb to me. I combed his hair, moving around him as I did it, and the feeling of possessing him, of owning him, transmuted itself into an awesome pride.