Beauty's Release Read Free

secrets.
     
    Yet all of us, despite our differences, our talk of love, were true slaves. That was certain.
    We had been opened up and inalterably changed by our servitude. No matter what our fears and conflicts, we were not the blushing, awestruck beings we had once been. We swam, each at his or her own pace, in the dazzling current of erotic torment.
    And as I lay thinking, I sought to understand the important differences between the castle life and the village life, and to guess what this new captivity in the Sultanate promised us.

LAURENT: MEMORIES OF THE CASTLE AND THE VILLAGE
    I HAD SERVED well for a year in the castle, property of the strict Lady Elvera, who had had me whipped each morning as a matter of course, while she took her breakfast. She was a proud and quiet raven-haired woman with slate-gray eyes, who spent her hours at delicate embroidery. I had kissed her slippers afterwards in thanks for the whipping, hopeful for the smallest crumb of praise—that I had taken the blows well or that she found me handsome still. Seldom did she speak a word. Seldom did she look up from her needle.
    In the afternoons, she took her work to the gardens, and there I coupled with Princesses for her amusement. I had first to catch my pretty prey, which meant a hard chase through the flower beds, and then the blushing little Princess must be carried back and laid at My Lady’s feet for inspection, after which my real performance commenced and must be carried through perfectly.
    Of course, I had loved these moments—pumping my heat into the shy and quivering body beneath me, even the most frivolous Princess shaken by the chase and the capture, and both of us burning under My Lady’s steady gaze as she nevertheless went on with her sewing.
    Pity I had never covered Beauty during this time. Beauty had remained the Crown Prince’s favorite until she fell from grace and was sent down to the village. Only the Lady Juliana was allowed to share her. But I had glimpsed her on the Bridle Path and longed to have her gasping under me. How finely tuned a slave she had been even in the first few days, her form as she marched beside Lady Juliana’s horse quite impeccable. Her hair was golden as wheat as it hung down beside her heart-shaped face; her blue eyes flashed with burnt pride and undisguised passion. Even the great Queen was jealous of her.
    But, looking back on all of it now, I did not for a moment doubt Beauty when she said she had not loved those who claimed her affections. I could have seen, had I looked, that her heart wore no chains then.
    But what had been the particular quality of my life in the halls of the castle? My heart did wear chains. But what had been the essence of my bondage?
    I was a Prince, though bound to serve—a high-born being temporarily deprived of his privileges and made to undergo unique and difficult trials of the body and the soul. Yes, that was the nature of the humiliation: that I should be privileged again after it was over, that I was the equal of those who enjoyed my nakedness and reprimanded me severely for the slightest show of will or pride.
    It was never so clear to me as when Princes from other lands came to visit and to marvel at this custom of keeping royal pleasure slaves. How it had flayed me to be presented to these guests.
    “But how do you make them serve?” they would ask, half astonished, half enchanted. You never knew whether they yearned to serve or command. Do all beings have both inclinations at war within them?
    The inevitable answer to their timid questions was a mere demonstration of our fine training; that we must kneel before them, offering our naked organs for their examination, our upturned backsides to be whipped.
    “It is a game of pleasure,” My Lady would say matter-of-factly. “And this one, Laurent, a beautifully mannered Prince, amuses me in particular. He will one day rule a rich realm.” She would pinch my nipples slowly, then lift my cock and balls in her