They were coming to a pair of doors. And with a shock, she saw that a male slave was fixed to one door and a female slave to the other. And these two were not wrapped, but rather completely naked. Gold bands around the foreheads, the legs, waist, neck, ankles, and wrists held each flat to the door with knees wide apart, the soles of the feet pressed together. The arms were fixed straight up over the head, palms outward. And the faces were still, eyes cast down, and the mouths held artfully arranged bunches of grapes and leaves that were gilded like the flesh so that the creatures looked very much like sculptures.
But the doors were opened. The slaves passed these two silent sentinels in a flash.
And the pace slowed as Beauty found herself in an immense courtyard, full of potted palm trees and flower beds bordered in variegated marble.
Sunlight dappled the tiles in front of her. The perfume of flowers suddenly refreshed her. She glimpsed blossoms of all hues, and for one paralyzing instant she saw that the vast garden was filled with gilded and caged slaves as well as other beautiful creatures fixed in dramatic positions atop marble pedestals.
Beauty was made to stop. The leashes were taken from her mouth. And she saw her groom gather up her own leashes as he stood beside her. The thong played between her thighs, tickling her, forcing her legs a little apart. Then a hand smoothed her hair tenderly. She saw Tristan to her left and Laurent to her right, and she realized that the slaves had been positioned in a loose circle.
But all at once the great crowd of grooms began to laugh and talk as though released from some enforced silence. They closed in on the slaves, hands pointing, gesturing.
The slipper was on Beauty’s neck again, and it forced her head down until her lips touched the marble. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Laurent and the others were bent in the same lowly posture.
In a wash of rainbow colors the silk robes of the grooms surrounded them. The din of conservation was worse than the noise of the crowd in the streets. Beauty knelt shuddering as she felt hands on her back and on her hair, the thong pushing her legs even wider. Silk-robed grooms stood between her and Tristan, between her and Laurent.
But suddenly a silence fell that utterly shattered the last of Beauty’s fragile composure.
The grooms withdrew as if swept aside. And there was no sound except the chattering of birds, and the tinkling of wind chimes.
Then Beauty heard the soft sound of slippered feet approaching.
2 Examination in the Garden
It was not one man who entered the garden, but a group of three. Yet two stood back in deference to one who advanced alone and slowly.
In the tense silence, Beauty saw his feet and the hem of his robe as he moved about the circle. Richer fabric, and velvet slippers with high upturned curling toes, each decorated by a dangling ruby. He moved with slow steps, as if he was surveying carefully.
Beauty held her breath as he approached her. She squinted slightly as the toe of the wine-colored slipper touched her cheek, and then rested upon the back of her neck, then followed the line of her spine to its tip.
She shivered, unable to help herself, her moan sounding loud and impertinent to her own ears. But there was no reprimand.
She thought she heard a little laugh. And then a sentence spoken gently made the tears spring to her eyes again. How soothing was the voice, how unusually musical. Maybe the unintelligible language made it seem more lyrical. Yet she longed to understand the words spoken.
Of course, she had not been addressed. The words had been spoken to one of the other two men, yet the voice stirred her, almost seduced her.
Quite suddenly she felt the chains pulled hard. Her nipples stiffened with a tingling that sent its tentacles down into her groin instantly.
She knelt up, unsure, frightened, and then was pulled to her feet, nipples burning, her face flaming.
For one moment the immensity of the garden impressed her. The bound slaves, the lavish blooms, the blue sky above shockingly clear, the large assemblage of the grooms watching her. And then the man standing before her.
What must she do with her hands? She put them behind her neck, and stood staring at the tiled floor, with only the vaguest picture of the Master who faced her.
He was much taller than the little boys – in fact, he was a slender giant of a man, elegantly proportioned, and he seemed older by virtue of his air of command. And it was he who had pulled the chains himself and still held the handles.
Quite suddenly he passed them from his right hand to his left. And with the right hand, he slapped the undersides of Beauty’s breasts, startling her. She bit down on her cry. But the warm yielding of her body surprised her. She throbbed with the desire to be touched, slapped again, for an even more annihilating violence.
And in the moment of trying to collect her wits, she had glimpsed the man’s dark wavy hair, not quite shoulder length, and his eyes, so black they seemed drawn in ink, with large shining beads of jet for the irises.
“How gorgeous these desert people can be,” she thought. And her dreams in the hold of the ship suddenly rose to mock her. Love him? Love this one who is but a servant like the others?
Yet the face burnt through her fear and agitation. It seemed an impossible face suddenly. It was almost innocent.
The ringing slaps came again, and she stepped back before she could stop herself. Her breasts were flooded with warmth. At once, her little groom thrashed her disobedient legs with the thong. She steadied herself, sorry for the failure.
The voice spoke again and it was as light as before, as melodious and almost caressing. But it sent the little grooms into a flurry of activity.
She felt soft, silken fingers on her ankles and on her wrists, and before she realized what was happening, she was lifted, her legs raised at right angles to her body and spread wide by the grooms who held her, her arms forced straight up in the air, her back and head supported firmly. She shivered spasmodically, her thighs aching, her sex brutally exposed. And then she felt another pair of hands lift her head, and she peered right into the eyes of the mysterious giant of a Master, who smiled at her radiantly.
O, too handsome he was. Instantly, she looked away, her lids fluttering. His eyes were tilted upwards at the outsides, which gave him a slightly devilish look, and his mouth was large and extremely kissable. But, for all the innocence of the expression, a ferocious spirit seemed to emanate from him. She sensed menace in him. She could feel it in his touch. And, with her legs held wide apart as they were, she passed into a silent panic.
As if to confirm his power, the Master quickly slapped her face, causing her to whimper before she could stop herself. The hand rose again, this time slapping her right cheek, and then the left again, until she was suddenly crying audibly.
“But what have I done?” she thought. And through a mist of tears she saw only curiosity in his face. He was studying her. It wasn’t innocence. She had judged wrongly. It was merely fascination with what he was doing that flamed in him.
“So it’s a test,” she tried to tell herself. “But how do I pass or fail?” And shuddering, she saw the hands rising again.
He tilted her head back and opened her mouth, touching her tongue and her teeth. Chills passed over her. She felt her whole body convulse in the hands of the grooms. The probing fingers touched her eyelids, her eyebrows. They wiped at her tears, which were spilling down her face as she stared at the blue sky above her.
And then she felt the hands at her exposed sex. The thumbs went into her vagina, and she was pulled impossibly wide as her hips rocked forward, shaming her.
It seemed she would burst with orgasm, that she couldn’t contain it. But was this forbidden? And how would she be punished? She tossed her head from side to side, struggling to command herself. But the fingers were so gentle, so soft, yet firm as they opened her. If they touched her clitoris, she would be lost, incapable of restraint.