Finally, Beauty felt Inanna was ready, and roughly she pushed her back on the pillows and parted her legs, and spread apart the little sex that had been so butchered. The vital wetness was there, the delicious smoky-tasting fluids that Beauty could lap with her tongue as Inanna's hips rose in snapping spasms. "Yes, darling," Beauty thought, and her tongue drove deep into the sex, licking at the top of the vagina until Inanna's cries became hoarse and unmodulated. "Yes, yes, darling," she thought, and she closed her mouth on the stunted lips, her tongue seeking the deeper, tougher muscles of the little cavity and pumping against them furiously.

Inanna turned and struggled under her. Her hands pushed at Beauty's hair but not with enough will to dislodge Beauty's head, and Beauty, intent upon her task, forced Inanna's thighs up and tilted her sex back and sucked at it even more savagely. "Yes, come, feel it, my little one," she thought, "feel it deeply inside," and she buried her face in the wet swollen flesh, digging faster and deeper with her tongue, her teeth scraping at the tiny pad of scar tissue where the clitoris had been until Inanna lifted her hips with all her strength and cried out, the whole little mouth convulsing violently. Beauty had done it. She had triumphed. And she sucked the throbbing flesh harder and harder until Inanna's cries went almost into a scream and the woman pulled away and buried her face in the pillow, her whole body shaking.

Beauty sat up. She rested back on her hips again, her own sex ripe, and full of pulse like a heart. Inanna lay still, her face still hidden, and then she sat up slowly, looking stunned and witless, and she stared at Beauty. She threw her arms around Beauty's neck, and she kissed Beauty all over her face and neck and shoulders.

Beauty accepted all this. Then she lay back on the pillows and she let Inanna lie next to her. She moved her hand between Inanna's legs, and she put her fingers into the sex.

"Well, this one is stronger than the others," she thought. "And there has been no one to satisfy her."

And only then, as she snuggled with Inanna, did she realize that they might both be in danger. It must be forbidden for the wives to do this, forbidden for the wives to be naked except for and with the Sultan.

And Beauty felt a profound hatred for the Sultan and a sudden desire to leave this realm and return to the land of the Queen. But she tried to put this out of her mind, to enjoy the pure excitement of lying next to Inanna, and she began to kiss her br**sts again.

In fact, it seemed to her that Inanna's br**sts were the most delectable part of her, and she began to knead them as she nibbled at the ni**les. A new sense of abandon came over her. She wasn't trying to please Inanna now so much as she was lost in her own desires, her mouth pulling on the nipple, her mind only dimly aware of Inanna once more moving under her.

She parted her legs over Inanna's thigh and pushed her sex against the smooth skin, her burning clitoris throbbing.

Suckling Inanna's breast, she rode the thigh, up and down, her body stiffening, her legs hugging Inanna, until suddenly the orgasms flooded her.

When it was over, it did not leave her in peace. She felt herself in the grip of a fever. The lushness of Inanna's body and the softness of her own created some new sense of limitless ecstasy, some vague and mad dream of a night of unfolding pleasures, desire building upon desire.

She sucked on Inanna's tongue, the sweetness intoxicating her and carrying her up and out of her drowsiness. And, remembering dimly the spectacle of Lexius impaling Laurent on his gloved fist, she made her hand into a tight knot and moved it through the charred mouth between Inanna's legs.

Wet as before, tight, deliciously tight, the opening gripped her fist and the part of her wrist that also entered, and the muscles pulsed against her hungrily, further exciting her. And when she felt Inanna's clenched hand enter her, she knew again the old pleasure of being filled, her body embracing all these sensations with increasing urgency. She worked Inanna with her fist as Inanna worked her, Inanna's arm pumping with almost punishing roughness.

When they came it was together, moaning into each other, their bodies drenched in warmth and unbroken tremors of pure ecstasy.

Finally, Beauty lay back on the pillow and rested, her arm still wound around Inanna's arm, her fingers playing with Inanna's fingers. She did not open her eyes when Inanna sat up. She was only dimly conscious of Inanna examining her again, Inanna taking her time as she touched Beauty's br**sts and pubic lips, then embracing Beauty and rocking her in her arms as if Beauty were something precious she must never lose: the key to her new and secret realm. She wept again, her tears flowing onto Beauty's face, but the weeping was soft and full of unmistakable relief and happiness.

Chapter 12

LAURENT: THE GARDEN OF MALE DELIGHTS

IT SEEMED a long time passed. I knelt in silence, my head bowed, my hands spread on my thighs, my c**k rising again. The light in the small room had darkened. Late afternoon. Lexius, looking quite composed in his robes, merely stood watching me. Whether it was anger that fixed him there, or bewilderment I couldn't be certain.

But, when he finally came striding across the room, I felt the force of his will, his ability once again to command both of us. He put the c**k strap around my c**k and yanked hard on the leash as he opened the door. In seconds, I was crawling after him. The blood was racing to my head.

And when I saw the garden through the open doors, I felt the faint hope that maybe I wasn't to be specially punished. It was getting dusk already, and the torches on the walls were just being lighted. The lamps hung in the trees gave off their illumination. And the exquisitely bound slaves, their torsos oiled and gleaming, their heads bowed as before, looked as tantalizing as I had thought they would.

There was one change in the picture, however. All the slaves had been blindfolded. Their eyes were masked by gold leather. And I realized that they were struggling in their bonds, moaning softly--moving with more abandon than they had before, as if the blindfolds released them to do so.

Seldom had I been blindfolded. I didn't know what I thought of it--whether it would be good or bad, whether it would make me more or less fearful.

There were more servants at work in the garden. Bowls of fruit were being set down. I could smell the red wine in the open decanters.

A small group of grooms appeared. The Master, whose face I had not glimpsed since I had kissed him, snapped his fingers, and we proceeded to the center of the grove of fig trees, the place where we had been before, and I saw Dmitri and Tristan, bound on their crosses as we had left them. Tristan looked particularly handsome with the blindfold, his golden hair falling down over it.