She reached up for the gold ribbon at her throat and opened the fragile knot there, the heavy black cloak falling away from her to a puddle of shadow around her naked feet.

“Come to me,” she whispered as she opened her arms.

I embraced her tightly, my sex tortured against her smooth flesh. Her mouth opened and I kissed her hungrily, desperately. “Beauty, my precious unforgettable Beauty,” I whispered. “Oh, I have been haunted by you so long, my sweet. If only you knew.” I was breathing these words, not really speaking them, kissing her hair now, kissing her cheeks, her eyes. All the cruel moments of the old kingdom came back to me, the moment when I’d been told Beauty was gone, condemned to the village, beyond my reach, beyond hope of another night of secret lovemaking. Ah, the anguish of that I wanted never to know again.

Suddenly I took her breasts cruelly in my hands, cupping them and lifting them, and I sucked at her right nipple. She was mine now, once again, here, and I did not care really what happened. I had to possess her.

A low muffled cry came from her.

“Alexi,” she said.

I felt her tumbling towards me, weightless, and without will, a bundle of fragrant, delicious limbs, of moist lips and tangling hair.

I gathered her up in my arms and moved towards the bed. I reached to remove the coverlet.

“No, my love, no. Press me down on it, rough as it is, on all those tiny little jewels. I want to feel them against my bottom and my back.”

I laid her down with her head on the pillow, her shining hair a tousled nest beneath her.

Her sex was ripe and beautiful as she stretched her legs, the secret lips wet and gleaming in the light of the fire, like a secret rose in a wreath of golden hair.

“That’s it,” she said, reaching out for me.

I bent over and kissed her belly, and kissed the curling secretive hair, my tongue darting at her nether mouth, licking at it, licking at the petals of the deep dark bloodred rose.

“No, come up in my arms,” she said. “I want your cock inside of me. Don’t tease me with your tongue.”

I obeyed, straddling her on my knees.

“This first time must be quick, for both of us.”

I could hold back no longer.

I slid my cock into her, feeling the little mouth clamp down on it hungrily, and the world was nothing but fire. My whole cock was sheathed with her flesh. I could feel her throbbing against me even as she tugged at me with her arms, even as her lips rose to kiss me, her eyes closed, a low moan coming from her as subtle as her perfume.

She writhed against the coverlet, twisting and turning on a bed of twinkling stars.

I clamped my mouth to her lips and rode her hard, thrusting wildly, uncontrollably, slamming against her as freely as if she were a tavern maid, or anyone I had ever utterly possessed.

Her face went bloodred beneath me, her eyes fluttering, her mouth slack as though she were losing consciousness, and then the sheath that held my cock tightened against it in one clamping spasm after another.

“Beauty,” I cried out. I could hold back no longer. I shot the fire into her, bucking over and over again. As always, time stopped and the ecstasy seemed to go on forever, to have lifted me forever out of time and out of reason. And then it was finished, and I lay breathless and damp all over, and quiet beside her. Now I felt the prickling of this bed of jewels. Now I felt it biting into my skin and I didn’t care.

How long will this last, I thought. She’s made a boy out of me, taken me right back down to the boy I was for the old queen, ever hard, ever ready to please, ever ready to do her will, and never able to resist her.

Yet I thought about Laurent, not the mighty King Laurent, but the slave Laurent, the great and legendary slave of long ago. I remembered him vividly. He’d been at the castle as long as I had before he ran away and was sent to the village. All marveled at his height, his strength, the thickness of his organ, and his perfectly proportioned face and devilish smile. The faces of slaves had always mattered. And his expression had been irresistible—so affectionate and generous and yet mocking, yes, mocking, always. What was I by comparison, a more delicate smaller man in every single regard. So be it. Her husband she had anytime she wished. Perhaps I was a spicy dish for a summer night when the regular fare, grand as it was, had grown too familiar. Well enough. I accepted it.

I was too grateful now that we had had this. I turned towards her and gazed at her profile as she lay, as if dreaming, with her eyes closed. Her loose disheveled hair was almost entirely straight, no curl or wave at all, and lovely to look at as it covered the pillow.

I touched her soft pink lips with my fingers.

“I loved you in that long-ago time when we were together,” I said. “I love you now. I loved so many who served with me.”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I loved so many as well. I loved Tristan, and I loved Captain Gordon, and I loved you, yes, you. I loved the cruel innkeeper who punished me with such disdain. Mistress Jennifer Loxley. You never knew her. I loved the strange men and women of the Sultan’s kingdom. I loved Lexius, the Sultan’s steward who was so strict with us, and yet. . . . We were swimming in love in those times.”

“That’s why we want it to be preserved,” I said. “That’s why we have come back to the kingdom, that’s why we want to save it now.” I did not tell her that I knew Lady Jennifer Loxley very well indeed now. I did not tell her how well I knew Lexius.

“I know, Alexi,” she said. “I understand. And surely you know that the decision belongs to Laurent. Oh, I might persuade him not to take the crown of Bellavalten, yes, but I could never persuade him to take it if that was not his wish.”

“But what do you want, Beauty?”

“I want it!” She sat up and turned to me, looking down on me, her hand lying on my thigh, close to my cock. “I want it with all my heart,” she said excitedly. “But I don’t know that I know how to rule or command others when it comes to the old ways of pleasure slavery. I took to submission so effortlessly. I found it voluptuous. Why lie about it? But Queen Eleanor—she was a monarch carved out of ice.”

“That’s true, but she was not what you are, Beauty. She had none of your mystery, your complexity! Beauty, she was— Ah, I don’t want to say unkind things of her now. She was the dark heart of the kingdom. But you bring grace and wisdom to the enterprise. Besides, why would you have to command pleasure slaves yourself? I mean, of course, yes, you and your lord would be our monarchs. But you would have a realm of servants to do the commanding of slaves for you. You would have Lady Eva. You would have old Lord Gregory. You would have a hundred lords and ladies at Court who know how to command the slaves who serve them. You would rule over those who know how to command and those who must obey in whatever fashion pleases you.”

“I want more,” she said. She was irresistible to me in her seriousness, the deep thoughtful expression on her face. “If I’m to rule, I must be part of what I rule. I must be of the same fabric, not some lofty figurehead gazing on all with aloofness and even fear. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I think I understand.”

She looked girlish and innocent again, her flaxen hair falling down to veil her nipples. “I want to be a true queen if we do it. I want to learn how to be as strict and demanding as the old queen. I want to see from that point of view, which I never truly grasped, you understand?”

“That will come more easily to you, perhaps, than you know,” I said. She was such a vision that I had to force myself for the moment to concentrate on the thread of her words. I wanted her crushed beneath me again, helpless and yielding.

“Has it come easily to you?” she asked. “You were such an obedient and near-perfect slave.”

“Yes, it did come to me, the ability to command,” I confessed. “I found it surprising at the time. But yes, it came to me. You spoke just now of Lexius, the steward of the Sultan, brought back with you from the sultanate by Laurent.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes, such a beautiful man. Dark golden skin, gorgeous dark eyes. Eyelashes so thick they seemed unreal. He was our grand master under the Sultan, inspecting us, instructing us, punishing us, and then Laurent made a slave out of him in a flash. Why, Laurent made a slave of Lexius in secret before we were ever rescued from the sultanate. And then in the hold of the ship on our return voyage, Laurent was merciless. Oh, my lord is such a devil! What did happen with Lexius when he was brought before the Queen? I was gone by then, expelled into the ‘real’ world.”

“The Queen accepted him,” I explained. “Oh, at first she balked. Slaves were not to choose her, she declared; she was to choose her slaves. How little she understood! But she accepted him soon enough, and he became her beloved plaything as I was. He was magnificent. So stately, tall, so languid in his smallest gestures. He submitted with such irrepressible dignity.” I smiled, thinking of it, remembering it, remembering the glint of the light on his dark chest, on his black hair. “He adored her. But . . . we came to have our secrets, Lexius and I. . . .”

“As you had with me.”

“Yes, only with Lexius, it was different. After a year, I began to play the cruel master with him in the small hours of the night while the Queen slept.” I knew I was still smiling. Bad things had come to pass, but not from our lovemaking.