Beauty's Release Read Online Free PDF Page B

which she suddenly found herself standing. And she could not help but raise her head to see the great crowds being held back by turbaned men from the ship, hundreds and hundreds of dark faces scrutinizing her and the other captives. There were camels and donkeys piled high with wares, men of all ages in linen robes, most with their heads either turbaned or veiled in longer, flowing desert headdresses.
    For a moment Beauty’s courage failed her utterly. It was not the Queen’s village, this. No, it was something far more real, even as it was foreign.
    And yet her soul expanded as the little clamps were tugged again, as she saw gaudily dressed men appear in groups of four, each group bearing on its shoulders the long gilded rods of an open, cushioned litter.
    Immediately, one of these cushions was lowered before her. And her nipples were pulled again by the mean little leashes as the thong snapped at her knees. She understood. She knelt down on the cushion, its rich red and gold design dazzling her slightly. And she felt herself pushed back on her heels, her legs opened wide, her head bowed again by a warm hand placed firmly on her neck.
    “This is unbearable,” she thought, moaning as softly as she could, “that we will be carried through the city itself. Why were we not taken secretly to His Highness the Sultan? Are we not royal slaves?”
    But she knew the answer. She saw it in the dark faces that pressed in on all sides.
    “We are only slaves here. No royalty accompanies us now. We are merely expensive and fine, like the other merchandise brought from the hold of the ships. How could the Queen let this happen to us?”
    But her fragile sense of outrage was at once dissolved as if in the heat of her own naked flesh. Her groom pushed her knees even wider apart, and spread her buttocks upon her heels as she struggled to remain utterly pliant.
    “Yes,” she thought, her heart palpitating, her skin breathing in the awe of the crowd, “a very good position. They can see my sex. They can see every secret part of me.” Yet she struggled with another little flair of alarm. And the gold leashes were quickly wound around a golden hook at the front of the cushion, which made them quite taut, holding her nipples in a state of bittersweet tension.
    Her heart beat too fast. Her little groom further frightened her with all his desperate gestures that she be silent, that she be good. He was being fussy as he touched her arms. No, she must not move them. She knew that. Had she ever tried so hard to remain motionless? When her sex convulsed like a mouth gasping for air, could the crowd see it?
    The litter was lifted carefully to the shoulders of the turbaned bearers. She grew almost dizzy with an awareness of her exposure. But it comforted her just a little to see Tristan kneeling on his cushion just ahead, to be reminded that she was not alone here.
    The noisy crowd made way. The little procession moved through the huge open place that spread out from the harbor.
    Overcome with a sense of decorum, she dared not move a muscle. Yet she could see all around her the great bazaar—merchants with their bright ceramic wares spread out upon multicolored rugs; rolls of silk and linen in stacks; leather goods and brass goods and ornaments of silver and gold; cages of fluttering, clucking birds; and food cooking in smoking pots under dusty canopies.
    Yet the whole market had turned its chattering attention to the captives who were being carried past. Some stood mute beside their camels, just staring. And some—the young bareheaded boys, it seemed—ran along beside Beauty, glancing up at her and pointing and talking rapidly.
    Her groom was at her left, and with his long leather thong he made some small adjustment of her long hair, and now and then fiercely admonished the crowd, driving it backwards.
    Beauty tried not to see anything but the high mud-brick buildings coming closer and closer.
    She was being carried up an incline, but her