Free Exit to Eden by Anne Rice

were the free-wheeling peacocks picking their way here and there through the flowers and the grass.
    It's paradise all right, I thought, and we're pleasure slaves in it, just like something out of an ancient Egyptian tomb painting, where all the slaves had been naked and the lords and ladies exquisitely dressed. We were here to be used and enjoyed like the food being eaten, the wine being poured. We'd slipped into an unexpurgated history of decadence, and found ourselves being driven right through the garden of the quintessential lord.
    I felt my breath give out, but it wasn't the running. It was the flood of sensation, the desire reaching a new pitch.
    The slaves waiting the tables were incredibly poised. I got glimpses over and over of well-oiled bodies adorned only with a bit of silver or collar of white leather, pubic hair and nipples startling me wherever I glanced. And I'm one of these characters, I thought. This is my role and there's no getting away from the script.
    We were driven faster, the handlers smacking us pretty hard with the straps. And the blows were beginning to sting.
    There was that creeping, swelling warmth that excites and weakens at the same time. And while the other slaves pressed to the middle of the path to escape the straps, I didn't bother. I got stubborn and just let the blows fall.
    The path twisted and turned a thousand times. I realized we were going around the garden. We were being shown off. A tiny psychic explosion went off in my brain. There wasn't any escape from this. I couldn't give some code word and check out for a bath and massage.
    In fact, everything was out of my hands. Maybe for the first time in my life.
    We passed very close to a flagstone terrace of tables. Heads turned, members, guests—whatever they were—pointing, commenting. And a young dark-haired handler started really putting on a show with his strap.
    On some level, my reason said: "It's his job to whip the hell out of us, so why resist it? We're here to be reduced to nothing, to surrender our will." But I couldn't keep this in my head. I was already losing some vital perspective, "getting lost"—which was just what I'd told Martin I wanted to do.
    But the scene around us was looking familiar. We were passing the swimming pools again and the high mesh fence of the tennis courts.
    In fact, we'd come around almost to where we started, and now we were driven towards the center of the garden, where the tables fanned out from a large white stage. It was a kind of pavilion you see in small town parks where the band plays on Sundays, but there was a catwalk jutting out from it like the kind they use in fashion shows.
    My blood went cold, or hot, depending on how you see it, when I saw the stage.
    Within seconds we'd been crowded under the mimosa trees behind the pavilion, in the shade. The handlers pushed us roughly together, then told us not to touch one another, and over the loud speaker system there came one of those smooth, liquid radio announcer voices saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, the postulants are now at the pavilion to be viewed."
    For a second the sound of my heart pounded over everything else. Then I heard a roar of clapping rising from the tables. It seemed to echo off the banks of terraces, and then to lose itself in the empty blue sky.
    I could feel the trembling and the anxiety around me as if we were all connected to the same live wire.
    A tall female slave with a lot of sleek golden hair pushed her lovely breasts against me.
    "They aren't going to make us walk down that ramp one by one?" she asked under her breath.
    "Yes, ma'am, I think they are," I found myself whispering back, red-faced at the realization we were two naked slaves trying to talk to each other, scared as hell the handlers would hear.
    "And this is just the start," the red-haired male slave said to my right.
    "Why the hell can't we just serve drinks or something?" the blond said without moving her lips.
    One of the handlers turned around,