Exit to Eden by Anne Rice

pressed against me, the incarnation of softness, and I turned and kissed her large and puckering mouth. I could see the feeling penetrating her, coursing through her limbs, her nakedness offering up everything. Could she feel the stiffness in me? She tightened her eyebrows, her lips open, when I let her go.
    "There's no time now," I whispered. It wasn't necessary, really, to tell her that. She was as well trained as any slave I'd ever had. But there was that softness between us, and it excited her just as much as the remoteness that always brought the tears to her eyes.
    I turned on the computer video display, quickly tapping out Preliminary Report on the bed of white plastic keys. At once the silent string of glittering green letters began its march across the screen. Fifty new slaves. I was astonished at the number.
    Thirty I knew about from the auction, but there were twenty independent sales.
All
two-year contracts! So our new rules and regulations were working. I hadn't expected it so early, I'd thought surely we'd be stuck with some six-monthers or at least yearlies who would be released just when they had reached their prime. We need two years really to train a slave, and get our money's worth out of him or her, but many just aren't ready for that.
    Now time for the hard copy.
    Each file has a large picture of the slave on the inside cover. I went through them fast. I threw aside six, seven, ten immediately. Beauties all, and someone would love them and torment them. But not me.
    But here was a gorgeous woman, with heaps of brown hair in big natural ringlets, American oval face.
    I released myself slowly from Diana, guiding her down to put her arms around my waist. I could feel her delicious weight against me, her forehead nudging my belly, and with my right hand I stroked her hair. She was trembling. She was always jealous of the new slaves. And her breasts felt very hot. I could almost feel her heart beating.
    "Did you miss me?" I asked.
    "Desperately, Lisa," she said.
    Kitty Kantwell, I memorized the name of the slave in the file. She was tall by the chart, five foot six inches, that would make her fun to handle, and the IQ was listed as remarkably high. Master's Degree in journalism, well traveled, television weather girl in Los Angeles, own talk show in San Francisco for a while, trained in a private club in Bel Air by a Parisian named Elena Gifner. I didn't know the trainer. But we had bought good merchandise from Gifner before. I flipped back to the picture.
    "And were you worked much?" I asked. I had deliberately left permission Diana could be worked. She needed it. Maintenance wasn't enough.
    "Yes, Lisa," she said. I could hear the break in her voice. I lifted her hair back from her neck. She was hot all over. I knew the hair between her legs would be drenched.
    The brown-haired girl in the picture was definitely an American Beauty-
Playboy
centerfold type, perfect weather girl all right. I could see her on the nightly news. Round-eyed, big-eyed, like Diana, but something mundane about her, even with the lovely bone structure. But then, there was the strong intelligence in the face, the touch of inquisitiveness. Wholesome American girl, with cheerleader breasts.
    Definitely have a look at this one.
    I sipped the gin and hurried, cracking back the stiff covers one after another. Diana was kissing me.
    "Be still."
    I was staring at a photograph of a man.
    Blond-haired, six foot two by the chart. But I looked back to the photograph, unable for a moment to understand my reaction, its intensity, unless it was the expression on the man's face.
    They don't often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward as though they were being photographed by the law. Sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. They're going into captivity, they don't know what's going to happen, maybe it's all a mistake. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there.
    Thick blond hair,