by John Norman
Then he was kissing me about my hips and belly, and then, much lower, above the midpoint of the interior of my thighs.
"Master," I said.
"Oh!" I said. "Oh!"
His hands, and his tongue, and his kisses, were unbelievable!
Suddenly I lifted my hips to him. "Master!" I begged. "Master!"
His large hands were on me, gripping me, holding me an inch or two above the furs. I felt his thumbs. They pressed deeply into me, at the sides of my belly, but did not hurt me. They only held me fixed in place. I could feel the strength of him. I could not even think of escaping that grip.
"Master!" I begged.
I knew then that I belonged in a collar, and so, too doubtless, did he.
"Oh!" I said, frightened.
Then I was tense, waiting.
"Oh," I said, softly, frightened.
He was so strong!
"Oh!" I said, softly.
He kissed me, gently, holding me.
"It is done," I whispered. "It is done!"
He kissed me again.
What a fool I am, I thought to myself, and what a fool he must think me. Of course, it has been done!
I had sensed the parting of that tissue, its giving way, but it had not hurt. I had expected it to hurt. It had not hurt!
"I am no longer special," I said. "I am now only another girl."
He laughed.
What a small thing it had been! There had been nothing to it! What an absurdity to be concerned over so small a thing, so trivial a thing, I thought. I knew that in some women, of course, the matter was not so simple. I was pleased, and relieved, accordingly, that in my case it had all happened so quickly, so simply, so painlessly.
He kissed me again.
I had been opened, I thought. I was now "red silk"!
I was still, of course, locked in his arms. I felt his power and surgency.
He then began to make use of me.
"Master!" I gasped.
Perhaps his patience was then at an end, or perhaps he felt he had waited long enough, or perhaps he found me, suddenly, too beautiful to resist, I did not know, but he then began, with apparently little regard for me, to content himself.
I clung to him, startled.
It may be, of course, that this was merely another kindness on his part, that I be now reminded of my status, that I wore a collar, that I was naught but a slave, I do not know.
"Yes, Master!" I whispered.
I suspect I was not the first girl he had opened. He realized, I think, as I did not, at that time, that at this time there would be severe limitations on my capacity to respond to him, limitations attendant on my opening, and on being a new girl, not yet finding herself the victim of helpless slave needs.
"Master!" I cried.
I clung to him. I jerked my legs. I felt the chain on my left ankle. What can we be but vessels of pleasure to such brutes, I thought. To be sure, the slave must sometimes expect to be used with complete unilaterality. This feature is attendant on her condition. She is, after all, only a slave. Most slaves, incidentally, welcome this, for they treasure their bondage, many of them more dearly than their life, and they know that without it, and such things, they cannot be true slaves. Even such a service, perhaps paradoxically, they find exciting and fulfilling. Too, after one has been a slave for a time, it is difficult to be touched by a man without becoming responsive, and extremely so. Thus a girl is often grateful for her master's touch, and weeps with pleasure in her usage, even when he is not concerned in the least with her. This is a part of her helplessness, and having been made the prisoner of her slave needs.
"Ah," he said, as though interested.
Could I actually be responding to him, this brute who had opened me in a Gorean tavern, this monster who had but a moment ago red-silked me!
"Oh, Master!" I whispered, startled.
Oh, he had been patient, he had been kind, I knew. He could have cuffed me and torn me open in an instant but he had not done so. I was grateful. But now what was he doing to me? What were the sorts of things I was beginning to feel? To be sure, as I would later understand, these were, in their depth, only incipient sensations, little more than the hints of sensations, but even so I did not know, now, how to cope with them. Something here seemed to be different now from the simple, intimate, unbelievable, unspeakable deliciousness of his earlier attentions. Something within me that I now sensed, something deep in my belly but which seemed to radiate out through my whole body, now hinted obscurely of something different, of sensations and feelings, of yieldings and submissions such that I hastily attempted to drive even the thought of them from my mind.
"Ah!" he said again.
I could not help how my body had moved, or how it had gripped him!
We are the submitted and the conquered, I thought. Otherwise we cannot be ourselves!
I tried to push him away, sobbing. But he pressed me the more closely to him.
My hips moved.
He laughed.
I hated him!
"What are men going to do to me?" I asked. "What are they going to make me?"
He tapped with his finger on my collar. He put his hand on my left thigh. I realized, suddenly, that was where my brand was.
"I am already a slave," I sobbed, "totally a slave!"
He laughed, softly. I shuddered. I gathered I had not yet begun to learn my slavery.
Then he began again, having granted me this respite, to make use of me.
"Oh," I said, softly. "Oh!"
It is difficult to make clear the wholeness of this experience, even within its limitations, for as I now understand, and I am sure he understood at the time, it provided me with little more than an inchoate intimation of how I might be subdued and owned in the arms of men. But even so, even at that time, the experience was a startling, astonishing whole. That is something I think many men do not grasp, the wholeness of the sexual experience for the woman, its enhancement and deepening by the beautiful and intricate context, that it is not simply a matter of skillful epidermic stimulations. If it were, for example, I would never have been drawn to the beauties of ethnic dance. Here, of course, in a Gorean alcove, and given our conditions, he free, I a collared slave, who must submit and obey, there was just such a totalistic context. Indeed, the situation of bondage itself is such a context.
"Oh!" I cried, softly. And then I could not believe, suddenly, how tightly I was held. How helpless we are! "Oh," I said, then, and for the first time felt the imperious casting forth within me, seeming to fill my helplessly held body, of a man's triumph. How precious suddenly seemed such stuff to me. We could not make it. We could get it only from men. I had little doubt that in the arms of such a man, had I not had "slave wine," I would have been impregnated. How could my body have resisted such floods of seed? But I knew I had little to fear, or hope for, in such matters. My breeding was not under my own will. It was under the will of masters. It would be controlled, and supervised, and regulated, as carefully as that of any other domestic animal. I needed not fear pregnancy until the matter had been decided otherwise by masters.
I clung to my use master. I did not want him to let me go, not yet.
Then I was afraid and angry. With what insolence, with what arrogance, he had cast his seed within me! And I must endure such things, as it pleased him! How he had held me, and then loosed himself within me! What arrogance, what insolence! He had not asked my permission. He had simply taken me, as a slave might be taken! Did he not know I was from Earth? Did he think I was only another Gorean girl? But I realized, then, that here I was perhaps even less than a Gorean girl, and, at best, only another slut in a collar.
"Please do not let me go, Master," I begged. "Hold me, please."
He then for a time kept me in his arms.
I was not displeased to be a woman.
It was what I wanted to be, if there were such men.
I clung to him. He kissed me. "Thank you, Master," I whispered. It was lonely and
dark inside the hood, but his body was warm. In a way I was pleased to be hooded. Otherwise I might have fallen in love with him. As it was, and this was according to the will of masters, I could not relate to him as a woman to a man, but only as a woman to any man, or men.
I heard sounds in the tavern outside.
I knew I was now a red-silk paga slave. I heard slave bells outside, the sort sometimes fastened on slaves, on their ankles, their wrists, their collars. Perhaps those I heard were bound on Tupita's or Sita's well-turned ankle.
I clung yet more closely to him.
I was troubled.
He had made me begin to feel sensations, though doubtless I was now ready for them, which had alarmed me, sensations which spoke to me of female helplessnesses, and of female helplessnesses beyond them, and perhaps even beyond them, intriguing, fascinating helplessnesses, helplessnesses dimly sensed and terribly feared, yet somehow desperately longed for, of which I could scarcely conjecture.
He then thrust me away.
I lay there, in the darkness of the hood. I felt a coolness on my left thigh, like a thread. I had not noticed it before. I knew what it must be. I did not touch it.
I heard him dress.
He came back and, I think, crouched beside me. I felt his thumb rubbing on the interior of my left thigh. I then heard him pick up a sheet of paper and, seemingly, clean his thumb on the paper. He then rubbed his fingers on my thigh and lifted them gently to my mouth. "Yes, Master," I said. Obediently I licked his fingers, finding on them, sweet with sweat and oil, the dampness of my virgin blood. I thus, being granted the permission of my use master, tasted the fruits of my own first ravishing. The paper on which he had smeared blood was doubtless the attestation paper, the blood being presumably put at the bottom, in the place for it.
I sensed him stand.
I knelt before my use master. I put out my hand to him.
He had been kind to me. He had been patient with me. He had been gentle, even in the rupturing of that fragile tissue, my virgin's defense, that mockery of a wall made for a man's sundering. I sought his legs, and, finding them, groping, put down my head, kissing his feet. "Thank you, Master," I said.
I heard a slave girl crying out with pleasure outside. I shuddered. She must be being used so simply as having been flung across one of the tables, perhaps her hair and back in spilled paga.
I lifted my head, in its hood, to him. "Do not leave me," I begged. "Stay with me!"
He said nothing. This was in accordance, of course, with the custom in Brundisium, and in certain other cities, that in the light of which I had been given my first ravishing.
I then heard the snap of a slave whip outside the leather curtain, rather close to it, and a girl's cry of pain. "We are going to the alcove, slave!" I heard. "Yes, Master!" she cried. It was Sita. I heard her then, probably, judging by the jangling of slave bells, being conducted, stumbling, to an alcove. Probably he had her head at his hip, held by the hair. "Yes, Master!" she was weeping, her voice fading. "Yes, Master!"
"Please," I begged, frightened. "Please!"
He was silent.
"Please, Master," I wheedled.
He had been kind. It seemed possible to me then, that he might be weak, like the men of Earth, that perhaps I could manipulate him. What a fool I was! Did I not understand he was a Gorean male?
"Please, Master!" I begged, prettily.
His only answer was a cuff that threw me to one side, startled, where I crouched, disbelievingly, at the end of the chain. Then he took me and thrust me to my back on the furs and, as he had before, when we had first come to the alcove, manacled my hands at the sides of my head. He then removed the shackle from my left ankle.
My lip had been cut by his blow. I could taste blood there. "Master?" I asked.
Then I felt him, and I could not have stopped him, had I wished to do so, as I was chained, remove the white-silk ribbon from my collar. In a moment he had fastened something else there, in its place, doubtless another ribbon, doubtless the red-silk ribbon which had been given to him earlier by Mirus. He jerked it down on the collar, snugly.
He was then, I think, crouching near me. I pulled at the manacles. I was helpless. There was another trickle of blood on my leg. He put his thumb in this and scrawled a 'Kef' on my belly, the first letter of 'Kajira'. Then I felt the whip thrown beside me. "Master!" I wept. "Forgive me, if I have been displeasing, Master! Please, forgive me!" I recoiled, whimpering, from a kick, from the side of his foot. Then I heard him unbuckling the leather curtain, and leaving. I was helpless in the alcove. "Master!" I called after him, "Master!" I tried to rise but, by the chains, was prevented from doing so. I sank back, miserable, on the furs. He had been kind to me, and the first thing I had tried to do was to take advantage of him, to bend him to my will. I had then been cuffed. Then he had chained me. Too, he had thrown the whip against me, and had kicked me, showing me his contempt for me, a caught, would-be manipulative slave. Then he had left. I moaned. What a fool I had been! He was Gorean! Had I not understood that it was I who was the slave, and he the master? Perhaps the whip had been flung against me to remind me of my subjectability to it. Or perhaps he had flung it there that my master, or his man, might understand, when he came to unchain me, that at the least failure in my pleasingness I was due for a whipping. Yet he himself had not used it on me. That was perhaps yet another evidence of his kindness, or of his understanding and patience with me, his recognition that I was still naught but an ignorant and naive novice with respect to the rigors of my bondage. Had I irritated him further, however, I do not doubt but what he himself would have used it on me. As it was, he had not been pleased when he had left me. If he were to use me again, in the future, I feared he would be merciless with me, treating me as the foolish and errant Earth woman I had been.
"Master?" I asked. I had heard the curtains being parted. "Master!" I said, elatedly. "Master?"
But then I felt my ankles flung apart.
"Oh!" I said, suddenly and smoothly penetrated, deeply.
I lay there, absolutely still.
This was not the same man!
I did not dare to move, so penetrated.
He made an animal noise.
"Master?" I asked.
I was very alive to him, so much so that I was unwilling to move.
"Dance," said Tupita, apparently from the opening of the alcove. There was laughter there, too, mostly that of men. The curtain I realized had not been drawn!
"He wants you to dance, slave," laughed Tupita. "You are a dancer. Go ahead, dance."
I moaned.
"Did you see the "Kef" on her belly?" asked Tupita.
"Yes," said a man.
"It belongs there," she said.
"Yes," agreed another fellow.
"There is now a red-silk ribbon on your collar, Doreen," said Tupita. "What is the meaning of that?"
"That I have been red-silked, Mistress," I said.
"Yes," said Tupita.
"Close the curtain, Mistress!" I begged.
"Why?" asked Tupita. "Are you modest?"
"No, Mistress," I sobbed. Slaves are not permitted modesty.
"You are now only a red-silk slut, Doreen," she said, "no different from the rest of us!"
"No, Mistress," I said.
"And do not forget it," she said.
"No, Mistress," I said.
There was laughter.
"Do you hear pounding?" asked Tupita.
"She has already been pounded," said a man.
There was laughter.
"Listen," said Tupita.
I could then hear pounding. It was far off, somewhere perhaps in the front of the tavern.
"Do you hear it?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"Do you know what it is?" she asked.
"No, Mistress," I said.
"It is your attestation paper, together with your white ribbon, being nailed to the wall in the vestibule of the tavern," she said. "It is there
now with mine, and Sita's, and those of some of the other girls."
I did not respond.
"But not with Inger's," said a fellow.
"No," laughed Tupita.
Several of the fellows laughed. Inger, from distant Skjern, had been taken by Torvaldslanders. She was voluptuous. Too, Torvaldslanders seldom deliver virgins to the slave markets.
"You are fortunate that I am not a man," laughed Tupita.
"Mistress?" I asked, puzzled.
"In the case of a man, the repetition of a command is commonly a cause for discipline."
"A command, Mistress?" I asked, frightened.
"Yes," she said.
I knew that Tupita was having her sport with me, but, too, I knew that she might beat me tomorrow, in the slave area. As first girl she had that privilege. I did not want her to whip me, or switch me, or have the other girls put my ankles over the low bar and tie them there, and then have her spank the soles of my bare feet with the springy, flat board. It is very painful, and it is hard to walk after it.
"What command?" I asked, frightened.
"'Dance,'" laughed Tupita.
"Mistress, I am chained!" I said. "I am held!"
"Dance," said a man, from the entryway of the alcove.
Immediately I did what I could.
There was laughter from the entryway, and a grunt of pleasure from him in whose arms I lay slave captive.
I had been commanded by a man. I obeyed immediately, or did my best to obey. If a command needs to be repeated, as the saying goes, the girl needs to be punished. If the girl thinks, however, that the command may have been, say, an inadvertence, or mistake, or that the master might relent, or something along these lines, she might, say, beg or inquire. She is reassured of the intent and seriousness of the command if, for example, she is asked if the command need be repeated, which eventuality she will presumably be anxious to avoid. If she has, sincerely, and not as a girl's trick, not understood the command, or has not heard it, or fears she may not have heard it correctly, she may also inquire into the matter, of course, and normally without penalty. In such cases the repetition of a command is not regarded as cause for discipline. A girl is seldom punished for trying to be pleasing, at least at first. If her efforts continue to fail, however, that is a different matter. The whip is an absolutely marvelous instructional device for improving female conduct.