Rannah pretended to consider. “You are most vexatious with your demands. You must be taught the cost of your whims. You may choose: six strokes across your breasts or twenty on your back?”
It was cruel! Stacie longed to weep and to plead. She looked in heartbroken longing at the girl who would whip her. “I wish you would love me,” she said wanly. “I dare not think of my breasts being whipped, I choose the twenty.” Despite her determination her tears flowed.
Rannah was equal to any occasion. She kissed away the tears. The slave knew the kisses were of love and was comforted. For a few glorious moments she was set free, captive only of her handcuffs, able to move as she desired, aching muscles screaming their relief. Then, all too soon, facing the stone with wrist joined to the hook, her feet now awkwardly sideways in their clamps. Her main concern to press her body against the wall so the tip of the lash would not score her breasts and belly.
To be whipped was still a new experience, the shock as great as the first time, the awfulness taxing credulity. Stacie pressed her forehead against the stone and managed not to scream until the seventh cut across the softness of her back. At the tenth Rannah paused.
“I am being kind to my slave. I should have you away from the wall so the lash could curl around you properly. Be thankful.”
“I am grateful, my Lady.” How trite it sounded in the midst of torture.
“Still glad you chose the twenty? You are but half way through.”
How cruel a question! Any answer was wrong. “Yes, my Lady.” Stacie’s voice sounded sad and small. Her tears were bitter.
The thong bit and cracked at the already striped back.
From the neat impacts avoiding a lapping on the stone the victim guessed she was being practiced on. Half the length of the lash was enough to mark the width of her back or shoulders, and this was what she got. Hard snapping blows that welted where they struck and evoked from their recipient a responsive scream. Stacie saw no point in being mute. It helped to scream, she was not gagged, so she screamed. She hoped some of her most piercing cries touched Rannah’s heart. But if they did, the whip bit just as hard.
When it was done, only the whip stopped, the pain went on. The tears were hysterical and could not be quenched. The burning cut of the handcuffs reasserted their demand for help. Pain was everywhere.
The girl with the whip turned the face of her slave away from the wall and studied it, the dust from the stone mingled with the salt teardrops from the eyes. “Was it very bad, slave girl?” she asked gently.
Stacie nodded. She could not speak.
Rannah freed her slave, even taking the handcuffs from the chafed wrists. Instinctively, as before, the sobbing girl fell to her knees and clasped the legs of she who had whipped her. “Thank you, oh thank you . . . !” Her grip was convulsive with emotion.
The dark eyes became tender as they gazed down at the weeping girl and the livid weals across the bent back. A week ago Stacie Blair had been a society girl in New York, the thought was strange. Looking at the lovely nakedness Rannah understood how great the desolation this girl must feel, how nearly mortal the sundering from all she had ever known. She found a seat and allowed the set face with its damp hair to pillow itself within the juncture of her thighs and dry its tears upon her dress.
They had no need of words. They were female, that was enough. Females have an instinct for pain. Whether they give it or receive it they understand its nature and effect. Rannah was training a slave girl. In its way it was like being mother to a child.
“Thank you, Rannah. Oh, please look after me! I’ll never know the right thing to do or say.” The voice was piteous, the hurt face burrowed its way closer to the hidden sex of the girl who gave it refuge.
“I will look after you, slave girl, never fear that I will not. Sometimes my care will hurt you as today.”
“I don’t mind.” Stacie inconsistently sniffed into the fold of cloth.
Rannah leant down and inserted a key in a padlock. The chastity belt fell away and jangled on the floor. Feeling its wearer tense, Rannah laughed gaily. “You will have no further need of it today, I promise you.”
“It is nicer than being entirely naked,” Stacie ventured.
“I like you naked. You have the loveliest cluster of black curls I have ever seen.”
“You have seen many, my lady?” The captive was feeling better.
“As many as you, I expect. You know what school is.”
“Yes, my lady. Is my punishment over for today?”
“You are indeed feeling better. You are becoming feminine and curious. Here, dry your tears.”
Stacie thankfully obeyed. She longed to ask questions, but feared to do so. It was glorious to be free of bonds and to kneel instead of stand stretched and taut and scared. She knew it incongruous to feel the gratitude she did, bet it flowed instinctively. She wanted to say thank you again, but had already said it twice. “You have been very sweet to me,” she said softly instead.
“Sweet! But I have just whipped you!”
“I know.” Stacie managed a grin. “But that’s how I feel. I’m not going to bother trying to understand.”
Rannah nodded quietly, deep in thought. “There is a way for a slave girl to say her thank you,” she said slowly. “I wonder if you know what to do.”
Stacie felt the current along the line that joined them, the invisible bond that linked a slave girl with her mistress. There was something she must do, or something she must say. She knew it important that her next act be the right one. Rannah wanted something of her . . . But what! It would prove or disprove something for the dark-eyed girl . . . something important.
How hard it was to know! She who had never known slavery or even dreamed of it. How hard always to be right now in this strange world. But how great her need . . . ! Rannah was all she had. Rannah was an anchor in a storm of incredulity. Quite plausibly and with certain clarity the answer came. She knelt back straight and held out her hands. “My handcuffs please, my lady.”
She watched, not caring, as the steel bands closed around her wrists and clicked into the now familiar circlets. The eyes of the two girls locked, smiling in their understanding. Without a word the naked girl, her back so gaudily striped by the whip, positioned herself against the wall, her ankles finding their place within the clamps, her joined hands raised above her head. She looked at her mistress with impudent invitation. Rannah nodded in approval, her slave had passed the test. When she had fastened her prisoner securely she kissed her for a long, long time before she went away.
One could chronicle the days, but to what end! They passed! For Stacie they were never the same, each held its own question mark. There was much pain and much discomfort, yet the captive could never feel a certainty that, beyond the first time, she had not been tortured in the true sense of that dread word. Both girls avoided the term. Stacie was torn between thankfulness that her sufferings were no worse and fear of what would eventually befall. The things that happened to her each day could easily be called torture, but she knew they were not. She longed to ask, but did not care. Her owner was sufficiently capricious that a query might provoke the agony she wanted least. Each night her wrist was handcuffed to Rannah’s bed, she slept upon the rug without question or complaint.
Rannah was unpredictable. She sanctioned the intimacy of meals and the talk of feminine things, their companionship was real. At such times Stacie’s impudence might be rewarded with laughter or a whip. The captive felt a great need to know the fate of those other three who had been kidnapped with her, she intruded her queries whenever she deemed the moment propitious.
“Perhaps you would be happier not to know,” Rannah mocked.
“Please tell me. Don’t let me think terrible things.”
“Like you, they have disappeared . . . pouf!” Rannah made an airy gesture. “They are now the most costly merchandise in the world.”