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 helplessness, 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 ravishment. 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 gently, even in the rupturing of that fragile tissue, my sundering. I sought his legs, and, finding them, groping, put down my head, kissing his feet. "Thank you, Maser," 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 had at his hip, held by her 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 on 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 sand 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 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 naA?ve 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 curtain 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.