"Yes, Master," she said. "I am a new girl, who is being introduced into the house."
Then I gave her ten strokes. This seemed to me a suitable number for such a purpose. She shook, gasping, in the bracelets. I timed the blows mercifully, and uniformly. I did not use a random timing, nor did I use a customized timing, in which the blows are indexed to the particular psychological and, emotional condition of the individual slave. There are many ways to beat a girl. Against several of them there is no way that a woman can maintain resistance. I did not strike her with my full strength.
"Master kissed me earlier," she gasped, happily. "And Master did not strike me as hard as he might have!" She drew in a deep breath, and put her head back, delightedly. "I think that Master might care a little for his slave!" she laughed.
Angrily I went to the wheel at the side of the room, that to which the chain was attached. I put the whip on its hook, and angrily disengaged the wheel, and then turned it. "Oh!" she cried, suddenly drawn, painfully, to the very tips of her toes under the chain. I then locked the wheel in place, and seized again the whip from its hook. "Please, forgive me, Master!" she cried. "I am nothing! I am only a slave!" I then struck her ten times, savagely, with the unrestrained strength of a man. "Forgive me, Master!" she cried. "Oh!" she screamed. Then, sobbing, fighting for breath, she could only endure. After the tenth blow she hung helplessly in the bracelets, her full weight on the chain. I examined the beaten slave. I did not think she would soon again be presumptuous. Such presumptions, she had now learned, might entail penalties. Too, after this beating, I thought her position in the house might be clearer to her.
I tapped her on the back of the left shoulder with the whip. One more blow was to be struck.
"Yes, Master," she said, "that blow which is to remind me that I am a slave."
I then stood again behind her, and to her left. I grasped the handle of the slave whip with two hands. Then again, with unrestrained force, the hardest blow of all, was she struck. She cried out in pain. Then, again, sobbing, she hung in the bracelets, a whipped slave. This last blow is often, though not invariably, added to a slave's whipping. It is sometimes referred to as the gratis blow, or the mnemonic blow. Often it functions as little more than a stroke for, say, good measure. To be sure, whatever its purpose, it makes it very clear to the slave that she is fully under discipline, and that the master may, if he wishes, beat her how, when and as much as he pleases.
I went then to the side of the room. I replaced the slave whip on its hook. I released the wheel. With a rattle of chain the girl fell to her knees beneath the ring. I removed the bracelets from her and, by means of the wheel, returned the bracelets and the chain to their original positions. In place, overhead, rather toward one side of the room, they were visible, but not obtrusive. A girl, in her labors, might pass to and fro in the room many times a day, and not think of them, or notice them. But if she were to look for them, she would see them.
I looked to the girl who, naked, her face almost fully covered by the slave hood, knelt under the ring, on the tiles. I went and stood before her. Sensing my nearness she timidly put out her small hands, touching my calves and ankles. Then she put herself on her belly before me, her lips over my feet. "Forgive me for having displeased you, my Master," she said. I felt her lips upon my feet, kissing them. It is pleasant to have a beautiful slave at one's feet, thusly. "I am your slave, my Master," she said, "and I love you. I love you."
Slowly she drew herself to her knees, still keeping her head down, kissing at my feet and ankles. "I love you, my Master," she said. "I love you." Then, slowly, kissing at my feet and legs, and holding them, she straightened her body before me. She lifted her head, in the hood. I saw her lips tremble. "I am totally yours, my Gorean master," she said. "I submit myself to you, fully, in all things, as your total and abject slave. Do with me as you will. I am yours."
I then disengaged her hands from my legs, and stepped back. She extended her hands, piteously. "Master," she said, "have I displeased you?" She seemed small, forlorn and lost, on the tiles. "I shall try to overcome whatever might linger of my Earth-girl frigidities," she said. "I will try to be a full Gorean slave to you." I smiled to myself. An Earth woman brought to Gor and properly imbonded often proved to be among the hottest of slaves. "Have mercy on me, Master," she begged. "Please do not kill me!" I removed from its peg on the wall an opened slave collar. It was a standard collar, of a sort worn by many girls on Gor. It was both attractive and efficient. It would look well on a girl's throat, and it would hold, perfectly.
"Please do not kill me, Master," whimpered the girl. She put out her hands.
"A collar!" she cried, touching the metal. "A collar!" She reached out, holding my wrist, and kissed at my hand and the collar it held. She lifted her head to me, it mostly concealed in the tightened slave hood. "Do you deign to put me in your collar, my Master? Oh, thank you, my Master! Thank you! I want your collar! I beg your collar! Oh, please, Master, put your collar on me! Collar me! I am yours!"
It pleased me to have the former Miss Henderson, who had been such a haughty wench on Earth, naked before me, as a Gorean slave girl, begging my collar.
"Collar me, Master," she begged. "I am yours!
I thrust her head back and, rudely, put the collar on her.
"Thank you, Master!" she breathed. "Thank you!"
I lifted her up, by the upper arms, half lifting her from her knees. Her head was back. I had collared her! She wore my collar! I shook her, in savage elation. She wore my collar!
"Master?" she gasped, frightened.
I then, wanting to scream with joy, twisted her and threw her on her belly to the tiles at my feet. She lay there, frightened, breathing heavily, her hands at the sides of her head. "Master?" she asked, frightened.
I looked down upon her, prone at my feet. She who had once been the haughty Miss Henderson, of Earth, now lay before me, on her belly on the tiles of my house, only a stripped slave on Gor. I saw the collar on her neck. It was mine, and locked. I had collared her! I owned her!
"Master?" she asked. What pleasure it gave me to see her as my collared slave!
I went to her and, with my foot, rolled her to her back. She whimpered, and threw apart her ankles. I smiled. What a little slave she was!
I stepped back from her, going to the center of the room. I then snapped my fingers and she crawled to me, and then, putting out her hand to determine my position, knelt before me.
"If I have annoyed or offended my Master," she said, "please permit me to appease or placate him, in the intimate manners of the female slave."
I said nothing.
"I thank my Master for his collar," she whispered. "I rejoice to wear it. I shall struggle to be worthy of it, the collar of such a man." Collars, incidentally, can be experienced quite differently by different girls. New girls, in particular, first finding themselves helplessly fastened in them, may find them distressing. For example, they cannot remove them. They are made to stay on their neck. The girl, seeing herself in the mirror, sees that her throat has been locked in what she, at the time, may take to be a shameful and degrading, even horrifying, symbol of bondage. This can distress, or dismay, her. Some girls even fear to leave the house in their collars, fearing that on the streets, unveiled, scantily clad and collared, they might die of shame. They are sometimes, mercifully, whipped from the portals.