"It is nothing," I told her.
She rose to her feet, and kissed the wounds. "Am I to be punished, Master?" she asked.
"No," I said. Masters are commonly indulgent of the uncontrollable spasms of their female slaves.
"Thank you, Master," she said.
I then held her by the upper arms. She was so beautiful!
"Doubtless I must soon be released from the slave ring," she said, "that I may attend to my work."
"Oh!" she cried, thrown brutally to the furs at the foot of the couch. She looked up at me, frightened, the chain on her neck.
"That decision is mine," I said, "not yours."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Do you hear?" I asked.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
"Who hears?" I asked.
"Beverly!" she said.
"Who does Beverly hear?" I asked.
"Beverly hears her Master!" she said.
I then crouched down, and took her in my arms.
"Yes, Master," she said.
It was pleasant to hold her, as a yielding slave.
"It is evening, Master," she said, lying beside me.
"Yes," I said.
I had refilled the ravishment lamp and then had had her relight it. She was beautiful in its soft light, lying on the furs, the heavy stone of the couch and the iron of the slave ring, to which she was still attached, behind her.
"All last night, and all today," she said, "you have kept me at your ring."
"I have waited long to own you," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said. She rolled onto her back, looking up at the beams in the ceiling. "Callimachus has selected you to be his second in command, in the forces of the Vosk League," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I am the slave, then, of an important man, am I not?" she asked.
"Perhaps," I said, "but remember that you are only his slave."
"Yes, Master," she said, "that is well understood by this enslaved female."
"You may serve me wine," I said.
She reached to the wine, a sweet Ka-la-na of Ar, and filled the goblet to the third ring. Then, as I sat back against the couch, she knelt before me. She, head down, pressed the heavy metal goblet deep into her lower abdomen, and then she lifted it to her lips and, holding it with both hands, kissed it lingeringly and lovingly. Then, kneeling back on her heels she put down her head and, humbly, her arms extended, her head down between them, proffered me the goblet. "Wine, Master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. I then took the goblet from her, and drank.
She lifted her head, and watched me.
"I think you know how to serve wine well," I said.
"Master should know," she laughed.
I indicated that she should approach me. "Keep your hands on your thighs," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then, crouching beside her, my hand in her hair, controlling her, gave her to drink from the goblet, letting her finish the last ring. I then gave her the goblet, and she put it to the side, with the wine vessel.
I then sat back again, against the foot of the couch.
She, kneeling to the side, in the lovely position of the pleasure slave, watched me.
"Lie down here," I said, "beside me."
"Yes, Master," she said.
She lay beside me, in her chained softness, and beauty. She kissed me on the hip and then, with a rustle of chain, put her head down to the furs. "Do I please Master?" she asked.
"You are not entirely displeasing," I told her.
"That pleases me," she said. She laughed.
"What is wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said. "It is only that I thought it amusing. On Earth many boys, I think, would have liked to get me to their bed. But here, on Gor, you have not yet even permitted me to ascend to the surface of your couch."
I smiled. She had served only at its foot, at the slave ring.
"Will Master permit me sometime to ascend his couch?" she asked.
"We shall see what progress you make in your slavery," I said.
"I shall endeavor to make progress," she said. A Gorean slave girl, incidentally, does not simply take a position on a couch as might a free person. Commonly she will kneel at its lower left side, or bottom, and then kiss its furs, or covers, after which she will crawl into it on her belly. Unless otherwise instructed she will remain near its foot, rather in the manner of a pet sleen. She may also, of course, be whipped or beaten to the couch, or forced to it, her arm twisted high, and painfully, behind her back, or carried to it, or thrown upon it, perhaps chained or bound.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you recall, long ago, in the restaurant, when I spoke to you, daringly, I think, for a then-unenslaved slave, of the dreams, strange then to my mind, which I had been having?"
"I recall," I said.
"I had often then dreamed, as I recounted to you, and as you will perhaps remember, that I was a female slave, that I was kept in rags or naked, that a steel collar had been put on my neck, that I had been branded, and that I was subject to discipline-and that I must serve a man."
"I remember," I said.
"There was one thing about those dreams, dear Master," she said, "which I did not dare to tell you."
"What was that?" I asked. I recalled that I had suspected, from certain subtle cues, and silences, that she hard not fully expressed herself to me on that occasion.
She looked down.
"What was it?" I asked.
She looked up. "That the man I must serve was always the same," she said.
"Yes?" I said.
"And that he was you, my Master," she said.
I took her gently in my arms.
"You see, my Master," she said, "you are, for me, a dream come true."
"And you, for me, Sweet Slave," I said, "are, too, a dream come true."
"Master?" she asked.
"Many times," I said, "did I fantasize you thusly, in my arms, an owned slave, mine to do with as I pleased."
"I am here now, my Master," she said.
"I know," I said.
"And it is where I want to be," she said.
I looked at her, in the light of the ravishment lamp.
"Gone now," she whispered, "are the pains and shames of Earth."
I kissed her, gently.
"How strange I once would have thought it, on Earth, so long ago," she said, "had I been told that I would find my fulfillment only on a distant world-and chained by the neck to the slave ring of a master."
"You are a woman," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then caressed her gently into ecstasy.