"Sir?" she asked.
"You may call me Master," I said.
"Master?" she said.
"The way you rubbed your wrists, that suggests you were not merely bound with customary tightness, but punishment bound."
"Perhaps," she said.
"Perhaps you had showed less than absolutely perfect deference to men?" I speculated.
"No, Master," she said. "I am not a fool." "I would guess then," I said, caressing her, "that the tie was intended to be an informative, or admonitory one, one from which you were to gather something of the meaning of your reduction in station."
"Yes," she said.
"Doubtless, then, you were formerly of some importance."
"Yes," she said. "I was important."
"Are you important now?" I asked.
"No!" she gasped.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes, yes!" she gasped.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I ama€”261!" she said.
I pulled her to a sitting position, before me, and then bent her backward and turned her body. "Yes," I said, "you are 261." I then put her back on her stomach. "And who is your daughter?" I asked.
"437," she said.
"Are you more beautiful than your daughter?" I asked.
"I do not know," she wept, clutching the bench.
I heard a gasp from the side, from our right, from among the other women.
I stepped from the bench, looking at the other women. "You," I said to a girl there. "Kneel, straighten your back, put your chin up, throw your hair behind your back." She did these things. "You are 437," I said, reading her number. "Yes," she said.
"Yes, what?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said, quickly.
"Yes," I said to the woman on the bench, "she has something of your beauty." "Something!" gasped the girl.
"You are both quite beautiful," I said to the woman on the bench, returning to her. "I suppose it would be difficult to say who, ultimately, under proper slave disciplines, will prove the most beautiful, but, clearly, now, at the moment, if these things are pertinent to the issue, you would bring the highest price." "I?" asked the woman before me, wonderingly. "Yes," I said. "But she has something of your coloring and characteristics, and is quite beautiful, and I think it likely, in time, with more experience in life and love, she might aspire to equal your beauty." The girl gasped.
"Please," said the woman. "We are mother and daughter."
"You are only two women," I said, "two women in collars, and, at this time, you, my chained beauty, would bring a higher price on the auction block, a price she could not hope, for perhaps years, to equal or excel. To be sure, I think you are both excellent collar meat."
The woman moaned. I then renewed my attentions to her body.
"I gather it has been a long time since you have been touched," I said. "Yes," she said. "Are you disappointed in me? Do I take too long to respond?" "Mother!" cried the girl, scandalized.
"You are not a slave," I said. "You do not have trained, honed reflexes. Smoldering fires have not been set in your belly, never far from the surface, ready to leap into flame at the smallest touch. You are a free woman. I do not expect much of you."
"Oh!" she cried, suddenly.
"Still," I said, "you seem to have in you the promise of vitality." "Oh," she said.
"Interesting," I said.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh!"
"Perhaps, as in all women," I mused, there is a slave in you."
She moaned.
"Or perhaps it is not so much that there is a slave in you," I mused, "as that you are simply a slave."
"Please do not make me yield!" she begged, suddenly. I continued to caress her. "Be silent!" she said. "Be silent! Can't you see I am in the hands of a man!" "Mother!" cried the girl. "Oh!" cried the woman.
"You squirm like a slut!" cried the girl.
"What you are doing to me!" cried the woman, half rearing up on the palms of her hands, the chains on her wrists.
"Lie down," I instructed her.
She then lay there, on the cool marble, clutching it, tensely, her eyes wild, her head to the left.
"Is anything wrong?" I asked.
She lay extremely still, almost rigid, tensely, on the bench. She gripped the marble tightly. It seemed she did not dare to move.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Do not make me yield," she begged. She was very beautiful, and very helpless. Such a female would indeed, I thought, bring a high price.
"Why?" I asked.
She moaned.
"Why?" I pressed. It was not necessary to beat her for not having responded promptly to my question. She was a free woman. Such tardiness in a slave, of course, is not acceptable. It can mean the whip for her.
"Please," she said.
"You want to yield, do you not?" I asked.
"No, no," she said.
"I think it has been a long time since you have yielded, if ever before you have truly yielded to a man."
"Yes," she whimpered.
"Did you ever before, truly, yield to a man?" I asked.
"No," she whispered.
"I think you now suspect what it might be like to do so," I said.
"Yes, yes," she whispered, tensely.
I touched her, slightly. "Oh," she said, grasping the marble even more tightly. "Be strong, Mother," called the girl.
Tears fell from the woman's eyes, falling to the marble. The padlock, holding her in the close-fitting metal collar, moved a little on the smooth marble. It made a small sound. She had long, dark hair.
"I think you want to yield," I said.
"No, no," she said.
I touched her, gently, "Ohhh," she said.
"I think you want to yield," I said.
"No, no!" she said.
I again caressed her, this time with an exquisite delicacy, a brief, sweet touch that brought her, in her present condition, to the brink of an uncontrollable response. If I should continue I had little doubt but what she would, in a moment or two, be jerking on her belly, crying out in a rattle of chain, writhing helplessly on the marble, then bruising and marking the soft interiors of her lovely thighs against it, so tightly gripping it.
"No man can make you yield, Mother!" cried the girl.
I gathered she was a mere virgin. Doubtless in the next few weeks she would learn better.
"Be silent, you stupid girl!" wept the mother.
"Mother!" protested the girl.
"Why do you not wish to yield?" I asked the woman.
"My daughter," she gasped. "My daughter is here!
"But you would be willing to yield if she were not present," I asked.
"Yes, yes!" said the woman.
"Interesting," I said.
"Mother!" protested the girl, horrified.
"Do you think I would have her removed from the room?" I asked.
"Please! said the woman.
"No," I said.
She moaned.
"Do you not want her to know what a pleasure and a joy you can be to a man?" I asked.
"I am her mother! she wept.
"You are only another woman in a collar," I said. "And, soon, you will be going your different ways. Besides, I do not think she is your equal in these things. Perhaps sometime she might possibly be your equal. I do not know. Perhaps you, in your love, could hope that for her, and even give her training, and advice. At present, however, dear lady, it is you, I assure you, who are the prize, you whom strong men would relish most on her belly before them. Who knows? Perhaps you will both find yourselves eventually in the same household. It might be interesting to see you competing for the favor of the same master. I have little doubt it would be you, properly enslaved, my dear, and not she, who would be most often drawn by the hair to the master's couch."
The woman sobbed.
"What has been the relationship between you and your daughter?" I asked. The woman did not respond.
"I gather it has been distant," I said. "I gather that you love for her has been little reciprocated, that your sacrifices, your concerns and efforts in her behalf, have been little understood or appreciated. I gather that she, in the customary, unquestioning self-centeredness and vanity of her youth, seemingly so inevitable in the young, has given little concern to your feelings, to your reality as an independent woman and human being, that she has scarcely thought of you, or understood you, in these ways, that she has, typically, much taken you for granted, considering you often as little more than a convenience, a tool and fixture, in her world, as little more than her servant and satellite." "No, no!" said the daughter.