He slipped away his tunic and crouched beside me. I could see he could scarcely restrain himself from seizing me.
"I'm yours," I told him. I lifted my arms to him. "Take me, Master," I said.
"I care for you," he said.
I regarded him. "Be strong with me, Master," I whispered. "I do not want to challenge you. I do not want to fight you. I want to serve you, and I want to love you. I want to give you all, holding back nothing, ever."
He regarded me.
"Do you not understand, Master?" I asked. "If I had the choice, I would choose not to be free but to be your slave." A woman, I had learned, must choose between freedom and love. Both are estimable virtues. Let each choose which is best for her.
"But I do not give you a choice," he said.
"Of course not, Master," I said. "You are Gorean."
He looked down at the furs.
"Perhaps I will sell you," he said.
"You may do as you wish, Master," I said. I knew I was at his complete mercy, only a bond girl.
He seemed angry.
"Bring me wine, Master," I said.
He looked at me, suddenly.
"A girl is only testing her master," I smiled.
Suddenly he struck me, slapping me cruelly across the mouth. It hurt me. I tasted a bit of blood.
"Do you think," he asked, "that because I care for you I will not be strong with you?"
"No, Master," I said.
I lay in the shadow of the slave ring. A chain and heavy collar lay at the foot of the ring, the chain attached to the ring.
He took the heavy metal collar and closed it about my throat, over and about the lighter collar I wore, confining me at the ring, on the furs at the foot of his couch.
Then he touched me.
"I see you will be strong with me, Master," I said.
"What a fool I am," he said, "to care for a miserable Earth-girl slave."
"I ask only to love and serve you, Master," I said.
"Yet you are attractive," he said.
"A girl is grateful to her master, should he find her pleasing," I said.
"So you would choose to be a slave?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"Slut," said he.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"It is I who will decide," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"I decide-" he said.
"Yes, Master," I begged.
"— that you are my slave."
"Yes, Master!" I cried.
Then I writhed in his arms as he took me, exploding in the deepest and most profound ecstasies a female can know, those of the slave orgasm, known only to the owned woman.
"How could I love you so much," he asked, "if I did not truly own you, if you were not fully mine?"
"I do not know, Master," I said. Clitus Vitellius had confessed his love for a slave. I hoped he would not now beat me.
He took me by the hair and thrust my head down to the furs. "A man can truly love only that woman," he said, "who is truly his, who belongs to him. Otherwise he is only a party to a contract."
"A woman," I said, "can love only that man to whom she truly belongs."
"To whom do you truly belong, Slave?" he asked.
"To you, Master," I said.
"You please me, Slave Girl," he said.
"Free me," I said, teasing him.
"Do you wish to feel the whip?" he asked.
"No, Master," I said, quickly, suddenly frightened. I was his. He might do to me what he wanted.
"Beg for your freedom," he said.
"Please free me, Master," I begged.
He laughed. "No," he said. "I do not free you. I will keep you as my slave."
I closed my eyes. I had been Judy Thornton, of Earth. I had been a co-ed at a small but prestigious college. I had been an English major. I had written poetry. I had been popular on campus. Now I was only a branded slave girl, Dina, helpless in the arms of her master. I thought of Elicia Nevins, who had been my beauty rival at the college. She now, too, wore a collar. I wondered if she were as happy in the arms of her master as I in the arms of mine. She had been an anthropologist. I wondered if now she truly understood, perhaps for the first time, the nature of the institution of slavery. Her master had perhaps taught her. I lay blissfully in the arms of Clitus Vitellius, owned.
I opened my eyes.
"Is a girl not to be permitted sometimes to speak her mind?" I asked.
"Perhaps upon occasion," said Clitus Vitellius, "provided she does so upon her knees and at my feet."
"You are a monster, Master," I said.
Then again I felt his body at mine, and I cried out as my legs were thrust apart.
"You are rough, Master!" I chided. Then, frightened, I said, "Forgive me, Master."
He did not beat me.
I began to respond to him, shuddering under the blows of his manhood, and surrendered myself then, content, to the delicious brutality of my ravishment.
He had many ways of taking me, and I must submit to them all, unquestioningly.
We heard men later upon the bridges outside. It was early morning.
I held Clitus Vitellius. "You are very lustful, Master," I told him.
"I am shamed neither by my health nor vitality," he said. He said this as a Gorean, explaining something to an ignorant Earth-girl slave. "And you," he said, "you must know, are an exquisitely responsive she-sleen. Does that shame you?"
"Not any more, Master," I said.
"It is an indication of your vitality and health, and emotional freedom," he said. "It is a sign that you are vigorous and sound, neither psychologically crippled nor diseased."
I had grown free on Gor, though I wore a collar. Strange, collared, I was free. Uncollared I had been a true slave, a prisoner of a pathological culture, ascetic, mechanistic and twisted.
"Perhaps I am emotionally free," I laughed. "But I scarcely am physically free."
"True," he said. He pulled me by the chain at the back of the collar back to my back on the furs at the foot of his couch.
"You keep me a slave?" I asked.
"Of course," he said.
"I never knew I would meet a man who could lust for me and desire me so much," I said, "that he would keep me as a slave."
"You never knew you would meet a man who would satisfy your deepest needs," he said, "the hidden, profound, scarcely understood, secret needs which you yourself scarcely recognized."
"You are a secret dream, which I scarcely dared dream, come true to me, Master," I said.
"And you to me, Slave," said he.
"Will you truly be hard with me, Master?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Will you truly, though you care for me, keep me as full slave?"
"Yes, Slave," he said.
"Subject even to discipline, if I displease you?" I asked.
"Subject to discipline, at my pleasure, whether you displease me or not," he said.
"My bondage then will be absolute," I said.
"Of course, Slave," he said.
I reached out timidly, to touch him. I kissed him, tenderly, on the shoulder.
"I love you, Master," I said.
"Be silent, Slave," he said, irritably.
"Yes, Master," I said.
He then touched me with sweetness, and tenderness, and I held him closely, but did not speak, lost in his touch, for I, a slave, had been forbidden to speak. He made gentle love to me then, which, I knew, might become abrupt or brutal as he chose. There were a thousand ways to have a slave girl and I did not doubt but what Clitus Vitellius was master of them all. How joyful I was. He was dominant over me. I was subject to him. I was his, completely without qualification. It is impossible for me to express my feelings. Perhaps this is why he had warned me to silence, that I might not try to speak, but would be content to feel what could not, in any language, be spoken. So I did not then try to speak, but, rather, contented myself with turning to the tasks of love.