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"I didn't! It was hateful?!"

"Quiet!" The crop curled round Ilona's hip. "I don't want to hear. Save it."

Ilona had relapsed into sullen silence while the rope was taken from her neck and an Envelope changed hands. She seethed with the injustice of Luke and Rance being rewarded for her rape, their protracted violation of her sex for which they ought to go to jail. Resentfully she tugged at the rawhide on her wrists. It was all she dared do. The weal on her hip scorched as bitterly as her mistress's contempt.

For a minute the slave and her mistress watched the riders out of sight. Then Cicely had curtly commanded. "Come in the house you absolute idiot."

The Mistress mixed herself a drink but did not share it. Gulping the cocktail angrily she glared at her bound and naked slave before impatience spurred it's resentful flood.

"I'd have thought you had more sense. I had to call in men from all over, too small a chance of catching you myself alone." She snorted angrily. "There's the expense. . and the snickers. . and you've got yourself fucked. . Ugh!"

It was at that point she had pleaded guilty. The impulse to giggle had gone away.

Ilona looked at the woman she loved and said, wanly: "Cicely, I think I'm going to cry."

"Go ahead. If a few licks with this crop will help your tears let me know Dammit, girl, why, why, why?"

"I don't know myself. Honest, Cicely, it was an impulse thing. I'm sorry."

"And you'll be a lot sorrier, darling."

"Yes, of course. But please don't hurt Nora?"

"Nora's been hurt already, and she'll be hurt some more. If her feet hadn't been ironed she'd have run with you." Cicely gestured in disgust. "Do I need to have a hundred pounds of iron riveted on your ankles to keep you around?"

"I won't run again, Cicely. I promise."

"You're damn right you'l run again, but not the way you think. Blast it all, Ilona, what the hell am I going to do to you?"

"Punish me."

"How?"

The delinquent nudity found herself not wanting to be punished at all. She wanted to be loved. But love seemed unlikely to be part of her immediate future. Unhappily, she suggested: "You can always whip me."

"Sure I can. Any other ideas?"

"To stop loving me would be the worst of all. I don't want you to stop loving me."

"A disloyal slave!" Cicely sneered. "You let that silly little bitch talk you into running away from me, and now you expect love?"

"I expect to be punished." Ilona said doggedly. "After you've punished me I hope you'll love me again."

"I love you now, damn you!"

The delinquent heart raced. "Would it help a bit if I told you I was on the way back here when they picked me up? I was asleep when they found me. It wasn't all that far from here."

"How can I know that's true?"

"Only by whatever you think of me. I sat on a little hill way out there somewhere and assessed the whole thing. There I was, naked in a wilderness, and you were here.

I knew I'd been damn stupid. That's when I turned around." The penitent paused. "I thought about Paisley Publications then too. But it didn't seem real, it doesn't seem real now. I don't think it ever will again."

"D'your wrists hurt?"

"Yes."

"Come here. I'm going to untie you. Go and bathe and make yourself beautiful.

Oh, and have a douche, have three or four. Those damn men. . ! Ugh!"

"Yes, Cicely." The slave was breathless. "Thank you."

"Don't think you're forgiven. I'm still going to punish you."

"I want you to."

"You're free. So if you feel like running, go ahead and run."

"You know I won't do that."

"I'll be waiting for you. We can talk about your punishments in bed. .

afterwards."

Breathlessly, Ilona went to bathe.

"I want to be really cruel to you, darling." Cicely mused languidly in deep content.

"You do need to be taught a lesson, y'know."

"A hundred lashes." Suggested Ilona dreamily.

"You're being flip. Liberty doesn't become you, pet. Give me your hands."

Obedience was instant. Ilona watched her mistress reach beneath the pillow. The handcuffs were the dark gun metal one's she adored, expensive, handcrafted. They encircled her wrists with oiled precision. Her nostrils flared with a gasp of enchantment. "They're gorgeous!"

"I'm clicking them one notch too tight, sweetheart, a constant reminder."

"Don't ever take them off, not ever!" Laying nakedly beside her love, Ilona lifted her cuffed hands and admired their linked allure. Testing their snugness, she pouted:

"You could make them a notch tighter still, Cicely. I wouldn't mind."

"We're getting maudlin." Her Mistress warned. "We're besotted with each other's cunts and pubic hair and breasts and nipples, the whole ensemble. You've changed incredibly. You're not the woman who wrote that article. You're not a woman at all, you're a little girl. I don't know how you ever ran that damn business of yours. Since I bought you you've blossomed into the most submissive creature I've ever known."

Cicely laughed softly, "And I've whipped a lot of submissive bottoms and clipped a lot of submissive tits."

"You've never put clips on my nipples."

"Don't sound so cheated. Give me time. That reminds me, I've got to get you collared."

Ilona lowered her handcuffed wrists, she was suddenly tense. "You mean that iron thing with rivets?"

"You hate the idea, darling, and you might have talked me out of it if you hadn't been a bad girl. But you'l look wonderful with that on your neck. It will have a mental effect too because you'll know there's no way it will come off."

"Oh, alright, I expect I'll live."

"You bet you will. And I've been thinking about your ankles. If they'd been ironed you'd never have run away."

"Oh Cicely, those things. . like on Nora? Those iron bands and all those links swirling every time I take a step?"

"Why not?"

There was laughter in the Mistress's voice, but the slave was unsure, her position weakened by recent guilt. She rejoined, doubtfully, "Well. . I suppose. . !"

Cicely was amused, thrilled by her own power. "Oh, stop pouting." She said gaily.

"I'd iron you like a shot but it's so permanent. I can't be taking you to the blacksmith shop every time I want to use you for this or that. I've got some that lock and use a key but the mental effect's no way as potent."

"I don't mind."

"Of course you don't, you little idiot! What girl wants to be ironed! I ought to have Josh hammer rivets on you everyplace, and keep you that way for a month."

"I'm sure I deserve it."

"Stop being a masochistic kitten. You're getting a lubricated cunt out of self immolation. It can get to be a vice."

"Alright, Cicely, so I have to wear an iron collar. Now, what about my real punishment? Do I get the hundred lashes?"

"No. You're positively wallowing in lust at the mere thought of all those lovely stripes. I'll punish you, but not because you ask for it or want me to. I'll do it my way. Come along now, I've got something you ought to see."

"Aren't you going to wear something, Cicely?"

"I feel like being naked. Come along, you quivering kitten, I'll make you quiver some more."

Intuitively Ilona knew. In the punishment room Nora hung suspended by her wrists. Her feet were off the floor but the heavy irons hung pendent from her ankles so that some of their links found a resting place beneath the punished feet. Her eyes had been closed in suffering, she opened them now and, beholding Ilona, wept. "I thought you got away." She sobbed brokenly. "I thought you got away."

Ilona's attempt to embrace the suspended nudity was foiled by the handcuffs she had so recently adored. She could do nothing but cradle tear wet cheeks and kiss the disconsolate lips.

"Turn her round, darling, she swings easily."

Again she knew! The handcuffed girl obeyed. As the loveliness revolved under the guidance of her locked hands Ilona gasped. Nora's back, her buttocks, her thighs, were criss crossed by weals, ridged bars of proud flesh raised by Cicely's crop. She wailed in anguish at the sight.