by Mind Guest
are always alternate methods."
"I dislike being limited in my use of a slave," Fallan answered,
sounding bored with the whole thing. "I believe I have had enough of
this slave. What of that black-haired one?"
"That one you may enjoy as you wish," light-shirt said, professional
friendliness now heavy in his voice. "The use rooms are to your left,
and you may also see to the fees there. I wish you a pleasant time."
There were sounds of movement all around me, bringing Bellna partway
out of her stupor with whimpering protests, but this time she didn't
have a chance of taking over and wouldn't have been able to change the
situation even if she had. I opened my eyes to see the black-haired
girl being released from the bar and the ankle chain restraint, her
whole body quivering with anticipation. I didn't have the strength to
quiver with anticipation, even when light-shirt began unlocking my own
chains. When my wrists were released from the bar I sprawled face down
in the furs of the platform, and light-shirt chuckled and parted my
bottom.
"You have come a far distance this day, little slave," he said, working
on whatever held my ankles in place. "You have earned a time of rest
before your lessons continue. You may thank me."
"Thank you master," I whispered silently cursing the now disappearing
Fallan for having put me in a position where I had to say that. I
didn't know what would happen next, but my mouth was dry and swallowing
was difficult.
Light-shirt closed the cuff around my right wrist again, locked the
chain under the two rings at my waist, then stepped back. My goldenshirt,
whom I hadn't seen, was behind him, and he was the one who
lifted me off the platform. I felt completely surrounded and outnumbered,
which had to be the way I was supposed to feel-according to
my training program. My golden-shirt steadied me on my feet, pulled my
wrist-chain out the way he had earlier, then led me out of the tent.
We moved through the late afternoon sunshine at a slower pace than we
had on the way there, and although I knew there had to be a specific
reason for it, I didn't care. The cooling air was like a breath of
fresh air after the closeness of the tent, and I wished I had the
strength to appreciate it. I stumbled along in my chains after my
golden-shirt, feeling my mind uncurl and spread out to the openness
above. It's almost dark, I thought, relishing the words. Just a little
while longer, and then you can go. I looked at the crowds of men we
moved through, feeling their eyes on me as a physical thing, and knew I
had to get out of there soon. If I were ever trapped in that place
permanently, my life span could be measured in minutes. Slavers don't
like victims who refuse to be good, obedient slaves, and usually don't
waste much time on them.
I was taken back to the tent I had originally come from, but the room
was somewhat different from the others I had seen. It was small and
dim, covered completely with thick luxurious fur, and held a couple of odd-shaped somethings made of wood and fur that I didn't like the looks
of. There was also a small table holding a familiar bowl, but I wasn't
given a chance to get more than a single glance at it.
"Kneel," my golden-shirt said as soon as we were inside, and his slave
obeyed him immediately. The fur felt strange to my bare legs even after
the fur I'd been kneeling on on the platform, but I didn't have time to
think about that, either. The golden-shirt pulled his boots off, got
out of his clothes, then made himself comfortable on the fur.
"Crawl to me, slave;" he ordered, and when I reached him he leaned up
on one elbow and took my face in his hand. "You are incredibly
fortunate in that you have already declared yourself slave," he said,
looking down into my eyes. "Had you not, this next lesson would have
been a good deal more painful for you. Are you prepared for your next
lesson?"
"I was told I might have a time of rest," I whispered, shaken by what
he had said. So Fallan had been right after all-and the dance he'd put
me through had saved me from something that would have been a lot
worse.
"You have already had your time of rest," golden-shirt answered, still
holding my face. "Our return here was leisurely, and you were to have
rested then." Suddenly his hand released my face, and I was slapped
hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. "You must also learn that you
are never to question a master. You were asked, slave: are you prepared
for your next lesson?"
"Yes, master!" I gasped out at once, trembling and letting the tears
roll down my cheeks-and making sure my hands didn't curl into fists. "I
am prepared, master!"
"Excellent," he said, leaning back from me somewhat. "Go and fetch your
bowl, for it is time that you be fed."
"Yes, master," I sniffled, then crawled after the bowl standing on the
small wooden table. The bowl held the same soup-soaked bread I'd been
fed earlier in the day, and when I brought it back I was put to my
belly again before it was fed to me. I'd said I was ready for the next
lesson, but the only thing I was really ready for was about twelve
hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt as close to the end of the line as
I'd ever been, and that had to be why the lessons were continuing.
Conditioning works best on an undefended mind, and it's hard to defend
your inner self when your eyes are closing in exhaustion. I was so
tired I could even feel myself reacting to the nearness of a naked male
body, and that despite the release I'd so recently had. By the time my
"meal" was done and I had licked golden-shirt's fingers clean, I was
almost to the point of squirming.
"And now that you are fed, we may continue," golden-shirt said, tossing
away the empty bowl. "Tell me what you are, slave."
"I am a slave, master," I whispered, making sure I didn't meet his
eyes. "I am your slave."
"You are the slave of any free man who commands you," golden-shirt
corrected. "Raise yourself to kneeling beside me, slave."
"Yes, master," I acknowledged, pulling myself to my knees with some
difficulty. The device gave me its usual trouble, and golden-shirt
chuckled.
"You appear to be in discomfort, slave," he said, reaching around to
touch me. "Do you wish this removed?"
"Yes, master," I gasped, finding it impossible to hold still against
his toying fingers.
"Then you have my permission to beg me to remove it," he said, laying
himself farther back in the furs. "And, as the potion which turned me uninterested has for the most part worn off, you may also, at the same
time, serve me."
I gasped at the flaring of heat all through me at the key word, finding
it considerably worse than it had been. I was too tired to fight the
conditioning, and Bellna was no help at all. She lay cowering in her
corner of my mind, sick with fear over the thought of serving the man
who had done so much to me that day. She was triggered into wanting to
please him, but she was so
afraid of him that she was frozen in place.
It was all up to me again, and I had absolutely no choice.
"Oh, master, please remove the device," I wheedled, remembering the
advice of the woman who had washed me. At the same time I put my hands
on his body, and began gently kissing him all over. There was dark hair
all over him, his body mostly hard but beginning to turn soft from easy
living. I worked my way up to his throat with kisses, then licked my
way slowly back down, all the while wheedling and pleading and begging
in true slave style. His interest was only beginning to stir, and I
found that I had no choice at all about encouraging it. I wanted to
encourage his interest, and when his hands came to me, I bad to. I did
to him what I'd been taught to do, and I could no longer remember when
I'd been taught it or by whom. When he moaned and twisted under my
hands and lips the faintly disturbing thought came that I might have
gone too far, but I was in no condition to worry about it. It might
have been something to worry about if golden-shirt had still been in
the grip of that potion and watching, but as the victim of my
ministrations, he was in no condition to be cooly observant.
"Stop, s-stop," he said at last, pulling me away from him by the hair.
"You have-learned your lessons-well, slave, and I am-no longer able to
bear it. Tell me again what you would have me do."
"Master, I beg you to remove the device," I panted, breathing almost as
hard as my victim. I reached my hands out to touch him, but the
distance he held me away from him by the hair was too far for the chain
linking my wrists. "Also do I beg for use, master. Please, master,
please!"
The words I blurted out were a shock to me, but golden-shirt must have
been expecting them. He laughed softly in satisfaction, then shook his
head.
"The use you beg for you may not have," he said, reaching a hand out to
tickle a moan out of me. "You have not yet earned the ultimate
satisfaction, and will not till you have pleased the master you are
meant for. There is another means by which you may give satisfaction,
however, and it is for this reason that I am here. Now that your
lessons have prepared me, we are able to continue on to it."
He let go of my hair and reached down to untie the front leather strip
of the device, then had me put my forehead to the floor while he untied
the back strip. The removal of the device itself was unbelievable
relief, but that only solved half my problem. I still needed what that
man was nicely prepared to give me, and I was seriously considering
raping him when his hand came hack to my hair and pulled me painfully
to my feet. I mewled in protest, just about all I was capable of in the
way of protest just then, but I was still dragged to one of those wood
and fur contraptions and pushed face down across it. Before I could
blink away the sleepiness clouding my thinking and stressing how much
in need I was, my wrists had been pushed through holes to either side
of the thing I lay on and clamped tight in place. Then wheels were
turned on the thing, and I lay head down and bottom up.
"This device will hold you as I wish you to be," golden-shirt said as
he fiddled with something between my legs. "Tomorrow, after your lessons, I will return for the same, and will then expect to have no
need of the device. Should I find a need for it, you will not be
released from it before you have been beaten. Am I mistaken in
believing that you will be pleasing?"
"I will be pleasing, master," I babbled, feeling a desperate need to be
pleasing. "I beg you to use me, master! Please, master, please!"
"I mean to use you, little slave," he chuckled, moving around the room
somewhere behind me. "Not in the manner you beg for, yet will you be
used. I must, however, first prepare myself a bit further."
I knew that what he said should have made me suspicious, but I couldn't
think clearly. A good part of the begging and groveling I'd done had
been because of Bellna, but some of it was caused by the conditioning I
couldn't seem to hold off. I was so tired, and so much in need, and my
body quivered at the thought that he was going to take care of me.
"I am now prepared for you," he said from directly behind me, snapping
me out of a half-doze and making my body burn even more. Groggily I
tried raising myself to receive him then was roused to the point of
lifting my head.
"No, master, no!" I whimpered, feebly trying to escape, but there was
no escape. His manhood was taking the place of the device, and he'd
greased himself for the purpose. I tried pulling away from the
penetration that was beginning to excite me terribly, knowing it wasn't
what I really wanted and wouldn't satisfy me nearly as well, but I
struck something scratchy and irritating on the device that made me
jerk back I immediately cried out, simultaneously with his grunt of
satisfaction; I'd lost and he had won.
I'd begged for use, but not the kind of use I was given. I couldn't
think clearly, but bodily sensations came through clear as the chime of
perfect crystal. I was battered at over and over again, forced against
the scratchy, irritating part of the device until I began using it to
satisfy the screams of my body, accepting the pain in my desperate need
for release. Eventually I found the release, just before golden-shirt
found his own, and I was limp when he unlocked me from the device and
dumped me on the floor.
"The potion given you in your food has done well," he said, looking
down at me where I lay curled up on the furs. "It will now make you
sleep till the time comes for your lessons to continue. Sleep well,
little slave, for the next lessons bring learning in earnest."
No, I thought as I blurrily watched him walk to his clothes. I can't
sleep and wake up still here, still chained as a slave. I can't. I
can't.
But my eyes were closing even then, proving that I sure as hell could.
Chapter 6
I awoke with a start, my heart racing and my mouth dry. I jerked my
head up and looked around the dim, fur-decorated room without
recognizing it, not knowing where I was or what was happening. I
started to get to my feet but the tinkle of chain caught my attentionand
then the memory of everything that had happened came flooding back.
I sank back down on the floor, took a deep breath, then lowered my head
to my hands. My system was still twanging from the emergency wake-up
I'd gone through, but being awake was more than worth it. There are a
lot of drugs that have little or no effect on me, but of the ones that
do, some are able to trigger emergency wake-up. The light opiate sort,
mild sleeping draughts and the like, begin to break down in the body
rather quickly. As soon as that breaking down starts, my nervous system triggers the release of adrenalin, which gets me up and moving even
sooner than my usual fast snapback. It's a rubbing-bare-nerves-with-afile
kind of feeling to go through, but I'll take that any day as
opposed to staying cozily aslee
p.
I took another deep breath then raised my head, still feeling the urge
to stretch out and close my eyes, but not about to give in to it. I
moved over to the device I'd been used on, keeping the chain-tinkling
to a minimum, then began poking around the underside of the thing. I
needed something to use as a lock pick, and I was hoping that that
device wasn't as neat and clean-lined underneath as it was above. The
Lord of Luck must have come back from the lunch break he'd been on so
long; the underside of the device had all sorts of thin protrusions of
metal, undoubtedly the Narellan equivalent of nails. I chose one, got a
good grip on it, then started working it back and forth.
Cursing under my breath did no good whatsoever; the damned thing took
its own sweet time breaking free, and time was the biggest unknown I
had to work with right then. By the time I had the piece of metal in my
hand I was sweating, and I went to work with it without wasting another
minute. I tossed my head to get the hair out of my face and eyes then
began probing the lock on my right wrist, trying to figure out how a
key worked on it. The locking mechanism wasn't only primitive it was
alien, and if you think all locks work on the same principle, then
you've never opened one with anything but a key or a palm.
As I probed the lock I couldn't count the minutes ticking past without
screwing up, but it took all the control I have to keep myself patient
and attentive. I knew the slavers weren't going to let their red-haired
slave sleep until she was all rested, but I didn't know how long they
would give her. Conditioning works best on an exhausted mind, but a
little too much push and the mind breaks, leaving you with nothing to
show for your efforts but an empty husk. I was sure they had enough
experience with twisting little girls to know how long to give it, but
I didn't know how long to give it. It was surely night outside, but
that wasn't likely to mean anything to the slavers' plans, especially
with the way they were training me. I'd had to accept pain in order to
get release again, and the thought of continuing on further with that
put a trem6r in my hands that I couldn't quite ignore. If I didn't get
out of there soon, I'd be bouncing off the walls.
When the break came, I almost missed it. You can't hear the twang of a
