than be whipped to death.'
Corey's heart fluttered. Would he? She did not think he would. But still…! She fell back on mischief: 'Will you fuck me first, Master?'
'…And last, you outrageous female! They had a word for you in the States… Sexpot!'
'I'm not really. I used to be considered cold. I was cold. I'm what I am now because of you.'
Seth held up a hand. 'We're starting to argue. Keep quiet while I tell you about the housekeeping money… and don't think those pretty tits can't get another stripe or two.'
'I'll behave, Master. I'm honestly not a bit keen on getting my breasts whipped, even by you.'
Burdett draped his whip prominently across one knee.
'First off, you'd better understand about the slave trade. When someone pays a million dollars for you up there on the auction block I'm lucky to end up with ten percent. There's the Auction boys to pay, there's a couple of political factions, there's the lousy police, and there's some damn heavy bribery to find the girls, get them kidnapped and delivered to where the coffle starts it's trek.' He grinned, admiring her taut loveliness in its tiring kneel. 'The Trek doesn't cost, and it gets us out of sight. Its best function is to tell the girls what they are. I've seen many a randy little bitch start out fighting her chains all the way but end up smooth as silk. Nice thing about the coffle is the girls have to pay attention to each other. If one of them acts up so the girls on either side get chafed skin they damn soon lean on her hard. A coffle's the best leveller I know.'
'Can I sit back now, Master?'
'No, you can't! Erect and attentive's the drill.'
'Well, can I lower my hands from behind my neck, please?'
'No. Stay as you are. Your breasts are nicely positioned for a couple more stripes… you're hovering on the edge of getting them.'
'Master… about the Auctions? All that money for Audrey and I…? I thought you'd be rich?'
'Hah, so did I! You three white girls stolen out of Amphala were the first real bonanza Mustafa and I ever ran into. White girls are hard to come by without an organization behind you. We'd mostly had to deal in coffee colours. If it hadn't been for those bastards, Abdul and Mustafa, I'd have made enough out of you to turn respectable.' Seth grimaced in disgust. 'If I sold you again now I could make enough to feel I was talking to you on half way equal terms… that is, if you were around… which you wouldn't be. So now I've promised not to sell you, and that leaves me about where I've been for a long time.' He bestowed a rueful grin. 'How'd it be if I sold you anyway and kidnapped you back afterwards?'
'Darling, collect ransom on me. Daddy will gladly give you a couple of millions and then we can get married…'
Corey's breasts cringed under the two cuts, one across each. She whimpered under the searing impacts, fighting hard not to move, protruding her second feminine curvature defiantly while still screaming inwardly with the agony of the first. But her emotions were overcharged. With a cry of anguish, she slumped back on her heels, her bound hands flashed up and over her head to awkwardly and pathetically caress her wounds. Piteously, she wept.
'I was only… t-t-trying… to h-h-help.' She sobbed.
'I am a slaver, not an extortionist.'
'I'm… I'm sorry… I… I keep making the mistake.' 'And my wife doesn't by me! I'm not at all sure I want a wife. I told you I'd take you as a slave, and I still will. If that's not good enough, just say so. I'll sell you instead.'
'It's good enough!' Corey couldn't get the words out faster.
Seth Burdett eyed the disorganized bundle of feminity with affectionate amusement. 'This is where the script says I take you in my arms and offer you my shirt and pants if you'll stop crying…' He gave a contemptuous grunt. 'Piss on that! Here's the proper way.'
Once more, Miss Corey Gibson knew herself betrayed by her own libido. One should have dissolved in grief to either disgust this man or earn his pity as he dragged her to the tree. Instead, her tears ceased and her loins flared in a sudden intense desire for the cleansing scourge of his lash. As her bound hands were tied to the trunk above her head, she muttered savagely: 'Alright, whip me! Whip me into an orgasm. Whip me into a hundred orgasms… damn you, Master!'
Seth whipped her joyously, aware of each of her tremors, the flexing of her muscles, the growing heat within. Amused, he noted her bound wrists and their agony as she tugged and heaved, turned and twisted. But, as a boy controls the whipping of a top, so he carefully kept Corey facing the trunk, the whip across a twisting hip or exposed flank kept her back and bottom properly available. When, in her beginnings of orgasm, her legs parted and one raised invitingly, he swept the thong in a snapping uppercut into her crotch so that her climax flowered in a ullation of delicious agony. Her wailing cry was neither of triumph or defeat. It was the tribute of a slave whose Master knew her all too well.
'Don't stop! Whip me! Whip me…!'
'What are you?'
'A slave! You idiot, I know I'm a slave, a slave, a slave…! I'm never going to be anything else but a slave, so I may as well get used to it. Whip me… you complacent bastard. Whip me good.'
Corey thrust her breasts hard against the tree while her Mster spaced his strokes across her back. Probably he would half kill her for the epithets she had hurled at him. Her tear-stained cheek joined her breasts in seeking the comfort of the bark. Inspired, she added to her declaration: 'I want to be… Oh, can't you understand! I want to be your slave, I want to be… I want…'
The whip acknowledged her surrender. It did not stop. When she began to scream she terminated each cry of pain with a curt demand: 'Whip me, damn you, Master, whip me…!'Then screamed again.
When he dragged her back to the coffle he locked only her neck, leaving her hands tied as they had been. Corey did not know whether he had forgotten or had a purpose, but she hurt too much and was too tired to try and bite at his knots. Besides, what did it matter! Even freed entirely of all restraints she would still be a slave. She would always be a slave. Her mind would no longer search beyond that knowlegde. Unconcerned and undismayed she went to sleep.
When Corey was freed the next morning for the chores, another girl was unlocked to take her place. Quietly smiling, her Master stood her upright before nineteen curious girls, tied her ankles tight, then took her crossed wrists to the nape of her neck and tied them to her collar. His instruction was terse. 'Stand there and keep still.'
Miss Corey Gibson stood there, a public spectacle, fuming.
The girls were delighted.
When Corey's neck and right wrist were once more shackled to the coffle and the march resumed she was teased unmercifully. She did not mind. She detected in the comments a hint of envy. She wore her fresh weals, particularly the scarlet stripes across her breasts, with immense elan. She wondered at herself and at the man who owned them all. Could she say she was broken, that the coffle and the whip had made her subservient? Or was it her own shameless lust that made his whip a benison upon her flesh? She was wanton, reveling in the memory of being tied to the tree and then, afterwards, ravished again and again in a series of couplings in which she used her bound hands and thrusting body in taunting provocations to replenish her Master's virility. In loving abandon she regaled the man who had whipped her with every trick and variation of the practiced whore. In so doing she defeated not him but herself by erasing from her mind all thought of liberty. Seth Burdett remained his own man, but Corey Gibson was most certainly a woman!
It happened on the day before they should have reached Ben Sirah. The uniformed men rose from concealment, three to each side of the coffle of girls. Rifles pointed.
'Is nice we meet again.' Corporal Eliah was one big grin.
'What the hell do you want, Eliah?' Seth demanded without concern for pointing muzzles. 'You'll get your cut…!'
The corporal raised a placating hand. 'Mr. Burdett… please!' He managed to sound reprovingly shocked. 'We do not steal. We arrest.'
'Try and arrest me and I'll break all your bloody necks!'
