She looked up at me. I saw that her eyes were angry. I saw, too, in her eyes that she knew she belonged at the feet of a man.
'I am very thirsty,' she said.
'What of it?' I asked.
Her eyes flashed.
I looked away, out into the street.
'I am very thirsty,' said the girl, after a time. 'I am chained. Would you bring me water from the fountain, please?'
'You must pay me,' I said.
The male silk slave at the next ring cried out with outrage.
'You must pay me,' I said. 'Do you understand?'
'Clearly,' she said.
I went to the fountain and, from the lower bowl, scooped up a brimming, double handful of water which I carried, carefully, to the girl. I lifted it to her lips and she, kneeling, hands bound before her body, her neck on its chain leash fastened to the ring behind her, drank. My hands were in position, when she had drunk, to hold her head. She looked at me, frightened. 'I know the feel of such hands,' she said. 'You are not a silk slave,' she whispered.
'I,' said the silk slave fastened at the next ring, 'if I had been free, would have fetched you the water for nothing.'
'I know your sort,' said the girl. 'You ask nothing, but you expect much.' I thrust the girl back against the wall. I thrust my lips to her throat. 'I prefer a man,' gasped the girl, to the silk slave, 'who takes command of a girl, and takes what he wants from her.' Then she said to me, sucking in her breath, turning her head to the side, 'And what do you_ want of me?' 'Everything,' I told her, 'and more'
'I feared so,' she laughed. I thrust up her bound hands, to get them out of my way. I then understood why Goreans commonly bind the hands of women behind their back. Then her bound wrists, crossed, were behind the back of my neck, and her lips began to meet mine, eagerly. 'Take me,' she whispered, 'Master!'
'Stop!' cried the silk slave at the next ring. 'Stop! I shall tell!'
'Take me, Master!' begged the girl. 'Please take me!'
'Stop!' cried the silk slave. 'Stop! I shall tell! I shall tell!'
I had been had numerous times on Gor by free women, usually chained or obedient to their commands, but I had not been permitted, myself, to take a woman, to hold her in my arms, owning her, and transform her into an obedient, squirming slave. Uncontrollable, wild, starved for the ownership of a woman, I thrust her back, brutally, against the wall. Then I dragged her, half lying, holding her helplessly, from the wall. Her head was up in the leash collar. 'Oh,' she cried, 'oh!'
'Disgusting!' I heard from a free woman passing in the street.
'Animal!' I heard another woman say.
But these passers-by, and others, did not order us apart. We were slaves. Such scenes are not unknown on Gorean streets. They would attract little more attention than would the writhings of pet sleen. It is for such reasons that slave girls are sometimes sent from their houses locked in the iron belt. To be sure the slave girl is more likely to be attacked by young ruffians than male slaves, who are often closely supervisor.
'Oh,' moaned the girl in my arms. 'Oh, Master.'
'Please take me home, Publius, and touch me,' I heard a woman, in robes of concealment, say to he who walked with her upon that street.
They hurried away.
I cried out with the glory of having her.
'Master!' she wept.
I withdrew from the girl, lifting her arms from about my neck, shuddering, gasping.
'You are ruthless. Master,' she said. Then she reached out to me with her mouth, and kissed me, again and again, on the left forearm.
I stood up, and left her at my feet. I was breathing heavily.
'Wait until your Mistress comes,' said the silk slave at the ring. 'I shall tell her.'
The girl, half sitting, half kneeling, her neck in the leash collar, her hands still bound before her, put her head against the wall. She was covered with sweat, and the smell of her pleasure. Her body was covered with deep crimson blotches. Demurely she smoothed down the hem of her tunic.
I turned about to look at the street. Some twenty yards away two palanquins, heading in opposite directions, were stopped. The men in them, facing one another, were talking, presumably greeting one another and passing the time of day with genial converse. The pace of life in a Gorean city, even a large city such as Ar, does not tend to be swift. Sometimes when there is an especially beautiful sky many people will close their shops and men will flock to the high bridges to watch.
'I shall tell,' said the silk slave at the ring.
Behind the palanquins, as behind several of the others I had seen this day, were several chained girls, briefly tunicked and ribboned.
'Yes, I shall tell,' said the silk slave.
One of the girls was looking at me. She was small, slender-legged and exquisite. She was collared. The short, loose silk she wore was hitched high, at her left hip. She was chained by the neck, in one of two eleven-girl coffies, between two other girls, each coffle chained separately to a bar at the back of the palanquin. Her hands, like those of the other girls, were fastened behind her back.
I shook with emotion. I had never realized she could be so beautiful.
She was looking at me.
Slowly, trembling, heart pounding, I moved toward her.
'Come back,' called the silk slave. 'Stay at the wall! I will tell! I will tell!'
I approached the girl. The masters did not notice, for they were in converse. Some servants, too, were speaking together, near the palanquins. Neither did they notice.
Then I stood before her. Her eyes were regarding me with horror. She stepped back, in the chain.
'I did not think I would ever see you again,' I said.
She did not speak.
I looked at her fair, white throat; it was lovely and delicate; it wore, snugly, locked on it, the circlet of bondage.
'That girl,' she said. 'You raped her.'
I stepped back from the girl, to look upon her. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
'Please,' she said.
Objectively, I suppose, she was no more beautiful than thousands of other girls, but to me she was the most exciting woman I had ever seen.
'Please,' she said.
I examined, with wonder and pleasure, the girl who stood before me, her small feet, bare, and trim ankles, her calves and thighs, the delicious curves of her body in the loose, scant silk, the loveliness of her slender throat, locked in its collar, the delicacy and beauty of her features, the loveliness of her eyes, sensitive and vulnerable, and the marvels of her dark bair, grown longer now, tied back with a silk ribbon.
'Please,' she said, 'do not look at me like that.'
'Are you branded?' I asked.
She turned her left side from me. She pulled at the bracelets which fastened her hands behind her back.
'Oh, how beautiful it is,' I said, having stepped to her left. There, her tunic had been hitched up to her hip, presumably the better to expose her beauty and the mark which identified it as merely that of an item of merchandise.
'You raped that girl,' she said.
It was hard for me to take my eyes off the beautv. Her thigh, I had noted, bore the common Kajira mark of Gor. She, I understood, in spite of her beauty to me, was only a common Kajira.
'Are you not pleased to see me?' I asked. It seemed to me Incredible that she should not be pleased to see
