that he was not dissatisfied.'
'Good,' I said. To be sure, I had heard several of these sounds emanating from the shrubbery.
'But his usages were brief, and abrupt,' she said.
'He is a lad,' I said.
'But I,' she said, 'am a woman.'
'Did you respond to him?' I asked.
'I could not help myself,' she said. 'Apparently you have trained my body in that fashion.'
'You do almost all of that yourself,' I said.
'But I was given little choice,' she said.
'True,' I said.
'But time and again,' she said, 'I was not granted my full release.'
'He is a lad,' I said.
'In the end,' she said, 'he succeeded, apart from obtaining his own brief pleasures, in doing little more than arousing me.'
'Captives,' I said, 'are next to nothing, as slaves are nothing. The captive, and the slave, may be done with as one pleases. The captive, like the slave, must accept usages of any sort to which captors, or masters, are pleased to subject them. Entitled to expect little if they are captives, and nothing if they are slaves, let them rejoice if they receive anything. Be pleased that you were not beaten.'
'Yes my captor,' she said.
To be sure the youth, had it not been, presumably, for his haste, or lack of experience, might have done far better for himself than he had. It is not that it is not fully appropriate for captives and slaves to be occasionally subjected to brief, casual and even frustrating usages, if only to remind them that they are captives or slaves, but that the youth, had he taken care to enforce lengthy and exquisite ecstasies on the captive would have discovered that his own pleasures would have been marvelously deepened, lengthened and multiplied. One of the great pleasures in the mastery, increasing the sense of its joy and power, is forcing the female to experience, at your will, and convenience, incredible pleasures, carrying her up and down, and through, a series of slave orgasms, making her more and more helpless, until she is irremediably yours, lost in the throes of her submission ecstasies.
'We must leave soon,' I said. 'They are breaking camp even now.'
'But you cannot leave me in this state!' she said.
'On your belly,' I said.
'Yes!' she said, delightedly, going to her belly in the sand.
I knelt over the back of her thighs.
'Captor?' she asked.
I reached beneath her belly, in the sand, and put a loop of binding fiber about her.
'Oh!' she said.
I had pulled the cord snugly up, about her waist, and knotted it behind the small of her back.
I then drew her hands up, behind her back.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I am tying your hands behind your back,' I said, fastening them there, using the two free ends of the cord as a double cord.
I then rose to my feet.
She turned to her left shoulder in the sand, looking up at me, reproachfully. 'What is the meaning of this?' she asked.
'We are breaking camp,' I said. 'I am afraid, until morning, pretty Ina, you will just have to squirm a little.'
'No!' she said.
'You may kneel,' I said.
She struggled to a kneeling position.
'Sometimes slave girls,' I said, 'are aroused and then put in their kennels with their hands braceleted behind their backs, held there with a belly chain, or a belly cord. Much the same effect is achieved when they are chained by the neck in a slave bin, on the straw, their wrists chained to their holding collar.'
She regarded me, with horror.
'You may rise to your feet,' I said. 'We trek within the Ehn.'
She struggled to her feet.
'Will it be necessary to put you in a leading halter?' I asked.
'No!' she said.
'We are ready,' said Plenius.
'We will trek southwest,' I said.
'Southwest?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'The young rencer was caught to the west of the camp, was he not?' asked Labienus, the hand of Titus on his arm.
'Yes,' said Plenius.
'Do as Tarl says,' said Labienus.
'In three or four days we will make our adjustments southward,' I said.
'Let us trek,' said Plenius.
We then left the sand island. Several times in the first two or three Ahn, Ina, finding her way to my side, pressed herself against me, piteously. Each time I thrust her back. She continued to follow me very closely. Sometimes she would make a tiny moaning noise, not unlike one of the unvocalized need signals of a slave girl.
Once, past midnight, while we stopped to rest, she came very close to me, and looked up at me, piteously. I looked down at her face in the moonlight, streaked with tears.
'May I speak?' she asked. 'Yes,' I said.
'I am needful!' she whispered.
'Then doubtless you will be warm in the morning,' I said.
Such answers are sometimes given to the girls in the kennels, pressing their tear-stained faces and bodies against the bars, their hands braceleted behind them, or the girls in the slave bins, sitting or kneeling, their small hands twisting at their throats, in their manacles.
'I am already aflame,' she said, 'ragingly aflame!'
'We trek,' I said.
'You will give me relief in the morning!' she said.
'Perhaps,' I said, 'perhaps not.'
She moaned. 'I am not a slave,' she whispered.
'Fortunately you are not,' I said, 'or you would know what the miseries of deprivation could be.'
She looked at me with horror.
'They strive well, to please their masters,' I said.
'And what would a slave do in the morning?' she asked.
'One in your situation,' I asked, 'one not limited by the length of her chain or the placement of her kennel bars?'
'Yes,' she said.
'I suppose she might crawl to me, or to another, on her knees,' I said, 'begging.'
'I beg now!' she said.
'In the morning,' I said, 'you will doubtless beg harder.'
'In the morning,' she sobbed, 'I will crawl to you on my knees, begging.'
'But why would you do that?' I asked.
'Can you not guess?' she sobbed.
I then lifted my hand in the moonlight, signaling that we would now resume the trek.
