Nickel was still Lord Snow's whiphand and now she was itching for a reason to tenderize Irene's c.u.n.t. Her hand was twitching toward her strap as she waited for Irene to refuse.

Irene did not.

In her cell, Nickel said, "I think it would be good if we started fresh. No hard feelings. Water under the bridge. All that."

Irene didn't believe a word that Nickel was saying. That woman knew how to hold a grudge like no other.

"So I'm going to give you a chance to show your good faith." She lay on her cot and spread her thighs wide.

Irene could have refused, could have gone running to find Lord Snow, but she didn't. This was her problem to solve. A display of pride would only make it worse.

She sank to her knees, buried her face in Nickel's crotch, and began licking her musky c.u.n.t.

While Nickel's moans increased in volume and deepened in timbre, Irene thought about what was going to happen at the next entertainment.

An entertainment that Nickel would not be able to escape or avoid.

An entertainment in which Nickel would have the starring role.

It made her task easier.

Nickel's climax was explosive. The more Nickel hated Irene, the more she was stimulated when she forced Irene to degrade herself by pleasuring her enemy.

Irene's face was lathered with a froth of c.u.n.t juice when she left the cell.

Lime found her in the bathroom, taking her second shower of the day, trying to make herself feel clean again.

"Irene, I have instructions from Lord Snow. There's a car coming to take you somewhere. I don't know where. Lord Snow didn't say. You're to wear a housedress and shoes. I left them on your cot. The car's going to be here in a half hour. You've got to be ready."

"I will," Irene said as she turned off the water.

She wondered if she had been sold. It didn't sound like it. When a slave was transferred to a new owner, she was always naked, had her hands cuffed behind her back, and was leashed about the neck.

Of course, that was just tradition, not law. Lords could break tradition if they felt like it.

But surely Lord Snow wouldn't have sold her when he needed her to plan his next entertainment. That was still more than two weeks away, but she couldn't imagine Lord Snow wanting to change entertainment directors, even two weeks before an event.

Unless he had already cancelled the event.

Maybe he had been offered an earldom. That would be sufficient incentive for him to give up his favorite slave. Especially one who never serviced him.

Maybe the last time she begged to be f.u.c.ked had been the straw that had broken the camel's back. Maybe he didn't want to have to fight temptation any longer and was happy to get rid of her.

Maybe he had sold her to a brothel down by the docks and couldn't be bothered with the usual ceremonial transfer of property.

By the time she was climbing into the backseat of the nondescript sedan, she had terrified herself with thoughts of spending the rest of her life on her knees in some dirty brothel, sucking one sailor's c.o.c.k after another's, all day, every day for the rest of her life.

The driver was taking the road that led toward the ocean.

That did nothing to a.s.suage Irene's fears.

But instead of driving toward the docks, he drove north to reach a barren, windswept granite peninsula. Irene had been here before when she was a lady. It was one of the most dramatic features of the western coastline. People came to watch storms roll in across the ocean. It was called G.o.d's Finger, but this time, Irene thought of it as G.o.d's c.o.c.k. She had to get laid soon. She was so h.o.r.n.y that everything she saw made her think of s.e.x. Having to design orgies for everyone else, being surrounded by naked beauties who were getting f.u.c.ked left and right, even seeing Nickel have an o.r.g.a.s.m every d.a.m.ned day, was a constant torture.

Lord Snow was a cruel, cruel man.

The driver parked right next to another sedan that was waiting at the back of the lot, away from the other cars.

He exited the car and walked toward the point.

He'd given no instructions, so Irene sat alone in the back seat.

A minute later, a lady in a long dress with her hair piled high on her head slipped out of the adjacent car and joined her.

"h.e.l.lo, Irene."

"h.e.l.lo, Linda. It's good to see you again."

Her old friend looked curiously at the gold collar that encircled her neck. "Still collared, I see."

Irene fingered the gold self-consciously. "Not by choice. Lord Snow owns me now and he wants me to keep wearing it. I'm a slave so I'd rather be known by a proper slave name. I'm thinking that maybe Grapefruit would be a good name."

"Better than Ugli Fruit."

"I'd rather be called Ugli than Irene."

"Ugli would be a blunt irony. You were the most beautiful of the ladies in our circle. As a slave, you're breathtaking." Her voice sank to a low, bitter octave. "I expect that you're d.a.m.ned popular with our husbands."

"I'm afraid not. Lord Snow is keeping me celibate. I haven't been laid in months. I became a slave for all the s.e.x. This enforced abstention is h.e.l.l."

Linda smiled. "Good for him."

"It's not natural. Women were designed to be f.u.c.ked, well and often."

Linda blushed at the raw language. Or maybe because the idea was so appealing to her. "Apart from that, you seem to be doing all right."

"I am. A pleasure slave's future is bleak but the present is fine. Apart from suffering from near-fatal horniness." Irene was enjoying baiting her old friend with outrageous talk statements that would never be spoken in polite circles. She nodded at the driver who was standing on the edge of a precipice, looking at the lowering sky. "You think that he'd like to f.u.c.k a willing slave? He can b.u.g.g.e.r me if he wants. Right now, I'll take anything I can get."

"I... I..." Linda was stuttering.

Irene laughed in delight. "I'm just pulling your chain." Then she stopped laughing. "But I mean it. If he wants to f.u.c.k me, I'd love it. Really. I'm so far beyond picky, you wouldn't believe it. If Lord Snow would let me run errands, I'd be bending over for random men on the street."

Linda laughed with her. "I believe it. You're terrible. Terrible."

"You know slaves. They'll do anything. Literally anything."

Linda paused for a long moment. "I heard a rumor. I heard that you organize after-dinner entertainments for Lord Snow."

"That's not just rumor. He made me his director of entertainment. I have to come up with some novel experience for his guests every week or two. If the men aren't happy enough with what I give them, then I'll get locked in my cell for three days without any food. People always think that a beating is the worst punishment, but a slave would take a strapping over a fast any time. Maybe not a caning, but a fast is definitely worse than a strapping."

"Lord Snow would do that to you? Not let you eat anything for three days?"

"Sure. It's no problem for him. He just says a word to his kennelmen and it's done. I don't get a single bite of food until breakfast on the fourth day."

"Men think of the most horrible things to do to women." Linda's mouth curved in disgust but her eyes were sparkling.

"The truth is that Lord Snow didn't think of it. I did. He doesn't think that I need to be punished but I told him that he has to starve me if I fail to please his guests. Not just please them but give them a better entertainment than they expected. If my entertainment is only average, my belly stays empty for days."

Linda stared at Irene in shock. "Why would you tell him to punish you?"

"It's complicated. It's because of how gentlemen think about slaves. They can see that Lord Snow is favoring me so they have to know that I'm risking severe punishment if I fail. That convinces them that I'm giving them my best effort. I can't let them suspect that Lord Snow is short-changing them. Especially when he doesn't let me partic.i.p.ate in the entertainment. My a.s.s has to be on the line, one way or the other. It also delivers a message to the other slaves. They're more cooperative if they know that I'm hanging out in the wind with them."

"I hope they like you. Otherwise they could mess up your entertainment and you'd have to suffer for it."

Irene smiled. "That's a risk that they won't take. However much I get punished, if they're the cause of it, I'll make sure that they suffer just as much."

"You can punish the other slaves?"

"I can ask Lord Snow to punish them. He will. There are other, more subtle things that I can do to them. I can design an entertainment that will make the slaves suffer in a way that delights the guests."

"Do you do that?"

"I have, but it's not the norm. I'd rather stage an entertainment that the slaves enjoy as much as the gentlemen."

"Do they? Enjoy the entertainments?"

"They can. It can be fun. Lighthearted."

Linda was silent for a long time. Irene waited to see what she was going to say.

Finally, she spoke. "Are there ever other women at the entertainments? Besides slaves?" Suddenly, Linda couldn't meet Irene's eyes. She was looking down at her hands.

"No gentleman wants a wh.o.r.e at an entertainment," Irene said. "I would only allow someone else to partic.i.p.ate if she were a lady of quality who was brave enough and daring enough to put herself in the room. That can't happen because the gentlemen would recognize her."

"But if there were a way..." Linda let her words trail off.

"It might have happened once," Irene said. "Funny enough, it was an entertainment at your manor. It was the only time that I'd seen an entertainment that was designed by a professional. I think that was where Lord Snow got the idea to make me his entertainment director."

"What happened?"

"The slaves were all blindfolded and masked. Their tattoos were covered with wide collars. The only way that they could be distinguished was by bra.s.s letters on the masks. They weren't allowed to speak, either. None of the men could hope to identify any of the women by their voice. It was a game. One of the slaves, me, had been a lady recently and the gentlemen were challenged to discover me. To see if they could distinguish between a recently-enslaved lady and a long-time slave."

"Did they?"

"I almost fooled them. There was another slave who tied with me. Six men thought that she was the lady and six thought that it was me. But I lost the tie-breaking vote and was punished most cruelly for losing the game. I still shudder when I think of it. Sometimes I wonder it the final vote was counted correctly. It was a close call."

"You mean that you think that a lady might have snuck into the entertainment in disguise? Someone who was especially brave and daring?"

"I lost count of the number of slaves who were at the entertainment. It was hard, being that we were all blindfolded throughout. I thought that I was the second to last to enter the room, but sometimes it seemed like there were two slaves behind me instead of just one."

"So you think that some lady might have wanted to enjoy servicing a lot of men, even though she was risking brutal punishment if she failed to act like a perfect slave?"

"Her punishment might not have been so brutal. It wasn't announced ahead of time. When I lost, I was crucified for half an hour. It was agonizing. But if the lady had lost, her punishment might have been a lighthearted paddling. It would sting and be humiliating for her, but wouldn't have been a true torture."

"That wouldn't have been fair." Linda looked offended.

"She wouldn't have known that she was getting a lighter penalty than the real slave because it wasn't announced beforehand." Irene smiled at her old friend. "I've learned that a lot of things aren't fair for slaves and ladies, but you have to live on both sides to see the difference."

Linda licked her lips and glanced up at Irene, not quite meeting her eyes. "Do you think that it could ever happen again? That a lady could be smuggled into an entertainment where she would be used like a slave?"

"It could, if the entertainment were designed to accommodate her."

"Maybe even two ladies could be smuggled in?"

"Maybe."

"It would have to be one of those light, fun entertainments, though. I don't think any lady would want to risk being crucified for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the gentlemen in the room."

"Of course," Irene said. "Like in the entertainment that I was telling you about, there were no punishments for the slaves, except for me at the end. It was all just s.e.x."

"I think I know a lady or two who might like to try that sometime. If they could be a.s.sured that they would never be identified."

This was the whole point of the meeting. At last.

"I think that I could design an entertainment that would give a lady or two that rather unique experience."

"If you can design such an entertainment, I could guarantee at least one lady would attend. And maybe a second would come as well. As long as there was no possibility that they could be unmasked."

"Of course, the ladies would have to prepare themselves. They could never refuse to obey a gentleman during the entertainment. That would reveal them as imposters. A slave would never dare refuse an order."

"Of course."

"And they have to be shaved. No slave ever has a single pubic hair."

"I know that."

"The biggest problem, as you might imagine, is that the gentlemen sometimes enjoy sodomizing their slaves. Slaves always take care to keep their sphincters well stretched and constantly lubricated, especially before an entertainment. They don't want to suffer any tears."

"I understand." Linda paused. "In the entertainment that you described, was the other slave the one that you thought might be a lady in disguise was she violated a.n.a.lly?"

"I don't know. I was blindfolded."

"If she was, then she must have prepared herself for that, right? I mean it would have given her away if she had been torn."

"I a.s.sume that she was told how to prepare herself. In more ways than that because she didn't get any more votes than me and I had been a slave for three months. For a lady who had never been a slave before, it would have been an impressive performance."

She glanced at Linda. The lady couldn't resist beaming in pride.

"I would consider it a great favor if you could design a performance that would allow a lady or two to partic.i.p.ate without being discovered," Linda said.