Irene smiled. "Tonight is about fun."

"Life should be fun," Linda said.

Then she got into her car and drove off into the night.

Irene breathed a sigh of relief. So many things could have gone so wrong. It was a miracle that she had not been discovered. Now she could return to the entertainment without worrying about being tortured to death by a bevy of furious aristocrats.

Before she entered to the billiard room, she pressed a b.u.t.ton that was mounted beside the door. Then she stepped inside and waited.

After a minute, a spotlight began to glow faintly. She positioned her head in the center of the beam and waited until while it slowly increased in intensity.

When it was bright enough, it began to expand to display her whole body encased in the shiny black catsuit.

The slaves took their cue and whispered their farewells to the gentlemen around them and then rose from the mattresses and filed back toward the kennels.

The houselights were still dark so the gentlemen never did get a clear look at the slaves who had serviced them. The best they got was glimpses of silhouettes as they pa.s.sed in front of the spot that illuminated Irene.

When Irene saw Nickel walk past with the red light glowing on her collar, she pulled her into the spotlight and gave her a long kiss on the lips.

The gentlemen hooted and clapped.

She tasted the salty flavor of s.e.m.e.n on Nickel's lips. "You saved yourself a caning, p.e.n.i.s breath," she said and pushed her toward the door.

When the last slave cleared the door, the houselights began slowly coming up.

"Gentlemen, I hope that you enjoyed our stars on this midsummer night."

Irene couldn't see if the gentlemen were nodding or shaking their heads, but she was relieved to hear a few of them mutter happy sentiments. She wasn't going to starve this time.

Someone said, loudly, "It was a midsummer night dream."

He got it.

Someone else said, "The only woman I f.u.c.k in the dark is my wife. This was better."

Gentlemen laughed in agreement.

"Even my own slaves don't work me like these did," a third voice said. "I don't know how they do it, but Lord Snow could lend them out to other kennels to give lessons."

"I'd like to borrow one," another voice said.

"Me, too."

"We'll have to see about that," Lord Snow said from the back of the room.

Irene could hear that he was forcing a cheerful tone in his voice. He had a tiger by the tail. He didn't want to give his secrets away to every kennel in the county. But he couldn't refuse to do a favor for the gentlemen in the room, either. Most of them outranked him.

The lights were now bright enough for Irene to see the a.s.sembled gentlemen. They had been lying with the slaves when she called time but they were standing now.

"Gentlemen, it is my custom to ask my lord's guests to vote on their satisfaction at the end of an entertainment. I strive to provide more pleasure to you than you usually experience in an evening. If the majority of you think that I have failed in that goal, then I will be punished with an enforced three-day fast. I will be sent directly to my cell to be confined without food until Wednesday breakfast.

"If any gentleman thinks that he did not receive more pleasure tonight than he receives from the usual entertainment, please raise your hand now and send me to my cell to starve for the next three days."

She was shocked to see three hands drift into the air. Two of the gentlemen were standing in the part of the room where she had left Nickel. The third hand was Lord Snow's.

The gentlemen looked around and saw who had their hands raised. One of the men voting for punishment was Marquette Kelly. He shrugged and said, "It was good. But I can't say that it was the best that I ever had. The service felt decidedly perfunctory toward the end."

One other gentleman frowned and belatedly raised his hand in agreement.

"Anyone else?" Irene asked. "Then that makes four votes out of fifteen against me. Not a majority, but I will consider myself rebuked. It's not enough to merit three days of starvation, but I will ask Lord Snow to administer the strap to me to ensure that, next time I will strive to do better. He does know how to make a slave regret her failure."

The men lowered their hands.

After Lord Snow led the gentlemen back to their wives, Irene retreated to her cell and stripped off her catsuit. She had had a wonderful time. The two ladies had had a wonderful time. More than two-thirds of the gentlemen had had a wonderful time. But it galled her that even four men had claimed that they had enjoyed other entertainments more than hers.

She counted that as a defeat. Lord Snow was an expert at bruising a backside with his strap. She had seen the evidence of that on three of his slaves since she had arrived. She didn't want to suffer the same, but she believed that she deserved it.

Lord Snow came to her cell some time later, after he had bid his guests a good evening.

"Would you like to strap me now?" Irene asked.

"No. I'm not going to strap you," he replied. "Both the marquette and I agreed that you failed to provide a better than average entertainment tonight. In my manor, his vote and mine together const.i.tute a majority. I'll instruct the kennelman give you a bucket and a pint of water in the morning."

He stepped out of the cell and closed the door.

She didn't have to try the k.n.o.b. She'd heard the lock click.

A moment later, the lights went out, leaving her sitting on her cot in pitch blackness.

She had eaten only lightly at dinner, being too nervous about the entertainment that she had planned.

Her stomach was already growling.

The kennelman had been brusque. Quick glance to see if Irene was still breathing, dump an empty bucket into the cell, and throw a plastic bottle of water on the bed.

The door was closed and locked again before her eyes had time to adjust to the light. She had to keep them closed for the entire fifteen seconds and had not even seen the kennelman's face.

She spent her time sitting in the dark, trying to make herself stop thinking about the unfairness of her punishment. Fair wasn't a consideration in a slave's life. There was no fair and unfair, only that which a slave would endure and that which would kill her. She told herself that three days of starvation wasn't going to kill her so it was merely another trial to be endured.

She told her empty belly to be still and stop growing at her like a hungry beast in the dark.

Instead, she thought about Lady Linda and Lady Kaitlin. They had enjoyed themselves at her entertainment. That helped validate her choice to sell herself into slavery many months ago. A choice that ultimately led to her starvation in a locked cell. But she now knew that other ladies were also so bored and unhappy that they were willing to become slaves for a while. It's true that they only pretended for a few hours instead of committing themselves to a lifetime a short lifetime of unceasing submission. But even wanting to be slave for a few hours indicated that, like Irene, they needed relief from being ladies.

If it had occurred to Irene that she could have merely dabbled with slavery instead of selling herself to the highest bidder, she would have done that. She was a slave today because she lacked the imagination to have found another option like Lady Linda had.

She supposed that it is always true that people are bored only because they lack sufficient imagination to entertain themselves.

She opened the water bottle and sipped at it. She was terribly thirsty and she wanted to upend it over her gaping, upturned mouth, but she controlled her urge. Sipping slowly helped pa.s.s the time for a few minutes. As well, it ensured that she didn't dribble even a single precious drop.

After a bit, she opened her wardrobe and located her v.a.g.i.n.al weights by feel. She a.s.sembled a combination that totaled four and a half ounces, inserted it into her c.u.n.t, and clamped her muscles around it. She stood up with her legs apart and concentrated on keeping the weight from falling out. After a while, she tried to do better than that. She tried to hold it in with the lower part of her v.a.g.i.n.a while she contracted her muscles deeper inside to see if she could pull the weight further into herself by v.a.g.i.n.al ma.s.sage alone.

She thought that she succeeded but couldn't be certain. The flare at the end kept it from actually moving inside. But she kept trying until her c.u.n.t was exhausted.

Then she imagined that it was Lord Snow's c.o.c.k and tried to squeeze it until it turned purple, developed gangrene, and had to be amputated from his miserable carca.s.s.

That's when she decided on the design of the next entertainment. Not in detail, just a general outline, but that was enough to start planning.

As soon as her concentration was broken, the weight slipped out and clattered to the floor. She had to get down on her hands and knees and feel around half the floor before she found it wedged against the base of the wardrobe.

She cleaned the weights as best as she could with no water and then packed them away. She would take them out again in a couple of hours and work more on her control.

Next, she sat on her cot and tried to remember everything that Cherry, Tamarind, Lime, and Peach had told her about their early lives.

One was adjudicated into slavery because she had taken a joyride in an aristocrat's car; two were pressed by bankruptcy, one of those because her landlord had lent her more money than she could afford and the other because her husband had gambled her family into debt; and one was born into slavery.

It struck her that all three of the women who had been enslaved as adults were lucky that they were exceptionally beautiful. If they had been homely, they would have gone straight to the labor auction where they would have been worth a lot less money and had a much shorter, more brutish existence.

Maybe it wasn't just luck. Maybe the creditors a.s.sessed the beauty of a women before they decided to lend her or her husband money. Homely women would be a far worse credit risk.

Something about that idea began chewing industriously on the underside of her mind. She felt it down there and tried to drag the thought out in the open to take it to its logical conclusion, but she just couldn't get a grip on it and eventually gave up.

When recalling the other slaves' lives got old, she opened her wardrobe to retrieve her b.u.t.t plug and lube.

She was locked up, but that didn't mean that she could exempt herself from staying stretched and lubed. A man might come to her cell to b.u.g.g.e.r her even if she were being punished. It didn't seem likely, given Lord Snow's insistence on her chast.i.ty, but it could happen. Besides, she had been lubing herself every day for so long that it felt wrong for her a.s.shole to be tight and dry.

But as she was feeling around on the shelf, her door slammed open and her cell was flooded with blinding light. Her eyelids snapped shut instantly.

"So, b.i.t.c.h, you want something to eat? I got something for you to eat." Nickel grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the wardrobe.

The cell door slammed closed.

"Git down on your knees, b.i.t.c.h and get eating."

Irene was pushed to the floor by her shoulders. She heard her cot creak and then felt the insides of Nickel's thighs against her ears.

Her eyes were still too sensitive to open, but she stuck her tongue out and leaned forward until she tasted c.u.n.t. She had done this so often, she could navigate around the whiphand's crotch by feel alone. She didn't need to see Nickel leering down at her.

Her tongue was barely wet a pint of water in the morning didn't keep her flush all day long but Nickel was secreting enough to lubricate her wide licks along the full length of her slit.

Irene was certainly getting the full, raw taste of Nickel today.

She couldn't tell if there was any lingering s.e.m.e.n from last night's orgy in the mix but she wouldn't have been surprised if there was. After she had forced Nickel into the center of the festivities, the gentlemen wouldn't have let her alone. They would have f.u.c.ked her, but good, in every available orifice. And she wouldn't have dared to deny any gentleman access to any hole.

She had no doubt that Marquette Kelly and his friend had voted to punish her with starvation because Nickel had serviced them with less than full enthusiasm. The word that they had used was "perfunctory."

She would not forgive Nickel for that.

She suspected that, if those men didn't find satisfaction in one hole, they would have moved on to the next. And she further suspected that Nickel would be less than diligent about keeping herself lubed and stretched than most slaves who expected to be used hard.

While she was licking and thrusting her tongue into Nickel's c.u.n.t, she ran a gentle finger down below her chin until she felt the tight, puckered opening below. She pressed her index finger into it.

The effect was electric. Nickel screamed in pain and sprang backward, pulling away from Irene's face and hand. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" she shouted.

That was an informative reaction. Nickel's a.s.shole was d.a.m.ned sensitive. Any other slave would accommodate three fingers without batting an eye. Irene wondered how badly Nickel had been torn last night. She hoped it was bad, but she controlled her expression to keep her satisfaction from showing on her face.

"I thought that you might like a gentle ma.s.sage there. You know. Just a bit of extra stimulation to add to your pleasure."

"G.o.d f.u.c.king d.a.m.n it. You keep your G.o.dd.a.m.ned f.u.c.king finger out of my d.a.m.ned a.s.shole. You try that again and I'll whip your p.u.s.s.y right off. You'll be nothing but raw bone between your legs. You got me?"

Irene's eyes were finally adapted to the light. She looked up at Nickel with an expression of proper submissiveness. "Yes, ma'am. Some men really like that when I suck their c.o.c.k. I thought that you might find it special, too."

She thought that she could detect tears in the whiphand's eyes.

"Don't you ever, ever, ever do that again."

"No, ma'am. I certainly won't."

She had broken the mood. Nickel pushed herself off the cot and minced toward the door.

Irene noted a spot of blood on her blanket. The last thing that she saw before the lights went out again, was a smear of Nickel's blood on her finger.

Taking a s.h.i.t had to be excruciating. If Nickel were wise, she would limit herself to soup and juice until she healed. Better, she should mention her a.n.a.l trauma to the kennelman and get it repaired.

But Nickel would rather tough it out than admit any weakness.

Irene didn't care. If that were the way Nickel wanted it, that was the way she could have it.

Irene marked the second day of her fast by the second visit of the kennelman in the morning and by the second time that Nickel came into her cell to get her c.u.n.t serviced in the middle of the day.

This time, Irene didn't try to ream out her a.s.shole. That would be fun only once. As she was licking Nickel to a climax, she wondered why Nickel didn't order one of the other slaves to service her.

It was risky for Nickel to interrupt Irene's isolation this way. n.o.body except the kennelman and Lord Snow had permission to enter Irene's cell when she was being confined for punishment.

That Nickel insisted that Irene had to be the slave to service her could be taken as a compliment to her skill. Not the kind of complement that she desired, but a complement, nevertheless. But Irene was not deluded. Nickel liked the way she licked c.u.n.t, but she liked, far, far more, that she was humiliating Irene by forcing her to her knees and making her to give service. It was all about power. Nickel loved that Irene had once been one of the fine ladies who looked down on slaves with hateful contempt and now she could look down on Irene's bobbing head with her own contempt.

If Irene had even a slight inclination toward other women she would have not minded having her face buried in Nickel's crotch. She might have even found some pleasure in it. But even that wouldn't have ameliorated the humiliation of forced submission.

But Irene didn't complain. The humiliation of forced submission was exactly what she had accepted when she had mounted the auction block to sell herself into slavery half a year ago.

So, on the third day of her fast, when Nickel entered the cell and announced that she had, once again, brought something for Irene to eat, Irene, once again, forced herself to kneel between Nickel's widespread thighs and push her face into the dripping crotch.

She tried to feign enthusiasm, but she had no energy for it. The slaves were kept svelte. At the best of times, hunger gnawed at their bellies for most of the day. Irene had no reserve of fat to sustain her through a three-day fast. Even the fat in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was being depleted and they were beginning to sag on her chest.

"Lick me properly, little b.i.t.c.h, or I'll strap your c.u.n.t raw. Put some effort into it." Nickel's voice was loud and demanding.