"What happened to the money?"

"It paid for my debts."

"Your debts were three thousand. You sold for twenty-three-thousand. What happened to the twenty-thousand extra?"

Cherry shrugged. "I don't know." She smiled bitterly. "People in my neighborhood don't know anything about the business of slavery. Only about people who get pressed or adjudicated into it. Most don't get pressed. I never knew anyone who was as foolish as me and got herself into debt. I knew a couple of boys who were caught stealing and were adjudicated. Not the first time they were caught, they were only declared incorrigible after their third conviction." She smiled again. "Only bankrupts get sent directly to slavery."

"Or murderers?"

"Murderers get hung. n.o.body wants a murderer for a slave. Not even as a labor slave."

"I'm sorry that you were made a slave," Irene said.

Cherry raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"You lost your freedom over three thousand plaqs." Irene couldn't help but think that she had owned shoes that cost that much. They were lovely shoes, but they weren't worth a nineteen-year-old's life.

"That was my own fault. Everyone told me that I was foolish to borrow money. I had lots of warning."

"Then I'm sorry that you didn't take their advice."

Cherry looked hard at Irene. "You told me a moment ago that you don't regret trading a lady's life to become a slave. Do you think that I had a better life in the ghetto than a lady in her manor? Here, I get fed regularly. I have lots of leisure time. I get the best medical care. My cell is warm and dry. I'm twenty-five years old. You know what twenty-five-year-old women are like in my old neighborhood? We weren't the middle cla.s.s. We were at the bottom of the heap. My childhood friends are starting to lose their teeth. Their bodies are worn out from bearing children. They collapse into bed in exhaustion every night and have to crawl back out before dawn to take care of their families as best they can before they go out looking for work.

"Me? I get f.u.c.ked every day or two and a bunch of times some evenings. I do a little light housework most days. You, I don't understand, but me? I know exactly why I don't regret having been pressed into slavery. I regretted it at the time. I was devastated when they took me away and tattooed slave numbers on the back of my neck. But now, when I can look back and see how it turned out, now I don't regret it at all."

Cherry shrugged. "I know what's in store for me. When I get close to forty and don't bring much at auction any more, I'm going to be sold as a labor slave. I'll work hard at some dangerous job and die before I'm forty-five. But my childhood friends? They're going to work hard at bad jobs for their whole lives and still die before they're fifty. I was never destined to live a long life, so slavery hasn't cost me anything."

"I understand," Irene said. "But that still doesn't make it right."

"And I still don't understand you," Cherry said. "You know that you're going to die as a labor slave when you're in your forties, too, right? So you've lost decades of your life. You would have had thirty or forty years as an elderly lady in a big manor with fine things and servants to take care of you. I'll never understand why you don't regret throwing that away. Anyone in my neighborhood would have done anything to have your life as a lady. I'm not exaggerating. They would have done anything. Anything."

Cherry didn't take her leave. Without another word, she rose and went back to her cell.

"I want you to f.u.c.k me." Irene stared at Lord Snow defiantly.

His eyes automatically flicked down to her bald crotch before he could bring his gaze under control and roll his eyes back up to look at Irene's.

"No." Then he laughed. "You haven't learned much about being a slave if you think that a lord cares what a slave wants."

"I'm a good f.u.c.k," she said. "In fact, I'm a great f.u.c.k. I'm truly amazing. I'm a master c.o.c.ksucker. My c.u.n.t has talents that you've never experienced. My a.s.shole is to die for. You're missing out."

"No."

"You can f.u.c.k me up, down, and sideways. f.u.c.k every orifice in every possible order."

"No." But he sounded just a little uncertain. He was weakening.

She looked down at his crotch. His pants weren't exactly tented, but they looked like they were bulging a little.

"Then beat me. Paddle me. Flog me. Take a strap to me and make me regret my mistakes. You can even take a cane to me and autograph my back with scars. Make me remember you for the rest of my life." There was definitely a leavening in his pants now. "Humiliate me. Turn me over your knee and spank me with your bare hand. Make my a.s.s twitch and shudder. Use your brute strength to bring tears to my eyes."

He had a tent pole now.

It took a visible effort for him to say, "No."

"Please. I'm begging you." She slipped from the chair and knelt before him. "f.u.c.k me. Beat me. Whatever. Do something to me. Please. I'm begging you on my knees. I didn't enslave myself to live a life of celibacy. If I wanted that, I could have stayed married to James."

"Be quiet, slave!" He looked angry.

A slave who angered her owner past a certain point was putting her life in danger. "Yes, sir." She shut up. Getting him to call her a slave instead of Irene was only a small victory, but it was something.

She hung her head and waited.

"Get back in that chair."

"Yes, sir." She rose from her knees and slid back into the chair in a single, smooth, graceful motion. She kept her head bowed.

"I didn't bring you in here so that you could service me. I need to talk to you."

"Yes, sir."

She waited.

After a minute, he said, "Oh, h.e.l.l. Get out of here and send one of the others in. f.u.c.k, no. Send in two of them."

"Which two?"

"I don't give a d.a.m.n. Whoever's out there. And don't make me wait or someone's going to regret it."

"Yes, sir." She scrambled out of the room.

Tamarind, Cherry, and Peach were in the kitchen. "Tamarind and Cherry, Lord Snow wants you right now."

The two slaves ran to the pleasure room.

Peach looked at her but said nothing.

"What?" Irene asked.

"Nothing," Peach replied.

One of the slaves started squealing in the pleasure room. A minute later, the other joined her. They didn't sound like they were in much pain.

Peach stared at the door. "Some day, you're going to give Nickel some reason to tenderize your c.u.n.t. It's going to happen, sooner or later, as sure as I'm sitting here. When that day comes, I'm going to laugh in your face. Count on it." She left the room in the direction of the cells.

Irene listened to the squeals from the pleasure room for a few minutes. They rose in joyful crescendos and then collapsed in happy giggles. She didn't know what Lord Snow was doing to his slaves, but she wished with all her heart that he were doing it to her, instead.

She would cheerfully get her c.u.n.t tenderized by Nickel every day for a week if it would earn her a single hour of happy f.u.c.king.

She couldn't listen any longer. She retired to her own cell, took her v.a.g.i.n.al weights out of the wardrobe, a.s.sembled five ounces, and inserted it. That was a lot of weight. Having begged Lord Snow to give her the treatment that he was heaping on Tamarind and Cherry and then hearing their ecstatic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns had made her as slippery as h.e.l.l. Keeping the weights from falling out required an extraordinary effort.

Then, to make it harder, she began doing deep knee bends.

It was working the concentration was distracting her from thinking about what was happening in the pleasure room when Nickel opened her cell door.

The weight clattered to the floor.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Nickel said.

"Nothing," Irene replied and scooped the weight off the floor.

"My cell, now." Nickel left.

A minute later, when Irene entered Nickel's cell, she found her sitting on the edge of her cot, her legs splayed wide to expose her open c.u.n.t.

There was no surprise here. She saw this every day and was prepared to do what was required. She sank to her knees in front of Nickel and put her tongue and lips to work on Nickel's crotch.

In a minute, Nickel was moaning and, a few minutes later, coming to a screaming climax.

This was the only s.e.x that Irene ever got in Lord Snow's kennel and it did nothing for her but to make her wish, for the dozenth time, that Nickel had a c.o.c.k instead of a c.u.n.t. Irene would love to taste a c.o.c.k again.

As always, Irene stayed on her knees on the cold concrete floor, waiting for instructions.

After Nickel's breathing slowed to a normal rhythm, she said, "Now you tell me what the h.e.l.l you were doing in your cell."

"I was exercising, ma'am."

"Exercising what?"

"My c.u.n.t, ma'am."

Nickel stare at her. "You better tell me that this is some kind of stupid joke."

"No, ma'am. I started exercising to make my c.u.n.t stronger after I became a slave. I wanted to be able to service gentlemen better."

"What in h.e.l.l does that mean? Make your c.u.n.t stronger?"

Irene explained that there were muscles in the v.u.l.v.a that could squeeze the v.a.g.i.n.al walls. If they were exercised, they became stronger and could be used to ma.s.sage a man's p.e.n.i.s when it was inside her. Holding slippery weights helped her develop those muscles.

"You think your c.u.n.t is stronger than mine?" Nickel asked.

"I don't know. I've never felt you squeeze anything with your c.u.n.t so I don't know how strong you might be."

"Stand up."

Irene stood up.

Nickel shoved the index and middle finger of her right hand into Irene. "Squeeze me."

Irene squeezed.

Nickel sniffed. "Okay. Not exactly crushing me, but I can feel what you're doing." She withdrew her fingers and inserted them in herself. Her stomach rippled and her face contorted for a minute. Then she looked at Irene. "What are you doing when you do that?"

"I'm tightening my muscles. It takes some practice. Think of what you do when you have to p.i.s.s real bad and you tighten your muscles to stop yourself. Do that."

Nickel's face contorted for a minute. "Okay," she said. "I can do that." She stuck two fingers on her left hand into Irene and kept the fingers on her right hand inside herself. "Squeeze me."

Irene did.

Nickel concentrated again. Then she frowned. She withdrew her fingers from herself but kept her left hand fingers inside Irene. "What can you do? Just squeeze?"

Irene began ma.s.saging her fingers, up and down, and from side to side.

Nickel looked amazed. "How long can you keep that up?"

"Long enough to make a man come from the ma.s.sage alone. Half an hour if I have to."

"And a man comes from that alone?"

"Neither one of us has to move a muscle. He can lie flat on his back and I can mount him and we both stay motionless while I get him off. Except not all men can keep themselves motionless. A lot of them start bucking against me. It makes it harder for me to concentrate, but it doesn't matter. By the time they get to that state, they're about ready to come and I don't have to ma.s.sage them much more."

All the time that Irene was talking she kept ma.s.saging Nickel's fingers. She had developed an amazing amount of control.

Her breathing was quickening from the stimulation that she was giving herself. She tilted her hips slightly so that Nickel's fingers were pressing against the magic spot on the front wall of her v.a.g.i.n.a.

"It's good for me, too," she said. "When I'm stimulating a man this way, I stimulate myself. I can" She gasped involuntarily when Nickel's fingers twitched a little inside her. "I can push my most sensitive area" She gasped again. Nickel was stimulating her deliberately now. "against the man's" Another movement of Nickel's fingers, this time a stroke. And another. "parts." She lost her ability to speak as her breath was now coming in deep gasps.

She redoubled her efforts to squeeze herself against Nickel's strong caresses deep inside her.

Nickel was looking at her with a clinical expression.

It had been so long since Irene had been stimulated by another person. She didn't care that it was a woman's fingers instead of a man's c.o.c.k. She wanted to come so badly.

In another minute, she came so well. She groaned as her c.u.n.t began contracting involuntarily around Nickel's fingers. Fluids were flowing so freely that they were running over Nickel's wrist and down her forearm.

Irene howled in pleasure. "G.o.d, that feels good. Oh, G.o.d. Yes! G.o.d!"

She could barely keep to her feet. She grabbed Nickel's shoulders to support herself while she came and came.

Nickel, mercifully, never stopped ma.s.saging her c.u.n.t, but coaxed her into the best o.r.g.a.s.m that she had had in weeks.

When her c.u.n.t finally stopped contracting, Nickel withdrew her hand and Irene collapsed slowly to the floor in front of her.

"d.a.m.ned impressive," Nickel said. "Now, get out of my cell."

Irene crawled a few feet to the door and then used the k.n.o.b to pull herself up. She staggered to her own cell, twenty feet down the hallway, and collapsed on her cot.