She didn't know if Grenfeld would prefer that she obey or not. He might enjoy seeing her back cut to ribbons even more than he would enjoy humiliating her by reminding her of her past.

"I won't ask again. Say, 'James,' now or have your back flayed to the bone." Grenfeld's voice was velvet over steel.

"James," she whispered.

"Say that you love me."

Her will was broken. "I love you."

"James."

"James." Grenfeld had finally found what he had been looking for: the hammer that he could use to crush her will. "I love you, James." She said it like she meant it.

He kissed her again, long and deeply and gently. "Come, my darling. Let us share the sweet love of a lady and her husband in their marital bed."

Grenfeld led her up the steps to the mattress. She knew what was coming. He was going to show her what she had forgone when she sold herself. What she would have had if James had been an attentive husband; what was now beyond all hope of regaining.

He coaxed Flame onto her back and kissed her with warm soft lips. He stroked the hair away from her head. "You are beautiful, Irene. I'm so lucky to be married to you. I love you with all my heart."

The other gentlemen were watching. They snickered softly. Anthony said, "Tell your husband how much you love him, Irene."

"I love you," she said.

Grenfeld looked into her eyes. "No need to say the words, darling. I can feel your love in my heart." He kissed her again.

To her shame, tears were flowing down her face and soaking into her hair. She should have chosen the caning. It would have been less painful than this reminder of the life that she'd thrown away.

Sapphire spoke up. "Gentlemen, I'm feeling ignored." She turned, grabbed the arms of an easy chair, bent over, and spread her legs. "I have two hot, juicy holes waiting for your pleasure. You've been ignoring them all night. f.u.c.k one or the other or both. Gentleman's choice. I'm h.o.r.n.y as h.e.l.l and I'm begging you to plug me good."

Grenfeld was performing only for Flame's benefit. The show held little interest for the spectators. The men shuffled away to cl.u.s.ter around Sapphire. A line formed behind her.

Grenfeld parted Flame's legs and lowered himself between her thighs. He penetrated her gently, considerately.

When she closed her eyes, Grenfeld felt no different than James had felt on their wedding night. Why had her husband not continued to make love to her throughout their marriage? Wasn't that the duty of a husband? To keep his wife satisfied? If only he had done for her what Grenfeld was doing now, even once a month, she would never have enslaved herself.

"You give your husband so much pleasure," he said. "And so generously. I can feel your love flowing through my whole body."

"James," she whispered. The name had come to her lips, unbidden; an old habit resurrected by the feelings that Grenfeld had resurrected. She hugged him close. "I love you, James." She meant it.

"I love you, Irene," he whispered back. "Always."

She responded to his slow, rhythmic pressure against her v.u.l.v.a and rocked her hips to receive his thrusts.

He moved a little faster and harder and she responded more dramatically.

He kept working her until he made her climax. She screamed James' name when she came.

Grenfeld had his ultimate triumph over the lady who had snubbed him.

When he climbed off, she was weeping bitter, salty tears.

He grabbed her ankles, flipped her over on her belly, and pulled her down the mattress until her waist was at the edge of the table.

She was too broken to resist.

He dropped her legs and kicked them apart to open her a.s.s and c.u.n.t to all.

"Here's the other one. Two more holes to fill. Gentleman's choice. No waiting."

A line formed behind her. Someone penetrated her c.u.n.t and started pumping into her. It hurt because it was still hypersensitive from her recent o.r.g.a.s.m, but her heart was hurting so much worse that she cared little about her body.

After a time, that c.o.c.k was replaced by another. And then someone reamed out her a.s.s with yet another c.o.c.k.

She never bothered looking back to see who was using her. She didn't care.

At some point, Grenfeld pulled her hair aside and whispered into her ear. "If only James could see his sweet Irene now. Some wife you turned out to be. Legs splayed wide to offer your a.s.shole and c.u.n.t to any man who can get it up. He's going to hear what you've become. I promise you that. He's going to hear every disgusting detail."

As he was talking, someone pumped a load in her a.s.s, pulled out, and made way so that another thick c.o.c.k could be rammed into her c.u.n.t.

Flame never stopped weeping.

It wasn't long before every man in the room had sated himself in one of the available holes. They stepped off to sitting or standing around quietly. Flame and Sapphire were both still bent over, gaping and available, but no longer being of service.

Sapphire judged that the time had come to bid all a good night.

She rose and then took Flame by the hand and helped her to her feet, and led her to the brightly-lit area by the door where they had entered.

"Gentlemen," she said, "you have honored us with your enthusiastic attention tonight. In grat.i.tude, we request the further honor of offering cleanup service before you dress yourselves for your ladies." She sank to her knees, pulling Flame down to kneel beside her, and then raised her hands in a gesture of welcome.

Anthony stepped in front of her and Sapphire proceeded to lick his limp c.o.c.k gently and thoroughly until it was shiny clean from base to tip.

Flame did the same for one of Dodge's unnamed friends.

Grenfeld hung back and waited until the other six men had been serviced and were getting dressed again. Then he stepped before Flame and said, "Get cleaning, slave."

She licked every b.u.mp and wrinkle until his male equipment sparkled.

Then he turned and thrust his a.s.s into her face. "Backside, too. Get your tongue all the way in there. I want to feel as fresh as a newborn babe."

She pressed her face deep into his crack and began licking.

This was less humiliating than being treated as the lady that she no longer was.

The other six men in the room looked at him in admiration. Grenfeld was a man who knew how to get proper service from a slave.

Sapphire and Flame stayed on their knees until the last man, Dodge, had left the room.

He glanced back and grinned at them. They had made him a happy man.

Flame noticed, but she didn't have the heart to raise her head and acknowledge his success.

Sapphire had to help Flame to her feet. Flame's body ached to her bones and her spirit had been crushed to ash. Sapphire felt only physical exhaustion.

As she gathered up the dresses, hairpins, and shoes that had been discarded at the beginning of the entertainment, Sapphire said, "That wasn't too bad. You were cuffed for a while, but n.o.body got paddled. Or worse."

Flame looked at the shelf of toys. She saw paddles, floggers, d.i.l.d.os, vibrators, clamps, and a variety of ropes and chains. Except for the cuffs, they hadn't been used.

"An evening of straight s.e.x is about as good as entertainment gets," Sapphire said. "But even that leaves you pretty sore."

Flame nodded and took some of the clothes out of Sapphire's hands.

As they padded down the stone corridor back to the kennels, Flame in bare feet and Sapphire still in red stockings, Sapphire said, "That baronet had a special hard on for you. For a while, I was afraid that he was going to do something terrible to you."

He had, but Flame would never be able to explain it was so that Sapphire would understand. "Last year, when I was a lady, I refused a dance with him."

Sapphire giggled. "As a slave, you're never going to refuse a dance with anyone again."

Flame managed a bitter laugh. "That's what I volunteered for."

"We say that any ill a slave does to a man will be visited on her a hundred fold in return. That doesn't start when a woman is enslaved, it extends all the way back to her birth." Another cruel truth about the life of a slave. "I've had hundreds of strokes of the cane visited on my back and that was for doing only what I was commanded."

Flame looked at Sapphire and felt ashamed by her weakness. As cruelly as Grenfeld had treated her, Sapphire had lived through far worse. Flame was no longer a lady who had the luxury of delicate sensibilities. A slave had to be tough enough to survive any humiliation, no matter how sharply it cut.

"How did you become a slave?" Flame asked.

"I didn't become a slave. I was born to it. My mother's owner decided to breed her for profit. He withdrew the contraceptive injections and let her get pregnant. She dropped a new slave every year for ten years."

Flame knew that some were born into slavery but she'd never thought about the horror of it. "Were you... As a child, were you... You know... used... like tonight?"

Sapphire shook her head. "No. That doesn't happen much. Few men are interested in children. Especially slave owners who can get f.u.c.ked any time they want by a woman who's far more compliant than any child. Also, the government keeps an eye on child slaves to make sure that they are treated properly. No one cares about adult slaves but children get inspected every month. And they get surprise inspections on top of that. Child abuse would start a scandal that would blacken the name of every slave owner."

"When were men first allowed to use you?"

"I was sold at fifteen. I've been owned by twenty-two different men since then. I saw my value rise from nineteen thousand to a high of thirty-one and drop down to twelve. Every slave knows what she's worth to the nearest plaq." Sapphire glanced at Flame. "How much did you fetch?"

"Dodge paid a hundred thousand for me."

Sapphire's eyes grew wide. "I've met seventy-five thousand plaq slaves before, but never a hundred thousand."

"I was a novelty. But I wasn't the most expensive. My husband paid a hundred and fifteen for a slave at the same auction."

"Really? That's the highest price that I've ever heard. You're sure? A hundred and fifteen thousand plaquettes sterling?"

"I saw the bidding myself."

"She must have been something special."

"She was a felon. She'd been convicted of adopting a false ident.i.ty for the purpose of sedition."

"Oh. She was high-born."

"How did you know?"

"You know what that means? Adopting a false ident.i.ty for the purpose of sedition?"

"That she was some kind of revolutionary?"

"Hardly. Every so often a highborn woman is adjudicated into slavery on that charge. It's always a lady who was engaged to someone of rank a lord, at least, or maybe even an earl and tried to run away. The running away is the false ident.i.ty she was pretending that she wasn't a fiancee and the high rank of her fiance made it sedition. An insult to the n.o.bility. The highborn punish disrespect and disobedience severely, especially from their own. You didn't know that? I thought that you were highborn."

"I didn't try to run away from my engagement. I never heard of anyone who did. It's something that just isn't done. Every lady that I know respects and obeys both her father and her husband. Within reason."

"I guess not many try to strike out on their own when getting caught means getting adjudicated into slavery."

Flame thought about that the rest of the way back to the kennel. For her entire life, she had been told, every day and in every way, what it meant to be a highborn lady. No one had ever mentioned that there would be consequences for disobedience. It had simply never been an issue.

Until it did. Until she couldn't stand being a lady any longer and fled into a life of slavery.

"You shower first," Sapphire said. "You look like you've been racked."

Before she stepped into the bathroom, Flame looked hard at Sapphire. "When we were giving a show at the beginning. When I was licking you. Did you ... you know ... really come?"

Sapphire blushed. "No. Just part of the act." She spoke too quickly for that to be true.

Flame smiled. "Pity. I know how hard you worked to save me from the worst tonight. You deserve all the thanks that I can give you."

Sapphire blushed a deeper shade of red. "Just doing my job."

Flame felt good about having given Sapphire a few moments of pleasure, job or not.

In the morning, Sapphire was gone before the Flame awoke. The kennelman didn't arrive until later in the morning.

"How did it go last night?"

"The entertainment?"

"What else? I have a note that it was your first. After an entertainment, you need a full checkup to make sure that nothing is torn or broken."

"Your advice about keeping my a.s.shole loose and lubed saved me a lot of grief. Thank you."

"Just part of the service."

"My jaw is pretty sore. I want to thank you properly but I'd like to wait until tomorrow so that I can do a proper job. Do you mind?"

He smiled. "I'll look forward to tomorrow."