"I'll obey you because that's the proper order of the world. You paid a lot of money for me. You own me. I, of all the slaves in the world, have the least right to complain about that. I wasn't forced into this. I decided of my own free will that I would let men own me for the rest of my life. You can beat me half to death any time you want. You don't need a reason. You can tell me right now to crawl back onto that bench so that you can cane the flesh from my back and I'll do it even if it means that I'll be disfigured for the rest of my life. I'll put the cane in your hands, personally, and kiss your feet afterward."

"I'll never understand you."

She didn't answer that. She didn't really understand herself. She understood only that she would do it.

"Do you like being caned? Is that how your brain works? Don't you feel pain at all? Or do you feel it, but the pain is a pleasure for you?"

She flinched at the thought. "No. I feel pain as acutely as any person. Maybe more acutely, now that I have experienced so much more of it. And I hate it. I have never asked you to beat me. Never deliberately done anything to give you cause. I seek as much pleasure as I can get but I never seek pain. Never."

"Yet you made yourself a slave. How much pleasure can a slave get?"

"More than a lady. When I was a lady, I felt very little pain but I also felt no pleasure, either. Now I feel both. More intensely than I ever thought possible, and far more pain that pleasure, but even pain is better than feeling nothing."

"So you find slavery a happy state?"

"No. A happy state would be having much pleasure and no pain. But I don't know anyone who achieves that. If I thought that a carpenter lived in such a state then I would have become a carpenter."

"I employ carpenters. They don't strike me as living in bliss."

"I thought not."

He looked at Flame lying on her cot on her stomach, her bandaged a.s.s sticking in the air, too tortured for her to sit or lie on her back, and a look of guilt returned to his face.

"I don't give you much pleasure," he said.

"So what? I'm your slave. You have no duty to give me pleasure. No obligation to my feelings." She winced as her attention turned to her abused b.u.t.tocks. "You know what you should do now?"

"No. What should I do?"

"You should order me to tear this bandage off my a.s.s and crawl back to the whipping bench. You should order me to give you the cane so that you can beat me all over again. Last night you laid nineteen strokes on me. Tonight you should lay on twenty. You should stripe me cruelly in a slow, measured cadence so that I feel each stroke individually and suffer as much as possible. You should make me scream in agony for a long, long time." Her voice caught and slow tears began to roll down her face. Her body began to shake in terror.

"Why should I do that?"

It was hard for her to force herself to speak. "Because you can. Because a slave's feelings mean nothing to you. Because it will help you stop thinking of me as a person. Because if you cane me deliberately instead of in anger, if you cane me as simple physical exercise to limber your arm without any concern for my terror and suffering, then you will realize that you have no reason to feel guilt."

He looked at her for a long time.

She prepared her mind for the coming ordeal. In her thoughts, she rehea.r.s.ed tearing the bandages from her wounds and crawling off the bed. Her fingers twitched in antic.i.p.ation of his orders.

She pressed her face into her mattress so that he would not see the tears flowing from her eyes. Not see that her face was blanched with terror.

"Do you know why I'm not going to do that?" he asked.

"No." The word was m.u.f.fled because it was spoken into her mattress ticking.

"Because I paid a hundred-thousand plaqs for you and I can't afford to lower your value with any more scars."

That was the only acceptable reason for not caning her again.

"But don't worry," he said. "As soon as your a.s.s can take another beating, I'll take the paddle to it. And the flogger and the strap. I'll make you sing your songs of suffering and dance your dances of agony. I've come to enjoy hearing you moan and shriek while you quiver and writhe. I never thought that I could develop a taste for another's pain, but life is full of surprises."

He hadn't mentioned the cane. She wondered if he would soon develop a taste for the sight of blood and scars. "I will try to give you good return on your investment, then," she said into her ticking.

He laughed bitterly. "You better. I need to get as much return as possible on everything that I own right now."

She turned her head to look at him again. "That bad?"

"Sir Drake has bled me white."

"You can sell me. I'm worth a hundred thousand on the block. I can keep you from bankruptcy for a while."

"Don't be foolish. I'm not an idiot. I'd never get myself in so deep that I'd risk going bankrupt. You think that I'd risk being sold as slave myself?" He sounded annoyed.

"Are there male slaves?" Flame had never thought about that before. Some aristocrat's tastes ran to men rather than women, but she didn't think that there were enough of them to support trade in male slavery. They were more likely to want to b.u.g.g.e.r each other. In her experience, all slaves were beautiful women between the age of fifteen and forty.

"Of course there are male slaves. You think that the only slaves are pleasure slaves? Men and undesirable women are labor slaves. They are sold into mines, factories, farms, and shipping. There aren't a lot of them because it's usually cheaper to hire help than to buy a slave, even a cheap one. But the worst jobs the dirtiest and most dangerous can't be filled by volunteers so we buy slaves for fodder." He looked at her curiously and waited for the penny to drop.

She wasn't stupid. She realized the implication of what he was saying. She wouldn't be a pleasure slave forever. In another ten years, she would be getting close to forty. However hard she tried to remain attractive, she would no longer be able to compete in an auction against younger, prettier slaves.

There were no old pleasure slaves. None.

But there weren't any old labor slaves, either, because they didn't last long. A few years after she was sold as a labor slave, she would die of heatstroke picking berries or choking on coal dust in the bottom of a mineshaft or being washed overboard from a fishing trawler in a gale.

When she had sold herself into slavery, she hadn't thought ahead to the ultimate destiny that she had fixed for herself. She had not thought past being violated by her new owner and his friends a few times. She had been ignorant and foolish.

"How much do labor slaves fetch on the block?" she asked.

"A thousand plaqs. Maybe two. Never three. They're not an expensive investment. It costs more to feed and house them than to buy them. They can't do much work if they are starving to death or dying of pneumonia."

She smiled wryly. "You should sell me soon or you won't get your hundred-thousand plaqs back."

"I wouldn't get it back if I sell you now. Not even close. You fetched that much because you were a novelty. We all watched a lady place herself in slavery. That was astounding. But the next time you're on the block, you're going to be just another slave being sold by her owner. I'd be surprised if you fetched much more than thirty thousand."

"So you lost seventy thousand when you bought me?"

"As soon as I took you off the block."

"Why did you pay so much, then."

"I thought that you were worth it. I still do."

"Because my screams are so s.e.xy and I writhe so seductively when I'm being stung by the paddle."

"Yes. And also because you can tell me how to behave like a proper aristocrat."

"Is becoming a knight that important to you?"

He looked at her in shock. "Of course."

"Why? It's just a t.i.tle. You're already a far better man than the knights that you've been entertaining."

"You mean the knights that you've been entertaining." He smiled. "You're developing a bit of a reputation. A dinner invitation from Mr. Dodge is becoming a hot ticket among the minor aristocracy. It seems that I could have a successful career as a pimp."

"They should know. Pimping his slaves is the most popular hobby of every gentleman that I ever met."

"A pimp is only as good as his wh.o.r.e."

"Then I'll try to be the best wh.o.r.e that a slave can be." She appreciated his conversation. It helped distract her from the pain in her a.s.s.

He wrinkled his nose. "I guess that's the job description of a pleasure slave."

"But you still haven't told me why a t.i.tle is so important to you."

"I thought that was obvious. So that I can own property. Only t.i.tled aristocrats are permitted to own property."

She was confused. "You do own property. You own me. You own your car and your furniture and your clothes. You own a lot of property."

"I mean real estate. Land. Buildings. Commoners can't own real estate. Only men who have a social rank of knight or higher can be landed gentry. I can't own my own house. I have to pay an exorbitant rent to Baronet Norbit for this place. His family has owned all the property on Norbit Hill for three hundred years. And I pay a crippling rent to one aristocrat or another for every business that I own. I want to own my own house and my own business properties and never pay a sterling chip to a landlord again."

She had never thought about where James' money came from. He had inherited a fortune. Now she realized that what he had really inherited was land. The fortune came from the rents. "When you're a knight, you'll buy properties to rent out to other commoners?"

"Of course."

"Just like every other aristocrat."

"No. I know a way that I can do it better than they do."

"How's that?"

"They rent property for a fixed price. As much as the market can bear. But they misread the market and, often as not, charge more than a business can bear. They drive commoners out of business all the time. I won't do that."

"Because you're going to charge less?"

"No. I'll end up charging more. But not by charging a fixed rent like everyone else. I'm going to collect a portion of the business income as rent. A successful business will pay more and a struggling one will pay less for the same property. I've done the math. Fewer businesses will go bankrupt and I'll still make more money than the traditional landlords. I'm not going to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs; I'm going to nourish them. And then collect a lot of eggs."

"But only the struggling business will go for that. As soon as a business starts to make a lot of money, it'll leave your building and move to a property with a fixed rent."

He was surprised at her insight. She had a better head for business than she knew. "No. They'll have to sign a long-term lease. The penalties for early termination will be significant."

"And they'd be signing the lease when they were just starting out, before they made much money, so they wouldn't worry about that clause."

"Exactly."

"Until it's too late and their rents are going through the ceiling."

"But when their rents get that high, it will mean that their business is booming and they can afford to pay it. All the other landlords don't care if their tenants succeed or fail. I'll be the only one who wants his tenants to get rich. Win-win."

"Then I guess we better make sure that you are benighted." She dared say that only because she believed him when he said that he didn't want to cane her again.

He laughed at her pun.

She sighed in relief. And then sighed from a fresh wave of pain radiating from her a.s.s.

Flame was working hard at learning how to squeeze things with her c.u.n.t.

She no longer had to put her fingers inside to feel the muscles working. Now she knew how to squeeze them when she was sitting, standing, or lying down. She settled into a routine of squeezing the muscles in her c.u.n.t as hard as she could, ten times, as often as it occurred to her, which was several times a day. She felt like she was getting stronger, but it didn't seem like quite enough.

Though her a.s.s was scabbed over and healing it still felt rather sore.

Dodge was sorry that he had caned her, but he was not so sorry that he was willing to forego her s.e.xual services. He began f.u.c.king her the third day after the caning and continued to do so every day after that.

He did not restrain her for a while but he still preferred to bend her over and take her from behind, which meant that he was banging into her bruised b.u.t.tocks with his hips.

Sometimes he let her lie on her back. That was much better because, when her legs weren't tied down, she could raise them and lift the bruised part of her b.u.t.tocks off the bed.

She took the initiative one afternoon when he took her into the pleasure room. He had already shed his pants before she said, "Mr. Dodge, with your permission, I'd like to try something a little different."

"What's that?"

"I've been working on a variation in the usual way of servicing a man and I'd like to see how well it works."

He was rampant and ready to rut. "What do you mean? What kind of variation?" He sounded irritated. He had no desire to fool around with any experiments. He wanted to get down to business now.

"I want you to lie on the bed and let me service you. I will do all the work. You won't have to do anything, just lie still."

Dark skepticism clouded his features. "This better be worth it."

For the sake of her aching a.s.s, she dearly hoped that it would be. With the damage from the caning only half healed, even a brisk paddling would be pure torture.

"All I want is to be able to service you better than you've ever been serviced before."

He got even harder.

She was making promises that she prayed she would be able to keep. Mr. Dodge wasn't her lover and he wasn't her husband. He was her owner and he would make her pay with hours and days of pain if she disappointed him.

But she had to find out if all her exercising was doing any good or if she were only wasting her time and effort.

She was sweating lightly, afraid of the gamble that she was taking, when she laid Dodge on his back on the mattress.

She straddled him and slowly lowered herself to impale her c.u.n.t gently with his c.o.c.k.

He moaned in frustration and began arching his back to thrust against gravity.

She put her fingers on his lips and said, "Shh. Don't move. Just lie still and let me do the work."

He groaned but obeyed her instruction.