To her surprise, it was also the second time she climaxed in harmony with him. In one evening she had experienced more o.r.g.a.s.ms than in the past three years of marriage to James.

Enslaving herself to a stranger had been a mistake, but it did have its compensations.

He locked her in her cell before going to the house to spend the evening with his family.

It was dark in the windowless room. There was a light fixture on the ceiling, but the switch was outside the door. The owner, not the slave decided if she were allowed to see.

She spent the night sleeping and waking, on and off. But she had nowhere to go and nothing to do but stay on her cot until she dozed again.

When Flame opened her eyes, she found a stranger standing in the doorway to her cell.

"Who are you?"

"Barry. Kennel service. I'll be here at seven every morning. There's soap and shampoo in your wardrobe. Get showered now."

Barry openly appraised her naked body when she climbed out of bed. She supposed that it didn't matter. She was property. She no longer decided who could see her naked, her owner did.

She had not been able to look in the wardrobe before because it was dark in the cell. Now she opened it and found a few toiletries. There was nothing else inside. No clothes. Not even a robe or slippers.

She retrieved the soap, shampoo, toothbrush, and toothpaste.

Apparently Barry found her pleasant to the eye because he kept staring at her until she had left the room.

Lady Irene's husband had never appreciated her naked body as much as every casual stranger who saw Flame now.

When she returned, sopping wet and dripping on the floor, he was still in her cell, waiting for her. There was a towel lying on her bed.

"How are you feeling?"

"Okay." Her a.s.s was sore. It felt like it was bruised to the bone. Walking hurt.

"No sniffles? Sneezing? Coughing?"

"No."

"We don't want any kennel cough. Let me know immediately if there's any change in your health."

She nodded. "Do you provide food?" She was hungry. Her last meal was lunch the previous day. Lady Irene ate lightly but regularly. She was not accustomed to missing meals.

"Not unless instructed. We've received no instruction about nutrition yet."

"Is there any chance that I could get a book to read?" The prospect of spending the day in her windowless, featureless cell was bleak. The light was on now. She hoped that Barry would leave it on.

"That's your owner's prerogative, not mine."

A television would clearly be out of the question.

There was a moment of silence, then he said, "I heard a rumor that you volunteered for slavery. Is that right?"

She nodded. "It was an impulse." A self-destructive impulse, akin to jumping off a bridge or stepping in front of a train.

"You were a lady? In the peerage? Married to a lord?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "I don't get it."

"Me, neither," she said. "It was an impulse."

"I have to lock you in," he said. "We have to leave a slave as we find her." Presumably that meant that he would turn out her light, too. He stepped toward the door.

"Wait," she said.

"Yes?"

"I was wondering if you could help me with something."

"Maybe. What?"

She lowered her eyes and stared at the floor. "I... I don't have much experience. I want to please my owner."

"That's a good idea." His voice was dry. He'd seen the bruises on her a.s.s and a.s.sumed that she'd already failed to please him.

"I don't know how to... How to please a man ... service him ... with my mouth. I've never had to do that and I heard that men like it."

"You want to know how to give him a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"What's to know? Don't bite him. And don't blow. Kiss and lick and suck until he comes. Use your hands, too. Jerk him off into your mouth. It's way harder to get him to come if you don't jerk him off. And swallow. Don't gag or spit it back out. Just swallow his j.i.z.z and lick him clean afterward. That's a nice touch, cleaning him up."

"That sounds easy enough."

"I guess it is. Even stupid girls figure it out."

"Can I try it?"

"What do you mean?" He stared at her and raised an eyebrow. "With me? Now?"

"Yes. Please."

He looked around as though the owner might be standing behind him. They were alone.

"Okay. Make it quick, then."

She dropped to her knees in front of him and unbuckled his pants. He was erect already. She didn't know if he were bigger than other men or not she had never seen a c.o.c.k this close but he looked enormous. She grabbed him tentatively and licked his shiny purple head experimentally.

He tasted a little salty, but not too bad.

She tried again.

"Tighter," he said. "Hold me tighter and put some spit into it. A b.l.o.w.j.o.b should be sloppy. It's all right if saliva is running down your chin and dripping on your t.i.ts. It shows enthusiasm. You're letting a man know how great his d.i.c.k is. You can't go wrong as long as you're making him feel like a stud."

She threw herself into the task, licking him, shoving him as far down her throat as she could take him, sucking with gusto.

He began groaning and his words grew effortful. "Good...G.o.d!... You... natural... wonderful... pump me... with fist... fast... Goooood-G.o.d! ... G.o.d! ... G.o.d!"

She was the one on her knees but he was the one praying to G.o.d.

She felt him begin to pulse with her hand first, and then against her lips, and then he was spraying great, thick gobs across her tongue. She thrust all civilized thoughts out of her mind and began swallowing and swallowing.

His contractions continued sporadically for longer than she expected. She always thought that a man spurted into a woman and that was the end. Now she realized that a man's o.r.g.a.s.m was a prolonged process.

Too late, she understood why James had wanted to keep lying on top of her for a while after he was done. It was because he wasn't.

When Barry's c.o.c.k began to soften in her mouth she remembered what he'd said and licked him clean.

When she released him, he sagged against the bed.

"Thank you for the instruction," she said.

It took a moment for him to stop gasping. Then he said, "You're welcome."

He rested for a couple of minutes.

She waited on her knees the picture of subservience and thought about a different meaning for the words, kennel service.

"You never did that before?" he asked.

"Never. I just did what you told me."

"Are all ladies such quick studies?"

"I'm not a lady. Just a slave."

He grinned. "Yeah, right. Well, don't worry. You're going to do fine with old Dodge."

Dodge wasn't that old. Maybe in his early forties, but he was more than a decade older than the kennelman.

"I still have to lock you in," he said. "And I can't give you any books or food."

"That's all right. I understand."

"I don't think that you'll have much problem getting treats from your owner, though."

She felt a surge of pride. She'd done well. "I'll see what I can do."

He left her light on. She didn't know if that was standard procedure or a treat in grat.i.tude for the b.l.o.w.j.o.b. She liked the idea that she had earned a boon.

She brushed out her hair and applied makeup using the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.

The woman slaver had told her that slaves should wear their makeup heavy, but Flame decided to maintain her lady face until Dodge indicated that he wanted something different.

He could have bought one of the more experienced slaves, but he'd paid a lot to get a lady that he could f.u.c.k. She felt obliged to give him his money's worth.

"I could kill you, you know. I could handcuff you and then get a knife from the kitchen the big butcher knife and carve you into pieces. n.o.body would stop me."

The woman standing at the door of Flame's cell was pet.i.te. No slave; her grey-speckled, curly hair was pinned on the top of her head, baring the nape of her neck for the world to see that it was unmarked. The corners of her eyes were wrinkled into crow's feet. She was no older than Dodge but she had not aged as well as he had. Women seldom aged as well as men.

"I could slice your t.i.ts off and spill your bowels over the floor and wear your scalp for a wig and I wouldn't be arrested for it. n.o.body would care."

Her husband would care. He would lose a piece of property that was worth a hundred-thousand plaqs. But the authorities wouldn't lift a finger. Mrs. Dodge was right about that. Flame's well-being was of no more concern to them than if Mrs. Dodge took a sledge hammer to her own china cabinet.

She pulled half a loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a meaty hambone out of a sack and threw each of them at Flame. The cheese bounced off her breast onto the floor and the bread missed her completely and bounced off the wall onto the bed. The hambone almost nailed her in the head but Flame managed to get a hand up and deflected it onto the floor with the cheese.

"Maybe I poisoned your dinner. Think about that when you're eating it."

The woman slammed the door when she left.

Flame didn't hear the lock click closed. Most likely Mrs. Dodge was hoping that she would avail herself of the opportunity to escape and flee back to Calam Shire.

She would not. Everyone knew that runaway slaves never got far and Flame had no desire to be nailed akimbo to the jailhouse wall. Those poor wretches took days to die.

She wasn't that self-destructive.

As she picked the bits of dirt out of the cheese and ham, she thought about Mrs. Dodge.

She didn't blame Mrs. Dodge for hating her. Every lady hated her husband's slaves. When she had been Irene, she had hated James' slaves with as much pa.s.sion as Mrs. Dodge hated her. But a lady didn't express her hate. Not like Mrs. Dodge did. Doing so would lower the lady to the slave's level while simultaneously giving the slave a degree of humanity that she didn't warrant.

If you hate your husband's car, you don't abuse it, you ask your husband to buy a new one.

It was a trial for a lady because most husbands required that their slaves perform routine ch.o.r.es around the house. It was a necessary part of the fiction that the slaves were purchased for the house rather than to satisfy the husband's l.u.s.t.

Normally, the ladies in the house avoided the areas where the slaves worked during the times that they would be working. Irene had almost never seen James' slaves. And she certainly had never seen them nude.

What kind of woman would visit her husband's kennels? No lady. Well, maybe Lady Fern, the s.a.d.i.s.tic lesbian who was as likely to use her husband's slaves as he was. But Fern was no lady, despite her t.i.tle.

Maybe old Dodge was punishing his wife for something and that was why he had ordered her to bring food to the slave.

If so, it was certainly a cruel and unusual punishment. For both Mrs. Dodge and her.

When she was gnawing the meat off the hambone, she suspected that she was also eating Mrs. Dodge's saliva. She smelled it carefully, but couldn't detect the odor of urine of feces.

At least Mrs. Dodge was that much of a lady.