“Perhaps your master is a fool,” he said.
“A girl dare not comment on such things,” she said.
“Would you like to be whipped?” he asked.
“No, Master,” she said.
“But actually I am not, as it seems, such a fool,” he said.
“Master?”
“I have received higher offers for you,” he said, “even from men who have merely seen you on the streets, of twenty-five silver tarsks, and more.”
The slave began to tremble. She had understood nothing of this.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
“Master!” she wept.
“There are tears in your eyes, pretty slut,” he said.
“Please do not sell me, Master,” she begged. Her sale now seemed an option within the purview of her master, one he might plausibly view with favor.
“You now seem in earnest,” he said, not displeased.
“Yes, Master!”
“Why should I not sell you?” he asked.
“I am pretty,” she said. “I juice quickly, I squirm helplessly!”
“Many slaves are pretty,” he said, “and they, too, juice quickly and squirm helplessly. One expects such things of a slave.”
“I work hard,” she said. “I strive zealously to be pleasing to you!”
“I can work any slave,” he said. “And the whip will assure that they strive zealously to be pleasing to me.”
“I think Master is pleased with me, when I experience great pleasure in his arms.”
“Slave pleasure,” he said, dismissively.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “But I do not think I could experience such pleasure in the arms of any other man.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “You are a slave. In the arms of any man you would leap and cry out.”
“Does it not give Master pleasure to know I am so subjugated, so unmitigatedly and irremediably subjugated, that I am so much his, and that in his arms I experience the most ecstatic of joys, those of the overcome, yielding and ravished slave?”
“Who cares,” asked he, “aught of a slave’s pleasure?”
“You, Master!” she exclaimed.
“Bold slave,” he said.
“Speak,” she said, “as though our pleasures were nothing, which perhaps they are, but it is clearly one of the joys of the mastery to see the effect wrought upon a slave by your attentions. You cannot tell me it is not a triumph for you, and a pleasure, to see a slave begging and pleading for more, fearing only that you will not continue, weeping with gratitude, half blinded with ecstasy, in the throes of her submission orgasms.”
“I acknowledge,” he said, “it is pleasant to have a slave so, to have her so much in your power, to force her, if one wishes, she willing or not, to undergo such pleasures.”
“Do you think, Master, that we do not desire such pleasures?”
“I suppose you want them,” he said, “you are not free women. You are mere slaves.”
“We are women, Master! We desire our bondage. We long for masters. Without them we are incomplete!”
“So you desire sexual pleasure?”
“We do, we do, as Master well knows.”
“Say it,” said he.
“We desire sexual pleasure,” she said.
“Speak specifically,” said he.
“I, Ellen, the slave of Selius Arconious, tarnster of Ar, desire sexual pleasure.”
“Do you beg it?”
“Yes, Master! Please, Master!”
“Beg, then.”
“I, Ellen, slave, property of Selius Arconious, of Ar, beg sexual pleasure!”
She looked up at him, pathetically. Would it be granted to her? She was, after all, only a slave.
“Slaves beg for such things,” he said. “It is expected of them. One thinks nothing of it. But they are not free women. They are only domestic animals, no more than worthless beasts.”
“Free women also desire sexual pleasure,” she said.
He smiled.
“They do, they do!” insisted the slave. “Let them redden, and froth and deny it, if they will, but they do! I was a free woman! I know! But I did not know what sexual pleasure was until I was put in a collar!”
“It is true you are a hot slut,” he said.
“Yes, Master!” she said, defiantly. “But do you think those free women, brought into collars, are so different?”
“They do learn to kiss one’s feet quickly,” he observed.
“Of course,” she said. “All they needed was to be collared, to be owned, and mastered.”
“It is undeniable,” he said, “that women make excellent slaves.”
“Of course, Master,” she said. “It is what they are in their hearts, and wish to be. The sexes are complementary, two parts which together form a whole! Each is an enigma, a puzzle, meaningless, until they are brought together, each in their difference and perfection, to form one whole. Two radical differences, female and male, but one whole! Is the character of nature so difficult to discern? Can you not see it in the great themes of dominance and submission? One is bred to submit, one to dominate; one is bred to obey, and one to command; one is bred to serve, and another to rule. And the perfection of this complementarity, as societally recognized, as socially articulated, as culturally enhanced and celebrated, and fixed into the matrix of custom and legality, is the relationship of master and slave.”
“And you are a slave,” he said.
“Yes, Master!”
“I think I will have you,” he said.
“Please do, Master!”
“But why you, and not another?” he asked.
“Master?”
“Are not women women, and slaves slaves?”
“But one slave is not another slave.”
“True,” he said, “each is exquisitely different, each wholly slave, and yet each so remarkably and preciously different a slave.”
True, thought Ellen. Each is sold off the platform as living meat, as a property, as no more than a shapely beast, and yet each is wonderfully different and unique.
How men search the markets for their perfect slave, and how slaves hope for their perfect master!
“Are you an insolent slave?” he asked.
“I trust not, Master,” she said.
“Yet you spoke earlier — as I recall — of love.”
“Forgive me, Master.”
“You love me?”
“Yes, Master.”
“You, only a slave, dare to love a free man?”
“Forgive me, Master.”
“A slave,” he mused. “The love of a slave.”
“We cannot help ourselves, Master,” she said. “You own us. We are in your collars. We are with you so much, so intimately. We serve you so abjectly. We bring you your sandals. We bathe you. We kneel before you. It is on our limbs that your chains are fastened. It is you by whom we are mastered.”
“I see,” he said.
“The first time I saw you,” she wept, “I wanted to be your slave.”
“The first time I saw you,” he said, “I wanted you as my slave.”
“Master!” she breathed.
“Not to love you, of course,” he said, “just to have you as my slave, a simple collar slut, you understand.”
“Of course, Master,” she said.
“But you did seem, somehow, as I recall, of particular interest.”
“A slave is pleased,” she said.
“I fought my feelings for you,” he said.
“As I for you, Master.”
“Oh?”
“But not well! Not successfully!”
“Good,” he said.
“Scorn me, if you wish,” she said, “for I am only a slave, and that I well know, but I do love you.”
“With the love of a slave,” he smiled.