I looked down at the floor. "No, master," I whispered. "I am a true slave, a natural slave, a girl who desires nothing more than to please her masters in any way she can."

"Well, we shall see," he said simply.

He made a brief motion with his hand. Felix tugged on my leash, drawing me to my feet, and led me over to a corner of the room. Above my head, an overhanging beam jutted out from the wall. A ring was set in the bottom face of the beam. I wondered what was going on. Then Felix quickly cuffed my hands together in front of me and attached them to a long chain, which he looped through the ring and pulled down on the other side. He was incredibly strong despite his moderate build. I felt the tension on the chain pulling my feet off the ground. My toes could barely graze the floor. The steel cuffs bit into my wrists.

Then I realized what was happening. I was to be whipped.

"This is only a demonstration," I heard M. Arnaud saying behind me. "This is to let you know what awaits you should you ever be in the least displeasing." He paused. "You may thank me."

"Thank you, master," I said, my voice trembling. I wondered how many times I would be struck. I had felt switches and whips in training, but only to correct lapses in my concentration or technique. I had never been subjected to a sustained, disciplinary beating.

M. Arnaud walked in front of me and help up a whip in front of me. It was long and black, with thick, heavy blades. He pressed the handle to my mouth. I licked and kissed it, almost instinctively. I hoped to mollify him with my eager obedience, to soften the blows that would follow.

He walked behind me again. I tried to steel myself for the blow. Then I heard the hiss of the air behind me, and my back exploded in pain. I screamed despite myself. Then the whip fell again. And again. It fell on my back, my bottom, the back of my thighs, the front of my thighs, my belly, my breasts, and my shoulders. The blades of the whip were too large and heavy to bite into my skin and draw blood, but their weight made it feel like I was being struck with clubs. I quickly lost count of the blows in the haze of pain that followed. In retrospect, I realized I was probably only whipped ten or fifteen times. But in my mind, the beating lasted an eternity. I screamed and begged for it to end, promising to do anything, anything at all to make it stop, but knowing that, as a slave, anything could already be demanded of me, and what was demanded now was that I scream in agony. My body twisted in the air. I remember seeing Mr. McGregor and Felix and wondering at how calmly they looked on. I begged them all to rape me, to let me please them, to exact from me the price of my slavery. But they were impassive.

Finally the blows seemed to stop for longer than usual. I was hanging from my wrists, sobbing, my body alive with pain. I know there are people for whom physical pain is erotic and stimulating, the elixir that fires their arousal. I am not one of them. As a slave girl, I knew that I was subject to the whip, that I might be beaten for any disobedience, or even for no reason at all, and I knew that was only fitting, for I was a slave. But I could never enjoy the actual pain of the beating. I would gladly have served a hundred men in succession rather than undergo the torture I had just experienced.

When Felix released my wrists, I could only collapse on the floor. I dragged myself on my belly over to M. Arnaud's feet and frantically began kissing them. "Please, master," I begged. "Let me please you. Take me any way you want. Have your way with my body. Let me serve you." I was desperate to prove my worth to him, thinking that could spare me another beating.

"Remember, Jenny, that was a warning," he said as I continued to lick his shoes.

"Yes, master," I said. "Thank you, master." I expected to be raped then and there. Instead, he pulled me up to a kneeling position by my hair. I kept my knees as far as apart as I could, in terror. I would do nothing that might earn me the slightest disapproval. He put his hands to my neck and unlocked the collar that had been there since I had first been abducted. An instant later, he replaced it with another - a smooth, gleaming, gold-colored collar engraved with my name and the name of my owner: Club Aphrodite.

Felix accompanied me back to the slaves' wing where, thankfully, I was allowed to sleep for a few hours.

I awoke on one of four beds in a large shared bedroom. The others were unoccupied. Not knowing what I was allowed to do, I was too scared to leave the room and explore the area. Instead, I lay on my back, naked, wondering what course of events had brought me here, a slave girl completely subject to the whims and cruelties of her masters.

Sometime later, another girl came in. She was taller than I, with honey-blonde hair, and, only partially concealed by her brief garment, a body that men might kill to possess. But, of course, as she was a slave, they could have her body simply by snapping their fingers.

"Are you Jenny?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "... mistress."

"Oh, you don't need to bother with that," she said, smiling. "I'm a slave as much as you. My name is Michelle."

"You're an American?" I asked, guessing from her accent.

"Yes, I'm from Mississippi," she answered. "I heard there was a new American girl here. It can be awfully difficult to find your bearings here, so I thought I'd help you out."

And so Michelle explained to me the workings of Club Aphrodite. As Cristina had forewarned me, it was essentially a brothel, but one with the particular twist that all the girls were complete and utter slaves. Most of the patrons were wealthy businessmen who paid either annual membership fees (in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) or nightly fees (in the thousands of dollars) to come to the club in the evenings (or, occasionally, in the afternoons) and take advantage of all that it had to offer. This included a bar, a lounge, and a small dining area. The primary offering, of course, was its stable of slave girls, of which I was now the twelfth. Our duties were to wait on them, to bring them drinks and food, to dance for them, and, of course, to provide them with whatever sensuous pleasures they might care to imagine. We were completely at their disposal at all times, and could be simply ordered to our backs and raped on the floor. We could also be taken into one of the adjoining bedrooms, there to render longer services in private; for that, however, the clients would have to pay extra.

In addition, the club had its own peculiar system for disciplining its slave girls. We were continuously ranked in three categories - A, B, and C - based on several criteria: how often we were selected to perform in a private bedroom (thereby earning additional revenues for our masters), how satisfied our clients were with our performances, how obedient we were to our masters, and so on. The best, most pleasing girls were in category A, and the least pleasing girls, those most likely simply to be thrown over a table and raped from behind, were in category C. And the higher your category, the more privileges you were allowed. A girls were allowed to wear brief garments that, while highly revealing, at least allowed them to preserve their modesty; were given the lightest of chores; and were generally off-limits to club staff during the day. C girls, by contrast, remained completely nude at all times, were set to menial tasks such as scrubbing the floor, and were available to any staff members in any way at any time. The result was a constant competition in which the girls strove to outdo each other in obedience, sensuousness, and intimate skills, to be as hot, wet, and deliciously open as they could possibly be, in order to attract and hold the attention of our masters and our clients.

As the new girl, I was automatically at the bottom of the rankings, and would remain there until I learned how to be more pleasing.