His large hands were on me, gripping me, holding me an inch to two above the furs. I felt his thumbs. They pressed deeply into me, at the sides of my belly, but did not hurt me. They only held me fixed in place. I could feel the strength of him. I could not even think of escaping that grip.

"Master!" I begged.

I knew then that I belonged in a collar, and so, too doubtless, did he. "Oh!" he said, frightened. I was tense, waiting. "Oh," I said, softly, frightened.

He was so strong!

"Oh!" I said, softly.

He kissed me, gently, holding me.

"It" s done," I whispered. "It" s done!"

He kissed me again.

What a fool I am, I thought to myself, and what a fool he must think me. Of course, it has been done!

I had sensed the parting of that tissue, its giving way, but it had not hurt. I had expected it to hurt. It had not hurt!

"I am longer special," I said. "I am now only another girl."

He laughed.

What a small thing it had been! There had been nothing to it! What an absurdity to be concerned over so small a thing, so trivial a thing, I thought. I knew that in some women, of course, the matter was not so simple. I was pleased, and relieved, accordingly, that in my case it had all happened so quickly, so simply, so painlessly.

He kissed me again.

I had been opened, I though. I was now "red silk!"

I was still, of course, locked in his arms. I felt his power and surgency. He then began to make use of me.

"Master!" I gasped.

Perhaps his patience was then at the end, or perhaps he felt he had waited long enough, or perhaps he found me, suddenly, too beautiful to resist. I did not know, but he then began, with apparently little regard for me, to content himself.

I clung to him, startled.

It may be, of course, that this was merely another kindness on his part, that I be now reminded of my status, that I wore a collar, that I was naught but a slave, I did not know.

"Yes, Master!" I whispered.

I suspect I was not the first girl he had opened. He realized, I think, as I did not, at that time, that at this time there would be severe limitations on my capacity to respond to him, limitations finding herself the victim of helpless slave needs.

"Master!" I cried.

I clung to him. I jerked my legs. I felt the chain on my left ankle. What can we be but vessels of pleasure to such brutes, I thought. To be sure, the slave must sometimes expect to be used with complete unilaterally. This feature is attendant on her condition. She is, after all, only a slave. Most slaves, incidentally, welcome this, for they treasure their bondage, many of them dearly than their life, and they know that without it, and such things, they cannot be true slaves. Even such a service, perhaps paradoxically, they find exciting and fulfilling. Too, after one has been a slave for a time, it is difficult to be touched by a man without becoming responsive, and extremely so. Thus a girl is often grateful for her master" s touch, and weeps with pleasure in her usage, even when he is not concerned in the least with her. This is a part of her helplessness, and having been made the prisoner of her slave needs.

"Ah," he said, as though interested.

Could I actually be responding to him, this brute who had opened me in a Gorean tavern, this monster who had but a moment ago red-silked me!

"Oh, Master!" I whispered, startled.

Oh, he had been patient, he had been kind, I knew. He could have cuffed me and torn me open in an instant but he had not done so. I was grateful. But now what was he doing to me? What were the sorts of things I was beginning to feel? To be sure, as I would later understand, these were, in their depth, only incipient sensations, little more than the hints of sensations, but even so I did not know now, how to cope with them. Something here seemed to be different now from the simple, intimate, unbelievable, unspeakable deliciousness of his earlier attentions. Something within me that I now sensed, something deep in my belly but which seemed to radiate out through my whole body, now hinted obscurely of something different, of sensations and feelings, of yieldings and submissions such that I hastily attempted to drive even the thought of them from my mind.

"Ah!" he said again.

I could not help how my body had moved, or how it had gripped him!

We are the submitted and the conquered, I thought. Otherwise we cannot be ourselves!

I tried to push hum away, sobbing. But he pressed me the more closely to him. My hips moved.

He laughed.

I hated him!

"What are men going to do to me?" I asked. "What are they going to make me?" He tapped with his finger on my collar. He put his hand on my left thigh. I realized, suddenly, that was where my brand was.

"I am already a slave," I sobbed, " totally a slave!"

He laughed, softly. I shuddered. I gathered I had not yet begun to learn my slavery.

Then he began again, having granted me this respite, to make use of me. "Oh," I said, softly. "Oh!"

It is difficult to make clear the wholeness of this experience, even within its limitations, for as I now understand, and I am sure he understood at the time, it provided me with little more than an inchoate intimation of how I might be subdued and owned in the arms of men. But even so, even at that time, the experience was a startling, astonishing whole. That is something I think many men do not grasp, the wholeness of the sexual experience for the woman, its enhancement and deepening by the beautiful and intricate context, that it is not simply a matter of skillful epidermic stimulations. If it were, for example, I would never have been drawn to the beauties of ethnic dance. Here, of course, in a Gorean alcove, and given our condition, he free, I a collared slave, who must submit and obey, there was just such a totalistic context. Indeed, the situation of bondage itself is such a context.

"Oh!" I cried, softly. And then I could not believe, suddenly, how tightly I was held. How helpless we are! "Oh," I said, then, and for the first time felt the imperious casting forth within me, seeming to fill my helplessly held body, of a man" s triumph. How precious suddenly seemed such stuff to me. We could not make it. We could get it only from men. I had little doubt that in the arms of such a man, had I not had "slave wine," I would have been impregnated. How could my body have resisted such floods of seed? But I knew I had little to fear, or hope for, in such matters. My breeding was not under my own will. It was under the will of masters. It would be controlled, and supervised, and regulated, as carefully as that of any other domestic animal. I needed not fear pregnancy until the matter had been decided otherwise by masters.

I clung to my use master. I did not want him to let me go, not yet.

Then I was afraid and angry. With what insolence, with what arrogance, he had cast his seed within me! And I must endure such things, as it pleased him! how he had held me, and then loosed himself within me! What arrogance, what insolence! He had not asked my permission. He had simply taken me, as a slave might be taken! Did he not know I was from Earth? Did he think I was only another Gorean girl? But I realized, then, that here I was perhaps even less than a Gorean girl, and, at best, only another slut in a collar.

"Please do not let me go, Master," I begged. "Hold me, please." He then for a time kept me in his arms.

I was not displeased to be a woman.

It was what I wanted to be, if there were such men.

I clung to him. He kissed me. "Thank you, Master," I whispered. It was lonely and dark inside the hood, but his body was warm. In a way I was pleased to be hooded. Otherwise I might have fallen in love with him. As it was, and this was according to the will of masters, I could not relate to him as a woman to a man, but only as a woman to any man, or men.