Chain of Jedrah

They were being sorted. Dark eyes gleamed contemptuously as the rifle barrels pointed their directives with a calm and certain precision. The DC-9 sat sadly in the sand like an abandoned house, robbed of the passengers and crew from which it had drawn life, its gun-compelled landing a thing of horror to remember. Even the desert was sad, without majesty or menace it was simply dreary. The welcoming committee was numerous and nondescript and like the land itself. They had come from nowhere to this place in jeeps and trucks and a Volkswagen. There was even a camel. There was not a building in sight.

There were a few guttural words behind the guns. But it was the man in the Saville Row clothes and the kaffiyeh whose English was lucid, direct and frightening.

“You will obey or be shot. Resistance means instant death. We have no time for heroes.”

His eyes roved up and down the ranks. In them, too, was the faint contempt for a race whose day was past. “Cooperation can save your lives and earn you comfort. We do not wish to kill. We are about to dispose of you as suits our convenience. Please obey. Please ask no questions. The men have orders to be brutal.” He turned impatiently away to confer with an aide.

Standing alone where the automatic rifle had shepherded her, Stacie cherished no illusions of heroics. Her fear was but slightly modified when she was joined by a girl from the passengers and a stewardess. The three exchanged bewildered glances and watched.

The elderly and infirm were now being prodded back into the plane, they accounted for half the total. One more young woman was extracted from the ranks and sent to join the trio. Her eyes asked a question they could not answer. The balance of the passengers were marshalled in a line. Among them a woman raised her voice.

“What are you going to do with those four girls?”

The impeccably attired director of activities was curt and brief. “You were told: no questions.” He irritably surveyed the feminine quartet and conferred with a cohort. “We have no interest in them,” he announced brusquely. “They are free to go. There is a village beyond the farthest hill, a couple of miles. It will provide their needs.” He turned and glared at the four young and frightened faces. “Go!” He waved an impatient arm. “Begone, you are lucky.”

Feminine bewilderment deepened. “Walk out in the desert, alone . . . like this!” the stewardess protested.

“Would you prefer to join the hostages?”

The word itself was chilling. The eyes of the four girls roved from one horror to another in a dilemma they were ill equipped to deal with. The leader observed their hesitations with what may have been sympathy, but sounded more like impatience. He turned and shouted: “Salim!”

Stacie judged the gangling youth to be no more than thirteen. He was attired in tattered remnants and seemed composed entirely of large liquid eyes and a wide ingratiating smile. Words flew back and forth.

“The boy will guide you.” The brief words dismissed them.

The august personage returned his attention to more pressing affairs.

“Am fine young man, a most good guide.” Salim beamed at his four responsibilities with immense panache. “Am talking such fine American.”

Stacie looked at her companions. They were as baffled as herself. Shrugs were exchanged. With a final longing glance at the hi-jacked plane they turned to follow the Arab boy across the sand. When the staccato commands and clash of equipment fell well behind them, the stewardess summed up their sentiment. “I don’t like it! Makes no sense . . .”

“Where are we?”

“This has to be Jedrah, not that that’s any help.”

“Is Jedrah,” Salim confirmed with pride. “Much fine place.”

Traversing the first undulation to rob them of backward glances at the plane, Stacie knew unreality. Four white girls and an Arab boy walking in the desert on a track that was no more than a few weaving tire impressions, destination unknown. It was hard to feel relief at what might or might not be a reprieve.

One of the passengers gave her companions a half-hearted grin. “Has it occurred to you girls: we’re not a bad looking collection. In fact we’re four damn good looking females. Add that to the place we’re in and this fool walk, and I get an answer I don’t like.”

“Harems?”

“That or worse. I know it sounds silly, but is it!”

Sensing the dolor of his charges, Salim made a cheerful suggestion. “You fine ladies please to show me your tits.”

It was like being asked to produce your passport. Stacie repressed a giggle.

“Drop dead, kid,” the stewardess was emphatic.

Salim was unabashed. “Arab girls wear much clothes,” he explained equably. “American girls have little cover up. Lovely tits stick out front. Salim much like to see real thing.”

Stacie once more wanted to giggle. The mammary equipment of herself and her companions was admittedly well in evidence. Perhaps, by his own codes, Salim’s request was reasonable. “We don’t show them either,” she told him, not unkindly.

“Well then, just one girl take off all clothes so Salim see.”

“Hey, kid, where d’you get the idea?”

Salim looked surprised. “On fine movies. All American girls undress. Much naked.”

A couple of actual giggles acknowledged his point. But retorts were halted by a fresh vista, they had topped a rise. “Where’s this lousy village?” a passenger asked fretfully.

“Is much close,” Salim reassured. “Ah see! Soon we beg ride.”

Half a mile distant a small van stood lonely in the vast landscape. Its hood was up, two or three figures seemed busily engaged. Little as it might be, it conveyed an encouraging impression of life. “Will give us nice ride.” Salim pride-fully took credit for the apparition.

A dusty trudge disclosed two men and a girl, all Arab. The men were as faceless as their land, but the girl in jeans and T-shirt might have stepped off an American sidewalk. All wore guns. Salim engaged them in a chatter of Jedrah. “We have fine ride,” he announced jubilantly.

The four girls were examined by eyes in which there was none of Salim’s effervescence. “My name is Rannah,” the girl announced without cordiality. “I do not like you, but you will ride.” She opened the back of the vehicle and climbed within.

What happened then was pure nightmare. Stacie would always look back at it as the beginning. She followed the first girl to where Rannah offered an inviting hand. As her companion climbed aboard she beheld a thing that held her rooted and, for a moment, speechless. Running the length of the van were bench seats, fixtures, hard and uninviting, one on each side. Above them, fastened firmly to the sidewalls were the open jaws of handcuffs.

The girl about to take her seat saw them too. She also saw the look in Rannah’s eyes. Without preamble she leaped from the open door and screamed: “Run!”

One of the men tripped the fleeing girl and struck her a brutal blow on the side of the head. She lay sprawled upon the sand, dazed. Two guns menaced the remainder of the quartet. “Stand still!” There was no mistaking the intent behind Rannah’s command.

“You don’t mean to use those things on us?” Stacie asked incredulously.

“Of course we do.”

“But it’s . . . it’s . . . silly. All we want is a ride. We’ll pay. Why do you want to . . . to fasten us?” She could not bring herself to use a less pleasant word for what she had seen.

The half-stunned girl was slowly getting to her feet, her fear-filled eyes seeing only the muzzles of the guns. She was prodded apart to stand alone.

“You do as we tell you or we shoot her,” Rannah stated calmly. She gave her attention to the trembling hurt girl. “Understand? When the others are in the van you’ll get in too.” Her gaze scanned the four of them. “We are prepared to kill one of you to make the surviving three accept what you must.”

It was spine chilling. But Stacie tried: “But what must we accept! What do you want? We don’t know.”

Only Rannah’s out-thrust arm stopped the swinging rifle barrel aimed at the girl who had the temerity to question.

“You need to know nothing. Do as you’re told. Get in here.” Seething in frustration and fear Stacie obeyed. Seated on the wooden seat she heeded the injunction of the hostile eyes and placed her left wrist gingerly within the open metal cuff. Rannah snapped the bands tight upon her. “Now the other!”

Stacie throttled her protest. Surely one prisoned wrist made her impotent enough for their need! But she was scared. Resignedly she delivered her right hand into a similar bondage. The clicking of the ratchets as they locked her wrist sounded a death knell to hope. This was neither aid nor deliverance. Miserably she watched her fellow captives similarly rendered helpless. She and the stewardess were locked by both wrists, the other two girls by one wrist only. It sufficed. Salim climbed in with them. Rannah left, the van door closed. “Now for nice ride,” said Salim cheerfully.

The ride was far from nice. It was rough and without concern for the passengers, their prisoned wrists took the brunt of it, chafing against the unyielding metal as they braced themselves against the motion. Salim surveyed their distress benignly like a proud parent.

“Why do I have to have my wrists fastened?” the stewardess demanded of him irritably. “Can’t you unlock one?”

Salim was shocked. “Oh, most bad to unlock. Salim not have key.” He surveyed the situation pensively and came up with a shattering conclusion. “Is now most good, both your hands are fix. Salim can have fine look at tits.”

As nearly as was possible within the van there fell a shocked silence before Stacie broke it angrily. “Leave her alone. You touch us and I’ll report you.”

“This report?” Salim examined the word. “You mean you tell what I do.” He guffawed heartily. “Everybody much laugh, they not care.”

“Come near me and I’ll kick you where it hurts,” his victim threatened.

“Salim could tie nice feet.” He pointed to a coil of thin rope looped in the framework.

Stacie knew the chill of something more than fear. The boy’s very innocence told how far they were from their own world. Naiveté and brutality side by side were to be feared, reason would not touch them. Salim was lifting down the rope.

“No! Don’t tie my feet.” The stewardess sought frantically for inspiration and, finding none, capitulated. “Oh, go ahead!” she said disgustedly. “I don’t suppose it will kill me.” Nodding toward her neighbor she sought to cut her loss. “Let her do it, she’s got a free hand?”

“Very hot dog!” Salim was intrigued. “Right now, quick.” She, on whom had fallen the task of baring a girl’s breasts, found it more difficult than supposed. Her single wrist was rigidly held, and the uncertain motion of the vehicle added its own hazard, but she competently used the one hand vouchsafed her. “Dammit, with both your wrists fastened I’d have to tear too much,” she said regretfully. “We may need these clothes, they’re all we’ve got.” She bestowed a look of infinite distaste on their guide: “Look, kid, with one hand I can uncover one of mine without tearing anything. Will that do?”

The beaming youth was enjoying his power. He scrutinized the swelling bulge being offered for his delectation. “Much O.K. Please to show now.”

Stacie watched, sharing the shame, noting the tumescence of the Arab boy in his conquest. Even with a free hand the donor of a girl’s flesh found her task difficult. She twisted and squirmed, tugging constantly at her locked wrist in an instinctive need. She grinned sheepishly at her tense companions. “This is a helluva note,” she said bitterly. “I’ve never been helpless like this before. It’s twice as difficult as you’d think.”

But she achieved her purpose. Scarlet and awkward, she brought into view the curved loveliness Salim desired. The boy’s eyes glowed.

“Is not big tit,” he complained.

Circumstance had denied erotic stimulation, the nipple was half inverted. Its owner gave her companions a despairing and disgusted shrug and proceeded to apply friction. The pink bud of flesh responded handsomely. Salim’s eyes bulged at the phenomenon.

Having fulfilled her contract, the girl arranged her breast to give it full exposure, took away her hand and sat with flaming cheeks so that the concupiscent child of the desert might feast on his desire. The glances she exchanged with the other girls held a faint amusement: there was something pathetically absurd in her predicament.

But, of course, it did not end there. Salim sat next to the angry girl and used his hands in increasingly bold explorations that were obviously genuine in their curiosity as to the texture and nature of the firm flesh. Assiduously he plied his fingertip on the sacrificial nipple, but was unsuccessful in fostering further growth, it was already hard and sensitive. He was enraptured as with a glamorous toy. The girl sat staring fixedly at nothing.

From the female flesh, Salim graduated to the intricacies of the female garb, but found his desire for additional nudity frustrated by the captive hand. It was evident that had he possessed the key to the handcuff he would have used it, obviously he was hesitant to rip and tear.

Stacie could almost watch the inevitability of his thought.

She cringed as his eager gaze sought her own garments and those of the girl at her side. If one breast was vulnerable, surely there must be others! She fought down the impulse to kick at him as he approached. She did not want her feet tied, she was vulnerable enough. She knew the nature of what she wore could enable cunning fingers to untidily expose the twin cones by which the Arab youth was obsessed. Angrily she felt her nipples respond to the eroticism of the occasion. She averted her face from the wide brown eyes and the full sensuous lips so close to hers as the increasingly knowledgeable fingers tugged and pulled and found the tiny fastenings that had been the frail armour of her nakedness. Even her bra was gently unclipped, so that she soon found herself with the flimsy materials tucked back over her prisoned arms and behind her neck. The sanctity of her breasts was lost to her, they stood out fully naked, her nipples pert and impudent. She was furiously conscious that, with her wrists fastened as they were, her chest thrust out its double glories as though in pride. She sat, flushed and fuming, as the boy’s insatiable curiosity transferred itself to the girl who shared her bench.

It was absurd, ludicrous, shaming. Stacie knew she could laugh or weep, but beneath the surface there was fear. If a gawky boy could treat them thus, what might they expect from adults! Salim sat now like a pasha in his harem admiring the intimate attributes of his women. He had fondled and prodded to his heart’s content at the total of five female breasts that were the harvest of his lechery.

“Are not all alike?” he questioned.

“Think you’ve been short changed?” the stewardess asked bitterly.

“Ah, but tits grow if tickle! Is not so with breast?”

“If it was, you’d have mine as big as a melon the way you’ve been at it,” the last girl told him drily.

“Now that you’ve had a good look, can we get dressed again?” the first girl asked hopefully.

Their youthful guide waved away the request as palpably silly. “You not hurting,” he proclaimed. “Salim like to see such good tits. You stay quiet or I tie.” He motioned to the waiting rope.

Stacie loathed her dishabille. It seemed furtive and untidy, faintly obscene, yet she was helpless to correct it. She tried to adjust to the incredible: A few hours ago in the Hilton Hotel, now this! She wondered what her father would do if he could see her now. Certainly he would set forces in motion, but they would not be swift enough to cover his daughter’s breasts within this speeding van. Her impotence was infuriating, she could touch no part of herself. Her clothes were every which way, her naked breasts proclaimed themselves. All she could do was sit and bear the lively scrutiny of a pubescent urchin. Every instinct forbade her passivity, her arms constantly asserted themselves and were foiled. Never in her life had she known bonds or restraints. The plight of her hands now held unreality, looking along the length of her arms she beheld her metal encircled wrists as belonging to someone else, that she be handcuffed like a criminal in transit was incomprehensible. The shining steel tight-clasping her flesh was, in its modernity, as incongruous here in the desert as the automatic rifles and the jeeps.

“You have nicest tits of all,” Salim assured her grandly. Stacie was annoyed with herself for feeling proud.

It was a bitter moment when the van stopped. Now they would really be ogled! Sheepishly Salim tried to mend his fences, but the doors were opened while he was still fumbling with the first girl. Rannah laughed caustically, her companion with the inevitable rifle leered appreciatively. “Those things will look better with a few whipmarks,” she observed casually as she produced her key.

Whipmarks! On their breasts! Four pairs of female eyes focused on her sardonic regard. She chuckled at their dismay as she unlocked Stacie’s hands. “Just you. Out!” she ordered briefly.

Solid ground felt good to Stacie’s feet. Without asking or waiting to be told her hands flew to their task of repairing Salim’s predation. She had no sooner achieved this much desired end than Rannah accepted a cord from her henchman and ordered. “I’m going to tie your hands. If you want to fight or run Fazzim will hit you with his gun.”

It was part of the jig-saw taking shape. They were captive.

They would be given no freedom. Looking about her, Stacie saw they had entered a high walled Courtyard. She could run for the gate, but it would be futile. Hopelessly, and feeling foolish, she held out her hands.

“Behind your back!”

Only her total helplessness would appease! Fearfully Stacie turned her back and crossed her wrists, wryly remembering a hundred movies in which she had seen a heroine similarly bound. The cord bit and twisted savagely, its final knot was like the clanging of a prison door. It hurt and told her she was captive, a couple of testing tugs emphasised that she could never free herself. Once more it was a new and incredible sensation.

The next shock was the slamming of the doors of the van and the return of the man and his gun to the cab. The vehicle roared out of the Courtyard and disappeared. Rannah twisted a hand in the hair of the bound girl and tugged. “Make no trouble,”

she advised. “I can handle you like a kitten.”

Stacie knew desolation. She had not even known the names of the other girls, but there had been comfort in their presence. Now she was alone, the fact was sinister. She took as quick a survey as Rannah would allow. What she saw spelt wealth and consequence, a private Oasis walled and tended, the building huge yet graceful, definitely Moorish. She had no way of knowing if it was an isolated palace or part of a community. Rannah gave an admonitory tug. “Come.”

He sat in an open mezzanine, a shaded balcony above his patios and gardens, a pleasant place. He was sipping coffee. His robe was of Jedrah but his face was of the West, vaguely familiar, handsome and suave. He did not rise, but waved her to a chair across from him at the small table. “Please sit down, Miss Blair.”

So he knew her! Silent and cautious the captive approached. Rannah had disappeared. Tentatively Stacie sat, her bound hands precluded grace. She would let him talk, she could protest later.

“Coffee?”

“Thanks, I’d like some. But my hands are tied behind my back.”

He nodded appreciatively. “I will lift the cup to your lips. It will be a pleasure.”

She would play it cool. Deliberately her voice was casual.

“Why not untie me so we may drink together in comfort?”

“I prefer you tied. It pleases me.” His nonchalance outmatched hers.

Stacie watched him pour. She swallowed both her pride and the coffee when he raised the cup. She needed it.

“Young women find the loss of their hands difficult at first.” His voice had a pleasing vibrancy, his English was perfect. Again there was the shadow of familiarity.

“You always tie the hands of your female guests?” She knew her sarcasm trite, but it was apt.

His smile was reflective. “More often than you might suppose,” he acknowledged. “It is amusing to watch their reactions.”

“I am tied too tight. It hurts.”

“Of course, Rannah is most competent.”

She knew herself played with. Seething, she kept silent.

“I am Mohammad Yasin,” he said simply.

Another of the jig-saw pieces fell into place. She recognized him now! But he was as unbelievable as the rest of the nightmare. Yasin was Arab Oil. Yasin was a delegate at the United Nations, an Arab spokesman. Yasin was one of the most powerful men in the world. She should have been reassured, but she was not. “Would the Secretariat approve this . . . this . . . ?” She shrugged her strained shoulders eloquently.

“I am sure you are puzzled.” His faintly amused courtesy was ill-matched with her bound hands. “I will bring you into the picture.”

“Could I have more coffee?” Her demand was an assertion of herself. She also wanted the coffee.

Gravely, Mohammad Yasin went through the small ritual.

When he resumed his seat he continued without changing inflection: “I have brought you here to torture you.”

Stacie let it sink in. It was too big to encompass in a single moment or with a quick exclamation. Was it opera bouffe or pure evil! For such a word there was no median. Fear was a cold presence within her spine. She looked at Yasin in wide eyed puzzlement.

His rich cool voice acknowledged her inability to respond.

“Not too long ago before we repossessed our Oil, my daughter little more than a child, by odd mischance fell into the hands of a crew of rough-necks, all American, operating one of your father’s drilling rigs. Fourteen of them raped her repeatedly throughout the day, poured crude oil over her nakedness as a parting gift and sent her on her way. I was not then as well known as now . . .”

He paused musingly. Stacie saw the whiteness of his clenched hands, and stilled her voice.

“My representations seeking justice, made direct to your father, were ignored or treated with ridicule or flatly rejected.” He eyed Stacie quizzically. “Your father is a hard, biased and conceited man.”

Stacie twisted against her tied wrists. Yasin’s words made the cord seem tighter than before. She grudgingly conceded his judgment of her parent largely true. She could believe that a few years ago he would have treated the rape of a wog girl far away with amused contempt.

“And you’d punish me for this!” Her voice told her disbelief.

“Is it not fitting?”

Again the seeking to adjust, to comprehend reality. Her eyes were an appeal to reason. “But it’s pure melodrama!”

He shrugged agreement. “Most of life is, my dear. That or farce. The division depends on where you live.”

“My father will ransom me.”

“I am sure he would.” He waved the thought aside. “I have more money than he. True, he has some power and much wealth, but neither match my own. This leaves you as his only currency.”

“But there’ll be a tremendous fuss. The hi-jacking, the disappearances. Daddy will raise the roof in Washington over me . . . !” She probed for a weakness in his armour.

His amusement was genuine, “Let us consider, my dear, what Washington and your father face. The plane with its elderly is already well on its way to its normal destination. The group of passengers most likely to be of profit are in the hands of a guerrilla force for whom I hold some sympathy. Everyone is witness to the fact that you and your three companions were seen to be free and walking of your own will along a desert path without coercion. Conclusions will be drawn, none of them certain. You have disappeared. Who can tell with today’s youth . . . perhaps from your own caprice.” Yasin smiled. “A good deal of trouble, yes. But you will be worth it.”

How neatly she had been sundered from her world! Fear was now rampant. “The other girls?” she asked. “Why them?”

“Your own word, dear child. Pure melodrama! They too are a currency rare and costly in the desert. I will admit to opportunism. It seemed a pity to waste them.”

“But it’s cruel . . . both them and their families . . . !”

“They have but joined the ranks of women through the ages.”

“Have I . . . ?”

“No.”

The single negative was fearful. Its implications vivid.

“You are going to kill me?”

Yasin seemed genuinely affronted. “My dear child! Give me credit for more finesse and for some appreciation of what you are. You are an unusually beautiful young woman. Your death would desolate me.”

“But you used a word . . . !”

“Torture!” He laughed at her loathing of the word.

“Torture does not mean death. You could be tortured daily and live to be old. There are degrees . . . ”

“This, this ugly word . . . is it physical?”

“Indubitably. You will scream. The mental is concomitant.”

Reason rejected. Stacie tried to visualise. It was not possible! “But my father . . .. ”

She groped her way toward a strange conclusion. “He will believe me dead. You will have hurt him there, but without this . . . this personal thing . . . he won’t know!”

She gazed across the table in desperation. “You are going to hurt me to punish him, but he’ll never know. That means you are going to be cruel only to punish me for something of which I’m innocent.”

“Photos of you will be taken regularly. They will be mailed to him anonymously from around the world. He will share your pain.” Yasin chuckled. “If political circumstances were favourable I might send you back to him after a few years. The marks on your skin would convey an eloquent testimony. So, my dear, you are but an instrument. I suspect I will like you and enjoy you as a person. I may have you taken to my bed. But nonetheless all those connotations of your ugly word will be made very real for you.”

So neat, so logical! By Jedrahn standards so obvious! Here, women were not people. They were bodies to be used. If the body failed to please, the hands could be employed. Sometimes they might be allowed the exercise of their minds. But they had no will. Yasin had called her an instrument. Stacie began to feel like one. She understood why he kept her bound, the painful joining of her wrists engendered a state of mind which would eventually possess her entirely. Her voice was now an entreaty.

“I suppose I could grovel. I expect I will. Do you want me to grovel?”

“Hmmmmm . . . !” He took her question seriously. “I have to admit it would give me pleasure as a female act,” he admitted slowly. “But if, at this juncture you actually did it I would find my judgment of you at fault. I do not wish it as a specific end. When you do it, it will be coincidental to the rest of your condition.”

Stacie stirred restlessly. “I suppose you can understand how nearly impossible it is for me to assimilate this . . . this horror. I’m trying. I want to be rational with you. But you’re so . . . so civilized. I can’t equate you with torture.” She shook her head as though to rid it of illusion. “I can’t equate myself. I just can’t believe it! These cords round my wrists tell me something is terribly wrong. But that’s all.”

The voice of Mohammad Yasin was warm with sympathy.

“My dear, I am honoured that you wish our communication to be realistic. Do not concern yourself with this point. Reality will come. Face it then.”

“When am I to be tortured? I mean, when does it start?” He shrugged.

“It does not matter. It is not today.” Stacie frowned in concentration. “I’m sitting here in this pleasant place, my hands are tied behind my back so they hurt, and there you are, normal and polite. I’m half expecting this to be all a joke and that you’ll burst out laughing and the other girls come bouncing in and you’ll untie me.”

Again she twisted in frustration. “It makes it hard for me to ask what I want to, it sounds so silly and impossible and out of context. But this torture . . . ! What exactly will be done to me?”

“You will be completely naked.”

He watched her flinch. But she did not move or speak. “You will be whipped often. If it serves a purpose you will be ceremonially flogged.”

Yasin saw now that her features were drawn, but she was still concentrating, seeking to visualise, striving to comprehend.

“You will be suspended by your thumbs.” Her eyes were still lost in disbelief.

“Needles will be thrust under your nails.” A brief pause.

“You will be branded. You will straddle The Horse.” The quiet words without emphasis or anger ware like small blows at her inmost being. By their very simplicity they became believable. She raised her eyes to him, inviting the worst.

“Fiction and history have told you of many things. In the course of time they will happen to you. Those that end in maiming or death will be modified. I tell you, not as a gesture of mercy but of common sense, you will know pain but not injury, To me you are a jewel of great price, save for your torture you will be treated as such. You will be neither crippled nor invalid.”

“You said naked . . . ! In front of men?”

“That bothers you! You wear a bikini yet you ask that question?”

To be flogged, yet first query nudity! Stacie wryly recognized disproportion. “Yes, it bothers me.”

“Yousef is a man. He will sometimes deal with you. You will not be displayed naked for male eyes other than within the boundaries of your life here.”

“Am I to be . . . violated?”

Her choice of the word amused. “Just by me.” He said drily. “Only by some unusual circumstance would I grant you to Yousef.”

To discuss her ravishment! Or was the word rape applicable where she was to be penetrated again and again! Stacie shrugged it off as academic. She tried again.

“Is there more?”

“Quite soon your flesh will be pierced for the introduction of rings in the customary places.” A flicker of humour crossed Yasin’s features. “And also one place usually left chaste.”

Stacie tensed, uncertain. “As part of the torture?”

“Secondarily. There will be no anaesthetic. But primarily for my pleasure. As I said, you are very beautiful.”

“Rings in my flesh! But where?”

“Come, dear child, you are not naive. I want you yourself to name the places on your person where you might logically be so adorned . . . Now!”

The captive stifled revolt, it was unlikely she could give this man ideas he did not already have. “My ears,” she offered tentatively.

It was not enough. She knew it was not enough. But to voice such things as though in invitation! “I have heard of a girl’s nipples being pierced,” she admitted.

His gaze was relentless. Stacie twisted against the compelling cords. “Surely not my nose?”

“Most certainly your nose. The effect is charming.”

No mercy! She was not done. “I read a book: the lips of a girl’s sex were ringed . . .”

She looked at him bleakly. “It seems to me impractical,” she flushed. “I still think it is.”

“You’re quite delightful,” Yasin approved. “Yes, your enumeration correct,” he mused quietly for a moment. “Your rings will be as lovely as yourself. You may come to treasure them.”

“Through my nose!”

“There especially. You will see . . .”

She squirmed beneath his regard. She felt certain he was visualising her naked and ringed like a Pasha’s slave girl. It was an indicative admission that such a girl’s life was to be envied compared to her own. She sat awaiting his pleasure, he had left her nothing to say. Mohammad Yasin clapped his hands in summons.

Vivid impressions, one atop the other. Forever off balance, alternating between hope and starkest fear. Against the captive Stacie there marched a small army of successive shocks.

Rannah, suddenly feminine and darkly lovely in slacks.

The bathing and the cosmetics and the hair, all with hands still tied, ministered to by a dark eyed enigmatic mistress with little to say. Stacie’s futile protest as she was stripped and what must be torn was torn.

And then the magic of the gown and the costly trifles beneath. Pure Paris, pure gorgeous extravagance! The hard deft fingers moulded the loveliness to her figure, then guided her to a mirror before which she gasped in admiration of the glory of Rannah’s choice. Her own hands had contributed nothing, they were still tied at her back.

Incongruity! The return of fear. Seated, she was fitted with shoes, but shoes such as she had never worn. Wonderfully crafted, perfectly fitted, but which locked upon her ankles by a silver band and between the bands a silver chain. All exquisite, all deadly, wearing them Stacie was captive.

Rannah was adamant: the prisoner in the Paris creation must learn to walk with hobbled feet. If she was to be a lovely lady in chains she must fill the role with grace. “Keep walking round the room until you get used to them,” she directed.

It went against the grain, but Stacie worked at her task.

She admitted to herself that the gown and its accessories were a factor that actually made her desire proficiency. Uppermost in her mind was the conviction that her clothing was not designed for torture: all else was welcome, why fight! Soon she was gliding in a rhythmic motion Rannah approved.

“Now! Backwards and sideways. They’re the bad ones.” The chained maiden learned those too. It was much like learning the steps of a new dance. Girls are naturally adept. She knew herself good, and felt absurdly proud of proficiency.

“Pleased with yourself!” Rannah sneered. “Why not! You’ve got a talent. Here, you’ve earned this.” She was as harsh in untying Stacie’s wrists as she had been in binding them.

The bewildered captive stood massaging her grooved flesh with an infinite relief. The release of her wrists felt better than anything she remembered. She had her hands again! It was a small miracle.

“Sit down. We have a few minutes.”

Obeying the directive, Stacie watched her companion and jailer pour drinks. She accepted hers gratefully. It was all too much to believe in.

“You won’t be whipped today,” Rannah said matter-of-factly.

The prisoner said nothing, but sought help in rapid sips. “What’s it feel like to know you’re going to be tortured? I’ve always wondered,” the voice of the dark eyed Arab girl had lost some of it’s hostility.

“Are girls often tortured here?” Stacie was still groping.

“I asked you a question. Answer it.”

“I only half believe it.”

Rannah nodded. “For you, yes. But not for a Jedrah girl.”

“Have you ever been . . . tortured? Sorry, but I find the word impossible.”

“Of course. But never with your preludes.”

Stacie gulped and reassessed. “But why . . . how? I don’t understand.”

Rannah laughed without bitterness. “You are a long way from home. Haven’t you read . . . don’t you know! Men love to torture us. But they welcome an excuse. It keeps them feeling noble.”

“Am I really going to be tortured? Isn’t this really a bad joke in bad taste?”

Stacie’s question was answered by the look in Rannah’s eyes.

“You are going to be tortured so terribly I can no longer hate you.”

“In this dress! I thought I was to be naked?”

Rannah laughed. A natural unaffected sound. “It pleases our lord to jest . . . or to boast. Tonight you are on display, a jewel in his crown. Come, finish your drink.”

It was a select gathering of sybarites, all male. They examined Stacie avidly, but did not touch. The speech was Jedrahn, with here and there an English compliment.

“You are a very lovely child, you wear chains well.”

“Yasin is a lucky man, but do not earn his wrath.”

“I would purchase you.”

Stacie accepted it all in a calm daze. Concentration on the chain that made her captive occupied most of her attention. To stumble and fall before these grave men would be unforgivable. Without thinking, she gave Yasin a smile of reassurance.

“You are quite remarkable, my dear,” he told her in his deep rich voice.

“Can I earn no reprieve?” she asked, greatly daring.

He shook his head sadly. “Alas no, but you can save much extra pain by being as you are. You do me honour.”

She felt pride. He had that quality. To be praised or to be loved by him was very good, a constant aspiration. Angrily she chided herself for feminine susceptibility. She took her place beside him at the table and ate ravenously.

Her partner on her other side was elderly, he exhibited no awe for his host or the occasion. His examination of her was frank and libidinous. “Yasin tells me you are not for sale,” he said regretfully. “I would pay much for you. Not to love, but to whip,” he sighed. “’Tis not long before Allah calls me. There is an ache in my bones, but to whip you would make me young again.”

Stacie almost pitied him. Old and impotent unless he could stripe the skin of a girl with a whip! How sad it was. She had read of it. How noble would it be to offer him that one last benison before the darkness! She shuddered, she would have to watch herself. Jedrah possessed the insidious quality of rationalising the irrational.

“Our host intends to torture you,” he ruminated without emotion.

“Sweet of him, isn’t it!” Stacie could not contain her sarcasm.

“Do not fear to scream,” he counselled gently. “It is no dishonour.”

It was a very small comfort.

When the cigars were passed around Rannah led her from the room. She had served her purpose. Her ankle chains clinked happily as she was led back to the room where she had been dressed.

“Hands behind again.”

It was back to Earth with a vengeance. Disappointed, Stacie turned and crossed her wrists, Rannah bound them with firm precision. The rest happened very quickly, the gown was taken from her, the lovely under-things, the shoes their anklets and their chain. Stacie stood, nude, her hands tied behind her back. Again the hand in her hair, the passages and the steps, and then the door. Within was a narrow cell, a pail and a rug, nothing more. Rannah pushed her captive across the threshold, left and thudded the door shut with needless emphasis.

It was late, the light was dim. Stacie stood naked in her small prison in the gloom. Her heart was thudding. The transition from luxury to stark nakedness in a stone cell had been too swift to comprehend: Planned deliberately, no doubt, as part of her conditioning it called for an adjustment she could not make. Here was her first glimpse of needless cruelty. Her punishment had started.

She turned and looked at the door, she pushed against it with a naked shoulder and then a naked foot. It was solid, immovable. Why, then, tie her hands! Even free of bonds she could not escape, The answer was obvious enough, the cords round her wrists were an assertion of authority, a constant reminder of what she had become, a prelude to suffering. Alone in the claustrophobic cubicle fear become definite, hope fled. In animal frenzy she tore at her pinioned wrists and moaned her desuetude.

But she could not get free, she had not expected to. The pain of the strictures against which she fought and the exertion of her revolt were her only possible expression, she had been reduced to a neatly tied package without a wrapper. She looked with distaste at the utilitarian pail, she would have to use it but would loathe the act. She transferred her attention to the rug. It was sparse enough but her only comfort. There was no covering, but tied as she was she could not have done much with a blanket had there been one. She knelt, then fell forward on her face. Even the simplest act emphasised her loss of her hands. The rough odorous wool imparted a faint human comfort, it was better than bare stone. Stacie wept in loneliness and fell asleep.

How good it was to wear her clothes again! The tears had been neatly mended. Rannah had bathed her, removed the makeup of the night before and then, surprisingly, untied the chafed numb wrists and told her, laconically, to dress. The faint amusement in the dark eyes that watched the donning of the garments told nothing.

“I will breakfast with you,” Rannah said casually. “There is no hurry,”

Stacie drew comfort from the girl, she was a middle ground between Mohammad Yasin and the stone cell. The breakfast table was equally reassuring, it was Western and replete. She looked at her enigmatic mistress uncertainly.

“Don’t you want to . . . to tie me, or something?”

“No. I would be amused if you decided to flee. Try it.” The quiet dare was more inhibiting than bonds. Stacie seated herself at the table. “Is this the condemned’s last meal?” she inquired with little humour.

“Then I too am condemned,” Rannah smiled. “Come, enjoy it. American coffee is easy to drink.”

“Rannah . . .” Stacie paused, “Am I allowed to call you that?”

“What else? It is my name.”

“Well, I’d wondered. You know: there’s mistress and madam and miss?”

“I am Rannah. If you called me mistress it would amuse. But there is no need. I will be constantly unkind, but that has been explained. Come, let me fill your cup.”

“Rannah, I’m curious. Supposing I leaped through that door and ran, what would happen?”

The dark eyes mocked. “I would probably catch you, I am stronger than you are. If I failed, then someone else would end your flight. The best you could manage would be to circle the Courtyard wall you could never climb. You would then be taken before the master of this house who would probably order you whipped,” she smiled in secret amusement. “I would probably be whipped too for failing to control you.”

Stacie stopped eating. “You! Whipped! . . . You mean . . . ?”

“Why not! I am of Jedrah. Here all women are whipped if they deserve the lash. It is expected.”

“But in this day and age! And to one of your own . . . ! Yasin talks in the United Nations of brotherly love!”

“So! There is no contradiction. In imprisoning female prisoners you recognize punishment.”

“But a girl like you! Whipping sounds so terrible, It is terrible, isn’t it . . . ?”

“It is terrible. You are to be whipped, so you will know.” The captive was once more groping.

“That means you are being kind. You could be whipped for trusting me. For not tying . . .”

Rannah laughed. “Your world has gone. You will understand this one, little by little. Yes, I am trusting you. I think you are sure you cannot escape, so you will not try. But have no fear, I will tie you tight enough and often enough. I don’t like to be whipped any more than you.”

“Why were my hands tied last night in that beastly cell?”

“To help you adjust, a reminder. That is all. You slept.” Rannah poured two more cups.

“This is Yousef,” Rannah’s voice was as enigmatic as her eyes. “Yousef, her name is Stacie Blair. You have your orders.”

Yousef was large and very muscular. He was copper coloured and attired only in shorts. He eyed his new charge with what seemed to be a professional interest. Stacie felt she was being measured for the Rack. She hoped they could not hear the thumping of her heart. He bowed slightly as he grasped her arm. As he led her from the room she turned a glance of mute appeal. Rannah smiled and shrugged in deprecation.

They were only female.

“You would like to fight, perhaps to run?” Yousef inquired politely. His voice was soft and liquid. Stacie could imagine him selling Turkish rugs.

She looked about her at the huge stone chamber and the barred windows and the closed door. Sure, she’d like to fight, but to what end! This mass of thew and sinew would beat her into submission in moments. “I would like to run, but I will not try,”

she told him tonelessly. “Tell me what you require, I’ll obey you.”

At a height of eight feet a truss rod ran from wall to wall.

It’s fixtures indicated a varied utility. Passively holding out her hands Stacie watched the broad leather straps buckled tight upon her wrists, each wristlet held a ring. In but a few moments her arms were lifted high and spread wide to the rod above her head. She stood as though worshipping the sun.

For several moments Yousef studied his captive, then did the most awful thing of all. With powerful and purposeful hands he tore her clothing to tatters as he stripped her. He spared nothing of her garments or herself. The poor torn remnants of her modesty lay scattered pathetically upon the stone. Stacie stood, utterly bare.

It was the first time! Naked before a male she had never previously seen, helpless to shield her secrets from his gaze. Stacie knew the moment for what it was: the beginning of her torture. She had purposely been dressed in her own familiar things so that her stripping be doubly shaming and her desolation complete in seeing them destroyed beyond repair. Here was the real division. Normalcy had gone. She was delivered to a world in which her only function was to provide the naked nerve ends that would trigger her screams. She looked up at Yousef with what courage she could muster. He gave her his small polite bow and left the room.

A plaything . . . even for a torturer! The rug forever pulled from beneath her trembling feet. Was her tied pose a punishment in itself! It could well become one. Or would the hot iron and the pincers soon appear! She felt the nerves flicker beneath her flesh and muscle spasms ripple across her skin.

Stacie stood in loneliness. From time to time she looked up at her strained arms and wrists, it would be useless to fight such firmly designed fastenings. She did not try, they could hold her thus forever. She was stretched, but not on tip-toe. She wondered why. In all she had read . . . !

She soon realised that weariness and strain would exact their toll of her. But, at the moment, her most compelling sensation was of her nakedness, it was so complete, so impossible to hide. She was vulnerable to the point of cringing.

She let her gaze rove around the room. But why think of it as such! It was a torture chamber, no more no less. She supposed it could be called a ‘Punishment room’. But why use euphemisms! Its intent was clear, people were brought here to be hurt. She idly tried to name the structures and the gear, most of it told her nothing. She suspected the most innocent was probably the most deadly. Whips and canes and slender withes hung from hooks. Her gaze returned to them again and again. She gained little comfort that the notorious cat-o’-nine-tails was not in evidence. In reading of it in fiction she had supposed it mostly apocryphal. Perhaps it was. But she remembered she had been told that sometime she would be flogged . . . What instrument did they use to flog a girl! She closed her mind to the thought. Yesterday it had been unreal. Today, naked and looking at the whips, it was very real indeed.

The girl Yousef dragged in was young. She would have been pretty had not her youthful features been haggard with fear. Her eyes were wide and imploring. She did not fight, but her steps were laggard and fearful to the point where she was being dragged by Yousef’s harsh grip upon her wrist. She was already naked, prepared physically and mentally for whatever was going to be done to her, distraught with anguish she fell to her knees and clasped her torturer’s knees when he positioned her beneath the same bar to which Stacie was tied.

Stacie watched, incredulous. This belonged on a horror film on T.V. Someone would laugh and break the tension. But it was happening. It was happening to her!

The girl wept and pleaded. Stacie wondered if such abasement could indeed lighten the sentence or the blows. The girl might have some previous experience, she probably had! Yousef responded to her sobbing incoherencies with a smile and soft laconic sentences in Jedrah.

The girl froze, even her sobbing stopped. For a long time she stayed clutching the legs of her master. Then, slowly and without complaint, she shuffled back and lay upon the stone, spreading her feet wide apart to offer free access to the penetration of her sex. She looked at no one, but closed her eyes and waited. Without haste, Yousef discarded his shorts. There came into view a phallus so huge that the watching girl quailed at the sight. Sensing the impression he had made, Yousef shook the thing at her like a bludgeon, laughing at her blush, pleased by her apprehension and the tribute of her amazed scrutiny. “One day,” he promised. “One day you too.”

Whether his words were a promise or a threat did not matter. Stacie remembered the statement that under certain unnamed circumstances her body would indeed be delivered to this smiling man. She wondered miserably how so immense an organ could enter any orifice she had to offer. He probably tore female flesh thoughtlessly and without caring while in rut. It would be part of the pattern.

Yousef ravished the naked girl with masterly competence.

Could it be called rape! Stacie thought not. For this girl it would not be the first time. There was no stallion plunging, no sadistic thrust, instead a steady entry under pressure so that the recipient gasped and arched her back, flinging wide her arms to clutch at nothing, emitting a long drawn out moan of acknowledgement when the last of the vast impalement was within her sheath.

It lasted long. Stacie counted three orgasms for the girl before Yousef brought the coupling to an end. When he withdrew the wet and glistening weapon from within her most intimate cleft the girl rose to her knees and, without direction, used her lips and tongue to cleanse and dry it before it was once more housed within the shorts. While she performed the service Yousef’s eyes met Stacie’s. “You next,” he promised vaguely and sardonically. He was childishly pleased by her reaction.

From what happened then Stacie drew the conclusion that the girl had believed the use of her body had bought her immunity. When Yousef produced the wristlets her eyes widened in disbelief and an angry flood of denunciation assailed the grinning man. Whatever he said in reply was evidently more than the girl could bear, she leaped screaming for the door.

Within two paces he had a handful of her hair and was slapping her face back and forth until she meekly and hopelessly offered him her hands. Very quickly she stood as Stacie stood, but on her toes, her young loveliness taut and strained and ready. Helplessness brought with it resignation. She moaned as though to herself but ceased to plead. She no longer looked at the man who would torture her, she expected nothing from him that she would want.

Yousef whipped the girl as methodically as he had ravaged her. First a cane across the curves of the young buttocks and then a short and tapered whip for the rest of her, no female curve or crevice was immune. The girl screamed steadily, fighting her strapped wrists and sometimes lifting herself entirely from the floor in the unbearable cutting of her flesh. There was no lash that failed to evoke from her a mad gyration and peal of anguish, sweat stained her everywhere as the ridges of beaten skin rose one by one.

Stacie had no knowledge by which to gauge the severity of what she saw. To her it seemed the girl was being whipped to death, that female flesh could not withstand such pain or bear such marks. Yet when the whipping was done and Yousef returned the hateful thing to its hook the girl continued to moan and to twist and writhe with a vigour that spelt survival. Stacie had much to learn of the resiliency of the feminine physique. When, again, Yousef leered at her knowingly and said: “You next.” She had no reason to believe other than that he spoke truth.

The torturer, mightily pleased with himself, went away and left the two girls hanging by their wrists. The door slammed.

Stacie was deathly afraid, but she longed to give comfort to the punished girl who stood so close in the same confinement by which she was held. Yet she feared to intrude upon the victim’s inward communion with her pain. The eyes were closed, the cheeks wet with tears, the weight of the slenderness dragged against the straps as though the pain of the bound wrists was needed to balance the agony of the whip, her toes were on the floor, but not in solid seeking for support. The moans gradually sank away, but the panting respirations were as eloquent of suffering as had been her screams.

“I’m sorry.” Stacie felt that so futile a statement was justified to break the silence.

Her companion opened one eye as though seeing her for the first time. “Why sorry? You not whipped.” She relapsed into misery.

Stacie gave her a bit more silence and tried again. “Why did they whip you? What had you done?”

Both eyes opened this time, they were faintly animated.

“Break dishes in kitchen.” A brief pause. “Throw water on cook.” The last words held a trace of satisfaction or humour. The hurt body reasserted itself, toes searching.

“Is that all!” Stacie was aghast.

“Is plenty too much.” This time the humour was definite. “How many times have you been whipped?”

“Many, many times. Cannot remember.” To the girl the question was silly. She eyed Stacie’s unmarked skin in puzzlement. “Why you not get whip?”

“I’m going to be whipped,” Stacie reassured her. “They are making me wait so I’ll be more and more frightened.”

The girl perked up. Her sense of justice was restored. If Stacie was to be whipped she was a friend. “You soon hurt very much,” she informed helpfully. “Is best to make much scream or they do much harder.”

The advice of experience! Stacie wondered if she could follow it convincingly. She did not recall ever having screamed in pain. “Have you ever been . . .” She could not use the word. “. . . Punished with any of these other things?”

“I have had to sit on the horse. It is not nice. Most bad for a girl’s cunt,” she brightened perceptibly. “But I am hearing you are to have proper torture. Yousef do everything to hurt. Is me who is feeling sorry for you.”

Stacie was feeling sorry for herself. She dropped the subject. “Why do they leave you tied after you’ve been whipped?”

“Is same as you. Make feel bad. Cannot use hands,” she giggled. “Cook make Yousef free me soon. Is work to do.”

And thus it was. Untied, the girl sped from the awful chamber as though it was on fire. Yousef chuckled as he watched her go. “Back next week to sit on horse,” he opined sagely. “Is most foolish girl.” As he was leaving he turned and consoled. “Despair not, the whip is always ready.”

Stacie wondered if it was a quote from the Koran.

She felt great weariness, not only from standing straight with her arms in the air but also from the attrition of emotion in the alternating hope and fear to which she was subjected. Stacie had little doubt she had been witness to the whipping by deliberate design. It had affected her cruelly, a preview of her own agony to come. She was distraught by fears and doubts of her ability to endure so awful a punishment. She envisioned herself hanging limp and unconscious as the thong scored her skin.

When the door opened to admit a widely grinning Salim it was no more than in keeping with all else. Looking around cautiously to ensure they were alone the youth came eagerly forward to examine his prize. Positioning himself before the pinioned girl he scanned her nakedness with a fascination both clinical and erotic. Stacie felt the tell-tale blush rise and quelled an instinct to cross her legs.

“Is much better than just tits,” Salim’s voice was almost reverent.

“Please set me free, Salim.” Stacie thought it worth a try.

“My father will make you rich.”

“Mohammad Yasin also make me very dead,” the youth pointed out reasonably, his eyes clinging to the inevitable. “Are all girls having much hair round pee-hole?”

“We all have some,” Stacie sighed.

“You are going to be much whip. I wish to watch, but Yousef is much not kind, he say no.”

Salim was neither friend nor enemy. But, if only she could condition herself to his scrutiny of her nakedness, he was at least someone to talk to. At the moment she felt all breasts and vulva. “Where are the other girls?” she asked casually.

“Are chained to wall in nice stone room,” he informed absently. “Salim much wishes to fuck you.”

She supposed the male hunger would never be far removed, her nakedness would always generate lust. Stacie had little expectation of remaining inviolate, but surely not this buffoon of a boy! “Set me free and I’ll let you,” she offered without hope.

“Cannot set free. Salim thinks can fuck you like now.” His mind was obviously busy with the mechanics of vertical congress.

“Oh, Salim, it’s no fun standing up! Please untie me.” For a moment the boy weakened, she could see desire tearing his caution to shreds. But caution won. “First I have good look at cunt,” he said non-commitally. “If you kick, I bite tit most hard.”

She had lost nothing by trying, but it was infuriating to have so totally failed and now to have to stand and pretend indifference while he explored her sex. Shame mantled her at his next request. “Please to open wide the legs.”

Stacie did not want her nipples savagely bitten, so she sulkily obeyed, presenting the avidly curious youth with a complete exposure of her pubes. He was like a concupiscent puppy wagging its tail, using his finger to search within her cleft and to make her gasp, then sniffing her pungency as might a dog. Suddenly she yelped in pain.

Triumphantly Salim held up his trophy. Stacie saw her own pubic hair between his finger and thumb, she could cheerfully have killed the beaming lout. “Don’t do that!”

she commanded vehemently.

He was delighted with his provocation. “Could pull many. Salim much enjoy to see.”

He bent once more to his new found hobby.

Stacie kicked at him, but without success. Craftily he bent beside her, encircling her waist with one arm whilst employing his other to pluck. Angrily she fought to shake loose his grip, she kicked and stamped, but she was too helplessly tied. Through the most frantic of her struggles his hand found her black triangle so that, defeated, she stopped her futile and painful efforts. “Please, Salim, don’t. If you pull any more I’ll tell Yousef and Rannah.”

It gave him pause. He did not loose his grip, but stood holding his treasure while considering. “Will not miss one more,” he decided firmly. “Salim pull very slow.”

The captive miserably realised that from now on her life would always be like this. She would be used as others desired, never as she herself would wish. To be tied naked while an Arab boy amused himself with her body might very soon seem a trivial diversion, perhaps even a welcome one, all things were relative. She resigned herself to the “One more".

If it had not hurt she might have laughed. She was suddenly smitten by the absurdity of what was taking place. It would make a quaint picture. But it did hurt! Stacie was positive that more than one of her pubic hairs was being gripped, and was astonished by the pain of the slow withdrawal, her skin followed the anchored curl and would not let go, each increase of the steady pull made her gasp with the severity until, in furious revolt, she writhed and lunged away from his lecherous hand so that the roots surrendered their hold in one single flash of pain that left her flushed and bitter as she was forced to examine the shining strands wrested from her flesh.

“Salim keep always,” said the boy who had stolen them. She was getting accustomed to being naked and open to the eyes of the male. For her, now, it would become commonplace. Nakedness was implicit in Yousef’s work upon her flesh, there would be other male members of Yasin’s staff who would get a look at her. Salim would be endlessly intrigued and increasingly demanding, but still, she did not want him as an enemy. “Well, have you had a good look at a naked girl?” she asked him without sarcasm.

“Oh, is very nice.” His eyes glowed their approval. “Much best than men. Must now fuck.”

The captive sighed, always back to the eternal square one.

Youthful females were never left unaware of her desired orifice. “Set me free then,”

she demanded negatively.

Salim scarcely heard, his eyes and mind were busy.

Without preamble he loosened fastenings and produced a male weapon that, whilst lacking the massiveness of the torturer’s, was still formidable. “You kick, I hurt you,”

he said decisively.

Facing the inevitable, Stacie once more spread wide her legs.

It was then that Yousef returned.

Had her plight been less drastic, Stacie would have laughed. Her would be rapist stood for a moment stricken in dismay, his male organ ridiculously rampant before he tucked it out of sight and dived for the open door. A grinning Yousef caught the flying figure half way, shook it as one does a bag of rubbish, then sent it on its swift retreat with a well planted kick. There came a thud and a cry and the receding sounds of fleeing feet. “Is too young for fuck,” said the torturer indulgently.

Yousef lounged against the wall and surveyed the naked girl he was to torture. He discerned her weariness and absence of hope. He also enjoyed her loveliness for what it was. “I intend to make you give me pleasure,” he said simply.

“Is it now?”

He laughed enjoyably at the mixed emotions in her voice.

As he passed he slapped her bottom with a huge hand. The door thudded and once again Stacie was alone. But now there was a change, before her on the stone was the coiled wickedness of a black whip.

She had no delusions, this play was torture. Her skin remained unmarked, but she was tired and cringingly afraid. It would have been kinder to have whipped her when she was first tied. It was what she had expected, thus it had not been granted. Some time in the day the black horror on the floor would be used on her: but when! By the time it happened she would be a wreck. Suppose they were waiting for her to plead to be whipped . . . ! To get it over with, to end the awfulness of knowing and waiting for it to happen. She might be tempted. If Yousef were present at this moment, would she have the courage!

As the hours passed she hung more and more heavily upon her wrists. They took the strain protestingly, but it was the only relief she could contrive. She constantly varied her posture within the small tolerances of her bonds: this foot and that, cheek against one arm or the other, head bowed or thrown back so that she could gaze upon her captive hands. That was all. There was nothing else but loneliness.

Rannah had stood before the pinioned nakedness for some time before Stacie became aware and opened her eyes. The girl had been silent on bare feet and the hinges of the door well oiled. The captive had hung so long alone that sight of the dark eyed beauty was a shock.

“You are very tired,” said Rannah. “Please whip me,” Stacie pleaded.

The Arab girl nodded in confirmation and picked up the whip. She ran its sinuous length through her fingers several times. “It will hurt far more than you believe,” she said tonelessly. “After the first stroke you will no longer be weary.”

The captive nodded and closed her eyes. “Do it to me now. Don’t make me wait any longer, I can’t stand it.”

Rannah set her free.

For a moment the relief of the lowered arms was agony.

Then, with a small inarticulate cry and in a purely instinctive compulsion, the naked girl fell to her knees and clasped and hugged herself against Rannah’s legs, weeping noisily in great gusts of pent up emotion.

“She has a wonderful instinct for the right clothes,” Mohammad Yasin conceded as he broke open a roll and knifed the hard refrigerated butter. “Rannah is a sweet child, she is indispensable.”

Stacie supposed she could call herself clothed, but she was almost bare. Her breasts were covered, and her loins, but that was all. The scantiness of what she wore was quite lovely and patterned with gems. She was adorned at neck and wrists with metal and jewels worth several ransoms, her feet were chained and fettered by silver shackles. She was intimately at dinner with her lord. She refused to be ashamed of her hunger.

“I was not whipped today.”

“Alas no, I observe no marks,” Yasin acknowledged drily.

“I suppose what . . . what did happen was planned?” Yasin laughed and made a deprecating gesture with a stalk of celery.

“You do so long for a proper order, dear child. You would wish to be whipped by appointment?”

It was hard for Stacie to hold back the tears. He was such a charming man, she enjoyed his company. Under different circumstances she would be enjoying herself immensely. Yet the chains on her feet told her she was a slave, there had been no word of remission of her promised torture. “Why are you so kind to me?” she asked inconsistently.

“Am I kind?”

“Yes, this is heavenly.”

Yasin smiled as at a favourite daughter. “Have you forgotten the day, and the night preceding? It is a privilege of wealth that others perform my less agreeable tasks.”

“No, I have not forgotten. But Rannah does not hate me.”

“How could she! You are adorable.”

He meant it! She knew he did. She sought his eyes. “But you will torture me!” She made a rapid amendment: “You will have me tortured?”

Yasin smiled benignly at her bafflement. “Need we discuss it, dear girl?”

Stacie wanted to cry and laugh and scream. “My mind is full of it. I can’t forget what you have sentenced me to: that’s what it is, a sentence as though I had to go to prison to be punished.” She managed a weak smile.

He nodded in understanding. “Yousef makes a vivid impression.”

“Must it be . . . be, done to me by a man?”

“You would prefer Rannah?” His eyes glinted amusement.

“Yes, please! If in truth you do not hate me personally, then let her be the one to torture me.”

“She may not desire the task.”

“She would do it, I know she would! May I ask her?” Yasin smiled at her vehemence.

“You misjudge her. She is not a sadist.”

“She does not need to be. She is tremendously competent. It would be a woman thing between the two of us. It needs no name . . .”

He was so easy to talk to, so aware of her as a person as well as a female body. Stacie knew she should be frightened at her own temerity: a nearly naked girl with chained feet laying down the law! If she was truly slave she would be punished. She looked her penitence. “I’m sorry . . .”

“You are a delightful child. You have not offended me. Quite the contrary.”

The captive girl was suffused with a great warmth toward this man whose prisoner she was. Greatly daring she burned a bridge. “Take me into your . . . your . . . Harem—I suppose you have one? Please, I would like that! Please don’t have me tortured.”

He surveyed her gravely. She could not tell what her outburst may have earned. He sighed. “The eternal feminine!” His voice was sad.

Stacie sensed his thought. “You mean, give us an inch and we seek a mile?”

“Women do it constantly, even when they know they’ll be whipped.” He was amused by her perception.

“What else can we do!” Stacie protested. “We have to get everything we want through men, by earning it or wheedling it or cheating . . . It’s even more true of a slave girl.” She looked at him coaxingly, “Is that what I am?”

His wry smile was perplexed. “It is not what I planned for you, but you have a talent.” He mused quietly while they ate.

“I had never met you. You are not what I expected. I am curious, are you not surprising yourself?”

“How can I do that?”

“By your acceptance. Most girls would be in hysterics or sulky revolt.”

Involuntarily she laughed. “You have me nearly naked with my feet chained together. What revolution can I start!”

“You see! That is what I mean: that sentence. It was as though you were discussing this meal we share.”

He was right! Stacie examined herself, except for a few kicks at Salim she had not fought. “Am I really that submissive?” she queried doubtfully. “I’ve never seen myself like that. I’d have said the reverse. Remember, Rannah’s kept me handcuffed or tied almost all the time . . . or these chains on my ankles. I can’t run, I’d be silly to try.”

Yasin shrugged. “Perhaps you are right, but I will not concede the point. You have shown me something you do not know you possess, you harbour a treasure and are unaware. But I suppose the important thing is that you sit across from me now. The chains upon your feet are incidental.”

Stacie’s voice was mischievous. “I suppose I do have to admit to some annoyance with myself. The closer I get to my torture the less I believe in it. There was a little while today when I was tied and naked and very weary . . . But now . . . ! It is you who make your own threat unbelievable. Will I be tortured tomorrow?”

“I do not wish to torture you at all.”

“Why do it then!”

“I have told you. My father would have said it was the will of Allah.”

“It is your will, and no one else’s. Tonight will I be tied in that rotten little hole in the stone?”

Yasin held up an admonitory hand. “My dear child, you tear a man’s heart. You are one of those women whose beauty is so great and their spirit so alive that a mere male can cope with you in only two ways: he must love you or he must whip you. In the middle ground you will always defeat him.”

Mischief still held her. “Your problem is simple, whip me and love me too.”

Mohammad Yasin sighed deeply. Beside him was a gong.

He struck it a single blow. As the wave of resonant sound washed over her Stacie knew she had gone too far. Yousef carried her across his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, beating her fists against his back was like hammering a castle door. The chain linking her ankles defeated her frantic kicks. Stacie fought only for pride, she had no expectation of escaping anything. The torturer chuckled as he walked and patted her well bent bottom with his free hand. She continued to struggle furiously all the way to the torture chamber. It kept her from thinking.

Yousef unlocked her fetters. “Must take off all pretty things,” he ordered cheerfully. “You put in little bag here.” He stood between her and the door.

Stacie stripped herself naked.

Yousef strapped her wrists and positioned her as she had been that day, but now she teetered on her toes.

He whipped her coldly and methodically.

Long afterwards, when Stacie looked back at her first whipping she remembered most vividly of all her reiterated exclamations between her screams: “Oh no! No! No! Oh nooooh!” Her moaning negative was a denial of her pain, a denial that such pain could exist, a refusal to countenance it as possible. Once she accepted its reality she was lost, she would feel the full agony of each blow as it cut at her. But her refutations dwindled away as her screams became continuous. They were replaced by pleadings and abasements she did not bother to recall. The eternal cry of a naked girl beneath the lash. “No more . . . ! Oh stop! stop it . . . stop! Please . . . ! Please . . . !” And then the offer of her body if only he would halt the steady rhythm of his blows. The blows that cut and cut and scored and striated the white skin that had never known pain. She screamed in ways she had never believed possible.

In the haze of her agony, Stacie knew her behaviour deplorable. She danced and kicked and moaned and lifted herself from the floor in futile efforts to ease the steady inflictions that would not cease. No matter what she pleaded or promised the lash curled round her flesh with the steady precision of a metronome. Yousef had been told to whip the slave girl well, and this he did. It was a joy of work. He enjoyed whipping girls, but he had whipped so many the thrill was wearing thin. He heard her pleas and her promises only in an abstract way. His job was to whip her nakedness from shoulders down to knees. This one was special, he was not allowed the use of her sex. He did not care, she was but one of many. He expended his lusts on all the rest, save one. She and this white bitch would fall his way soon enough. He had but to wait. He plied his whip to extract the loudest crack upon the shrinking flesh and the most piercing scream from the tortured lips. He had dreamed of this hour all day long. The white body and the sun tanned limbs danced their saraband of anguish to the measure of his thong.

Stacie had not fainted, but she had reached the misty land of disorientation. When her wrists were loosed she slumped to the stone, rubbing first the hurt wrists themselves and then seeking tentative explorations of wounds such as she had never previously borne, her body seemed welted everywhere. When she was lifted and carried away in the same manner by which she had been brought to her first torture she cared no whit for her destination, even the bound wrists and the tiny dungeon would have been welcome if she could have lain upon the rug in peace without the whip seeking her. When she was finally tossed contemptuously upon something soft it was some time before she opened her eyes enough to know herself upon a bed in splendour. She did not care about her pain, the strong naked arms of Mohammad Yasin enveloped her and felt searchingly the ridges across her back and all the curves of her loveliness. One had even found her breast and this he lingered upon most of all with fingers and with lips. Her moans mounted and mounted until he stilled them with his mouth. He ravaged his slave girl lustily, brutally and with love. Stacie knew that to be loved like this as her reward she would happily submit herself to be whipped every day. She had never known such intensity of sensation. She clung and clung, raking the back of her master with sharp fingernails as he thrust and thrust into her very heart. Stacie Blair was exquisitely happy.

“You must possess a magic.” Rannah pronounced sardonically. “Our master has gone away on his endless business and left you with me to torture. I have orders to torture you to the extent of my knowledge of such things.” She laughed ruefully. “My knowledge is very great. You will scream a lot while we are together.”

“I asked for you,” Stacie said simply.

“I know. Yousef will be disappointed.”

“Don’t give me to Yousef, please.”

“Never fear. You are mine. You may wish otherwise.”

“No. If I am to be tortured I wish you to do it.”

“He loved you through the night, did he not?”

“Yes. I am his slave. It is all I want.”

“You are one of the richest girls in the world, yet you seek slavery?”

“With Mohammad Yasin, yes.”

“And with me! Why me?”

“You know why.”

The dark eyes burned bright. “Of course I know. I lusted for you when first I put your wrists within those handcuffs in the truck. I could have killed Salim for baring your breasts.”

“You laughed.”

“We are women, you and I. We say yes only when we must, then it is real for us. We do not shout desire from the housetops. I am going to torture you. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes terribly afraid. Can I have more coffee?”

Rannah leaned across the breakfast table and replenished cups. “You ooze lubricity, our master lit a fire within your loins. At this moment you do not care about the torture, you think it will not happen, that I’ll relent. I won’t!”

“Torture me, Rannah. It is his wish, his order. Please may I have more toast?”

“I spoil you. You are outrageously happy. Surely Yousef made some impression on your mind? I can see those he made upon your skin.”

Stacie knew herself drunk with ecstasy. She gloried and knew shame. “I am done with Yousef,” she said grandly. “Will you whip me as hard?”

Rannah recognized the euphoria of infatuation. “I will whip you so you think Yousef’s hand held no more than a feather. It takes a girl to hurt a girl. I know those places where you can be hurt.”

“You mean my breasts?” Stacie asked absently. She was still within Yasin’s arms.

“You are quite ridiculous,” Rannah affirmed angrily. “A girl in love! Pouf! I had intended to be easy with you today, but now I will make you scream in ways you have not even thought of.”

“Don’t be angry with me. I know I’m being silly.” Stacie was contrite. She wanted very much to please this enigmatic girl who held her person in thrall. “I will behave. See, I’m not chained or tied, but I do not run away.”

“Will this fine courage carry you to the room where it will happen?”

The captive wrinkled her brows in confrontation with the conscience of her past. “Oh yes, I will walk with you to the torture chamber where you will make me scream,” she said slowly and solemnly. “But everything I do, or perhaps it’s the way I do it, leaves me guilty. You know: the Protestant ethic thing. I ought to be screaming now: I ought to throw this lovely food in your face: I ought to be demanding release with every second breath I take: I ought to be reviling Yasin and you and Yousef . . . In fact, I ought to be making an absolute ass of myself as a . . . a sort of social conformity. Am I being silly?”

Rannah eyed her captive with amusement. “I have wondered about you,” she admitted. “So has our master. He believes you are by nature a slave girl even though you do not seem to be. For the rest, you are only being sensible, facing the facts of your condition,” Rannah grinned confidingly. “But I will tell you honestly: I am not sure I could behave as you. In your place I think I would be hostile, getting myself many blows and tight bindings and feeling noble within my mind.”

“You’ve read about brainwashing. Is that what you’re doing to me? I mean, you switch me back and forth between terror and luxury, I’m always off balance.”

“That is by our own caprice,” Rannah admitted. “We are selfish. We do not allow our sadness at what we must do to you to rob us of the pleasure of treating you as our guest. We are also curious about your reactions.”

“In other words, you’re playing with me.” Rannah shrugged.

“Allah plays with all of us.”

“I’m sure good old Allah is a big comfort to you guys,” Stacie said drily. She gazed earnestly across the table. “Look, Rannah, I like being your guest, I like you. If you enjoy my company, don’t torture me. There has to be some other way. My father will do anything Yasin demands to get me safely back.”

“What could your father do! Think. There is nothing.” Stacie thought. Just what could her father do! Money, apologies, the United Nations, all were inapplicable. She looked woefully into the dark watching eyes. “But this revenge . . . ! It’s so savage, it doesn’t belong anymore. It’s out of the past.”

“Mohammad Yasin has sworn an oath.”

“That brings us back to Allah again.” The voice of the captive lost its insouciance. The two girls looked starkly at each other in full reality.

Stacie wondered at the lack of grimness and foreboding in the huge chamber where she would spend her pain-filled days, and perhaps some pain-filled nights. The stone was mellow and light flooded in from the iron-barred windows that half-circled the room high in the walls. No doubt plenty of light was desirable that those who did the torturing might clearly see what they were doing and assess its results.

“Does the need to strip yourself at each beginning bother you?” Rannah asked curiously.

“It was Yousef who stripped me yesterday. He ruined all my clothes. I supposed it was done as . . . as part of my punishment.”

“It was.”

Stacie set aside the last of her scanty clothing and stood naked. “No, I don’t mind stripping before you. It’s the purpose of being stripped that bothers me.”

“I have left the door open to tempt you. Go, run if you wish. Does your nakedness doubly impel you to flight?”

The captive looked at the wide portal without interest.

“All nakedness does is make me want to crouch in a corner and hide my face and as much of the rest as I can,” she confessed dolefully.

“Go and do it then,” Rannah laughed.

Stacie squirmed, her eyes imploring. “I can’t even do that now you’ve told me to. You’re just having fun with me. If you really want to know, I feel like saying: Come on, let’s get on with it.”

“Say it then, Stacie.”

The naked girl took a deep breath. Already she knew there was a thread between this dark-eyed maiden and herself, a thread that would grow and grow regardless of other things. Rannah’s curiosity about her state of mind was a part of it. She tossed reticence to the winds. “Please start my torture, Rannah.”

First a belt very tight around her slim waist. The scent of her torturess was tangible in the closeness of the buckling. Next the Arab girl bound Stacie’s hands behind her back, palm to palm, the cords neatly positioned and cruelly knotted with the cinching band that joined them between the prisoned wrists and then continued on to be drawn between the naked thighs and threaded through a ring in the front of the belt itself.

They were face to face now, the torturess and she who was to be tortured, both were breathing faster than their need. Rannah touched the passive lips with her own, then pulled upon the cord.

It was the beginning! Stacie recognized it as such. It was also the end of any possibility of resistance, she was too firmly tied. She gasped as the cord parted her buttocks, cut at her crotch and entered between the lips of her sex. Rannah facilitated its entry within her flesh by a firm application of finger and thumb. The cord was tugged, and tugged again. It hurt bitterly so that the captive gasped and knew shame at what had been done to her.

The pull of the cord beneath her loins compelled Stacie to stand erect, even to arch herself back to ease the pain. Her arms and hands had been pulled down and down so that they were completely lost to her. She stood, her shoulders wrenched back, her loins afire, and wondered if this was it or if there might be something more.

There was something more.

It was a triangular metal rod, of no great dimensions. It held a ring at each end. It was positioned between her arms and her back, the pressure of her strained pose held it there without support while the trapeze bar was lowered from the ceiling. The bar itself sustained short chains at each end, on them were hooks. Stacie looked up fearfully and guessed.

Again there was the intimacy of female bodies while the hooks were inserted in the rings. Then the naked body braced itself as the hidden motor gathered up the slack that stood between the helpless flesh and its punishment. At her back, Stacie could feel Rannah’s strong fingers positioning the rod and compressing her skin so that as the mechanism tautened it would not be pinched. And then the moment! The awful moment when the rod nestled itself into her armpits, bit into her skin with a sharp edge of the triangle and lifted her from the floor.

For a moment her toes searched frantically for the comforting solidity no longer there. By the time the whirr of the motor ceased they were twelve inches above the floor, and their owner breathless with pain.

“It is best that I go,” Rannah said calmly. “You may be ashamed of what your lips permit, nor do I wish to hear. Perhaps after a long time I will visit you.” Leaving she shut tight the door and turned a key.

Alone with the unbearable! Stacie understood. If Rannah had stayed to hear she would now be pouring out her pleas. It was so urgent that she tell of the impossibility of such pain or the bearing of it. So vital that someone be made aware of the need to put her feet back on the floor before her arms were wrenched from their sockets or the sharp edge of the rod ate its way through the flesh and bone and severed them. But there was no one to listen, so Stacie screamed. What else could she do? She screamed steadily for a very long time. Screaming exhausts. When there is none to hear, it shames itself and dies. But a beneficent nature has provided an immense versatility of expression for the tortured: moans, small inarticulate words and cries, sounds that have no place in the world of sanity. But, because of the place in which they are uttered, are the most eloquent of all. Stacie used them all.

She soon discovered it best not to move. She could kick to her heart’s content and move her head as she wished. But it hurt, all of it. To set her suspended nudity in motion as a pendulum was worst of all, she swung and could not halt the momentum. It would die its own death and no other. While she swung she was sure the pain was greater. To hang limp and passive was the best, a poor best to be sure, but all that she could do, to hang with screaming agony beneath each arm.

It was quite different from the whip. The captive had supposed that pain was pain, you suffered it in degrees. But this was different, here was no scalding cut of a leather thong across naked skin. No impact. Here was a relentless imposition without count, agony without intermission, pain without pause. The thing in her armpits was a live enemy against which she had no defense. It worked its will with her, and its will was merciless. Stacie’s tears accompanied her moans.

Why, oh why, must she be left to suffer alone! That was the cruellest thing of all. The pain was so great that the suspended girl cherished the illusion that had Rannah been present to witness she must inevitably have ended it. Surely no one anywhere at any time had known anything like this! It was not within the realm of bearing. By night she would hang lifeless, she was sure of it. If only Rannah would return! Stacie wonderingly heard her own voice far away crying, “Please, oh please . . . Oh please . . . !”

It was not the poor hurt shoulders alone. Stacie found herself tied ingeniously. Her weight on the rod pulled at her arms, and they in turn pulled at her wrists: the poor hurt wrists so helplessly tied together that she could no longer move even her fingers. But the chain of agony did not stop there, it continued on its way with the cord now deeply bedded at the apex of her legs and within her cleft vagina. It was a band of fire as implacable as the rod.

Stacie Blair was being tortured.

The naked girl could not measure time. It might have been an hour or several hours before she fell silent, all sound exhausted save the laboured breaths that themselves imparted pain. If Stacie could have stopped them and lived she would have done so, each respiration delivered her flesh anew to the burrowing rod. She puzzled that she still lived, that she was still conscious. Why, oh why, could not the blackness take her for its own and end her suffering?

There came the time she knew she would neither faint nor die. It must be possible, then, for a girl to suffer anything! Facing the knowledge she found no comfort. The discomfort meant only an endless vista of torture that could go on and on forever. Or would she be granted holidays! Her life’s work now was to be tortured. She found herself light-heartedly wondering about a five-day week, sick leave and statutory holidays . . . Could she wheedle privilege from Rannah!

Could she . . . !

“And so, my Stacie has not died!” The youthful torturess easily divined the progression of her victim’s chaotic emotions.

The naked girl tried a feeble smile without much success.

She was almost afraid to speak for fear of pain. She managed only the obvious. “Please let me down.”

“It is not yet time, but you may ask.”

Hope died in bitter disappointment, an overwhelming desolation that she was not to be freed. “How long?” she whispered pitifully, “How long . . . ?”

“I will not tell you,” Rannah said comfortably. “It is best that you do not know how long you have been thus or how much longer you must stay as you are. It is very painful, is it not?”

“Will it always be as bad?”

“As bad or worse. There is nothing that cannot be worse, Stacie.” Rannah laughed without malice. “I could light a small fire beneath your feet.”

“Kill me.”

“Don’t be silly. You are being dramatic for my benefit. You have no wish to die. If I produced a knife or gun you would be horrified.”

“Then let me down, give me a rest . . . for just a little while.”

“It would be much worse when I lifted you again, no kindness at all.”

“Yes it would! Oh please . . . !”

“You see! It is as I said. Much better you are alone. When I am here you see hope that is not there. You plead and I cannot listen. It is best I go.”

“No don’t!” The words had a sudden explosive vehemence.

“Don’t leave me, not yet. If you don’t want me to plead, then I won’t. I’ll behave. I . . . I need you. Oh Rannah . . . I”

The dark eyes became misty, they searched the punished nudity in sadness. “I will stay a little while, Stacie. I wish you did not hang like that. It is a will beyond mine.”

It was in the mind of the bound girl to retort: “Then set me free.” But she sensed the other girl’s distress and held her tongue. The thread between them was still tenuous, she would treasure it. Instead, she said wanly: “Thank you for coming . . . thank you.”

Even the silence was comforting. Rannah was there! A strange and enigmatic girl, but female and of her age. Strength flowed between them, and something else . . . ! The hurt captive wished the dark eyes would watch her always. It was Rannah who broke the silence.

“This is the first day of your torture. Tell me, when next you are free of bonds will you not wish to fight or to flee? You will not yield to me as you have done . . . ?”

“I will. Oh, I will!” Again the vehemence. Stacie herself could not explain it. “I won’t fight you, Rannah.”

“But you would fight Yousef?”

“I . . . I suppose so, yes. It would do me no good, but I would fight him.”

“Because he is a man!”

“Of course!” The captive’s words were purely instinctive. Born of an emotion she did not yet understand.

“Are you passive to me because you wish no bonds?” Again a purely instinctive response.

“No! Oh, Rannah, it isn’t that at all. I . . . I’m happy when I’m with you, I don’t want to . . . make a fuss.” Stacie gaspingly absorbed pain. “But I wish you would always keep me chained or tied. In some small way so I can’t be silly and so you don’t have to keep an eye on my. Don’t you have a pair of handcuffs . . . ? Something simple. Something that won’t hurt but will make me helpless?”

The Arab girl laughed in gaiety at the ingenious request.

“I do not have such things, but I can get them. You must have enjoyed those that held you in the van the day I brought you here?”

“I hated them that day. But they are simple, and if I don’t struggle they won’t hurt.”

“I could put them on you very tight!”

“I don’t care! It’s a sensible idea.”

“You are quite incredible!”

“No, I’m just being sensible. Oh, Rannah, how much longer have I got to hang like this?”

But Rannah was gone.

When, after the passage of centuries, the rope slackened and allowed the tired feet to find the floor Stacie slumped helplessly into a tightly tied package upon the stone. She could not move, but lay there giving little moans of thankfulness and pain, moans that intensified into a crescendo when Rannah gently withdrew the rod and loosed the cord bisecting the swollen sex. Even then she lay still unable to move her tortured arms. She was as helpless as though still tied.

“They won’t work. My arms . . . I can’t move them.” She lay on her back and looked up piteously at the girl who controlled her.

Rannah smiled."They did not like what I did to them. But come, I will help you. In an hour the little arms will begin to like me again.”

Stacie would always remember the firm and gentle hands that rubbed away her pain and brought her arms back to life, a life she believed lost forever. She lay upon the bed of the girl who had tortured her, and was massaged with love, later her sweat-stained body was bathed and restored to beauty.

“Why do you clothe me, Rannah?”

“I do not clothe you much, slave girl. Only enough that when you must strip each day you will know fear. I find those small pretty things upon your breasts and round your hips evocative.”

“I would have thought it convenient to keep me naked.”

“True, but there are other things besides convenience. You arc quite impossible. You surprise me as much as I strive to surprise you. I suspect you have come by some erotic wish to be made naked. The thought would have horrified you a week ago. Has it to do with me?”

“I can’t explain it. I’m half ashamed. But there it is.”

“Do you like nudity when I torture you?”

Stacie shrugged her puzzlement. “I don’t even think about it then, it seems so natural after that first moment you have spoken of.”

“There are some tortures in which I could leave much of you clothed. Would you not prefer that?”

The captive considered the offer. “I don’t think so. I think I’d feel silly as well as hurt.”

“Ah, but supposing the one torturing you was Yousef?”

“Even there, during the actual time I was being hurt, I can only see myself as naked. I must be naturally wanton.”

They shared laughter. “We women are absurd, Stacie. We do not know ourselves. It is one of the reasons men control us so easily. I too am often shocked at things I think or wish or do. When first I beheld those four shivering maidens by the plane I thought I hated you. Look at me now! I cannot even toss you in a cell.”

“But you torture me!”

“Don’t dwell on that. It is apart, a duty to perform.”

“Mohammad Yasin told me I was not a slave, but you just called me ‘slave girl’ . . . ?”

The dark eyes dwelt amusedly upon their captive. “I can’t tell you that either. The words slipped out without thought. I think I will use them, you have a quality. They fit. You may not be slave to our Master, but I can certainly make you mine.”

Stacie savoured the words upon her tongue: ‘slave girl’! They sent a delicious thrill trilling up her spine. Rannah’s slave! She closed her mind to guilt and a sense of the ridiculous. If being called slave girl gave her a good feeling, so be it! She raised mischievous eyes. “What should I call you?”

“You will call me Rannah. I am not as silly as you.” Seeing a flicker of disappointment in the young eyes, she added:

“When I am angry or you have misbehaved you can call me My Lady. There is a Jedrah term, but that is the best translation I can make.”

“Not Mistress?”

Rannah grimaced. “It’s threadbare. Besides, it makes me seem a spinster in gown and mortar-board. I went to school in England.”

“Yes My Lady.” Stacie gave it everything she had.

“You can be whipped for impertinence.”

“Was I impertinent, My Lady?”

“You know damn well you are—and drop that ‘My Lady’ bit. You’re feeling foxy because you think your troubles are over for the day. It’s not a log walk back to that room, y’know.”

Stacie quelled her rising spirits. There would always be steel in Rannah. She could learn gradually how far she dare provoke.

“You spoke of the four of us, Rannah. Where are the other three?”

“They are quite safe, and very angry, and very much afraid. Perhaps I may allow them to share a torture with you.”

“Torture! Them! But why?”

“I did not say torture them: they may share yours. They can watch.”

Stacie considered the humiliation. Three pairs of female eyes seeing her nudity writhe in agony . . .

“You do not like the thought, slave girl?” Rannah accused.

“Are they . . . are they, naked?”

“No. But if it would make it easier for you it could be arranged.”

Stacie flushed. “Silly! But it would make a tremendous difference in the way I’d feel. Please don’t do it.”

“Don’t you want to talk to them?”

“Not in between screams.”

“I will torture them too, then,” Rannah assured cheerfully. “Then none of you will feel embarrassed.”

“You’re teasing.”

“Hold out your hands.”

The sudden order, absurdly, made the captive remember early days at school when the strap or dirty finger nails were the motive. Unconcernedly she obeyed, then gasped with a strange pleasure.

“I told you, slave girl, I spoil you.” Rannah held up the silver handcuffs, laughing at the mixed emotions on her companion’s face.

“They’re beautiful!” Stacie’s eyes glowed as though she beheld jewelled bracelets. “Oh, Rannah, you’re sweet.”

“I am told they are the best,” the Arab girl said proudly.

“It is marked on them: Smith & Wesson. U.S.A. They are brand new. Yours is their first skin.”

Each savoured the moment in their own way. For Rannah it was delighted amusement at her slave girl’s desire. For Stacie it was the warmth of knowing the shining things a gift that must have sprung from deeper emotion than strict practicability. Undeniably, too, they would be much more comfortable than having her wrists corded at her back or a heavy chain tethering her like a dog.

“I will still tie you, slave girl.”

Stacie’s euphoria was not dented. “I don’t mind,” she said absently. “Please put them on me, I want to hear the little clicks.”

Stacie’s handcuffing had all the air of a Ritual. Very deliberately Rannah trapped a slender wrist, flipped over the notched half circle of steel and pressed it home. They laughed together at the resultant clicks of the ratchet and its pawl. The last two clicks exploratory to make the cuff snug but not to cut. When both the girlish wrists had been circled captive in the glinting metal Stacie held them up to admire. A single link joined her hands and limited their freedom. “They’re gorgeous!” she breathed. “Oh, Rannah, you’re so good to me!”

The dark eyes studied the ecstatic captive with a measure of incredulity. “Slave girl . . .” The voice was serious and puzzled. “All day I tortured you. How then am I good?”

“Oh, but you are! Rannah, don’t worry about me. Maybe I’m nuts . . . everything’s nuts! But I’m not going to try and figure myself out. I’m just grateful you bought these things for me. Quite simple really.”

“See how good they are for me,” Stacie exulted at dinner.

“It’s funny at first, using two hands for everything. But it’s sort of quaint and I expect I’ll improve. And the nice thing is I don’t have to wonder if I should make a quick dash for the door, and you don’t have to wonder if I’m going to.”

“You are a nonsensical slave girl,” Rannah chided. “Your feet are free, you can run as well as you ever could.”

Stacie was unabashed. “Well, anyway, I’m not going to. I’d look a perfect idiot running around the way I’m dressed, or undressed, and with these on my wrists.”

The dark haired Jedrah maiden surveyed her slave with pride. Perhaps with love . . . Later, with a studied casualness, she said: “Tonight you will sleep with me.”

Stacie’s heart skipped a beat. She saw the truth of her slavery. She could be delivered to torment or to Paradise by a whim or a word from whoever owned her. The handcuffs had a life of their own upon her flesh. She sparkled with a new content.

Yet Rannah was cruel. Leading her trembling captive to the holy place of sleep she unlocked a single cuff and clasped it round the lower foot of her bed so that its wearer was on her knees. She tossed the astonished slave a blanket and readied herself for sleep.

Kneeling on the rug at the foot of Rannah’s bed, one wrist solidly captive against the heavy and ornately carved wooden frame, Stacie was torn between laughter and tears. She was not sure whether she was being teased, but here was slavery indeed! To sleep on the floor, chained beside her mistress’s bed like a pet dog or, more aptly, a pet slave. She longed to speak of her new condition, but was unsure of what to say or how to say it. Rannah was keeping her eyes loftily averted from the humbled girl upon the floor.

“Would you prefer your small cell and the cords on your wrists, slave-girl?” The Arab girl was secretly laughing at her captive’s dismay.

“Oh no, my Lady! I want to be near you.”

“But my slave girl is not pleased by her humiliation?” Stacie was cautious and uncertain.

“I have never slept on the floor at the foot of anyone’s bed, my Lady. It’s strange to me.”

“Why am I suddenly being called ‘my Lady’?”

“I feared you must be angry with me.”

Rannah laughed at the girl who knelt so awkwardly on the rug, her arm taut against the tug of the handcuff that locked it to the bed. “Silly girl! You thought you were to get in my bed, not beside it on the floor. But think of all the worse places you could be than where you are. There are many. You will share my bed only when I choose.”

Stacie wiped the pout from her lips, it could get her into trouble. Memory of the day welled up. This dark haired beauty was the same girl who had tortured her. Best not to push her luck.

“Forgive me, Rannah.”

“There is nothing to forgive, slave girl. Now, let me see you dispose yourself.”

Stacie Blair had never felt more foolish. Laughter contended with anger, sarcasm with protest, but prudence quenched them all. Her principle concern was, suddenly, to do what she must with grace. She found herself not wanting to appear awkward or inadequate before the watching eyes. In whatever she did from this day on she would wish the approval of the girl who held her slave.

It should have been simple, but it was not. To kneel, to sit, to lay down had ceased to be easy. Her right hand chained so closely to the wooden leg so near the floor inhibited whatever she sought to do. It was not enough to have one free hand, she wanted two. Relapsing on the rug she searched for comfort, but the handcuffed wrist defeated her no matter how she turned. Exasperated, she sat up, glared at the snug cuff on her wrist, and gave the matter of her night’s rest serious thought.

“It was you who asked for handcuffs, slave girl,” Rannah mocked.

“I’m doing something wrong, there just has to be a way . . .”

“I am being cruel. I will chain you differently.”

“No, don’t. You couldn’t chain me less. I’ll find a spot.” The slave girl wriggled and twisted and unexpectedly found comfort, her prisoned hand ceased to tug and hurt. Her mistress clapped gently in applause. “You see, slave girls quickly learn.”

“Please, Rannah, throw the blanket over me.”

“I will do nothing of the sort. Throw it over yourself.”

“I can’t! Oh please! Rannah, you’re teasing.”

The Arab girl’s voice became haughty. “You mistake me for a servant? I could take offence. Cover yourself and be quick about it or I’ll find a whip.”

Groaning inwardly, but with cautious features, Stacie used her one hand to push herself up on a hip. The handcuff bit at her savagely as she essayed tossing throws with the blanket. Catching the amused gaze of the watching girl she said: “Don’t laugh. I’ll be good at it next time.” With a flailing of legs she again found both comfort and cover.

But sleep did not come quickly. The handcuffed wrist was demanding, she could not be unaware of it, an incautious movement hurt. But more potent still was the slave girl’s awareness of the vibrant female body in the bed. Before she slept, Stacie thought much about the dark eyed maiden whose possession she had become. In her thoughts was longing.

By midday Stacie had come to accept that she would never be sure, of herself, of Rannah, of her slavery, of nothing! There would be no pattern. Intimacy, no matter how close or how dear, would never intrude on the purpose of her kidnapping. She sensed with certainty the things that Rannah did with regret, but it was equally certain she would do them.

That morning when she had stripped away the brief things to bare her body for whatever was to be done to it Stacie had sensed in her companion an aura of an emotion she could not define. At the moment her own pubic hair and breasts were exposed she knew the pure fear that waited all the other twenty-four hours for that confrontation. For her now, nakedness was the true reality.

“You will never be quite naked, slave girl, there will always be the handcuffs.”

Rannah had mocked.

Always the handcuffs! It was true! Stacie wondered wryly how wise she had been in asking for them. They were turning out to be a greater convenience to Rannah than to herself. Always they clasped her in some way, even in sleep.

“Back against the wall, slave girl. Here, I will position you.”

It had been so terribly simple. Her feet had been pushed apart and locked into clamps in the wall, her handcuffed wrists had been raised above her head and linked over a hook. No lock was needed, she could not lift them. So there she stood, the stone at her back, her legs spread so that her pubes were wantonly displayed, her hands high in their steel cuffs so that she was held erect with breasts out-thrust, looking at her world from between tautly raised arms. She felt more naked than naked.

“A little pause, slave girl, so you may stand and think.”

“Rannah, please! Can’t we get it over with?”

“You wish me to start your torture?” Rannah had laughed gaily.

“Suspense is awful. It’s . . . sort of extra.”

“How can you tell that this is not your torture! In an hour you will not be happy. By then your favourite handcuffs will be hurting your favourite wrists. Before the day is done you may scream.”

Stacie had glimpsed the possibility. She was strained and uncomfortable now. She had learned how potent an hour could be for a girl in punishment. She could not move. From somewhere she found courage to ask her question.

“Rannah, if I’m tortured to enable you to send horrible pictures to my father, why haven’t they been taken?”

“Have you not guessed, slave girl! Hidden cameras are trained on you in this room all the time. You will never see and never know. Through each hour they will intermittently record your suffering. We take the best of them for Mohammad Yasin’s purpose.”

“Must I be tortured all day for a few pictures? You could get them in an hour?”

“I had asked this question too,” Rannah admitted. “But he whose charge the cameras are insists that each minute and each hour will etch their imprint on your features and your body for your father to read. I fear he speaks truth, I have beheld it.”

“But, Rannah, it’s so cruel . . . for so long! Must it be?”

“Yes. It is by order from Yasin. Perhaps he has a purpose of his own.”

“But what! He isn’t even here to see me suffer.”

“Yasin is not a sadist. I am closer to being a sadist than he. No, I think he believes the things I do to you will make you a Jedrah girl. But enough! One more question and I whip you. Do you wish to be whipped, slave girl?”

“No, my Lady.”

“That is much better. Argumentative slave girls are a bore. They deserve only the whip. You are beautifully positioned to have your breasts whipped. I have a delightful whip for the purpose, it has silken thongs. Shall we try it?”

“Please no, my Lady.” Stacie suddenly felt her two breasts as focal points.

“Ah well, another time. I am going to amuse myself with a small pleasantry.”

The taut captive watched without enthusiasm as her female tormentor rummaged in a wooden chest and produced a shining object of chain and silver plate which she held up for inspection. “Do you recognize this, slave girl?”

Stacie felt foolish at her blush and the words she must utter. “I think it’s a chastity belt.”

“And you are going to wear it. I shall put it on you very tightly indeed so that you are very, very safe.”

It was tight, very tight! The silver shield over her sex was firmly compressed by the silver chains embedded in her waist and loins. The padlock, which she was smilingly shown, was modern and emphatic. Its solid click sealed her against penetration. Her eyes pleaded the question she had been forbidden to ask.

“You are curious, slave girl,” Rannah was enjoying a private joke. “I shall not tell you what befalls. You may stand and wait. If you stand long enough you may actually want something to happen, even if it is bad.” Rannah went away.

That had been long ago. By midday Stacie knew torture, she hurt everywhere. The handcuffs had become an implacable enemy, they cut and burned so that she was forever straining her tired body to find them relief, but her spread legs made their own demands and the chastity belt burrowed into her flesh painfully. Perhaps her plight was not torture, but she could think of no other name for it.

“Most beautiful lady is pleased to see Salim, I am hoping?” The naked girl tensed angrily at the unctuous voice. A male, to see her thus! And such a male! Neither the brutality of manhood or the innocence of a child, only prurience!

“Go away, Salim. If you touch me I’ll scream.”

The beaming smile enveloped her. “Lady is much kind to scream. Salim will shut door tight.”

He did so and returned to the inevitable scrutiny, a lewd inventory. “Our mistress has locked up lovely cunt,” he deplored with much evident disappointment. “But Salim enjoys tits and other things. He has much permit.”

So this was Rannah’s ‘Little Pleasantry’! Stacie was torn between anger and wry humour. She wondered miserably if pictures of Salim’s ineffectual ravishments of her person would reach her father. She felt shame and distaste at what the boy would do to her, but supposed it would add little to her pain.

“Salim much like to fuck.”

“Go ahead, help yourself.”

“You are making much joke. Is not nice.”

“Well, I can’t help what I’m wearing.”

“But you are much pleased.” He was obviously debating ways and means.

The helpless naked girl was not surprised when his roving eye focused on her breasts. A man’s hunger for the breasts of a girl was insatiable, Salim’s was aflame with discovery, his lips and teeth avidly sought Stacie’s nipples.

It was futile to protest, and she could not move, so she raised her eyes above the bent head so busily ravaging her femaleness and forced herself to seek for the ports through which the camera’s would be focusing on her shame. Looking at the stone walls she tried to divorce her mind from what was being done to her body. She cringed from the thought of responding sexually to this pubescent pup. She could not stop him, but she wanted no orgasms with which to regale his lechery.

A strange contest! Stacie wondered how many women had fought it through the centuries. To keep the citadel of her emotions intact while her outer defences were ravaged by the foe! In a process of attrition the citadel would fall, but its crumbling might be delayed. She could hardly pretend that Salim was not sucking her nipples, but she could send her mind away from what was being done to her.

Quite suddenly it stopped. Salim backed away from her wet breasts, his glowing features irradiated by inspiration. “Very hot dog!” he exclaimed to no one in particular. “Salim is much clever.”

The fastened girl knew it would be bad. She watched, without hope, as he searched among the plenitude of objects the awful room provided. With a grunt of satisfaction he chose a sizable wooden chest which he dragged over and thrust against his victim’s pinioned legs. Standing on it he seemed pleased with the result. It was not until he threw aside the cloth around his loins that Stacie guessed what he would make her do. “Is good as fuck,” said Salim.

“I’m not going to do it!” Stacie stated flatly.

The Arab boy got down from the box, his smile undiminished. “Is always much argue,” he conceded as though from long experience. “Salim soon fix.”

When he selected the whip, the helpless girl knew real desolation. It was not so much the thing he wanted of her, but rather her utter impotence to question or refute. To be possessed so totally by this ingenuous adolescent was a humiliation over which she was sure Rannah would now be laughing. She longed to kick and plunge and fight, but she could not move. She eyed the approaching whip with a certainty of defeat.

“Salim whip nicely all up and down front.”

“I’ll tell Rannah. She’ll be angry.”

“Please tell. Rannah say can do.”

He might be lying. But the marks his whip were about to put on her would convict him. Stacie had to suppose her mistress felt a whipping would do her no harm. The dark eyed Arab girl was unpredictable. Fastened as she was, the absurd lout would scarcely forego the joy of whipping her breasts. Had it been her back that was to bear the brunt she might have borne some strokes as a sop to pride or in the hope the youth would not dare whip her too much or too long, but to stand and face the whip! It was more than she could bear.

“Don’t whip me, Salim. I’ll do it.” Never had capitulation seemed more abject. She was thankful her father could not hear her voice.

Salim was obviously disappointed. “You no wish to be much brave?” he inquired coaxingly.

“I’m not brave, Salim, I’m scared. I’ll do what you want.”

“Perhaps I whip small bit. Make very sure!”

“What small bit?”

Instantly she knew her mistake. He was intrigued. He surveyed the possibilities offered by her nakedness. “Cannot whip cunt, or nice arse, or pretty back,” he eliminated the obvious one by one and arrived at the answer, “Pretty tits are nice stuck out,” he proclaimed in triumph.

Stacie quailed, fear flooded her being. To whip a girl’s breasts! It was unthinkable. She looked down at her firm cones as though bidding them good by. Surely a girl’s breasts could not be whipped without injury! Their virgin loveliness would never be the same . . .

“I’ll be very nice to you. I’m sorry I was rude,” she said humbly.

“How nice you be?”

“I’ll take it in my mouth and make you feel good.”

He seemed to expand. She thought of small cockerels whose wattles got red and scarlet. “Please to tell, Salim want to hear.”

She was to be properly debased! Well, what of it, there was none to see her degradation. Taking a deep breath as though diving into cold water she said the loathsome words. “Salim, I will suck your cock and play with it with my tongue and when you go off in my mouth I will swallow all you give me and then I will lick your cock clean.”

Salim stood dazed, absorbing his riches. Stacie’s abundant specifics had most evidently had a potent effect. She watched him lay aside the whip, and breathed a great sigh of thankfulness. This time the boy stepped upon his box in much the same grandiloquence with which Suliman the Great might have mounted his throne. His rampant male rod was thrust at Stacie’s mouth like a blunt spear.

The helpless girl remembered a favorite precept of her grade one teacher at school: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” Ruefully she supposed it applied to even this unworthy endeavour. She was also still very conscious of the whip. It was still there and might be used should she fail to please. Could she, by simulating the arts of a whore, earn gratitude! She would try. Skilfully and busily she plied her lips and tongue to do battle for such of her citadel as was still intact. Salim’s grunts and moans were the cries of an army in retreat. Stacie sucked and tongued lustily.

When it was done, a dazed and deflated Salim dragged hack the box and sat on it, dolefully eyeing his limp, wet and flaccid member as though mourning the dead. After a lengthy scrutiny of past glory he spoke the epitaph: “Such small little time,”

he said sadly.

It was the eternal lament of all mankind: In finding splendour you relinquished it, victory and defeat were one. Stacie almost felt sorry for the boy. Surely his inexperience had not made him believe his loss irreparable!

“Did you enjoy it, Salim?” she asked in feminine curiosity.

“Is most hot dog.” He pronounced ultimate praise. After a moment’s meditation he asked: “Is fuck so good?”

Stacie was cautious. She had no wish that in some later helplessness this Jedrah youth father a child within her. “Fucking is not nearly as nice as . . . what we’ve just done,” she assured him with simulated vehemence.

He nodded as though willing to believe. Without vigour he pushed the box back where he had found it. Returning, he stood and surveyed his field of battle as though reliving its glory. Stacie cringed inwardly in fear that her nakedness might rekindle the fire. But Salim’s beaming smile was now vacant. “I go now,” he said grandly as befits a conquerer. He wandered from the chamber in a seeming daze.

The whip lay, unused, upon the floor.

“He didn’t whip you!” Rannah sounded quaintly shocked.

“Was he supposed to?”

“I gave him permission. Not too hard or too long . . .”

“He wanted to whip my breasts. Would you have wanted him to do that to me, Rannah?”

Rannah laughed. “He was teasing. He knew they were forbidden. There’s your stomach and your hips and the front of your thighs. He could have amused himself with them.”

“Why didn’t he?”

Stacie explained. Rannah laughed. “The young devil! There’ll be no holding him now. It will take a whipping to put him back in a proper frame of mind.”

“I’d like to watch,” the captive said bitterly.

“Poor slave girl! You feel soiled?”

“I suppose I’ll live,” Stacie conceded. She eyed her mistress hopefully. “Is there any chance of being let loose?”

“Of course not. You’ve only been here a few hours.”

“It feels like a few days. I hurt.”

“But you have not screamed.”

“I will if it will help.”

Rannah kissed her slave. “It becomes a game we play.”

“But why, Rannah! Why do we play it! It seems so useless?”

“Because I wish it. I told you I would make you a slave. Mine! Today has nothing to do with Yasin.”

“But I am yours! You know that. I’ll let you do anything you like with me.”

“That is what we do: the thing I like. Who this morning stripped and gave herself to be fastened?”

The naked girl longed to stamp her foot in frustration.

“You know what I mean,” she retorted with feminine sulkiness.

“You mean you should sleep with me in my bed. I know! You shall, but not yet. For now you sleep as a good slave girl on the floor. And safely chained at that.”

The captive tossed her head from side to side. “Rannah, what’s going to become of me? After the pictures, I suppose they’ll come to an end sometime? What then?”

“I think I had best whip you a little. My slave girl becomes a bore. Remember, I warned you!”

“Don’t! Oh please! I’m sorry, I’ll apologize.”

“It is a little late. Besides, I whip you only to help. It will take your mind off the future and your worries,” Rannah’s voice was sly.

“Oh no! I don’t want to be whipped . . . I’m facing the wrong way.”

“You wish me to turn you round?”

With this dark eyed girl Stacie could not be sure. She was probably being teased. But it was probable, too, that she would be whipped at least a little. She knew the eternal dilemma of the slave in which the wrong word or the inflection of a voice could earn her stripes. She had a feeling that whatever she said would now be wrong.

“If I must be whipped, yes. Please turn me around.”

“You would put me to all that trouble?”

“Oh, my Lady, please! I’m all mixed up, I don’t know what to say.”

“It is very simple, slave girl. You deserve a whipping. Ask for it.”

Once more! The abasement of words, the dissolution of self, of what you were, before the menace of the whip. The whip made a girl a nothing! “My Lady, I have misbehaved. Please whip me.”

“Where, on what part of you, shall I use the whip, slave girl?”

“On my back please, my Lady.”

Rannah pretended to consider. “You are most vexatious with your demands. You must be taught the cost of your whims. You may choose: six strokes across your breasts or twenty on your back?”

It was cruel! Stacie longed to weep and to plead. She looked in heartbroken longing at the girl who would whip her. “I wish you would love me,” she said wanly. “I dare not think of my breasts being whipped, I choose the twenty.” Despite her determination her tears flowed.

Rannah was equal to any occasion. She kissed away the tears. The slave knew the kisses were of love and was comforted. For a few glorious moments she was set free, captive only of her handcuffs, able to move as she desired, aching muscles screaming their relief. Then, all too soon, facing the stone with wrist joined to the hook, her feet now awkwardly sideways in their clamps. Her main concern to press her body against the wall so the tip of the lash would not score her breasts and belly.

To be whipped was still a new experience, the shock as great as the first time, the awfulness taxing credulity. Stacie pressed her forehead against the stone and managed not to scream until the seventh cut across the softness of her back. At the tenth Rannah paused.

“I am being kind to my slave. I should have you away from the wall so the lash could curl around you properly. Be thankful.”

“I am grateful, my Lady.” How trite it sounded in the midst of torture.

“Still glad you chose the twenty? You are but half way through.”

How cruel a question! Any answer was wrong. “Yes, my Lady.” Stacie’s voice sounded sad and small. Her tears were bitter.

The thong bit and cracked at the already striped back.

From the neat impacts avoiding a lapping on the stone the victim guessed she was being practiced on. Half the length of the lash was enough to mark the width of her back or shoulders, and this was what she got. Hard snapping blows that welted where they struck and evoked from their recipient a responsive scream. Stacie saw no point in being mute. It helped to scream, she was not gagged, so she screamed. She hoped some of her most piercing cries touched Rannah’s heart. But if they did, the whip bit just as hard.

When it was done, only the whip stopped, the pain went on. The tears were hysterical and could not be quenched. The burning cut of the handcuffs reasserted their demand for help. Pain was everywhere.

The girl with the whip turned the face of her slave away from the wall and studied it, the dust from the stone mingled with the salt teardrops from the eyes. “Was it very bad, slave girl?” she asked gently.

Stacie nodded. She could not speak.

Rannah freed her slave, even taking the handcuffs from the chafed wrists. Instinctively, as before, the sobbing girl fell to her knees and clasped the legs of she who had whipped her. “Thank you, oh thank you . . . !” Her grip was convulsive with emotion.

The dark eyes became tender as they gazed down at the weeping girl and the livid weals across the bent back. A week ago Stacie Blair had been a society girl in New York, the thought was strange. Looking at the lovely nakedness Rannah understood how great the desolation this girl must feel, how nearly mortal the sundering from all she had ever known. She found a seat and allowed the set face with its damp hair to pillow itself within the juncture of her thighs and dry its tears upon her dress.

They had no need of words. They were female, that was enough. Females have an instinct for pain. Whether they give it or receive it they understand its nature and effect. Rannah was training a slave girl. In its way it was like being mother to a child.

“Thank you, Rannah. Oh, please look after me! I’ll never know the right thing to do or say.” The voice was piteous, the hurt face burrowed its way closer to the hidden sex of the girl who gave it refuge.

“I will look after you, slave girl, never fear that I will not. Sometimes my care will hurt you as today.”

“I don’t mind.” Stacie inconsistently sniffed into the fold of cloth.

Rannah leant down and inserted a key in a padlock. The chastity belt fell away and jangled on the floor. Feeling its wearer tense, Rannah laughed gaily. “You will have no further need of it today, I promise you.”

“It is nicer than being entirely naked,” Stacie ventured.

“I like you naked. You have the loveliest cluster of black curls I have ever seen.”

“You have seen many, my lady?” The captive was feeling better.

“As many as you, I expect. You know what school is.”

“Yes, my lady. Is my punishment over for today?”

“You are indeed feeling better. You are becoming feminine and curious. Here, dry your tears.”

Stacie thankfully obeyed. She longed to ask questions, but feared to do so. It was glorious to be free of bonds and to kneel instead of stand stretched and taut and scared. She knew it incongruous to feel the gratitude she did, bet it flowed instinctively. She wanted to say thank you again, but had already said it twice. “You have been very sweet to me,” she said softly instead.

“Sweet! But I have just whipped you!”

“I know.” Stacie managed a grin. “But that’s how I feel. I’m not going to bother trying to understand.”

Rannah nodded quietly, deep in thought. “There is a way for a slave girl to say her thank you,” she said slowly. “I wonder if you know what to do.”

Stacie felt the current along the line that joined them, the invisible bond that linked a slave girl with her mistress. There was something she must do, or something she must say. She knew it important that her next act be the right one. Rannah wanted something of her . . . But what! It would prove or disprove something for the dark-eyed girl . . . something important.

How hard it was to know! She who had never known slavery or even dreamed of it. How hard always to be right now in this strange world. But how great her need . . . ! Rannah was all she had. Rannah was an anchor in a storm of incredulity. Quite plausibly and with certain clarity the answer came. She knelt back straight and held out her hands. “My handcuffs please, my lady.”

She watched, not caring, as the steel bands closed around her wrists and clicked into the now familiar circlets. The eyes of the two girls locked, smiling in their understanding. Without a word the naked girl, her back so gaudily striped by the whip, positioned herself against the wall, her ankles finding their place within the clamps, her joined hands raised above her head. She looked at her mistress with impudent invitation. Rannah nodded in approval, her slave had passed the test. When she had fastened her prisoner securely she kissed her for a long, long time before she went away.

One could chronicle the days, but to what end! They passed! For Stacie they were never the same, each held its own question mark. There was much pain and much discomfort, yet the captive could never feel a certainty that, beyond the first time, she had not been tortured in the true sense of that dread word. Both girls avoided the term. Stacie was torn between thankfulness that her sufferings were no worse and fear of what would eventually befall. The things that happened to her each day could easily be called torture, but she knew they were not. She longed to ask, but did not care. Her owner was sufficiently capricious that a query might provoke the agony she wanted least. Each night her wrist was handcuffed to Rannah’s bed, she slept upon the rug without question or complaint.

Rannah was unpredictable. She sanctioned the intimacy of meals and the talk of feminine things, their companionship was real. At such times Stacie’s impudence might be rewarded with laughter or a whip. The captive felt a great need to know the fate of those other three who had been kidnapped with her, she intruded her queries whenever she deemed the moment propitious.

“Perhaps you would be happier not to know,” Rannah mocked.

“Please tell me. Don’t let me think terrible things.”

“Like you, they have disappeared . . . pouf!” Rannah made an airy gesture. “They are now the most costly merchandise in the world.”

“You mean . . . a . . . a . . . ?” Stacie could not bring herself to speak the ugly word.

The dark eyes sparkled with amusement. “A bordello, a whore house, a crib . . . ? You picture some evil Arab collecting cash as the clients enter to slake their lust?”

“It’s been done often enough. It’s what I half expected.”

“Come, slave girl, you underrate us. We do not deal in coins.”

“I suppose you’ll sell them to an oil sheik?”

“Even that is passé. Who needs money! We are deluged in it.”

“Yasin’s harem then?”

“That might be a last resort. Like those fire sales your merchants have in the U.S. No, they have a more potent value.”

The slave girl’s eyes pleaded.

“You are quite incorrigible,” Rannah protested primly. “I shall make you pay. If you must pester me, I will tell you their awful destiny if you are willing to ask me properly for ten with the cane across that pert behind of yours. There! You can’t say I’m not reasonable.”

Stacie was intrigued. This was one of their games. She must inevitably ask, but without certainly the penalty would be exacted. “Please tell me, my lady. And please cane my bottom ten times for having the temerity to ask.”

“For an additional ten you may have the privilege of visiting them.”

Stacie squirmed. Ten was bad but bearable. Twenty was unbearable by any standard. She was becoming knowledgeable in such matters. She cast her bread upon the waters. “Please give me the extra ten for a visit, my lady.”

Rannah was impressed. “I do not think I would bear twenty wounds for such curiosity,” she admitted. “I’d have thought you tired of pain.”

“I have to know, my lady. It’s a sort of duty thing.”

“Very well, you shall. But you won’t like the price Now, no more of it. I will arrange.”

“Thank you, my lady.” But Stacie’s gratitude was much subdued.

“I love your screams, Stacie, but let us mute them for once.” The slave girl looked askance at the rubber ball and the strap. “Will that thing go in my mouth?” she asked dubiously.

“Let us try. You may use your own fingers to insert it. I think it is not easy.”

Stacie took the seemingly innocent thing in her handcuffed hands and raised it to her mouth. By dint of compressing and see-saw motion she got it inside, her tongue retreated in confusion, she could make no sound. Rannah buckled its strap tightly at the back of her neck.

“And now the little hands behind the back.”

The captive stood passive as she was made trebly helpless.

The handcuffs made such changes so very easy. Rannah stood back and surveyed the effect. “You look delightful, slave girl. I will take it out when you have received those twenty strokes with the cane you so prettily asked for.”

So that was it! Her penalty and her privilege had come.

Two days of wondering had passed since the pact had been made. Now her bottom was to pay the agreed price. Perhaps it would be nice not to scream. Stacie was often shamed afterwards by the noise she had made. But the gag was frightening in its effectiveness. It was total. The rubber ball filled her mouth, she longed to swallow but could not, the strap bit unkindly at the corners of her lips.

She was to pay the price before she received the reward!

Obediently Stacie followed her mistress down the passage. What did it matter! It would hurt as much one time as another, perhaps it was best to get it over. Whimsically she debated whether to show the girls what she had paid to visit them. What strange currency a slave girl lived by!

She would be fastened for the twenty. It was the only way she could bear them. The room would provide a way. But, suddenly, the passage was strange, a new direction. They were not following the familiar path to her daily quota of pain. When they reached the door it was quickly opened and she was quickly thrust inside, it closed behind her with a decisive thud, a lock clicked, a bolt shot home.

It was pure nightmare, one of Salvador Dali’s most surrealistic creations. Not to be taken seriously . . . impossible!

It was another stone chamber such as she knew so well.

But this one was bare of furnishings. It held only three naked girls, and now herself. The abundant daylight, the lack of dungeon gloom made what Stacie saw the more incongruous.

The stewardess first, she held the center of the bizarre stage. Naked, she was hard to recognize as the trim girl who had served them on the plane, but it was the wracked contortion of her pose that made the recognition doubly difficult. She hung by her left wrist only, her right wrist being tied with cord to her left ankle. The toes of her right foot had been allowed to rest upon the floor to take some of her weight from the overtaxed arm above her head. Her plight was pure cruelty. She was gagged as was Stacie herself.

The mouths of the other two were also distended by the rubber balls and the straps. One girl was tied to a pillar, her arms from wrist to shoulder were corded on either side as were her ankles, but she was thrusting herself painfully away from her bonds, her body in an outward bow or curve to avoid impalement on a spike protruding from the post to which she was bound, the tip of which was already lost to sight in the upper cleft of her buttocks. She was as naked as her companions, her miserable posture thrusting her sex into a distorted obscenity.

The third girl hung like an impaled butterfly against the stone of a wall, her arms spread out and up. She hung from her wrists, her toes striving vainly for the floor.

The tableau held a strange and erotic beauty of its own. How cruel! How well contrived! Three pairs of female eyes focused on the visitor and implored, three female heads shook wildly in negation of the silence of their gag. Stacie knew guilt at her own absence of agony in such a place, knew the greatest frustration of her captivity in her inability to help. With an eloquent shrug she turned her back that they might see her handcuffed wrists.

How sad a visit! What exclamations of dismay each girl made within her mind. So much of which to speak, so great a need! Yet none would talk, their tongues as captive as their limbs. One of them already wept and none could dry her tears.

Stacie went from one to the other. Each tried to smile, but the gag defeated them, their eyes were their only communion, in them were only questions and despair. All three were in pain. How easy now for Stacie to know their anguish. They looked at her handcuffs with envy.

They had been whipped. Now as much as she herself, but perhaps a single severe beating, the marks were plain to see. Stacie remembered Rannah’s words: ‘Merchandise’: their skin was valuable. But a most curious thing had been done: high on the chest of each, well above the swell of their breasts, a name had been printed in some indelible ink. Convenience, humiliation, identification! Stacie could not know. The stewardess was Wendy, the others, Jane and Suzie. It was their only introduction. Her own absence of such an imprint set her apart. They must be as curious of her as she was of them. At least the weals upon her skin would tell them she was not unfairly favoured.

As a visit it was desolation. All it achieved was a knowledge of each other’s continued existence in captive pain. To stand before one of the tortured girls was to be tortured too, for it would not be long until their hurt eyes closed and they relapsed into their private misery. As she stood before each Stacie saw their eyes focus on her scanty slave girl garb. Compared to their own nudity she was well dressed. She longed to tell them that in her punishments she, too, was naked.

It was to painful. Stacie wished she had not come. Her eyes were brimming with tears by the time Rannah returned to take her away. She was glad to leave.

Rannah laughed at the woebegone faces. “You think me cruel. I know! So I tell two things. You are gagged because it is best you do not exchange such things as you may know. You three are punished by your own request as a price for this visit. Stacie is about to be punished as her own contribution. You three will now be released, she will not.”

Simple and direct. Rannah had the laugh on all of them. How helpless they were in their bondage! Robbed even of speech! Following her mistress, Stacie longed to speak but was still gagged. She ceased to care about the tears that trickled down her cheeks.

“You think I am terribly cruel, don’t you, slave girl. So now I keep the other half of my bargain. Those three very beautiful girls will be nurtured and trained to become houris for the delight of any man. When Mohammad Yasin desires a favour in high places, favours that money cannot buy, he will use them as a bribe. So cease to worry about them. They will receive pain only in such measure as is needful to make them amenable to their new status.”

Rannah looked back and laughed at what she saw.

“Allright, I take it off. I love your chatter and your screams. I do not want you silent.” Deftly, but with care she took the wet ball from her slave girl’s mouth. “There! You can talk. Is your bottom ready for its stripes?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“But you do not really relish them!”

“No, my lady.”

Rannah laughed gaily. “So woebegone, so sad! Perhaps I will forgive you the stripes and give you something worse. The day is still young, we have much time. Would you like that?”

“If it pleases you, my lady.”

“Poor child! So cautious! But I would be cautious too, were I in your shoes.”

The slave girl had a sad feeling it was not going to be a good day. She was glad to be forgiven the caning—if in truth she was! But Rannah was in a pixie mood. The ‘something worse’ might indeed be just that. She strained tentatively at her handcuffs as was her instinctive habit when in stress. She looked around the familiar room they had just entered and wondered which of its terrors she would meet.

“Lay face down, slave girl, so your ankles fit in these.” ‘These’ comprised an anchored metal clamp, the half circles of which were raised a few inches from the stone. Their intent was all too evident. Sighing, Stacie lowered herself to the floor, her locked hands helping her not at all. Looking over one shoulder she disposed her feet as ordered and watched Rannah flip over the top section and immovably prison her ankles. Her helplessness was now frightening. “I’m not naked,” she said irrelevantly as though hoping to start afresh.

“You’re not, are you! Never mind. What you’ve got on won’t matter for this one.”

When Rannah knelt beside her and began to plait her hair Stacie was both scared and intrigued. The plait was long, twined within it was solidly anchored a knotted cord.

“On your knees, slave girl, erect.”

It was not easy, Rannah had to help. Possibilities began to loom, to kneel on the stone all day would not be pleasant. But the preparations were not yet done. A couple of feet before her was a square hole in the stone, into it Rannah inserted and pushed home a solid four by four that had the appearance of much use. The handcuffs were unlocked and discarded.

“A hand on each side, Stacie.”

Her wrists were tied to the post with much care so that the slave knelt upright, her hands slightly raised above the level of her chin.

“Comfy?”

“No, my lady.”

Not the braid! Its cord was pulled back and tethered to a ring behind her feet. It was gently tested and gently pulled. When it was knotted Stacie could not bend or lean forward, she could not even look down. Her head was held very erect indeed. Her pinioned arms prevented her leaning back to ease the strain. She had perforce to kneel as she had been positioned, she had no other choice. She could move little and that without effect. She longed to slump back upon her heels, but her corded wrists denied her wish. It was not a routine day.

Rannah circled her appraisingly. “You look delicious, slave girl,” she approved. “I will leave you soon, but there is one more thing . . .”

Stacie saw her torture only as it approached. Once positioned, her taut braid would prohibit examination. She divined its purpose instantly, and looked up at the Arab girl in mute and agonized appeal.

It was very simple: a block of wood three feet long. Six inches at the base, tapering to a faintly curved smooth edge an inch wide. Straddling the helpless girl, Rannah managed to raise her from the floor long enough to slip the balk of timber into its appointed place beneath the victim’s knees. A kick here and there aligned it to her satisfaction before she went away and left the kneeling girl alone. Neither girl had spoken. Each had seen the condition as immutable.

Stacie knew it would get worse, probably much worse. But even at the beginning it was frightening enough to make her clench her teeth in silence while the door closed and Rannah went beyond the sound of a voice in agony. Throughout the preparations she had longed to plead. Now it was too late, there was none to hear. It was awful, it was frightening, but it was best. That was why the dark-eyed girl had sped away.

Coping with the waves of pain from her tortured knees, Stacie tried to assess the limits of her suffering. More urgently she sought easement. There was none. Her braided hair was wicked, without it she could have leant forward and perhaps taken some weight with her prisoned wrists, but erect as she was forced to stay, her arms were thrust straight forward and took none of her weight at all, her knees got it all. If she wanted to lean her weight on one she could ease the other. She tried it, but relapsed in gasping anguish. Stacie bitterly realized she would stay kneeling and upright as she was, her knees indented on their narrow ledge, until such time as her mistress decided to release her. Even if she fainted, her hands tied to the post would keep her from falling. Between her wrists and her braided hair she could do naught else but endure what she must.

Torture was always the same in its ‘if only’. The phrase was Stacie’s. Looking along the bare while columns of her arms so securely bound to the post she was impelled to think that if only she could free one hand, even one finger. If only she could so lean back and toss her head that the braid would come undone. If only she had been vouchsafed the leverage to thrust aside the chunk of wood on which her knees were punished so that she could kneel upon the flat stone instead of the cunning edge designed for the endless messages of pain that shot up her thighs and enveloped her whole being. If only . . . If only . . . !

She moaned quietly. Her pain was such a lovely thing. She needed someone to share it, to hear her scream, to reprove or to console, it mattered little which so long as they were a human presence who might eventually feel pity and set her free. Free! How distant the word seemed now! But it was always thus with torture. When she was whipped the horror of the first stroke told her she could never survive until the last, it would not come in time! Then and now she would succumb and die long before the strokes or the hours or the centuries rolled by. She thought of those who had held their secrets no matter what the torturer did to them, but deemed herself not of these. She felt certain she would blurt out what was required of her at the first shock of awfulness. More probably, now she knew the limitless nature of pain she would tell all when they stripped her and bound her at the start.

This was the real thing. There would be no visitors to distract her from her pain. The pain was an end in itself, so none need witness it. The hidden cameras would record it with fidelity for her father’s eyes. How incredible that he should see her thus! Perhaps at this moment she had moved enough to find favour on the film. Would the pictures show her as grotesque or beautiful! It still mattered, she was female.

For a little while she moaned and screamed. She did it with conscious intent as though the sound placed a barrier between herself and agony. It tired her so that she moved closer to the dazed acceptance as the pain burrowed and fought its way into her, the acceptance of something that could not be escaped. You moaned constantly to placate that which could not be assuaged, perhaps you sobbed. If you were a girl you cried.

While she wept she forced her mind to dwell on things she had read of horrors beyond her present affliction. There had been a tale of a girl taken by an Indian tribe, stripped and tied by her wrists to two trees so that she stood between them with arms stretched taut. Her torture had been a gala event. Men and women had been given the privilege of doing their own single evil with her flesh. Stacie remembered the pine splinters thrust into the soft skin and set afire, the stab of slender skewers into the naked breasts, the heated tomahawk pressed home upon the tenderness beneath the pinioned arm . . . And the screams, always the screams.

Did it lessen her own pain? She had no proof of it, so thrust the morbid pictures from her mind. Perhaps she had gained a small thankfulness that her own flesh was kept intact. But she was a treasure that must be slowly spent. Yasin wanted her alive and in good health. She wondered cynically if indeed his motives were twofold. Certainly Rannah would deal her no greater injury than pain. But there were so many ways . . .

Was this worse than hanging by the rod beneath her armpits? She could not judge. Her present plight was intensified by her need to stay erect, to make the small motions she desired was to punish her scalp or her wrists. But it was so cruel! To kneel as though in prayer, to keep still when every nerve fought for motion, to sanction the ceaseless attrition of the narrow strip of wood against her knees, to know it would continue on and on.

The punished girl longed for the option of surrender. How fortunate those other tortured girls who need say only a few words or affirm an act to gain release. Stacie made no pretense of heroics, she would yield her body willingly to anyone who would end her misery. She thought bitterly of Salim and wondered if he would succumb to such bribe.

After a long, long time and when the tortured girl had immured herself deeply into the awful half world that only the tortured know, Rannah slipped quietly back into the stone place of suffering. She sat and stared pensively at the loveliness of her slave, waiting in curiosity for whatever pleading the sad soft lips might make.

“I will do anything, my lady, anything . . .”

“What can you do, slave girl?”

“If you were a man I would offer you my body.”

“I am not a man, but you can still make the offer.”

“It would mean nothing, my lady. You have me now, all of me.”

“I think it would be the same with me,” Rannah mused. “I would not endure torture I would end by laying on my back.”

“Please free me, my lady. Surely by now there are enough pictures?”

“I am cruel, slave girl. You delight me as you are. In this suffering you are quite exquisite.”

“Why cannot I hate you?”

“I have asked that too, slave girl. I think it is that we are female. In us is something wanton, a need to hurt or to be hurt. I think we seek an endless orgasm. Would you like me to give you one now? I could.”

How great the longing! But Stacie moaned. “Oh please! Not now, it would be all wrong. I am tied so strangely.”

“I have come by a quite wicked thought, slave girl. If you would earn release by bartering yourself, would it not be kind if I gave you the possibility?”

“Please, my lady, I hurt too much to tease.”

“Yes, I tease. But it is for real,” the Arab girl laughed. “My thought is quite delicious. I will send Salim. He will know he will be punished if he consummates his greatest wish. It will be a punishment he can bear: I must not deter him totally. But it will give him pause. To end your suffering see if you can tempt him.”

Did hope kindle? Stacie knew it did. But it was a strangely mixed emotion. “Please, my lady, free me yourself. You can. Free me and love me.” Her heart was in the words.

“But my plan, slave girl! Is it not delightfully droll?”

“I cannot tell how I will behave when the moment comes.”

“That is its piquancy. Salim’s grin and his fine erection may make your torture preferable. Then you must persuade him not to do the thing you most want. There are yet many hours for you to kneel, so I will hasten that you may make your choice. Are you not grateful?”

“Yes, my lady. Thank you.”

But Stacie was not certain of her gratitude.

“Nice girl is most pretty like that,” Salim opened affably.

“Thank you, Salim.”

Stacie was annoyed with herself. Here was deliverance and all she had the wit to do with it was be little girl polite.

“Would you like me to fuck you?” Salim was not bothered by inhibitions.

“I’m tied up so much it’s not possible.”

“Salim set pretty girl free if promise to show how best to fuck.”

So it was the boy’s first time. Stacie felt a guilty annoyance as eroticism flared. There were those who would be amusedly envious of her privilege. Despite her longing for release, she found herself temporizing. “Would you trust me? If I was free I might not keep my word.”

It stayed him for but a moment. “You nice girl, you keep promise. Besides, you are very much hurting.”

“Won’t you be terribly punished?”

“Salim is not much caring. You are too nice.”

“It’s the thing between my legs you like, Salim, not me.” The boy gave this much thought. “Have nice mouth too,” he pointed out brightly. Stacie had the feeling he was hopeful of other discoveries as well.

“Wouldn’t you prefer me to use my mouth? I told you it was best.” She felt it worth a try.

“Then no need to untie.”

Stacie moaned. She was in agony and they were nattering like two housewives. “Untie me, Salim, I’ll do what you want.”

“Much promise?”

“Much promise.”

The untying was more agonizing than being tied, even her neck hurt when the cord in her braid was loosed. When the cord fell away from her wrists her hands flew to the punishing wood on which she knelt. It was both excruciating and gorgeous to raise her tortured knees from the brutal edge on which they had been sacrificed. When Salim contrived to loose her ankles the sudden complete freedom seemed as unreal as the strained posture of punishment had been.

“Is still much hurting?” Salim commiserated.

“It’s awful.” Stacie was massaging her wounds. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

The youth was solicitous. “But has not hurt cunt?” he inquired anxiously.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll let you have a look at it in a minute.”

With a peacock gesture of triumph the boy divested himself of his only garment, the loin cloth. Stacie took note of the implement of her impalement. It evidenced intense excitation. Her mind worked busily with a faint hope.

Ruefully, the slave girl reflected that a month ago her course of action would have been clear. Having wheedled freedom out of this comic creature she should fight and run, surely in such self-preservation there could be no dishonour! But now she would not renege. Having set her free, Salim would get whatever penalty Rannah had planned for him. Why should a slave girl deny him his bargain. He had freed her, was that not enough? He had ended her torture, why question his motives? Without further ado Stacie removed her two scanty scraps of covering, perhaps what he now saw would excite him further . . . !

“So many nice parts!” Salim obviously wished he had three hands.

Stacie was half hysterical with the joy of release. She was in a mood where Salim’s ambitions seemed trivial. She also pursued a possibility . . ."I expect you’d like to play with them all,” she said demurely. Standing with feel well apart she clasped her hands behind her neck. It was a provocative pose.

It is doubtful that the shrine at Mecca would have held the beaming boy in greater awe. Faced with such a plentitude of riches he was, for a moment, at a loss. Stacie, craftily, helped out.

“You can suck one and hold one and then use your other hand between my legs,” she suggested helpfully, uncertain whether she was being clinical or carnal.

The entranced youth leaped into the fray. His eager application to his task reminded the naked girl of the more enterprising of her dates in her early teens. Bracing herself for her ordeal she wondered how so much friction could emanate from a single boy. Relaxed after release from the awfulness now over she found herself responding. After all, the attention she was receiving could hardly go unnoticed. Without shame she pulled the bare male loins close so that the rampant penis was pressed tight against her hip, her own orgasms were incidental, what counted was his!

Stacie supposed she would always compare her ‘nows’ with her memories of her life in the other world from which she had been wrested. Ruefully she considered her immediate condition. Nothing in her other existence was comparable: nothing could condone. “You can put a finger inside me if you wish,” she said dreamily.

“Is most hot dog!” Salim took the barest time for his commendation before returning to work.

When it became evident that further delays might jeopardize the entente cordiale between herself and her would-be ravisher Stacie lay herself down on the cool stone and invited the son of the desert with open arms. “Some men like to rub it all over a girl’s nipples,” she offered tentatively.

“You are meaning tits?”

“Try it, you might like it.”

She lay quiescent while the play ran its course. Would the camera record this absurdity! To see his daughter act the wanton as she was doing would break her father’s heart as badly as the scenes of torture. All that had been done to her and made her a child of Jedrah in word and act. What did it matter! For her, freedom was a dream.

She saw it happen in his eyes, they blanked and were lost in some vision of their own. Stacie closed her mind to disgust as the boy’s ejaculation inundated her breasts. She had planned it and it had happened. She had won the first round. She lay and contemptuously watched the disintegration of a male libido. She thought of dogs and cats and barnyards.

“Am most sorry. Should have put in cunt,” Salim sounded bereft.

“Never mind,” Stacie was magnanimous in victory. “I’ll make it up to you. May I have your loincloth to wipe myself?”

He did it for her. He was insistent. “Is most bad thing. I cut him off,” he declared morosely. “He is liking tits too much.”

The thankful girl allowed herself to be cleansed. She watched while the same cloth was used on the fallen warrior. So far she was winning, could she keep it up! “Do you want to tie me back the way I was?” she asked experimentally.

In the throes of post coital depression the idea appeared to have some merit in the adolescent mind. “For not getting cock in cunt?” he inquired interestedly.

“I don’t want you to feel cheated.” Stacie wondered what maniacal impulse was prompting her.

“If tie most tight Salim get no punish!”

The naked girl wanted to kick herself. Why was she doing this! Was it true that she thought and acted as a slave! Or was it simply the cutting of a loss! She had enjoyed freedom and easement from her torture at the expense of no more than some fleshy friction and a damp chest. Or did she feel a kindred sympathy for this youth who might be mercilessly whipped for what he had so far failed to receive.

“You let Salim tie you?”

“If you want.”

“You are most hot dog! Then I not get punish.” It was his greatest accolade. “You are now to kneel please.”

How stupid can a girl get! She asked herself savagely as she obeyed his request and rested her ankles in the clamps that would hold them immovably. Looking over her shoulder she morosely watched his suddenly urgent fingers make her captive, with the snapping of the lock she knew herself consigned to helplessness.

The boy looked at her in wonder as, without prompting, she placed a slender chafed wrist on each side of the waiting post and smilingly invited him to tie them. “Must make most tight,” he consoled apologetically.

Stacie winced as the cords made their familiar grooves within her flesh. Salim made a competent job of both the tie and the knot, she could never free herself, but she no longer ever expected to. It did not matter, it was her life.

“Is most funny with hair,” the amateur torturer ruminated picking up the cord still entwined within the victim’s braid. “Am not much like.”

The naked girl did not like it either as the slow pull brought her more and more upright and took from her the ability to look down at her own person. Her knees were hurting afresh, even on the flat stone she was getting a bitter foretaste of pain to come.

“Is about right I think?” Salim enquired.

“About right,” she agreed listlessly. “You’ll have to lift me to get the timber under my knees.”

It was a strange intimacy that took place then between the Arab boy and the white girl who had become a slave. To lift her he must grasp her firmly in a manner without lustful intent. For him it was the hardest thing he had ever done with her, for her it was an unexpected reliance in his maleness that he should do for her something she could not do for herself, his strength was surprising and oddly comforting. There came into being between them a kindred something Stacie could not name. When he gently lowered her to a resumption of her agony his hand continued to rest upon her naked shoulder in a tender sympathy.

“Is hurt most bad.” He had a gift for the obvious. Stacie moaned, not in pain but at her own illogic.

Everything was insane and impossible, nothing made sense. Tears of weariness with pain welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She could not touch them, she could not move.

“Have done a thing most bad,” said Salim in a sad shocked voice.

It hurt to look sideways and up, but Stacie enquiringly did so, sensing disquiet. What she saw was a thing for laughter or for rage. An embarrassed youth was holding up her briefs and bra.

In her nakedness they were both condemned.

“Never mind,” she said wearily. “I don’t care what happens.” Then, remembering his vulnerability: “Oh, Salim, I’m sorry . . .”

“I think we both get much whip,” he mourned lugubriously.

“Just let me loose. I’ll put them on and we’ll start over.” With quick decisive motions he set her free. Without pause she donned the two forgotten trifles, then once more knelt for punishment.

“Salim no can tie.”

She looked in astonishment at his dejected face. “You are so nice girl. Most kind.”

“It won’t take you long to tie me, Salim, then you’ll be safe.”

He shook his head. “No. No tie. I am liking you.” Always the unexpected! Some magic had come from her and touched this naive boy. He would accept his penalty and she would be free, her pain behind her for the day. Yet she was not happy.

“Oh, Salim, I’m sorry.”

He looked at her with infinite pathos. “So nice a cunt.” It was as though he mourned the dead.

The girl of Jedrah knew what she must do. She could not have done it once, but she could do it now. Kneeling before him as a slave she fondled his genitals in her hands and used her lips to revive that which its owner believed lost. She did not care for pictures or of memories or of guilt. All Stacie Blair wanted at that moment was to give this sad young man some pleasure for the pain he would suffer as her price.

There are many kinds of love.

When they separated and surveyed each other with new eyes Salim was not as he had been, he had passed a milestone. The slave girl knew that had he possessed wealth he would have paid any price to buy her for his own. For this boy who, before her capture, had never seen a naked girl she was all the treasure of the world.

“Am most sad.” Sheepishly he retrieved the discarded handcuffs. “The lady Rannah tell me I must do this.”

Stacie laughed gaily and offered him her hands. “I don’t mind, Salim. I know I have to be chained.”

Apologetically he locked a cuff oh her right wrist, led her to the wall, and secured her safely to a ring. He thrust forward a box that she might sit in comfort. She said, “Thank you,” without irony.

He lingered, seeking a last statement. “Is cunt much used?” he inquired politely.

“Not these days,” Stacie tried not to giggle. “Most people use other things.”

He nodded with great wisdom. “Cunt pretty in hair, but pretty girl’s lips most hot dog. You have most fine parts.” Once more beaming he left his Princess seated on her wooden throne.

“I should have you both soundly whipped by Yousef,” Rannah declared with laughter. “You have bewitched the boy.”

“Don’t punish him, my Lady. I cheated, he did not get the thing he desired.”

“Oh, I was sure enough of that, slave girl. Perhaps it is you I should punish?”

“If you wish, my Lady. If one of us is to be whipped I expect it should be me.”

Stacie giggled at the memory. “He’s rather sweet, I’m afraid I managed him outrageously.”

The deep dark eyes examined the chained girl intently.

“Since you carry so much guilt you may go and kneel again to be tied.”

There was a bare moment of tense silence before Stacie’s demure: “Yes, my Lady,”

as she rose to obey, only to be jerked back by her forgotten hand still cuffed to the ring.

They shared a smile. Still intent on a purpose the Arab girl used her key. Without hesitation Stacie knelt in the hated pose, positioned her ankles in their waiting clamps, and raised her arms to place a wrist on each side of the post. She looked at her mistress expectantly without emotion.

It was almost a minute before Rannah’s laughter broke the tension. “Stacie, you are impossible! I do not believe you! What has Jedrah done to you!”

The compliant candidate for torture shrugged wryly. “I do not know, my Lady.” The lovely lips twisted in deprecation, “I too am puzzled by me. Once I was not like this.” Manfully she held the posture in which she would be tied.

“No tears? No plea?”

“No, my Lady,” the eyes glinted with a single spark of mischief. “I am a slave girl.” The briefest pause and then:

“When this is done, my Lady, am I to be whipped also? Will you truly give me to Yousef?”

“Why not! It is what you deserve. Since it is he who will whip you I will be merciful: twenty strokes. It will be enough.”

“Thank you, my Lady.” There were tears in the voice, but they did not fall. “Will you please tie me now, it is very hard to kneel like this.”

“Get up and come here!”

The command was like the crack of a whip. Stacie looked up in alarm, she wanted no more punishments. Fearfully she obeyed.

“Your hands.”

Stacie watched the shining steel capture her wrists. “You are an outrageous little masochist! What must I do with you!” Rannah’s voice was joyous.

It happened then as it had happened before. Without volition Stacie sank to her knees and clasped, as best her fettered hands would allow, the legs that in their strength and warmth gave her the comfort of which she had a great need. She felt no abasement in the act, only love and longing. She understood nothing and did not care. If this was where she belonged, so be it. After a long while she said softly: “I am not a masochist, my Lady. You know I’m not.”

“I know that,” Rannah looked down at the supplicating loveliness with exasperated affection. “But if you keep offering that beautiful body of yours for punishment you will get more of it than you deserve. You have me lusting to whip you right now.”

“I offer myself only to you, my Lady.”

“Have you forgotten Salim!”

“Yes, my Lady. He does not count.” There was a hint of a giggle.

“If you had never been brought to Jedrah you would never have discovered yourself. Is that not truth?”

“It is truth, my Lady.”

“You are the most natural and instinctive slave girl fantasy could devise. You’re not acting, are you?”

Slowly the kneeling girl relinquished her hold and sat back on her heels. She shook her head in perplexity. “Oh Rannah, I feel silly. No, I’m not acting, I can’t help it. I find myself doing and saying the things I do as though I was drugged or hypnotised. You know: I sort of see myself and hear myself as though I was someone else. But I don’t want to change it: I suppose that’s the frightening thing.” She shrugged and grinned ruefully, “Or the wonderful thing . . . according to how you look at it. If you ordered me to go to Yousef now to be whipped I’d trot along like a good little girl.”

“You are incredibly wonderful. I am lucky.”

“I’m not silly, Rannah?”

“You could never be silly. Come, I wish to bathe you.”

“If you take off my handcuffs I will bathe myself. It is not seemly for you to attend me. I am a slave.”

Rannah chuckled delightedly. “You wanted handcuffs, you have them. You’ll wear them whether you wish to or not.”

They bathed, both together in the huge pool. Stacie sensed the intensity of the current between them. Rannah’s nakedness excited her, it was lithe and slender and strong.

“Come, slave girl, I will let you sleep.”

Stacie knelt upon the familiar rug on which she spent her nights. She offered her hands that she be chained. Her right wrist was unlocked, she was raised and thrust upon the bed. Her left hand was dragged above her head and clicked firmly to the scroll work at the head. She lay naked on her back, free to do all she would need to do. She could well spare the single hand by which she would be kept captive. The smoldering fire flamed hotly within her loins as the dark eyes found and held her own.

“I have kept you waiting far too long.” With a moan of anguished hunger Rannah sought the scented flesh of the slave girl on the bed. Stacie’s single arm rose to clutch and cling. For both it was a fresh chapter in their lives.

They feasted endlessly upon each other’s flesh, it gained in savour as the days and the nights drifted through their love. It was an unending appetite that regenerated itself as often as it was appeased. They luxuriated in each other without thought or count or care of time. They lived in a perfumed garden of delight.

Yet always Stacie’s wrists knew steel. She had asked and she would be given the handcuffs, the affection for which Rannah shared. If one captive wrist inhibited their lovemaking it was laughingly unlocked and tethered elsewhere, it added spice. They giggled over the possibilities uncovered by the chaining of the prisoned hand, first here and there around the bed, or simply joined to its fellow when they bathed and ate their meals. They lived in a Lotus Land beyond the World.

For Stacie it was a homecoming and a discovery. She asked no questions, nor did she look either forward or back. She revelled in her slavery as she revelled in her love. As a slave she had no decisions and no fears. Rannah was a rock shielding her from harm, sustaining her with the bounty of her flesh. She received no real punishments, only small whippings delivered and received with squeals and laughter as she lay chained upon the bed that had become her world. She knew herself a slave and wished to be more and more a slave as she found within her slavery the greatest joys she had ever known.

If sometimes the rapturous slave saw within her mistress’s eyes the shadow of a prescience beyond her ken she spoke no word. Knowledge was a penalty of being free, and she was captive. True, she occasionally remembered her torture and the pain chamber where she had spent her days, but if Rannah was content to forget then so was she. But she was female and when their halcyon days had lengthened into a couple of weeks and they lay satiated and entwined upon their bed a pixie mood prompted her sudden question.

“Rannah, what about those cameras?” she giggled. “Are they still clicking on an empty room?”

The dark eyed mistress sighed. She had waited for the question and dreaded it. “The cameras have ceased their work,” she said dully.

Sensing disquiet, the slave girl raised herself on her one free elbow and looked with concern at her beloved. She was suddenly desperately afraid. “My torture . . . ?” she could not frame the question.

“How can I do that to flesh of my flesh!” The Arab girl’s anger was vehement. “I will not torture again, I love you.”

“But Yasin . . . ?”

“He will punish me. I do not care!”

It sounded like an affirmation of her own. Stacie looked down with tenderness at the serenity of her loved one’s face. She understood how easily it came to a girl’s lips. When a girl loved it seemed good to make a sacrifice to pain.

“He will punish you because of me?”

Rannah smiled impishly. “Not because of you, but because of me. You have disobeyed nothing.”

“Punish, what will he . . . !”

The dark eyes held no regret. “You have been punished . . . it will be things like that.”

It was not possible! Rannah tortured . . . whipped! The slave girl’s mind worked frantically. “Is there not yet time? Can’t we catch up? I mean the pictures and my . . . my pain?”

“I will not hurt you again, Stacie beloved. I cannot.”

“I . . . I know. But give me to Yousef. In a few days surely there will be enough pictures. Yasin need not know.”

“He will know, but let us not concern ourselves. Our Master will return before many days, but if I am clever we will have at least half our nights. I think his need to torture you will slowly wane. Let us not desolate ourselves with horrors.”

“But tomorrow . . . give me to Yousef. Mohammad Yasin will be less angry with you if he finds me hurt. Please, Rannah, please! I can’t bear to have you tortured because of . . . us.”

The dark eyes sought for wisdom, the dark head nodded sadly. “Very well then. Perhaps it may be best for both of us. Tomorrow Yousef shall have you for a little while enough to give the cameras some work. But for tonight let us live out our dream.” Rannah reached out a sun drenched arm to find her heart’s desire.

Yet in the morning Rannah rebelled, she could not bring herself to deliver her love to torment. So, greatly daring and greatly loving, the slave girl awaited a time when her wrists were handcuffed together so that she was free to walk without being tethered, and took herself upon the dread errand.

“Please, Yousef, I am to be punished. Take me to the room and make sure the cameras are working.”

He surveyed her in amused surprise, but there would be few secrets he did not know. Stacie found herself blushing.

She recalled his deferential bow. “And how must I punish you, lady?”

Stacie cringed but shrugged offhandedly. “You may suit yourself about my punishment. It may last no more than three hours.” It was like asking the cook to prepare a special dish.

She followed his lead, feeling foolish and tiny beside his muscularity. When she faced him in the chamber where she must bear her pain to feed the camera’s hungry eyes she held out her linked hands. “If you will free them, please, I will strip for you.”

He had a key, there seemed to be a lot of keys but none where she might find one. When he took the glinting metal from her wrists she found herself freshly shamed to reveal all her nakedness before his sardonic inspection. She stripped herself hastily and stood as brazenly as she could contrive. She felt positive he correctly assessed the situation between herself and Rannah.

“Your hands, lady,” he was unfailingly polite.

She watched him buckle the broad padded straps upon her wrists, she was not surprised to be suspended, to hang naked made a girl frighteningly accessible. When her toes left the comfort of the floor she knew her arms had been stretched more widely than before. Her shoulders were cruelly wrenched. She tried hard not to move.

There were other bands for her ankles, the ropes that led from them to the columns on either side were long and looped high above the floor. She began to tremble at thought of what he would do to her.

Yousef pulled taut her ankle ropes one at a time. The first two heaves spread her obscenely and should have been enough for any carnal mind, but it was only the beginning. Stacie moaned softly as he tugged first one and then the other to open her more and more cruelly, her feet being lifted, almost to the level of her hips. The sounds she made were as much in fear as in pain. She had dreadful visions of torn ligaments and sundered joints. When he was satisfied her legs had been pulled out to each side more blatantly than any ballet dancer doing the splits. Between her gasps she reflected bitterly that ‘split’ was now the word for Stacie Blair, she was positive her sex was gaping wide with lips pulled well apart.

When Yousef chose his whip Stacie was appalled. She had supposed her wickedly stretched limbs torture enough. Pure terror prompted her plea. “Please don’t whip me as well, Yousef.”

He stood and calmly surveyed his work. Stacie was sure her wracked nudity must appear bizarre, grotesque, a caricature of her normal loveliness, but how well delivered to the whip!

“Why should I not whip you, lady?”

There was no satisfying answer, of course! Stacie did her best. “I’m in agony now. Isn’t this enough?”

“You do not scream.”

“I’m trying hard not to.”

“I give help.” The lash snaked out and wrapped itself around her totally offered thigh.

Yousef listened judicially to Stacie’s screams with the same grave attention a wine taster gives his vintages. Thoughtfully he sought for better effect, his whip snapped and curled its twin wound on her other side. She now had two flaming circlets of fire to prompt her choice. Yousef listened attentively to her pealing cries, he was a connoisseur.

“Don’t hit me again, Yousef. Oh please . . . ! Do something else . . . anything, but not the whip.”

“An iron heated in the fire perhaps?” he asked solicitously.

“Please, don’t whip me, I can’t stand it.”

“Little lady has no choice.”

“On my back then . . . whip my back.”

Yousef made a gesture of contempt. “A girl’s back, pouf! It is as nothing, you would laugh.”

“No, no, no! Please, Yousef, my back! I’ll scream. Don’t hit me down there again . . . oh please!”

“Right up through cunt, pretty lady. Yousef most clever.” A third party might have appreciated the skill. Stacie could not. Her whole world exploded as the leather bit up at her from below, kept Yousef’s promise, and spent itself within the cleft of her bottom. She could not scream fast or loud enough to voice not only her agony but also her outraged anger that any girl should have to bear such punishment in such a place. Yousef nodded in deep approval. Here was a girl worthy of him, already his erection was demanding. He looked longingly at Stacie’s strained breasts. How lovely they were! What satisfaction a man would have in whipping them! What noises would the charming child make as they bounced beneath his tong! But they were proscribed . . . ! He sighed contentedly enough, sooner or later all things came to the man who held the whip. He had thought he had lost this one, but here she was screaming her head off. He knew himself a lucky man.

“I will not whip your back, pretty lady.”

“My bottom then. Won’t that satisfy you?”

He laughed at her earnestness. “Your bottom is split, lady, you have two halves: one cheek at a time perhaps?”

Stacie moaned. He was laughing at her. She was tied so tightly she could not even twitch. He could whip her to death. “Oh yes, yes please . . . do it as you said.” It would be better to be whipped there than have her loins sliced to shreds.

“Pretty lady ask Yousef to punish.”

Stacie was desperate. She threw her head from side to side and gazed hopelessly up the slender taut arms by which she was held. She was pitiably unable to move, if Yousef wished to whip her in strange ways she was wonderfully stretched for his purpose. Somehow she must try and divert his interest, hating herself she tried the age old bribe. “Yousef, don’t whip me. I’ll be very nice to you.”

“You do not bargain, lady. Yousef fucks you or whips you as it pleases him. You now be much whip.”

She moaned with the hopelessness of her plight. Her screams pealed out afresh as a new stroke bit at the junction of hip and thigh and lapped over one cheek of her bottom with a cruel thunk. Yousef laughed his pleasure.

It was frightening to be so totally robbed of response. Her legs and arms were pulled out and tied so that not even a flinch or a quiver could result from the cuts as they fell upon her skin. She was as the inanimate metal placed upon the anvil beneath the pounding hammer of the smith . .

The man who was whipping her was an artist. She knew he would now match the last lash by a similar infliction over her other hip. He would mark her beautifully and geometrically. She tried to close her eyes but could not. There was an element of disbelief she must appease by watching Yousef draw back his arm and measure distance, his target was herself. The long lash snapped and scored her scaldingly in the precise spot she had known it would. She lost herself in screams which Yousef drank in with hungry ears and eyes.

“You are very beautiful, lady,” he said after a long time. It was a simple tribute to a loveliness he was uniquely equipped to judge.

“No more . . .” Stacie shook her head slowly in negation. “No more . . .”

“All girls being whipped say that, lady,” he laughed reminiscently, “and offer to fuck: always they do that. They think most valuable their slit inside their hair. Last girl I whip she offer her little arse too: as though I could not take it when I wish.”

Smilingly tolerant of feminine weakness the torturer circled her tractioned nudity with one arm and with his other hand cupped the sexuality within her pubic hair, he plied his palm and fingers thoughtfully as on familiar ground. Stacie gasped at the unexpected attention.

“All girls like this while being whipped.”

Stacie could believe it. Even though her vulva was swollen and sore from the vicious cut of Yousef’s whip the respite of this half amorous fondling was welcome, anything was better than the continued sibilance and cracking impact of the lash. She closed her eyes, she could think of nothing suitable to say, she hoped her panting gasps were enough. He would always milk a girl of her pride, it was part of his trade. “Are you not grateful?” he insinuated.

“Oh yes Yousef, you’re wonderful. Thank you.”

He inserted a blunt finger. “Can make scream this way too.”

Stacie was sure he could. She increased the tempo of her moans, only part of them were simulated.

Suddenly it stopped. Yousef backed away laughing at her flushed and bewildered face. “Now I whip your cunt again.” He was totally omnipotent, every part of her was his to hurt.

“No! Love me . . . love me! Don’t whip me there again.” How silly it sounded! Trite, childish, demeaning. The words had formed themselves. She looked at her torturer in wide eyed appeal. “Don’t whip me there . . .”

He whipped her there, not once but twice, glorying in his power and her panicked screams. Stacie believed herself split open by the impacting thong, yet even at her peak of agony she could not move, nor twitch nor shrink so tightly was she bound. Looking down across her breasts she saw her flesh drenched with the sweat of torment.

This time when he cupped his hand across her pubes she screamed in genuine hurt. He had whipped the labia skilfully so that, for the moment, they welcomed nothing male. But the naked girl ground her teeth determinedly against protest, if he would play with her there it was still far, far better than fresh new cuts upon her skin. Yousef’s whip was a greater enemy than his hand. No matter how pathetic a weapon her femaleness might be she must use it to the full. She moaned in what she hoped he would hear as pleasure.

“Thank you, Yousef.”

“You are most pretty lady, such fine screams.”

The captive gasped and moaned in the bizarre blend of emotions his busy hand generated in her youthful flesh. Yousef the Torturer was too old a hand to be deceived or influenced by feminine wiles or female agony, but she could try. Without ceasing her vocal acknowledgements of his skills, and at the expense of pain, she leaned forward enough to enable her to kiss the bare skin of his shoulder. She made her lips linger and breathed hotly on the wetness made by her mouth. “Please, Yousef My Master, whip my bottom, save me elsewhere,” Stacie Blair made her voice soft with love, she too had skills!

She could tell she had reached him, the lecherous hand paused, his breathing quickened. After a moment’s thought he announced her prize: “Yousef now whip pretty lady with fine cane instead of whip.”

How terrible a girl’s state that she be made happy by such words! Yet it was so. Canes and bottoms matched, awful as it might be it would still impose a lesser agony than the lewd thong searching out her femaleness. “Thank you, Master, thank you . . .” The words were not all abasement, they also held gratitude. Yousef the Master terminated his ministrations just short or her orgasm, such denial was implicit in punishment, girls being whipped were not supposed to know joy. Stacie sighed resignedly and watched in hopeful anxiety for what would now be done to her. The scald of the whipmarks on her flesh were no good augury for anything.

The man who was whipping her went about his change of implements with tantalizing deliberation. Setting aside the awful whip he brought forth the canes. The stretched and naked girl with her flaming sex watched fearfully as he sorted the wicked lengths to find the one that would slice her wracked and distorted buttocks to his pleasure. She could not tremble, but felt the twitching of her inmost nerves as he selected the black and shining withe that would soon bed itself within her flesh. He flexed and swished it testingly while he smiled at the apprehension on his victim’s face.

“Thank you, Yousef my Master,” she would lay her charm on thick!

He laughed unaffectedly at her wish to please him. “Why thank me! I am about to hurt you more than you have ever been hurt before.” There was excitement in his voice.

The naked girl’s eyes widened, her head tensed. She did not understand, but she was suddenly desperately afraid.

Yousef saw her fear and savoured it. “I told you I would use a cane, lady: I did not say where.”

Realization and denial were instant and vehement. “You may not whip my breasts. It is forbidden!”

“Your breasts, lady! I did not speak of breasts.”

Stacie stared at him in horror. What awfulness had he devised that pleased him so! If not her breasts, then where! Her face . . . ! With a sudden thrill of anguish she knew! Her eyes followed his to focus on her foot.

It was quite perfect, of course. It would be! Like all the rest of her nudity her feet were beautifully positioned for torture. She looked along her rigid thigh and leg to where the tractioning band held her foot motionless and isolated in space, so great was the tension of her bonds she could scarcely wriggle her toes. As though fascinated by serpent eyes she watched him take up his stance and measure the swing of the cane that would desolate the sole she could not hide. When he began preliminary tappings to test her courage she broke down.

“I’m sorry, Master, I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive, lady. I now cane the soles of your little feet instead of whipping your fine large cunt.”

“I won’t be able to stand it, I’ll faint.”

“You have been bastinadoed before?”

“No never. Oh, please!”

“If lady has never had her small feet whipped how can she know the pain? Perhaps you will like it.”

“I won’t! I won’t! Oh, you mustn’t . . . you mustn’t!”

“But indeed I must.” He was teasing her and loving it. “Then . . . then, whip my cunt again.” She was in a panic of fear. “If you whip my feet I won’t be able to walk . . . perhaps never!”

Yousef enjoyed her drama as he enjoyed his power. This white maiden was truly a treasure house of vivid responses. How satisfyingly she was about to scream. He drew back his arm.

Stacie Blair saw it all, saw the cane snicker and whirrr its way towards her foot, saw the terse smile of cruelty on Yousef’s lips, saw the actual impact as though on flesh other than her own with herself as spectator.

Her being was fragmented. For a moment she was so choked with screams she could utter none of them, the sounds that emerged were animal, inarticulate, terrifying. There had never in the whole world been pain like this, there could not have been. She was sundered, lanced, burned and consumed by its fire. She felt herself slip away into darkness.

Yousef was pleased. This lovely creature had paid him her ultimate tribute. What had promised to be a dull day was turning into a memorable experience. He was quite unperturbed by a loss of consciousness in his victims. The expression on their faces when he revived them and they realised their torture was to continue was one of his favourite perquisites of office. Thoughtfully he found the bottle of arrack and took a deep and luxurious draught before pouring a generous potion down the gaping throat of the whipped nakedness.

The wounded naked girl coughed her way back into the daylight. Her throat burned and she sought to reject a second libation, but the bottle was thrust between her teeth so that she was compelled to swallow. She felt no gratitude for the fresh life her system acknowledged. For her there would be no joy in consciousness. Her whipped foot was throbbing and aflame with a nauseating agony different from anything she had experienced before. She looked up without hope at the smiling visage of her torturer.

Stacie Blair would never know why they exchanged no words. Yousef had no need of them, she believed them useless, she had consigned herself to death. No girl could survive what Yousef was doing to her. If only Rannah would come! But the dark eyed girl would purposely stay away. When she did come it would be too late.

She looked sideways at the captive foot, virgin, unmarked without a wound. In a few moments it would be sliced by the cane and made horrific as its twin had been. It was unreal that she could look at it and know this was about to happen while she impotently watched. She looked at her torturer as if hoping to find in his face too a disbelief in what was taking place. He smiled in pleasure, valuing her desolation. His slight and courtly bow told her to abandon hope.

The taps upon the cringing sole were real enough, light authoritative raps to make her curl up inside and long to die. He made a long drawn out ritual of it, turning toward her after each that she might share the glinting amusement in his eyes.

“I think but ten on each small foot,” he confided slyly. Stacie’s cringing fear turned Yousef’s swing and the wide arc of the cane into slow motion. It was actually a flashing stroke, but watching it the naked girl died a hundred deaths and as many tortures. Her foot did not move, it waited patiently and passively for what was to be done to it: traitorous in its submission as though the pain would be only hers without a sharing. A small and lovely foot delivered into Hell, tied with exquisite cruelty so that even when the cane struck it did not move.

The captive’s screech of anguish slid with her into the dark.

“It is pleasant that we sit thus at the beginning of a day.”

Mohammad Yasin sipped his coffee and smiled benignly across the breakfast table.

His philosophic mood was not shared by either of the girls.

Rannah had been strangely distrait since her Master’s sudden return, and Stacie was still striving to orient herself. The lovely scented world she had shared with the dark eyed Arab girl had been dissipated by Yousef’s cane and whip, perhaps it was gone forever! She sensed in their suave Master an implacable undercurrent of some fearful purpose. That he had ravished her throughout the night had countered the awfulness of her wounded feet. He himself had brought her back into life from the black void into which the Torturer’s second slash across her feet had cast her. It had been his face, grave and tender, she had first seen on her second return to consciousness, it had been on his bed her wounds were examined and, later, her body riven and transported by his passion.

“There is much work to do,” Yasin continued musingly. “Yes, Lord.” Rannah’s breakfast lay mostly uneaten, she sipped her coffee absently.

“It would seem very little has been done.” His words drifted like clouds across the sun.

“The fault is mine, Lord.”

The captive girl knew herself lost in what was taking place around her. New forces were at work. Tentatively she moved her feet in a motion of disquiet, testing the chains locked on her ankles and the pain of her bruised flesh. Her handcuffs had disappeared, she felt naked without them even though she was now clothed by Yasin’s wish. But the chain joining her feet hobbled her far more helplessly, the metal bands round each ankle were heavy and demanding with each step. She had been obliged to learn to walk again. But now, thanks to Yousef, she walked in pain.

“And why your fault, child?”

Rannah motioned listlessly. “You know my fault, Lord. I will not excuse it.”

Mohammad Yasin sighed. “This girl we hold for torture: she has a terrible potency. She has made you as much captive as herself.”

Rannah remained silent, vividly aware.

Yasin’s eyes as he gazed at Stacie were kind. “You have not known, child, that here in Jedrah this woman love you have practiced with this wayward girl is punished by death or mutilation.”

She looked at him askance. Once more her world collapsed.

“Death! You mean that we . . . ?”

Yasin laughed, delighted by her responsive fear. “No, child, I speak of the Jedrah beyond these walls.”

Her ankle links rattled as she stirred in perturbation.

Dark eyes smiled back at her in reassurance without joy. Striving to come to grips with things unsaid she turned appealingly to Yasin. “Please, Master, if I have done wrong punish me. Do not blame my Lady Rannah.”

He looked at her with an impatient tenderness. “You are as besotted with my daughter as she with you.”

Both of them laughed at her disbelief.

“There was no need to tell you. It alters nothing,” Rannah said simply.

“I am very proud of she who bears my name.” In Yasin’s words was love.

“Then it was she . . . !” Stacie was blushing.