“Yes,” I said. I then took the goblet from her, and drank.
She lifted her head, and watched me.
“I think you know how to serve wine well,” I said.
“Master should know,” she laughed.
I indicated that she should approach me. “Keep your hands on your thighs,” I told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I then, crouching beside her, my hand in her hair, controlling her, gave her to drink from the goblet, letting her finish the last ring. I then gave her the goblet, and she put it to the side, with the wine vessel.
I then sat back again, against the foot of the couch.
She, kneeling to the side, in the lovely position of the pleasure slave, watched me.
“Lie down here,” I said, “beside me.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
She lay beside me, in her chained softness, and beauty. She kissed me on the hip and then, with a rustle of chain, put her head down to the furs. “Do I please Master?” she asked.
“You are not entirely displeasing,” I told her.
“That pleases me,” she said. She laughed.
“What is wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “It is only that I thought it amusing. On Earth many boys, I think, would have liked to get me to their bed. But here, on Gor, you have not yet even permitted me to ascend to the surface of your couch.”
I smiled. She had served only at its foot, at the slave ring.
“Will Master permit me sometime to ascend his couch?” she asked.
“We shall see what progress you make in your slavery,” I said.
“I shall endeavor to make progress,” she said. A Gorean slave girl, incidentally, does not simply take a position on a couch as might a free person. Commonly she will kneel at its lower left side, or bottom, and then kiss its furs, or covers, after which she will crawl into it on her belly. Unless otherwise instructed she will remain near its foot, rather in the manner of a pet sleen. She may also, of course, be whipped or beaten to the couch, or forced to it, her arm twisted high, and painfully, behind her back, or carried to it, or thrown upon it, perhaps chained or bound.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you recall, long ago, in the restaurant, when I spoke to you, daringly, I think, for a then-unenslaved slave, of the dreams, strange then to my mind, which I had been having?”
“I recall,” I said.
“I had often then dreamed, as I recounted to you, and as you will perhaps remember, that I was a female slave, that I was kept in rags or naked, that a steel collar had been put on my neck, that I had been branded, and that I was subject to discipline—and that I must serve a man.”
“I remember,” I said.
“There was one thing about those dreams, dear Master,” she said, “which I did not dare to tell you.”
“What was that?” I asked. I recalled that I had suspected, from certain subtle cues, and silences, that she hard not fully expressed herself to me on that occasion.
She looked down.
“What was it?” I asked.
She looked up. “That the man I must serve was always the same,” she said.
“Yes?” I said.
“And that he was you, my Master,” she said.
I took her gently in my arms.
“You see, my Master,” she said, “you are, for me, a dream come true.”
“And you, for me, Sweet Slave,” I said, “are, too, a dream come true.”
“Master?” she asked.
“Many times,” I said, “did I fantasize you thusly, in my arms, an owned slave, mine to do with as I pleased.”
“I am here now, my Master,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“And it is where I want to be,” she said.
I looked at her, in the light of the ravishment lamp.
“Gone now,” she whispered, “are the pains and shames of Earth.”
I kissed her, gently.
“How strange I once would have thought it, on Earth, so long ago,” she said, “had I been told that I would find my fulfillment only on a distant world—and chained by the neck to the slave ring of a master.”
“You are a woman,” I told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I then caressed her gently into ecstasy.