A girl was kneeling on Rainier’s opposite side, her head at his feet.

         “Simia,” he said with undisguised joy.

         “Your girl has missed you, my lord,” crooned the little slut.  

Gustav’s hand was in her hair, playfully tussling.  She was brown-skinned, slim and shapely.  Her costume, what little I could see from this angle, consisted of a shiny metal collar and a woven scrap of metal fabric that hung down the middle of her lush buttocks like a loincloth.  It was attached to a chain at the girl’s waist.  There were also silver bands on both ankles.  Other than a lush forest of black hair, her back was bare, and so I assumed, were her breasts.

         A chill passed down my spine as I saw the marks, dark and angry across the small of her back and buttocks.  No belt had done this; pretty little Simia had been whipped.

         Rainier noticed it, too.  “Have you been a bad girl, Simia?”

         “If it pleases my lord,” she replied, her head still buried in the cushions.  “Simia is a clumsy girl. “

         “What did Simia do?” he inquired, clearly amused at the unfolding tale of the woman’s humiliation.

         “If it pleases my lord, Simia spilled a customer’s drink yesterday.”

         “In that case, Simia got off easy.”

         “Yes, my lord.”

         “In the old days,” said Rainier to me casually, as though I were an ordinary date and not a hogtied, half-naked girl on her knees before him, “a clumsy slave might well lose a hand or foot for such an offense.  Isn’t that right, Simia?”

         “The Sharif was a strong man, my lord.  He is the master of all slaves.”

         “Sharif Omar, Danielle, was a chieftain of the desert, a man ill appreciated in his day for his genius.  There are some, however, who still seek to follow his ways.  Isn’t that correct, Simia?”

         “Yes, my lord.”

         “I should like to have the braised lamb, Simia.”

         “Yes, my lord.  Would my lord like anything else tonight?”  Her tone was playful and seductive.  Leaning forward, she touched her tongue to the bottom of Gustav’s shoes, her licking motion suggestive of other more sensual actions.

         “Simia has an outstanding mouth,” Rainier remarked, as though the girl was not present.  “She is an exquisite fellatrix.”

         “Thank you, my lord.”

         “Simia, this is Danielle.”

         The girl sat up in a single, fluid motion, smooth and graceful.  I gasped audibly as I saw the chain linking her pierced nipples.  At the center hung another chain, this one extending down to her parted thighs.  A ring, like the one in her breasts, was attached to her vaginal lips, piercing the upper one, the delicate flesh skewered by glimmering metal.  A bit of metal fabric hung from her waist chain, covering but not concealing her petal-like cunt.

         “She is your new slave?” asked Simia, clasping her hands behind her back as though they were attached.

         Rainier looked idly at the girl’s widely opened legs; no doubt the girl’s sex was readily available to him.  “Yes; her training begins tomorrow.”

         Disbelief flooded me.  Had I agreed to such a thing?  And what would this mean for my carefully regulated life, my ambitions?  Surely this was all some joke; if I were to blink it would all just vanish and I’d be back in my poorly furnished flat with my fellow starving model roommate Julia.

         “She is fat, my lord.”  Simia’s eyes had settled on mine, cruel and cat-like.  Apparently my status as a fellow slave meant Simia need not treat me with respect.

         “Her body is workable,” shrugged the man who had just announced himself as my master.

         Simia arched her back and lifted her hips.  “Use Simia instead, my lord.  Simia will give you much pleasure.”

         Rainier pulled at the nipple chain, the one attached by a second chain to a ring in Simia’s cunt.  Without breaking posture, she inched towards him, a ready slut.

         “You are a cheeky little monkey, Simia.  I should have you whipped for your insolence.”

         “Yes, master.”  Her breathing had quickened.  Something helpless and faraway had come over her eyes.  “Simia begs master to whip her.”

         He silenced her with his lips.  It was a hard kiss, a raping of the girl’s mouth.  She softened to him, begging for more.  I could feel the wetness collecting between my own legs.  I was mortified and yet, more than anything I wanted to be that girl, that slave, virtually naked and without rights in his grasp.

         “I am hungry, Simia.”  Rainier thrust her from him abruptly.  

         “Yes,” she croaked, a shivering mass at his feet.  “My lord.”

         Simia went to all fours.  Head to the floor, she scuttled backwards, several feet before rising to her feet and running to the kitchen.  My eyes absorbed her every motion.

         Rainier put his hand on me, in me.  “You are aroused by this.”

         I turned my head away, trying to deny.  “No—I—please . . .”

         “I want you to come on my hand,” he said idly, putting the goblet to my lips with his other hand.

         I had no choice but to open my mouth and take the wine.  It was hot in my throat, robust and burning.  What I could not drink dribbled from the corners of my mouth and down the stalk of my neck.  It would stain the dress but Rainier did not seem to care.  Nor did I; I was too busy orgasming, spasming under the assault of his dastardly finger on my exposed clit.

         I could hear sounds around me.  The noise reminded me there were other people here, though I’d scarcely registered them on my arrival.  Were they watching me, getting off on my humiliation?  Wave after wave hit me; I could not hold back.  He took what he wanted from me: my heart, my soul.  Afterwards, as the musicians began to play, he made me lick my juices from his hand.

         A series of wonderful smelling delicacies were brought to the table.  The servers were girls, young and pretty, naked, or nearly so.  All wore chains of various kinds and some were tattooed.  The marks were bold and strong and they were placed intimately on their soft flesh.  One girl had a snake slithering up her belly and over her left breast, its mouth poised as if to strike her thick red nipple.  Another had a dragon over her hip and thigh.  The word ‘slave’ was elegantly embroidered on the arse of a third.

         Each knelt, head to the floor as Rainier tested the proffered tidbit.  I was focusing now on a couple to our right, one of the several filled tables I had ignored on my way in.  A young, dark skinned man of slight build was teasing a woman, a buxom blonde in her early forties.  She wore a short red skirt and blouse and was tethered exactly as I was.  The shirt was open and the bra, too.  Her huge breasts, milk white, spilled out, helpless to the man’s abuse.

         Mouth open, she was whimpering and begging for a piece of meat held on a skewer.  It was very hot, however, and I feared she might be so hungry as to have lost her self-preservation instinct.  Sure enough, she was shoving her bosom toward the skewer, offering to let herself be scalded in exchange for a bite. As soon as he touched the sizzling skewer to her tit, she cried out from the pain.  He left the skewer for a moment, then allowed her a tiny bite of the meat.  There were numerous burn marks on her breasts, I noticed, indicating the game had been going on for some time.

         Laughing at her misery, the young man poured some wine over her cleavage and bit down hard on her nipple with his teeth.  Her cries melted into the high-pitched cadence of the desert instruments.  What, I wondered, could make her behave this way?  Was she truly so hungry, or had he some other power over her?

Turning my attentions just beyond them, I noted a man in a long Arab style robe, sitting cross-legged and paddling the upturned behind of his own date.  She was on all fours, panty-less, her skirt pulled up and her head buried in a bowl from which she was hungrily eating.  The man had a steak on his plate along with an assortment of wild vegetables, but the female appeared to be eating some kind of mush.

         Over my shoulder I heard a girl scream.  Just prior to that there’d been a whistling sound, and the crack of leather on flesh.  She was apparently beseeching mercy and receiving none.  I tried to picture her, naked and writhing on the end of a rope.  The image made me flush with a mix of desire and fear.

         “You should have left my office, Danielle, when you had the chance,” Gustav remarked, reading my emotions.  “It is rare that I give a girl like you a chance to go free; I assure you, I will not repeat the offer.”