It was an almost theatrical tableau. Even though she was still dustily naked and her hands were still tied behind her back and a frightful punishment undoubtedly pending, Ilona felt sure that if she caught her mistress's eye she would giggle. It was too classic a scene to be true. But it was true. "Innocence before its Judge": "Guilt standing before Justice": "Awaiting sentence": "The condemned." The Victorian titles of a hundred paintings of douce damsels about to get their just desserts flitted though her mind. She would like to break the pose, but could think of none more practical. She wanted to exclaim: "For goodness sake, Cicely, don't sit there like Julius Caesar about to send me to the Arena," but lacked the courage. Instead, she ejaculated lamely:
"So alright, Cicely, I'm guilty."
In the ensuing silence the prisoner reviewed her return to the ranch. It had been far from triumphant. For the last mile she had been made to walk, entering the big yard and Cicely's range of vision at the end of a long rope, one end noosed round her neck, the other coiled round Rance's saddle horn. Her tired feet had been made to halt before the disdainful figure of a woman with a riding crop.
"We git the right gal, maam?"
The crop turned the runaway around to be examined. Its tip hovered upon the rawhide knots on her wrists and flickered across the scarlet evidence of the quirt.
Both were ignored by Cicely's cold acknowledgement. "Yes, she's the right one. I see you quirted her rump. Why?"
"It was part of them fucking me!" The exclamation burst from Ilona's lips in hot resentment. Sullenly, she added: "The bastards fucked me again and again."
"Really." Cicely parted with the word in contempt.
"I'm sure you enjoyed it."
"I didn't! It was hateful?!"
"Quiet!" The crop curled round Ilona's hip. "I don't want to hear. Save it."
Ilona had relapsed into sullen silence while the rope was taken from her neck and an Envelope changed hands. She seethed with the injustice of Luke and Rance being rewarded for her rape, their protracted violation of her sex for which they ought to go to jail. Resentfully she tugged at the rawhide on her wrists. It was all she dared do. The weal on her hip scorched as bitterly as her mistress's contempt.
For a minute the slave and her mistress watched the riders out of sight. Then Cicely had curtly commanded. "Come in the house you absolute idiot."
The Mistress mixed herself a drink but did not share it. Gulping the cocktail angrily she glared at her bound and naked slave before impatience spurred it's resentful flood.
"I'd have thought you had more sense. I had to call in men from all over, too small a chance of catching you myself alone." She snorted angrily. "There's the expense. . and the snickers. . and you've got yourself fucked. . Ugh!"
It was at that point she had pleaded guilty. The impulse to giggle had gone away.
Ilona looked at the woman she loved and said, wanly: "Cicely, I think I'm going to cry."
"Go ahead. If a few licks with this crop will help your tears let me know Dammit, girl, why, why, why?"
"I don't know myself. Honest, Cicely, it was an impulse thing. I'm sorry."
"And you'll be a lot sorrier, darling."
"Yes, of course. But please don't hurt Nora?"
"Nora's been hurt already, and she'll be hurt some more. If her feet hadn't been ironed she'd have run with you." Cicely gestured in disgust. "Do I need to have a hundred pounds of iron riveted on your ankles to keep you around?"
"I won't run again, Cicely. I promise."
"You're damn right you'l run again, but not the way you think. Blast it all, Ilona, what the hell am I going to do to you?"
"Punish me."
"How?"
The delinquent nudity found herself not wanting to be punished at all. She wanted to be loved. But love seemed unlikely to be part of her immediate future. Unhappily, she suggested: "You can always whip me."
"Sure I can. Any other ideas?"
"To stop loving me would be the worst of all. I don't want you to stop loving me."
"A disloyal slave!" Cicely sneered. "You let that silly little bitch talk you into running away from me, and now you expect love?"
"I expect to be punished." Ilona said doggedly. "After you've punished me I hope you'll love me again."
"I love you now, damn you!"
The delinquent heart raced. "Would it help a bit if I told you I was on the way back here when they picked me up? I was asleep when they found me. It wasn't all that far from here."
"How can I know that's true?"
"Only by whatever you think of me. I sat on a little hill way out there somewhere and assessed the whole thing. There I was, naked in a wilderness, and you were here.
I knew I'd been damn stupid. That's when I turned around." The penitent paused. "I thought about Paisley Publications then too. But it didn't seem real, it doesn't seem real now. I don't think it ever will again."
"D'your wrists hurt?"
"Yes."
"Come here. I'm going to untie you. Go and bathe and make yourself beautiful.
Oh, and have a douche, have three or four. Those damn men. . ! Ugh!"
"Yes, Cicely." The slave was breathless. "Thank you."
"Don't think you're forgiven. I'm still going to punish you."
"I want you to."
"You're free. So if you feel like running, go ahead and run."
"You know I won't do that."
"I'll be waiting for you. We can talk about your punishments in bed. .
afterwards."
Breathlessly, Ilona went to bathe.
"I want to be really cruel to you, darling." Cicely mused languidly in deep content.
"You do need to be taught a lesson, y'know."
"A hundred lashes." Suggested Ilona dreamily.
"You're being flip. Liberty doesn't become you, pet. Give me your hands."
Obedience was instant. Ilona watched her mistress reach beneath the pillow. The handcuffs were the dark gun metal one's she adored, expensive, handcrafted. They encircled her wrists with oiled precision. Her nostrils flared with a gasp of enchantment. "They're gorgeous!"
"I'm clicking them one notch too tight, sweetheart, a constant reminder."
"Don't ever take them off, not ever!" Laying nakedly beside her love, Ilona lifted her cuffed hands and admired their linked allure. Testing their snugness, she pouted:
"You could make them a notch tighter still, Cicely. I wouldn't mind."
"We're getting maudlin." Her Mistress warned. "We're besotted with each other's cunts and pubic hair and breasts and nipples, the whole ensemble. You've changed incredibly. You're not the woman who wrote that article. You're not a woman at all, you're a little girl. I don't know how you ever ran that damn business of yours. Since I bought you you've blossomed into the most submissive creature I've ever known."
Cicely laughed softly, "And I've whipped a lot of submissive bottoms and clipped a lot of submissive tits."
"You've never put clips on my nipples."
"Don't sound so cheated. Give me time. That reminds me, I've got to get you collared."
Ilona lowered her handcuffed wrists, she was suddenly tense. "You mean that iron thing with rivets?"
"You hate the idea, darling, and you might have talked me out of it if you hadn't been a bad girl. But you'l look wonderful with that on your neck. It will have a mental effect too because you'll know there's no way it will come off."
"Oh, alright, I expect I'll live."
"You bet you will. And I've been thinking about your ankles. If they'd been ironed you'd never have run away."
"Oh Cicely, those things. . like on Nora? Those iron bands and all those links swirling every time I take a step?"
"Why not?"
There was laughter in the Mistress's voice, but the slave was unsure, her position weakened by recent guilt. She rejoined, doubtfully, "Well. . I suppose. . !"
Cicely was amused, thrilled by her own power. "Oh, stop pouting." She said gaily.
"I'd iron you like a shot but it's so permanent. I can't be taking you to the blacksmith shop every time I want to use you for this or that. I've got some that lock and use a key but the mental effect's no way as potent."
"I don't mind."
"Of course you don't, you little idiot! What girl wants to be ironed! I ought to have Josh hammer rivets on you everyplace, and keep you that way for a month."
"I'm sure I deserve it."
"Stop being a masochistic kitten. You're getting a lubricated cunt out of self immolation. It can get to be a vice."
"Alright, Cicely, so I have to wear an iron collar. Now, what about my real punishment? Do I get the hundred lashes?"
"No. You're positively wallowing in lust at the mere thought of all those lovely stripes. I'll punish you, but not because you ask for it or want me to. I'll do it my way. Come along now, I've got something you ought to see."
"Aren't you going to wear something, Cicely?"
"I feel like being naked. Come along, you quivering kitten, I'll make you quiver some more."
Intuitively Ilona knew. In the punishment room Nora hung suspended by her wrists. Her feet were off the floor but the heavy irons hung pendent from her ankles so that some of their links found a resting place beneath the punished feet. Her eyes had been closed in suffering, she opened them now and, beholding Ilona, wept. "I thought you got away." She sobbed brokenly. "I thought you got away."
Ilona's attempt to embrace the suspended nudity was foiled by the handcuffs she had so recently adored. She could do nothing but cradle tear wet cheeks and kiss the disconsolate lips.
"Turn her round, darling, she swings easily."
Again she knew! The handcuffed girl obeyed. As the loveliness revolved under the guidance of her locked hands Ilona gasped. Nora's back, her buttocks, her thighs, were criss crossed by weals, ridged bars of proud flesh raised by Cicely's crop. She wailed in anguish at the sight.
"Stop that!" The Mistress's command was peremptory.
"We take her down each night to sleep, and hang her up again each day. If you hadn't run I might have let her off with twenty strokes."
"Every day?" Ilona was aghast. "You mean, ever since I ran?"
"That's right, darling. Her attitude improves daily."
The theatrical gesture came naturally. Ilona the slave fell to her knees and clasped her mistress's thigh in locked hands. "Please, Cicely, oh please! Don't punish her any more. Oh no, no, no. .!"
"Why not?"
"Because it was all my fault. Let Nora down and put me there instead."
"Darling, that line's stereotyped, positively threadbare. Can't you do better?"
Cicely patted the bowed head. "And it might be a good idea if you stood up."
Shamed, Ilona obeyed. Looking in anguish at the whipped beauty turning slowly on her rope she understood the implacability of Cicely's justice. Here on the ranch a slave was a slave, even if much loved she would remain a slave. At first sight of Nora's whipped skin Ilona had felt unfairly privileged. But her own punishment was still to come, judging by what she now beheld it would be a thing for tears and penitence. She trembled and twisted locked wrists but was strangely glad.
"Come along, dear. Nora would sooner be alone."
The handcuffed girl allowed herself to be led from the room. The fingers on her bare arm were tender but they were the fingers of a woman who owned girls, a woman by whom she herself was owned by right of purchase. Wanly, Ilona asked:
"How long must she??"
"She'll be freed this evening, sweetheart, but I wasn't going to tell her so."
"It's such a terrible punishment. . so long!"
"Think it would fit your penance, pet?"
"If you wanted?"
"That isn't what I asked."
"Yes, I think it would punish me enough." Ilona ventured with simulated bravery.
"Oh, Cicely. .!"
"She's only had forty strokes, dear. All hard, of course."
Cicely informed equably. "None of that hundred lashes you're so fond of tossing around. D'you still want 'em?"
"Yes."
"Well, you're not sentenced yet, darling, I'm still thinking about it. You can think about it too. In the meantime we've got a little job."
As they walked to the blacksmith shop Ilona longed to plead. Every feminine instinct revolted against an iron band riveted on her neck. But sight of Nora's punishment told her clearly she could not be forever on her knees. Cicely owned her.
Cicely would use her as she wished. Ilona looked down at the black metal on her wrists but felt no wish it be taken from her.
"Hate me, darling?"
"Oh, Cicely, you know I don't." It was almost a wail of anguish. "But tell me why I love you? I do, terribly."
"I'm sort of fond of you, sweetheart." Fond fingers were once more on a bare chained arm. "If I wasn't you'd be hanging up in there with your poor devoted Nora." Cicely's laugh was a silvery acknowledgement that life was good. "Look at Josh, there in the doorway, waiting for you. He's so proud."
The captive could understand the craftsman's pride. She supposed that if a girl was obliged to wear an iron collar the object held to view was probably as good as she could expect. Its edges had been bevel ed and polished, its pendent ring would have foiled the tug of a horse.
"Josh, you do the nicest collar." Cicely's tribute was warm.
"Little lady gonna' like it, maam. I takes a lot o' trouble."
"And the rivets. .?"
"Like you said, Miz Woods, they ain't gonna' show. I'se recessed the holes so's I kin beat 'em down in and file 'em flat. Iron's heavy 'nuff to take a long drill without no flange."
"But, Josh, there's no hinge to open and close??"
"Ah aims fer smooth circle, Miz Woods. She open now and I got leverage ter close it."
"Darling, you're so lucky. Let Josh arrange you."
Miss Ilona Paisley, formerly of Paisley Publications, knelt beside the anvil and allowed a coloured blacksmith to insert her neck within a metal band and drape it across the waiting surface of brutal steel. Her handcuffed fingers clung desperately to the wooden block on which the anvil stood.
"I figger's this'un out fer meself, maam. Sure takes a lot o' pressure to close that cold iron, but I ain't usin' no hammer."
Breathlessly, the naked girl felt the slow closing of the strangest confinement a girl could know. Ilona could barely see the long and heavy bar by which the smith was exerting such relentless force, but her neck received its message like the closing of a trap.
"Look'a that, maam. Fit real good she do. Ain't no daylight showin' nowheres."
It was true. The prisoned neck felt an even contact. Josh was skilled. The kneeling girl waited passively for what she knew she would hate the most.
"I git's me one rivet in there, Miz Woods, afore I lifts the lever. Then we got her fer sure."
It was hateful, but had become strangely exciting. Perhaps royalty felt thus in their ritualistic regalia. Ilona felt the fumbles and the friction of metal within metal. Then the hammer blows that touched her not but rang in her ear as a knell of doom.
The bar was lifted, the collar remained. Josh was happy.
"The other rivet, maam, and then the little lady has herself the damnedest collar ever was."
Ilona did not move, she did not demur. She thought of the headsman's block, it was a frightening simile. But in a little while she would be allowed to stand. She winced with the second rivet and flinched from the hammer. But it was the file and the electric buffer which set the seal on her shame. She was a slave, collared! Ready always now for the chain and padlock.
"Up's-a-daisy, darling: I can't wait to see."
The weight was frightening. Lifting her neck from the anvil Ilona was sure she could never bear it. Standing, she met her mistress's eye and grinned ruefully. "You own me now for sure." She admitted, and was suddenly inflamed by lust. Never had she felt such an onrush of emotion as now when her captive fingers explored the broad band of iron she would wear forever.
"You're gorgeous darling!" Cicely was exultant. She took her collared slave within eager arms and kissed and kissed, her lips sinking to find the soft and pulsing throat above and below the black iron band in which it was imprisoned. "Come along, I must get you to a mirror."
Suddenly the iron was weightless. Ilona had never felt more happy.
The reflection staring back at Ilona from the glass was shocking. It was ugly. It was beautiful. It was wonderful and scarce to be believed. The collar changed her. It took possession of her nakedness and transformed it utterly. The flat thick band was as wide as it could be without intrusion. Its fit was snug so it would not chafe. The round iron ring hanging below the nape of her neck was of the same proportions.
The effect of the black circlet in contrast to her white nudity was exquisite.
"It's better than gold or silver, darling." Cicely was awed.
To the owner of the slender neck that bore the iron it held all the magic of a wedding ring. It was a bond indissoluble between herself and the woman she loved, the woman who owned her so totally. Ilona stared back, entranced. She was a naked slave, her wrists darkly chained, her neck banded and ringed. With a thrill of delight she saw herself more beautiful than she had ever been. Within her sex a fire was rising in sweet agony.
After such an erotic feast it was inevitable they seek their bed, lips wet and swollen, tongues avid, nipples hard and high. Satiated, they slept. When Ilona woke she was alone. Drowsily, she let her feet slide to the floor and became aware of change. Suddenly alert, her locked hands flew to her neck, knowing what they would find. The ring no longer hung empty, within it was a padlock and a chain. The chain was formidable, so was the padlock, far heavier than need be to hold a girl.
Excited and filled with laughter, Ilona lifted the trailing links and traced them to a ringbolt in the floor. This anchorage was as solid as the rest. Delighted with her mistress's whimsey she stepped out the radius of her tether. It gave her the freedom of the bed and a few paces to one side only, then snubbed her hard. For moments she stood, savouring the new sensation, knowing she would be chained thus every night, glimpsing the stern utility of Josh's creation. It was not a punishment, it was a facility every slavegirl needed. Alight with longing for her mistress she threw her constrained nudity back upon the sheets.
It was delicious to dream. In slavery Ilona discovered a narcotic by which all things were dreamable and nothing real. Slaves lived vividly in the moment, the rest did not matter, they could not influence it so why treat it seriously! Their life was not their own, it belonged to someone else. In the punishment room Nora was suffering the last hours of her penalty. Nothing Nora or Ilona could do would change that one iota. At some moment in the future she herself would suffer for her truancy. She was sure her penance would be dire. But that, too, she could not change. It was in the realm of fantasy. Ilona envisioned herself screaming beneath the lash, moaning away the hours in nude suspension, or perhaps to have her ankles locked in the stocks to sit day after day in lonely longing to be free.
The weight on her neck had changed her life. Ilona was sure of it. Miss Paisley was gone. She could not but wonder on the potency of what had been done to her. It had changed her image of herself and all her thinking. Its effect was exquisitely erotic, no matter how she sought to close her mind to it, the iron collar imposed a constant titillation of her senses. Her fingers played with it constantly so that her handcuffs became an erotic presence on her wrists. She was ashamed of her female responses, her abject but glorious submissions to Cicely. But she would change nothing, not even if she could.
In a contentment such as she had never known Ilona went back to sleep.