After the Asian girl had led Karin away, Caine stood in silent contemplation of Natalie for a long time. At last he moved close to her, and slowly pulled away the bands of heavy tape over her mouth. He held his hand under the Nat's mouth and said, "Spit it out."

By pushing with her tongue and forcing her jaws as wide as she could, Natalie was finally able to force Caine's sopping handkerchief out of her mouth and into his waiting hand.

"You wanted me to put you out of your misery a little while ago when I had you hooked up to this thing. I think your friend would be pretty upset with me, if I did," Caine said, patting the metal top of the shock cabinet. "Do you still want that, or would you rather live?"

"Of course I want to live, sir... Master," Natalie added, remembering that Caine had told Karin what his preferred mode of address was.

Caine nodded. "I have found that people are tenacious of life. They fight to stay alive, even when the alternative would be a relief. Still, I'll wager you would do almost anything to avoid another session with this machine. Am I right?"

Her eyes flicked to the machine, and then back to Caine. She licked her lips nervously. "Yes, you're right of course, Master. I'm ready to do whatever you ask of me."

Caine detached Nat's collar from the bar, and then drew her away with him across the room by her elbow. "We'll just have to make a test of that, then, won't we?" he asked.

He pulled a thick leather belt around her, and cinched it up uncomfortably tightly around her narrow waist. He released her hands from the cuffs that held them behind her back, saying as he did so, "I know you're much too intelligent to try to get away."

Nat did not answer, standing passively as he took her wrists and tied them firmly to loops on either side of the belt. He then fastened a broad collar tightly around Nat's neck and pulled a loop of nylon cord down from a reel set in the ceiling, which he attached to the collar. He shortened the cord by turning the reel until she was forced up onto the balls of her feet, then locked the reel. Finally, he tied straps around Natalie's ankles, attaching them to steel rings set into the floor, so that her legs were spread three feet apart. As he worked, he talked to her.

"Of course, while you're on the machine and you are getting shocked, you'll agree to anything, promise the world," he said. "But you have a much stronger personality than your friend Karin. It's not so simple to break a spirit like yours. All too soon, you'll remember your pride and your courage, and I'll have to go through the whole long, painful process all over again." He completed his arrangements, then he stepped back to admire the girl's suspended, trim form, and run a proprietary hand down her haunch.

"Please..." Nat said in a hoarse whisper. "I can't breathe."

"Perhaps if you stood on the tips of your toes, it might relieve a little of the pressure," Caine suggested. In fact, as Caine well knew, it was impossible for her to strangle, even if she had deliberately tried to hang herself. The reel had a built-in safety that would release the tension the instant her entire weight pulled on it. But of course, Nat did not know this.

His hand moved up between her legs, casually inserting his fingers in her virginal slot, and drawing a gasp of shock. "To get back to what I was saying, it's so hard to really know when you can count on the submission of a girl like you."

As Nat stared, her eyes bulging from her head, he removed his hand from Nat's sex, sauntered to a wooden rack on a nearby wall, and selected a sinuous dog-whip. He returned to stand over her, looking down at her face, running the slick leather whip lightly over her small, tight breasts, and then down her flat stomach.

"I'm going to whip you now," Caine said steadily. "I'll continue until you stop me." She turned her head as well as she could to follow, as he walked behind her and raised the whip.

Natalie was in tears. "Please," she moaned in terror, "How can I... ahh!" she screamed as the lash hissed through the air and cut into the unmarked whiteness of her bottom globes, leaving behind a curving pink welt.

"I imagine you've never been whipped before," Caine remarked conversationally, as he watched her frenzied contortions. "Parents nowadays are getting a trifle lax, if you ask me." He struck again, sending the lash to slice up between Nat's legs so that the tip marked her belly and the blade impacted directly on the lips of her sex. She screamed and jumped, choking as the collar took her weight for a few seconds.

Caine marked her back, thighs and buttocks with a network of crisscrossing ridges, and then he moved to her front. Then he slashed her belly, thighs and breasts, making the latter bounce under the impact of the light whip, and leaving livid lines in her pale flesh. He paused twice during this phase of the beating, standing back and regarding her thoughtfully for a few minutes until she stopped screaming, as if he was expecting something from her.

He paused a third time. "Do you want me to stop?" he asked.

""Yes... please stop," she gasped. "I'll obey you, Master, whatever you say, I will... no, please!" she ended when Caine shook his head and brought the lash overhead once more.

Twenty minutes later, the front of her body from shoulders to ankles bore the fiery marks of Caine's dog-whip. He had concentrated much of his attention on her apple-sized breasts, admiring the way they bounced under his attack. Where the whip marks intersected, her flesh there hung a few tiny ruby droplets. He body gleamed with sweat, and her head drooped in despair and exhaustion. He paused again.

"Come on now, Natalie, think," Caine urged. "What do you suppose I want to hear?"

At several points during the flogging, Natalie thought that she would faint from the pain, but each time a new stroke had brought her unwillingly back to the world of burning agony. She concentrated with all her will, trying to bring the fragments of her thoughts together. What did he want? He wants... me, she realized, but not just my body. He wants all of me.

"Please Master," she said quietly, in a voice ragged from screaming. "Please take me... fuck me. Please fuck your slave." She sighed in relief when Caine smiled and said, "You see how simple it was?"

He unbuckled the collar, and pulled up a plain wooden chair between her outspread legs, then sat down on it facing Nat and opened his fly to free his rigid cock. With his hands on her hips, he guided her down to settle across his thighs, with her pussy directly over his rigid cock.

She could not imagine herself becoming aroused by Caine after he had beaten her so cruelly, but his fingers were busy inside her sex and it was not long before there was no doubt of her body's intense reaction to his manipulations. She grimaced and turned her face away from him when she realized what was happening and how her body was betraying her.

"No, Natalie, my dear," he corrected her, taking her chin in his hand and bringing her lips to his face. "You should show me how badly you need to be fucked. Kiss me, and ask for my cock."

The heat now building between her legs was something beyond Natalie's experience. She felt herself falling under Caine's control, but she could not think of a way to it. The whirl of sexual arousal was so overwhelming, she could hardly think at all. "Fuck me, Master," she mumbled, her face pressed against his cheek, her tongue leaving a wet trail on the stubble of his beard. "Please put your cock in me. Fuck me, Master."

His hand withdrew from her pussy, and she felt the head of his rod poised and brushing against her lower lips. Her hips jerked forward automatically, trying to envelope him. "Please," she moaned softly in his ear, her bound hands clutching at nothing.

"Slowly, slowly Nat," he told her, easing the head of his organ into her welcoming slot. "You only lose your virginity once, so take your time."

She sighed as she impaled herself on his cock, pausing when she felt resistance and a twinge of pain after the first two inches. She wiggled her hips from side to side, wondering how much it would hurt if she went ahead and pressed down on him with her full weight. Before she could make up her mind, she heard a loud smack, and felt a sudden explosion of pain across her much-abused ass cheeks. Caine had struck her with a leather paddle he had somehow secreted within his reach.

The unexpected blow instantly ended her hesitation, driving her forward to fully impale herself on his cock. She yelped in sudden pain as her hymen was ripped rudely away from the walls of her vagina. As his cock slid deeper, it felt as if the interior of her sex was being scraped raw. She tried to stop moving on him, but he hit her again with the paddle, and growled, "Keep fucking me, bitch."

Nat obeyed, riding the thick pole all the way to the bottom, then gritting her teeth as she stood up until he was almost all the way out of her. There was another burning stroke of the paddle, signaling that he wanted her to ride down his pole again, which she obeyed with alacrity. She discovered that this second stroke was far less painful than the first, and she was once again noticing the warm sensations of pleasure building in her groin.

Caine now used the paddle enforce the pace, pummeling her bottom rhythmically to make her bounce up and down on his cock, until her bottom globes were bright red and she begged him to stop.

"Not until I come, cunt," he snarled, striking the girl again. Nat threw her head back and shrieked in her helpless agony.

Somehow in spite of the vicious beating, the warm pleasurable sensation continued to grow, until it was overwhelming. Nat climaxed before he did, screaming out nonsense syllables and bouncing enthusiastically on his cock. Caine exploded shortly thereafter, seizing her nipples in his fingers and twisting them viciously as he pumped his seed into her.

Afterwards Caine leaned back in the chair, his heart hammering in his chest, reflecting that he was not a young man any longer, and might have to consider a slightly less strenuous sex life.

Nat slumped over him, her body slick with perspiration, her bottom feeling as if it had been doused in gasoline and set on fire. She wept silently for her lost innocence, strands of lank hair hanging down over her head as her neck bowed in complete defeat.