Jo’s escorts took her down a flight of stairs to Briarcliff’s lower level. This was not much like what she had seen of the opulently designed and furnished main floor of the mansion. The floor here was bare concrete, as were the walls, the doors were all heavily constructed of metal with oversized locks, and clearly designed for security rather than beauty, and the lighting was provided by bare fluorescent bulbs set overhead at regular intervals. All-in-all, Jo did not feel as if she was still in the house of a multi-millionaire, but rather as if she had been suddenly whisked away back to the Army brig where she and Robyn had spent six months awaiting trial. Adding to the prison atmosphere were the security cameras located high up on the walls on either side.

They stopped in front of a door that looked much like others they had passed, dented, metallic and menacing-looking. There was a key hanging on a hook on the wall next to the door frame. The blonde Lorna used this to open the lock, not without some difficulty.

“Someone should tell maintenance that these locks need to be oiled,” Lorna said to her colleague when she finally got the key to turn. “Shut up,” answered Kim.

They took Jo inside the room, with Lorna entering first to switch on the lights. Like the corridor outside, the room was illuminated (poorly, in Jo’s opinion) by more of the cheap fluorescent glow-tubes, several of which were humming and flickering.

Jo quickly evaluated her chances of overcoming the two servants at that moment, with the door open and the blonde’s back momentarily to her, and again decided that the time was not ripe. She was very limited in what she could do as long as she was still confined in Quentin’s restraints. She would have to hope the servants removed them while they were getting her “ready” for Caine, whatever that might entail, before she could even consider trying anything. If she was successful in overcoming the greensuits, what she would do after that, naked, weaponless, with a slave control collar still locked around her neck, in Caine’s house and surrounded by hundreds of his employees, she did not know. She would tackle those problems when the time came.

She looked around the room as they led her through it. There were all sorts of metal, wood and leather contraptions, frames, chairs, sawhorses, tables and things to which she could not put a name. There were odd electrical gadgets, pulley systems and nameless, but ominous-looking machines. Jo had little doubt that they were all designed to inflict pain or to facilitate its infliction. In short, the room was a torture chamber.

Jo was told to stand just in front of a device consisting of an electrically operated mechanism of adjustable jointed metal rods and cables. The machine, whatever its exact function, was connected by a length of insulated wire to a control panel which sat on a small table. Some of the rods sported leather straps with buckles, which were obviously restraints. Jo did not like the look of the thing even a little.

“Now we’re just going to put you in this frame, hon,” the stocky blonde Lorna said, in a kindly tone. “You’re in for a difficult time for the next few days, but the sooner you make up your mind to become Master Caine’s kind of servant, the quicker this part will be over and done, and things will get better. Don’t move, now.” She went down on one knee to remove the plastic rings from around Jo’s ankles, using a tool she took from the small pouch which hung from a belt around her waist. (This answered one question in Jo’s mind, to wit: how could the green-suited slaves carry anything, as there were clearly no pockets in their skin-tight uniforms.) “Just let me have your leg for a second, so I can strap you in,” she said. Jo cooperated, and soon both of her ankles were strapped and buckled to poles at floor level, three feet apart.

Jo put every fiber of her being into feigning relaxation as Lorna set to work unlocking and removing the remaining plastic rings around her wrists. “Was it very bad, when Mr. Caine had you down here?” She asked casually.

Lorna paused and frowned, her tool poised over the restraint on Jo left wrist. “I try not to think about that. The best thing I can say about Master Caine’s training is that, eventually, it ends.” She bent forward, and inserted the tool, springing open the plastic ring and thereby, freeing her prisoner’s hands.

Jo reacted instantly. She lashed out with her left elbow, trying for a disabling blow to Lorna’s solar plexus, and followed up by pivoting at the waist, to bring her right hand around for a palm strike to the nose.

This did not work out as she had hoped. The elbow shot landed, but to her dismay, it had little effect, as Lorna rolled with the blow. The blonde dodged Jo’s palm strike expertly, almost as if she had enjoyed martial arts training herself, as in fact she had. Jo did not know that Caine required every greensuit to become proficient in hand to hand fighting as part of their training, since their duties often required them to control recalcitrant and sometimes downright violent prisoners. It also seemed that Lorna was expecting her to try something of this sort, and was ready for it.

The sad look on the blonde’s face was the last thing Jo saw before the universe disappeared in an explosion of indescribable pain. The second greensuit, Kim, had evidently also been fully prepared for this moment, and had the slave collar remote control pointed at Jo almost before the latter’s right hand hissed past Lorna’s nose. Everything went blindingly white, as liquid fire ran through Jo’s entire nervous system. Quentin Scales had not been exaggerating about the pain induced by the collar at the higher levels (Kim had set it at75%); it felt nothing at all like the shock sticks the handlers had used to subdue her at the auction; it was worse, far worse, incomparably worse.

Jo lost control of her limbs, and would have fallen to the ground instantly, but for the fact that she was paralyzed by pain for a second or two, as every muscle in her body clenched in agony. She remained on her feet long enough for Lorna come close and catch her before she collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. The pain went on and on, for what felt like hours, and Jo wondered why she could not die, or at least pass out.

“Stupid bitch,” she heard the Asian girl’s voice, as if from a great distance. “I told you she would try something like this.”

“You were right, Kim,” Lorna acknowledged. “I just wish you hadn’t been.” That was the last thing Jo heard before her mind fled, and the nothingness of death or unconsciousness gathered her in at last.

***

She was jolted back to life when bucket of icy-cold water was dashed over her naked body. For a moment, she was too shocked by the sensation to scream, but then she drew in a double-lungful of air, and bellowed with all the strength in her body. The result, however, in no way reflected the effort involved. Instead of an ear-splitting shriek like the sound of a steam-whistle, all she produced was a thin, muffled “Eeeee!”

This was because Jo’s mouth was stuffed completely full of some soft, absorbent substance, and something was preventing her from opening her jaws even a crack. Her hands were drawn out to the sides above her head, kept there, she supposed, by the same type of leather straps Lorna had buckled around her ankles. She assumed that she now was strapped onto the device they had been attaching her to when she made her idiotic attempt to escape (the stupidity of her actions was obvious, in retrospect). This was only an assumption on her part, however, as her eyes were covered, and she could see nothing. There something covering her entire head which went all the way down to her neck, which accounted for both her inability to see or open her mouth. She could not see it, but she was clad in a hood made of latex and leather, which had only four openings: two small holes in the front for her nostrils, a zippered slit, currently closed, over her mouth and another hole on top, for her hair.

The hood allowed her to hear, at least. This was proved when she heard Caine’s voice say, “So, you’re back with us at last. I trust you found your nap refreshing, because you will be expending quite a lot of energy today.” As this did not seem to call for a reply, Jo did not attempt to respond.

A moment later, his voice was coming from much closer, and his hand was fondling her sex. “I must tell you, Colonel, I was a little disappointed when I was told what happened down here. I wasn’t joking when I said I knew a great deal about you. I believe I have read everything publicly available about your life and career, and every reliable report about you agreed you had two qualities in particular which made you an outstanding officer: intelligence and self-control. Your attempt to break Lorna’s ribs this morning did not demonstrate either quality, as I think you will agree.” This was much along the lines of what Jo had been thinking when she came to. She nodded, conceding the point.

“It probably was a temporary lapse on your part,” Caine offered generously. “If anybody had an excuse for a momentary lapse of judgment, you did. But the time for foolish gestures is over, and we need to get down to the business at hand. I intend to obtain your submission, then train you to serve me exactly as my other slaves do. The question is, will I have to kill you before you submit to me? Quentin thinks I might. I hope he is wrong.”

He slapped her on the buttock ringingly. “Today, I would like to introduce you to some of the tools I use to train my fuck slaves. You have already experienced what the collar can do, but there are many other more or less subtle methods of persuasion available.” Jo heard a quiet humming sound, and felt her limbs being pulled further apart as the device to which she was attached to went into motion.

“Take this frame you’re strapped into, for example,” Caine said. “It is a very versatile device. To begin with, I can put you under any degree of tension I wish. If I was careless, I could easily dislocate several joints.”

As Caine spoke, Jo was being stretched in four different directions, and when Caine mentioned the possibility of dislocated joints, it momentarily felt as if this was about to happen. In fact, the machine had built-in safeties which ensured that nothing of this sort could happen, but of course, Jo did not know this. When the electric motor stopped humming, she was spread wide in an “X”, her body, under such great tension that she had been lifted completely off the floor, and could move only her fingers, toes and head.

“That’s one configuration,” Cain said. “I find it very convenient for sexual training, but it’s not too bad for other things as well.”

She heard the sound of his boots on the hard floor, and then he was behind her. “What I am holding now is a leather paddle, one of my particular favorites. It is quite thick, very supple and packs a powerful punch. See what you think.”

There was a wet smack when something heavy and solid smashed into Jo’s buttocks, and she felt a jolt of pain, as an oblong of fire was printed across her flesh. The pain was unlike that of the control collar, because it was concentrated on only one part of her body. Nor was it so great that she was driven into unconsciousness. But it was still terribly painful, and much worse than the spanking, which had required all of Jo’s will to keep from showing Caine how much it had stung.

In this case, there was no question of pretending that she had not felt the blow. Jo managed to control her vocal cords, to keep from making more than an almost inaudible grunt, but she could not prevent her hands from clenching into fists, nor her toes from wriggling in reaction.

“So, it’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” Caine asked. Jo did not dignify this question with a response. He continued. “Let’s see how another ten feels.”

The first stroke had covered an area of about two feet by one foot across the middle of Jo’s ass cheeks. The second cut up into the underside of her rear hemispheres, just below the scarlet rectangle left by the first. Jo grunted again, a little more loudly this time, and her body writhed in agony, or rather, it tried to. So tightly was she stretched that she hardly moved at all. Instead, the muscles of her back, buttocks, shoulders arms and legs strained and corded for a second or two, until the initial spasm of pain passed.

Jo repeated this performance for the each of the remaining nine strokes, which Caine applied down the backs of her thighs and calves, so that when he was finished, the back of her body from the waist down was a more or less uniform red. In addition to the afore-mentioned straining of her muscles, Jo threw her head back and howled at the top of her lungs for the final four strokes, making a weak sound like “Eeeeee!”

To Jo, it seemed to take an unconscionably long time for the fires in her rear end to cool after the last stroke. The continuing waves of pain fully occupied her attention, so that she did not even notice when Caine went away briefly and returned.

“Now, one of the first things I like to check is how a new girl responds to pain,” he told her. She could feel his hand down between her legs again, this time inserting his fingers inside her pussy. “I have found a surprising number of women are excited by being dominated and corrected,” he remarked, “and though this may seem counter-intuitive, these are often the strongest, most independent ones.”

As his fingers worked inside her, Jo could feel the warm glow of sexual arousal spreading from her loins. No Caine, she said silently, I am not one of those women who get off by being tortured. She had no way to know that when Caine had left her, he went to fetch his ever-reliable contact aphrodisiac, which he found very helpful in breaking down the wills of his new girl-toys. This ointment invariably multiplied the sensitivity of female sexual organs by three times or more, and greatly increased Caine’s ability to use pleasure as well as pain in his training.

In a few minutes, Jo’s hips were moving sensuously in an unmistakable response to his manipulation. The feeling was so intense she could not pretend any longer, even to herself, that she was not reacting to Caine as he wished. But I don’t get my kicks from being beaten, she insisted to herself. “Nnnnn!” she mumbled in protest, even as her pelvis circled on his fingers, and she felt a huge explosion nearing.

Caine seemed to take her meaning. “Really, Colonel, are you trying to tell me you’re not about to come? Please don’t disappoint me again. I know you’re strong enough to accept the truth about yourself, even if you don’t happen to like it.” He twirled her clit in a way that sent a wave of sensation like an earth tremor through her, and made Jo stare blindly down at her traitorous body in disbelief.

He had excited her with his hand earlier in the day, and she did not realize until this moment how frustrated that had left her. Hardened as she was to pain, Jo had little resistance to pleasure, especially on this scale. She moaned “Ehhhhh! Ehhhhh!”, and surrendered, letting herself drown in the flood of sensation as she came on Caine’s hand. She could hear him talking, but her mind was so clouded with lust that his words did not register until later.

“You see how easy it is?” He asked. “Your body knows what it wants, and it doesn’t care who gives it to you.”

Afterwards, Jo hung limp in her bonds, her body slick with sweat, her head low in dejection. He had not merely defeated her, but had done so with humiliating ease. The pain of the paddling, that was nothing, but the way he manipulated her to make her climax against her will, when he wanted, that undermined her whole sense of who she was. Could she really be so weak, so easily controlled? She wondered despairingly.

Caine was in front of her again, lifting her chin in his hand. “Why so sad, Colonel? You should be proud of how much you’ve accomplished in such a short time,” he said with mock enthusiasm. “Why, I’m willing to bet that before you know it, you’ll be coming like a volcano while I fuck you up the ass, and if that’s not progress, especially for a confirmed lesbian, I don’t know what is.” For some reason, this praise did not make Jo feel any better.

Caine had developed an erection from paddling and masturbating Jo, but as he was not ready to penetrate her yet, he delayed his gratification to dish out another round of paddling. “Just a bit of reinforcement, to make sure the lesson goes home,” he explained.

Had she been able to speak, Jo would have assured him that she was a quick study, and no reinforcement of any kind was required. She was not looking forward to another beating like the first. She felt as low as she could ever remember, and was far from her normal tough, confident self.

Although Jo tried to steel herself for it, reminding herself that she was not a baby, the first stroke across her buttocks, on flesh that was only just cooling after the initial ten strokes, made her scream and contort without shame or restraint. She was shocked by how much worse the paddle felt this time. This was probably because at that moment, her courage was at a low ebb and her resistance to pain was less than usual.

When he stopped, Caine immediately applied more of his aphrodisiac ointment to his fingers. Then he rubbed it into her nipples, until they were so distended that they were almost painful, toyed with her inflamed clitoris until she was close to another orgasm, then stopped, leaving Jo on the brink.

Uhhhh, nnnn, aaaaah!” Jo screamed in an agony of need, which meant roughly “Fuck! Don’t stop!” She pulled violently and futilely at her restraints, trying to get a hand loose, so that she could finish what he had started.

“There is more to the first lesson than you think, Colonel Langstrom,” Caine told her. “You must also understand that my slaves get nothing they do not earn. In time, you will discover that I decide who receives pleasure and who pain, and in what quantities. Just because you want to come, does not mean you will be permitted to come. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand!” She shrieked. “I’m not an idiot! Now finish me, asshole!” None of this emerged in any sort of comprehensible words of course, but was simply more stifled gibberish.

Caine had not originally planned to harvest Jo’s virginity on the first day, as he had not expected his preliminary efforts to be so successful, but if the Master of Briarcliff was anything, he was adaptable. Jo’s morale was so low at this moment that he was sure he could make her beg to be fucked, and he was not about to the opportunity to inflict such a crushing psychological defeat on her slip away.

He returned to the control console, and made a few adjustments to Jo’s position, lowering her and bringing her feet closer together, creating some slack, and giving her a limited ability to move her lower body.

Then he brought over small chair, placed it between her still open thighs and sat down positioned directly below the golden-tufted triangle between her legs. “Colonel,” he said, “perhaps you are wondering why I have relaxed the tension on your legs and lower body. I am doing it to give you the opportunity to get what we both know you want: an orgasm.” He reached up to finger her pussy, which was now practically in his lap. “You do want to come, don’t you?” She moaned and tried to rub her sex knob on his fingers, moving her hips in a way that demonstrated her excellent flexibility. Caine instantly withdrew his hand, and she whined in frustration.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” he said. “Now, I normally don’t do this for my new fuck-slaves on the first day, but I have so much respect for you that I’m going to make an exception this one time,” he continued. To his own ears, Caine sounded about as convincing as a used car salesman telling a mark about the special price he was going to offer on a clunker because he liked him. It probably sounded more convincing to her, he judged. She was in no state to be very analytical, after all.

He reached up to unzip the mouth of the hood, and said, “Open up and start pushing with your tongue.” As she did, he reached into her mouth to pull out the sopping wet gel-foam which had so effectively stifled her speech. When the last bit of gray plastic was out, Jo gasped and said, “Thank you. I almost forgot how good it feels to be able to talk.”

Caine did not want to distract her from the main issue, so he allowed her failure to address him as he had instructed go uncorrected this time. “My pleasure, Colonel.”

He opened his fly, and drew out his cock, which was at its maximum state of erection, eight inches long, an inch and a half in circumference, and bending back like a hairy, flesh-colored banana. He grasped it in his hand, and moved it to brush lightly back and forth against the lips of Jo’s sex, which hovered just over his lap. She shuddered, not sure what had touched her, but suspecting the worst.

“That was my cock,” Caine said. “It is right under your cunt, in perfect position to be rammed home. The question is: do you want it?”

“What do you think?” She demanded sounding outraged, although he strongly suspected the reaction was largely simulated. “What kind of question is that? You know all about Robyn and me.”

He could excuse her once, but not twice, especially when she was openly disputing with him, as there was a danger of her forgetting her place. He reached up, and slammed his open palm into her cheek, snapping her head sideways and making a line of spittle fly from her mouth. “Master,” he said. “You must remember to call me ‘Master’.”

“Uh, uh…Master, yes…, Master,” she mumbled, sounding dazed. “I forgot, sorry.”

He waited a little while, until he was sure her head was clear, then reached up into her sopping slot again, and asked, “So, what’s your answer?”

Jo’s hips began to move in a series of circles, led by his grip on her sex button. “Umm, ummmm, you bastard,” she muttered. “I won’t…oh fuck!” she shouted, as he pulled his hand away again.

She panted for a little while, fighting to stop her pelvis from grinding down where his hand had just been. “All right,” she said through gritted teeth, “you win, this time. You can put your…” she hesitated, “…you can fuck me if you like...” After a heartbeat she sullenly added “Master.”

“My, my, that’s very kind of you, Colonel Langstrom,” Caine said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “My pleasure slave is giving me permission to have intercourse with her. I certainly am the lucky one.” He paused and went on in a very different tone. “No, Colonel, that is not the way things work around here. Look at it this way: if this was the Army, I would be the equivalent of a General of the Army, and you would be a raw recruit, still in boot camp. Now if the five-star General wanted a boot private to do something, do you suppose he would ask permission?”

“If he wanted to fuck the private, do you mean?” Jo asked.

“Yes, well, we don’t want to take the analogy too far,” Caine conceded. “I hope I am stating the obvious, when I tell you that I do not need your permission to fuck you, any way I want, at any time I choose. I can do whatever I want with you: sell you to a brothel, put you to work cleaning toilets or grind you up for fertilizer, anything. You are a chattel slave, Colonel Langstrom, personal property with no more rights than this chair I’m sitting on. If you want something from me, like the orgasm your horny little body craves, you will have to ask for it, humbly and sincerely.” He placed his hand palm upward on her swollen pussy lips, and rubbed gently. Jo’s hips instantly went into motion again, swaying back and forth on his hand.

“Ah…ah, um, yes, I can see that, Master,” she said distractedly. “So, errr…, OK… will you fuck me… please, Master?”

“Better,” Caine said, “but still not quite good enough.” He was determined to chasten the proud former soldier as much as possible. He could not turn her into a useful slave as long as her pride would not allow her to bend to his will. He pulled his hand away from her pussy again, and she moaned “Goddamn it!”

After that, she was silent for so long that Caine began to wonder if he had pushed her too far, and whether he should have accepted her initial request. Finally, she cleared her throat, shook her head, and speaking in a strange, husky voice, said, “I haven’t had much practice begging, but I’ll do the best I can. Master, I beg…” she swallowed, “…beg you to please fuck me. I am only a slave, I know, and I don’t have the right to ask for so much as a drink of water, but you would be doing me a great favor…I mean, I need it so badly, I…oh, please will you just fuck me, Master?” Her voice had begun to tremble halfway through as she stuttered out this request, and by the end, it was obvious that she was crying.

Crying? Caine asked himself. Jo Langstrom of the Legion of Mjolnir, crying like a schoolgirl? He was startled at first, but then reflected that she had probably never been forced to beg like this before. Her pride had not allowed her to escape prison and save her career by perjuring herself and testifying that Robyn Brand and she were not lovers at her trial, nor had she asked for mercy or any special consideration from the court. She probably had not asked anybody for mercy in her whole life. But he had made her beg, and beg humbly, for his cock.

The most rigid steel is not the most resilient: it is more durable if it can bend, at least a little, especially if it will otherwise break. Jo Langstrom was a sword that did not know how to bend, so she had broken. The dark patches on the hood near her eyes, where her tears had soaked through the latex, gave mute testimony to what her pride had cost her. It was wrenching to witness someone so strong giving way, something that moved Caine in spite of himself.

“All right, Jo,” he said almost gently, “your request is granted.” He cupped her buttocks in his hands, and said, “Let me guide you down, nice and slow, now. It may hurt a little at first.” It was not until much later that he realized that for the very first time, he had addressed her by her first name.