He slapped her again, and then twice more.  Both tear-covered cheeks now were bright red and visibly puffy.  “Would you like to talk now, sweet Katie?” he asked.  She nodded.

Stern loosened the strap around her mouth and removed the bulky, saliva-coated ball.  She looked up at her tormentor with huge, sad, pale-blue eyes.

“Robert, poor Robert,” she said softly.  “It was so long ago, so many years to carry so much hate around with you.  I am so sorry that I hurt you.  But can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me for the happiness I found with Charles?”

Stern seemed to wipe a tear from his eye, and knelt down to bring his face level with hers.  He reached out his hand and she flinched, thinking he was about to strike her again, but instead he gently stroked her face where he had slapped her a moment before.

“Of course I’ll forgive you, dear Katherine, my love,” he said, smiling warmly at her.  Katherine smiled back tentatively, wondering if her plea had somehow touched his heart.

“I will forgive you,” he continued, rising, his voice growing harder, “after you and your little bitches have suffered the twenty years of Hell I have endured since you betrayed me.  I only wish that dear Charles were here with us.  I had planned for him to receive the bulk of the punishment, you know.  But now that he is no longer with us, you will have to take his place.”

Katherine gasped in horror at the hideous change in Stern.  His shadow fell across her face as he stood with eyes blazing, lips set in a grimace, his hands balled in fists of rage.  He looked like something glimpsed in a nightmare.

He had the glittering rod in his hand again.  It hissed through the air as he lashed down, etching a pink line across the tops of her tits and making them bounce excitingly.

She screamed at the fiery agony that the rod left behind.  It seemed to inflict far more pain than it appeared; it felt as if it was slicing the flesh off her mounds, but when she looked down, there was no blood, not even a welt.

“It’s remarkably painful, isn’t it, Katie?”  Stern asked.  “It delivers a mild electric charge when it strikes, you see.  I used it to warm up Alex’s bottom before the first time I took her.  After that, I made her beg me to take her little cherry.  You should have her the way she came like a cheap slut…”

Katherine thought that she would go mad.  “No, please no more!” she shrieked.  “How can you do such things to my sweet little girl?  She’s just an innocent!  Please, I beg you… ahh!”

Stern cut her plea short by whipping the shiny rod down to strike directly on her left nipple.  The pain was so great that she nearly choked herself lunging forward and up under the burning torment the rod visited on her.

“Enough!” Stern said.  “She may have been an innocent when she left home, but she is now nothing more or less than a pain-slut,” he told the weeping beauty.  “Evidently the video I sent you did not open your eyes to the truth about your precious daughters.  Perhaps you need a little more proof.”

With this, he rammed the gag back into her mouth and covered her head with a black latex hood that completely covered her eyes.  He detached her from the pole, removed the straps around her ankles, and released the spreader bar.  He forced her roughly to her feet by pulling her elbow until she thought her shoulder would dislocate.  Then, he shoved her in the direction of the stairs, yelling, “Walk, bitch!” and snapping a whip into her exposed buttocks.

The journey was a nightmare for Katherine.  The hood effectively blinded her, so she tripped and fell often.  Each time she did, Stern was ready with the whip, lashing her naked body until she regained her feet.  She was not even able to express her agony aloud, as the combination of the ball gag and hood effectively stifled all of her cries and pleas for mercy.

Katherine stumbled to the top of the stone stairway, enduring several bruising falls and numerous strokes of the vicious whip on the way.  She was forced into another of the little cars and whisked away.  When the car stopped, Stern pulled her out, and drove her before him with the whip, calling out directions as he flogged her.

“Turn left, bitch!”  snap!  “Turn right, cunt!  Faster!”  snap!

By the time they reached the destination, her alabaster skin was marked with red welts from her slender ankles to her creamy shoulders.  Stern pushed her into an armchair and quickly attached restraints to her arms and legs.  Then he fixed her head in place with a clamp, immobilizing it completely.  Finally, he removed the upper half of the latex hood so that she could see again.  She was in a dimly lit room, looking at a blank wall.

“I’m going to leave you alone here for a while.  You should see something interesting very soon,” Stern told her.  He left.