Ulrika, in Caine's second basement dungeon, had to wait in the darkness longer than her former assistant, as her new owner was visiting with Dane first. She was restrained in a more uncomfortable way than her former aide.

The two liveried servants had pulled a full latex mask over her head, covering her eyes and mouth, and rendering her effectively blind and mute. There was a hole in the back, through which her hair had been drawn and shaped into a pony tail. There was a small pair of holes for her nose, allowing her to breathe, and a zipper over the mouth, currently closed.

A cord coming down from a pulley system on the ceiling had been knotted around the pony tail and shortened, stretching Ulrika's neck and pulling her head back. Her arms were behind her body, confined from wrist to shoulder in a single glove which was tied tightly enough to make her elbows touch, and jam her shoulders painfully together. This, not incidentally, forced her chest to bow outward, to produce an impressive display of her wondrous breasts.

To add to this effect (not that it was really needed), the servants had laced Ulrika into an improbably small corset, drawing the strings so tightly that she was unable to fill her lungs completely, and could only manage to draw shallow breaths. The real purpose of the corset, however, was to exaggerate the swells of her hips and breasts, and it accomplished this task with gusto. With her outthrust breasts, artificially narrowed waist, and features hidden under the latex mask, she looked more like the world's most expensive sex toy than she did a flesh and blood woman.

Perhaps to ensure that she did become too comfortable and fall asleep while waiting for Caine, another overhead line had been knotted to a ring on the end of the single glove and pulled up, putting terrible pressure on Ulrika's already strained shoulders and arms, and obliging her to bend forward at the waist, even though this made the rope on her hair threaten to rip her scalp from her head.

She was left alone in the room in this state for more than 2 hours, and by the time she heard the door open, signaling the arrival of Caine, she thought she was ready for any form of relief, even death.

She heard feet growing nearer, and then moving behind her. "Nice position, Ulrika. Since we are old friends, I am going to take the liberty of using your first name. I know you won't mind." Caine said.

Ulrika answered, "Mmmm", which he took to be her permission.

"Very good," he said. He rested his hand atop one smooth buttock and slid it over the curve down to her inner thigh. "Spread your legs, Ulrika, and show me how much you want to serve me. You do want to serve me, don't you?"

Ulrika obediently slid her legs apart and moaned "Ehhhh,", which was the closest approximation of "yes" she could produce.

"I'm glad to hear that," he said. He toyed with her sex as he talked, casually working two fingers inside her sheath, feeling for her clitoris. "You see, I feel you owe me a great debt for trying to blackmail me, and I have not yet decided whether I should allow you to discharge it with personal service, or simply put an end to your evil existence in some lingering and very painful fashion. After all, you are now my chattel, with no more rights than a lawn chair or an old typewriter, so there's nothing to keep me from disposing of you permanently, and it's not as if anyone would miss you if I did. What are your thoughts on the matter? Would you prefer to die and be done with all your suffering, or would you rather continue your worthless existence as a fuck-slave?"

As soon as he finished asking this question, Caine reached out to pinch Ulrika's nostrils shut between his fingers. Just a few minutes earlier, she had been telling herself that death would be a welcome relief from the unbearable pain of living as a tormented slave, but now, when this option was offered to her, she realized that she had only been deceiving herself. Ulrika was not ready to die. Somewhere deep inside, she still believed that her current problems were merely temporary, that she would someday make a comeback. She was not ready to give up hope and, on a more basic level, she was afraid to die. She reacted vigorously when her air was cut off, tossing her head frantically to try to throw him off, flinging her body about as much as her bonds permitted, and emitting a high-pitched squeal of distress: "Nnnnnn!"

"So than, you would rather be a cowardly fuck-slave than a brave corpse?" Caine asked, retaining his hold and watching her struggles with interest.

"Uhhh! Uhhhh!" Ulrika said, nodding her head as well as she could, to communicate her strong desire to live. Her pulse was pounding in her ears both from the surge of panic-driven adrenaline and the lack of oxygen. She could feel herself slipping away, as iron bands tightened around her heaving chest. Her brain seemed to be trapped inside a narrowing circle of darkness. Just as the black ring was on the verge of swallowing her, Caine said, "We'll just have to see about that, then," and released her nose.

Ulrika's nostrils flared wide as she fought to fill her starved lungs. "You will have to convince me you are worth more to me alive than dead. I will give you a chance to do so, but if you fail..." He trailed off ominously.

Caine opened the zipper in the front of the mask, freeing Ulrika's mouth. "Th...thank you..." she gasped. She screamed when Caine's hand smashed into her face, setting off tiny explosions of light, like flashbulbs, in her brain.

"You will address me as 'Master' at all times, bitch," he said coldly. "And you will not speak again until you are spoken to. For someone whose life depends on pleasing me, you are not off to a very good start."

He waited, then slammed his hand into the other side of her face, which was already sore from her initial encounter with Caine upstairs. "I'm waiting for an apology," he said. "I expect my slaves to acknowledge their mistakes."

But if she apologized, she would be breaking the rule about not speaking unless spoken to, Ulrika thought, so no matter what she did, she would be in the wrong. "I am sorry, Master," she said. "It won't happen again."

"Consider the matter forgotten," Caine said. (Generous of you, Ulrika thought). "Let's talk about something else." He strolled around behind the nude woman, admiring her loveliness. "I wonder what kind of service I can expect from a slave who was once the most powerful woman...most powerful person...in Karlsvania."

His hand stroked upward between her legs, and into the valley between her upraised ass cheeks. As he talked, his thumb and fingers spread her smooth rear hemispheres wide, and probed at the crinkled ring of her anus. "For example, are you prepared to take my cock in here?" He worked one finger into the elastic hole, drawing a startled "Eeek!" from Ulrika.

"I...yes, Mas...yes Master...if you want...me...to...ahh!...I will...do whatev...oww!...you want...oh! oh!" She answered with some difficulty, as Caine was now cramming three fingers at a time up to the second joint into her undersized hole.

"Really?" He asked. "You will do whatever I want?"

She squirmed as he rotated his fingers back and forth, stretching the sensitive ring painfully. "Eeee!...Yes, anything!...Ahhh!"

He pulled out of her rectum, and went back to stand in front of her bowed head. "Lick me clean," he ordered, holding his fingers up to Ulrika's lips.

Ulrika shuddered in disgust when she smelled the odor of her own bowels and realized what he was asking her to do. She grimaced, made a sound like "Echh," under her breath, and said, "Yes, Master." Then she gingerly extended her tongue until it made contact with his hand, controlling an urge to vomit.

"Come on, Ulrika," Caine said impatiently, "we don't have all day." He put one hand on the back of her head to hold her in place and shoved his fingers into her mouth.

She bucked under his hand, trying to pull away, but Caine would not allow her to escape. "It's your dirt, you clean it up," he said. She had little choice but to suck his fingers clean as he demanded.

"So, you're ready to serve me, hmm?" Caine mused aloud. "Perhaps you will have an opportunity to prove that. But before that happens, there is still another matter to be resolved. We still need to decide on an appropriate repayment for what you tried to do to me."

She heard the sounds of his footsteps moving away, then returning. Ulrika heard something cutting the air behind her. "I don't think you will disagree when I suggest that you deserve to be punished for your attempt to blackmail me." He paused, which Ulrika guessed meant that he expected a reply, even though he had not directly asked her a question.

"Er...no Master, I agree...," she said uncertainly. She considered trying to offer a defense or mitigation of some kind, almost instantly decided that would only serve to anger Caine further, and continued, "...I deserve punishment for what I tried to do to you." She tensed for a moment, then relaxed slightly when no rain of blows followed.

"Then, since we are on the same page," Caine said. "the only thing we need to decide is the exact nature of that punishment. Why don't we start with twenty lashes on your pussy and asshole, and then you can try to convince me what an obedient slave you will be?"

Ulrika froze in terror when she heard Caine pronounce her punishment. Twenty strokes of a whip on her...? She gibbered in fear, desperately trying to think of some way to change her sentence. "Uh...ummm...M...Master...I...eeee!"

Her beginning plea was left unfinished when the leather tails of the whip inscribed three parallel lines of fire on the flesh of her vulnerable bottom globes. "You will beg for twenty well-earned strokes on your cunt and asshole, and you will do so humbly and with sincerity," Caine said in a voice like iron.

Ulrika surrendered, giving up any idea of negotiating the terms of the punishment. She spoke slowly, choosing her words with care, her voice trembling. "Master Caine, please...uh...punish me ...with ...twenty lashes on my..." she hesitated, swallowed, then went on, "...p...pussy and asshole. I deserve to be punished for my misbehavior."

"Misbehavior?" Caine repeated. "Is that what you call it? Misbehavior? 'Misbehavior' is when a five-year old refuses to lie down at naptime. What we are discussing here is extortion, which as a former prosecutor, you are undoubtedly aware is a crime, a felony of the second degree, to be precise. You and your late husband threatened to put me in prison if I didn't pay up." He swung the whip underhand, cutting up between Ulrika's legs. Two of the three blades struck the lips of her sex. Over her shrieking, he said, "That was a gentle reminder. The next one will be harder. Try again."

For the next thirty seconds, Ulrika's comments were limited to cries of "Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" as she pranced energetically in place. At last, prompted by Caine's snarled, "Get on with it, cunt," she said haltingly, "Ah!...Fuck!...Please ex...cuse me... Master. I...deserve to be pun...punished for my...crime."

"Punished how, exactly?" Caine prompted.

"With twenty lashes on my pussy and asshole," Ulrika responded.

"Let's call it a down payment on your debt," Caine said. He nudged her anus with the handle of the whip. "Spread your legs wider, and lift your ass higher. I want your asshole winking at me."

Ulrika obediently opened her stance, arched her back and locked her knees, feeling horribly exposed.

"Higher," Caine ordered, prodding her bottom hole again with the whip handle. "All the way up." Ulrika's calf muscles strained as she went up on her toes in response. Caine eyed the tempting target she presented. With their creamy flesh and rounded elegance, the twin moons of her buttocks were the equals of any he had ever seen. Beneath a few curls of red-gold hair, the pink lips of her sex were invitingly parted, while the separation of her ass cheeks and the angle at which they were held afforded him an unobstructed view of the little rayed star of her bottomhole.

Caine removed a tube of ointment from his pocket and squeezed some of the contents onto his fingers. He inserted the fingers in her slot, working in the salve, which was of course, his favorite contact stimulant. "Just getting you properly prepared, so you can enjoy the full benefit of the correction," he explained. In less than a minute, the interior of Ulrika's sex was flowing with her juice, her clit was as hard as a pebble and her hips were moving in time to each stroke of his fingers.

He removed his hand from her cleft. "I think you're ready. Count the strokes out loud," Caine said. "Any you don't count will be repeated." Then he slashed upward into the delicate flesh with his full strength. Two of the three blades painfully furrowed into the softness at the top of Ulrika's thighs on either side of her pubic mound. But, the third landed squarely athwart the crinkled ring of her rectum, inflicting suffering of an entirely different magnitude.

A white-hot flash of pain filled her world for a few, endless seconds. She forgot where she was, what she was doing, forgot even who she was. She danced in place and made animal sounds of distress, but she did not know it. By the time she was capable of comprehending speech again, Caine had already begun a warning. "...remind you to count each stroke, or it will be repeated."

She concentrated, doing her best to ignore the red fog of pain, trying to make sense of his words. Yes, she remembered, he had told her to count aloud. "One," she said.

"Now resume the position," he commanded. The whipping that followed lasted 15 minutes, according to the clock. To Ulrika Torvald, it seemed more like 15 years. Although not all of the three leather snakes bit her exposed orifices on every stroke, at least one of the cowhide strands landed on either her anus or her labia each time, and on one occasion, one somehow found its way to her swollen love button, sending her into a crazed, two-minute long jig of agony.

After delivering the final stroke, Caine stood over the sobbing Ulrika, hands on hips, considering the welted flesh of her sweating, straining hindquarters. He reached out to take her pony tail in his hand, and tugged on it, bending her head back. "Do I have your attention?" He inquired.

"Yes, yes, Master!" Ulrika shouted.

"All right," Caine said. "I trust I have provided sufficient inspiration. Now you may try to persuade me that I should retain you as a fuck-slave, instead of putting you down like a rabid dog." He began to massage the interior of her slot, gently rubbing her sore love button. "Begin."

Part of Ulrika wondered if he expected her to become aroused by stroking her clitoris while it was still bruised and swollen from the lash. For the most part, however, she was marshalling her thoughts as she prepared to argue for her life.

"I will not attempt to deny my share of the responsibility, Master Caine...," she began.

"Glad to hear it," he grunted.

"...but you should know that the whole scheme was Jens' idea...ahh!" Her recital ended in a shriek as the three leather lashes cut the soft flesh of her thighs.

"No dice," Caine said. "First, I don't believe it. It's a little too convenient to blame everything on dear old Jens, who doesn't happen to be around to deny it. But even if it was true, you were the Public Prosecutor, not he, and the whole thing depended on you using your power in the courts. Besides, the scheme was for the benefit of your political career. Next, I suppose you'll tell me that he forced you to do it, that you were really the victim. Don't even think about trying that nonsense with me. Nothing you can possibly say will gain my sympathy."

He snapped the whip into her upraised posterior again, making her shriek and jump straight in the air. "Now cut the crap, and start giving me good reasons why I should ever trust a snake like you in my service." His fingers returned to her sheath, resuming the manipulation of her love button, which had made a surprisingly rapid recovery after the whipping.

Ulrika considered telling him that her experiences since being impeached had changed her profoundly and that she was now a reformed character, then almost instantly rejected the idea. She was confident of her ability to con most people, but she knew her tricks would not work with this man. Perhaps if she dealt with him honestly...

"Master Caine, I will be the best, most loyal, most obedient slave in the house, because I will always know that if I fail you, you will not hesitate to...to put me down, like a rabid dog," she answered, recalling his words. There was more she wanted to say, but she was distracted by the powerful, insistent waves of sexual excitement coming from between her legs. She struggled to concentrate. "Um, uh..., if you have me around, you can... ooh, Master, it's so hard to think when you touch me ...you can p...punish me every day, but you can't...can't do anything more to me after I'm dead. So it's a much better investment for...oh, oh, fuck! I'm coming!"

Ulrika 's pelvis swiveled vigorously from side to side, as she climaxed uninhibitedly on Caine's hand. As she writhed in a massive spasm of pleasure, Caine said, "It's true that I could always hang or drown you later, if you don't work out. And it does look like you're a pretty hot fuck, too. Perhaps I'll give you a trial period, and you can show me just how submissive you can be."

Spent after the climax, Ulrika sighed and relaxed, her body glowing with warmth. Watching her perspiring body contorting as he handled her had given Caine a massive erection. He applied aphrodisiac ointment to her nipples, which almost instantly swelled in his fingers, then rubbed more into already receptive sex knob.

Ulrika had not believed that she could be aroused so soon after her massive orgasm. So she was surprised when, after teasing, flicking and pinching the little stem inside her slot, Caine soon had her on the brink of another eruption. "You can start your trial by begging me very prettily for a fuck," he said. He rubbed the head of his organ suggestively against the engorged lips of her pussy.

"Yes, fuck me Master, please fuck me," Ulrika said, raising her hips and trying to surround the cock that she could feel so touching the engorged lips of her sex.

Caine moved back, allowing only the first inch of his rod into her slot. "I'm not hearing it," he told her. "I don't think you really mean it. Tell me what a cheap whore you are, tell me how badly you want to be fucked."

She ground her teeth together in frustration. "Urr...I need your cock, Master! I beg you to fuck me like a two-crown hooker, like a dog. I don't care what you do, just fuck me!" By the end, she was shrieking like a madwoman.

He slid forward to fill her slippery box, inserting his entire length in one long, slow stroke, and said, "If you come without permission, I will whip your tits."

She shuddered, trying and failing to control the demands of her body. "I...I...can't help it, Master," Ulrika wailed. Her pelvis pressed down on him, as primitive instincts made her try to stuff his thick pole deeper into her slot. "I'm going to come. Please don't hurt my poor breasts."

By now he had taken control of her nipples. He rolled the distended heads in his fingers, and she moaned. "My slaves enjoy orgasms when I decide they have earned them, not before. Do not come without permission," he repeated.

As he had expected, the effect of the deep strokes on her salve-sensitized tissues of his rigid meat were far too powerful for Ulrika to fight. Caine felt the walls of her sex contract around him as she exploded in another, even wilder climax.

"Eeee! Eeeee! Fuck, I'm coming. Fuck!" She shouted, her back arching, as she bounced up and down like a carousel horse.

Caine had laid the whip on a nearby table, within easy reach. While continuing to thrust in and out of Ulrika, he snatched it up and began to flail her breasts with the leather tails. As her globes were forced far out in front of her chest by the bondage and pressed dramatically upward by the corset, they presented a target that would have been difficult to miss.

He did not miss. The three leather blades hissed through the air like malicious serpents, making Ulrika's breasts bounce momentarily at the moment of impact, before their remarkable firmness caused them to settle back in place almost immediately with the soft flesh quivering. Three angry red lines marred the formerly white perfection. Ulrika screamed, as a shock of sudden pain suddenly disturbed her private universe of pleasure.

"Do...not...come...without...permission," Caine said, matching each word with a swing of the whip.

Each burning blow made her writhe and shriek. They also caused her pussy to clamp on Caine's organ like a fist, a delightful sensation which did nothing to discourage him from continuing to apply the whip.

The whipping had an effect on Ulrika which she had not anticipated. The pain of flagellation somehow merged with her ongoing orgasm, heightening an already nearly overwhelming flood of sexual pleasure. She danced and swayed like a mad creature, screaming "Don't stop! Harder!" Had she been asked at that moment whether she was asking for heavier strokes of his cock, blows of the whip, or both, she would not have been able to answer. She was in a strange, new place, floating in a delirium of sensation, where the concepts of pleasure and pain no longer had distinct meanings.

At some point, Caine's organ throbbed and shot off inside her, but Ulrika did not know it. Even when he stopped flagellating her breasts and dropped the whip, she hardly noticed it, so lost was she in her own world. It was not until she became so drained by the orgasm that she simply did not have the physical strength to continue, that it finally ended.

Ulrika was practically unconscious by then. She hung slackly in her bonds, which were all that kept her on her from collapsing to the floor. She only slowly became aware that her breasts were extraordinarily sore (they felt, in fact, as if they had been scoured with a cheese grater), that she was puffing like a steam locomotive, her legs were as weak as strands of overcooked pasta and her heart was pounding as if she had just completed a marathon. She opened her eyes, and was startled to discover that she could see again! While she had been drifting in her private universe, Caine had removed the mask.

He was the first thing she saw. He was seated in a folding chair directly in front of her, breathing deeply, red-faced and perspiring, apparently not yet fully recovered from his exertions.

He looked up, cued perhaps by a change in the sound of her breathing. "So you finally decided to come back from wherever you went," he said slowly. "I was starting to wonder if you were coming back at all. You know Ulrika, I am no longer a young man, so it is entirely within the realm of possibility that another session like that would be the end of me. I wonder if you were deliberately trying to..." He stopped and shook his head. "No, I don't suppose so." He said, answering his own half-completed question.

"Anyway," he went on after a pause, "it looks like I'm going to have to keep you around for a while, at least long enough to film you coming like that again. Nobody will believe it otherwise."

Ulrika, who was having difficulty believing it herself, had nothing to add.