Red Feline was recovering the feeling in her body, she could feel the ropes on her wrists and ankles pulling her apart, her chest rising, struggling to breath, a struggle that she was familiar with from the times when she hanged herself from the tree, and from way, way back in the time of the unknown, when she was hanged for a long time.

There were those fantasies -or were they memories? that followed her through life, and for a while she thought that she would have to be happy with the idea that it was an experience she had to deal with on her own.

The few times she involved her friends in her games, she wasn't happy. First, she could not go as far as she needed, and second, it was a bit embarrassing. She felt that her friends could see in her eyes the intensity of her passion for the whip and the cross.

But it was the whip and the cross that were present in her mind every morning, when she woke up and every night before she went to sleep and they were there when she was under the weight of a lover or when she mounted him...or her.

The Governor walked around Piroska talking softly, as if trying to seduce her, as if he needed to convince her to be a good slave. "I will make you my favorite.", he whispered "I will dress you in the finest garments and I will place three slaves to tend to your needs." .

Piroska was not paying much attention, his words were like the noise that thunder makes on stormy nights, it's there, but matters little if you are not paying attention. "I will put oil on your skin and make those marks disappear...I will wipe your tears and dry your sweat...I will be kind to you if you submit right now...but if you don't...I will tame you like a beast and mark my words...you will be tamed and serve me on your knees..."

"You have a choice now, and think well...", he whispered.

Red Feline heard the words of the Governor, or maybe she read them from the parchments she accumulated in the extensive library of her imagination but the steps of the Man in Black approaching took her back to her tormented present. The man reached out with his hand and pulled the last strand of her top that was still hanging from her shoulder.

She not only felt the rag being tugged away, but she saw her glistening body trembling, shivering from the cold and perhaps the fear she was still harboring deep inside. Her harsh punishment was beyond rationality, an impossible feat if it were real. She was secure in the thought that at one point she was going to wake up and find herself, naked perhaps, in the middle of the room from where she was taken, because she was sure that at least that room was real.

But the marble under Piroska's feet felt also very real, as real as her anger and determination.

The Governor, smiling kindly, reached to her with his hand to touch her face, like a lover touches the cheek of a loved one.

His hand kissed the cold face of Piroska who was still looking down, her body tense, her knees bent, feeling the Governor's fingers touch her skin. She felt his thumb pressing her chin in an almost pleasant way, rubbing with the tips of his fingers her tender skin. "I'm sorry for using the whip on you.", he whispered as he timidly caressed Piroska's face, now with the back of his hand,"I'll never do it again if you submit, and accept me as your master.".

They stood in front of each other silent, tense. The soldiers watched, curious, at their supreme Governor tenderly trying to dissuade a naked slave, one that he could rape if he wanted to, one that he owned, one that had no power, no choice, nothing at all.

It was a bizarre spectacle to see the Governor humbling himself to appease the young, naked, whipped slave. The soldiers were in awe, one of them was sure that the Governor was about to go down on his knees to kiss her feet. What happened next surprised them all.

Red Feline woke to the feeling of the man's hand reaching under her panties and touching her soft mound. He was reaching that place where a man should only go if she has given the ok. She was at his mercy and he had the power to do whatever he felt like doing.

He took her panties in his grip and pulled them up, to make them go into the crack of her vagina. Red Feline returned to her ordeal as her panties turned into a sharp, thin rope that cut her skin and parted her tender labia, her toes left the floor and her entire body was now resting on the thin edge of her panties. She moaned softly in pain and shame, but she could not raise her head, as she wanted, she could not open her eyes and yet she could see, always from the outside, how her open legs, still tied to the sides of the frame, rose a few inches off the floor.

The pain took her back into her body where she found herself struggling to open her eyes and smelling the armpits of the man who was leaning towards her.