He climbed into bed and sat against the pillows, with one knee up, his left arm resting on it. He reached over and filled the two goblets and then he extended one to me.

I was baffled. Did he mean for me to drink from it as he would? I took it at once and sat back holding it. I was looking unabashedly at him now; he had not commanded me not to. And his lean hard chest with its curling bits of white hair around the ni**les and down the center to his belly caught the light of the candle beautifully. His c**k was not as hard as mine yet. I wanted to remedy that.

"You may drink the wine as I do," he said, as if he'd read my thoughts. And, quite astonished, I drank as a man for the first time in half a year, feeling a little awkward about it. I gulped too much and had to stop. But it was well-aged burgundy and without equal in my memory.

"Tristan," he said softly.

I looked him straight in the eye and slowly lowered the cup.

"You're to speak to me now," he said, "to answer me."

More amazement. "Yes, Master," I said softly.

"Did you hate me last night when I had you whipped on the turntable?" he asked.

I was shocked.

He took another drink of the wine but without taking his eyes off me. He looked ominous suddenly, though I didn't know why.

"No, Master," I whispered.

"Louder," he said. "I can't hear you."

"No, Master," I answered. I flushed as deeply as I ever had. It wasn't really necessary to recall the turntable. I'd never truly stopped thinking about it.

" 'Sir' will do now and then as well as 'Master,' " he said. "I like both. Did you hate Julia when she stretched your anus with the horsetail phallus?"

"No, Sir," I said, the blush getting hotter.

"Did you hate me when I tethered you with the ponies and made you pull the coach to the manor house? I don't mean today after you had been so well worked and tempered. I mean yesterday when you were staring with such horror at the harnesses."

"No, Sir," I protested.

"Then what did you feel when all those things happened?"

I was too stupefied to answer.

"What did I want from you today when I tethered you behind that pair of ponies, when I plugged your mouth and your anus and made you march in your bare feet?"

"Submission," I said, my mouth dry. My voice sounded unfamiliar to me.

"And ... in more precise detail?"

"That I... I march briskly. And that I be taken through the village in ... in that fashion. . . ."I was trembling. I tried to steady the goblet with the other hand as if it were a thoughtless gesture.

"In what fashion?" he pressed.

"Harnessed, gagged."

"Yes. . . ?"

"And impaled on a phallus and barefoot." I swallowed, but I didn't look away from him.

"And what do I want from you now?" he said.

I thought for a moment. "I don't know. I ... That I answer your questions."

"Exactly. So you will answer them, fully," he said politely with a slight lift of his eyebrows, "and with deep descriptive passages, concealing nothing and without so much coaxing. You will give long answers. In fact you will continue your answer until I put another question." He reached for the bottle and filled my goblet.

"And drink your wine whenever you like," he said, "there is plenty of it."

"Thank you, Sir," I murmured, staring at the cup.

"That's a little better!" he said, marking my response. "Now, we'll start again. When you first saw the team 'of ponies and you realized you were being made to join them, what went through your mind? Let me remind you, you had a stout phallus in your backside with a good horsetail attached to it. But then came the boots and the harness. You are blushing. What did you think?"

"That I couldn't bear it," I said, not daring to pause, my voice quavering. "That I couldn't be made to do it. That I, I would fail somehow. That I couldn't be lashed to a coach and made to pull it like an animal, and the tail, it seemed a dreadful decoration, a stigma." My face was in a fever. I sipped at the wine, but he had not spoken and this meant I had to go on answering him! "I think it was better as the harnesses were tightened and I couldn't get away."

"But you made no move to get away before that. When I strapped you home through the street, I was alone with you. You didn't try to run then, not even when the village toughs whipped you."

"Well, what good would it have done to run?" I asked in consternation. "I'd been taught not to run! I would only have been trussed up somewhere, beaten, maybe my c**k whipped - " I stopped, shocked at my own words. "Or maybe I would only have been caught and harnessed anyway, and pulled along truckling by the other ponies. And the mortification would have been greater because all would have known that I was so afraid, out of control, and being so violently forced to it."

I drank from the goblet and shoved my hair out of my eyes. "No, if it was to be done, then it was better to submit; it was inescapable, so it had to be accepted."

I shut my eyes tight for a second. The heat and torrent of my words amazed me.

"But you'd been taught to submit to Lord Stefan, and you did not," he said.

"I tried!" I burst out. "But Lord Stefan ..."

"Yes. . ."

"It was what the Captain said," I faltered. My voice sounded frail to me now. The words were too rapid. "He had been my lover before, and instead of using that intimacy to his advantage as Master, he allowed it to weaken him."

"What an interesting statement. Did he talk to you as I'm talking to you now?"

"No! No one has ever done that!" I laughed shortly, dryly. "That is, not with me talking back. He ordered me about like any castle Lord. He ordered me stiffly, but he was in a terrible state of agitation. It excited him beyond words to see me erect and bowing to his wishes and yet he couldn't endure it. I think, well, I think sometimes that if our positions had been reversed by fate, I might have showed him how to do it."

My Master laughed, and his laugh was free and slow.

He drank from his cup. His face was animated and a little warmer now. I felt some terrible sense of danger to my soul, looking at him.

"O, that is probably too true," he said. "The best slaves sometimes make the best Masters. But you may never have the opportunity to prove it. I spoke to the Captain about you this afternoon. I made thorough inquiries. When you were free years ago, you bested Lord Stefan in all ways, didn't you? Better rider, swordsman, archer. And he loved you and admired you."