I stood barefoot, naked, save for collar and adornments, on the dancing floor of a low-ceilinged Gorean tavern. I must prepare to please masters.
"Are you ready?" asked the leader of the musicians, the czehar player.
"Yes, Master!" I said eagerly.
"Aii!" cried a fellow, pleased, as I began to dance. The music was rich about me. I danced, as the slave I was.
"Here, slut, here!" called more than one man.
I teased them, dancing close to them, swaying, my belly alive for them, with the jangling metal pieces, the anklets clashing on my ankles, the bracelets sliding and ringing on my wrists, and then as they attempted to seize me, drew back, backing away, or whirled, with a swirl of beads, away from them. I picked one man after another out of the audience, seeming to dance my beauty most meaningfully to him. Perhaps he would be my use master. I did not know. Several began to keep the time with their hands, clapping them together.
Suddenly in my dance it seemed I was a virgin, reluctant and fearful, terrified in the reality in which she found herself, but knowing she must respond to the music, to those heady, sensuous rhythms, to the wild cries of the flute, to the beating of the drum. I then danced timidity, and reluctance and inhibition, but yet reflecting, as one would, in such a situation, the commands of the music. I examined in dismay the beads about my neck, the cords at my waist, my barbarically adorned anklets and wrists. I touched my thighs, and lifted my arms, looking at them, and put my hands upon my body, as though I could not believe it was unclothed. I pretended to shrink down within myself, to desire to crouch down, and conceal and cover my nudity; but then I straightened up, fearfully, as though I had heard commands to desist in such absurdities, and then I extended my hands to the sides, to various sides, as though pleading for mercy, to be released from the imperatives of the music, but then reacted, drawing back, as though I had seen the sign of whips or weapons. The kaska player, alert to this, reduced the volume of his drumming, and then, five times, smote hard upon the taut skin, almost like the cracking of a whip, to which I reacted, turning to one side and another, as though such a disciplinary device had been sounded menacingly, on all sides, in my vicinity, and then I continued to dance, helpless before the will of masters. Then, as the dance continued, I signified by expression and movement my curiosity and fascination with what I was being forced to do, and the responses of my body, reconciled now to its reality, helplessly obedient now to the music.
I suddenly by expression and movement, an almost involuntary contortion of my belly, seemingly startling me, and frightening me, appeared to suddenly sense, or glimpse, my sexuality. "Ah," said a man, appreciatively.
I approached him in the dance, and then others, my belly seeming to register, with its jangling accouterments, their presence. Each time I would draw back from them, but my belly, my hips, would seem to propel me again toward them, or toward yet another. I then felt my hips, and thighs, and breasts, and belly, as these seemed to come alive in the music. And then, throwing my head back, I danced unabashedly as an acknowledged, aroused slave, much as I had before, taunting them, teasing them, delighting in my power, but then, suddenly as though I sensed my ultimate helplessness, my ultimate inability to acheive fulfillment without the wholeness of sexuality, without the master and the yielding, which gave meaning to the incipient passions within me. I danced the aroused slave who is the property of the master and begs his touch.
"Good," said a fellow.
"The slut is excellent," said another.
