Bear swallowed his shock and looked up at Master Rivello. His gray eyes were still clouded with his pleasure from moments ago. He was pulled to his feet and with the handle of the whip pressed hard into his back, Rivello walked Bear to the whipping posts at the edge of the arena. Bear started to wake up to this fact, just as Rivello lashed his whip around Bear's neck. The lord was an expert with the length of leather. Any resistance or hint of it, brought a jerk at Bear's throat and a tightening of the whip. Master Rivello called to picca to join them and chain Bear's ankles and wrists to the heavy posts.

Picca crawled up from the floor and scurried over to do as instructed. She could barely reach to lock Bear's wrists in, but with a few slaps across her face from Master Rivello, she stretched and hurried to complete the task. Her master commanded that she kneel and watch and learn. Bear could say nothing even if he wanted to. The whip was now crushing his throat, at least until Rivello ripped it from around his neck and went to stand behind him.

He had been here before. Bear had been beaten before, whipped before, but none seemed to take such pleasure in it as Master Rivello. He goaded verbally, chastising him for fucking his slave, even though he'd been commanded to do so. Rivello jeered and laughed with each lash and crack of his whip onto Bear's back. He wanted him to cry out. He would let the leather bite into him until he got a confession, an apology, begging... The Master's prattle went on and with each phrase there was another sting upon Bear's flesh.

After a while, Bear no longer heard the whip in the air, the warning sound before the snap on his skin. His fists gripped the chains securing his wrists. His eyes stared across to white mist rolling over the floor from the grotto. He listened for the sound of the water falling and gurgling in the hot spring. On the fringes he heard picca whimpering... but for the rest, for Master Rivello's voice and the leather whip, he would no longer listen. Bear's body jerked with each hit. His jaws tightened until he felt his teeth might crack, but he let no sound more than a grunt escape him. He would not give Rivello what he wanted.

The lashing suddenly ceased as Rivello became aware that his own member had stiffened at last. Yes! He had done it and now to use it! He lassoed picca's neck this time and dragged her over to him. He roughly pushed her over onto her face and shoved the length of his stiff member into her without care that she was frightened and tight and ill prepared to receive him. He held tightly to the whip without concern that her breath could not pass through her throat.

Bear could not see them but he could hear her cries til the whip choked them off. He looked at his chains through his wavering vision. He so wanted to jerk a post from the ground and beat Rivello to death, but he was finding it difficult to stand. His bleeding back, the pain from the whip, the weakness from which it started... Rivello's rantings and picca's rasping breath became softer. Bear strained to hear anything now, but it all faded from him. What he had been able to see of the dungeon faded too. He felt a sharp pain in his shoulders and wrists as his own body weight sagged against the chains. Bear's head dropped forward as he lost consciousness.

( Continued in Reward)