She wasn't exactly pretty. Attractive, yes. Intriguing, sure. Some – most – might even say beautiful. But pretty? There lay a kind of hardness in her features, making it difficult to connect her to terms such as "cute" or "twee".

I would call her Rho, for her real name is of no consequence anymore, the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. Or, minding that it was to be a proper name, the capital form: P

Rho owned the lithe body of a runner (actually, she had been a semi-professional fencer until some years ago). Right now this very body, nude and firm, was struggling and wriggling to get free from the sole chain that was tethering it. The woman felt the ring in the back of her stainless steel posture collar, grabbed the chain's end locked to it, pulled. Grabbed the chain's other end fixed to the concrete pillar that bore the cellar ceiling, pulled again. Finally she forced her fingers behind the collar from above in an attempt to pry it open, to break its lock. All in vain, of course.

I had let her be uncuffed intentionally. Not being able to free herself even with the use of her hands would frustrate her nicely. There would be severe arm bondage soon enough: reverse prayer, armbinder, Strappado. She appeared tough enough to dangle from the ceiling by her arms pulled up behind the back for a night. I was indeed considering to apply this punishment, given her current attitude.

"You sick fuck! Get that shit off me! Now!"

If she was still dizzy from the sedative, she did a hell of a job not showing it.

"I'll get you for this, you bastard!"

As the more perceptive amongst you may have realised by now, Rho wasn't gagged – a circumstance of which she took advantage to full extend. In flowery phrases she outlined my supposed impotence, genetic degeneration and fondness for homoerotic practices. "Cocksucker" and "arsefucker" were the most quotable expressions of the latter.

Well, with cocksucking I could not serve, but let's see what I was able to do about the other one...

However, her accusations were tiring me. Eventually, she would be without a gag only a few minutes each day, if ever. Better break her in to it in time. The next foul word would earn her some mouth hardware.

"Fuckface!"

Thank you.

I chose the multipurpose ring gag. Stainless steel, heavy duty. Far too large to be worked out by tongue and jaw movement. Nonetheless it was fitted with four "spider-legs" around the circumference to keep it from being flipped – even if I decided to do things to Rho's mouth which would be considered anatomically impossible by people with less imaginative potential than me. Or sadistic potential, for that matter.

First things first, so I closed in to her with a set of shackles. No stuff from the Internet, but manacles forged to put on a victim, throw away the key and let her rot in them. Rho hissed another profanity and kicked at me. I was impressed that she was capable of this action.

For a reason to be revealed later on, I had laced and locked her into punitive fetish boots while she had been unconscious. The soles were sharply angled and only level off somewhat near the toes, as you might see it at medium-severe pony boots. They were the precursors to ballet boots, which her feet would suffer from the next phase of her training on.

I spun her around and pressed her against the pillar, capturing her arms in a nasty grip. She writhed for all she was worth, but I managed to trap her wrists in the fetters – after getting her elbow in the ribs twice, that was.

I secured her upper arms as well, forcing her elbows to touch, which made her squeal nicely. Her legs remained in freedom, at least for now. Still chained to the pillar, she was not going anywhere soon. Besides, I didn't want to give her an opportunity to knee me in the face (approach from the front) or lash out (approach from the rear).

What was next?

"How dare you tying me up, you depraved pervert?! You will bleed for that!"

Right, gag. In fact, I was about to do Rho a favour. Such a language was just beneath a well-educated woman like her.

The spider gag came with a full head harness, and a very strict one, too. Even the chinstrap was additionally secured by separate belts running around the neck. Somewhere in my considerable collection I had a panel gag with a similar feature. But on it the straps would run down the sides of the chin, cross and – still the same straps – go around the neck. Not the clean task sharing one could find on the model that was to become Rho's new best friend. It had a decoupling of vertical and horizontal force application, if you are into that technical stuff. What did it boiled down to? That the brunette bitch would bite the steel ring, no matter what. That she would taste iron. That she would undergo the sickening sensation of bare metal on tooth enamel. No leather wrapping. No rubber cover.

Whilst she was putting into question my general sexual orientation (again) and the size of my genitals (that was a new one), I produced the harness and showed it to her. Rho stopped her tirades long enough to give me a look filled rather with incomprehension than with fury. She did not know what to think of the contraption in my hand, but was in doubt about my good intentions.

With my free hand I sized her head unceremoniously from beneath, using a special grip that put unbearable pressure on the jaw joint within reach. Rho opened her mouth automatically, both to lessen the pain and to reward me with a distinctive scream.

When I had finally manoeuvred the ring into place, my fingers were pretty sore. She had bitten me several times, but luckily parts of the gag-gear caught in her mouth had prevented worse injuries.

I wiped her saliva off my hands with my shirt, letting the complex tack dangle for the moment. The metal loop was so large that I had had to angle it in order to wedge it between her jaws. Rho would not be able to push it out in time.

With fingers dry again and less smarting, I attended to the most satisfying business of harnessing my unruly prisoner. The main strap running to the back of her head was first, and the way it pulled the ring further into her mouth was just delightful.

Rho yelped every time a new strap cut into her flesh, and I made sure they do cut, and cut deeply. More than once she tried to abscond within the limits of her tether. To bring her back to heel, I occasionally tugged on her chain, or – a little meaner – on her elbow bondage. The procedure took me some minutes, for I had a bit of a struggle with the high collar as well as with her mane.

Eventually, I closed the last buckle. Neither it nor any other of its kin would open soon. The harness was fully lockable, and I had no intention to remember where I had left the keys.

I stepped back to admire my work. Yes, very nice! The strict bondage forced her chest out and put a beautiful strain to her arms and shoulders. But the ring gag really was the icing.

If she thought that the discipline collar was humiliating, Rho was in for a nasty surprise. I hold up the small hand mirror I had brought just for an occasion like this, so she could admire herself. The sharp intake of breath, amplified by the increased resonating cavity of her gaping mouth, told me enough.

The head harness made her appear to herself like a captured and bridled beast, low and not worthy to be treated as a human being. Especially the Inverted Y-strap running across her cheeks to the bridge of her nose and up her forehead added massively to the demeaning look. The uncontrollable drooling was certainly gnawing on her dignity as well.

Glad you like it, darling.

Darling loathed it, and darling did not need her ability to articulate intelligibly to show me that she was fuming. I supposed there were several reasons why Rho went for rage rather than for fear. She had a strong personality with a dominant streak – I had to give her that –, she knew me to some degree (at least she had thought so), and she was absolutely no fan of fetish stuff whatsoever.

Time to dish out some more humble pie to her:

"Since you are still considering yourself a kidnapee, I may let you off for your understandable resistance so far." It was the first time I spoke to her since she had regained consciousness.

"But from now on it's training time. Each infraction gets you a demerit. Five demerits result in corrective measures with the cane. Twenty-five demerits will call the bullwhip to action. The bullwhipping is additional to the caning for the last five demerits that brought you up to twenty-five."

For a second, Rho stared at me in true bewilderment. The look was just priceless: her auburn eyes huge and with a tendency to squint due to the Y-strap, her forced open mouth helpless and vulnerable – and hurting, she could not hide that fact from me. Ring gags this large had the nasty habit to cause the jaw joints to throb immediately. By now the mean, or better said cruel device was causing her considerable pain. She should better get used to it, for the mouth-ring would not budge a millimetre with the harness and its back-bend extensions digging into her cheeks. Did I mentioned that I had ground those spider-legs' ends to fierce points?

"Do you understand these rules of discipline, and are you ready to obey and submit to your master?"

"'uck 'ou!"

Demerit No. 1

I locked a longer chain to the ring at the pillar and to her posture collar, then removed the old one. The first, short chain had forced her to stand, staggering in the demanding boots. The longer one allowed her to sit, a prospect welcomed by her aching feet and cramping calves.

I knew how to prevent that:

"Sit down, slave."

Three simple words. Rho kept standing, leant against the pillar instead. If I had ordered her to breathe, she would had shut down her lungs until turning blue, just because. That reverse psychology really seemed to work!

By the way: disobeying a direct order. Demerit No. 2

Manipulating a stubborn woman like this was fun, but of course I could not have my authority being undermined. I released her from the chain, only to lock one end to her wrist shackles and run the other through another pillar-ring, set higher into the concrete than the first one. She realised the purpose of this re-arrangement the moment I pulled at the loose end. My captive put all her strength against me, but I had the whole length of her arms as leverage.

Soon she was bent over, her arms dramatically rotated in their sockets and now pointing straight up. Any more pulling would force her up again mercilessly, until, finally, her body would be suspended in the dreaded Strappado.

But that was not the position I had in mind. Right now she was resting her flank against the pillar in an attempt to gather both stability and relieve. Good approach, yet some adjustment was needed.