The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

DARK FOREST

Codes: mc, fd, nc, ff, ft

Disclaimers (if you scroll past, you’ve still read ‘em—don’t blame me):

  • This author is not the same trilby who dwells on AOL; thus, Trilby on AOL should not be held responsible for anything that follows.
  • This work is copyright the author, © 2000. Kindly do not repost or otherwise use without permission and credit.
  • This is adult fiction with nonconsensual sex, mind control, and other immoral and illegal acts both explicit and implied. In real life this would all be very bad. All characters, events, and places are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, events or places is coincidental, etc. All characters are of legal age in all jurisdictions, not that it’s done them much good so far. References like “boy”, “girl”, or “child” are rhetorical, not technical.
  • If you’re underage, stop reading and get out. (The average fashion magazine these days is probably enough.) If it’s just flat illegal there, ditto (and I’m very sorry.) If you find this sort of thing offensive in general, ditto (and why are you here?)
  • It’s more about mind control than sex. I’m a fetishist: point isn’t using MC to get sex, it’s sex being something interesting to do with MC. So if you only want short zap/long fuckfest . . . see ya. Also, I consider this literature, i.e. with redeeming artistic content, i.e. not “obscene” in the legal definition. (Argue that if you will, but it’s my story, so to speak, and I’m sticking to it.)
  • I disparage no lifestyle. If characters are forced into one, it’s the force that degrades, not the lifestyle.
* * *

Inspirations: Before anyone else, I need to thank my correspondent Mme Claude, who not only maintains an interest in all this but has also done some serious thinking on technique. This story is based partly on some ideas we exchanged, and owes its existence to her encouragement.—Having said that, there are a number of stories that have helped warp my consciousness into these shapes—Alphax’s “Presents”, Colleen Whyte’s “Howell’s Way,” and innovations like the Angela cycle in blankpage’s “Volupian Takeover” and Sara H’s stories of Julia, not even to be exhaustive.

* * *

She felt her thoughts skitter away and swayed as the leather cupped her breasts, ignoring the train that left the platform. A strange impulse alighted in her mind, to step in front of the next one . . . it left her, finding no place to stay in her. Another feeling, fear this time, made her wonder briefly what part of the city this was and how she’d gotten there, but the grimy station sign meant nothing to her. Whether it was the bad lighting, or whether she could no longer read, she couldn’t tell.

She looked down to street level, seeing the prostitutes by the corner looking back up at her.

Writhing under the raincoat, barely able to breathe in the rigid bustier, she closed her eyes, wishing the other passengers who were starting to stare at her could see how tight the hotpants were. Vaguely she thought of her suit, hanging now in a stall in a restroom she could no longer place, for others to wonder over. Clothes like that no longer made sense to her. Clothes like these, though . . .

Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place.

Down on the street, some of the hookers looked like they’d been there too, thighs bound in microskirts, hints of cruel bindings under the tight unnatural fabrics.

On the way down the platform steps, she let her raincoat fall off under a broken lamp. It muffled the noise of her briefcase hitting the stair on top of it. When she passed into the light again she looked like them. So glad she’d found that place.

They glared at her and moved to drive her off, and she heard two knives click open. But then one hooker stepped out from behind the rest and said, “No.”

She looked at her savior, at how easily she stood in the ten-inch heels. At how knowingly she smiled. So glad she’d found that place.

“You’ll take the next one.”

* * *

1.

Ronnie didn’t need this. She tried to sound reasonable. “Bridget, what is the problem? It’s just a delivery, and you don’t even have to leave the mall. God.” Bridget looked like a stereotypical millennial girl, too hip even for the minidress/clunky shoes/mauve lipgloss ensembles she wore, but up to now she’d been one of the most reliable people Ronnie managed at Esprit d’Espresso.

“It’s—” Bridget looked off toward nothing down the concourse. Ronnie looked more closely, putting up two tall cappucinos without thinking about it. Something had blown past the self-confidence and shaken Bridget to the core. She needed someone to unload to, right now.

It just couldn’t be Ronnie, right now. “I thought you liked an excuse to visit that place. Upscale fetish clothes, things to train boyfriends with. You could . . .” She stopped. She saw how Bridget was standing. Stiffly, straighter than she usually did. She looked at Bridget’s chest, at the shape of her breasts under the tight blouse, at the odd suggestion of a smaller, harder shape on each . . .

She looked up, embarrassed to be looking, but Bridget didn’t seem to resent the examination. She looked instead as if she were pleading for something. Trying to find a way to say it.

“Bridget—grande mocha decaf and grande chai, thank you—it’s just a cup of coffee. Madame likes her French roast, and we make points by bringing it to her.”

“it’s just one store,” Bridget said, weakly.

“Yeah. But it’s a way to show the rest how reliable we are. Team players.” By now, she could spew the monthly meeting buzzwords out as if she meant them. “Besides, we have to stay with it. Cindy set it up months ago.”

“And then just disappeared,” Bridget said, as if that meant anything.

“She quit, right, which is why (Kevin, we need some more short cups out here now, stat!) we have to work even harder not to seem like flakes.”

“Right, so I’m a flake.”

Ronnie was about to snap at her for whining, but it wasn’t a whine. Something was really wrong. Why couldn’t it be wrong later?

God, she hated to act like a manager. “Bridget, do I have to tell you to do it?”

Bridget stiffened, but instead of a retort she said quietly, “I’m very sorry, Ronnie. I’ll take it to her right now.” She turned briskly and busied herself with the equipment. Ronnie was still trying to figure out if this mood shift to obedient-employee mode was some new, unBridget kind of active sulking when the other girl headed out with the coffee.

“We can talk when you get back,” Ronnie said, already guilty at pulling rank. Such as it was.

Bridget didn’t slow down, but instead looked sadly back at her. “I may not be coming back, Ronnie.”

Ronnie just let it go. No point in rising to it—if she reacted at all, she might even back Bridget into quitting for real, just to save face, and then they’d waste a day trying to find her a way back in. At least Madame would get her coffee today. And Bridget was playing it too seriously; that almost sounded like a real goodbye.

Half the mall needed a caffeine fix then, and she was too busy covering for Bridget to have time to be irritated that she really hadn’t come back. So I’m a bad manager, too. She returned a customer’s warm, wordless smile, wondering if he were sensing and trying to assuage her shitty day, or just coming on to her. She didn’t care. He and his latte were gone a moment later.

When Wayne came in for the afternoon shift, she didn’t bother to mention it. She wanted to try to fix it herself. But when she stepped back into the crew break room and called, Bridget wasn’t at her apartment, or at her boyfriend’s. Great. She hadn’t looked like the employee from hell. Who knew.

But Ronnie wanted to think well of Bridget, and starting with the idea that her behavior really did make sense, turned to the other odd thing—the strange reaction to that store. Dark Forest. Had something happened to her there? Something trivial but huge, like spilling coffee over Madame’s desk or recognizing someone at the dildo counter who didn’t appreciate the timing. None of that explained the . . . despair? . . . in Bridget’s eyes and voice when she’d left.

Ronnie’d never been to Dark Forest. Part of it was not wanting to spend more time in the mall than she had to, and most of the stores were the sort of place that she couldn’t afford to look too closely, let alone shop. Part of it was the way it sat in an off-corridor at the other end of the mall, on the ground level. All the other retail spaces beside it were genteelly vacant, their display windows put to use showing the wares of other stores in the main concourses, though in an oddly spiritless way.

The one time Ronnie had gone with Cindy to deliver Madame’s French roast she hadn’t even gotten all the way down the deserted space to Dark Forest’s front door before her pager called her back, as Kevin, handling a trainee and bad cash-register software that morning, panicked. He’d been justified anyway, but Ronnie remembered now how glad she’d been for an excuse to back out of the visit to Madame. How the demure glow of the entryway to Dark Forest, framed in its green-marble facing, had made it seem like something healthy that had sucked the life from all its neighbors, draining the other stores of life force and now feasting on customers.

Weird marketing for a fetish emporium, but Ronnie didn’t know the demographics they were going for. Besides, a lot of the clientele might appreciate a store they could go into without doing so in front of the entire shopping public. (“Mommy, is the man going to buy that rubber lady? Can I have one too?")

Ronnie slipped the Esprit d’Espresso tunic off and slipped the shirt back on, counting down. I need to go see the place anyway. Maybe they can help me unfreak Bridget, when I find her. She slipped off the crosstrainers she wore for her barista shifts and stepped into her pumps, pulling on the blazer that made this skirt a suit. It saved time when she went job-hunting, and just now she wanted to look, that vague way, “professional” , when she visited the mysterious Madame Whomever.

I don’t want to go by myself.

She blinked. Oh, come on. If this was as foolish as it seemed, the last thing she needed was someone else to hear how Bridget was screwing up.

Never mind. Her instincts had failed her before, but never this kind. She picked up the phone again.

“Vicki? Need some whips and chains? I’m buying.” She smiled at her one arid triumph today: her best friend was speechless.

* * *

She let her thoughts evaporate as the boots gripped her from thighs to soles and the heels kinked her muscles with an ache that echoed delightfully up to her pubis. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place. She pulled the sheet the rest of the way off her sleeping roommate, aware of nothing but the sweet, round, brown limbs limp on the cartoon-pattern bedlinen, the light clean scent of girl. It was taking less and less of the syrup each night now to put her down, but they’d given her plenty of the vials. So glad she’d found that place.

The vibrators fit her hands, built to be held by another and used on someone, not by them. She looked down at her roommate and licked her lips. She couldn’t remember when the obsession had started and didn’t care, but it had been a while. She was learning to speak as she did this each night, whispering and softly snarling the commands.

Tonight she wasn’t feeling gentle, and smiled in the dark as the sleeping girl whined at the double invasion, her flesh suppressing the vibrators’ chorus into a softer whine in tune with hers. So glad she’d found that place.

She watched the other girl writhe as long as she could stand, then leaned down, hissing the new instructions into the offered ear until she had to bite it.

* * *

2.

The leather got Ronnie first.

She swayed a little as she stood just inside the door of Dark Forest, breathing the scent, almost able to see it drifting to envelop her. She hadn’t even seen what it was, ordinary jackets, or miniskirts, or hotpants, or . . . restraints?

The world spun gently, propelled by the softly bouncing trance music on the sound system.

The warm, dark throb of leather was like a strong-sided animal pushing against her and . . .

Vicki laughed. She glanced around, but looked again at Ronnie, smiling at her confusion. “What’s with you?”

Ronnie smiled, realizing she looked a little more dazed than she wanted to, even to a friend as good as Vicki. Shaking her head, she looked around, trying not to breathe too hard. She groped for something to say. “It’s, uh, bigger inside than it looked. From outside.”

“So how small was that town where you went to college?” Vicki asked.

“Boston . . .” Ronnie murmured absently, seeing it better now: this place was less like a forest than a jungle, tall partitions set thickly, dividing it into dimly-lit sections full of coiled, pulsing vitality. But there was a mannequin set over some racks, posed in an almost human attitude, a faceless woman-shape in an almost metallic glitter fabric, poised as if to flee. She stared at it.

“Like I said.” Vicki sighed and shook her head. “Oh, never mind.”

Now something else: a colder, metallic tang. Rubber? PVC? It made Ronnie lightheaded—not the smell, but the idea. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. Why had they come in here in the first place?

Bridget. Right. Just trying to find out whether something had happened, without raising unpleasant memories if it had.

She was suddenly frightened of being overwhelmed by it. She wanted to ask Vicki, but Vicki was moving away, as if in another current, drawn over to a dark overhang of Goth-black crepe that sheltered a display case, lit from within, of long, gleaming dildos.

As if held in an eddy that kept her from Vicki’s current, Ronnie breathed in the leather and the PVC, watching Vicki look up into the calm smile of the woman who stood behind the display like a priestess over a votary flame. The woman smiled deeply, bending without taking her eyes off Vicki to take out a long chrome phallus and hold it upright. She began gesturing, moving the dildo from side to side as she spoke to Vicki. Something was wrong.

“May I help you?” The voice rubbed her ear. Ronnie turned and found herself staring into pale brown eyes, set in a fine-featured, clever feline face behind tiny oblong glasses. The other girl wore an off-white minidress that set of her olive coloring, with a sinuous pattern in some iridescent texture like . . . subliminal sequins. To try to follow it was to become lost in the girl’s lush contours, to be drawn up to the offered cleavage, down to the shapely thighs trapped by the high, narrow hem.

The clerk smiled, and moved her head slightly, the motion drawing Ronnie’s gaze to the choker she wore. A nametag hung from it, almost like a dog license. nicole, it said, in stylish lowercase sanserif.

Ronnie couldn’t speak for a moment, and caught herself swaying. The movement reminded her that she’d forgotten, again, that she’d come to speak with someone, about . . . someone . . . Bridget. That was . . .

Nicole inclined her head, still looking at her, and raised something. Something black and shining that clinked faintly. She raised it to eye level and swept it slowly across Ronnie’s trapped gaze. Leather. The scent spread after it like a ship’s wake, rocking Ronnie’s mind in the swell, washing Bridget effortlessly away. She blinked, and found herself shyly smiling back at Nicole.

“Yes. We’ve found something we like,” the other girl said. “Something we want to have.”

“Yes, Nicole,” Ronnie murmured, glad to agree.

Nicole just looked at her, not speaking, not moving. Smiling. Ronnie thought of speaking, or moving, but she could think of nothing to say, nowhere to go. She thought of one thing she wanted to say.

“Yes, Nicole.” It felt good to say that, and she thought Nicole’s eyes sparkled a bit, but the girl did nothing.

She waited. She found herself just breathing. She started to count breaths. Each breath was full of leather.

“Uh’um—let’s look at some skirts.” It was Vicki, by her elbow. Ronnie started as if she’d been awakened from sleep, but she saw that Vicki didn’t notice. She seemed dazed herself, and there had been a hitch in her voice Ronnie rarely heard.

Ronnie found it very easy to say, “Yes, Vicki,” and it felt almost as good as saying it to Nicole.

“May I help you find the skirts?” Nicole spoke to Vicki this time, and Ronnie enjoyed seeing it visibly soothe her friend.

“I . . . Yes, thank you,” Vicki said, blinking with the effort.

Ronnie smiled, and closing her eyes to enjoy it fully, said again, “Yes, Nicole.” Nicole looked at her sharply, but then smiled, and this time she nodded. Ronnie felt as if she’d been petted. She was too riveted with Nicole to pay much attention to Vicki, but she did sense her friend looking at her in confusion as they began to follow Nicole deeper into the store.

Skirts . . . Ronnie stared at a rack of metallic suits like the mannequin out front wore, then found her eyes held by what were obviously very brief costumes, almost swimsuits, of the same material. Past the next partition were—something with straps and studs and brushed-steel padlocks.

Skirts. The first rack of vinyl microminis was almost comforting after what Ronnie had been seeing, but she felt oddly unwilling to be comforted. She breathed, and smiled, and saw Nicole look over her shoulder and smile back. Vicki was looking at the skirts almost desperately, and Ronnie put her hand on Vicki’s back between her shoulder blades, feeling a most dreadful joy at being able to calm her down.

“Oh, Ronnie,” Vicki said, nearly whispering. “This place is . . . way fucked up. We . . . really . . .”

“Those dildos really got to you, didn’t they?” Ronnie was mildly puzzled by the look of near-panic that flickered over her friend’s face, but then she smiled as Vicki closed her eyes and visibly relaxed.

“Dildos,” she murmured, a note in her voice almost making Ronnie want to go back and . . . look.

“Welcome,” said a voice that cut through the fog in Ronnie’s brain without dissipating it, “to the Dark Forest.”

* * *

She put her thoughts aside and let the latex grip her crotch. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place. Looking at him on the bed in the restraints, she didn’t know whether the gleam in his eyes was fear, or lust, or just the candlelight. Or which she wanted it to be. The blowjob that had convinced him to let her bind him, the first in all their married lives, must have him wanting more, and docile enough to wait for it. He wasn’t pulling too hard on them, but she knew she’d be glad in a while that she’d been taught to fasten them well. So glad she’d found that place.

Dropping the blouse, she let him see her pierced nipples, the chain that spanned them, and it drew his eyes from the second toy she’d bought, the one for him.

She admired the way the ballgag, the first toy she’d bought for him kept his mouth open but quiet. She knew somehow she’d be glad about that too.

* * *

3.

Ronnie gaped at the woman who’d spoken. She stood taut in a night-black catsuit that clung to her contours, her exotically striking features preempted by her dark, almost black eyes under a helmet of blonde hair. Ronnie fled those eyes, but she realized she was staring at the woman’s body. It was a very attractive one, but it was so hard to tell . . . why. Right now, it looked voluptuously curved, but in less than an eyeblink, with no more movement than the woman’s shallow breath, she was a lean panther stalking Ronnie on two legs. Something was confusing her. The fabric, the lighting . . . the leather . . .

Like a distant phone’s ringing drawing her out of sleep, the jarring realization that she was ardently checking out another woman pulled Ronnie slowly out of the trance she’d fallen into. She realized Nicole was standing behind and to the left of the woman, and smiling at her, clearly realizing what she’d been doing. But before Ronnie could decide whether that bothered her, Nicole’s eyes seemed to glaze over and her attention gravitated back to the woman herself.

Bridget. Bridget. Ronnie shivered, hearing an echo from some boyfriend’ s war-movie video about “going back in after your man.” Why did visiting this place in search of a flaky employee . . . ?

She cleared her throat. “Thank you. I’m looking for someone who . . . a young woman—”

The woman laughed, and the sound paralyzed Ronnie where she stood. “You are not the first to come here looking for young women,” she said. “Although I hope you do not plan to ask if you may buy one.”

Ronnie struggled to be at least polite; this was the proprietress. Her voice was low, modulated, soothing and—exciting?—at the same time, and it had something European in it: not just the way she sounded vowels, but the clarity . . .

The woman waited. Ronnie’s mind still circled sluggishly. A very small smile played on the woman’s full lips, as she looked from Vicki to Ronnie and back. “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

“Yes, uh, Madame . . .” Ronnie waited, but the woman didn’t finish it for her with her name. She couldn’t tell if she’d ever known the woman’s actual name, if she could remember Cindy ever saying anything but “Madame . . .” in a tone of stunned wonder. But her own memory was misfiring now. She started to feel a mild pique that the woman wouldn’t cut her some slack, but felt it evaporate almost before she knew it. It just didn’t feel right to play mind games with this woman.

Or safe to try.

“That’s quite all right . . . ?” Now the proprietress—Madame—waited again, and even as Ronnie thought one last time about being petty and playing the same game, she suddenly felt her lips and tongue forming her name, her voice uncertain as she said it, almost whispering.

“. . . Ronnie . . .”

Madame smiled but arched an exquisite eyebrow. “Ronnie?”

Ronnie swallowed and flicked a glance at Vicki, dreading to see her friend’ s amusement at how she was losing it in front of this domme shopowner. But Vicki seemed as caught up in Madame as she was, and her brief look back at Ronnie was as disoriented as Ronnie felt.

That wasn’t reassuring.

Madame was waiting.

“My name is Veronica, Madame.” She felt better for saying it, and then better still when Madame smiled and nodded.

“Yes, Veronica.” Her gaze shifted to Vicki. She waited, and Veronica found a way to let her gaze leave Madame long enough to see that Vicki was almost shaking, though just as transfixed by Madame.

“Vicki,” she said, shortly, the effort it took to get it out making her sound brusque. Madame didn’t change expression, but she became more still than before as she looked at Vicki. Waiting. Veronica knew how Vicki hated the long form of her name, something to do with her family, and wondered when, under Madame’s gaze, she’d force “Victoria” out.

She didn’t.

Madame inclined her head slightly. “As you wish—Vicki.” She turned to Nicole. “I will see to finding Vicki the outfit she needs. You will attend to Veronica; there is already something for her to try?”

“Yes, Madame.” Nicole stared at her, holding up the leather and metal cluster that had snared Veronica earlier. Neither she nor Veronica looked at it, focusing on Madame instead.

“Take her to the trying rooms.” She turned a languid hand toward Nicole, who blinked and walked around behind Vicki as Vicki stood rooted to the spot, trying to stare down Madame—or perhaps already unable to turn away. Veronica felt Nicole’s light touch on her elbow, and only then looked away from Madame.

Vicki started to walk toward Madame, but after a step or two stopped herself and tried to look around to Veronica. Veronica marveled at the effort it took her friend to try turning to face her. It wasn’t enough. Vicki had stepped too far forward, and now her head, her gaze, her attention swung slowly back to Madame, who nodded approvingly and held out a beckoning arm. Veronica realized that a word from her might have given Vicki what she needed to turn away from Madame, but she couldn’t really imagine why that would be a good thing.

In any case, Madame wanted her to go to the trying room. She followed as Nicole led her deeper into the Dark Forest.

* * *

She stared until thought was too dim to make out in the club’s strobes, letting the chains touch her everywhere. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place. Seeing the people here look at her and down on her. The chains on her caught the flashing, and the chains in her shook as she shook. The bass from the sound system had gotten inside her before anyone else, but it wasn’t jealous.

So glad she’d found that place. Until they’d taught her, she hadn’t dreamed what she could add to piercings.

They came to the table, two men and two women, hungry but no longer desperate. Looking for a toy and finding one. They looked at her, saw her lick the black-painted lips whose taste was slowly driving her mad, saw the whole ensemble of the goth girl she’d been. Before. So glad she’d found that place.

They wanted to know if she were a pain slut. She gasped as she tried to answer.

It was one of the women who chose a chain to take and led her out, past everyone. So glad she’d found that place.

She tried to wonder if they’d be the ones that finally killed her.

* * *

4.

The velvet drape sighed deeply as Nicole pulled it shut to close them both in the spacious alcove. She set the leather thing down on one of the banquettes. Veronica realized this was not just a trying room but a place where watchers could sit at their ease, looking on as a woman tried on and modeled what she—or they?—had chosen.

She shook her head. Where were these ideas coming from?

Nicole walked slowly around her, almost as if pacing out an archaic dance, staring at her from all sides, studying her, and she stood quietly, submitting to the inspection. Nicole swept in, deftly putting her hands on Veronica’s shoulders as she stared into her eyes, then lightly easing off Veronica’s blazer, stepping past her and moving to hang it up. Veronica turned in place to watch her, and saw Nicole look back expectantly.

Veronica realized she was looking for reasons not to, without knowing why, so she stopped. She moved over to stand by Nicole, and slowly undressed. Nicole stepped back and sat lightly on a banquette when Veronica’s suit and blouse were neatly on the rack. She stared unblinkingly at Veronica, who took a breath and admitted to herself that she wanted to strip before—for the other girl. She met Nicole’s stare as she slid her shoes off, then her stockings. When she slipped off her bra, she saw Nicole’s eyes dip to her breasts before returning to her own eyes, and again to her pussy when she slipped the panty down over her thighs.

With nothing left to take off, she straightened to stand nude. For a moment she was off-balance, amazed at herself for being here, doing this. What would Vicki think of this? Where was Vicki? That hadn’t been a very friendly scene with Madame . . . with Madame. Something about the way Vicki had behaved then, almost like a servant with her mistress. Or like someone hypnotized, except there’d been no time . . .

Her gaze drifted to the mirror, and she saw herself, pale and straight, her nipples starting to harden in the cool of the air and the heat of Nicole’s glance. As she became aware of Nicole again, the other girl uncoiled from the banquette and stepped around her again as she stood meekly and submitted to the inspection. Nicole’s cool fingertips stroked her back beside her spine, tapped her hip, brushed negligently over her pubic hair.

Nicole caught her gaze and nodded to the banquette, and Veronica fell back before her and sat down, shocked and then soothed by the satiny fabric under her skin. She looked up at the other woman, and Nicole held out something purple. Stockings, not fishnet but some sort of intricate pattern. Suddenly needing to see the pattern, Veronica took one from her and raised her leg, glad now that she’d shaved. Feeling it climb her leg as she pulled it up was stepping into a jungle pool, and thinking of covetous, predatory eyes spying out her helplessness made her wet.

Eager to step all the way into the pool. She was intensely aware of the stocking crawling possessively up her leg, but barely knew what else was happening until she found herself taking cool patent leather from Nicole’s hands. A pair of three-inch stilettos. Only three? But I’m being—trained.

She was in them, and Nicole led her to her feet. Back to the mirror . . . and to a Veronica who looked so much more nude in the hose and heels. Her pelvis was already swaying gently, lewdly forward as she found her balance, and seeing how needful it made her look made her pose into it. She saw her legs take the shift, and as she moved her shoulders, her breasts . . .

Nicole’s eyes drew hers in the mirror, and she returned the other girl’s knowing smile, glad to be caught vamping herself. Nicole held the leather and waved in front of Veronica’s face, putting a gentle hand between her shoulderblades as she started to lean back in the scent. Veronica closed her eyes . . . and then an “Oh . . . !” forced itself softly from her as Nicole bent and blew softly across her moist pussy.

She kept closing her eyes as Nicole fitted the harness over her, including the outline of a bodice that forced her breasts up and out but left them uncovered. She only saw the woman in the mirror take shape in dreamy flashes, losing herself in the delicate brutality of Nicole’s handling. She didn’t even try to hold back the moaning as the straps took over her crotch.

Nicole had lain them teasingly into place. When she tightened them, Veronica cried out quietly and her legs gave way. Nicole had an arm across her shoulders and stood her up until she could carry herself, rising back on the heels.

She looked up into Nicole’s catlike tawny eyes, seeing no pity there and realizing she wanted none. She let her head loll onto Nicole’s shoulder, and kissed her neck. Nicole made a noise in her throat and took Veronica by the hair, not violently, and pulled her head upright again. Veronica stood straight now and stared at the woman in the mirror.

Slut. Slave.

Whore.

Her.

Veronica’s nerves were singing to her, everywhere that her skin was bound by the tight leather or the relentless silk, and everywhere that her skin was left to the gaze and mercy of anyone to see her for what she was, and use her if they saw fit. Their song drowned out whatever her mind might have been trying to tell her, if her mind had anything in it now but the way her excitement was moving her breasts, her belly pent behind crossed straps of black.

Nicole’s breath touched her behind her ear, and she remembered Yes, there’ s someone seeing me slut slave whore right now and she took another shaky gulp of air. She felt fingertips encircle her left nipple and closed her eyes, leaning back.

When something warm but hard took her nipple and just kept tightening, she had only a whining exhalation to offer, too lost in being open to the hurt to feel it as pain. It made it almost unbearable to anticipate each step as her right breast was clamped in turn. When she looked again each breast was tipped with a chrome lozenge, eye-shaped but faced with an intricate pattern. She almost lost herself in the gleaming tracery but her gaze was rescued and drawn away by the fine chains that swept away from the blind eyes like streams of disregarded tears. Joined, the chains went down and back, behind Veronica.

She closed her eyes. The word bridget floated past her mind, and she was barely able to remember that it used mean something. What it had meant was itself beyond her.

Before she could care, she heard Madame say, “Yes. Just so.”

* * *

She let her thoughts gutter out into a darkness as black as the robe that covered her as she sat on the bench and waited for the arraignments to begin. The robe hid the unbuttoned blouse and minimal plaid kilt, showing only the white stockings and low pumps, undecipherable clues to the fetish schoolgirl underneath. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place.

Only her clerk had seen her today without the robe on, and she smiled to herself, picturing the younger lawyer still sitting dazed in the chair back in chambers. The handcuffs were better than the bailiffs had, and she’d sweetened the penis gag in her own juice before silencing her protegee. So glad she’d found that place. They’d given her the AC adaptor for free, and the tools that impaled the clerk would keep buzzing into her through the long day of business.

The cases were briefed, though. She patted the neat pile of folders. She ‘d made sure to ask before whipping out the stungun.

They were staring as she looked up, and she wondered how she’d smiled. She left the smile on as she looked at the accused young man, taking in his awkwardness, his obvious fear.

Taking in his unfortunate grace, his smooth skin and limpid hurt-me eyes. She thought of tools and toys she’d almost bought that might make his next few nights, and many more to follow, more stimulating, though not necessarily for him. So glad she’d found that place.

His attorney, who had been talking, stopped. She hadn’t even heard the ADA. She rubbed her thighs together and reached discreetly between them, watching carefully how those Bambi eyes widened and softened as she denied bail and sent him back.

* * *

5.

Madame looked at her steadily, and Veronica felt no discomfort now, sinking into her gaze effortlessly. Nicole was forgotten.

“You are a very pretty girl,” Madame observed. “You wear the garments well and gracefully, and you are very attentive. You would make an excellent shopgirl. Would she not, Nicole?”

“Yes, Madame.”

Madame’s gaze intensified, and Veronica found a new depth in it. “You may be a shopgirl for now, Veronica.” It was neither a request nor a command; Madame was allowing her a treat she didn’t remember begging for, but she began to get excited at the thought of going out there in this harness, seducing people into staying, buying. Serving Madame . . .

As she smiled into Madame’s eyes and breathlessly said Yes, the froth at the top of her roiling mind was Oooohhh kinky so kinky. In the deeper layers there was a darker heat.

Madame’s eyes were all that existed, her soft voice vibrating in each cell of Veronica’s body. “And what, my Veronica, is the purpose of the Dark Forest?”

“I . . .” Veronica’s dazed mind suddenly found itself balanced on a precipice over a deep gulf. What was the purpose of this . . . so much, much more than just a store . . . ? Dreading to fail but unable to withhold anything from Madame, she whispered abashedly, “I do not know, Madame.”

She calmed as she sensed no immediate disapproval from Madame. Madame asked, “Then do you know your purpose, my Veronica?”

She closed her eyes in bliss, knowing the answer this time. “Yes, Madame. My purpose is to do as I am told.” She was suddenly conscious of the leather bindings, the light bite of the titclamps.

Madame waited.

“My purpose is to obey.”

Veronica gasped, seeing Madame’s smile deepen as she nodded, and feeling the leather in her crotch flex for one glorious moment, too brief to send her to climax but precious as the idle caress of a passing goddess.

“Yes, little one. For now, you will obey Nicole.” Madame reached up and hung a medallion from Veronica’s collar, then stepped away and nodded to Nicole, who stepped into Veronica’s view. She was almost easier to see now that Madame had set her over Veronica, and Veronica felt Madame’s delegated power shining from the senior shopgirl like the moon reflecting sunlight. Nicole smiled tightly and held up more strips of leather.

She led Veronica to the mirror, and for a moment Veronica could read the reversed message of her medallion: not her name, but the word trainee in soft, round letters. Then she was bending at the waist, her gaze dipping to her straight, spread legs, sweeping up in narrow violet curves from the stilettos. She panted lightly as she felt Nicole’s hands working at her groin, and then straightened when Nicole tapped her on the rump. Nicole had her raise her arms and fitted something into the bodice. She stepped back, and to the side so Veronica could see her and what she held.

Veronica was leashed.

She waited, and saw Madame nod. Even as she saw that Nicole held not one strand of leather but almost a set of reins, Nicole flicked her hand deftly, and the titclamps drew a muted squeal from Veronica as they nipped her. Flicked again, and Veronica’s legs quivered as the crotch-strap moved again and another near-orgasm speared into her pussy. Her palms, her thighs, her lips, her eyes, her mind were all open as she looked up at the other girl’s reflection.

“Yes, Nicole!” she whispered desperately.

Nicole smiled and gestured to the curtains, and Veronica stepped out to work.

The leather and perfume swept over her like a warm surf now, and she drifted through them like a bridled mermaid. She heard and felt the stilettos clicking on the floor, and felt her hips sway to bring them into line. She was conscious of every centimeter of strap and buckle that bound her, and walked proudly in the constraint, unconsciously keeping her arms clear of the reins and turning at only the least tweak from Nicole behind her.

She saw a pair of women staring at her, and from their quickness of movement and their clear-eyed gaze she could see they were not . . . like her, not in the thrall of whatever it was here in the Dark Forest. An odd impulse surprised her: somehow she wanted to talk to them, to ask them to help her, to beg them to help her leave.

Breathing harder, she turned toward them, and felt the reins move to let her approach. The weird idea of wanting to leave, of not wanting to be one of Madame’s half-naked shopgirls, was suddenly growing on her. The customers were in business suits (like she’d been wearing), an older woman and a younger one, both attractive (since when had that mattered?), and both staring at her wide-eyed.

“What is she?” asked the younger, looking Veronica up and down but clearly talking to Nicole. A light flick, and a hint of clamp touched her nipples. Instead of speaking Veronica felt the urge to stiffen into a show posture, feet somewhat apart, staring ahead.

“A slave,” said Nicole, with a lilt that suggested it might or might not be a promotional gimmick.

“Is this a . . . training rig?” the older woman asked. She was looking at Veronica’s face, and suddenly Veronica was glad she was unable to look back at her, relieved that she wouldn’t be able to ask anything of these women. Not even to buy her for a few . . . (what?)

“No, ma’am. It’s just for handling.” Veronica could hear the different way she spoke to them, the way they could keep putting thoughts together.

“Real leather, too,” the younger woman hesitated, and must have sought and gotten a nod from Nicole, for she touched Veronica, sliding her fingers along the straps but just as often leaving them and rubbing her skin, not gently. “You can smell it.”

No, she could remember a job that let her dress as they did, that had nothing to do with standing on display in a bondage harness. She could remember being able to think now, and she wanted to cry. But it was her pussy that moistened.

“Not all you can smell, either,” sniffed the older woman, and her discomfiture put her even further away from Veronica, even more alien. She didn’t belong in the Forest.

“Come.” Nicole drew her away, not before flicking a crotch-strap and giving the women a parting whimper from the trainee.

* * *

She felt thought gush out of her over her shaking hand, staring over the hospital sink at the rubber nurse in the mirror as she masturbated. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place. The hot stupid hot degrading hot hot costume made her look more like herself, not less, she knew, as she fell forward and held herself up by the cold edge of the sink.

The little scream snapped back from the tiles but it didn’t worry her. It was the graveyard shift and everyone at this end of the ward was pretty well sedated.

All but one, she thought, and her eyes, closer to the mirror now, glared back into themselves with a shine that only a small part of her remembered to be afraid of. She slid reluctantly back into the scrubs, smiling at the way the short skirt of the costume fit so well inside the loose crotch of the greens, so she could keep it on all night. So glad she’d found that place.

She would have thanked herself for thinking to take that break on her fingers, but she only knew the need was less, now, not enough to paralyze her. She took the tape player from the locker and went out, finding her way to the suite, the room, the bed she wanted.

The patient stirred but only slightly. She looked down at the pretty features, recalling how lively the woman’s intelligence had made them as she lay there earlier, chatting, taking the pills without question.

She blinked, thinking she might have preferred the woman that way but unable to remember why. Then she breathed, and felt the rubber encasing her from neck to thigh and the rubber nurse she was to wear it. So glad she’d found that place.

Forgetting everything but the fantasy she was about to fulfil, she leaned down and set the headphones over the woman’s ears. Started the loop playing. A new tape tonight. Specific commands to animate the truth of obedience that had been marinating the woman’s drug-softened mind since her admission.

She had to go back to the sink. To the mirror.

* * *

6.

They were not in a fitting room. This was out on the display floor, in an open area far from the door but visible to patrons.

Madame stood apart, looking at Vicki, while another shopgirl with wide but sleepy eyes stood behind Vicki. Veronica’s feelings confused her as she looked at her friend. Vicki was wearing fishnets, her thighs growing luxuriantly out of the tight white over-the-knee boots she stood in. The red PVC microskirt was nowhere near the stocking tops below it, and Veronica gasped just to see that whorishly vulnerable border of skin. There was nothing above the microskirt but Vicki, and Veronica found herself warming further as she saw her friend topless for the first time.

As Nicole drew Veronica to the tableau, Madame stepped forward.

Vicki shook slightly but didn’t move, didn’t seem able to. She darted a look at Veronica that bespoke panic, and seeing Veronica naked and docile in Nicole’s harness only deepened it. She looked away again as though she were afraid, seeing no help there. And she had to look at Madame.

Veronica’s feelings were uncertain. Why wasn’t this turning Vicki on? There was something missing, something she was forgetting. Or was Vicki forgetting it? Madame would help.

Madame reached over and touched a fingertip to the little tattoo on Vicki’s right breast.

“When were you marked—vicki?”

“I—” Vicki breathed deeply. “I got that when I was—”

“The symbol is not familiar,” Madame said, looking at the tattoo and not at Vicki herself. “I do not know this owner.”

“Owner?” Vicki’s outrage came out as a whisper. She seemed to be trying to say more, but she could just shake her head slowly. Her eyes were still fixed on Madame.

“Whoever she was, she trained you poorly,” Madame commented. She turned to Veronica. “Were you there when her owner had her marked?”

Veronica was confused. She knew Vicki had gotten it done last year, and mocked Ronn—Veronica for being afraid to get one. But it was so seductive to play along again with Madame. What would please Her?

Veronica’s nipples swelled inside the clamps, and it made her hotter, and they swelled . . .

“This girl does not remember clearly, Madame,” she said, leaning slightly as she stood, to feel the leather grip her. “She had put the rest of us in trance before selecting vicki to be . . . marked . . .” She trailed off, as if just the memory of being hypnotized by the imaginary Owner were putting her to sleep on her feet again.

Vicki stared at her, open-mouthed, as though she’d gone insane, and Veronica felt warm. Warmth became heat as she saw Madame smile at her, and lift Her hand to snap Her fingers sharply. “Stay awake, please, Veronica. Perhaps you will sleep later.”

She straightened. “Yes, Madame!”

“But you, vicki.” Madame shifted her weight from one perfect hip to the other. “I think you will need to sleep for a while. you have a long night ahead of you.”

It looked as though Vicki were trying to shake her head No, but Veronica saw that she was actually trying to pull herself away, to run. She watched as Vicki’s effort peaked, weakened, subsided. Madame waited until the other girl was staring at her again, still and erect. Defeated.

Madame waved a hand, and Vicki stared at it in terror, like a danger she’d forgotten for a while. Her thighs spasmed, and she moaned across the soft sound of a bell. The ringing had come from between her legs. Veronica recalled a buttplug she’d seen in a display on the way in. With a bell.

“We discussed what you need to do, what you are now compelled to do.”

“What . . . i am . . . compelled . . . to . . .” Vicki held her arms out. The shopgirl stepped over to slide a gleaming red vinyl vest onto Vicki and imprison her breasts into a cleavage behind the opening she left half-unzipped. “Compelled . . .” Her voice fell in a sigh.

She drifted, while Veronica admired how the vinyl shaped her chest, as if it were latex, and left her shoulders and stomach bare. She watched the breasts rise and fall enchantingly, and only knew Vicki’d been gathering breath to speak when Vicki called her by name.

“Rrrr . . . Veronica. I can’t. . .” Madame waved a hand again, and Vicki helplessly rang her buttplug.

Veronica’s head swam. She felt something dreadful and strange, guilt and a vague memory. She tried to concentrate on what was upsetting Vicki, but not very hard.

Then she melted as Nicole tweaked her nipples and pussy at once, and everything fled her head in the white flash.

Everything but “Yes, Nicole!”

Veronica watched the hope die in Vicki’s face, and in the afterglow of the not-quite-climax, she enjoyed it. Madame kept her hands still, choosing not to trigger Vicki to clench on her plug again, leaving the bell silent and the despair pure.

Then Veronica’s harness tightened and she responded instantly, as Nicole reined her back and away. Her nipples ached anew at her last glimpse of Vicki, a gleaming confection of red plastic, white leather, and tanned flesh, motionless under the spell of Madame. Vicki’s eyes were closing in the sleep Madame promised her. As Nicole guided her down a quiet lane of silks, Veronica heard the bell again.

Veronica stood in the Esprit d’Espresso crew break room, daydreaming through her resignation.

Wayne’s speech to her about how suddenly she was quitting lacked conviction, partly because of how he knew she’d busted her ass making this place work but mostly because his eyes kept dropping to the pleated miniskirt and below it to Veronica’s legs in the beguilingly patterned stockings. He seemed to gather energy when he asked her where she was going.

She thought about that, smiling slightly as she saw his gaze dip again. “I ‘ve found a place that has a use for my talents. Where the management style ‘s more focused.” Her smile deepened, mystifying him when he looked up. She enjoyed the wordplay, thinking she might as well use her mind now, since soon she wouldn’t need it.

“First Cindy, now you. I keep getting these hot-shot managers and you keep quitting on me.”

Veronica just smiled. She had no more thoughts to offer, at least until something else he might say triggered one of the few still floating around in her mind. The rich coffee smell around them that she’d grown used to no longer even registered. Nothing really penetrated the fog of leather perfume she seemed to dwell in, now, and without really caring she wondered how Wayne didn’t notice the compelling odor from the harness she wore under the blouse and jacket.

She’d stopped listening to his voice, so unpleasantly unlike Madame’s smooth purr or even Nicole’s insinuating whisper.

When he stopped speaking, she walked away.

* * *

She let her thoughts flicker out in the sweet, crazymaking burn of the piercings concealed in her crotch. She sat next to her friend and held her tightly, and her friend gripped her. She told her friend he was a bastard, that he didn’t deserve her, that he had something bad coming to him, that whoever it was he’d strayed with was a pure bitch, and there was acknowledgement through the sobs.

The piercings irritated her slightly but she liked that, knowing her moist dark softness kept the faint clink of the rings secret inside. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place.

Already her hands were softening her friend’s knotted shoulders, loosening the other girl’s fists, lasciviously stroking the chaste parts of her, and she was letting her friend know the gentleness of her whisper, without knowing how the soft air was seducing her outer ear.

Telling her friend it was time someone cared about her, just her, she felt the wrist-pulse under warming skin, and looked forward to sheathing it with the flat leather hidden in the bed, stretching it out. So glad she’d found that place.

By then she’d have her friend begging for it. She knew how, and didn’t care that she didn’t remember learning. Her friend would learn how to worship the rings, and she’d bet it would take less time than it had taken her friend’s ex-boyfriend.

* * *

7.

“Please.”

The woman’s eyes were wide, and even in the light streaming up from the case through the serried ranks of vibrators, her pupils were dilated. Veronica stared into them, then away, at the trim woman behind the eyes. Her tailored business suit looked like a costume now, as she looked helplessly at Veronica.

“I have to have it, Miss. Please.“ Veronica looked at the panties on the velvet display pad atop the glass, watching the woman twitch as she tried not to look at them.

“Yes, Ma’am. Your account here is past due. Do you have a major—”

“They’re maxed out,” the woman groaned. “The boots . . .” She sucked in a breath, looking wildly around. Veronica picked up the panties, shaking them to free the plugs and to hear the latex click as it opened like a black pungent flower. She had the smaller dildo between her lips when the woman turned back. The woman literally froze.

“My car . . .” she breathed. “Please.”

Parting her lips audibly from it, Veronica licked them and said, “The account lists that against the bondage frame you purchased last—”

“I can get it,” the woman said. “I will. May I . . .”

Veronica thought about letting the woman touch the panties, seeing her gaze focus on the shiny tip where Veronica had sucked the buttplug. “No, Ma’am. I’m sorry. It’s not permitted.”

“I’ll eat you out,” she rasped, as part of the self that she’d been before coming into Dark Forest resurfaced. Out there she made deals for gain, and in here, she . . .

As Veronica began to imagine the crisp wool of the woman’s suit against her thighs, the thin lips questing for her clit past the straps, she clenched against the plug in her ass. “You may speak to my supervisor about that,” she whispered out of her new arousal, and gathered the panties up. “Please wait here.”

She waited until another shopgirl slid up beside her at the counter before going in search of Nicole.

Nicole, wearing only white hose, was bent backward on her knees in another trying room, her face hidden between and behind the assertively spread and nylon-encased legs of Madame, one hand open limply on the floor behind each of Madame’s heeled boots. Veronica barely had time and thought to gasp in envy before Madame froze her with a glance. “Were you looking for Nicole, child?”

“Yes, Madame . . . I must . . .”

“I cannot think,” said Madame, Her eyes narrowing now and then but otherwise showing no reaction to what Nicole’s mouth was doing through the open crotch of Her catsuit, “how Nicole thought she could continue to make you do it. Do you know why you need to bring each sale to her?”

Veronica blinked. Nicole had been training her steadily in all the marvelous things Dark Forest had to offer. She never questioned any aspect of it, especially when Nicole had shown her the jewelry, how the pendants shone, how after being hung from a submissive’s piercing, they would swing gently, compellingly. She had to think of this each time she was about to make a sale. It helped her remember to . . .

“I must do it, Madame. She needs to supervise my progress.”

“She thinks too much for a shopgirl.” Madame let Nicole continue under Her, and Veronica softened with admiration at Her self-control. “And you are too susceptible, yet.

“Enough.” She waited while Nicole sagged back and down even further, then stepped forward.

“Veronica, fetch for me the mannequin from the full restraint section. Beverly will help you if you require it.”

“At once, Madame,” Veronica whispered, thinking nothing of the piteous noise Nicole made from the floor as she left.

She didn’t think she’d need to bother Beverly, the girl working full restraints, remembering how light the mannequins were that she’d dressed before. This one was posed standing upright with its arms spread above its uptilted head, like an Atlas with no globe, lifelike in its contours under the silvery bodystocking with its many attachment points. The bondage mask left the lower face uncovered, and Veronica was admiring how soft the glossy purplish lips were when she realized why.

The exposed tips of the breasts moved very slightly as the woman playing mannequin breathed. Veronica watched them. She looked at the rings embedded there, at the small shapes on the rings.

Live girl. For a moment, she recalled the dim outline of the outside world beyond Dark Forest, and thought of police and what they might do about a display of naked breasts.

She thought of a policewoman, her face twisting in distaste the way some customers’ did, going to confront . . .

Madame. Facing Her with nothing but a gun and . . . handcuffs . . .

Veronica smiled, lost for a moment in contemplating the policewoman crawling, begging—she looked around, wondering which of the other displays might have begun as a police inquiry. This one? But the mauve lips and the deja vu of the irons on her breasts were telling her something else.

She slid up to the mannequin and embraced it, closing her eyes at the soft warmth. She reached up and pulled the mask off.

Stupefied, the girl gazed upward, at where her head had been canted when she was posed. Veronica blinked at the deeper deja vu as a name swam into her thoughts. She spoke it softly.

“Bridget.” It seemed to mean even less to the girl than to Veronica, but she looked down, and when Veronica looked into her eyes, she felt a wonderful vertigo nearly as great as when she looked into Madame’s. But these were so empty, and the emptiness was a need. Veronica felt herself start to fall, and reached out to hold . . . Bridget, feeling a strange need to protect her but not knowing why.

Bridget’s soft lips worked, and as Veronica imagined them kissing her, they formed a word.

“Madame . . .”

Veronica repeated it. Bridget didn’t nod. She said it again. Veronica shuddered as she wondered briefly if Bridget were calling her Madame, but Bridget just stared.

No matter. Madame wanted the mannequin: now it could walk to Her. She took hold of one of the flat loops between the shallow mounds of Bridget’s bust and pulled gently. Bridget followed, her gaze intermittently focusing on Veronica. “Madame,” she said musingly. It was as though there were nothing else in her mind.

On the way to Madame, they met a shopping couple and stopped for them, the submissive running her hands over Bridget’s body stocking, praising its attachments and what she could do inside them. Veronica turned to the dominant, but the woman was looking only at Bridget’s lovely, vacant face.

She looked at her sub and said, quietly, “Absolutely not. Not this. Not for you. Ever.”

She reached gently for her sub’s shoulder, but the sub straightened too quickly and stared angrily at her, not understanding, before catching herself and looking down. The domme looked at Veronica, and her expression didn’t change. Being equated with what this girl, Bridget, had become made Veronica’s pussy quiver, and she said nothing as the domme took her sub’s elbow and turned toward the front of the store. Veronica sensed the sub wouldn’t be back.

When she reached the trying room, Veronica found herself walking past the door to Madame’s office, and there she found them. Madame was watching Nicole, still nude except for her employee collar and the stockings, assemble a large packing container with a stiff contoured liner, its sides flat around the base like open petals. Nicole seemed to be crying as she worked.

Bridget looked at Madame, and sighed blissfully. Spoke Her title.

Madame smiled at Veronica and nodded approvingly at Bridget. “Undress

her.”

Veronica found it easier to think of Bridget as a soft statue than a stiff human being, and that made it more arousing for her when she felt a muscle relax or flex under her fingertips as she eased the suit off, or smelled the sweat as it cooled on Bridget’s skin, or came maddeningly close to tasting her fervid pussy.

Madame’s soft laughter roused her from a trance of inhaling over the bundled fabric in her hands, while Bridget stood blankly nude beside her. Nicole stepped over, her gaze moving across Veronica before she took Bridget ‘s arm and led the pliant girl to the container. Veronica recognized the contours of the liner as she helped Nicole lower Bridget gently into the woman-shaped hollow, then secure her limbs. Nicole fitted an oxygen mask to part of the liner, and then put it over Bridget, who continued to stare. She stared even when they closed the sides of the container and added the packing fill.

Veronica and Nicole stood by the box with the girl inside and stared at Madame. Madame looked at Veronica and gestured to a collection of straps and chains on Her desk.

“Dress the new mannequin,” She said, not looking at Nicole again. “When it is ready, bring it to Beverly. She will have the stand ready for it.

“I will join you when it is time to keep her still.”

She smiled and went out.

Veronica let her practiced hands fit the harness over Nicole as the senior shopgirl stood passively. She looked into her eyes often, trying to find what she had in Bridget’s eyes, but didn’t see it yet.

As she led Nicole out, feeling no resistance to the chain, she looked forward to seeing what Madame did.

* * *

She lost track of her thoughts as she flexed against the leather wristbands, enjoying how strong they helped her feel. She wore bands elsewhere now, too. Dark Forest. So glad she’d found that place.

Her client took up the repetitive movement, obediently exerting herself in the exercise machine. The client’s eyes glazed over as the rhythmic movement sent her into a familiar zone.

From the beginning, she’d enjoyed controlling the woman’s movements through her instructions, and when she’d conditioned the client to accept and obey, the shift to persuading the woman to wear the leather she’d brought was smooth. Neither of them commented on the contrast their beige softness made with the trainer’s uncompromising black. So glad she’d found that place.

She didn’t question the new need, didn’t even recognize it as new, when she signaled the client to dismount the machine after her set and come to the mats. She wanted control, and she wanted to be controlled, and she needed trust to bridge them. Her red-suited client/slave waited to begin.

Kneeling, she drew the client down with her, leaning back and drawing the woman toward her. The client was on her chest, straddling, looking down at her blankly. She readied herself to have the client slid up, bring her pussy forward.

Then she felt her hands pushed up and back, and realized she’d let her eyes close. She stared up into the client’s, and saw something in them she’ d never seen, not when conditioning her and not before that had begun. She was barely conscious of the beige on the other woman’s body, the leather that had cone from the same place . . .

So glad she’d found that place. She lay back beneath the other woman, falling into thrall to her thrall.

* * *

8.

Smiling as she’d been taught, Veronica looked at the young woman her mind told her was Lisa and wondered how to put this woman into . . . a rubber dress, she thought. Yes. The soft flesh wrapped tight, smothered in breathless tension.

Lisa had been here a few minutes ago, with another girl called Irene, talking about why Veronica was working here at Dark Forest, not at some other place. Veronica had been enigmatic, sensing that Irene was just considering her a pervert but that Lisa was worried. Lisa was clearly losing herself here, and her concern for Veronica was all that kept her from going completely adrift. She seemed mesmerized by the lingerie, but Veronica still saw her in rubber, and she’d learned such instincts were another thing she must accept without question, for pleasure to follow.

Lisa had very quickly learned to call her “Veronica” after seeing her medallion. Irene had dragged her out in annoyance. Now she was back, alone, and she’d followed Veronica deeper into the Forest.

“Veronica, is something going on?” She actually leaned closer, across the counter, and Veronica saw her nostrils flare. Lisa was turned on and didn’t know it, yet.

Holding her eyes, Veronica began to speak to her. It was so easy now. The words almost didn’t matter, and when she saw Lisa nodding deeply, stepped out from behind the counter, led her to the dresses. The scent and just the sound-deadening presence of the rubber seemed to be weighing on Lisa, making her looser and dazed. Veronica was smiling to herself as she led Lisa to a trying room.

She came to herself attending Madame as She dealt with the customer, a man She knew, who’d brought his daughter. Veronica watched the girl, Adrienne, as her father spoke to Madame, saw her stance lose its tension as she looked around at everything. Adrienne blinked slowly, as if she were half-asleep. Her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the bondage display and then moved quickly away, but Veronica could see it had captured her, as her gaze moved slowly back to the harnesses and cuffs. She blinked again, trying to believe it.

She sensed Veronica looking at her and turned, her eyes almost pleading now—What’s happening to me? Veronica tried to make her own smile less hungry, more reassuring, but Adrienne, her cheeks reddening, looked away again too quickly. She was breathing faster, and when her father put his arm around her he clearly felt it. He looked down at her with a sympathetic smile, and she looked dazedly up at him, too far gone already to feel as embarrassed as she might.

Madame nodded to him. “Mademoiselle has had a tiring day.”

“Yes,” he said, almost wistfully. “Well, there are limits. We need to be going, but thank you again, Madame.” He squeezed Adrienne’s shoulder and it almost seemed to wake her. “We will go home now.”

She swallowed, could only whisper. “Yes, Father. Home . . . now.” He kept his arm around her as they left.

Veronica went to stand next to Madame, letting her silk-cased thigh slide against Madame’s warm leather one as she restored the display with automatic skill. Madame was inscribing one of the blank lavender cards with Her fountain pen, and Veronica started to lose herself in the graceful loops and strokes of Her writing, Her light but firm grip on the thick marble-patterned barrel.

In a dim corner or her brain, Veronica realized she wasn’t paying attention to what Madame was writing. Before she could decide whether she cared or not, she realized Madame had finished and was looking—at her.

This close to Her, Veronica could see the faint veins in Her eyes, the contours of Her lips as they curved in a contemptuous but affectionate smile. She felt the warmth of Madame’s body and the heat of Her breath. Madame spoke. “Where is the delightful young woman who came in earlier?”

Veronica’s own breath caught. “I put her in the trying room, Madame. With the black.”

Madame smiled. “Then she will still be there. Come.”

She turned inward, brushing against Veronica, and Veronica moaned. She caught a glimpse of two young women who’d been looking at miniskirts near the front but had stopped to see how close the shopgirl and her boss would get. One turned away with a moue of distaste, but the other seemed almost like Adrienne, waking from a dream before obeying her friend’s summons and leaving. Veronica held her gaze for a moment, and for that moment the girl was oblivious of the friend, the skirts, everything but Veronica.

Veronica did not smile: it was as though the stockings and the corset gripped her in their own discipline, and she sensed that her own blank look would plunge more deeply into the girl’s softening mind than anything else.

Then it was over and the girl was gone. Veronica knew to expect her again, soon. Perhaps she would remember it was a miniskirt she thought she’d come for.

Veronica obediently followed Madame to the trying rooms, soothed and excited by how Madame’s back and rear and legs moved within the catsuit’s leather. They found Lisa transfixed, staring into the mirror at her black-encased figure, breathing in soft little gasps. Madame paused at the door after She pulled the curtain aside, and Veronica saw Her smile, just contemplating the helpless young woman. Veronica looked at her, content to wait until Madame instructed her.

Madame stepped into the trying room and beckoned Veronica after Her, and Her presence seemed to rouse the girl from her trance. “It’s . . . it’s so . . .”

“Yes, it is,” Madame murmured, reaching out to touch the rubber dress gently, first at the waist, then on the right breast, then lower down over the girl’s belly, looking back at Veronica and nodding in approval at how she’d dressed the girl. At each touch, the girl’s breath hitched and her eyes closed for a moment.

Resting Her hand on the dress just between and below the young woman’s imprisoned breasts, Madame said in Her low voice, “Tell me your name,

child.”

Staring deep into the mirror, the woman whispered, “Lisa.”

“You please me, Lisa.” Lisa’s eyelids drooped with the joy of knowing that, then opened again to allow her to keep contemplating her image. Madame moved Her hand, pressing Lisa gently and moving her to the velvet-padded bench against the wall. Lisa settled to it and kept staring at the mirror until she felt Madame’s gaze. She turned to look upward at Madame, and Veronica felt moist as she saw Lisa’s delicately exposed neck, her offered cleavage, her blank face pale under the light.

“Take this.” Madame held out the card. Lisa obeyed, her eyes turning reluctantly from Madame’s to read it once she knew that was Madame’s desire.

“Her name is Adrienne. Know her.

“Make her yours.

“Bring her here.”

When Lisa looked back up, the name and address now seared into her memory, her eyes brimmed with tears. Veronica knew what she felt: a way to please Madame, to make Her happy, was a gift no one could receive without realizing her worth in the world.

* * *

She no longer remembered thought as she crawled across her living room floor to her best friend’s feet, every movement grinding the buttplug deeper, overflowing her blown mind with the sensation. Dark Forest. So glad she’d . . . found . . .

Around her, the other women had sorted themselves into plugged naked slaves or leather-adorned mistresses. She was already past even the recent flurry of enslavings, when the mistresses had begun pairing off to seize a third and hold her while they raped her ass with a plug and then laughed as her struggles ebbed and she sank from dominance to her knees. Now most of them were nude on the carpet, mewing to be used.

She didn’t remember the lingerie and toys party, the idea of a girls’ night in. She had vague images of someone when she’d bought the . . . so glad . . .

* * *

END