The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Wendy’s dream had come back, and this time it woke her.

She was at the gym, at Bonnie’s self-defense class, the special advanced class that Wendy had eagerly joined to learn the elite techniques that could qualify her for work as a bodyguard.

Bonnie was putting them through meditation, and they were all in lotus position around the training mats, their surprising variety of body types all uniform under the identical leotards, their throats shadowed as they bowed their heads to listen to the meditation instruction . . .

Wendy’s knees hurt.

Like slowly losing her balance, in the dream’s strange leisurely rhythm, Wendy started to realize that her knees hurt because she wasn’t in lotus. She was kneeling—

Kneeling. Legs spread to display her pussy, that gleamed shaven in the dim reddish overhead light. Gleamed like the rest of her, naked and filmed lightly with sweat from the workout. No, not a workout. A long, erotic dance she’d just performed with the other girls—

The other girls.

They were all kneeling, nude, their necks clasped with the same collar that Wendy now felt close on her own. Their hands, like hers, were behind their bowed heads, as they listened passively to Bonnie’s voice drone on. Droning the truth into their open, sleeping minds.

Wendy’s knees hurt.

She shifted, and felt someone behind her. It had been Bonnie’s assistant Tanya, and something—

Alone on her bed now, clutching the sheets futilely, Wendy tried to remember more. She felt a tugging reluctance to think ill of either Bonnie or Tanya, and a desire to let this go as something her subconscious cooked up when some deep-buried, unresolved lesbian fantasy met her native paranoia and they decided to make a night of it. Yes—her entirely proper admiration and trust for Bonnie and Tanya could easily draw her into having a crush on either one. They were both fit and attractive women, and she looked at them both as teachers—mistresses. Wasn’t all the D/s stuff just a warped extension of a perfectly healthy subordination? If they’d all been male and Bonnie more a stickler for form, might she not call them “Sensei”—“Master”? How much of a stretch was it from there to kneeling in respect?

Too much. Too many details were coming back. She had a sudden flash of one of the other students, Kaitlin, curled up on the mat moaning in pain, but without any hint of anyone moving to help her. And the sound as the vinyl of her collar scraped the mat—

Wendy began to remember why Kaitlin was hurting, what had just been done to her.

Tanya had been playing the Assailant . . .

She shied away from remembering, but the very eagerness she felt to stop thinking about it almost frightened her. Something very bad had happened to Kaitlin. She wasn’t close to Wendy, but Wendy had knelt quietly and watched, doing nothing because she’d been told to do nothing, and the order had settled on her like a well-fitted harness.

Harness. The idea of being harnessed made her feel—warm.

She refused to be distracted. Her fear and natural shame at sitting by were dissipating, almost as if someone had opened a window in her mind to let them out like bad odors. She had to struggle to hold on to even the memory of feeling that way.

Now she had to fight to keep her eyes away from the dresser, away from the candle that Bonnie had given her as a gift. She was suddenly certain that Bonnie’s gift could help her put away all these suspicions and fall deeply asleep so she could be fresh for tomorrow’s session. If she just lit it and stared into the flame, it would all be fine, and peaceful, and she could focus on what was important.

The sheets fell away as she swung her feet out, her eyes locked on it. Focus on what was important. She barely felt the chill, no longer remembered that sleeping nude was a recent thing for her, something that a part of her mind now said it enjoyed, and said so in Bonnie’s whisper.

Focus on what was important. Focus on Bonnie’s voice, on Bonnie’s commands, on Bonnie’s truth of her role in the world and how best to perform it.

A rush of need—to please Bonnie, to submit to Her, to confess the momentary lapse of unquestioning faith and obedience unto death—drove Wendy to kneel, staring up at the candle as if it were an idol atop a pillar. Her lips began to form Bonnie’s name, her eyes were as moist now as her pussy—

Wendy’s knees hurt.

She wasn’t naturally a screamer, so she didn’t scream. As she backed away, unashamedly averting her eyes from the terrifying little column of wax, she almost wished she were.

Later, she lay on the bed, wrapped in a pleasant dowdy long flannel nightshirt she’d found in the rag bin but didn’t remember throwing in. When she found it she’d wept over it, comforting it as if it were a lost pet because there was no one to comfort her. Now she shook and turned and fought sleep. Sleep gave up and stayed away until it could outwait her.

In the cold light of day, everything seemed stupid. She’d had a vivid, frankly kinky dream, there were some unresolved issues, and now she was freaking out. She was glad she hadn’t picked up the phone at whatever AM it had been and woken up Bonnie to hear her disjointed accusations of lesbian mind control.

Lesbian mind control.

Wow. Tabloid, trash TV, or cable D-movie?

Wendy sipped her coffee, and was relieved to be able to laugh. Besides, under the circumstances, calling the hypnotist might be the last thing she’d think of doing, so Bonnie’s sleep had been safe.

The odd thing was that Bonnie in fact did use hypnosis in training, matched to each student’s needs and designed to help her know and reach her inner resources. It helped eliminate the layers of self-consciousness that Bonnie said inhibited not only many women’s ability to learn to fight, but their recognition of when to do it. Hypnosis was part of what Bonnie called part of her “straightforward way to Zen, if that’s not a contradiction in terms.” (Wendy’d scored points that day by asking “Is that a koan?")

It was how they could reach the deep meditation that they all now understood was key to achieving so many things. It was real hypnosis—consensual—not some Fu Manchu enslavement, and Wendy, having experienced it, should know better. But had her subconscious locked onto that, too?

Wendy frowned. She felt she’d have to bring this up to Bonnie one way or another, and it would be good to have some humor in it somewhere when she did. It wasn’t like she felt a dread compulsion to report to her controller—it was just the sort of thing Wendy would rather get out in the open, before Bonnie started wondering about the odd stares and the distant attitude that Wendy would end up resorting to if she held it in unresolved. Wendy didn’t have the patience either for grudges or mysteries.

Looking at the light slanting into her bedroom, she recalled her biggest worry yesterday at this time: trying to find the picture of her family. She’d always put it up on the table by her bed, watching over her while she slept, but now she couldn’t find it. It was all she really had of them, in the years since the fire. As she considered that again, she turned her mind from it, finding it easier, after all, to consider this weird headtrip about Bonnie. That guilt she could deal with.

She slipped the flannel nightshirt off, smiling at it and stroking it again. Worn, and overdue to be thrown out—but it had come through for her last night, and she laid it gently on her bed, barely keeping herself from nuzzling it. “Take the day off,” she told it aloud, laughing at herself.

Others she might not ever tell about this. Tanya, who was a little too clinical and objectifying. And the girl—what? Girl? Leftover dreamspeak?—the woman she’d thought she’d seen hurt. Who was it? Diane, or was it—

Kaitlin?

Wendy sat down. Kaitlin. Kaitlin who’d been raped after all, who in the end couldn’t even come back to face the people with whom she’d spent months, and agonizing practice—and Bonnie’s stiff tuition—to learn how to make sure rape never happened to her. What loss of confidence was Wendy’s psyche trying to represent to her by clothing it as Kaitlin’s torment?

And why, she asked herself as her blood ran very cold, could she distinctly remember it turned her on?

2.

Bonnie’s dojo was an industrial loft in the edge of a yuppified factory district. Inside, the reception area was pretty and well-furnished, since the bulk of Bonnie’s clientele were not jocks but women who stayed away from gyms, and she tailored the ambience accordingly.

Threading her way through the partitions and hanging tarpaulins that subdivided the area, Wendy started to wonder how far into the building Bonnie’s domain extended. Without letting herself acknowledge it, she was looking for a place that resembled where she’d been in the dream, a square of mats and an overhead lamp with red bulbs.

Bonnie was on one of the exercise floors, silently going through a sequence of positions that seemed like the fluid path of tai ch’i—but periodically burst into a flurry of quick, vicious blows with hands and feet. Light from the high windows shone on her as she moved, glowing along the edge of her pale green leotard, gleaming more brightly on the beads of sweat on her arms and legs. Wendy’s breath caught. Maybe she did have a crush on her beautiful teacher.

Inconvenient, she told herself, since she was a convinced heterosexual.

Bonnie folded out of an extension, brought her legs together gracefully, and ended staring straight at Wendy, smiling faintly. Wendy couldn’t meet her eyes just then, and instead made an exaggerated bow. Laughing, Bonnie returned it, and beckoned as she stepped over to pick up a towel.

“What’s up?” she asked, holding her head slightly to one side in a way Wendy’d always found disarming. Wendy became conscious of a high, sweet odor, realized it was Bonnie’s sweat, and caught herself inhaling.

“Um,” Wendy began. “I was . . .” What she was, just now, was frantically wondering what the hell she’d been thinking of. Even as a joke, how could she tell Bonnie any of it?

Bonnie dropped the towel and stepped back, looking Wendy up and down. With her new oddball perspective, Wendy was warmly conscious of how she looked in the chic short business suit and smoky hose. Was Bonnie nursing a crush on her?

“You’re looking pretty tense,” Bonnie said, startling her. “I won’t ask. I’d suggest a mild workout, but I doubt you have either the time or the clothes for it right now.

“Maybe I should just hypnotize you.”

Hypnotize? Wendy’s mind started to race. But it was sane daylight now, there was no sign of any diabolical conspiracies, and she was already remembering how Bonnie had used hypnosis to help her and others with just some relaxation.

Then again, Wendy thought, maybe when I’m under, I’ll blurt out something about the sex-slave dream, and embarrass us both. Maybe she’ll ask me to leave—for good. Wendy began to feel the relaxed confidence she always felt whenever Bonnie suggested she undergo hypnosis. It didn’t seem quite so simple this time, but then Bonnie stood in front of her, and Wendy had to look into her eyes.

“You will relax and not resist,” suggested Bonnie, and Wendy nodded quickly, her breath rushing out in a shuddering exhalation of relief as she let go, like slipping into a cool quiet pool and letting the water bear her. Bonnie kept talking firmly, gently, but Wendy realized she didn’t have to pay attention. She began to daydream, sensing Bonnie’s approval, and wondered vaguely how she could explain the lesbian fantasy, but not reveal her own growing desire for Bonnie herself. As Bonnie’s murmur ran on, Wendy realized there would be no need to explain. Bonnie would not question her. Bonnie would only help her meditate.

“Yes,” she said softly after a while, and dreamed about taking off her clothes and kneeling while Bonnie took a vinyl collar from a desk drawer and strapped it onto her neck. It was like the other slave dream, but full of warm, even sexy feelings instead of fear. When Bonnie stepped away from her, Wendy rose and walked out of the office, bewildered but kind of excited to be walking nude around the dojo even though there was no one there. She picked her way along a shadowy passage among the hangings, feeling no curiosity about the new part of the place she was exploring.

It’s just a dream, she told herself. No reason to look around; I’m still with Bonnie on the practice floor while she hypnotizes me to help me meditate.

She found a gap in the tarps and turned to step through, into a little room. Two other women, nude like her and with the same shiny collars, stood motionless at attention, staring ahead of them. As Wendy looked at them, she felt herself moistening. They were both pretty enough, but what was sending Wendy gently over the edge was the way they stood as if under a powerful command, the way they stared as if their minds were transfixed by a single idea that had flattened any other thought and feeling, the way they were naked and exposed, wearing only someone else’s badge of ownership. What a strange and arousing wet dream Bonnie was letting her have, as she murmured too quietly for Wendy to hear.

Wanting to be like them, Wendy stood straight and still, and smiled to herself at how she was bending Bonnie’s innocent little meditation-trance into a kinky fantasy that would still let her concentrate the way Bonnie wanted. She stood facing the other women, who did not react to her, put her hands by her sides, and drew herself up. She was trying to look at the other two slave-like women, but found it was easier and easier just to stare between them at the tarp. Wendy dreamt that another woman appeared from behind her, and for a moment her eyes could refocus from staring into the blank gray, for a little while, on the other woman’s supple, nude body as she stalked past. Neither of the other women spoke or moved, and Wendy felt even more aroused as she found she could be like them by also not speaking to the new girl.

The new girl just turned to face one of the other walls, came to attention, and went blank.

Later, other people were in the room. Bonnie was in loose-fitting black sweats, and Tanya stood in a pearl-colored pantsuit beside a figure Wendy couldn’t focus on. She didn’t try, too busy at first enjoying the sweet rush of standing nude and frozen while the two instructors stood clothed and able to move.

Then she realized the newcomer was male, and she lost herself in a fantasy of being told to bend, pose, freeze, as he looked her over and felt her up. This was much better than any of her old, tame spanking daydreams, and she smiled again to herself as she wondered how she’d ever thought ill of Bonnie when the poor woman was giving her (and even guest-starring in) such hot fantasies. Then it went voyeuristic as he went on to inspect the new girl and one of the other women the same way, shaking his head at the last one. Wendy caught snatches of conversation—“special program”, “cost you a thousand less”, even the erotic “this one’s so brainwashed she . . ."—but they kept slipping from her mind. Then Bonnie and Tanya and their male visitor strode out, and as he left he locked eyes with Wendy, laughing at her whimper. She and the other women stayed as they were . . . perfect . . .

. . . “OK,” Bonnie told her, and Wendy was awake again, smoothly leaving hypnosis as though stepping off the top of an escalator. She shook her head and furtively looked down, almost disappointed to find she was fully clothed and standing just where she was when Bonnie had started hypnotizing her. She tried to recall the trance, feeling there’s been something besides Bonnie’s beautiful eyes and soothing murmur, but couldn’t.

Trying to smile, she looked sidelong at the other woman. “Please tell me I haven’t made a complete ass out of myself.”

Bonnie laughed and shook her head. Part of Wendy wanted to go over and hug her.

She remembered that when Bonnie hypnotized her they usually didn’t discuss specifics—it was just repeated affirmations and relaxation. Bonnie, in hypnotist mode, was scrupulous about privacy. There was no sign she’d just heard any confessions, either, so very likely Wendy hadn’t said anything even in the openness of trance.

She gathered herself and thanked Bonnie and headed out to go back to work.

It bothered her that she hadn’t found a way to bring up the reason she’d gone to see Bonnie in the first place, but she gave up trying to sort out what that really had been.

Later, she realized that she hadn’t asked about Kaitlin, and that she was having difficulty even keeping her mind on the subject. Over and over, on each break, she looked down at her planner and struggled to think of why she’d written across three “Things to Do!” slots to herself:

“If you’ve seen Bonnie, and you don’t know what happened to Kaitlin by now, WORRY.”

3.

Wendy was a doer. She thought about it all and just decided to find out. Her feelings about Bonnie were now so tangled that she’d almost stood outside herself that afternoon as she lied smoothly to the other woman on the phone and begged out of tonight’s session, already done planning the covert visit she’d make.

In happier days Wendy had quietly amused herself plotting how sneak into the dojo. She smiled grimly as she moved up the neighboring building’s fire escape, remembering her euphoria at being recruited for the “palace guard” and her visions of instant-ninja capability.

Her smile blinked off as she realized she still had similar dreams—being a bodyguard to some prominent woman, a guard who could stay by her charge anywhere she went, a guard who wouldn’t embody the latent threat that any male inevitably represented even (or especially) to a woman he protected.

If Bonnie were fucking with that somehow, Wendy would make her pay for it. And, Wendy decided to believe for now, if Bonnie were busy with mind control, she might not be ready for something as basic as a physical attack.

Crossing the roof, she looked down to the alley to ensure her jump would have no audience, and paused, doing her usual inventory of potentially distracting thoughts to get them out of the way before they popped up later and ruined her concentration. Her mind was blessedly still for now, enjoying the activity. There was only the nagging whisper Where did I put that picture?, but she set that neurosis aside and got to work. She leaped the few feet across to Bonnie’s building, following the joints in the surface to avoid creaking as she sought the service entrance. As she stepped carefully toward the door, she felt suddenly very guilty. If she were caught, Bonnie would probably not even act upset, would talk about “a woman’s fear issues,” would be so damned understanding, and that would be worse than a tirade.

Wendy shook her head, and thought about Kaitlin. Too many questions to put aside.

She slipped the lock as an ex-boyfriend had taught her—one of the nicer ones, and she wished they’d gotten along better. That wasn’t helpful to think about either, so she concentrated on finding the quiet spots on the catwalk and inched her way over to the studio space, hearing the dull thump of music and wondering if one of the aerobics classes had run very late. And what was with the strobelights?

Lying flat on the catwalk’s boards, she crawled carefully the last few bodylengths and peered over. Eight women were dancing. The first thing she noticed was how perfectly synchronized their motion was, almost robotic. No one was calling moves—they looked like a topflight dance team that practiced every waking moment, needing no coaching. The second thing she noticed was that she knew them—it was the advanced self-defense class, the elite. The third thing she noticed kept her from wondering what this showgirl routine had to do with learning to close and fight with an attacker.

The third thing she noticed was that they were nude. And collared.

This was real. They were hypnotized, and the music and the flashing lights were sending them deeper. Suddenly she knew she wouldn’t have to see their blank faces to know why she didn’t remember ever doing this. Why none of them would remember it tomorrow.

Wendy went into a shutdown, waiting, trying to take it in. This was real. That meant the dream event had been real. And, she knew as she skidded around panic, that meant the mind control was real. If she didn’t leave now and they caught her, they could make her not want to leave.

Her heart skipped a beat then as she realized how compelling the dance was, how much she wanted to be down there, giving herself up to it, posing and thrusting and gyrating, showing off her body, spending her strength and energy.

The music was some kind of dehumanizing techno throb and it pulled at her, a merciless siren song that promised ecstasy if she rose and climbed down and walked into the dojo and met Bonnie’s eyes and fell into them and received permission to strip off her clothes and drop them where she stood and kneel to be collared and kiss Bonnie’s crotch and focus there and beg and be allowed to slip into the hypnotic dance and submerge her pathetic will and—

Wendy caught herself while she was only reaching for a stanchion to pull herself up.

She looked down, able—for now—to resist the music out of sheer raw fear that whatever had really happened to Kaitlin would happen to her if she succumbed. Looking now, she could see Bonnie, standing almost contemptuously still, immune to the beat and flicker that had overwhelmed and rehypnotized her student/slaves. The instructor was glistening, the tight leather outfit she wore somehow appropriate despite its melodrama.

Someone who’d brainwashed a bunch of adult women so thoroughly that they’d pay to come back week after week and dance themselves into a deeper trance could wear whatever she damn well liked. Who’d laugh at her?

No sign of Tanya, and Wendy began trying to think tactically. If her last free act were to get the drop on Bonnie somehow, and Tanya came up from behind, well—that would really suck.

And just how, part of her brain asked politely, did Wendy plan to get the drop on anyone?

She waited. The smart thing would be to get the police, and she doubted that Bonnie could get everything in order in time to hide whatever was going on. A bunch of cops would probably enjoy a room full of fit, naked women saying “There’s nothing wrong here” in identical zombie monotones, but they’d still do something.

To make it count, Wendy’d need more for them to see.

The music stopped, and the women did too, as if shut off. They came to attention, facing front, staring into the far wall with absolute concentration. Wendy felt sick as she realized she’d been there with them on other nights, blank and obedient, her mind empty with no memories to carry away. God, they were so helpless—the crazy woman who’d turned them into puppets stood there and ogled their nakedness, and she could probably walk over and slap one, or even stab her to death, and the rest would wait blankly until their Mistress told them what to do. No one would help. No one would remember they should.

God. Goddess. Somebody.

A gong sounded, and Wendy was chilled to realize that, like Bonnie’s dominatrix getup, it did not seem silly. The women responded, pivoting like toy soldiers and walking in line past one of the hangings that separated the areas of the dojo. Wendy shifted her perch to follow them.

She swallowed a gasp as her dream rushed back to her. Under a hanging red lamp assembly, the women padded silently to take up places around a rectangular mat. Spacing themselves through training, they stood at parade rest with their hands behind their backs, staring across at each other.

Through each other. Wendy could glimpse their empty faces, their glazed eyes, each in her private trance. Their minds would still be echoing the thought-killing beat of the music and the compulsion of the shared group movement, conforming with the other controlled dancers to fulfill the Mistress’ pattern. Out of that would be rising the mantra . . .

OBEY MISTRESS. DO NOT THINK. OBEY MISTRESS. SLEEP, SUBMIT.

Wendy bit her tongue to drive it out of her own head.

4.

Bonnie walked in, her bootheels clicking where her slaves’ bare feet had been noiseless. Wendy tried to reconcile this predator with the friendly, intuitive friend and teacher they’d all trusted. Was she a psychopath?

She walked around the standing women—girls to her, Wendy told herself, remembering the dream—gloating perhaps. She stepped onto the mat and faced one of them, Lucy with her long blond hair pulled up into a bun that made her look severe, almost fanatical. Bonnie touched Lucy where her thighs met, and the girl shook gently but held position, her eyes alive now and fixed on her Mistress.

Bonnie now put her hand on Lucy’s head as if blessing her, and Lucy sank slowly to kneel as Wendy remembered kneeling, parting her knees to expose her pussy, her eyes staying locked onto Bonnie’s as Bonnie’s hand withdrew. Lucy’s hands came out from behind her back to come together behind her head, and as Bonnie walked to the next slave Lucy stared blindly where her Mistress had been, only gradually lowering her head as the trance took her deeper.

Wendy knew what was going through what was left of the girl’s mind now, an even simpler mantra without words, begging to obey and be commanded, to be touched, and felt her own eyes start to tear up. Her crotch got wet again, as she recognized with dread that seeing the hypnotized women submit to their captor so easily was turning her on, and her desire to join them in their vulnerable blankness was close behind.

How had Bonnie done this to them? And why was Wendy free?

Bonnie made the round of her slaves until each one was kneeling open and mindless. Wendy watched from the catwalk, gradually feeling an icy dread creep up her bones: that the turn-on she felt would merge with the effect that Bonnie was having, and draw her helplessly down out of hiding to submit, as she’d almost done when first she heard the music. It might happen, the next time. She realized bleakly that Bonnie must already have tremendous control of her—she’d knelt like these women, alongside them, and barely remembered it. Certainly hadn’t resisted it.

Now Bonnie stepped carefully to the side of the mat, and said clearly, “What are you?”

The kneeling girls chorused, “i am Yours.” They sounded so lost and too sleepy to care that Wendy almost cried for them, even as it hit her that each responded for herself alone, unaware of the others. In her mind, each woman was alone with her Mistress. The feeling of sisterhood Wendy’d always left practice with, even as it had felt a little hokey, must be some suggestion Bonnie programmed them all to remember, drawing them back. When they were really here there was no fellowship. Just . . . this.

Practicality dragged her out of moping. Where the hell was Tanya?

Bonnie continued the catechism. “What do you do?”

“i obey.”

“What are you?”

“i am Your slave.”

Wendy looked at them as they knelt. She realized she’d never really gotten a good look at her fellow students. Many of them didn’t look even as athletic as she was. All of them were attractive, a couple drop-dead gorgeous, but there was a soft, voluptuous woman with hennaed Louise Brooks hair, and a petite girl whose hair looked almost pink in the lurid overhead light—neither one looked like she could survive a fight unless she won it with the opening blow, and neither looked up to doing even that. Maybe in need of Bonnie’s generalized course, but certainly not candidates for special training.

Not special martial arts training, anyway.

Wendy remembered asking Bonnie about this, and recalled some kind of Zen-bullshit reply about strength meaning nothing, and all body types being equally suitable. Wendy realized she hadn’t even remembered that conversation until now.

“What do you do?”

“i obey.”

“What are you?”

“i am a whore.”

One of the women who did look strong enough—Casey? Cassie?—knelt meekly beside the petite blonde, half a head taller, her muscle definition clear even from this far away. But she was equally docile, equally conquered, all her strength and skill neutralized by Bonnie’s hypnotic spell. It suddenly made her strength seem equine, like a strapping mare, and Wendy had a vision of her harnessed to—

She bit her tongue to fight the arousal.

“What do you do?”

“i obey.”

“What are you?”

“I am weak and helpless.”

An incongruous thought jostled the front of Wendy’s mind as it reeled away from the evil joy of imagining Casey enslaved as a beast of burden, pulling a cart where Tanya, laughing, lashed and drove her. Wendy thought, and gritted her teeth, We paid her to do this to us!

It was absurd, but indignant felt better than terrified.

“Your heart beats for me,” Bonnie almost growled, and the women moaned it back to her. It startled Wendy by calling up feelings from other dreams she hadn’t remembered having. “Your pussy juices for me . . . Your clit throbs for me . . .” Wendy heard the raw hunger in her voice, and realized how frightening it was. More frightening to think of being completely helpless before such hunger and power.

To want to be helpless. It was too easy to remember.

She looked at the women kneeling. Well-behaved, programmed. She fancied she could see them vibrating with the sheer joy of being vulnerable to their Owner.

Wendy found her eyes drawn to Bonnie’s body, imagining she remembered the curve of her taut thighs as Wendy knelt and looked up at her, on some erased night. She began to imagine—remember—the salty taste of Bonnie, the leather cupping her cheeks as she licked, the curry/caviar smell that kept hitting her again and again with the knowledge that she was conquered, that she was another woman’s willing slave and letting herself be addicted.

Wendy blinked, and realized she was wet. It was almost too late. Just watching Bonnie exult over the others was too seductive to resist much longer. She had no idea what was happening here, but she had to get away before it happened to her. She’d find someone to help. Or she’d just run away.

Looking away from the tableau down below, she covered her ears to shut out Bonnie’s voice and slowly rose to edge away on the catwalk.

Tanya was leaning on the rail, a yard or two behind her, between her and the way out.

There was an awful inevitability to this, and Wendy started to feel almost relieved that the waiting was over. But she was suddenly terrified that this feeling was another thing she’d been hypnotized into, the beginning of surrender, and froze in a half-crouch. She struggled to think of nothing but the physical facts of trying to fight her way past Tanya, and grimly swore that it didn’t matter who was the better fighter. Whichever of them went over the rail, Wendy would be free.

Her knee hurt.

As she straightened, blessing it for waking her up again, she was smiling at Tanya. Tanya smiled back, stepping to the center of the catwalk. Wendy couldn’t help but see how good she looked, the skintight metallic bodysuit cut high to show her graceful legs—soft-looking, but Wendy knew how hard they could kick.

I know how to kick, too, she told herself. She breathed out, and stepped forward.

Tanya said, “Obey.”