The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TETHER

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Inspirations: Some images from Orestes’ “The Server,” and moments from Aerosol Kid’s “Matryoshka Doll” (again) and Iago’s “Cry of Obedience.”

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15.

As she played with herself, bucking under her fingers’ work but keeping the orgasm down for now, Meredith looked up again from the bed to the spandex girl in the doorway, Slave Nine guarding her once more. She’d been giving herself glimpses of the girl’s toned body and her trained taut posture, dreaming of being the girl’s plaything. She’d avoided Slave Nine’s eyes without knowing why, but as her own body melted inward with the building need, she let her longing for connection tempt her. She sought the slavegirl’s gaze.

Slave Nine watched her masturbate with no reaction at all.

That sent her over into orgasm, and she locked eyes with Slave Nine until her own rolled up. She blinked and looked, when she could, as the aftershocks rolled through her, and kept looking as she lifted her fingertips to taste them. She came very close to offering them to the spandex girl.

She knew Slave Nine might just stare at her and not react otherwise, leave her feeling like even less than a slut, with her gift of come ignored. That was part of why she wanted to try.

The slavegirl’s stillness let Meredith’s arousal lift her to her feet and walk her over toward the other woman, envying her lithe shape and able to drink in how nice, how exciting it would be to touch her, to press that smooth muscularity or slide fingertips under her waistband.

Meredith stopped, lightheaded, as though she’d caught herself wanting to pet a tigress, after the color and depth of the fur had mesmerized her into the cage. She could remember the way Alice’s brainwashed spandex girls had frightened her when they first took her, and she knew how foolish it was to let herself be drawn into even dreaming of one as a toy.

Alice, who’d captured her and put her under a lovely spell, could and did think of Slave Nine and her sisters as toys. And they were. The graceful, strong, implacable spandex girls were putty in Alice’s hands, posable dolls. Mindlessly obedient in a way Meredith could only dream of being.

Dolls. Meredith looked at Slave Nine and pictured her bent over, her black-and-yellow bikini tight around her knees as Alice calmly fisted her, jerking and lost on her Mistress’ hand as her Mistress explored her ass.

A handpuppet.

Meredith had to stand very still, as part of her feared the sheer arousal of worshipping that kind of power might split her where she stood. That part of her was hoping to die that way. Alice . . .

Slave Nine watched her.

Meredith wondered how aware of her the other girl was, as anything more than something to be watched and kept under control. Did Slave Nine understand why Meredith stared at her with moist eyes and kept squeezing her thighs together?

She thought of something Alice had said when they’d first met and Alice was soothing her fears, about not being afraid of being raped because I have a whole stable of women for that. Did Slave Nine think of sex as anything other than serving Alice?

Meredith didn’t wonder too hard, because now all she could think of was how it might have felt if Alice had raped her as she lay there, nude and bound and . . .

Something thrummed through her and she stopped dead, limp on her feet like a pithed animal.

Her hand was across her chest as though in salute before she realized the purple watch had beeped and the beeptone had all but turned off her brain, just as Alice had promised. She was suddenly too contentedly empty to wonder what barrier she’d crossed to set it off.

Her mind couldn’t handle that. Her mind had too much in it now.

Beep is sleep.

Just the thought made her drowsier.

Slave Nine stepped out of attention and paced to where Meredith stood, taking her bare shoulders in cool strong fingertips and turning her without effort. As her hand flopped to her side again, Meredith let herself be guided to the chair, feeling herself juice freely at how helplessly blank she was.

She sank to the seat, feeling her moisture under her thigh and slipping on it a bit. She slumped forward, able to stay seated because her sluggish awareness could grasp that someone willed her to, and obedience was the deepest part of her now. Her eyelids drooped, but they let her see her knees. She saw her skin glisten, and then flash dimly but rhythmically.

She was too stupefied to put ideas together now, but the knowledge came from a repeatedly-programmed lesson: the trance light was pulsing against the wall again. She was so well-trained by now it would have hypnotized her in the blink of an eye—even as it robbed her of the ability to blink—but to let it take her, she’d have to look up.

There was not enough will left in Meredith now to do that.

The climax that knowledge brought was small, but her world was even smaller, and the pleasure filled it. She slumped there until it faded.

Firm fingertips under her chin lifted her head, and her body shifted automatically to sit erect. Her eyes slid closed from the pleasure of being handled and bidden, and the flash that beat against her eyelids now was too faint to snare her.

They popped open when another fingertip grazed her mons, but she forgot vague pleasure and vaguer gratitude when she saw the blinking yellow ellipse on the wall, and fell into it. It was a different but equally thrilling trance from the one the beeptone had put her into, though she no longer remembered the tone.

Her ears were full of a whisper.

She was looking at the wall.

Its whiteness was clean and even and empty, just like her mind. She understood that could change, that the wall, or her mind, could be filled and darkened, but Someone else had to choose to do that, then do it. Someone with will, not someone whose warm soft core was obedience.

Meredith thought about the wall being clean.

She thought about sitting quietly while someone made her mind dirty.

She stood and came to attention.

Turning to the door, she walked to where Slave Nine stood. The other girl stared at her. “Captive,” she said.

Meredith froze.

“What is your programming?”

Meredith looked into her eyes, delighting in the void there. “I am programmed to report,” she heard herself respond.

“Purpose?”

“For further programming,” she said. Part of her wanted to laugh, but more of her wanted to come.

“Confirmed,” Slave Nine pronounced, then swung away to the side and stared across the open doorway, making way for Meredith and seeming to forget her existence.

Meredith stopped thinking about the slave and padded out of the room, proud that she needed no guide. Alice’s control had been in her for a long time, and she could perform simple tasks without Alice needing to spare a spandex girl from more important service to lead her around.

She couldn’t remember any of the tasks, or the ways she’d passed to do them, but her obedient self knew the way and she followed without question.

She recalled making tapes behind one or another of the doors she passed, tiresome recitations under light trance with clothing on her upper body—but it pleased Alice to have her do it, and it pleased Alice more that she’d responded to her training and done it so well.

As she paced down the endless hallways of the place Alice kept her, she started to shimmy as she went, nursing the heat that was building in her cunt as she realized she didn’t know many of these areas. It was turning her on to realize, too, that Alice must have implanted the directions in her mind while she sat slumped in a chair, hypnotized and open.

A noise up ahead caught her ear, but she didn’t break step even as she felt the warm kiss of outside, unconditioned air. On the right, she saw a pair of glass doors opening onto a neat courtyard of gravel, warded by granite-block walls and tall hedges atop them.

The noise was a car, idling smoothly with the door open. As she came nearer down the hallway, she saw an open gate beyond, and when she passed the doorway itself, she saw what looked like clothing folded on the passenger seat.

She walked very slowly now, staring at the clothes, seeing pleasant colors but not able to tell what they were.

She could leave. She could get in and drive away.

Meredith moved one foot before the other, wondering if a spandex girl would come to speak a word and put her to sleep, or Alice herself would come and stare her into trance—anything to learn what to think about this.

She thought about driving. It was exciting to think about sitting naked on those leather seats warming in the hazy sunlight, and her breath caught as she thought seatbelts and imagined the binding across her soft lap, the edges digging into her skin, the other strap parting her breasts, holding her to the leather behind her.

But without any idea of where she’d want to go that wasn’t right here, she walked on. After a few steps the tingling in her thighs was more interesting than the car, and as she thought of being with Alice she forgot it.

There was a door, and another slave in a black and yellow bikini. Staring into another, darker pair of too-focused eyes, she said crisply, “Reporting as programmed.”

The spandex girl did something and the door opened, and Meredith stepped inside. Her heart raced as she recognized the table where she would lie, the monitor that would be swung to hang over her.

“I knew you’d know what to do,” Alice said. Meredith had no idea what she meant but blushed to have pleased her, and that seemed to make Alice happy, too. “Ready?”

Meredith came to attention again and beamed at her. “Your word is my will,” she said, and wriggled for a moment at the way Alice’s eye twinkled to hear that.

“Sweet,” she commented, and gestured at the table.

Meredith stepped to it and neatly stretched herself out, looking up and waiting for the monitor to show her the spiral.

Even when she felt Alice’s hand warm on her thigh, one fingertip questing gently northward, she didn’t look away, because Alice had trained her to concentrate, and wait, before she slept.

Then the spiral was everything.

16.

Meredith stared up into the spiral, sleeping and obeying. The whisper ruled her mind unchallenged.

As she strutted through the busy terminal she soaked up the stares and the whispered comments, and it made her warm even as she felt a breeze kiss her bottom under the pleated miniskirt. The heeled boots hugged her calves in an oddly familiar way.

She wore the brief but neat black and yellow uniform proudly, the colors of the airline that she belonged to, and smiled at the ticket agent as she got to her gate. “SFA Meredith for Flight 1072!” she chirped, and the ticket agent smiled back. The agent was pretty herself, but she was in slacks and a looser blazer. Meredith vaguely recalled having worn something like that as long ago as . . . lunchtime? . . . but couldn’t recall at all why she’d ever have wanted to.

The ticket agent said, “Captain Holloway’s flight?”

“Oh, yes!” Meredith said, even more chirpily, and the agent shook her head.

“Guessed that. Your, ah, crew is all on board.”

“Thanks!” Meredith pulled her cart behind her and headed down the jetway. Flying with Captain Alice Holloway was one of the weirder experiences, but her eccentricities just made it a very fun, very hot kind of weird. The preflight ritual in the crew lounge where she asked for volunteers to be hypnotized—pilot superstition or something—that always turned into a lingerie party. The way everyone always found herself wanting to wear what Capt Holloway wanted them to, this fetish-stewie uniform that the airline had phased out years before after the flight attendants rebelled.

A Senior Flight Attendant like herself should have stood up for the others, shouldn’t she?

But as Meredith stepped aboard, she savored the hazy but sweet memory of the rest of them standing blankly around the candle, intoning their choice to wear this. She had to go along with them, as Capt Holloway’s voice had reminded her in the candle’s glow, with the chanting in the background.

“SFA Meredith,” Capt Holloway had whispered, extinguishing even the memory of wanting to be addressed by her last name, whatever it was, like an adult. “SFA. Sweet Fuck-All. It’s what your head’s full of.”

It’s what I do and how I do it, Meredith knew, remembering deeper lessons form earlier flights under Capt Holloway’s command. She knew she was one of Capt Holloway’s favorites—there were the late-night phone calls that left her sleepy and sticky, the gift tapes in the mail she could neither recall nor stop listening to. The special assignments to Capt Holloway’s flights.

“You handle the other girls so well,” Capt Holloway had told her. “Stews that have learned to obey orders are so good at teaching others.”

She looked at the other stewardesses, prepping the plane for boarding call. For a moment she wished she were at the other end of the jetway, posing in the short skirt and the microphone in front of the whole crowded lounge, but she’d be on display through the whole flight.

Mind on the job, she told herself. Capt Holloway was counting on her. She looked at them, wondering if they were still dazed from the Captain’s hypnotic influence earlier. Leslie grinned at her before resuming her check of the pillows in the overheads—she always snapped out of trance more quickly than anyone, though she could retain commands longer even than Meredith. The quiet girl they all called “Nine” just nodded, as resilient as Leslie after a session with Capt Holloway.

Meredith looked with concern at the baby of the crew, Janet, whose bright blue eyes were still a little glassy as she put things away in the pantry with dreamy slowness. She went to Janet and touched her shoulder, and even the other stew’s start was subdued. Janet blinked at her, then smiled faintly.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m still . . . she’s quite a hypnotist.” Meredith nodded. She’d stood numbly back in the lounge, still putting on the black lace that had been chosen for them this trip, and watched the Captain work with Janet in more detail, since it was her first time on this crew. She seldom seen a girl go so deep, her first time in trance.

But Janet had spirit, and she was gamely recovering. “Mmm. Of course, I didn’t need to be hypnotized to want to wear this!” She looked down and started to smooth the hem of the miniskirt, then flounced it, and they both giggled softly. Then Janet sighed and resumed work, more briskly.

Then there was a flurry: Capt Holloway was aboard. Meredith skipped over to join the others as they stood straight to let her inspect them. Except when the Captain’s gaze was actually transfixing them, she and Leslie were able to trade glances, basking in the Captain’s frank admiration of how the skirts and boots showed off their legs, and the pert little vest-and-blouse sets displayed their chests. Janet and Nine were too spellbound to look anywhere else but at their pilot.

Capt Holloway had a special smile for Janet, and Meredith smiled as she saw the rookie’s bright blue eyes glaze over. She’s probably forgotten everything from stewardess training, now.

Lucky girl.

Then Alice Holloway stood over Janet, took her in her arms, and kissed her deeply, and Meredith could actually see Janet slump bonelessly in her embrace. The Captain held her and Meredith saw her cheek working under her closed eyes, and then the Captain’s hand slid smoothly under Janet’s skirt.

She let Janet go and the girl swayed where she stood for a moment, and Meredith stepped forward to keep her steady.

“Luck for the flight,” she whispered to Janet, who followed Capt Holloway with a hungry gaze as she sauntered to the cockpit. “Captain’s privilege with the new girl.”

“And mine,” Janet whisper-moaned, slowly becoming aware of the rest of the world.

Meredith squeezed her shoulders. “You’ll do the coach briefing.” Janet’s eyes lit up again, and after a hug they parted to finish prepping and then welcome the passengers.

As Meredith took her place at the front of first class with the brochure and oxygen mask, and through the gap in the curtains aft saw Janet doing likewise, Nine took the microphone and began to recite the safety ritual. Meredith usually assigned her that duty. Nine was lovely to look at when she postured with the various devices, but there was something compelling about her abstracted voice that soothed the passengers and lulled Meredith herself and the other stewardesses as they pointed rhythmically to the exits. It became a seductive dance that trapped the dancers as well as the audience.

Capt Holloway’s voice—so much more deeply commanding even than Nine’ s—came through the speakers now, and under its guidance Meredith and her girls patrolled the aisle to see that belts were fastened and tray tables were returned to the upright position. They strode through the cabin, nodding to each other, touching seatbacks like spokesmodels caressing cars in a showroom, and Meredith started to get wet as she found herself gently binding all these people in under Capt Holloway’s command.

Soon, she’d be bound on the same belts.

She wondered whether and when her scent might drift out past that high-riding hem. She’d already seen a couple of passengers she hoped to be waiting on, aloft, when that happened and they smelled her.

Then she looked up, getting nods from the other three and sparing a cheery grin for Janet. She about-faced and strode down the length of the plane to report to Capt Holloway. It was all she could do not to start skipping again.

In the cockpit she found the Captain going methodically down the checklist. In the right chair, the copilot was staring at a blinking telltale, whispering into the headset she’d fitted onto her crown of red braids. “Roger,” she said faintly, not looking away from the light. Meredith looked to the side and saw the flight engineer, her hands flat on a clipboard, looking from one indicator at the left end of her panel to another on the right, and then back, and then the other way. She was speaking softly into a headset too, and like the copilot she didn’t react to Meredith’s entry. “Copy,” she whispered.

Meredith didn’t expect them to be curious about her, but she couldn’t help looking at whatever the engineer was trying to keep track of, though of course she’d never understand it. She followed the engineer’s gaze and thought she could tell which instruments the woman kept monitoring, but it was hard to concentrate as she swung her head back, and forth, and back, and . . .

She blinked. The Captain had snapped her fingers and sat turned in her seat, smiling faintly as she waited for Meredith’s head to clear. “Sorry,” Meredith said, and then straightened. “Captain, the passengers and crew are ready for takeoff!”

“Roger,” murmured the copilot.

“Copy,” said the engineer quietly.

Capt Holloway leaned back and smiled. “New instructions,” she said, and Meredith smiled back, stepping forward until her knee brushed the poplin of the Captain’s uniform slacks. She leaned down from the waist, and the Captain reached up and touched her forehead. Meredith closed her eyes and then opened them, staring into the pilot’s, hypnotized again and calmly awaiting her orders.

“You will remember the special drinks service on this flight now.”

“I will remember the special drinks service on this flight now.” Meredith felt a closed compartment in her mind open, and inside there was the close warmth of a candle flame she’d stared into.

“Roger.” The telltale’s reflection shone like a candle in the copilot’s unblinking eyes.

“Copy,” the engineer whispered, tirelessly turning.

The Captain nodded. “When my voice instructs you, you will trigger the other stews and reinforce their indoctrination for the special drinks service.”

“When your voice instructs me, I will trigger the other stews and reinforce their indoctrination for the special drinks service.”

The Captain snapped her fingers again and Meredith straightened. “Think you can bring it off?”

Meredith smiled down at her. “My girls are good. And I’ve been trained by the very, very best,” she went on, looking deeply into Alice Holloway’s eyes.

“Roger,” the copilot suggested.

“Copy?” wondered the engineer, her voice fading as she spoke on the other arc of her endless turning.

The Captain held Meredith’s gaze, and then reached up to rest a possessive hand on her thigh. Meredith gasped and held position.

“Good girl. I might want my dinner served personally by my head stewie, later.”

Meredith tried to stay on her feet, and Capt Holloway’s training helped. “Y-yes, Captain. I’d be—” She swallowed.

“But the new girl. Janet should—Captain’s privilege—” She desperately wanted to wait on the Captain later herself, but it wasn’t just about her—she owed the opportunity to her rookie girl, and she wanted the Captain to enjoy breaking in a tender new stewardess. Being Senior Flight Attendant wasn’t just about the pretty gold piping on the fitted vest—she had responsibilities.

The Captain read her easily, and she blushed at the Captain’s approval. “I know, Meredith. I chose my top girl well.

“But nothing says I can’t have two girls see to my needs, on my own aircraft.” She looked past Meredith at the mesmerized cockpit crew. “Thoughts?”

“Roger,” said the copilot intently.

“Copy,” affirmed the engineer.

17.

Meredith strained under her belt during takeoff, closing her eyes. Whenever she flew with Capt Holloway, this moment ravished her, the balancing of thrust and grace so much different than any male pilot’s. Reaching so much deeper into Meredith, as though the G-force and the muted roar of the jets were the Captain’s godlike grip and whisper, holding her helpless.

She tried to smile at herself as the plane drew level and the orgasmic moment passed, but she knew she was just simpering like someone whose brains really had just been fucked out.

Stew training and the need to perform for her Captain drew her up, gathering the others with her eye and going out to see to the passengers. Most of them stared at the way she was dressed, and most of them plainly enjoyed it. Some she knew, regulars who asked for Capt Holloway’s flights.

She went down the first-class seats, touching the seatbacks again and nodding from side to side, smiling blankly, posing for each moment and then flowing into the next. She raised her eyes to look into coach again and saw Janet doing the same airy stroll, proud of how deep the other girl was in her tasks.

Janet stopped and turned to beam down at someone who’d spoken, raising her hand languidly to the overhead and showing off her trim form. Her face lit up as she became her own instant fascination with whatever passenger had said something to her. Meredith glowed as she saw the false brightness of Janet’s eyes as she poured focus onto the man or woman she was serving.

It wouldn’t be long before Capt Holloway trained Janet for first class.

Fingertips on Meredith’s thigh stopped her mind and paralyzed her body gently but utterly. She’d been caught in a pose with one foot forward, and she held it as she gazed down into the face of an older woman sitting alone in the last row of first class.

They stared at each other, and Meredith let the seconds drip away when she could have pretended this was about someone needing a blanket. After she’d let the woman have her eyes, she leaned gently against the touch.

“May I be of service?” she breathed, and realized she wasn’t pretending that, either.

“I hope so,” the woman said, and tilted her head, intrigued, as she saw how Meredith’s pupils dilated at the sound of her voice. “I get so confused, sometimes, with those restrooms.”

She didn’t explain further, and she didn’t take her hand from Meredith’s leg.

Meredith smiled, and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Of course. If you’ll please follow me, I’ll take care of you.”

She walked ahead of the woman past the rest of first class, and felt their stares as she opened the door. Looking into the woman’s eyes, she stopped and let them daze her again, and it made her even more obedient to the unspoken command she felt now.

She slipped inside and sat on the seat, spreading her thighs out to the bulkheads, as the passenger pressed in between them and shut the door. Meredith looked up at her and kept looking, letting her practiced hands reach up the woman’s skirt and undo her underwear by feel. She pictured what the woman was seeing as she looked down at Meredith, down on her.

Meredith was almost singing her need as she leaned forward at last and nosed under the skirt, questing with her tongue and finding the soft, salty place almost at once. The woman was soaked already, and came almost before Meredith could really lick her for long, but when she came she bucked hard into Meredith’s face and gripped Meredith’s head. As she pulled back and reached blindly for something to clean the woman and then herself, Meredith let herself admit that she’d been why—that the woman had gotten hot watching her prance through the cabin, and had peaked when Meredith had submitted to the advance so meekly and soon.

The hand was light on her head now, and when she looked up the woman’s eyes were moist as she whispered, “What about you?”

Meredith smiled. She couldn’t explain how just being face-fucked would keep her dreaming for days. “You tasted that good,” she said instead, and let herself enjoy the way that felt.

Then she closed her eyes, feeling the compulsion reawaken. “But I must tend to the special drinks service,” she droned, but in the whisper the passenger heard only the words.

The woman left first, leaving a kiss on Meredith’s forehead, and Meredith wiped her face and stepped out after her. She wanted them to look at her now, wondered which ones would try her next and how long they could make themselves wait. A few averted their eyes, but looked more amazed than appalled, and one or two just grinned, admiring how she must have won the smile her trick had worn coming out, after so little time working.

Presently, after she was back out in the aisle, Capt Holloway’s voice came over the speakers, greeting the passengers and describing the flight. “When we reach our cruising altitude, we will provide all passengers with our . . . special drinks service.”

As she heard it Meredith felt a ghost kiss her clit and saw Leslie stiffen too. They gazed emptily at each other and then pivoted to walk back to the pantry. Nine had gotten there first and turned to face outward, her face blank and waiting. Meredith watched Leslie stand next to her. She turned to see Janet making her dazed way down the aisle, obeying the posthypnotic command as though she were still nude in the lounge, with the Captain’s candle flame filling her sight and the Captain’s voice bending her thoughts. Just as they all were, attending the Captain on her plane and doing her will while they forgot their own.

The spell they were all under now seemed to keep the passengers quiet, too—no one stopped Janet for anything or even let their eyes linger on her pretty legs as she passed.

When they were together, Meredith looked at her stews. “The Captain’s voice has put our wills to sleep and awakened our programming. We will carry it out.”

“We must,” the other girls whispered. Meredith heard a sigh and saw Janet blinking.

“We remember her indoctrination,” she continued. “It controls us now.”

“It controls us now,” they repeated fervently.

“Nine,” Meredith said, and the other stewardess focused on her. “Prepare the special flavor packets.”

“I obey,” Nine said, and turned to one of the cupboards, bringing out a plastic box and efficiently sorting the little capsules into four styrofoam cups. Meredith was distracted for a moment, watching the way the other girl kept her thighs primly together as she worked, seeing the pleated mini shift this way and that across her ass.

But another sigh freed her attention. Janet had backed against the other bank of cupboards. Her eyes were still trance-wide but her lids were fluttering, and she trembled. Her eyes searched wildly like stirred birds and alighted on Meredith’s gaze.

“We can’t,” she whispered urgently. “The Captain’s voice instructs and I must obey but it’s wrong! We can’t do this!”

18.

Nine stopped arranging the special flavor packets and stared straight ahead at the closed panel in front of her, then rotated to look at Meredith. Leslie came to wary readiness on the other side, eyeing Janet almost with pleasure. They were ready to restrain her, and Meredith felt a memory probing her mind from the inside, something shiny Capt Holloway had given her while she was still deeply hypnotized back at the airport—something she ‘d programmed Meredith to remember only if one of the other girls got out of control.

But Meredith was the Senior Flight Attendant, and her Captain had chosen her top girl well.

She smiled at Janet, seeing it reassure the other girl, before she leaned over to the service panel and found the rectangular button with the silhouette of a miniskirted flight attendant. She didn’t know why they’d installed a call button back here, but she knew what it would do to Janet.

The bong was unobtrusive but it got into their heads and leashed their minds for a moment. Something in her kept her thinking clearly, but she saw Nine and Leslie go deeper—Nine’s training was so strong the girl was about to sleepwalk out into the aisle, looking for the call-light that would tell her which passenger had summoned her obedience.

“Obey the Captain,” Meredith said firmly, and the other two shook themselves and nodded to her, able to watch while she handled Janet.

Janet sagged against the cupboard, looking as though Capt Holloway had deeptongued her again, but somehow still trying to say No—it’s wrong.

Meredith had the odd inspiration to say, “Janet—is it time for your scuba lesson, now?”

Janet whimpered, and Meredith caught her before she could fall, sliding her thigh between the other girl’s and feeling their hems brush together. “Scu . . . ba,” the rookie said.

Meredith reached without looking and tapped the button again. While the bong was still in Janet’s ears she said, “Obey the Captain!”

She waited, seeing Janet’s eyes, impossibly wide and blue, mirroring hers.

There were tears in them, but they didn’t blink.

Meredith said, “We remember her indoctrination. It controls us now.”

Janet repeated tonelessly, “It controls us now.”

Meredith kissed her, and held out a hand. Leslie put a tissue onto her palm and then took her fingers lightly. When Meredith looked, Leslie just lavished her with a wordless look of admiration and stepped back. Meredith smiled and turned to wipe Janet’s eyes, careful of her makeup.

“Serve passengers,” she said, and had to tighten her legs around Janet’s as she saw the trigger from stew training switch the smile on, bright and empty and convincing.

Now, Janet was a happy pretty stewardess once more, from whom any passenger would gladly accept special drinks service. Avidly, Meredith leaned forward and hissed the phrase into Janet’s ear. She felt a tremor go through the other girl.

“I remember my indoctrination,” Janet hissed into hers. “It controls me now.”

They were all smiling then as they prepared the carts, and rolled them out.

Leslie obeyed Meredith’s reassignment wordlessly, letting Janet assist Meredith in first class instead of her. Janet was a lovely doll doing that, and when she looked over the seats of the ones they’d served, watching, Meredith could see nothing in her eyes at all, until they lit to charm the next passenger into accepting a drink. Neither of them found herself able to mention the special flavor packets, or even to marvel at how skillfully she put the flavoring into each drink without being seen to do it.

They were by the seat of the woman she’d licked in the restroom, and the woman put her hand on Meredith again after a glance at Janet, who looked almost virginal in her abstraction. Meredith slid her thigh under the woman ‘s hand, finding a way to blush, and the woman’s breathing quickened. It went even faster when Janet’s smile turned to them—and then became something predatory, sharing the woman’s pleasure at making Meredith a lust object.

Meredith felt herself juice to see that corrupted-schoolgirl leer.

The passenger drew her hand away, and when she looked again at Meredith she was moving her head in very faint apology. Seeing her lust reflected that way spoiled it, and Meredith remembered how she’d offered Meredith her own pleasure in the restroom, kissed her when she was done.

Meredith smiled reassuringly as she prepared the drink, and nodded as she watched the woman drink it, suddenly anxious to please.

She looked into the woman’s eyes, and watched them as they widened. The woman fell back against the seat as she died, and the glass fell quietly onto her lap. Her eyes locked on a point past Meredith’s shoulder.

Meredith looked through the curtains, and saw how much progress Nine and Leslie had made working back through coach. The flavoring worked quickly and quietly, and Capt Holloway’s indoctrination and their own obedience had made the stewies—all four of them, Meredith told herself with another proud look at Janet—perfect at their task.

She looked down again at the woman who’d had her before, and wondered why she wanted to kneel down and kiss her deeply, to taste what might still be on her tongue. But it’s wrong! she heard someone say. How could it be? And why did she feel it would be better to share this woman’s—?

Janet pressed against her and kissed her, there in the aisle amid all the open unseeing eyes, and it melted whatever had been troubling Meredith’s mind. Janet kept her arm around her and looked down at the passenger.

“Pretty,” she said. “I wonder how she tastes now?”

Meredith squeezed her shoulder, and they watched as Nine came up the aisle from the tail to report.

“We’re finished,” she said. “Everyone had their drink, just as the Captain said.

“Now I’m getting very, very sleepy. So is Leslie. We’re both very drowsy and soon we will sleep.”

“Sleepy,” Janet breathed, and when Meredith turned there was nothing of the lethal girl that had just helped her, just a pretty blue-eyed stewardess trying to keep her eyes open.

“I must report to the Captain,” Meredith told them, and let Nine try to support Janet as they walked back to the pantry past the quiet seats in coach. She about-faced and returned to the cockpit. Even the dream of serving Capt Holloway at dinner was eclipsed by the flare of having obeyed her now.

In the cockpit she found Capt Holloway leaning back in the pilot’s seat reading something. The copilot and the flight engineer were nude and thrashing together under the engineer’s console. Out the window, Meredith could see the plane soared above a flat floor of cloud, but nothing meant anything to her but the Captain.

“All the passengers have been served their special drink, Captain.” She was at attention, had waited until Capt Holloway looked up. “Janet had some difficulty obeying, but she’s under control now. She won’t resist your indoctrination.”

“No one resists my indoctrination,” Capt Holloway. “But I’m very pleased with you, Meredith. Your friends will be going to sleep, soon, but I want to reward you with something different.” She stood, and gestured to her seat.

Meredith was stunned, but she’d been trained too deeply in prompt obedience to hesitate once she knew what her Captain wanted. She sat, squirming with the feel of Capt Holloway’s warmth on the seat under her bare thighs.

“Take the controls and focus,” the Captain said, touching Meredith’s forehead, and Meredith felt the familiar lethargy creep over her. She sat and faced forward and waited.

“In a few moments I’m going to vanish,” the Captain told her. “You’ll land the aircraft. You’ll be able to remember to find a flat place for it.

“While you do that, Meredith, I’ve put two things in your mind.

“The first is the summit of wisdom for every little sub like you: Always feed the hand that bites you.

“The second is that while you’ve been hypnotized to know how to handle a couple of these controls, you’ll still need both hands to operate them. So the first time you recite the wisdom, you’ll feel that hand—not biting you, but between your thighs. You’re already in trance and going deeper with each breath, so you’ll be able to jill off without touching yourself.

“Try it now.”

Meredith stared intently at the clouds unrolling before her and said, “Always feed the hand that bites m—ooohhhh!” She writhed in the seat but kept her grip on the yoke.

“Take her down, girl.” Capt Holloway reached past her and flipped the autopilot off and even as the annoying little alarm went off for a moment, the plane seemed to wake up.

Meredith pushed the yoke forward and saw the cloud come up to cover her. The plane was heeling to one side as it dropped under them, and she could see the beautifully craggy terrain below. As the plane leaned, the women fucking behind her in the cockpit slid out. Their noises and the scent they were brewing were pleasantly maddening, and she was grateful for the ghostly hand haunting her cleft so wonderfully now.

She turned to thank Capt Holloway, but as she’d promised, the Captain had vanished.

It was desert below her, and she wasn’t sure why something inside her breathed Thank god to know that. As she looked at the canyons and gorges and rockfalls, she wondered where the flat place was where she was supposed to land the plane.

She kept pressing the yoke forward, gradually. The ground was rushing closer.

Alarms were going off. The other women started doing each other even more brutally as though trying to drown them out. Meredith couldn’t make sense of the words some of the alarms were speaking, but the automated chant of the verbal signals and the frantic rhythmic stuttering of the loudest one excited her, driving her into an intense eyes-open trance, and it began to pulse irresistibly through her head I must I must I must

What she must seemed less the point. She was obeying whatever the unspoken command was.

Then she saw it. Long and wide and flat, exactly what she needed. She turned the yoke and the plane leaned further.

The canyon wall she’d found to land them on was vertical, but Meredith couldn’t figure out why that would be a problem. She let the warbling alarms hypnotize her and the hand that wasn’t between her legs keep her divinely on the edge of climax, and kept flying, and she was so happy she wanted to cry out aloud.

I must I must I must

The ground hadn’t been spinning—spinning—had it? Meredith shivered a little as she realized it was the spiral over her head, and that the fantasy was over.

And . . . ground? She didn’t remember it, but the feelings it had left in her made her both glad and sorry about that.

She lay nude on Alice’s training table, breathing easier than she knew she had a few blank seconds before. Her whole body throbbed the way she’d come to know always followed a long session with many deep hard orgasms, and later when she masturbated she’d be able to imagine what had given them to her.

She looked up at Alice. There was no way she could tell the woman how grateful she was, but fortunately Alice had made her know there was no need to.

Alice was instructing her.

“Remember to feed the hand that bites you,” Alice said, and Meredith obeyed the impulse to whisper it back to her. She didn’t know if it was the spell of the words or the magic of Alice’s touch that made her come so sweetly, then.

“Time for more hypnosis,” Alice said as the spandex girl swung the monitor to hang over her again. “I’ve been teaching you to forget, and you’re brilliant at it. But now I need you to remember some things, and I know you ‘ll do that perfectly, too. And please me.”

Meredith tried to tell if Alice sounded wistful as she said that, but then she was asleep again.

19.

Meredith was being hypnotized again. She wanted to close her eyes and just enjoy giving up her will, but she knew she was to keep them open instead, staring obediently at the blinking spot on the wall just as she’d been told.

Hypnosis was like a gentle sort of masturbation, keeping her simmering for minutes, hours. Perhaps years were bubbling away as she held still under the control. She no longer craved orgasm, because it would be an end. This was something more primitive, more mindless. Utterly passive.

She could just stay like this, open and receptive, for as long as whoever controlled her meant her to.

She’d been trained to keep her arousal quiet, and she knew somehow that was becoming more important each time. It wasn’t what she expressed, but what was secret in her inmost mind, that mattered.

“Three. Awake and alert now.”

Meredith opened her eyes, not wondering why or how they’d been closed after all. The hospital room was quiet and pleasant as she glanced around it, blinking, no longer seeing the place where her kidnappers had held her, now that the hypnotic session was over.

Someone gripped her hand, hesitantly, and she turned to her mother sitting beside her. She squeezed back reassuringly and looked again at Dr Yeager, the police psychologist who’d just put her under, sitting at the foot of the bed next to the detective.

“Thanks,” she told Dr Yeager. “I feel great, actually.”

“That’s all you,” he said, flicking what he hoped was a furtive glance at her mother. “I didn’t suggest you feel anything. I wouldn’t mix therapy with forensics.”

She nodded, looking around once again at the hospital room, feeling the blanket under her hand as she lay on the raised bed. She turned to the detective, who’d insisted they call him Brian. She wasn’t sure she’d even heard his last name, yet. “Did I say anything useful?”

The memories seemed so clear to her, even now outside of hypnosis. Just not very informative.

He looked at her. “Don’t you remember?”

She looked back at him, almost amused. “It’s not amnesia. I remember talking to you as you led me through the events. I meant, was any of that something you could use?”

He seemed disconcerted. “Oh. Well, it confirmed what you told us before Dr Yeager induced you.”

Induced me. Meredith considered making a joke about induced labor, but realized that she was just high, having the emotional reaction to being released by the kidnappers that she’d been convincing herself she wasn’t going to have.

Dr Yeager saw it and smiled at her. “Brian, I think Meredith has given us a great deal more than we could have asked and it’s time to let her go home.”

Brian nodded. “Of course. And we’re really grateful to you, Meredith, for agreeing to submit to hypnosis this soon—it’s the freshest time for reviewing memories, but not everyone’s up to it.” He paused, and gave her a solemn look. “You were, though. And you may have helped us stop these bastards before they take some other young woman.”

With no idea what to say to that, she just shrugged, but he seemed to think that was all right.

He turned to her mother. “The other doctors gave her a clean bill of health physically, but they want to keep her here for—”

“Observation.” Meredith smiled with them as she said it, but it suddenly hit her how unreal this seemed, the clean bright room full of people who cared about her and a door she could walk out whenever she wanted, instead of the tiny locked cell with one of the polite masked men outside who might come in and kill her.

The memory of the faceless men who’d taken her, the close place where they’ d kept her, was still vivid.

I hope I’m not dreaming. She held her mother’s hand more tightly, and it stayed in hers. She was awake.

Detective Brian was already nodding at her mother. “Ms Stevens, ma’am, we told the doctors what you’d say and they’re not insisting. They know you can take care of her at home.

“They won’t budge on the wheelchair to the door, though.” Even her mother chuckled now. “That’s policy.”

“Oh, good,” Meredith sighed, and they all looked at her, newly reminded that she’d only been free a few hours yet. She was dazed and a little proud at the brave front she must be putting up, if they’d lost track of that. She wanted to go to sleep somewhere, and wasn’t sure if she wanted to dream, because on the off-chance this was all a dream . . .

It’s real. It was as though someone had spoken inside her mind. She felt sure she’d never heard that voice before, but she didn’t even think of doubting it. It felt like a promise kept.

She felt guilty. She should be more traumatized, or something, shouldn’t she?

“I’m sorry there isn’t more,” she said. “After those men took me from the car and chloroformed me they just kept me in that little room, and I never saw anyone, except when they took me out to make the videos.” She thought about the CDs they’d let her have, the books and magazines, the odd courtesy.

Maybe that was part of why she was calmer. She hadn’t been treated badly.

Well, aside from being forced off the road into a ditch and taken at gunpoint and drugged and held and threatened with death and left to think how her mother would feel if—

Dr Yeager was mindreading her again. “They were pros, Meredith. If ‘lucky ’ is a good word to use here, you were lucky it . . . anyway.” He’d seen her mother tensing beside her, willing him not to explore it.

Meredith was too limp to tense but she recalled, much too clearly, that first eternity wondering when she’d start to hear the comments, feel the hands stripping her. Before the voice through the mask had told her she wasn’t there for that.

Brian stood up hastily and left the room, saying something about getting the paperwork started to let her leave. Meredith guessed he and Frances Stevens had clashed before, when Meredith was still being held, and was leaving Dr Yeager to his fate.

But the psychologist just shook his head. “Sorry. Another reason I stay away from therapeutics—lousy bedside manner.” His smile was momentary, but disarmingly lopsided.

“Just a few things. I’m pretty sure you are going to crash after this—fatigue, some nightmares. There’ll be other reactions. Some of it will be delayed, days or weeks from now, and their forms may vary—anxiety, panic attacks, sudden rages.”

Frances was tense again but he was looking at Meredith frankly.

“My non-therapeutic advice is to let them happen. They make sense, because what happened to you doesn’t. Your mind is going to tip a bit before it balances again.

“By all means, tell someone when they do, even if it just seems mild. Your mother.” Meredith felt her mother stop tensing, and nod warily. “You’re a very healthy woman, and you’ll get through this. The fact that I was able to induce a hypnotic state so easily is a good sign of that—if you’d been harder to put under I’d be worried, but it’s a secure and well-adjusted person who can allow herself to relax and trust the way you did.”

“Thanks,” she said, surprised to hear herself barely whisper it. Frances leaned next to her and held her and Meredith just registered warmth and softness.

“Crashing early,” she commented, closing her eyes and turning her face to the warm soft shoulder.

She roused herself as she heard Dr Yeager offering to refer her to someone, but Frances fended him off and they waited for the nurse and the wheelchair. Meredith zoned through the ride to the door and climbed into the back of the limousine, almost dreaming, barely seeing anything, aware of her mother beside her by touch and smell and her heat as though she were a baby again.

As the driver closed the door, she looked her mother in the eye and they realized it was the first moment they’d been alone with each other since she ‘d been freed. Frances put her arms around her and Meredith curled into her.

When the car phone buzzed, Meredith realized she’d drifted off, and stayed as she was against her mother as Frances answered it.

“Yes. No, it’s all right. It’s all right. Yes—she’s fine.” Her hand brushed lightly over Meredith’s hair and she squirmed closer, leaving her eyes shut. She didn’t mind that it felt like being a child again. It felt good.

“I think that would be a good idea.” Frances’ voice was low and reassuring. Meredith didn’t know if it was to soothe her or whomever was calling, but either way it warmed her. “Yes. I’ve told them; don’t worry.

“Goodbye, now.” She hung up and began stroking Meredith’s hair. “That was Leslie,” she said.

Meredith trembled, and she felt her mother waiting. “How is she?” Meredith whispered.

“Worried sick about you.” They were silent while Meredith stretched her legs to lower herself to her mother’s lap, and she relaxed. “She’ll come by tomorrow. I asked if she wanted to be there today but she said this should be our day.”

Meredith felt a stab of disappointment but squeezed her mother’s arm. “Thanks.

“I thought she was all right. They said they hadn’t hurt her, after I woke up, and I thought you’d be different if you had bad news about her. I just . . . the last time I saw her someone had a gun in her face and she was . . .” She relaxed under the hand on her hair.

“She almost got killed, Mom.”

“I know, Meredith.” Her mother was quiet in a way Meredith knew was just clearing ground.

“She was under suspicion for a while. Some of the police were sure she was part of this”—she kept her hands on as Meredith thrashed mutely and then settled down—“and I wasn’t sure I disagreed, at first.”

Meredith wanted to meet her eyes, then, but she’d slid too far back from her twenty years to challenge an adult in this strange enjoyable weakness.

“I watched as they went at her, over and over. They kept trying to pin her down and she wasn’t even defending herself.” Even preoccupied, Frances’ hands were gentle and sure as she caressed her daughter. “She was racking her brain for anything she could think of to help identify the men that forced you off the road, while they were trying to get her to confess. It was too sickening to be funny.

“I still hated her.” The stroking stayed the same. “I didn’t think she was involved but she was the criminal idiot who helped put you in harm’s way. I finally spoke to the one in charge to make them let her go—they needed to throw me something and they could see how I felt about her, but I didn’t want them wasting effort.

“Then she called and asked to see me.”

Meredith pulled herself upright and rested against her mother, looking out the window.

“I was very curious. She came out to the estate and they let her onto the library and she stood before me . . . yes, ‘before’ me. There was something very formal about it. I just sat and waited, not even sure how I’d start on her.

“She looked me in the eye.

“She said ‘I wish they’d killed me.’”

Meredith stayed very still. “She didn’t cry, or shout. She was very quiet. She meant it.

“She didn’t think apologies mattered anymore, and she didn’t think I cared to hear how she felt about losing you. So she told me the only thing she thought I’d want to hear from her.” Frances looked at Meredith and then looked away again.

“She was right, just then. I could cheerfully have watched her die for putting you in danger. I could even have—”

Meredith was stricken to hear it, but understood.

“Then I realized what it meant. That there was another person who knew that failing you—that losing you felt worse then dying.” Frances just stopped, staring out the window.

“I couldn’t hate someone who knew that.”

20.

Meredith woke and stretched, seeing sunlight all over her bedroom and the suite beyond. She lay there, pleasantly paralyzed, feeling safe, savoring it. She knew she’d slept last night through, without wakefulness or nightmares.

She’d slept a lot, yesterday. In the car, curled up against her mother, she’d dragged her eyes open, trying not to lose a moment of the time with her, but her mother had had the windows opened for a natural breeze, and the hum of the car and the rush of the air were like a whisper in her mind. Something about whispers in her mind was putting her right to sleep. As she realized that she was safe in the arms of a strong woman who’d guard her sleep and protect her, she let go completely.

The whisper might have ruled her dreams, but she really couldn’t remember any.

When her head had hit the pillow last night, it had suddenly filled with the vision of a bubble, so riveting she hadn’t wondered if it were from a hot bath or a cold beer. It had been so detailed—the way its perfectly spherical shape bulged and wobbled in a way that was both comical and deeply sensual, the play of iridescence over its surface and the mesmerizing flow of color.

Mesmerizing. Color.

Her thoughts had taken her inside it, and when she began to wonder about a life of bliss within the bubble she’d fallen instantly to sleep. The same thing had happened when she’d lain down for a nap. Even now, the idea of it was pulling her eyelids down, and she tried to roll herself out of bed to fight the drowsiness.

But she paused to wonder why she was bothering to try, and the next thing she knew the room was dim with dusk. Today she and her mother had spent together, and she’d passed on dinner to sleep off the exhaustion, but she was glad to be exhausted.

She smiled again. She felt energized, now, and wondered briefly if this were more of what Dr Yeager had mentioned, strange reactions, but decided not to worry. Then the phone rang, and they told her Leslie was here. She felt a wonderful rush and a little dizziness, too, before she stood and went downstairs.

Leslie was in the library, and when she turned to see Meredith, she was so beautiful it hurt.

Meredith actually felt the pain under her ribs as she saw Leslie’s face, and the pain deepened gloriously as she saw Leslie’s joy tainted with fear. She looked across the room, watching Leslie twist on the fear, and started to walk toward her, but she couldn’t help herself and ran the last few steps.

They held each other too tightly to breathe. Leslie was moaning wordlessly through tight lips and Meredith’s heart was too full to make any sound at all. But when their grips slackened and she felt Leslie’s body taking air she pulled back and stared into her eyes.

“You’re here.” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say. She didn’t know the words for that.

She wanted to tell Leslie she hadn’t ever blamed her, but nothing really seemed to be enough.

“You’re here,” Leslie whispered in awe, stroking her hair.

Her mother’s words came back to her and she stared at Leslie. “I was so scared they’d shoot you,” she whispered. “I was so scared you’d try to fight them and they’d shoot you.” She saw Leslie’s eyes glisten and then turn away. “No. I don’t think you were too afraid, Leslie.”

Meredith was afraid, though, now. The memory of the masked men that had nearly plowed them off the road, the shock of seeing their guns, was so real, so clear. Only holding Leslie this way let her bear it.

“Leslie, if I’d seen you die it would have . . . sometimes,” her voice started to break, “sometimes it was the only thing that kept me in one piece in that cell, Leslie.

“Knowing you were still alive.”

Leslie was shaking her head, not accepting it, not forgiving herself even when Frances had.

Meredith looked at her, and leaned forward, barely aware but perfectly sure of what she was doing. She put her lips to Leslie’s and kissed her, and when she felt Leslie’s body loosen in vague surprise she held her friend more tightly and reached with her tongue, meeting Leslie’s.

They moaned together, softly.

Their mouths parted but they stood together, holding each other up.

“Meredith,” Leslie breathed, astonished and helpless. Her eyes were wide but unfocused.

“I love you,” Meredith said to her, amazed to be the assertive one at last, and in this.

Leslie stared at her, tried to say her name again but couldn’t, and then she was against Meredith, shaking, her tears hot on Meredith’s face. Meredith tasted them as she took Leslie’s face and kissed her again, firmly but gently. Then she let Leslie shelter against her once again.

“I wish I’d done this before,” she said, stroking her friend’s hair. “I wish I’d let myself feel this, years ago. So many times . . . I almost never saw you again, but something let me have this chance.”

Leslie hummed against her throat, so quietly Meredith felt it more than heard it. She made herself let the other girl pull away, and Leslie was so open and yearning she almost pulled her back again.

She stared into her eyes. “Do you want this?”

Leslie nodded, and raised a hand to touch Meredith’s cheek. “More than anything,” she said.

They met Frances in the foyer, and something went through Meredith as she stood on the marble with her mother and another woman, something that had nothing to do with what was happening now. It was beyond her mind to know but it was strange and dirty and naked . . .

Simply to be walking with her arm around her dearest friend was simple and natural, and she was amazed to see her mother almost pull back under the pressure of how matter-of-fact her gaze was.

Her mother regarded them as they stood together, pausing on their way to the staircase and Meredith’s room, and looked them each in the eye.

Then she nodded, and softly said something about having cold supper laid out later. As she walked away Meredith couldn’t read her expression, but she didn’t think Frances was unhappy. Even as she thought that, she felt Leslie’s lips on her cheek.

She resisted the urge to turn and see her, leaving Leslie at this moment to be firm warmth against her side, delicate breath by her ear, perfume and the light scent of redeemed anxiety. She closed her eyes as Leslie whispered, “Did we just get a blessing?” She squeezed Leslie’s hip and led her to the stairs.

In her suite, she locked the door and led Leslie into the bedroom. Leslie still seemed to be under the odd spell of Meredith’s new arousal, and her trustful passivity was making Meredith quiver with wanting her. She stopped halfway across the sitting room to take a kiss and Leslie just gave it up to her, her tongue wrapping Meredith’s slowly and joyfully.

When they finished it she leaned against Meredith again as though a slow dance had just ended, and Meredith had an aching non-memory of going somewhere to dance with Leslie, somewhere they never got to dance after all. What was it? Was she already mourning might-have-beens if she’d only known before that she was in love with her girlfriend?

She hugged Leslie tighter. No need to daydream, with the bed so near.

21.

They undressed each other without haste. Meredith was warm about the way Leslie looked at her as she sat on the edge of the bed, braless under the open chamois shirt, her panties almost invisible in the way her thighs were drawn up. She looked at Leslie, kneeling in the center of the bed in her teddy and hose, so pretty and so startling when the T-shirt and jeans had come off. They flowed together without bothering to take more off.

. . . Meredith tasted Leslie’s forehead, smiling as she realized they’d fallen asleep together.

She stroked Leslie’s back until her friend started to purr, and then more until she stirred and reared up in her arms.

“Stay with me,” she said, catching Leslie’s gaze as it focused.

“Of course,” said Leslie, leaning down for a kiss.

After a moment, Meredith said, “No. I mean here. Stay with me here. Live with me.”

Leslie’s eyes cleared. “I . . . Meredith, I might . . . god.”

“What?”

Leslie shook her head, but Meredith rolled them over and lay atop her, staring down. She almost lost herself in feeling Leslie’s thighs start to part under her, and the way some of Leslie’s hair had fallen across her neck like . . . capture straps? . . . but Leslie’s tension was not sexual now. She looked to the side.

“Please.” Leslie seemed hopeless but tried anyway. “Just let’s . . . make love, and rest, and then . . .”

“Look,” Meredith commanded, and waited, dampening as she saw Leslie slowly obey and gaze up at her. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

“I’m already staying with a friend. I have to. When they thought I was part of it, the police started coming by work, keeping me for statements during the day until my boss had enough—”

“You got fired?” Meredith was furious.

Leslie managed to smile up at her for that, but then her face clouded again. “Then, domino theory. Word got out and I couldn’t find anything else, and I took too long looking. Lost the apartment. I don’t know how long I can keep up the ransom on self-storage.

“I sold the . . . car.”

The T-Bird?

Meredith looked at her, and then slumped down to lie next to her, stroking her hair. “My god. You loved that car. You—” Leslie probably didn’t want to be reminded. Meredith slid along the pillow and kissed her again.

“I’ll buy it back. You can stay here and bring your stuff and . . .”

Leslie looked up at her and Meredith cringed at her expression. Leslie was proud but she’d had too much go wrong and the offer would have tempted her, even if it had come without Meredith and her bed. Meredith was already hating herself for not putting it any more gracefully, when Leslie closed her eyes and then smiled gamely.

“Sure,” she said, whispering. “Not like I’d be freeloading or anything, right? I could be like the genteelly-poor cousin who’s your—what, lady’s companion? Like one of those Edith Wharton characters, or Henry James?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said. “I only read the summaries and I don’t remember.” They laughed and it made them too loose to pull closer together.

“Mmm. My companion.” Meredith closed her eyes, thinking about long afternoons on the veranda, being together. A vacation in Italy, a rented chateau, Ms Stevens and her companion.

She stared at Leslie. “My companion. My lady in waiting.” Something stirred in her.

“My maidservant.”

She swallowed as she saw a flash of something in Leslie’s eyes, but saying it moistened her—and her thigh lay soft between Leslie’s and she felt them tighten around moisture too.

“As you say, Ma’am.” Leslie sounded hurt but her voice was thick. Aroused, even if she didn’t want to be. “Maybe I’m the indentured girl,” she said, excitement warring with bitterness. “Sent up from the tenant shack in lieu of rent.”

“To be taught proper manners?” Meredith told her, seeing tentative relief in her eyes. “And how to serve your betters?”

Leslie’s eyes widened in new hurt but she couldn’t seem to stop, and Meredith couldn’t seem to want her to. Then her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps I’ m a peasant witch out to avenge my oppressed kin, using folk magic to put a spell on my lady—to make her my slave.” Her lips curled as she saw Meredith go limp with that. “My willing, helpless slave. Conjuring her to sleep when I brush her hair, whispering sin into her helpless open ear when I bathe her smooth, sweet—”

“Or,” Meredith whispered, seeing Leslie pause at once as though suddenly glad she’d stopped her, “you’re my amazon bodyguard, always at my side, who’ d never let anyone harm me or take me—”

Leslie stiffened and the pain was shining out of her now, but as she did it pushed her against Meredith and their bodies were already responding. Meredith couldn’t believe she’d said that, even thought it, but before she could take it back Leslie’s flinch blurred her focus.

Leslie blinked and looked more deeply into Meredith, and then lifted herself to lean over her. The hurt had given way to something that made Meredith afraid—and so very hot.

“Or,” she said into the silence, over Meredith’s rapid breathing, “I could be your pet.

“The pet girl Mommy bought you as a child, to grow up with, the one you let sleep in your bed and taught tricks to. The one who follows you everywhere. The one you didn’t even have to teach to lick—”

“No.” Meredith nailed her with an unblinking stare and felt herself full of power, and she didn’t care that it felt like the speed of falling from a height. She rolled and was on top of Leslie again, this time pressing her thighs open deliberately, loving the nylon and skin that gripped her.

“Not a little pussy I raised from a kitten, no.” She heard her breath sawing out of her, felt Leslie panting too. She let herself lie on top of Leslie, and without having to hold herself up she could move her hand down, along Leslie’s lovely flank to her belly, between them, homing on the warmth below her belly, to undo the teddy and open Leslie to her.

“No. When Mother took me to the slave market I said I wanted a wild girl. Someone to tame.” Leslie made a tiny noise as the snap left her naked to Meredith’s probing.

“Mommy usually gives me what I want.” Leslie made a deeper noise as Meredith’s fingers found her slit and arrowed in.

“We found you in the corral with the new-caughts, still thrashing in the net, nothing on your body but sweat and chains and a few lovely stripes.

“’That one, Mommy,’ I said. ‘The one with the light in her eyes.’ You heard me, even though you hadn’t been taught to speak yet. Such a bright one.

“Bright slaves are easier to train.”

Leslie writhed under her, unable to look anywhere but into Meredith’s eyes.

“They know what’s happening and they can’t resist it.” Meredith couldn’t look away, couldn’t remember wanting to.

“We bought you wild and ran you home behind us to wear you down. I loved watching you move.” She stared down at Leslie and then put her head forward to kiss her.

She thrust her tongue in this time, and when she felt Leslie jerk under her and Leslie’s mouth pressed eagerly to hers she pulled back and smiled tightly. Leslie’s eyes were unfocused and she was starting to hyperventilate, but before she could react Meredith paralyzed her with a pass of thumb across clit and leaned down to her throat, licking and nipping to her collarbone.

She put her lips to it, feeling Leslie freeze, needing it, too lost to beg. Leslie’s thigh was against her cleft, nylon against silk, cool against hot.

“It surprised me, though.” She waited, and put her lips to Leslie’s throat, higher, against a softer part. Leslie twitched and then held still, submitting to it. Her thigh twitched against Meredith.

“How easy you were.”

She kissed the spot now, and in the middle tasted it with her tongue. She closed her eyes at the pleading mew from Leslie.

“So easy, so quick.” She didn’t touch this time, just breathed gently against it. Leslie was shaking.

Meredith bit her.

“Pussybroken.”

Leslie jerked and screamed and came, and as her arms tightened around Meredith, her thigh tensed and Meredith spasmed against it. They shook together as their minds darkened.

TO BE CONTINUED