The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

22.

Meredith awoke suddenly and altogether. It was morning and light, but for a moment she refused to be aware.

She remembered waking in the dark room, into another day that might be her last, if the kidnappers chose, and remembered losing dreams of happier mornings like this one. She tried not to hold on too tight, if she were still a captive, if this were a dream too. If they were going to kill her today, and the first ghost she met would be Leslie’s, murdered before her.

Then something exquisitely soft and warm reached into her navel, and the pleasure surged through her. She shook and then the gentle weight on her belly shifted and whimpered. She looked down as the vibration of Leslie’s lips stroked her navel, where her breath had only warmed it.

No. Freedom was no dream. Neither was her lover, alive and with her, mouthing her even still asleep. Last night came back to her—most of it, anyway, but enough to sweeten the day.

Leslie’s body was warm between her thighs, and Meredith recalled, very vaguely, managing to worry that Leslie would spend all night with her face in Meredith’s crotch. But it seemed she’d fought the lure of Meredith’s pussy enough to draw herself up, and sleep pillowed on Meredith’s stomach.

Meredith herself had passed out under what Leslie’s tongue had done.

She reached down and stroked Leslie’s hair, glad that she could be the softness under Leslie’s head.

She was remembering the cruel things they’d been saying to each other while they could still speak, the way it had turned her on so hard, and it hurt. It hurt more that she’d kept doing it, and that Leslie had let her.

But the warm smooth sweaty girl between her legs was making it hard to keep focused on how wrong it was. She realized she could feel Leslie’s slight movement against her cleft now, and she knew she needed only to press on the other girl’s head to force her down to it again, to resume licking her mistress.

Leslie already had the scent. She wouldn’t resist. She would obey it.

Meredith didn’t know why that was so hard to fight, but she made herself do it, twisting away and not letting herself feel Leslie slide against her. She wanted them to lie side by side. She wanted Leslie to taste her other, higher lips. She realized she couldn’t remember giving Leslie an orgasm, and felt small. She wanted to give Leslie pleasure, and she kept moving to find a way to touch her cleft.

Moving woke Leslie, but more slowly than Meredith had come awake, and her dreamy stirring started something in Meredith’s belly that scared her. She felt like a cat drawn to a struggling bird.

But she didn’t want to eat Leslie. She wanted to make Leslie eat her again, wanted to seize Leslie and throw her back and ride her face.

Forcing her way up to thinking of Leslie as her equal again would just make reenslaving her that much more of a rush.

She won’t fight it.

Her eyes won’t even open. They’ll roll up behind the lids as she submits but they won’t open.

She’d gotten the two of them level, and Meredith diverted the cruel energy to a strong grip on Leslie’s shoulder as she kept moving them together, and to an urgent whisper of her name.

Leslie had to drag her eyes open, but they kindled when they focused on Meredith. She smiled sleepily and gazed at Meredith as though nothing else in the world could make her happier. Clinging to that, Meredith leaned closer, and they kissed. There was heat but it was about being comfortable too, and as Meredith’s head reeled at the taste of her own pussy steeping Leslie’s lips, she felt Leslie’s tongue gently seeking her own, just to greet it. They lay on the mattress, and for a moment Meredith forgot where her body ended and Leslie’s began. In the other girl’s warmth, for a heartbeat, she didn’t even remember the regret for last night.

“Mmmm.” Leslie stirred again and pulled away, keeping her arms around her.

“And how did my Lady pass the night?” she whispered, grinning.

Meredith looked across the inches of wrinkled muslin between their faces, and couldn’t help the rush as she knew she didn’t have to regret anything. Leslie was—into this.

Wasn’t she?

Leslie’s fingers were stroking her shoulders, and more than the pleasure it gave her, Meredith felt Leslie’s desire to please her. It wasn’t servility. It was real. It was . . .

“Your Lady—” She stopped. She looked into Leslie’s eyes, and then moved closer and kissed her again, deeply. She stayed close and whispered, “Please be with me.”

She felt Leslie’s arms tighten around her. “Always,” Leslie said.

She pulled back. “Then you’ll stay?”

Leslie looked at her, brushed a fingertip through her hair, and slowly nodded against the sheets.

“I’ll let you tell your mother,” she said, and Meredith suddenly felt odd, reminded of the outside world.

Frances had seemed accepting last night as she’d watched her daughter take a girl to her rooms, but what was she ready for?

Meredith saw Leslie watching her, and smiled. “Don’t worry. I think she’ ll be thrilled at anything that’s likely to keep me around the place.” Leslie smiled back.

Then she raised herself to sit on the bed. “May this wench attend to her Lady’s bath, then?” Her face was solemn, but her eyes sparkled, and Meredith felt herself dampen. She is just so hot when she’s submissive!

“Or . . . does her Lady will that this wench serve more as befits her training?” She dipped her head so demurely that Meredith almost pulled her down right there, but it was sexier to play. Meredith reached up, trying to do it slowly to play the languid princess, and raised Leslie’s chin with a fingertip.

When she raised Leslie’s gaze it was actually fearful. “Please, my Lady!” she breathed. “We were told in the slaves’ quarters never . . . to look . . . at your . . . eyes . . .” Her eyes widened as her voice trailed off, and her arms settled to her sides.

She looked even hotter now, playing at trance, and Meredith felt the role enfold her, too. She held Leslie’s gaze and passed her hand across the other girl’s eyes. “Sleep now, wench,” she said softly. Leslie sighed as she obeyed, her eyelids fluttering down, and it made Meredith reach for her cleft with her other hand.

For a moment she just enjoyed seeing naked Leslie, mindless beside her. She sighed. “They keep sending me these weak-willed girls. So easily bewitched and enthralled.” Leslie’s nipples stiffened, and Meredith had to swallow.

“How I wish one would challenge my powers of enslavement! But such is my lot, to be worshipped by lovely helpless wenches without willpower.

“What is your name, morning-girl?”

Leslie kept her eyes closed, frowning slightly before losing expression again. “This girl is sorry, My Lady,” she whispered. “This girl cannot . . . remember.

“This girl can only remember . . . that nothing matters of our lives before serving you. Since the night we were presented in the courtyard, and first gazed upon . . . you . . .” She swayed as she knelt on the bed, and Meredith marveled at how real she looked, falling into the dream of her first trance in the depth of the one Meredith’s sorcerous glance had put her into now.

Meredith put her hand on Leslie’s thigh, taut as it curved toward her, and without opening her eyes Leslie knelt straighter and gasped.

Instead of taking her right then, though, Meredith pitched her voice low. “Hear and obey, slavegirl. I will call you—Bauble.

“Yes. Pretty and cheap and fun to play with—and easy to toss aside when something important claims my attention.

“Now you are Bauble.”

Leslie sucked in air and tensed even more, caught up in it, but didn’t break pose or open her eyes. Her voice was thick.

“Now I am Bauble.”

Meredith could smell her, but she was juicing too. The more she wanted to jump “hypnotized” Leslie and fuck her silly, the more seductive it was to lie still and see what each of them could add to this game. She licked her lips, tasting herself on them from Leslie’s kisses, and had to breathe for a moment.

“Hear and obey, Bauble. You are in my power, and my power gives you strength you do not have. To look into my eyes as a wide-awake girl is to collapse under my will—but my will is inside you now, like a puppeteer’s hand, and you can stay ‘awake’ and respond even when I look at you.

“When I wish you to sleep, I will command you to, and you will obey.”

Leslie sighed.

Bauble spoke.

“I will obey,” she intoned, and Meredith could hardly contain herself.

She reached up and snapped her fingers, and Bauble’s eyes flicked open, focusing brightly on hers.

Bauble smiled. “How may this slut serve her mistress?”

Meredith drank her in and considered the question. “Stand by the bed.” She was transfixed by how deep Leslie was in the slave role, as though she really had mesmerized herself into it. Was it turning her on that much? Or was she doing it for Meredith?

Maybe she wanted Meredith to take it farther, to let herself go.

Meredith found herself thinking of ropes. And whips. How she could make some from what was here on her suite.

She shook that off. Those were toys, and she had a naked slavegirl here to be used. A wise mistress tasted her tea before she flavored it, and tried her slaves raw before she seasoned them . . .

And I love her and I don’t want to hurt her. Meredith marveled at that thought but marveled more at how still Leslie stood. As though there really was a slave-trainer here on the estate, at whose feet she’d learned stillness and focus. Learned so many things.

Meredith looked at the slickness of Leslie’s mouth and pussy. She tried to think of exotic Kama Sutra paces to put her slave through and realized she didn’t know how to get into such poses in the first place.

Or, she suddenly realized, out of them. Which could be more important.

She felt a laugh flicker inside her and it was as though someone had opened the door to the sauna her mind had become. This was fun but it was really fucked up, and Leslie was . . .

The door was closing. Leslie was still being her slut. Bauble was still waiting the latest whim of her mistress. Her cruel, hypnotic, jaded mistress, Meredith, terror and secret dream of every slavegirl on the estate.

Bauble looked so utterly delicious.

Meredith didn’t need the Kama Sutra.

Being eaten out might be a simple enough pleasure.

But when her best friend knelt naked in the bright light of morning to worship her, it would be different. It would be using her fucktoy.

Bauble tensed and made a tiny moan, as though she were picking up Meredith’ s sudden powerlust vibe and thrumming helplessly to it. Bauble had been trained for it, brainwashed for it, conditioned to need it. Bauble wanted to be used.

Meredith knew it was a game, but she also knew that something would happen to them both when she used Bauble. They would get up and walk around later, but in a very important way Bauble would be on her knees forever, her head soaked in her owner’s pussy and worthy of nothing more.

Leslie, kneeling in her soul, always.

It was so difficult for Meredith to raise her hand, and she tried harder.

“Serve me this way, Bauble.” She actually saw the gleam as Bauble juiced at the chance to obey an order. She spoke the other words without letting herself think what she was passing up.

“Bring Leslie back,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

23.

Bauble closed her eyes and Leslie opened them.

Meredith had a strange sense of deja vu. There was suddenly something terribly important about seeing Leslie awaken from a slave-trance, and the feeling took her before the half-thoughts could form. She slid off the bed and pulled Leslie to her, and they tumbled back onto the sheets.

Leslie’s warm skin felt good. She must have been trying to figure out why Meredith had stopped the game, but her tentative squirming no longer raised that covetous hunger in Meredith. Instead, she wanted to protect Leslie. She knew her friend’s entrancement had been pure playacting—but she still wanted to guard her from the spells, from being taught to sleep and obey.

She kissed Leslie and when they settled back Leslie whispered the question. After a moment, Leslie called her “Meredith” and not “Mistress,” and Meredith nuzzled her in thanks.

“I guess I just ran out of imagination,” she said.

Leslie smiled but looked deeply into her eyes. “Somehow I don’t think so,” she said softly, and leaned forward to touch her lips to Meredith’s. “I think rather the opposite.” They stared at each other. “And thank you.”

Leslie blinked the depth away and smiled. “But I don’t think it was because I was displeasing as a slavegirl. Hm?” She cocked an eyebrow and pursed her lips, and Meredith felt a pulse of desire that was blessedly clean of anything more than lust for the girl against her.

“Anything but displeasing,” Meredith rasped, still seeing Bauble standing ready and willing. Her own selfishness caught up with her, and Leslie’s expression softened quizzically as she levered herself off the bed.

“Let me show you how pleasing you were.” She moved Leslie back onto the sheets and Leslie let herself be moved, unbearably soft and acquiescent as Meredith leaned down.

Leslie’s need was plain in her eyes and her panting, as she saw Meredith’s attention focus between her thighs. She relaxed and let Meredith part them, and didn’t beg, just lay still as Meredith paused halfway down to inhale.

As her head spun, Meredith could already taste her friend. Yeah, I’m being unselfish. She’ll have to pry me away from it. I need . . .

She blew gently and heard Leslie’s dissolving groan as the warmth surrounded her cleft. It fascinated Meredith, but she was able to close her eyes and find it by touch, guided by the wonderful smell that was joyfully shutting down her mind.

When her tongue found it, both of them spasmed, and neither one knew it.

Meredith licked, and hummed, and Leslie’s music deepened the spell.

Her mouth stopped working at the honey and she realized, simply but dimly, how much she wanted to give Leslie an orgasm. There was a cold breeze across her soul as she thought about close she’d come to turning Leslie into something less than she was.

Her upper lip found Leslie’s clit again and the slightest inward breath drew it against her tongue.

Leslie’s thighs gripped her head as her hips swung, and even so Meredith heard the low cry she made as it hit her, quiet and sustained, almost agonized. She sucked gently, and Leslie slowly relaxed, sagging to the bed again and releasing her legs’ grip on Meredith. Her sounds now were softer and more recognizable, and after a lingering lick to her pussy Meredith slid up to lie beside her.

Leslie looked over at her, moving her mouth but no longer speaking. Meredith pulled her close and they kissed. Meredith stroked the back of her neck and let her taste herself on Meredith’s lips, then rolled onto her back and let Leslie drape bonelessly across her. They breathed together, perfectly in rhythm, and Meredith realized they would put each other to sleep that way very quickly.

It would be wonderful. And waking up under a Leslie-comforter would be . . .

With a twinge of excitement, she realized that she didn’t have the will to fight that, and it was seductive to think of just lying here, enslaved to her sex, keeping Leslie bound to it too.

But the need to keep Leslie unbound was just enough to snap her out of it.

“We need to get moving,” she whispered.

“Why?” Leslie sounded sleepily peevish.

“Because we can’t have shower-sex in bed,” Meredith said at random. Her heart leapt as she felt Leslie stiffen and raise herself.

“Good thinking,” she said, and leaned down to kiss Meredith on the chin before levering herself off the bed.

Meredith rolled to watch her as she padded gracefully to the bathroom. It was suddenly in her mind to say “Bauble” and watch Leslie freeze and sink back into slave mode, and the idea grew on her even as it disturbed her. She could almost see Leslie turn and walk back to her, glassy-eyed and obedient, sinking to her knees and begging to be commanded.

She let her own lassitude keep her quiet until Leslie was out of sight, and the water was running too loudly for the trigger to reach her. Then she crawled off the bed and walked in after her.

My maid will have made the water ready for me, she thought, but saw Leslie’s grin as she stood waiting for her in the multiple sprays and stopped thinking of her lover as a servant.

They just stood in the sprays for a few moments, and then Leslie took the initiative and started to soap Meredith down. It seemed like a return to Leslie-as-bondmaid, but just as Meredith tried to make herself stop enjoying it and break the cycle, Leslie made her way up her arm and then leaned to kiss her.

They held each other, and Meredith’s grip was suddenly urgent. Leslie’s body was so firm and cool under the water. She rested her head on Leslie’s shoulder, feeling Leslie’s bush against her thigh.

“Be with me,” she begged as she had last night, but too quietly for Leslie to hear under the hiss of the water.

“Mmm,” Leslie said, feeling the urgency but not understanding. “You know,” she went on in a coaxing tone, “this will be even better after I’m slippery too.”

Meredith looked up and they kissed. Then it was easy to let Leslie finish, and to take the soap and the cloth and polish Leslie as she stood like a wonderful statue. And to writhe against each other.

Leslie was the first to let herself slip down to kneel on the tiles, and Meredith gripped the stainless steel bar, wondering how long she’d remember to hang on. Leslie grinned up from below her belly, and it took the servility out of her position. When her mouth covered Meredith’s pussy, impossibly hotter than the water felt, it was a gift, not tribute.

After a while, Meredith was standing alone in the water, coming back to herself from the place Leslie had taken her. She could still feel Leslie’s arms around her, and Leslie’s words against her ear until she’d reassured Leslie she was fine, and could stand on her own.

As she turned off the water, she wanted to call Leslie back so they could dry each other, but she was too relaxed to want to raise her voice. She enjoyed the warm after-sex lassitude as she toweled off.

She strode out to the bedroom, warm in nudity, and she glowed in Leslie’s gaze at her before she noticed that Leslie was dressed again, sitting at her ease on a chair by the east window. Meredith stopped, a little off-balance. Was Leslie just being practical, keeping them from staying here and fucking until Mom sent the maid to check on them?

But her vulnerability thrilled her as she stood there. Leslie’s expression, her whole bearing was cool, and it made Meredith feel subordinate now.

It sweetened her apology. “Leslie, about last night—” She laughed at the cliche, but Leslie just smiled thinly, and it excited her. Leslie didn’t seem resentful, just . . . above it.

Deliberately, Meredith stepped over to her. “I behaved badly, Leslie. I said things and did things that hurt you.”

Leslie looked up at her, not moving otherwise. Her whole affect was closed now, but Meredith was getting too turned on to focus on how that should bother her. “You went down on me very well just now.”

“Yes, well, that . . .” Meredith was embarrassed, and couldn’t think why. “Please, Leslie. That’s what I’d do because I love you. All the rest—She thought about Leslie playing the hypnotized servant girl, so ardently into the slave role, and tried to reconcile her with this utterly self-possessed person.

She knelt, feeling the rug under her knees and putting her hands lightly on Leslie’s thighs, warm in the tight jeans, looking up.

Leslie looked calmly down at her.

She opened her mouth and Meredith shut up at once, forgetting what she’d thought of saying, waiting for something from Leslie.

“The princess got a little above herself,” Leslie commented, and Meredith felt herself start to pant. Like a draft from an opened door, it reminded her she was naked and kneeling. “Hasn’t enough self-control to handle servants properly, and she’s enslaved to her own pussy.

“If we didn’t know why she needs a governess, we do now, don’t we?”

Meredith stared up into her eyes, her heartbeat violent under her throat, and slowly lifted her hands from Leslie’s thighs, bringing them together behind the small of her back and kneeling straighter. She was conscious of Leslie’s knees a handsbreadth from her breasts, thought of how the warm denim would feel on her nipples. She wanted to lean forward to them but—couldn’t.

She didn’t look away from Leslie’s eyes. Leslie didn’t move at all.

“Don’t we?”

Leslie’s tone was a cold breeze across Meredith’s loins, moist from the shower.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Meredith had to whisper. Her voice would break if she used it. Now her loins heated.

Leslie’s smile grew wider and thinner, and her eyes weren’t part of it. “I see some of the training caught, after all. You’re not a stupid girl. Just deeply in need of discipline, and lessons in concentration.”

“Lessons, ma’am?” Meredith whispered, seeking cues for this new game, desperate to play. Her need to please Leslie and perform to her desires was no game, and it felt as though she’d been chained to it forever. “I don’t remember.”

Leslie raised an eyebrow, and suddenly looked twice her age. “Your music lessons, girl.” Meredith’s puzzled gape seemed to fit the script, as Leslie ‘s smile continued. “Of course—there’s seldom time to learn much music and you really seem to lose track during the spankings when you can’t play.”

Meredith thought about being across Leslie’s lap now, staining the taut denim with helpless juicing as Leslie’s hand reddened her ass. She gasped as Leslie reached forward and flicked a nipple.

“I’ve trained you very well with the metronome, Meredith. It’s not your fault you lapse into trance instead of practicing, whenever you hear the ticking.”

“Ticking?” Meredith let her gaze go unfocused for a moment and then she was transfixed by the glitter in Leslie’s eyes. “M-met . . . ro . . . nome?”

“In your mind now,” Leslie purred, and her right hand, resting in her lap, turned to present an admonishing index finger, which waggled slowly at Meredith. It drew her eyes down and it kept moving, back and forth, back and forth.

“Metronome,” Meredith sighed. Her eyes closed slightly at the elated sound Leslie made to see her grasp it, but they stayed glued to the finger, and she started to see the imaginary little pyramid itself.

“Tick . . . tick . . . tick,” she started to breathe, and vaguely heard her governess and music teacher speaking to her.

She didn’t know what Miss Leslie was saying to her, but she knew it was making its way to her mind anyway. It didn’t matter.

She was hypnotized.

24.

Frances Stevens’ new security chief stood by her desk, very much the genteel hatchetwoman. She was polite enough with Meredith, but as Frances led them all to sofas in a brighter part of the room, Meredith could see Capaldi looking at her out of the corner of her eye.

When they’d been introduced she’d named herself “Capaldi,” just that, a firm handshake but no first name, and somehow it hadn’t sounded like false bravado. She looked like late twenties and carried herself like twice that age—but fit, to the point of dangerous. Meredith felt again like a child, knowing this young woman had more in common with Frances than with her, and that her mother could feel confidence in Capaldi that she could never . . .

Meredith didn’t want to follow that lonely track. Instead she imagined Capaldi, strong and tall in chainmail attending the Lady Frances in the great hall. She’d be—perhaps a condottiera as bored with the wars of the Continent as she’d been before that with the quiet of the Tuscan village that had driven her to join them. Solemnly she would take the charge and put herself and her sword between the Lady’s daughter and all danger. Meredith would be demure and soft in her flowing dress, very much the vulnerable prize to be protected.

Coveted.

The mind-picture of her protector slipping into her chambers vanished as she realized how very bad that would be, and that this woman really had contracted to risk her own skin to keep Meredith’s safe.

She paid attention.

Capaldi’s organization had won the Stevens assignment in the wake of their predecessor’s spectacular failure to prevent the kidnapping, but they were aware it wasn’t entirely their predecessor’s fault. Meredith felt a bit guilty, and she could understand that look that Capaldi, impeccably professional, couldn’t entirely keep hidden. OK, Miss Stevens. How are you going to destroy my career?

Meredith knew she and Leslie had made done more than take a stupid risk by eluding her prior generation of guards, and even though she’d been the one who’d nearly paid the most severe price, she was realizing that down from that peak of terror, she’d left plenty of wreckage here at sea level.

She looked back at Capaldi and smiled. The young woman’s careful reserve was suddenly more reassuring than her predecessor’s confident smile. His look had said You’re going to be a difficult one to mind, young lady, but that’s why I’m worth the big bucks your mother’s paying me.

Meredith felt a bit less guilty at that thought. Capaldi somehow managed not to return Meredith’s smile, clearly doubting its sincerity, without being offensive.

Frances sensed she had something to say and nodded to her, and she felt Capaldi’s gaze measuring her.

“I’ve come to some realizations,” she began. “I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. To wake up from a nightmare at 2 AM in the heart of this house, safe as I can hope to be, and be too terrified to feel safe at all.

“But I need to stay here for a while. When I get some thoughts together and feel good about a timeframe, I’m going to tell Warner Phipps I want some time.”

They looked at her, and she was happy to see her mother looked intrigued but not displeased.

“That’s a risk, too. They may decide I’m not that hot a property, and tell me I can reapply in the next batch.” As she said that, Frances didn’t even twitch, and it made her feel more adult than she had a moment ago—she’d won a place at the firm without appealing to her mother’s connections, and she’d gotten no feedback that Frances had helped in secret. If anything, the people at WP seemed to wonder if they were estranged, and it had made her proud that they’d selected her even in the face of Frances Stevens’ possible wrath.

Glad, now, that Frances didn’t seem inclined to intervene this time, either.

“Larger risk—I may find it harder to go back out in the world if I just stop. I don’t plan to hole up here, but there may still be . . .” She stopped, not yet having the words for it.

She looked at Capaldi. “I’m trying to say that I think what I plan to do and be for the next several months or so is going to be very, um, guardable.”

Capaldi looked back at her. “We work to adapt what we do to people’s lives, Miss Stevens. We try not to make them adapt to us, since we’re the tail and not the dog. What I’m saying is that I appreciate a cooperative principal, but when you start to want to move outward again, we’re ready to move with you.”

“Her people have worked with cases of more extreme . . .” Frances uncharacteristically searched for a word, and Capaldi looked at her but didn ‘t prompt. Then she nodded, and Capaldi nodded back deferentially before turning to Meredith again.

“We’ve briefed your mother on some of what we’ve done to help some very traumatized people learn to feel safe again, and base that in themselves, not just our teams.

“But I think you’re saying something else. You came close to dying, and you’d rather slow down and . . . live, for a while.”

Meredith smiled even more deeply. “Yes. That’s it.” She looked at Frances. “Mom, when I was in that little room, I did have those thoughts—things I haven’t done, or wanted to do. Spend time with you, travel, just stay here and enjoy the estate and see if it feels different than when I was a child on it.

“Sometimes it made me feel hopeful, and sometimes—” She stopped, waiting until she could swallow, and they waited with her.

A few deep breaths later she said, “But I have the chance, now. I won’t waste it chasing after something else.

“If Warner Phipps won’t begrudge me a year, they’ll just have to offer me an even better package a few years after that, when they see what I do for whoever is smart enough to hire me.”

Frances was grinning and Capaldi looked pleased. Meredith felt like a prodigy.

“There’s something else that I think will keep me from being afraid to get back on the horse.”

She looked at each of them in turn. “Someone else.”

Neither of them seemed surprised, so her mother must indeed have understood last night, and told Capaldi. Meredith felt good about that. But she owed it to Leslie to say it now, before witnesses.

“I’m in love with Leslie, and she loves me.” She heard her voice say it, and saw them hear it, and felt ten feet tall.

“I’ve asked her to stay with me, here. I’d be spending a lot of time with her—here, or when I do go out, with whatever escort you think I need.”

Capaldi looked at her, and pointedly did not look at her mother. This, too, had been discussed, and Meredith tensed, wondering what they’d decided.

In the glow of declaring herself for Leslie, she was serenely resolved that if Leslie had to walk out the front door, she’d have Meredith on her arm.

But Capaldi said, “We don’t just protect individuals—we protect lives. She’s part of your life.” She was so routine about it Meredith wanted to hug her. “I’ll guard her as I guard you.” Frances nodded, and Meredith’s heart flew.

Capaldi waited patiently, seeing the feelings flow through Meredith and marking their passage. “But if it comes to a choice, you must know that I will protect you first. Even at the cost of Leslie.”

Meredith started to answer, and felt tears start. She let them flow. Her throat was so tight it steadied her voice, and she was glad they could see it.

“Capaldi, I saw with my own eyes that she’d agree with you.”

Capaldi’s eyes flickered. “I believe you,” she said softly, and the validation hit Meredith’s heart.

She made herself calm. Crying when she said what she had did honor to Leslie, but dissolving in tears wouldn’t.

Capaldi waited. Then she said, “I’ve spoken with her.”

“Capaldi didn’t suspect her,” Frances said. “She was another reason the police backed off.”

Meredith looked gratefully at the woman.

“We didn’t discuss your relationship.” Capaldi left it there.

Meredith looked at her. “It didn’t . . . accelerate until last night,” she said, and now she did see a little blush on Frances’ cheek. Damn. I can’t even gloat about scandalizing Mom. The thought helped balance her. “One of those realizations I had when I didn’t know whether I’d live to see it through.”

“I understand.” Capaldi looked as though she did. “She may be thinking of herself as another guard—and I want to talk to her about it. There are things she should know how to do, and things she should know never to try doing.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve protected couples before. Leslie makes me feel better about protecting you.”

Meredith looked across at her, feeling her mother’s regard on her. “Thank you.” Pride in her lover nearly choked her, but she owed it to everyone to get that out.

She stood and walked over, shaking Capaldi’s hand again, and then hugging her mother. Frances didn’t say anything, but she rubbed Meredith’s back as she held her, the way she had years ago, and then she pulled back, keeping Meredith’s hands, drinking her in for a moment.

When she let go, Meredith kissed her and walked out. Frances probably couldn’t say it, yet, but Meredith felt very good about Leslie being here.

On the way back to her rooms, she stopped to look out a window at the parkland behind the house, savoring the idea of strolling through it with nothing driving her, and sharing it with Leslie.

Diffident footfalls drew her gaze around and she saw Clare, a maid who’d started here when Meredith had just been leaving for college. She’d only seen her intermittently on her trips home, but she’d known that the other girl had seemed fascinated by her—they were of an age, and Meredith wondered if the girl were having trouble dealing with the differences in their wealth and station, and chances.

Now she saw Clare’s moist look, appreciating how she wore the sleek but dignified uniform, and recognized the expression she’d been seeing in Leslie ‘s eyes.

She wanted me. She still does. It hurts her.

Meredith wondered what she—what they might have done if she’d awakened to her orientation back then.

She knows I’m with Leslie. That hurts her, too.

“Miss,” Clare said, softly.

Her voice was like a palm on Meredith’s skin. It excited her, but the worry in it reminded her that Clare was a person, not a fantasy. Good thing I didn’t. I’d have treated her like a toy back then. Maybe gotten her fired, or worse.

“I’m glad to be back, Clare. I’m really glad to see you.”

Clare nodded. “I was—we were all worried about you. I kept thinking what it must be like. Ms Stevens didn’t show the tape—she said you were healthy and calm and very brave, but—”

Meredith tried to focus on Clare’s need. What a lovely toy she would have made, though.

It was so easy to picture the other girl on her knees, desire for Meredith opening her to anything Meredith wanted to do. Sipping a drugged cup, staring at a swinging watch, leaving service for slavery.

I could have had Bauble for real, she thought.

She thought of Leslie, nude and obedient. Her eyes widened and she realized the here-and-now Clare had trailed off, looking abashed but still unable to walk away.

Walking over, she hugged Clare and said, “Thank you.” Clare hugged her back and they moved quickly apart from each other.

25.

Meredith had only Leslie in her mind as she walked to her suite, guilt and hunger warring for her. When she closed the doors behind her she could lock them and play with Leslie as long as she wanted, and she could dream of exulting over both women as they knelt in worship. She could rule them with her body, enslaving them anew just by rising from her bed and gesturing for a robe she’d only drape on her arm.

She was strutting like a tigress as she stepped into the bedroom and saw Leslie, chaste in one of her own skirts and blouses, looking out the window as she’d been doing herself when Clare found her.

Even as she knew, then, the warm submissiveness that Clare must have felt, Leslie turned and looked at her calmly, even coolly, utterly in control. Meredith was ashamed—in a pleasant way—that she’d just been fantasizing about dominating her governess. She hoped Leslie would demand that she confess it. Then she’d wait for Miss Leslie to chastise her for such wicked, disobedient thoughts.

Leslie’s glance parted her mind like a hand between her thighs and she nearly knelt right then, certain that Leslie had just read that in her mind. Leslie smiled faintly. She was pleased—but she’d chastise, anyway.

At least Meredith hoped so.

“I told them,” she said. “That I love you and that you’re here.”

Leslie was suddenly herself again, and they held each other. “I’m a very lucky woman,” Leslie said.

Meredith squirmed against her. “Mmm. Can—I get lucky, too?”

Leslie grinned. “You’re insatiable!”

“How do you know?” She grinned back. “We haven’t stopped trying to sate me, yet. I might have limits after all.

“Give me a break! I’ve just been held captive for weeks, not even able to jill off in privacy.”

Leslie kissed her. “OK, yes. I can see that. What did that guy say in the movie? ‘Lack of pussy makes you brave’? I guess it makes you horny first.”

Meredith was enjoying the tension of trying to decide whether to undress herself or Leslie first. She paused at the evil gleam in Leslie’s eye.

“Of course,” Leslie said, lowering her voice for drama, “we don’t really know what happened while you were there. Helpless in their hands, drugged and fondled and who knows what all.” There was a tiny frigid pause deep inside Meredith then, but it melted at once as she wondered what Leslie would do with the idea.

“Maybe they brainwashed you. Not with no sex, but with lots of it. They literally fucked your brains out and then put in what they wanted instead.” Her leer was making Meredith weak even as she tried to keep from laughing.

But the idea was exciting. So much better than the reality had been of lying there bored and scared, waiting, wondering. Sex had been the last thing on her mind. This was something different. Sick, really, but she was humoring Leslie, and it was . . .

“I wonder if they filmed it. You’d be—kneeling, I think, loose in the bonds, your skin blue in the light from the flickering images they were programming you with.” As Leslie described it, glitter-eyed, Meredith opened her mind to the vision, and pressed against the other girl.

“Your head would be tilted with the big headphones they were scrambling your thoughts with, planting triggers into them so you could be turned on and off as they wanted. When they wanted.”

Meredith keenly regretted not being nude already, so Leslie could see and feel how wet she was. It might stain Leslie’s clothes, but that was another thing Meredith could take care of for her . . .

“You’d be a sight. Your eyes would be glazed over, nothing in them but the flicker from the screen. It would flicker on the rest of you—their come and your juice, from the sex that opened you for it.”

There was a pause, as though a hammer were moving back from a firing pin. Leslie’s voice was rippling with joy as she kept it going. “Those places might even be brighter than your eyes were, by then.”

Leslie’s lips were moving to say more but Meredith sucked them into her own and tried to devour Leslie. She didn’t know if it was that she couldn’t bear to hear more of it, or that she couldn’t stand how into it Leslie seemed to be, or . . .

Or that she couldn’t endure that it was just a fantasy, that she wasn’t actually being sexually brainwashed, now, before Leslie’s hungry, hungry eyes.

Her tongue and Leslie’s moved together gently, as their bodies did. When they parted the oddness was gone, and it had been a flight of fancy.

Leslie brought it in for a gentler landing.

“Hmm. Of course, once you were, ah, putty in their hands, wet and mindless, they told you to forget—until they triggered you.”

Leslie cocked an eyebrow. “Hmm-hmm. I wonder. The Manchurian Meredith, perhaps?” She lifted her hand as though holding something flat, and her voice hardened. “Why not pass the time by playing a nice game of solitaire?”

Meredith almost cried out with the heat of coming to attention and staring blankly off over Leslie’s shoulder. “Must—play—cards,” she intoned huskily. “Must—obey—programming!”

She felt Leslie’s deliberate touch on her breast through the blouse and held pose. “Yesss,” Leslie said, in a delightfully sinister voice. “She responds perfectly. The others will be pleased, heh heh heh.”

Then her mouth was near Meredith’s ear, so close its wet warmth was almost turning Meredith’s bones to water. “Very well-programmed,” Leslie hissed, as Meredith nearly fell over. “Not even this rouses her.” A fingertip rested in Meredith’s nipple and only her need to please Leslie by staying still kept her from begging for the friction.

Leslie let her be, until not being teased started to be strain. “And she has no memory, when she’s awakened.” Leslie snapped her fingers.

Meredith blinked theatrically. “Sorry!” It was hard to act casual—even badly—when she could barely make her voice work. “I just . . . drifted off. Why am I suddenly so—strangely aroused?”

For a moment Leslie said nothing. “I would have liked to do that some more. You will not believe how you look when you’re acting hypnotized. I—” She smiled. “But I love you too much to leave you that hot and bothered.”

Meredith rallied, seeing how flushed Leslie was. “I’m not the only one, either, am I? Hot-and?”

“There’s that,” Leslie said, and then at last they were undressing each other, urgently.

I see where the rest of this day is going, Meredith thought, but said nothing, with her mouth so busy.

Hunger forced them down to dinner, though they ate by themselves. Frances had good-naturedly given up on them and closeted herself in her study, catching up on work, and they headed upstairs again rather than disturb her, or wait. Leslie surprised Meredith by staying in her underwear when they were back in the room, and then humored her when Leslie suggested that she stop short of nudity, too.

Leslie, in fact, gently suggested some possibilities, and Meredith got into the passive joy of letting her girlfriend direct her. It was odd, playing a fetish game with such unfetish things as T-shirts, but it was soothing and gently arousing. She liked the subversion of turning wholesome garments into a sex game, and kept shivering with the realization that Leslie’s fetish was her, that all this was just garnish for the meal that Leslie would make of her.

Making love while dressed was in some ways more erotic than thrashing in nothing but sweat. You had to think about it, and thinking meant . . .

They were in bed again when it slowed down and Meredith mentioned Clare, almost without thinking. She was half in a trance, open and relaxed against Leslie, and she wondered if she was going to let her libido be her puppeteer, making her mention her admirer to her lover, and hope Leslie was as curious as she might be.

Leslie kept stroking her arm after she’d said it.

“Wanting to sample some of the other vintages?” She kissed Meredith’s shoulder. “Or were you thinking of sharing?”

Meredith stirred against her, suddenly uncomfortable but too loose to find words. She felt Leslie’s kiss again. “It’s all right, Meredith.” She melted even more as Leslie reached over and cupped her breast. “It’s all right.

“Because we both know what a randy little slut you are, don’t we?”

Meredith moaned, and Leslie held her more firmly. “You’ll be told when to include someone else, girl. And you’ll like it.”

Yes! Oh, yes, I will! Meredith couldn’t even picture Clare’s face now as she struggled weakly to look up into Leslie’s. Leslie obligingly leaned down and let Meredith suck her way to Leslie’s mouth, and she put into the kiss all the surrender she was too rapt to speak.

Leslie held her for an endless time, softly lulling her to sleep.

26.

“Manchurian Meredith. Awaken, be still, and obey.”

The room was dark—sex and sleep had carried them well past sunset. She lay on her back, arms by her sides, aware of Leslie’s firm warmth by her side but focused in Leslie’s cool touch on her forehead.

She listened to Leslie breathe, as she waited for Meredith to rise to wakefulness. She sensed Leslie wanted her to be still, and waking suddenly to another of these games thrilled her rigid. Her own breath caught and she knew Leslie heard it, and Meredith’s readiness to play. To submit.

Leslie let her wait, and she waited, each poorly-harnessed gasp another bow to the dominant.

The unreality of a midnight escapade numbed her to the sudden curiosity about why Leslie was so eager to do this, so much. But she remembered a melting breath at her throat that first time they’d awakened together. One of the what-ifs they maddened each other with, before.

“Perhaps I’m a peasant witch, putting a spell on my lady to make her my willing, helpless slave. Whispering sin into her ear—”

Leslie loved her. But even if not, letting Leslie do this to her was . . .

“What you didn’t remember,” came Leslie’s eager whisper, “what you were programmed not to remember, was that they didn’t just brainwash you. They knew you were too deeply enslaved to your pussy to be reliable, even programmed. So, when they had you sleeping on command, they implanted something in your brain.

“A control device.”

Meredith felt the arousal but, again, it was even more exciting to lie still and listen to it than to move her hand a few fingerlengths to frig herself.

“You’re not just a slave, now. Not just your captors’ eager submissive, no.

“Now you’re a robot. Under remote control.”

Ohhhh yessss. The image blazed in her mind, and awakening to this fantasy, surfacing from sleep, almost made it real.

Meredith stiffened and opened her eyes wide, staring up at the dark.

“Slave ro.bot ac.tive,” she intoned softly.

She felt Leslie squirm to see Meredith taking the cue and slipping into the role, and she heard her friend’s ragged breath. It heated her but, as before, it made her even hotter to keep playing, to lie taut and be what she pretended: brainwashed, mindless, awaiting input that would give her purpose. Something to earn the orgasms she’d been conditioned to.

Something to obey.

When Leslie said nothing—thinking of the next play, or just trying not to ravish robot-Meredith beside her—Meredith hissed again. “Ro.bot au.to.di.ag.nos.tic com.plete. Girl mind off.line. Girl will.pow.er neu.tra.lized. Re.mote de.vice con.trols girl brain. Ro.bot o.be.di.ent.”

Leslie seemed to have stopped breathing. Meredith heard nothing as the hand left her forehead. Then, “Excellent. She will obey and remember nothing later when the chip releases her. Heh heh heh.” Leslie’s narration was a bit wobbly, but she was as anxious as Meredith not to spoil it.

“Robot. Rise and wait.”

Meredith felt the command in her belly and raised herself like a vampire sitting up in her coffin, her eyes still staring. She thought of letting Leslie direct each action, staying robotically still each time when she’d obeyed. Just getting out of bed would be an endless submission game. But she sensed there was more to come and swung stiffly to sit on the side of the bed. She stood, stepped away from the bed, and turned, hands by her sides.

“Ro.bot o.be.di.ent,” she reported, and closed her mouth.

She heard Leslie slide off the sheets, but she stayed in position like a well-programmed unit. She felt Leslie close to her and tried to imagine how Leslie felt.

Leslie felt her, resting her hands on Meredith’s hips, then her back. Something rattled and rustled softly. Meredith kept herself rigid as Leslie strapped a belt around her waist, with something hard and cool against her thigh below the high hem of the shorts she’d slept in. Cooler still was the wire that warm fingertips slid under Meredith’s top to link to the headset.

“Robot. Take position there.” Her arm entered Meredith’s caged vision, and Meredith turned, paused, and stepped to the spot on the floor where it pointed. She thought of moving jerkily, but . . . she realized the men who ‘d abducted her had tested her after implantation, to make sure their device would control her mind and body smoothly, fine-tuned her conditioning until she accepted the implant’s control like her own brain’s.

She swallowed the moan of desperate arousal. She was standing where she’d been told to, and lost the desire to keep walking.

“Ro.bot o.be.di.ent,” she gasped.

Then she saw herself in the mirror, straight and unblinking. The headset was light on her head, bridling her bed-mussed hair, and it was though she could see the route into her mind. Leslie came up beside her, looking at her critically but not meeting her gaze in the mirror.

Why should she? Meredith wondered and quivered. Why make eye-contact with a mindless robot?

Leslie let her look at herself, and then reached down to the cellphone she’ d strapped to Meredith. “The robot will respond to commands it hears as well as direct input. This will test the interface.”

Meredith was glad the script had her standing stiffly. It helped, keeping her thighs tight together as she listened to Leslie discoursing so calmly and precisely about how she’d been mind-stripped and turned into an object. A conditioned tool.

“The girl-unit functions acceptably as a mechanical system, but how well will its converted will process higher-level instructions?

“How well will it obey?”

Meredith looked at how they differed in the mirror: two pretty young women dressed for cool sleep, one standing casually and the other locked into an obedient dream, staring ahead unblinkingly. Small machines on a slim belt hung loosely from her, highlighting how soft she looked. The headset imprisoning her mind—something she could take off, but which she was not being allowed to think of removing.

So unspeakably hot to be this controlled.

Into Leslie’s pause she recited ardently, “Ro.bot will o.bey. Ro.bot in.doc.tri.na.tion des.troyed all re.sis.tance to com.mands.”

“Indeed,” Leslie mused. She was keeping her own arousal well-leashed. Of course. She’s better suited to be in control. Meredith wasn’t even sure what level that thought was on.

“The girl-unit has clearly uploaded its indoctrination. It was very responsive during the sex phase.”

Meredith hung in delicious suspense. She couldn’t tell if Leslie were joking, and wished—that she weren’t.

Leslie didn’t indicate either way. Why should she let a robot off the hook?

“The test run will begin. The robot will map the area where it will carry out its primary function.” A gloating note crept into Leslie’s narration, and Meredith weakened into blinking as she recalled they were playing.

“No one will suspect the young heiress herself when the jewels disappear.”

Meredith quivered but held still, and of all the potential robot responses she realized none really fit.

A true slave robot would just hold still until its controller told it what to do.

She held still.

She breathed faster, though. She understood “map the area” and guessed the cellphone was more than a neat tech-droid accessory. Leslie was going to send her out of the suite to scout out the imaginary remote-controlled jewel theft, and puppeteer her through it. Their game would be public.

It was late and she might not go far, so she might not meet anyone.

But she might.

Leslie knew she was thinking of all that. She was waiting for Meredith to respond—she might be cringing, hoping she hadn’t gone too far, hoping Meredith wouldn’t squick and giggle and turn and ask to fuck her instead, saying it in bot-speak monotone.

Except there was something in Leslie as she played these games that brooked no squicking, no pleas to vary the kink. No refusal. And whatever it was, it washed any desire to resist from Meredith’s soul.

“Ro.bot ac.ces.sing house sche.ma.tics,” she chanted, and nearly closed her eyes at Leslie’s delighted sigh. “Sche.ma.tics plot.ted. Ro.bot in seek mode. Ro.bot rea.dy for tar.get in.put.” As she said it, she thought Jewels—god, Mom’s home tonight! but the game was too hot in her to let that matter. There was something warmer, too, a trust in Leslie that soothed her. Leslie would make this work.

“Target will be neutral to test the robot’s obedience under remote control,” Leslie said evenly. “Robot will fetch something from the kitchen; if it’s caught, no one will suspect.”

Now Meredith shook at the idea of meeting one of the staff—or, god help her, an insomniac Capaldi—as she strutted robotically back from the fridge, Leslie’s voice in her ear more real and compelling than the embarrassment. Amazingly, she almost wanted it to happen.

But Leslie said, “Initialize persona program. The girl-unit is a completely enslaved drone, but it can still access behaviors that ‘Meredith’ used to have, to impersonate her among non-indoctrinated personalities.”

Meredith wanted to smile, but knew it wasn’t time yet. Instead she closed her eyes. “Per.so.na pro.gram—” She opened them. “—initialized,” she said, and blinked, but continued staring forward.

“Identify,” Leslie said softly.

“I am slave robot,” Meredith said, and it was harder to keep the passion out of her voice without the contrived monotone. It sounded even more obscenely hot spoken in a normal-girl voice. “Currently in persona mode.”

“Diagnostic?”

Meredith swallowed. “All my controls are operating. I am programmed to respond only to my implant chip, or to—your voice command. I am not capable of initiating thought or action.

“I am obedient.”

“Very good.” Leslie stood next to her, and rested a hand on her back. She twitched but held, and she thought she could feel Leslie’s approval in the warmth of her palm. “Access the restricted directory now, slave robot. You ‘ll need to be able to download and execute Meredith’s personality, so the target household will continue to believe you are she.

“Your function requires it.”

“My function requires it,” Meredith intoned, and closed her eyes again. She opened them. “Awaiting—no. I’m . . . ready.”

“Let’s test you, shall we?

“Smile—’Meredith.’”

In the mirror, Meredith simpered. She almost fluttered her eyelashes, but she was far too deep into this to let farce taint it.

“How are you, Meredith?” Leslie asked in a conversational tone beside her.

Glancing at herself, belted and wired, Meredith turned her head without moving anything else, and there was something excitingly familiar about the gesture. Then she was looking no longer at the robot-girl in the mirror but at Leslie, who smiled calmly at her.

“I’m fine, Leslie,” she said. “I feel wonderful.”

“You seem a little preoccupied—almost hypnotized. Is someone controlling your mind right now?”

Meredith laughed slightly. “No, I’m just a little sleepy. In fact I’ve never been hypnotized or brainwashed in my life. No one’s controlling me at all. Everything I do is of my own free will.”

“Really?”

Meredith looked at her. “Well, there is something I—have to do. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, though.”

“What is it, Meredith?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Doesn’t that bother you a little? A compulsion you can’t even identify?”

“No,” Meredith shook her head, still keeping her body taut. “I have no problem with it at all. I know if I just relax and be open, I’ll remember what I must do, when it’s time for me to do it. I know I must not worry.”

“And if you meet someone now?”

“I’m just raiding the kitchen. Midnight munchies.” Saying it as a lie gave her voice more of a quaver than a casual food run might warrant. Of course the whole house probably knew that she and Leslie were Spending A Lot Of Time Together, so passion about food might just be impatience to get refueled for more gymnastics.

Or maybe if she brought whipped cream . . .

But that didn’t even start a grin in her. Everything was sliding off the polished steel joy of being a robot for Leslie—even the subversive kick of her own selfhood being a mask to hide that control from everyone else.

“That’s very good, Meredith. You’ll do very well.”

The praise hit Meredith as she was feeling that imaginary control full on, and she blushed. “Pleasure impulse—activated.”

Leslie nodded. “It’s an automatic reward sequence, Meredith, but you’re programmed to deepen each time it trips, and you just have. Good. Look back at the mirror now.”

Meredith obeyed. She saw her robotic self again, and smiled the falsely genuine smile. Under the crop-T, her nipples were poking out.

The cellphone vibrated against Meredith’s thigh. She found the Talk button by feel.

Leslie’s voice was like a tongue in her ear. “Test excursion program Slave01 loaded. Input beginning.”

27.

She felt like a stranger as she padded through the mansion.

No—an intruder. She still looked like the daughter of the house, but she was now an enemy. Less than that. A tool that enemies had made from the daughter, and enslaved to their wills.

God.

It was almost evil enough to rouse her from the bliss, but not quite. What kept it safe enough to play was that it was just too bizarre an idea for anything but a kinky sex game.

Suddenly Meredith felt a new rush of love for Leslie. Victims had to create ways to cope with what happened to them, but only her friend who broke so many rules so well and so often would be brilliant and depraved enough to devise this.

Leslie had helped her turn her abductors into game-pieces in a fantasy. She played at being their mindless pawn, but when she was done they wouldn ‘t be the ones climaxing in their lover’s arms.

“Location?” Leslie’s soft query stopped her for a moment.

“I am at the top of the east staircase. May I descend?”

“Yes, slave.” So hot to hear the term from Leslie, so casually. “Proceed as programmed to the first floor and head to the kitchen.”

“I hear and obey.” Meredith lidded her eyes. Just stepping down the carpeted stairs was deeply erotic now that it was a task, part of her programming, done to obey her operator back in the bedroom.

Was Leslie still standing there, whispering commands into the phone, listening to Meredith breathe as she obeyed? Was she lying back on the bed with her hand under her waistband, picturing Meredith’s sleepwalk through the shadows? Meredith couldn’t hear her breathing, even over this crystalline cell connection.

“Slave. External diagnostic. What is in your mind now?”

Meredith kept walking. “Only obedience and the sound of your voice. I am not programmed to have other subjects in my active buffer. Am I to be reprogrammed now?”

“No, slave. You respond nominally. There is no trace of disobedience.”

Meredith kept herself from glancing into the shadows by the foot of the stairs as she reached the bottom, and had to close her eyes for a moment as she answered. “I am not programmed for this word. What is—’disobedience’ ?”

There was a faint sound from Leslie’s end, and a second’s pause before, “You did not hear that word, slave. It does not exist.”

“I obey. Disobedience does not exist.” She heard the sound again.

Then twice. In the other ear—she turned toward a parlor.

At a woman coming out of it, dim moonlight shining on eyes that were wide and locked onto her. Her groin twitched as she realized her first thought in this emergency hadn’ t been ohmigod but encountering house unit.

“Miss—?”

She made herself say, “Hello, Clare.”

“Relax.” Leslie’s command, quiet in the headset, steadied her like a firm hand. “Respond casually. Randomize and follow her response.” She had to resist acknowledging it.

Part of her wished Leslie had snapped her back into robot mode. Commanded her to advance on the cowering maid, intoning her obedience, ignoring the cries . . .

She’d been told to randomize. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

Clare was in a nightshirt—almost long enough to be a dress, but Meredith could guess how lovely her legs would be if it were shorter.

“No, Miss.” The maid blinked, and eyes flickered like faint lamps. “I mean yes. I was sleeping, but I woke . . . I’d left something in here earlier and I only thought of it now.”

It was weird enough to be true, but Meredith wondered if she were the only girl playing strange games tonight. She saw Clare’s gaze shift to the headset.

“The phone?” she asked, touching the mike by her mouth. She thought of an excuse, but she didn’t want to break role and explain it without instructions.

She wanted Leslie to tell her what to do.

“We just didn’t want to stop the conversation while you went for a snack.”

“We just didn’t want to stop the conversation while I went for a snack.” Meredith wondered if she sounded too much like a ventriloquist’s dummy. (Oh. To face everyone sitting on Leslie’s knee, with Leslie’s hand up her—)

Clare didn’t react to it, anyway. She stood still and fought to keep her eyes from Meredith’s body.

“Miss? If you’d like, I can go and bring you something.”

“You mean bring something to the room?” Meredith didn’t know if Leslie could hear the maid. She herself wasn’t clear on what she was hearing in Clare’s soft question. Just nervous about being bypassed for a servant’s errand?

Did she sense there was a game and, without really be aware of it, offer to play?

She thought of standing blankly while Leslie explained the game to Clare, and slowly hypnotized her into it. She wondered what role Clare would awaken with, once Leslie’s voice was in her head to stay.

Meredith drifted between breaths among these perilous chances, awaiting the choice of the only person whose will mattered now.

It came. “No. You’re not even sure what you want, yet.”

“No. I’m not even sure what I want, yet.” She blinked, with the command out of her buffer, but . . .

“But thank you, Clare.” She had the sudden feeling that Clare hadn’t just been spared some submissive time but from something darker, even deadlier. It passed.

“You’re welcome, Miss. Good night.” Clare went off, and Meredith continued on her programmed course to the kitchen.

“You performed well, slave. I monitored. She suspected nothing.”

Meredith walked a little lighter. “My programming is optimal. My operator uses me very deftly.”

Leslie said nothing, and Meredith worried that she’d gone too far. But then her operator said, “Slave, access recruiting program.”

Meredith tensed, terrified and hot—was Leslie going to send her stalking after the pretty servant to “recruit” her? As though reading her mind, Leslie added, “Passive configuration only. Evaluate suitability of household-unit female for enslavement.”

Meredith saw the glow from the kitchen ahead. She allowed herself another false smile: Leslie had found a place for Clare after all. “I obey. Program accessed. Subject female possesses deep submissive nature and is likely to be suggestible enough for initial control process to destroy resistance and condition her to accept new programming. She is intelligent and loyal, and will obey her new controllers once reoriented.

“She seems sexually susceptible as well.” And looks delicious. “This could be used both in capturing her and during phases of her brainwashing.

“She would be ideal for implantation of an obedience chip.”

“Evaluation noted, slave.” Leslie sounded amused at the tacit plea. “ Disengage and return to test program Slave01 now.”

“I obey.”

She entered the kitchen, looking around. “Awaiting specific instructions.”

“There were leftovers from the buffet. Access household memory for their location.”

Meredith smiled. She trusted Leslie to pick up the pace soon enough. Striding to the larger refrigerator, she said, “Target located.”

“Sorry?”

28.

She choked down the shriek and ignored the peeved grunt in her ear as she spun around.

“Capaldi . . .” The sound in her ear stopped at once. The security chief herself stood just inside the doorway. “Do you ever sleep?”

Capaldi shook her head. “Not a lot. I don’t seem to need it.” She wasn’t giving Meredith any cues. She didn’t look suspicious, or amused, or even particularly surprised to meet her charge prowling the house in her underwear at—whatever time this was.

“Paraphrase.” Leslie’s voice reentered her head, and Meredith stood a little straighter. She felt more exposed, barely dressed and wearing the cellphone like some exotic control device—which it was. It was almost like being outside and doing this. Riskier. Colder—and hotter, too. She let Capaldi answer.

“Extra hours in the day. Part of it lets me just walk around.” Capaldi was just looking at her, and she realized Capaldi wasn’t a chatting sort of person: she was just softening what would have been a menacing silence.

“Houses can be cool late at night,” Leslie suggested. Meredith repeated it, and Capaldi nodded. “Return to the program now.”

Meredith touched her headset and grinned. “Sorry. I have someone to feed, and she’s getting restless. Figured this would be simpler than guessing . . .”

Capaldi gave a thin smile and ostentatiously moved further from the fridge. “Target reacquired.” Meredith wondered what more she might have overheard, and felt queasy for a second as she saw that she wouldn’t be able to tell just from the lack of reaction.

Nothing to be done. She opened the fridge, really chilled now. She recited some of the items wrapped there and retained Leslie’s selections, and then started preparing a tray. Now and then Leslie would say a soft word, staying in contact without prompting Meredith into a odd-sounding response.

This did not feel at all like performing in front of Clare, and Meredith couldn’t make herself imagine what it would be like to play with Capaldi. But it did keep her stimulated—her errand as she hoped Capaldi saw it was plausibly close enough to program Slave01 to make it possible to carry on the submission game right in front of her.

Then Capaldi left, and Meredith waited for a while, listening to what she hoped were the bodyguard’s receding footsteps.

She closed her eyes and put her hands by the tray. “Awaiting command,” she prayed into the dark.

“Resume obedience,” came her operator’s voice. “You performed beautifully.” She really hadn’t done much, Meredith thought—just avoided egregious spazzing in front of someone who was inclined to leave her alone anyway.

But, she knew, it was helping her to return to correct robotic non-thought. She shouldn’t question. She wouldn’t. She should just accept the automatic reward. “Pleasure impulse—activated. Confirming obedience deepened.”

“Good.” She waited. “Slave. Go to the silver drawer.”

“I obey.”

She’d already gotten flatware for what she’d gathered to eat, but she walked to the drawer where some of the more select ones were kept. It wasn’ t the extreme formal set—those were on velvet in an antique breakfront somewhere—but it was “silver” in the literal sense.

For a moment Leslie said nothing and Meredith realized she’d sailed so far into subspace that she wasn’t even wondering if Leslie were improvising now or even using the silence to tense her. She just accepted her operator’s silence.

She was standing blankly in front of the counter, feeling no desire to go ahead and open the drawer. She was perfect again, already back under the imaginary chip’s domination, focused on the next command, unable to think of doing anything until it came.

It was a luxurious feeling, and she stood still and erect like a well-operated robot, not even waiting. Nothing existed until the woman controlling her chose to speak. It was so . . .

“Open it.”

“I obey.” She reached down, pulled it out, and then returned to staring at a spot on the cupboard door at eye level.

“Remove a teaspoon now.”

“I obey.” She found one by feel (accessing tactile sensors she hissed in her mind), not even looking away from the spot on the door. She held the spoon up in front of her.

“Place it in your waistband now.”

“I obey.” It was cool against her hip as she complied, never looking down. Her pussy dampened as she realized she hadn’t even blinked since this sequence started.

“Close the drawer now.”

“I obey.” She pushed until it stopped, then let her hand hang again.

“Return to the island now.”

“I obey.”

All of it—the meaninglessness of one more robot task, the way it seemed even more dronelike when Leslie broke it up into simpleminded commands—heated her, and she was tense with pleasure when she came to attention by the tray again.

“Ready and obedient,” she said this time, hoping Leslie heard the longing.

She did. “Return at once to the programming point. Bring what you have gathered.”

“I obey.”

It was driving her crazy to walk with android calm back through the house, but that needfulness fed itself and kept her under discipline. Thinking about how she was putting herself deeper by thinking about it was putting her—deeper . . . under discipline . . .

She met no other nocturnal lurkers, and just kept focused. Each step brought her nearer to Leslie, her operator, her controller. Each step taken calmly as she’d been told to was another act of obedience, pleasing her operator and earning her reward.

The door to her suite was ajar, and she pushed it open with her hip.

“Set the tray down on the coffee table.”

“I obey.”

“Close the door.”

“I obey.”

She heard Leslie take a deep breath. “Slave. Discontinue persona program and close restricted directory. Resume full robot mode.”

Meredith moaned and snapped almost painfully rigid. She stared at the spot on the wall before her. “Ro.bot con.trol on.line. No con.cept of ‘res.tric.ted di.rec.to.ry.’ Per.so.na off.line.

“Girl-self re.neu.tra.lized. To.tal ro.bot o.be.di.ence con.tin.ues.”

“Enter the bedroom, robot.”

She barely kept upright as she made herself move. Inside, she kept herself from looking at Leslie, even when her peripheral vision told her Leslie was one pale blur from head to bare feet, nude and already wet.

She stalked to the spot in front of the mirror and held still. “Ro.bot o.be.di.ent.”

“Remove the girl’s clothing.” Leslie’s whisper came only through the phone.

“Ro.bot o.be.di.ent.” Meredith watched herself strip, carefully moving the crop-T over the headset, then dropping her shorts. The spoon she’d tucked into the waistband on command thudded almost silently to the rug but she let it, with no programming to deal with it. She’d worn nothing underneath, and now she looked at herself moisten as she stood there in nothing but her lover’s control device.

“And now . . .” Leslie’s voice was slippery with wanting her and it came live, now, as the phone queeped off. Leslie stepped toward her, eyes shining, as Meredith stayed at attention.

“Ro.bot ac.ces.sing sex pro.gram.” Leslie stopped, looking a but quizzical but already guessing. “Please in.put de . . .de.sired sex . . . f-func.tions.” Meredith’s monotone was ragged by now but she stayed with it.

Leslie stepped to her and put her hand on Meredith’s cleft, putting the other on her shoulder in case it tipped her over. “Yes,” she purred. “This unit was very thoroughly sex-tested during its programming. And checkout. And transit. And pre-mission. And . . .” Part of Meredith was ready to laugh, but . . .

But she was too desperate for Leslie to fuck her as a robot, as a mindless slave with a chip in her brain.

“Still, there’s no such thing as too much sex-testing with a slave robot.”

She leaned forward and kissed Meredith. “The problem, as always with sexbots, is deciding which port to plug into. Like many ‘or’ questions, it’ s best answered by ‘yes.’”

Meredith was shaking. The whole sequence, from the moment Leslie had awakened her with a touch and the devilish hook of this fantasy, she’d been simmering. She wanted—she was barely able to think, now, but she—wanted . . .

Leslie’s arm was around her now, and she felt Leslie tap her phone to turn it off.

Her mouth was by Meredith’s ear. . . . putting a spell on my lady . . . whispering sin into her ear. . . “I wonder,” Leslie mused, “what it takes to make a robot scream when it comes.

“I won’t have to wonder for long.”

Then she reached behind Meredith again, and tapped the phone back on.

It hummed against Meredith’s skin, and even handsbreadths away she felt it on her pussy. She had no idea what was happening but she let Leslie control her. Leslie hit Talk.

Something thrummed through her and she hung limp in Leslie’s arms as if she’d been jolted by a painless stungun. She tried to raise her hand, not remembering why. She was only just now becoming aware that there’d been a deep, intense beep from the earphone, and it had all but turned off her brain before she could even hear it.

It was a familiar feeling she’d never had before.

Beep is sleep.

Just the thought made her drowsier. She was barely aware of Leslie holding her, completely incurious about why Leslie stood as still and silent as she, empty of any wonder about why her arousal was still peaking but she felt no rush to fuck or be fucked by the lovely nude girl keeping her up.

None of that mattered.

There was a voice in her ear.

It wasn’t Leslie.

She’d never heard it before, but she remembered it perfectly. She was ready to believe everything it told her.

Obey anything it commanded her to do.

It was an iridescent bubble keeping her safe and stupefied, a pretty spiral drilling into her soul.

She listened.

It spoke to her.

“Always feed the hand that bites you.”

The orgasm was so so so so so very

Leslie’s hand on her pussy didn’t move but Meredith bucked against it as she came with her mistress’ voice in her mind, and it set off more.

“Mistress,” she tried to say through numb lips. Alice, her mind tried to pray, no longer even knowing what the name meant as it shuddered to a stop.

The orgasm continued and and and and

She put her mouth to Leslie’s cool skin and bit and Leslie might have come too, but Meredith was too far gone to care.

Her eyes stared blindly over her lover’s shoulders, unable to see how glazed her lover’s eyes were too, as she listened.

The voice spoke to her.