The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TETHER

* * *

29.

There were fascinating shopwindows to explore and attractive shoppers to stare at as the car rolled along, and Leslie gazed delightedly out at them all. But Meredith saw only her. Sprawled against the seatback, she ignored the commercial crowd and the professionally oblivious driver, and coveted her girlfriend’s wonder.

Leslie’s mouth opened, then closed as something else caught her eye and sparkled it. Meredith made herself wait until she saw Leslie in profile. Then her own hand, dark against the outside view, circled Leslie’s head like a hunting serpent.

“God, Meredith! I keep wanting to say let’s stop mmmpph—” Leslie fell into the kiss as Meredith silently pulled her close and shut her up, yet again. Meredith’s smile faded into sucking at Leslie’s mouth, and held the other girl’s lips lightly but firmly as her tongue eased them apart.

She let go after a moment, letting Leslie wilt against her. She’d been tasting her friend bit by bit all morning, and Leslie kept attracting her by trying to talk, even by trying to take a more dominant role in the shopping foray. But Leslie seemed beautifully tentative about it, and temptingly easy for Meredith to distract with a touch or a kiss.

Meredith could remember the moments last night submitting to Leslie, and it made Leslie’s softness even tastier now. She was a pretty witch who’d forgotten her spells. Meredith smiled with the mouth that kept the witch forgetful.

The clarity of the morning still burned gloriously behind Meredith’s eyes. Last night’s expedition as Leslie’s robotic slave had left her vibrating with need, and the sex they’d drowned in, afterward, had . . . had . . .

She shivered. Something even more powerful crouched within her beyond the echoing cries, a welcome trespasser in her mind whose intrusion was too intense to remember.

Yet.

Today she’d awakened before Leslie, and an instinct had moved her to take control before anything else. Leslie hadn’t had a chance. She’d slid across Leslie’s body, lying on her until Leslie moaned and stirred and opened her eyes. Meredith had stared down into them as they focused, before Leslie could be aware of anything else.

“Get up and get ready,” she’d snapped quietly, and nearly came as Leslie stiffened and nodded, eyes wide and trapped.

She’d relented and leaned down to kiss Leslie, but even the compliant way Leslie had softened beneath her couldn’t tempt her to dalliance. The deeper urge that had spurred her awake from bright red dreaming was still at the reins and riding her hard. They had things to do today far more important than sex.

Even not knowing what they were didn’t stop them from driving her half-crazy.

Watching Leslie writhe with need as they’d gotten ready made it easier to ignore her own arousal. In the shower Leslie had knelt to her, adorable with her hair plastered to her and the droplets defining her svelte curves like jewels. Even in all the water Leslie’s mouth was moist as she opened it slightly. Need narrowed her eyes and spread her knees.

“Don’t beg,” Meredith had said, and nearly came as she saw it subdue Leslie.

Leslie had nodded, and might have wept. Her thighs closed like a flower. Then she’d bent to the tiles, her forehead at Meredith’s feet.

She slid into Meredith’s lap now, wide-eyed, her hands soft on Meredith ‘s shoulders. She waited for Meredith’s nod before leaning against her.

“Everyone still in place?” Meredith asked the driver, more to show her control than to know.

“Yes.” The driver was a family employee and sounded vaguely in awe of the security team Capaldi had detailed to them for this trip. Meredith was sure there were others he couldn’t see, too.

Meredith was mildly surprised how little she cared about how he was reacting to the sight and sound of her making out with another girl in the back seat. She thought of having him find some secluded place so she could play harder and dirtier with Leslie, feeling an evil thrill as she pictured Leslie trying to meet his eyes afterward.

Maybe I could hypnotize her first. Meredith couldn’t decide if that would be a way to spare Leslie the embarrassment, or a way to make her do things she’d never do outside the bedroom. Fun to consider, but she didn’t especially want to put on a show.

At least for today, she started to think, but her eyes were caught by the way Leslie’s thighs moved under the skirt of Meredith’s she’d borrowed. Her mind slid.

Mmm. Putting on a show. Diversion and amusement. That’s exactly what toys are for. She watched Leslie recover from the last kiss, trying to find what had beguiled her out the window but hooked on Meredith now, unable to look anywhere but at her. Her friend looked wonderfully hesitant, lost and looking for Meredith’s lead.

The cellphone shrilled silently against her hip and she went rigid.

Leslie stiffened too, puzzled by whatever had just taken hold of her lover’s mind.

Meredith blinked, feeling suddenly more awake and full of purpose.

“We’re here,” she said, certain of it before she even looked out to see where she was telling the driver to let them out. She was barely aware they’d reached a row of upscale but tres trendy clothing stores.

Letting the people brush past, Meredith stood with Leslie at her elbow and looked up at the expensively-contrived tackiness of the facade until she found the neon Gossamer logo. She vaguely recalled something (a PATTERN an irresistible PATTERN) smiting her mind once with similar intricate curves, pulling her thoughts apart until she stood mindlessly before it. She hadn’t moved or wanted to or recalled how until someone—someone—

She looked down, already losing the trace. The logo had fit into her mind like a key in a lock, and she was too focused to wonder if it had just opened her mind, or shut it tight, as she strode through the doors. Leslie followed, warm by her arm, and neither of them looked at the taut shopclerks who held the doors open.

“Welcome to Gossamer,” said someone who materialized to meet them, and it felt good to stop and talk with her. Meredith looked her up and down, admiring the yellow and black catsuit, and the latex halter top and microskirt that gave it a depraved respectability.

She smiled at herself, complacent enough about her submissive girlfriend that she could eye-fondle this voluptuous stranger in front of her.

Catsuit smiled back, her own eyes gleaming as they swept Meredith and Leslie from behind tiny oval glasses that tinted her eyes something darker than black. Their gleam made Meredith’s cleft tingle. “We were waiting for you.”

It made no sense to Meredith but it was perfectly fine, and she nodded, following the other girl without question toward the larger counter in the back. She was dimly aware of the displays around her, the clothing that she might have found sexy if she could think of anything but the intoxicating compulsion to defer to Catsuit that was slowly flooding her mind. From the corner of her eye she saw at least one of Capaldi’s team browsing.

At the counter, Catsuit smiled at them both but looked deeply at Leslie, who pressed against Meredith. “I have something you’re going to lose your mind over,” she said, licking her lips and lifting something the size of a diploma and setting it on its edge in front of them, low to the counter so no one else in the store could see.

The spiral that shimmered across it was enameled on, but it still seemed to pulse and spin. Meredith started to see ghostly colors as she fell into it, and pulled herself back as though from a cliff’s edge.

Leslie, transfixed, made a tiny sound that might have wanted to be a scream. She’d just gone over the cliff.

Meredith’s hand shook. She tore her gaze from Leslie, and found Catsuit watching her girlfriend’s resistance hungrily. She and the clerk traded a glance, and then Meredith’s hand could move. She had it up her skirt before she looked back at Leslie.

Leslie’s eyes were fluttering as though she were fighting sleep, but as Meredith watched the struggle find a rhythm, she saw it reaching balance not when Leslie’s eyes were closed, but when they were open and staring. Leslie was fighting something stronger than sleep, and she was losing. Meredith watched and fingered herself.

The spiral had Leslie in thrall. She kept trying to close her eyes but couldn’t resist opening them to look, fall deeper, submit. She tried to turn her head, but it just seemed to weary her, and her eyes never moved.

As her mouth closed, Meredith sensed she was about to speak. She couldn’t guess what word Leslie was going to force out, but she could almost taste how open Leslie was now. She pressed her clit, and when she could open her eyes she decided to offer Leslie a word.

“Hypnotized,” she said.

Leslie shuddered and then sagged where she stood, as though she’d just orgasmed.

“Hypnotized,” she whispered thickly, still aroused. Her eyes were glazed now, and she looked right through the spiral, so deep in its power she couldn’t see it anymore.

“Makes her a lot easier to handle,” Catsuit commented.

“She’s already been tamed,” Meredith said, and saw how deeply Catsuit grinned at her as she put the spiral away.

“I can guess where,” she said, pointedly admiring Meredith’s thighs as Meredith belatedly withdrew her hand from between them. Before Meredith could think of an answer, Catsuit snapped her fingers and a junior clerk with a graceful fall of ash-blond hair glided to Leslie’s side, looking at Catsuit with eyes only slightly less drugged-looking than Leslie’s.

Suddenly proprietary, Meredith moved to command Leslie before either of the other women could assert control.

“Go with her, Leslie. Do as you’re told.”

Leslie blinked but still looked lost, her mind still bound in the enamel swirls that were back under the counter. As the blonde led her girlfriend off, gesturing toward a rack of dresses she was sure both women were too entranced to see, Meredith had a delicious thrill. Maybe they’d steal Leslie from her, bending her pliant mind to accept new pussy-scent to put her will to sleep, new mistress-voices to reshape it while it slept.

But Catsuit was beckoning her the other way, and she turned away, leaving Leslie to them. The compulsion was between her thighs, where her fingers had lately danced, and it was easy.

Catsuit was turning her over to another sleepy-eyed salesgirl, this one a lusciously twisted wetdream in pleated skirt and virginal white blouse. The fact that she was clearly years past high school just made her look more succulent. Meredith was so lost in the way her thighs canted below the indecently high plaid hemline that Catsuit was gone before she knew it, though Catsuit’s leering smile stayed in her mind.

The faux lyceenne was chewing gum, and now she turned half-away from Meredith and actually started to blow a bubble. Meredith was caught first by the way her cheeks and throat worked, suggesting other intricate lip-and-tongue skills the girl must practice. The knowledge had reached her inner mind before she realized it.

A bubble.

The gum was white and the bubble was iridescent, an expanding pearl. Its shape and quiet growth hypnotized Meredith easily, and her pussy betrayed her as she dreamed of being inside it, of being in the girl’s hot moist skillful mouth to get there . . .

A bubble. Safe and controlled.

Where she belonged.

The bubble popped.

Someone was looking at her.

In the swamp of her mind, the voice was a cool breeze. “Always feed the hand that bites you.”

She’d never seen the beautiful woman who looked at her now, past the oblivious schoolgirl, but she remembered her.

Trust and blankness filled her as she smiled at Alice Holloway and waited to be told what to do.

30.

It felt like an orgasm, but . . .

This was lower-pitched, not the high bright violin-scream of coming but deeper, longer, something so wide and long and—throb—that Meredith could spend a lifetime as the long wave hummed through her. She could go completely insane with the pleasure and keep smiling sweetly across the—store.

Meredith blinked. Remembered the store, the people around. The throb was background now but it vibrated everything to its deep, compelling note. Obey.

She wondered where she’d ever met someone like Alice, why she knew Alice’s name, how she ever could have forgotten her. God—how could she ever, ever have met someone so beautiful and dominant and charismatic and utterly in control and ever stopped thinking of her, dreaming of her?

It was making less sense to wonder what had given this strange but familiar woman such complete power over her—and as soon as she let herself admit that power, Meredith forgot all the other questions.

She had no idea why, but she wanted to fall to the floor and crawl to Alice, but she couldn’t. Mustn’t. She thought of what Alice had just said to her. Hand. Bite. Feed. Her wits had vaporized and she no longer knew what that meant, but the sound stayed with her. The sound.

The voice. She knew the voice.

It had dripped through her ear into her brain last night during sex. She could remember that now: before taking her on the bed, Leslie had stripped away robot-Meredith’s human girl clothing but left her controls strapped on, the cellphone sliding on her damp skin and the headset snug over her ears. The voice had spoken to her while Leslie strummed her, mauled her, teased her cruelly.

Sometimes it had used her mouth to command Leslie. Leslie had stared up at her blankly and changed her touch, at each command. Meredith had shaken and moaned as they writhed together, puppets on the same strings.

It had reprogrammed her and she was still a robot now, her chip altered with each white-hot climax Leslie had mindlessly sent through her.

She knew she’d been programmed to stay still. Alice knew what she was going through and understood, forgave her for not worshipping openly, with her body. There was something in Alice’s eyes that said she even knew what a sacrifice that was for Meredith, and accepted it.

Alice smiled at her and looked away, then walked past her as Meredith stood rooted to the spot, her perfume warm and close. Now Meredith could move, though her motions seemed chosen already. She felt her face curve into a smile and her head turn to the schoolgirl/saleswoman. The girl spoke, and she answered, and they smiled and walked away from where Alice had gone.

Meredith had no idea what she or the girl were saying. She only knew she was doing what she’d been told, even if she’d forgotten hearing it.

She saw that the woman Capaldi had assigned to watch her, across the store, seemed undisturbed at what she saw, seeing Meredith meet a stranger and politely go on her way.

That was as it should be.

Then she was nodding to Leslie and her ash-blonde escort as they headed to another section, and she was following the schoolgirl to the changing rooms, holding something she’d pointed to and chosen and accepted without really knowing what it was. She didn’t look down because she sensed it didn’t matter, and because it was nicer to stare at the saleswoman’s thighs scissoring so sweetly below the pleated plaid miniskirt.

Past the changing area’s portal, she felt safer, hidden. The schoolgirl stopped in front of her and nearly pirouetted, twirling her skirt up.

The pussy she flashed was plump and pink under a dark V of bush that might have been brunette, or just honey-darkened blonde, before the tartan spun back down to cover it again. Her smile, though, was cool as she took the garment from Meredith’s trembling hands and pranced off. Meredith had never really seen whatever it was she’d been programmed to bring here to try on, but dressing wasn’t the point of being in this room.

Undressing was. She chose the door with the black and yellow ribbon on the handle, already undoing her blouse with one hand and her skirt with the other.

She turned to the mirror inside and shook, seeing them slide from her. They unveiled her posing in lingerie she didn’t recall putting on, didn’ t recall owning. She saw the outer clothing pooled at her feet, and drew herself up, proud to flaunt the body that those triangles of useless lace were displaying. She looked at the clothes she’d dropped but was caught by the way her hose showed off her legs, and the way her heels flexed them.

The door opened and she locked eyes with the schoolgirl, who had the black and yellow ribbon in her hands now. Meredith stood still as she moved closer.

Meredith kicked her clothes to the wall, and the girl stood behind her. They transfixed each other again when they both looked in the mirror. The salesgirl’s penny loafers did something different to her legs than heels would have, something equally delightful, and Meredith vaguely wished she could bend down and explore it with her lips, but the girl, standing shorter than she, was reaching up with the ribbon.

Her eyes found Meredith’s, and Meredith yielded to them, bowing as the girl tied the ribbon around her neck as a choker. Her fingertips were cool. Or else Meredith, even nearly nude, was getting very warm.

The girl’s cool hand was in Meredith’s, and she felt a lovely terror as she was drawn to step back out of the dressing room into the larger changing area, doors and chairs and mirrors. She was in some of the mirrors, a bedroom fantasy docile in a silken collar.

No one was there, just now, only the pretty salesgirl walking around her as though about to lay hands on her and pose her. But anyone might come in and see her. Nearly naked, deeply aroused, helplessly entranced.

She wondered if the girl would try her in poses and then lead her out into the store, posing Meredith as she thought most attractive, to model something. The submissive thrill made her moan and the girl smiled. It was like the way Alice had looked at her out there—the girl knew how much control she had over Meredith and savored it.

I’ll take any pose you put me in, no matter how randy. I’ll hold it until you release me, no matter how long.

Meredith wondered if she might be left as a warm trembling mannequin to model just the transparent wisps of bikini she was wearing. Her knees nearly buckled.

Then someone came in, and she whimpered.

The schoolgirl suddenly came to attention, her face losing expression and her eyes growing wide.

Alice was there, smiling at Meredith as she stood.

Meredith shook, losing the rest of her world as Alice filled it. She didn’t understand the need ripping through her but she knew it would be met, that she was a good obedient little slave and she wouldn’t be kept needful for long.

Who is She? a stunned little part of her mind gasped, but nothing else paid attention.

Alice held something small and silver: a spoon. Meredith remembered a robot-girl in a kitchen, obeying a voice in her ear one movement at a time, fetching the spoon and forgetting it when the orgasms shut her off. Alice had written her program.

“Now we both know how deeply you’ll obey,” Alice said. The truth was new and eternal in Meredith, now.

Alice reached back with the spoon without looking away from Meredith, and Meredith glimpsed the salesgirl, still lost on her own trance, open her mouth and accept it. She saw the girl standing emptily with the handle projecting from her lips, and then forgot the girl.

Seeing only Alice.

Meredith looked into . . . Her . . . eyes . . .

Meredith stared at a blank wall, unable to tear herself away.

She tried and tried to look away, for the pleasure of failing. The pleasure was unbearable and she could hear the drip between her spread thighs as she kept trying, but she knew she was permitted this joy. It would help deepen her, and that was another addiction itself. The ache in her arms as she cupped them behind her head was a light harmony to the longing in her crotch.

More than anything was the wall, mirroring the flat emptiness of her mind, enthralling it. She had no depth, nothing to fight with. She was empty and shallow.

Somehow she knew how demeaning it was to be so weakminded that she could be transfixed by nothing.

Yes. I am.

More joy. Deeper. The blankness sucked at her.

There was a voice in her mind, and she loved and trusted and obeyed it so intensely that her shallow blankness couldn’t really hear it.

That was all right.

The pleasure was washing through her, hooking her more with each maddeningly suborgasmic twinge down there, and the cooler words went deep and stayed, unnoticed as they remade her foundations.

She would obey.

Then she closed her eyes, because there was something, Someone, so much more important, and She was in front of Meredith and when Meredith couldn’t see the wall she forgot it completely. For a moment her own blankness was enough. Then she forgot even herself.

She bowed her head to the floor, smelled her damp arousal and feeling it warm up as Meredith sensed Her attention on Meredith’s smooth back and her ass lifted high.

“Kneel back.”

The voice echoed her heartbeat and she obeyed, staring forward at wonderfully curved thighs, the hint under the loose slacks of a crotch she wanted to smother in.

“Rise.”

She slid to her feet, humble and proud, and looked into the face of . . .

She blinked. There was a name but more than who This Person was to her was what She was. Meredith swallowed.

“Mistress.”

“Good girl. You retain programming very well. I wish more of my slaves let me in this easily.”

Mistress looked at her.

“Meredith?” She nodded slowly, seeing Meredith’s utter focus. “You know what I am to you, and I’m pleased. Do you know who I am?”

Meredith stared into Her eyes. “No, Mistress. You’re Alice Holloway. I don’t know your name and I’ve never seen you before.” She felt so proud to remember her forgetfulness. “When I awaken, I won’t even remember meeting you outside, a few minutes ago.”

“Why not?” Mistress covered one of Meredith’s breasts with Her hand, but she kept still. Her gaze was even warmer and more arousing than Her touch, right now.

The pleasure of the answer blurred her vision. “Because of your brainwashing, Mistress. I’m not programmed to remember that you own me, or that you control my every thought and desire, unless you tell me to.”

“Mm-hmm. So you won’t recognize me later, if we meet?”

“No, Mistress. I won’t know who you are but I’ll want to be yours. I’ ll forget my free will as soon as I hear your voice, especially on the phone. When I see you I’ll want to be naked and panting and begging, but I won’t show it unless you signal me to submit to it. I’ll pray for that signal, and my prayer will be to you.”

Mistress smiled.

“What is your deepest desire, Meredith? What, out of all the world, would you like to be, for me?”

It was Christmas morning for Meredith. She waited for the joy to release her.

“To be a sex slave, for you. Mistress . . .”

Mistress beamed at her. “You’ve behaved, Meredith. You’ve done as you were told, and you’re as much my slave now as when you were lying under the spiral. Do you remember the spiral?”

Meredith shook her head even as she started to see it twirl and pulse. She remembered nothing, and the memory was enthralling.

“As it should be, Meredith. Now I’ll tell you what a good sex slave must do here, to be pleasing and worth what’s paid for her.

“Just relax and do as my voice instructs you. You don’t have to think. I’ll do that for you.

“Obey me.”

Meredith felt her eyelids droop, and when Her fingertips touched the back of Meredith’s bowed head, she went the rest of the way to sleep.

31.

Meredith blinked awake, and checked herself out in the mirror of the Gossamer dressing room. For a moment she tried to grasp an impression of her dear friend Alice Holloway—something beyond the dizzying thrill of just being with her—but forgot it as she looked at herself. The barely-there ensemble had vanished, and her legs were bare.

Nearly all of her was. She was wearing a thong, dark and metallic but soft against her, tight enough that her cleft shimmered in outline and so brief that it hardly covered her mons. It was the largest thing she had on. There was nothing over her breasts but a thin sheen of sweat.

Her heeled sandals had straps that wound up her calves to below her knees. There was a bracelet in her right wrist, and another one circled her left arm above the elbow. Her hair was gathered up, and displayed her neck, still adorned with the silken choker, looking more like a collar than ever.

With the rest of this non-costume proclaiming slavegirl, a collar was—anticlimactic.

Meredith lusted after herself in the mirror, and thought about climaxes.

She wondered if she would be expected to dance, and essayed a shimmy. She shivered, suddenly wondering what someone would think of how she moved. She didn’t know how to dance, really. Not that way.

Meredith gazed at all the skin she was showing. So many places a whip might kiss her—she wondered what it might be like to be trained to dance.

A door opened behind her, but the guilty start faded before she could even tense. She was glad to be found this way, flirting with herself in the glass, and she returned the smile of the woman who’d caught her at it before she realized it was the saleswoman—a corrupted schoolgirl no longer, now sleek in a charcoal suit and white hose. Meredith felt even more decorative, less consequential, in her presence. She wondered if this woman had trained her, or watched while someone else had.

The saleswoman inspected her and she straightened to it, gasping when the woman brushed one of her nipples.

The woman smiled up at her. “Good thing we trained you not to masturbate on duty, or I’d be helping you stand now, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Meredith breathed, wishing she could remember that. It sounded so degrading.

Then the woman looked intently at her and snapped her fingers in front of Meredith’s face.

Meredith jerked as the trigger hit her and turned to the mirror. Her eyes tracked left and found a small tray. She’d been too mesmerized by her own pussy-dreaming to notice it, and felt a nice twinge of gratitude that Gossamer’s staff had taken such time to train her to focus on her job.

Her job. She picked up the tray and posed, smiling radiantly at her reflection, a display of skin and lines to draw the eye to the carafes on the tray. She enjoyed it, but something inside her rode her past it and she let it—she’d just checked to ensure she looked her best. Her eyes lost focus as the training pushed her gaze and mind to look through and forget the slavegirl in the glass, her universe centered on the one who mattered.

The Gossamer customer. Patroness. Meredith twitched as the thing inside her applied luscious correction.

“May this girl serve madame?” she asked the space behind the mirror, pitching it low, submissive, giving.

The woman nodded approvingly, bringing Meredith out of the momentary trance, and Meredith managed to hold the pose and the smile even when she felt the woman’s hand on her ass, softly stroking.

“Perfect,” the woman said. When she walked out Meredith followed her, smiling, with the tray.

She realized they were in another set of changing rooms—the Gossamer colors and symbols were there, but it was more opulent, another side of the store. The sort of place her mother might—

She froze.

Another gentle tap to her asscheek unfroze her, and she kept walking until they reached an open door and the woman, without even looking at her, touched a fingertip to her arm, just above the slave-bracelet.

Her job. She paused, awaiting the next command. She juiced, realizing the next step would be to perform.

She heard Alice’s voice. “Yes, I’d heard they were providing refreshment to preferred patronesses.”

“Don’t you mean refreshments, Alice?” A familiar voice stressed the plural. Not her mother’s, but it still . . .

. . . made her hot.

“Mmm, you tell me. Here she comes.” Meredith felt the touch on her ass, primed her smile, and paraded in.

The mirrors made it look crowded. Besides Alice and the other customer (patroness) there were other Gossamer staff—a saleswoman or two and someone else, a model. Even the illusion of strutting in naked with a tray to a room full of fully-dressed women was frightening and arousing at once, like playing a very dangerous game. Part of the arousal was knowing that Alice was seeing her strut, and seeing her do it in front of others.

Another part of it was seeing a half-dozen reflections of herself, making her entrance a gracious little dance of need, rolling her bare hips but keeping the carafes still on the tray. She saw how smooth she was, and realized how powerfully the training controlled her.

That kept her balanced and graceful on the heels, focused on everything but the eyes of the patroness who sat at her ease in a loose robe. She was aware of where Alice was, yearning toward her like a flower to its sun. She stepped close to the other woman’s chair, grateful for the training that serving wenches (slavegirls) didn’t meet the eyes of those they attended.

Too easy to be hypnotized—or was that—?

“Ohhh.” As the woman quietly exclaimed over her, she curtseyed, savoring the effect she’d had. It wasn’t just surprise; there was interest in that sound, and the breathing that followed. Her nipples hardened and she was glad they were visible.

“Does madame care for an aperitif?” Meredith asked softly, sinking to one knee and presenting the tray. The saleswomen, and the model poised and regal in the latest offered gown, said nothing, but Meredith felt their gaze on her skin, reflected from all sides. She knew she was a frill, not even as functional as they. She was a toy.

They knew it too. Their status went up when they shared the room with a toy. It didn’t make them respect the toy any more.

She wondered if they had bets on how quickly she’d soak through the thong.

When the patroness said nothing to her offer, she brought her other knee to the floor, and managed not to collapse as the mirrors showed her how much more submissive it made her look.

Other words slid up her throat. “If madame does not, is there something else this girl may fetch for her?” She heard the moist servility in it, more sincere than her deepest dreams of slavery had ever promised. She desperately wished she could remember being trained.

Meredith’s mind was too fogged now to think about the staff here or to consider whom she could lick, so they’d allow her to remember it.

She swallowed, wondering how many would let her lick first, enjoying her tongue and the sight of her ardent on her knees, and then admit they didn’t know.

She could spend a day crawling through the store. Meredith saw herself, slowly becoming enslaved to each new pussy, no longer able to think of what she sought, as the licking itself slowly became why.

“With the economy down,” she heard someone whisper, “I suppose some girls will do anything.” She basked in the disdain and waited.

She heard only faster breathing, and now she raised her eyes, keeping her head lowered. She fell into the staring eyes of the woman she was serving before she could register the face, and felt something open further, inside her.

“If madame does not wish her to fetch anything, is there some other way this girl may serve and give her pleasure as she waits?”

She met the other’s eyes, and saw the pupils dilate. A name, cool with the feel of the world outside this mirrored chamber, condensed from the fog of her thoughts. Christina. Christina Helfand.

She said once I should call her Aunt Christina.

“My god.” Christina sounded appalled, but kneeling before her, Meredith just opened to it.

And there was more than shock in Christina’s voice.

Alice’s voice was light. “Breeding tells, in girlflesh as in horseflesh.

“Lovely, isn’t she?” The praise made Meredith want to wriggle, but she was . . . too well-trained.

32.

“That’s—Frances Stevens’ daughter!”

“Yes, it is.”

Even expecting it, Meredith hadn’t known what the humiliation would do to her. How relentlessly it would turn her on.

“But she was kidnapped by—”

“Apparently she’s gotten past the experience, Tina.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and Meredith kept kneeling and looking.

Aunt Christina looked back at her. She hadn’t spoken directly to Meredith yet. Meredith shuddered at being ignored and stared at simultaneously. It made her feel like a thing, and that started a familiar throb inside her.

“Girl.” Meredith shivered at Alice’s voice and nodded but stayed fixed on Christina. “Tell her what Gossamer offers.”

“Gossamer is grateful to its most important patronesses,” she recited to Christina. “We reserve for those very special clients a level of personal service that guarantees the attention and devotion that they should expect.

“We select and train servers who can be taught to focus completely and totally on those patronesses’ needs and desires. Only the most receptive to training, the most devoted, the most pleasing are chosen for presentation.” She closed her eyes and wet her lips.

“This girl is trained to massage.” She let her excitement flutter her voice just enough to show how eager the service would be. “This girl can attend to madame’s feet, or her face, or her shoulders. Her body. This girl will relax and please madame anywhere and in any way that madame wishes.

“Madame only needs to command this girl and she will obey.”

Aunt Christina’s eyes glittered in a way Meredith had never seen before. The fear that started wisped into a deeper longing to let Christina see how aroused it was making her.

“God, Alice. Is the economy that bad? It almost sounds like they’re brainwashing them.” It was a comment, not a protest.

“Not quite.” Alice sounded amused at both of them, but Christina didn’ t seem to notice.

“What is ‘anything’?” she asked softly. Meredith waited.

Christina was speaking to her. Asking her what she’d be willing to do.

She wondered how to say it, suddenly blank of trained responses.

“Maybe they’re not that well brainwashed,” Christina said.

“Try a—’trigger’,” Alice suggested, and Meredith could hear her fingers slide together over currency.

“All that presentation—for a hooker?” Christina nearly snarled. “I have to pay her for it?”

“It’s not for her,” Alice purred. “If you want to see how willing—or brainwashed—she is, you may pay me.”

Christina looked at Meredith as though she’d just seen her. “You can really get her to do that? Just by hypnotizing her?”

Alice said nothing.

“I thought you were just—talking. Back at the hotel.”

“If you recall, Tina, when I was just talking, I didn’t say I’d hypnotize her into being a slave whore. I said I’d already done that, and that I could activate her programming and put her on her knees in front of you. Ready to lick you on command.”

“Yes, but you didn’t say the girl you’d hypnotized was . . .”

Christina had turned to Alice, and now she looked back at Meredith. “Are you hypnotized now?”

Meredith needed to serve her. “What does madame mean by ‘hypnotized’ ?

“This girl must obey Gossamer patroness policy. This girl can think only of pleasing madame.”

“Alice, I can’t believe that’s Gossamer policy!” She sounded more peeved than shocked.

“Nor should you, Tina, since it’s not. But Meredith’s conditioned to believe it now, which is the key thing.

“What else would you like to see her believe?”

Christina looked again at her, and Meredith realized she’d been posing, subtly, since she’d curled to her knees before her mother’s friend. She recognized the older woman’s new expression.

She’d seen Aunt Christina’s eyes flatten that way as she priced something.

She held very still.

I’m not even being sold.

I’m being rented.

Christina looked at her. “Frances Stevens’ daughter.” Her tone was as flat as her eyes. Meredith wondered when she’d meet her next, how she’d meet those eyes. What her mother would do when she knelt to Christina Helfand.

How odd she’d feel, meeting Christina on her feet, wearing clothes. How wrong.

“Misgivings?” Alice’s voice held a smile.

Christina raised an eyebrow. “Hardly. If you could hypnotize her into this, she wanted it. She’s weakminded and a whore.

“How much?”

Meredith quailed inside and nearly wept at the need to put her hand between her thighs.

To put her mouth between Christina’s.

“Well . . . she only has a few minutes before her chaperone comes looking for her. Time enough for some basic adoration.

“How’s this, Tina? Forgive my whist debt from this morning, and she’s yours for ten minutes.”

“. . . Alice, you only owe me . . . fifty . . .”

Meredith moistened to hear her price as Christina mused about what games Alice wasn’t telling her about.

Fifty dollar whore.

“True. But she’s new, and training only goes so far with a girl.”

Meredith heard the bill crackle.

Whore. Naked and dripping and ready for use, as she’d dreamed for so long. She wanted it so badly she felt like dying.

Maybe she had, and Alice was the archangel set over her.

Then Alice snapped her fingers. She turned to look at once.

“Girl, put the tray down.” Still kneeling, she obeyed, gaping up at the hypnotist. Alice began waving her hand in a slow circle and Meredith followed it, weaving her head and suddenly drowsier with each movement. Alice walked over her and had her bent backward and looking straight up.

Alice snapped her fingers and Meredith sagged back onto her heels, still looking up, her hands limp on her thighs. Everything faded behind Alice.

She touched Meredith’s forehead and Meredith felt things in her mind just . . . turn . . . off.

“Ready to obey, Meredith?”

“Yes,” Meredith answered softly. “Mistress.” She heard someone exclaim softly, but nothing mattered but hearing and obeying Mistress.

What was still on in her mind was rigidly oriented along a compass where Alice was True North.

There were no other directions.

“Can you hear anything?”

“I can hear only your voice in my ears, Mistress. And the commands in my head. I must obey the commands.”

Alice touched her forehead again. “What are the commands?”

“I am a sex slave. I will be obedient. I will behave. Soon I will sleep.”

“Yes,” Alice said. “You are a well-trained sex slave and I have erased your will. You will refuse a patroness nothing that pleases her.”

Alice spoke, and Meredith trembled as she felt her will being rewired in front of her first trick.

Then she was bowing again, worshipping Christina’s warm crotch and her cold eyes.

Christina’s taste was sharp and it made her head spin, but what rang along Meredith’s clit was the crisp quiet sound of the fifty dollars she was worth.

As she came, convulsively, Christina’s thighs trapped her head and Meredith’s lips played tag with the older woman’s clit, setting her off again.

Then she was released and settled back on her heels, gazing up at Aunt Christina and blinking through her honey, dimly aware that she wouldn’t remember. Alice was going to put her to sleep now.

But Alice reached down first, and snapped the whore’s-fifty next to her ear.

It set her off, and she heard faint laughter as she collapsed.

Meredith was still coming and writhing on the floor, squealing faintly, when Christina stepped over her. She was spasming too hard to hear Alice’s command consciously, but the slave within her was always attentive to commands, and it found her mind.

She obeyed it and slept.

33.

Meredith almost skipped out of the dressing room, and the salesgirl followed her, not quite as perky as she’d been but still delicious in her pleated mini.

She beamed at Leslie and the Capaldi bodyguard, who were standing together at the service desk. They traded a glance before looking at her with amazement and the schoolgirl with sympathy.

“None of them?” Leslie asked.

The schoolgirl smiled gamely as she arranged the last items Meredith had rejected.

Meredith grinned and went to her, embracing her warmly and taking the opportunity to explore those lovely thighs with her own (as smooth and cool as they looked.) “Sorry,” she said, seeing her infectious mood perk the girl up again. “I’m more in the mood to shop than decide.”

She stepped away in time to see Leslie indulging in a my girlfriend’s an airhead smirk, and was ready to tell her how hot this airhead would make the sex when they got home, when she realized they’d be in the limousine first, and lost her train of thought. Suddenly there was nothing in her head but the way the carpet would feel as she knelt to service Leslie on the back seat.

Meredith smiled, considering how she’d get Leslie to pretend it was a pickup, that Leslie was the rich girl slumming with a prostitute. She nearly turned to the beleaguered schoolgirl and asked for one last outfit—Money’s no object—but make me look like an object that doesn’t cost too much.—and felt utterly certain the girl would know exactly what Meredith needed, and that Meredith wouldn’t say no to this offering. She could already see the shocked lust in Leslie’s eyes and puzzlement in the bodyguard’s as she stalked out in something scanty and shiny.

But she knew that Gossamer wasn’t the place to get something like that. Money was an object, if she was to be. It needed to be cheap. Something like—fifty dollars?

Anyway, they had to get back to the estate now.

Sighing, she held hands with Leslie as they went out to meet the car when Capaldi’s woman called it round.

Leslie rested against her as they rode back, and Meredith half-wished she’d asked Leslie to be with her while she’d tried everything on. She could barely remember the blur of it all, and her girlfriend might have helped her make sense of it. She should ask Leslie . . .

Out the window, the freeway was already rushing by. Meredith should have asked to be driven out of the city another way. She only vaguely knew the district she’d have wanted, but she knew what was there, and knew the driver would have blushed to admit he could find it.

If she’d bought the minidress somewhere after all, she would have asked. She would have let her instincts choose a stretch of sidewalk to tell him to pull over, because she’d be too busy between Leslie’s thighs to look out, to do more than lean back and call it out.

She’d make sure she was still on her knees when the door opened and the other whores saw her. She’d kiss her dazed but satisfied trick and smile at them all as she turned her back on the Stevens limousine and walked away to mesmerize another long black car into pulling over . . .

Meredith shook her head. That was hot but it was starting to scare her. She rested her head against Leslie’s. She knew Leslie was in some kind of daze too, and wouldn’t burden her lover now with this weird new kink, but sometime soon she needed to curl up with her and talk.

She felt calmer as the estate gates slid by and they rolled up to the house. Leslie slipped off her lap and opened the door, and she needed Leslie’s help to stand, suddenly exhausted and feeling sore. I wish I could remember what was so strenuous about trying on . . . all . . . those . . . clothes. She stood against Leslie for a moment, eyes closed. I wish I could remember the clothes.

But it wasn’t important, and when Leslie squeezed her arm Meredith followed her into the house, up to her rooms. She hung back for a moment and Leslie looked at her, seeming much more alert than Meredith was feeling.

She waited for Leslie to prompt her, but Leslie just kept looking at her until she said, “Something weird happened. Today. Do you remember being in Gossamer and—?” The images she wasn’t sure if she remembered or dreamed were very odd, and the idea of Leslie standing there as a hypnotized slavegirl in front of strangers was—was—

Meredith remembered being with Leslie before, like this. It was her first time ever getting high, after her relentless whining had worn down Leslie’s resistance and Leslie had brought it. Leslie had stayed straight, taking her through it, laughing with her and looking at her with fond derision as she wowed.

Leslie looked like that now, almost, listening to her try to describe her strange daydream about the store.

Almost. Leslie’s eyes hadn’t glittered that way before, had they? Or had the pot just made everything sweeter than it was, back then?

Leslie let her run down and then moved in to lay cool fingertips between her collarbones. It was like being injected by something that tingled and dulled her at once, and her mind filled with Leslie’s voice.

“There’s no need to remember it at all, Meredith.”

“No need to remember it at all,” she whispered, breathing in the thought to make it hers. “I understand.”

Leslie turned and resumed walking to the suite and Meredith followed as though they were still holding hands.

In the bedroom she drifted to the window, and wondered if Leslie was going to put the headset on her and reactivate the Meredithbot she’d been last night. Her breasts itched with the need for that, and she tried to find the will to turn and plead with Leslie to do it.

Wait. Plead? I thought I was the— She looked at the bed and blinked, seeing the skirt she’d been wearing draped over the side of the mattress. She’d been undressing without even knowing. She fought to remember a morning—today? Yesterday? Leslie had been the slave, the exquisitely submissive Bauble, hypnotized into an unbearable pitch of obedience.

She looked at Leslie, who was already nude and leering at her. Something was wrong, but Meredith was increasingly at a loss to find out why she had a problem with that. She made herself stop with her blouse and didn’t reach for the panties that were already irritating her, begging her to slip out of them.

She wanted to say the word, snap her fingers and call Bauble by name and watch Leslie, so sleek and wonderfully malevolent now, fold into the harem girl.

She wanted to, and she was certain it would put her girlfriend on her knees.

But she was starting to know that she couldn’t say the word, and her fingers didn’t want to snap.

Meredith barely knew why she was resisting this need to kneel and crawl to her lover, but she tried. She dragged her gaze away from Leslie’s soft crotch and hard eyes and looked out the window at the long back lawn.

“Yes.” She told herself the quavering rasp sounded like a jaded slavemistress almost too bored to fuck. Not like a whore stalking the streets downtown, willing to do anything for a quick fifty, or even a slow fifty, or a filthy fifty they made her find with her mouth when they were tired of—

“Yes.” She nearly gritted her teeth. “Out there, I think. That’s where I’ll have it built.”

“Have what built?” Leslie asked softly. Meredith tried to hear respectful curiosity in her tone, not indulgence. She nearly succeeded.

She pressed on. “The ranch. Where I’ll raise slavegirls.” She swallowed, and her head started to clear. At least she started to rise from the steamy marsh of obedience to someplace hotter and drier, where she could peer out at prey she could take.

“Breed them, train them, sell them. I won’t brand them until I’ve taught them to beg for it.” She was breathing hard now, and could almost feel the leather she’d wear as she prowled the stalls and barracks, fondling and checking, watching them train, enjoying the sight of her attention distracting an especially promising girl into making an error she’d have to be punished for.

Or taken to the conditioning barn . . .

“Mmm.” She started; she’d been thinking aloud and Leslie was next to her, warm. “Very nice, Meredith. But of course, one of the trainers would trick you into staring too long at her pendulum, listening too closely to her latest hypnotic induction. She might take you as you were fucking one of the slaves—before it captured you, you’d think the lovely pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth, was to control the girl between your legs.

“You’d be asleep before you knew any better.” Leslie closed her mouth and chuckled, and Meredith’s hand was inside her waistband.

“Let me help you.” Meredith felt metal cold at her hip and then her panties vanished. “So shiny, already. But where were we?

“After a little of that, with a slavegirl working your pussy just as she’d been programmed—not that she’d know the difference anymore between serving her mistress and breaking her mistress’ will—you’d be ready for a restful night in the barn.” Her hand was warm on Meredith’s pussy, and her voice was dark in Meredith’s ear.

“And that would be it. Each day and each night, a slave in the main house would trigger you and you’d follow her out to be deepened by your own trusted trainers.” Leslie licked her ear but she couldn’t fall. She kept looking out the window, seeing it, seeing the other slaves passively working around her as she was brainwashed into one of them, the rest of the household watching the mistress enslaved.

This was supposed to be about her being powerful. That must be why it was so, so, so hot letting it go and letting Leslie twist it like this. She wanted Leslie to twist it. To twist her.

“They’d be patient enough to take their time. They wouldn’t rush it, and why should they? They could use your mouth or that pretty bubble butt anytime they wanted, and you’d already be obeying commands to get you used to it.

“When they finally had you sign everything over to them, you’d be ripe. You’d want to do it even more than they would.

“I wonder how much your new owner would let you remember.”

Meredith climaxed, and Leslie caught her before she fell, holding her still for a moment. She helped Meredith over to the bed, and lowered her to it. Meredith felt clothes wrinkling under her, but forgot about them as Leslie’s hands and mouth attacked her as silently as serpents.

Leslie didn’t talk anymore, but Meredith wouldn’t have heard her. She was lost in the dream Leslie had poured into her mind, and each orgasm Leslie lashed her with drove her deeper.

34.

“I’m still getting used to the idea of Meredith being ‘too bored to buy,’” Frances said as Clare reached deftly in to clear the dessert plate. Meredith traded glances with Leslie, who spread her arms in an attempt to look contrite.

“It was all I could tell her,” she said. “Had to explain coming back with no Gossamer-logo bags after—how long were we there?”

“There’s no need to remember,” Meredith said quietly, falling into her eyes.

“What?” They both looked at Frances, whose look at Meredith was uncomfortably canny.

“Past boredom,” Leslie diagnosed, with a catch in her voice that only Meredith caught. “Enroute to ennui.”

“On what?” Meredith found it oddly nice to play dumb. Her mother and Leslie smiled at each other.

“I’d say she’s idling too much,” Frances said, “but then I’m a workaholic and I have no objectivity about that.”

“Needs something to do,” Leslie commented, looking at Meredith again.

Meredith tossed her head. “Well, I don’t know. I rather enjoy being idle. Useless.”

“Decorative?” Leslie furrowed her brow, mocking concern more skillfully than contrition.

“Exactly!” Meredith displayed a debutante simper.

Her mother rolled her eyes. She seemed a little taken aback by the new Meredith, unfettered by study-obligation or the goal of earning a corner office at Warner Phipps, but she seemed to be learning to like her.

“Well, after going to all that trouble and arranging my own kidnapping just to leverage some vacation time, am I not entitled?” She saw Frances’ eyes widen just a bit but she was smiling, too, and so Meredith turned to Leslie. “Well, am I not?”

Leslie looked at her.

“Am’n’t I?” They all started laughing.

Leslie winked. “Especially with those cut-rate goons you hired. Really.”

“Hey, on my allowance, they were all I could afford! At least they brought their own chloroform.”

Frances sighed. “For all this, I may as well just sell you back.”

Meredith froze for an instant, and then turned to look at her mother. She wished she hadn’t, and kept looking at the chair Frances left empty to rush around to bend over and hold her.

“Oh god baby I didn’t mean it I would never ever ever I can’t believe I said—”

Meredith reached up and gripped her arm, more from reflex than anything else.

She’d started the bizarre little tangent, but Frances wasn’t blaming her. Even her mother’s hurt was fading before her own confusion. She guessed the agitation her face had shown, but Frances could have no idea what was behind it.

It was almost real. The marble of the foyer cold and hard under her knees, the air from the open door playing across her skin. She’d be kneeling properly, and with her head bent, only able to see her mother’s legs and the deliverywoman, but she’d hear the pen as it scritched across the bill of lading. She’d have been stripped before, but not oiled—this wasn’t exhibition, just transfer. The van would be running outside. She’d be wondering if there were other girls in it already or if she were the only pickup.

Before she could wonder if the driver would pull over on one of the long roads leading away from the estate, to play with her in her bonds, she felt certain that by the time the van was rolling away from her mother’s front portico, she’d already be secured in the back, staring at something pretty and pulsating, listening to headphones, oblivious.

That was what had widened her eyes. That and the heat of hearing about her sale in her mother’s voice, even in jest. That and the whiter heat of what her mother might sound like, bargaining for a good price.

Saying what a good fuck her daughter would be, to raise it.

Over her mother’s shoulder, she saw Leslie looking at her with an unfathomable expression, and wished she could recall more about the session they’d had in her room when they’d gotten back from shopping.

It was enough to move her, make her hug Frances back. “Mom. I know. It was a joke, and if we can’t make jokes about it—” She put her head below her mother’s and relaxed. She could still imagine kneeling there, sold and about to be shipped, but it was a tranquil feeling.

Leslie began to get up and Frances stood straighter, still touching Meredith.

“I’m going to go watch some TV,” Leslie said. “You two should come with. I think GlobalSat has a special on some civil war somewhere. Or maybe the health crisis. Just the thing to perk you up.”

“Sounds good,” Meredith murmured, and Frances let herself be led to the next room. She sat by herself in a wing chair as though she still felt guilty about the sellback comment, so Meredith joined Leslie on the couch. Leslie looked at the remote as though examining a new sidearm and then shot the TV crisply.

She wrinkled her nose. “Local news. And the really cute sportsgal is on assignment, too.”

Meredith glanced furtively at her mother to see how that had gone down, but Frances was staring fixedly at the screen.

“Oh, no,” she said softly, and put her hand to her mouth, suddenly looking years older.

“What?”

“Tina Helfand.” Frances shook herself and looked over at her. “Aunt Christina.”

As she looked at the TV, Meredith wondered why her crotch was suddenly so moist but her palms were suddenly so dry. She saw the faintly-smiling woman in the photo over the anchorman’s shoulder, and it felt like looking up from the floor at her. She shivered as Leslie raised the sound.

“. . . bus driver is not being charged. Police finished questioning most witnesses at the scene some time ago, but are still looking for an unidentified young woman who may have been near Ms Helfand when the accident occurred.”

Frances let out a breath. “I can’t believe it.”

“The police have not released more than a preliminary statement, but sources say she died instantly after being struck by the bus. The investigation . . . ” The anchorman looked confidently into the camera, and deflated slightly at what he read beside it. “. . . continues.

“Bank executive Christina Helfand, dead at 51.”

Frances stood up, and Meredith watched her with concern, but her mother ‘s shields were back up. “I need to call Albert,” she said. “God, I hope he didn’t find out this way.” She motioned Meredith back to the sofa and walked out. Meredith wondered if she’d call from her office, or go up to her own suite of rooms. It bothered her a little that she couldn’t visualize which one it might be.

Leslie had been surfing and now stopped. Meredith leaned against her and saw a blond-wood courtroom instead of the anchorman. “A lawyer show?” she asked with patience. She registered the fixed camera, the realistically aimless milling behavior. “Shit, Leslie, this is worse—the Trial Channel? Real ones?”

“Wait and learn, youngling,” Leslie said, not taking her eyes from the screen. “You’ll—there she is.”

Meredith looked as the defendant and her counsel stood behind the defense table. The attorney’s poise drew her, the way she stood in her short-skirted black powersuit with the yellow highlights . . . then she saw the defendant.

“She was in a closeup before,” Leslie said quietly, as though not to spook the beauty in the lavender dress, or to draw the bright blue gaze to see them through the screen.

Her name ran low on the screen, and Meredith almost lost it in the graphics—she could only see the woman’s first name.

Janet.

35.

The camera seemed to share Leslie’s fascination with Janet. Meredith looked at the open, pretty face under those lamplike eyes, and wondered why the sudden sense of deja vu had such a strong tactile aspect. Like baby oil by a pool. Smooth firm slippery thighs trying to trap her hand. Leslie’s firm softness beside her just accelerated it.

An offscreen voice narrated Janet’s sins—embezzlement, some associated crimes. Hints of other conspirators whom she hadn’t named, and was being pressed to, now. The judge made the threat explicit.

Janet peered at him, and seemed slowly to awaken herself by anchoring her gaze on him. Her expression started to gel. Meredith watched breathlessly as the intelligence glowed and caught in those blazing eyes. Janet began to blink as though something were in her eyes, and with each flicker there was more fear—and more fight.

The shapely attorney beside her smiled, adjusted round, tinted glasses, and leaned to whisper something in Janet’s ear.

Janet froze and her eyes widened, losing focus. Her lips pursed into a word, but her whisper was not to anyone she could see.

“Scuba?” Leslie lip-read, whispering herself.

“Scuba,” Meredith murmured into Leslie’s shoulder, seeing Janet in a fetish web of tight latex and masks and tubes, spasming slowly in dark water. The vision loosened her thighs.

On TV, Janet’s eyes rolled up briefly and then lidded as she relaxed, lapsing deeper into her dream. Her head lolled, and her arm shifted—Meredith could picture fingers flicking her skirt out of the way and plunging up to find the wet. Janet shook, very slightly, when they found it. She danced on her fingers as she sat, so subtly that Meredith felt the dance was only for her to see.

Janet’s eyelids drooped as her eyes rolled up underneath them.

“She’s coming,” Leslie whispered. She could see Janet dancing, too.

Janet seemed to awaken again and blinked dazedly at the attorney. They traded nods, and then rose.

“Your Honor,” the attorney said, “my client would like to withdraw her earlier plea of not guilty and accept the Commonwealth’s initial offer.” Next to her Janet swayed with sleepy grace, eyes still lidded, with a faint stupid smile of afterglow. She nodded like a toy dog on a dashboard as her lawyer accepted the first, worst deal for her. The lawyer frowned slightly and Janet’s head was still again.

Every second of silence after that made it clearer that Janet’s dance had, after all, been for everyone. The judge said nothing about watching her masturbate to a guilty plea, but seemed to take fierce satisfaction in the sentence. He asked if Janet had anything to say.

She smiled slowly, her eyes dull. “I look forward to the structure,” she said in a low, come-on voice. “And the . . . discipline.”

There was a hush in the courtroom then but she was already putting her hands back to be cuffed, and she ignored the attorney, already daydreaming again. The attorney ignored her, too.

“They’ll eat her alive,” Leslie said in awe. “She’ll only get off her knees long enough to go rent her ass to the guards for cigarettes.”

That pushed Meredith’s buttons so hard it scared her, as badly as her own little prostitution fancy on the way home. She pulled away from Leslie. “Oh? Really? Y’all seen that action when you was inside?”

Leslie just grinned at her. “I don’t have to see it. She’s a pretty little cupcake and the way she looked at her lawyer she not only melts for women who’ll fuck her, she liquefies for women who’ll fuck her over. She’ll be someone’s pet before the sun sets.

“Maybe everyone’s.”

“How about you?” Meredith caught her off-guard and pushed it. “How long would you be standing up before you were calling someone ‘Daddy’?”

“I might fight,” Leslie said. “I’d probably be there anyway because I’ d been caught trying to get you out of some scrape you’d gotten into. So I’d have to protect you.”

Meredith felt warm about that but kept playing. “Mmm. You might have to make me your bitch.”

“You are my bitch.”

Leslie said it so calmly Meredith wanted to throw herself down on the floor and beg, but she was too dizzy even to move before it passed. Leslie went on. “So they’d get that. Of course, you’re pretty enough they’d want you anyway. I might just get piled on, while they dragged you off and did you in another cell.

“I might not see you for a few days until you were prancing down the tier behind whoever’s turn it was. Tied to her with a leash they made from strips of your jumpsuit. You’d look so stoned I might not even know you, first time, but they wouldn’t even need drugs to make you behave. Why waste good shit?”

I’d be a pussyjuice junkie. Meredith was terrified with how much she wanted to say it out loud.

Leslie read it in her and smiled. “Maybe they’d back off. But I’d have to show them you really do belong to me. You’d have to stick close to me, obey me. I’d slap you.” She grinned. “A lot.

“Might have to get you some tats, while we were at it. You’d pay for it, but hey, I’d be there to make sure whoever it was didn’t ride your mouth raw.”

Meredith couldn’t move.

“But then, I’d meet someone. Big, strong, quiet woman out on the yard. Hair cut short, owned the weight bench, no nickname, just her name. Something basic—Alice, maybe. Her crew would be strong and bald and oiled and they’d work out with her, and I’d get sucked into it, into her. I’d wrestle one and go all weak and hot and turned on, and she’d beat me and make me like it. She’d end up fucking me while they cheered.

“By the time I found out Alice used the oil to control them, that wrestling one got it on me, it’d be Alice telling me as she put it on me. While I stood there, helpless.

“You’d come looking for me, after a day or two. You might get raped twice along the way, because word would be out that I was already Alice’ s newest weight-zombie and didn’t even remember I had a bitch. But you’ d still come.”

“Because I’m your bitch.”

Leslie’s teeth were so even and bright. “Every fuckable inch of you.

“You’d know me even with my head shaved the way Alice liked it, but my eyes would be strange.”

Meredith kept looking at her, at how languidly she sat and described it. “You wouldn’t know me, would you? The oil.”

“The oil, yes.” Leslie lay her head back. “And her voice, filling my mind when the oil and the reps on the bench emptied it.

“I’d tell her who you were when she commanded me to. When I licked her enough she’d let me give you to her, but after she let the others play with you she’d sell you to one of the gangs.”

Meredith stood up, and Leslie straightened again to look up at her. “When she sold me, you’d forget me again, too.”

Leslie nodded, her eyes glowing. “Wouldn’t take much. Her hand on me, a new coat of slave-oil, a few reps on the bench chanting what she put into my head . . .”

“And what’s one fluffy little bitch,” Meredith said, “with all those hardbodies to worship?” Leslie closed her eyes, but nodded. “Of course, after a few minutes getting passed around a cell for favors or smokes, it’s not like I’d be thinking of much else, either.” She was already unfastening her skirt, flushing in the calm way Leslie watched her after opening her eyes again, already wanting Leslie to leer at her nude, when she remembered she might meet her mother on their way out to the bedroom.

Dizzy again, she wondered quietly if that would be a good reason to strip after all.

If Frances were there doing time, how many smokes would she hand over on another slow afternoon, to use the pretty new bitch for a while?

Even that faded as Meredith thought about how many she’d be worth as a sex slave, even if those words never tickled her ears. She could get used to being bitch very easily. She’d be worth a pack—she’d learn how.

“We might meet little Janet, too.” Leslie’s hand was working, her fingers waving slowly liked tentacles. “In a mohawk and a long ripped T-shirt.”

“We wouldn’t know her by then,” Meredith said.

“Or each other.”

“Even if they made us fuck so they could watch.”

Leslie stood up. “They wouldn’t. They’re not jaded rich people—they’ re badass women who’d rather do a girl than wait while someone else does.” She stretched and flicked the remote off, and Meredith realized she’d forgotten the TV entirely.

“Upstairs.” She and Meredith managed not to run until they reached the stairs, and met no one on the way. They stayed dressed until they were inside Meredith’s suite, but it was only because they couldn’t decide for a while who’d tear whose clothes off first.

36.

Meredith was nodding before she realized it or knew why. Then she knew why.

She was sitting at her computer, the chair delightfully smooth and impersonal under her bare butt, slick and cool with her juices. She was staring at the screen, and something was throbbing out of it, right into her. She sat there and let it.

I can’t look away. The whisper in her head was in her own voice and someone else’s. She enjoyed the paralysis it cast over her will, and realized her will already lay pent under layers of the same.

She had no idea why she’d want to look away from the screen anyway. There was nothing else she wanted to do, or could think of doing, except staring at the screen and obeying clear thoughts like that. Suggestions. Commands.

Oh. She was hypnotized.

Meredith didn’t move, but she could feel the wetness under her ass warm up as she dripped afresh, knowing her hypnosis.

Then she knew that Leslie had hypnotized her. She’d taken Meredith to bed, still vibrating in the imaginary prison cell, and just as the sex had been about to blow Meredith’s mind utterly apart, she’d spoken some words, and Meredith had felt everything fade. She’d come, slowly and gloriously, as she staggered up to where Leslie wanted her.

Here, in the chair.

She stared at the spirals and the other wonderful shapes and colors. They were designed to capture a mind even when they were hidden behind other images, and she’d already been captured and tamed to harness. They were taking her to a submissive height she’d never reached.

It was like flying, with the whisper in her mind.

She heard the door open. There was no draft but she still felt her nakedness keenly—and just sat there, because she needed to do only what she’d been told.

Someone gasped. If she could have moved she’d have preened.

“Is—should I—is she—?” Clare.

Meredith relaxed against the bondage of her will, letting her servant see her spellbound.

“I’m training her,” said Leslie softly. “Would you like to help?”

Meredith heard the other girl’s breathing slow. Clare hadn’t run away.

Nor would she, if she hadn’t by now. Meredith fell into more spirals, suspended as though on floats by the sound of Leslie seducing the maid into it.

“She’s hypnotized, isn’t she?” There was curiosity and excitement in Clare’s whisper, but Meredith heard fear, too.

“Yes, she is.” Leslie’s voice was like gentle fingertips on her ears, and she knew it was soothing Clare into pliancy.

“Is she all right with this?”

Meredith was too relaxed to start visibly, but she almost blinked. Some of Clare’s fear was for her. It warmed and confused her. Clare cared . . .

“Of course she is, Clare.” Leslie’s soft voice was a silken scarf tying Clare down to this. “All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, you know. Meredith is so much more than all right with letting me hypnotize her.” She laughed almost soundlessly.

“Sometimes she begs for it.” Clare must have stirred at that because Leslie’s voice slid softer and tighter on her. “She doesn’t have to, for long. She’s just very deeply onto it. I try to keep her from going too deep.”

“How deep is she?” Clare asked, and Meredith felt an ache as her pussy tingled again. Clare would be staying. “Can she hear us?”

“Probably. And loving it. I’ve trained her to be, at this depth, and—hmm.” Meredith heard Leslie step closer and felt her arm, exquisitely clothed and cool against her own bare skin, then froze as Leslie touched her cleft. “Well, that wasn’t wet before.

“And you can see her nipples from there, can’t you?”

They listened to Clare breathe.

“You want to.” Leslie was standing close to Meredith, and rested her hand on Meredith’s head.

“You do,” she pressed, the smile clear in her voice. Clare was breathing fast.

“She wants you to, Clare. She’s letting herself want you because when she’s this deep she’s free.”

Clare didn’t speak, but she didn’t move either.

“I’ll make it a little easier.” Even as deep as Meredith was, hearing Leslie’s purr made her wish she were Clare now, with a will left to surrender to her. Leslie’s hand left her head and then her clothing was hissing down her body.

Meredith watched the spirals.

“Would you rather I just commanded Meredith to disrobe you?” It was no threat.

“It’s all right, hon.” Leslie was suddenly so gentle with her that Meredith’s ache started to throb. “Let me.” Now the soft fabric sounds were to her left, and in a moment she heard Leslie’s skin on Clare’s.

“Oh. I thought I knew how pretty you were under that cute uniform, but I had no idea . . .

“Yes. Come. That’s it. Help me take her deeper, Clare.”

More skin sounds, and the maddening virginal urgency of the maid’s breathing. Two women’s breath hot on Meredith’s skin. Two hands on her breast as Leslie guided her pupil’s touch. It was like being on special exhibit at a zoo, and Meredith wished she had a tail she could swish or toss.

I’m the tame one they let the children pet. Too docile—or whipped until they broke my spirit.

“She won’t bite,” Leslie said. “Unless I tell her to.” Clare’s touch on her breast didn’t falter at that.

But then it withdrew. “That stuff on the screen. Do I need to be careful? Could I get hypnotized accidentally if I look at it?”

“. . . Do you want to?” Leslie chuckled. “Sorry. No. Not even a conditioned subject like Meredith could be put under with exposure that brief.

“Besides, you really have nothing to worry about, Clare. The hypnotic visual I prepared is specific to Meredith’s trance. Her mind’s been trained to respond to certain symbols and sequences that won’t affect anyone else.

“There. All you can see are some shadowy spirals and half-shapes and colors, soothing perhaps and pretty eye-catching, but nothing you couldn ‘t look away from.

“Meredith, though, has learned that what she alone sees are irresistible compulsions. She’s triggered, and she’s taken them so deep, deep into her mind, Clare, that she doesn’t even have to think about them. She’s like a gymnast, in trance, balancing and flying without stopping to question why she can fly.

“You or I could look at it safely, Clare, just let it relax us, just letting the rhythm guide our breathing, just like that, yes, just breathing, but not getting hypnotized, Clare, no, not becoming more and more deeply relaxed and hypnotized like sleepy Meredith, because only she can see and be enslaved by the hidden summons to look deeper and sleep deeper and obey . . .

“You can just keep looking at it and listen to my voice, Clare, and let my suggestions guide you and make you more relaxed, and that way no matter what you end up doing to Meredith, no matter how you end up enjoying her, Clare, you’re just letting my voice guide you and control you and give me the responsibility, but you’re safe, completely safe, not helpless in trance like Meredith, hypnotized and asleep . . .”

Meredith heard it happen and dripped some more, waiting.

“Clare?”

“ . . . What? Wh—oh. I must have . . .”

“Gotten a little hypnotized, Clare?”

“Oh, not at all.” The maid’s voice was suddenly steadier and assured. “I remember clearly that I wasn’t hypnotized.”

“Really? I’m not surprised—you seem pretty strong-willed.” Leslie sounded pleased. “So you’d rather just watch?”

“I—no.” Clare’s drowsy uncertainty returned. “I’d like to help you.”

Leslie chuckled again, sounding even more pleased. “Lovely.

“Here. I’ve already programmed her to respond when she’s stroked . . . there . . . just like that, yes.” Meredith luxuriated in Clare manipulating her body, and listening to Leslie manipulate Clare’s mind.

“Keep an eye on her nipple, Clare. It’s one of the first things I trained her to do. It will tell you how well you’re stimulating her. It’ll come erect, slowly . . . there.

“Watch. Now do it . . . again . . . yes . . . again . . .”

Meredith reflected that she’d be thrashing and bucking too much for Clare to keep—touching her like that, if she weren’t locked into the command to sit and submit. This way there was no way to escape it, though, and it kept building far beyond where a thinking woman could bear it. Meredith wondered if she’d go insane from the pleasure. If she’d stay hypnotized, unable to scream . . .

Clare was whispering something, two things alternating, too softly for her to hear though each word was a cool kiss on her breast.

“That’s right. As you repeat it, I know you’re controlling her perfectly, Clare. Keep telling me what her nipple does as you stroke her and I’ll know how well you’re doing.

“Sending yourself back into relaxation and obedience, Clare. Still not hypnotized, still hearing only my voice.”

Meredith faded in and out, not crazy yet. Each time she could put thoughts together, she heard Leslie’s voice coiling more tightly.

“. . . she’s so absorbing to watch, Clare. Meredith’s hypnotized and you’re sending her deeper, so very much deeper. Hypnotized women are helpless to resist pleasure, and when you control them they don’t want to . . .”

There was something in the spirals keeping her plateaued on what Leslie was making Clare do to her, and for an endless heartbeat Meredith lost herself in the pretty colors.

“. . . you’re so absorbed in her, Clare. You’re so good at making Meredith more obedient . . . yes . . . relaxing her and arousing her, just . . . by touching her where she’s programmed to respond . . . respond . . .”

“Where are you sending her, Clare?”

“Deeper . . .” The maid’s voice was thick and full of wonder.

“Where are you going, Clare?”

“Deep . . . er . . .”

“Yes, Clare. Relax now.

“You have some programming to accept. Come this way; the visuals will put Meredith to sleep while I enslave you—but you’re not even thinking about her, are you?”

Meredith drifted off.

37.

Meredith stood at attention, facing Clare. She wondered if her eyes were as wide and blank as the other girl’s. Clare was dressed, deliciously demure, and Meredith was still nude.

Meredith spoke. “You will obey.”

Clare stared into her eyes. “I will obey.”

Meredith realized she was holding something in her hand. “You will go to sleep when you leave my suite and awaken when you close the door behind you.

“You will forget everything that happened here until you are told to remember it. Until then you will remember only what has been put in your mind.”

Clare stood motionless.

“When you reach the kitchen you will remember what you must do with these.” She passed the things in her hand to Clare’s hand. Neither girl looked down at them.

Clare closed her eyes, opened them. “I will remember and obey when I reach the kitchen. Each will go into the carafe I am programmed for. Everything is harmless. I am doing nothing. I will remember and obey, and then I will obey and not remember.”

Meredith felt a rush of admiration for how well Clare had absorbed her tasks. She stepped to Clare and pressed against her, loving the fabric against her skin. She turned Clare’s head as the maid stood passively, and kissed her.

She tasted of Leslie, and Meredith lingered there before releasing her.

Clare stayed at attention, still under her trance controls, but her breathing was rapid again, and she was blushing wonderfully.

If Meredith hadn’t been in trance, too, she would have—

She did. She heard Leslie giggle as she sank to her knees before Clare and nosed under her skirt.

Eyes closed, she followed the spice until Clare’s bush, coarse but fragrant, brushed her nose. She didn’t bother to wonder where Clare’s panties were.

Meredith licked and nibbled until she felt Clare writhe, and then heard the choked, desolate moan as the dew flowed. She stayed on her knees as Leslie snapped her fingers and Clare stepped away, her cool thigh brushing skin and stocking across Meredith’s cheek, the skirt flowing across as it unveiled her head. Leslie went with Clare to the outer room, instructing her softly.

Obeying an impulse to rise, Meredith stood, turned, and returned to the computer. She was back in deep trance before she felt the chair under her bottom.

“. . . It’s been long enough,” Leslie said, and Meredith swayed—she was standing in the shower, and Leslie was toweling them off. Leslie held her until she caught her balance again.

When they were dry Meredith followed Leslie back to the bedroom, and stood quietly. She waited for Leslie to tell her to kneel and go down on her or fall over asleep or run through the house to find Clare and nuzzle under her skirt again.

Leslie handed her a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and watched as she put them on. She emoted no desire, and it made Meredith feel like an object. She wanted to juice but somehow she couldn’t.

There was something else she had to do. She stood and waited again.

Leslie stepped away and walked past her, but it felt good to remain standing, facing a spot on the wall. Her eyes found the spot and tried to pull her into it with them, but she had to wait for Leslie.

Then Leslie was there, holding something flat. Meredith took it without looking, and blinked.

“Something for Mom,” Leslie said, and then turned away to start wiping the computer chair.

As she went through the house, Meredith remembered stalking through it as a robot, obeying the voice wired into her head, puppet to someone else’s purpose. She wanted to juice but somehow she couldn’t.

At the door of her mother’s office she saw Clare walk out with an empty tray, and the dimpled smile on the girl’s face smoothed into a blank stare as she emerged to see Meredith. Meredith felt her own expression flattening. There was no one else there.

They stood absolutely still. Then Clare nodded, paused, and turned on her heel toward the kitchen. Meredith knew the nod had just impelled her to do something. She turned sharply, the carpet warm under the ball of her foot as she swung, and then strode into Frances’ office.

She felt the smile assemble itself on her face as she knocked on the inner door.

“Yes?”

Her mother’s voice was softer than she was used to hearing it, but Meredith seemed to be in a bubble, and whatever had subdued Frances didn ‘t register with her.

All she knew was that she could go in, and that was good. She needed to be in with her mother, so she could—she relaxed and let the actions operate her.

“Hi,” she said.

Frances looked up from her desk. “Hi, baby.” She sounded as tired as the desk lamp made her look.

“I thought that would pick me right up.” She gestured to the decanter Clare had brought. “Usually does.

“This is all catching up with me. Christina, just like that, and poor Albert.

“And you.” She looked so intensely at Meredith all of a sudden that Meredith was afraid she’d looked through her soul and found out—though what she’d found out was beyond Meredith’s ability to think. “I really didn’t let myself know how close I came to losing you.”

Then the intensity dissolved. “Even to joke about selling you back . . .”

Meredith hadn’t seen her mother cry a lot, and she had no skill at it. Meredith looked at her for a moment before she felt the impulse to go quickly around the desk, setting down the flat thing she carried and leaning over Frances.

“I told you, Mom. That was okay. I know what you’d do before you’d let them take me again.” She ignored the odd ache as she said that, letting the strangeness of her mother weak and weepy like this push her feelings back.

“I’m not the only Stevens woman who needs a little time off at home, am I?” As she aped the emotion, she felt an awful glee rising in her at how easy it was to pretend—as if she were out with Leslie and only the two of them knew she wore nothing under her clothes but clips on her nipples and clit.

“Can’t,” her mother said, but she sounded ready to be convinced, and leaned back against her.

“Well, I just found this and I was going to let you see it just to . . . anyway, you may really need it.”

“What?” Frances sniffed, already rallying.

“This.” Meredith looked down at the flat thing she’d brought, seeing the CD-ROM for the first time. What she needed to say about it slid firmly into a new slot in her mind.

“Worked on it this past year—got me an A but it needs work before it can go real-world.”

“This is your idea?” Frances looked up at her, red-eyed. “Be a beta tester?”

Meredith grinned down at her. “Shh. It’s some telecommute-enabling software. Had a lot of help with the coding, but the concept’s what I put together.” She opened the jewelbox and plucked the disc loose, tapping the drive on her mother’s computer and setting it down when the carriage slid out, all without letting go her mother’s shoulder, which she discovered she was kneading. She wanted to juice but somehow she couldn’t.

Glancing at the decanter and seeing how low it was, she covered her mother’s hand and drew it over the mouse. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “It installs in no time, and the Readme’s really fast—puts all the necessary stuff in your brain before you even know it.

“You’ll be able to do a lot more from here than you do now.”

Frances looked at the screen, and then back at her.

Meredith squeezed her thighs together. “Please, Mom. For me.”

Frances leaned up and kissed her chin, and her hand tensed under Meredith as she worked the mouse. The application started to come up.

Frances stirred. “Does every package have an attentive daughter in the bundle?”

Meredith hugged her and then stepped back. “Hint taken. I’ll talk to you later.”

She moved quietly out, but stopped at the door to look at her mother in the glow of the desk lamp and the screen. For a moment, she remembered how much she loved her mother, seeing her grasp this and force herself into thought and action, pulling out of the funk.

Meredith kept looking at her mother as the program continued, and discovered how much she liked watching her mother’s face grow slack, and seeing the colors reflect off her eyes like an oilslick.

She was almost tempted to walk back and stand beside her, looking into the spirals again even if she couldn’t see them yet under the masking, but she knew, somehow, they’d do nothing to her now. It had something to do with what Leslie had done to her after Clare had left . . .

Meredith stopped thinking and watched Frances.

When she saw Frances start to undo her blouse without looking away from the screen, she turned and left, making sure the door was closed.

TO BE CONTINUED