The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The Fay and Her Knight

Part Four

The people and events in this story come from my brain, not the real world. Regardless of what that tells you about my brain, it means that I’m not writing about you, your mom, your friends, or your friends’ friends. So you can’t sue me. Neener neener.

If you’re underage in your territory (and you know what I mean), then read something else, please. If you’re easily offended by sexually explicit fetish content, how about reading something else? If you’re easily offended by sexual content and are determined to help yourself to a dash of moral outrage, try minding your own damn business for a change.

Note: I left this one alone for too long, but I hope this makes up for it.

© 2005 by Aerosol Kid. Protected under the Berne Convention.

Inana

She felt calm, even knowing that it was all over. One of her own kind—soul long since devoured—was about to offer her up to monsters. Even though her captor’s will enforced this calm, it was entirely Inana’s.

Darice sang in the next room. It was what she did when she wanted a break from thinking for two but still wanted to beguile her Sister, for now the mere sound of her voice was enough to keep Inana dumbstruck. Earlier that afternoon she had left Inana alone just long enough to catch her going for the door, but Darice had quickly put a stop to that. She sang whenever she left the room now.

Inana sighed as a warm compulsion to rise enveloped her. She was well aware it wasn’t her own wish, but coming up with one was more effort than she could muster, so she joined Darice in the sitting room.

She’d been busy. Her things were packed into two suitcases by the door. And she’d put on yet another provocative dress that would no doubt offend the locals. Inana wondered why was she still mussed and nude if they were leaving. The bikini she’d worn when Darice had enticed her here from the beach was gone.

She noticed the open crate with the long, queer pod inside.

We’re almost ready to go, li noura, Darice teased inside her head. I just need for you to be a good girl and lie down over there.

Dean

“How many Szaveri women left, exactly?” Dean didn’t mean it as a question so much as a reminder that the clock was ticking.

“Just Ms. Arjee here, then Ms. Sikri in 433,” said Vik, pounding the door to Bungalow 178.

His big fist made impressive noise, and presently a surprised, coffee-colored woman with lustrous black hair answered the door, brown eyes wide with alarm. “Yes?”

“Maede Arjee,” Vik recited as he barged past her into the bungalow with Dean and his men in tow, “we are agents of Ives III Security and Response. Please remain calm. We’re searching for a missing guest.”

“Oh goodness!” Ms. Arjee backpedaled away from Vik before banging her calves on a low glass table. “But I’m here by myself!” she protested, nervously wrapping her paper-thin gown over her scant yellow swimsuit.

Dean checked every room and failed to find any sign of Inana, or anything suspicious.

When one of the men gave a curt shake of the head, Vik segued from intimidating cop to cordial host. “Apologies, madam. Our missing girl was apparently last seen with someone fitting your general description.”

Ms. Arjee struggled for composure, still reeling from the sudden intrusion. She blinked at him for a moment, but when she finally realized what Vik had said, her expression hardened. “My ‘general description’?”

Vik knew he’d put his foot in it, but gamely tried to move things along by pulling Inana’s picture out of his jacket. “Yes, she was last seen with a dark-haired woman who—”

“I heard you perfectly,” Ms. Arjee sniffed. Her eyes flicked to Inana’s photo and back up to Vik’s face. “A white girl goes off shopping or some damned thing and loses track of the time, and the first thing you do is find someone fitting my ‘general description’?”

Dean was over it. “Let’s go,” he said, tugging Vik’s sleeve.

“Do you even know who I am?” she asked.

“Madam please,” Vik implored. “This woman is not off shopping. If you’ve seen her at all—”

“Do me a favor and let me get back to my bloody vacation!” replied Ms. Arjee, herding the men to the door.

After the impressive slam, Vik leaned against the door and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. He sighed upon noticing his friend’s pensive stare.

“So Ms. Sikri in 433?” suggested Dean.

Vik closed his eyes and put his handkerchief away. “Yes. Ms. Sikri in 433.”

Inana

“Get in now,” Darice repeated, with a hint of impatience.

Inana frowned as a familiar dread seeped into her haze of blunted thoughts. “Why?”

Darice’s violet eyes sparkled. Questions and worrying and then more questions. They make you so tired. Why not lie down?

Treachery or not, Inana was beaten. Her eyelids drooped instantly, and before she knew it she had stepped over the wall of the crate. The inside was filled with strange sheets of metallic packing material, all around the smooth pod. Some of it stuck to her feet when she sat down and slid her bare legs onto the mat, which gripped her calves with a little too much cushy zeal. As she reclined, her body sank into strange smelling foam. The headrest was just the right size. In fact, the whole thing seemed made just for her.

Such a good girl, Darice purred inside her head. You’ll be out of there in no time.

As she began to lower the lid, claustrophobia finally roused her to panic. “Wait! What are you doing? Darice?”

Latches clicked and her ears popped. There was a tiny window inches from her face, but she couldn’t see Darice anymore. It was deathly quiet, except for her rapid, shallow breathing. Then the whole thing hummed, and she was bathed in soft turquoise light. Something very cold pooled around her feet, causing her to gasp and angle her head to get a look. Her forehead was pressed against the glass portal, but she could just see her toes.

A shimmering blue gel invaded the inside of the pod, pumped in through nozzles on either side of her feet. It reached her ankles and kept coming.

Inana’s male ancestors had seen fit to create dazzling, submissive women who could be enthralled even by simple rhythmic words. Meekness in service to matters of love and society was one thing, but survival was different. As the air in the pod was forced out, the dark, creamy veil around her mind split open and her own thoughts poured forth, I’m going to die being the most insistent one. She pounded frantically on the lid, and Darice swung into view. Inana screamed at her to let her out.

Darice waved, blew a kiss, and closed up the crate.

The icy gel covered her thighs. It was getting hard to breathe. Her fists were bruised but she couldn’t stop banging on the lid. The intensity of her screams only made her more frightened, but she couldn’t stop, because the sound of the pumps was worse. The gel burbled across her stomach and her legs grew numb. When it reached her elbows she stopped banging, because her fists hurt like hell. When it flowed over her chest, she stopped screaming and took a deep breath.

Then it was everywhere. Everything was blue, and the insidious bubbling sound began to fade. All she could hear was the hum, which pulsed into her eardrums with the blue goop and became a roar. Dying seemed so quick, until she realized she didn’t want to do it slowly.

As she resigned herself to letting go of her last breath, her senses went berserk. Everything stuck. Her vision seemed to freeze when she moved her head and then abruptly catch up to her. The roaring sound seemed to disappear and reappear, and she lost almost all feeling in her body. This was so disconcerting that she didn’t realize she’d opened her mouth and sucked the thick, salty gel into her throat. She was about to gag, but she just... Stuck... Frozen in that instant...

Which went on for so long it became her whole universe.

Dean

He couldn’t help it. “How much farther?” he asked, as he fidgeted in the passenger seat of Vik’s cruiser. They’d sent the rest of Vik’s men back to question the guests on the beach near Dean’s bungalow.

Luckily, Vik’s patience seemed endless. “Two blocks, then we reach the Sound. Smoke?”

Dean took two cigarettes, lit one for his friend, puffed anxiously on his own. All they had to go on was one witness, whose statement was looking more and more dubious, unless this Ms. Sikri turned out to be the mysterious abductor hired by Gund to reclaim his valuable slavegirl. “What’s next if this doesn’t pan out?” he asked.

“We don’t just lose people around here,” Vik assured. “We’ve already instated a planet-wide alert. Immigration and Orbitside have been engaged for the search.”

Dean said nothing, just took a long drag and blew smoke out the window.

“Here,” Vik suggested, touching the dirty screen between them. The page to Dean’s bungalow chirped insistently, but went unanswered.

“They’re going to smuggle her offworld,” Dean said. “She could be gone already.”

“Unlikely.” They rounded the corner and Vik slowed the cruiser as they approached yet another idyllic quarter of rickety beach houses and shops. “Four hundred block...”

“Do you want me to do the talking?”

“You don’t have the authority to do that,” Vik sighed. “If anyone is going to field accusations of racial profiling, it should be someone in charge.”

The cruiser oriented itself to the curb and stopped. Dean put the spent cigarette filter in the ashtray and opened his door. “Let’s do it.”

“Indeed.”

Ms. Sikri turned out to be a slip of a thing. She was gentle, cheerful, poised and utterly harmless. She expressed disappointment when Dean and Vik wouldn’t stay for a drink, but wished them luck finding the missing girl.

So it was official: the witness statement they’d spent the afternoon nailing down was crap.

“We should go up to Orbitside,” Dean proposed anxiously, once back in the cruiser.

Vik did his ritual paging of Dean’s place while he considered this. No answer. “I still feel that she is nearby, my friend.”

“Meaning you still don’t believe she’s in trouble?” Dean was incredulous. “How long have we known each other, for fuck’s sake?”

“Long enough to observe that until now, I’ve never seen you with a woman, and you may have grown unfamiliar with their ways. I mean merely that—”

There was another chirp: a page for Vik. “Superintendent? Taz here, sir. I’ve got a young couple here that says they saw your missing girl with another young lady. They identified Ms. Inana from the photo.”

Vik perked up. “What’s the description?”

“Dark, curly hair. Petite but full-figured. Pale complexion and odd-colored eyes. Dressed rather outrageously.”

“Pale skin and odd eyes? You’re sure?” Vik pressed.

“Yessir. There’s another detail. The young man says there was, er, something ‘unholy provocative’ about them both.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean hissed. “That’s it.”

Vik hit the lights and punched the accelerator. On the way back to the precinct he coordinated with his Intel people, who singled out one Darice—no surname, just like Inana—who’d been three doors down from Dean’s bungalow since yesterday. The young couple had no trouble picking her visa photo out of a montage.

“Where is she right now?” Dean wanted to know.

“Checked out,” came the voice over the speakers, “over an hour ago. Hold on...”

“She’s in the damned terminal by now,” Dean said, looking upward as though he could see the space station through the roof. “Look, you need to have her stopped in customs.”

“Do it!” Vik said to his man. “I want her detained and I want to know what she’s carrying with her.”

Everyone went to work. Vik was driving very fast, and all Dean could do was rock back and forth in his seat as he simmered. He didn’t want to face the sensation of Inana slipping through his fingers in slow motion. The moments ticked by and the harsh yellow sun lowered toward the horizon. Dean had wasted most of the day looking for her in the wrong places, while she needed him.

Vik noted his friend’s mood. “Somebody talk to me!” he demanded into the radio. “Is this Darice in custody or not?”

“Sorry, hold on boss,” someone said. There was nervous chattering off-mic. “She appears to have been checked through the terminal under different credentials.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Dean groaned.

“When?” Vik demanded.

“A half-hour ago.”

“What ship did she board?”

“Oh, fuck me,” Dean reiterated.

“A shuttle bound for Theta Reg Colony.”

Vik assumed the worst. “When did it depart?”

“Oh, Fuck me!”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“Listen,” Vik said, “get with the Defense and have them intercept that ship. Under no circumstances are they to allow it through the gate.”

“Already on it.”

“Get its flight plan,” Dean said. “We need to know the whole itinerary.”

Vik nodded. “We’ll catch them.”

Dean shook his head. “Vik, forget the precinct. Take me to my place so I can get my stuff and get the hell out of here.”

“Sir?” called Taz over the radio.

Vik held up his hand at Dean. “Tell me something good.”

“The shuttle passed through the gate three minutes ago.”

Inana

Cold...

Water...

Light shimmering in the blue oil slicks that danced on her eyeballs...

Queasy wormhole sickness...

A tortured gurgle that sounded like someone drowning...

Inana convulsed violently and tucked herself into fetal position on the icy metal, as she finished puking and wheezed air that was finally free of sparkling blue ooze. Someone was hosing her down and the water was freezing. She didn’t know anything about cryo, but she was sure that her heart shouldn’t be pounding like that so soon after waking up.

“It hurts!” she croaked, hands clamped over her chest.

“Quiet!” someone snapped. “Welcome back to your life, slavegirl.”

Inana knew the cadence of the voice, its condescension. Its joyous cruelty and its truthfulness. “Fuck you, Nikki!” she sobbed, as she wiped her face and trembled.

Her pulse throbbed into her throat as her basest instincts screamed at her to kill or lose everything. Her hands skittered on the table as her stunned nerves rallied to get her up. What Inana didn’t know was that people subjected to cryo needed a while to wake up properly. Failing to get off the table, she settled for a loud scream.

“Shut up!” Nikki snarled, aiming the high-pressure stream at her rectum. “Shut up so I can make some money.”

After the vigorous goosing, the water stopped, but a needle slipped into her neck, promising warmth and fake happiness like always. “Get off me!” Inana shrieked.

Nikki paused to let the drug do her talking for her. Soon enough it spoke by way of spinning a hazy, hot illusion to mask the hard metal table, the freezing cold and Inana’s soaked hair. Her pounding heart settled into a luxurious rhythm that reached her ears, sounding out the steady throb that always seduced her into giving herself away. She was already unfolding onto the table. The buzz was so good that she forgot about her imminent heart attack.

“Hrrrrr,” she explained to herself, legs slipping against smooth chrome. Her pheromones swarmed away from her en masse, leaving her lightheaded.

“Relax, troublesome bitch,” Nikki intoned, before cursing quietly. “Damn your charms, girl. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

She let herself be led away like a child. Nikki wrapped her in a thick, dry robe and put her in a dark room. She closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her, but a gentle, insistent pulse of light kissed her eyelids. Her genetically modified instinct was to open them, the better to take in the induction sequence.

“Watch the screen,” Nikki suggested, as she left the room.

The strange warmth in her blood only made it easier to obey. The muscles in her face relaxed. The big screen was only a few feet away. It was the only light source in the room, which made it impossible to ignore. The attention grabbing pulses subsided, as some unseen intelligence detected Inana’s relaxed, supple mind. She was vaguely aware of her body dispatching more and more pheromones in response to the light. She was a dumb flying insect fascinated by a deadly candle. She smiled, because it was kind of funny, really.

The equipment must’ve been adjusted especially for her, because it rewarded her response with bright little curls of light that slowly crisscrossed each other, modulating from yellow to lavender as they intersected. Her eyes widened in order to let this information pass deeper into her brain. The patterns grew bigger and her eyes widened more. Then they grew brighter. Her mouth fell open as they multiplied. She began to breathe in time with them, and soon she was breathing deeply and slowly.

Before long, the lights were so connected to her mood and her breathing that it became uncomfortable to blink.

Dean

“What’s the plan, then?” Molly asked.

Dean wasn’t ready to answer just yet, but he knew she had a pretty good idea from the articles he was reading. The Starless patiently wound its way through the gate that Inana’s captor had used. It would be trivial to track her down on the other side.

Once again, he felt stupid about trusting other people to do anything for him. Instead of hiding behind them on Ives III, he should’ve just taken Inana to some unsettled system and waited things out. But he had doubted his ability to handle Gund, and he hadn’t had the heart to keep her holed up on his ship with no other people around for parsecs. But he was more than capable of taking care of his business on his own terms, and Inana probably would’ve preferred to be away from every other human save him.

Wisdom from hindsight always stung.

“Did I miss something? Are we not speaking to each other?” Molly teased.

Dean closed the file he was reading, leaned back in the pilot’s chair and rubbed his eyes. “What?”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Now why would you say something like that?”

“You’re a complex bag of bones and water, is all.”

Dean smiled a bit behind his hand as he rubbed his two-day-old beard. “Sorry.”

“Well are you then?”

“No. I’m not mad at you.”

“Fabulous. Now what’s the plan?”

Inana

There was no way of knowing how long she’d sat in front of the screen, with its dizzying, ornate truth fascinating her. What she realized now, though, was how far she’d traveled, judging by the odd starscape and distant white sun out the window, behind the faintly glowing Golean girl who sat in front of her.

They were alone in a cramped, dimly lit cabin. The reason it felt so familiar was that this was a reinforcement session. Nikki wasn’t into girls, so she always delegated these things to a trustworthy minion. And if Nikki happened to be in charge of a whole harem—which was often—a subtle chain of command often developed. Inana hadn’t been with Nikki very long, so she was used to being at the bottom.

“I’m Rakel,” the long-limbed, radiant being before her announced. “What have you learned?”

Inana knew the cue. She’d been waiting for someone to ask her that. “I’ve learned that I must obey.”

“Good. And?”

“And I must let you... Prepare me for my programming.”

Rakel shivered and smiled as Inana’s Xhian body invited. Interestingly, her luminous skin seemed to brighten in response. “Good. Hmm! Anything else?” She was rushing the interview now.

“I must... Submit to you.” Hearing herself say that was, as usual, a pretty big turn-on.

“Inana,” Rakel whispered, clearly enjoying the sound of the name, “can you do something for me?”

“Yes.”

“Take off that robe so I can help you relax.”

Dean

The shuttle from Ives III was still docked at a seedy waystation when they got to the gate junction, but the passengers had disembarked and the major connecting flights were already gone. The crate that contained Inana had been loaded onto one of these, but Molly had tracked Darice to a rickety little cryo-shuttle, still awaiting gate clearance in a long queue of small civilian ships.

More than likely, she’d know where Inana was going.

Dean had fibbed a bit, convincing the local authorities that the Starless was on Central Government business and had jurisdiction here. In short order, Darice’s ride was in the aft cargo bay.

They moved Darice to the infirmary. She was pale, cold and wrapped in cryo-gauze that made her look like a mummy in progress. The Xhian girl hadn’t been in stasis more than an hour, but she was still near enough to death that her unnatural powers of attraction were dormant, which made Dean very glad.

Looking her over, he realized she was just a wind-up doll; a tool Gund had sent in when armed force wasn’t a viable option. “Can’t we wake her now?” he asked, wanting to slap her, or throw things, or scream.

“Patience,” Molly said as probes orbited the gurney. “You’re not going to be able to pull off that stale old rite, you know.”

“The what?”

“I saw what you were reading. The Aseh Veshing ritual? You don’t have what you need to perform it.”

Darice’s weak vitals began to light the display behind her head.

“I know. We’re going to make up one of our own.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“You pump her full of drugs and I make her talk,” Dean explained. “By now we both know how easy it is to hypnotize a Xhian.”

“I suppose it’s futile to note that I have ethical objections to this?”

“Absolutely. Is she waking up?”

Darice was breathing visibly now, a bit of color returning to her cheeks. Already, Dean found himself watching the way her chest stretched out the gauze when she inhaled. Like Inana, she was impossibly lovely.

Just not like Inana.

“She’s still a while away from consciousness. Let’s not kill her before we can interrogate her.”

Dean began to pace the floor. “Then find something good and strong to dose her with. I want to have the advantage when we talk.”

Inana

“Hohh! I’m gonna...” someone cried.

The words weren’t hers. Even though she had orgasmed sympathetically, she knew it was Rakel who had really arrived just now. She smiled to know that she was supposed to be the one getting pleasured until her mind dissolved, yet Rakel was the one gasping for air.

Her turn would come, so to speak.

The lights were out, but conveniently, Inana’s partner glowed all over—even her wild green hair, to a degree. Freckles, veins and nipples were all backlit for her enjoyment, even the omnipresent collars and piercings they all wore, which made it easier to find things to tug at with her teeth.

Rakel struggled to regain her composure as she pushed Inana down on the bed and gripped her shoulders. Their eyes met, and Rakel made a feeble attempt to assert her dominance. Lucky for her, any such attempt was bound to succeed, matched, as she was, with a Xhian. Inana’s smile faded and her eyes went wide.

“I’m supposed,” Rakel mumbled, “to do my work. I need...” She trailed off as she pushed Inana’s thighs apart and put her lips and tongue to work elsewhere.

Inana locked her thighs around the luminous Rakel’s head and ground against it. She wondered that if she pressed hard enough, her own skin might start to glow. She wished she could see Rakel’s piercing green eyes, but the Golean’s mouth felt so good that she resigned herself to the trade-off. All that sea-green hair splashed across her belly, tickling as it helped dissolve her mind, and it felt so damned good that she moved faster. It was enough to feel Rakel’s head between her legs—even if she couldn’t see her face—but every time she imagined her captor’s eyes, it brought her closer to the brink.

When Rakel grabbed her calves and hoisted her legs in the air, it was too much. “Hohh, Rakel! I’m gonna...”

Dean

Darice opened her eyes slowly, and they just rolled on back into her head. “Aaahhhhh,” she sighed, voice thick with sleep and strange intoxication. Dean felt a sudden, urgent need for a cold shower. “...home, Mistress?” she mumbled.

He checked the IV tube feeding hypnotic dope into her wrist. “Can you hear me?”

She continued to babble. He tapped her cheek and her violet eyes rolled lazily to meet his gaze. An angelic, drunken smile graced her lips.

“No, you don’t have to do that,” Dean protested, as a small band of sleepy pheromones washed over him. “Listen to me.”

She tried to reach out to him, but she was still wrapped in cryo-gauze. Her shoulders wriggled a tantalizing bit. “Listen to you,” she agreed.

He found himself stroking her cheek, which at least helped one of them focus. “Where did they take Inana?”

She giggled softly. “Who?”

“The girl like you: I-na-na,” he said slowly. “Where did they take her?”

She breathed in deep. “Mmmmmm, the shiny one... Am I home yet? I wanna get up an’ dance for Mistress.”

Dean clenched his fists. “Molly, is she supposed to be this daft?”

He could sense virtual shoulders shrugging. “You wanted her on happy juice. She’s on happy juice.”

“Darice,” he attempted, gripping her chin, “Tell me where Inana’s going.”

She seemed to rouse, but so did more pheromones. “I can’t tell you that,” she teased, as Dean’s trousers began to bulge. She seemed to detect this, and giggled again.

Dean gripped her arms and glared at her. “Oh, you’re gonna tell me all right. How’d you like to go out the fucking airlock?”

She stopped giggling and her eyes widened. Then she dissolved into laughter again.

Molly spoke up. “You want a little advice?”

He counted to ten. Slowly. “Okay?”

“Fingerbang her until she nearly comes, then withhold until she tells you what you want to know.”

Dean was shocked. “You kiss your mainframe with that mouth? What happened to your ethical objections?”

“She obviously doesn’t find you threatening.”

“Thanks.”

“Dean, she’s a sex slave. Pleasure is the only thing she’ll understand.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake...”

“Indeed.”

He eyed Darice’s nearly-mummified mons veneris. “No way. Can’t do it.”

“Is it really cheating on Inana if you’re doing everything you can to find her?” Molly asked. “And will playing with her really be so awful?”

She had a point. Dean went straight for the supply cabinet, found an emergency bottle of Scotch and took a good pull at the bottle. “Right,” he said, wiping his lips.

On some level, Darice must’ve understood the conversation. The gauze at her crotch began to dampen. Dean took a deep breath and grabbed some scissors. “Strap her down. I don’t want her pawing at me.”

Molly dutifully activated the gurney restraints as Dean snipped around Darice’s lady business. When he pulled back the gauze, the heavenly scent and the sight of her glistening thatch gave him a painful erection. The newly revealed stretch of pale skin from her navel to her thighs was far too captivating.

“Oh, yeah please!” Darice enthused, perfectly comfortable with being tied down and molested.

He pushed her legs apart and fought back the powerful urge to cut away the rest of her wrappings and have at her. She hissed as soon as he touched her slit, and slowly rocked against his fingers, encouraging and lubricating. Instinct guided his hand to her (very hard) button. The liquor had been a mistake, because it made his warmly buzzing brain more receptive to her pheromonal assault.

Darice ground weakly against his fingers, too sapped from cryosleep and drugs to really keep up her end. Dean helped them get into a rhythm, taking dutiful care to strum her properly. He decided to ease up when he saw how fast she was building to climax.

Her back arched off the table as her mouth fell open. Perspiration broke out on her arms. She stared intently at the ceiling, and she wasn’t making any noise, just inhaling sharply ever so often. When her hips started to shake and her brow furrowed in anticipation, Dean withdrew his hand and took a step back.

First, she seemed to think she was just going to coast over the finish line. Then she tried to will herself the rest of the way there. Her wrists shook in their restraints as she tried to take things into her own hands. Finally, she made the most plaintive of faces at Dean. “Aren’t you going to finish?”

He shook his head.

She swallowed, resumed panting. “Then are you gonna fuck me?”

“Nope.”

Her head collapsed onto the mat. “Did I do something to displease you?” she managed.

Bravely, he resisted the urge to put his sticky fingers in his mouth. “No, Darice. Before you can come, you have to tell me where they took Inana.”

Her head petulantly rose and fell onto the mat. “But I wasn’t supposed to tell!”

“I know, but it’s very important. And as soon as you tell me, you can have a nice, relaxing orgasm.” And I can go relieve myself, he added.

“Promise?” she decided.

“Promise.”

She tried to form the words, as though she’d been conditioned not to. The thing Dean was slowly learning was that it was relatively easy for Xhians to adapt from one master to another. “I overheard, by accident. Before they wiped me clean and sent me home. But I remember, ‘cause they took me there once.”

“Yes?” Dean encouraged, putting his hand on her thigh.

She nodded slowly. “It’s Master Gund’s retreat, on Hedras.”

Didn’t sound familiar. “Where’s that?”

“The Bolomine System. Fifth world, on the wet moon...”

“Molly?”

“Already plotting a course.”

“Thank you, Darice,” Dean said, savoring the good luck.

“Please?” she reminded, ever so demurely.

“Oh, right.” Dean reapplied his hand to her hot, slick sex and her thighs clamped around him, weak and feverish. She rocked against him once, twice, then exhaled quietly, shivering. It was a bit anticlimactic, Dean thought, until he noticed that she’d passed out.

To Be Continued