The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Heaven.

She was in Heaven. The Goddess Celestra’s Heaven.

317’s hips writhed in regular, expertly timed rotations. She gasped delightedly as the worker she straddled squeezed her full, plump, and oh so squeezable breasts. “Ohh, Master,” the unit cooed softly, wriggled slightly, and unclenched her powerfully rebuilt pussy just long enough to draw even more of her user’s scrumptious cock inside her. She bent forward and lavished the man’s face with kisses, drawing her tongue over his stubbly face and enjoying the salty taste.

The worker thrust upward with another urgent groan, his fifth since he had ordered the pleasure unit to service him. The living toy atop him squealed and spread her legs further apart, her joy at being so divinely penetrated—of being filled, used, fucked—eclipsing her duties for a moment. Then she remembered. The unit’s pleasures are unimportant, the Voice of her Goddess spoke. 317 released another girlish squeal, though this time it was less in reaction to the attentions of the man below her—or of the male meat probing her deprived cunt—than it was in response to her Owner’s Command.

The unit’s sole purpose in being is to be pleasing. 317 listened closely, and, reminded once again of her place, timed her user’s thrusts and expertly matched them to the rhythms she had already picked up from his heartbeat. When she was ready, she quickly gave the master a rapid but measured set of six up-and-down motions with her succulent hips, clenching and unclenching, pulling and releasing with her pussy in a way designed to simultaneously coax potency out of him while denying a release. She performed the complex maneuver perfectly. She was a pleasure unit, after all. Fucking was her life

The man groaned outrageously. “You’re killing me, slut,” he said. “You’re killing me.”

“Oh no, Master,” the unit playing him like a musical instrument breathed. “Never, Master. The unit loves her Master.” And it was true. The unit did love her master. She loved all her masters. She just loved her Mistresses more, and her Goddess most of all. She wriggled on the worker’s shaft again, delaying his orgasm even more for maximum effect.

She massaged him, externally with her hands and mouth, internally with muscles possessing an even greater strength and skill. All of her attention focused on the penis riding so delightfully inside her. When the worker began to twitch uncontrollably, she knew he was ready. The unit moved forward slightly, pressing her large and firm breasts against his broad chest. The worker moaned, and the woman mounted atop him laughed, feeling queerly dominant and submissive at the same time. The unit will use every technique to please her users, the Voice spoke inside her again, even ones, apparently, that put a mere pleasure unit temporarily in charge of her user. 317 clenched with her pussy, then again, then, timing her user’s cycles against her own, pulled with precisely the right amount of strength… and immediately she was rewarded with a mutual climax, his penis pulsing passionately and pumping wondrous fluids into her willing socket. Nothing was better than being fucked!

Nothing… except of course serving her Goddess!!

“Oh, Master! Master!!” 317 screamed and shook spasmodically. “The unit loves her Master!”

The Goddess’ Gift rocketed through her. The sensation radiated divinely outward from her sex in such pulsating waves of joy and ecstasy that for a moment it felt as if the unit’s skin might crisp away like rice paper tossed into a kiln. Her user’s semen detonated inside her womb, exploded like an atomic charge, filling her blood with its monstrous and rapturous power. Unleashed so, it surged through her veins and nerve endings like a thing alive, like a separate entity unto itself, a tiny representation of her beloved Goddess, perhaps, the pleasure She brought burning away the unit’s flesh and setting her soul on fire, transmuting her deepest essence into purest white light. The climax was devastating, as all the unit’s orgasms were now. Her gene-engineered body triggered a pre-set combination of neuroelectric signals and chemical bliss-enhancers to stimulate the pleasure centers in her brain directly. What the unit felt was a joy unfiltered by mortal restraints. What she felt was the sheerest, most complete level of delight the human body could be modified to experience, such an overabundance of happiness and euphoria that it would have completely overloaded and shut down the nervous systems of the non-resequenced.

Unit 317 had no such limits, though. Both her mind and body had been restructured not only to regularly handle such a flood of crippling, joyous sensation but to revel in it, to respond to it and return some small portion of that jubilation to her users. She was the ultimate pleasure-giving, pleasure-taking tool. The wave of euphoria crested within her, and the unit rode both it and her current user to a mutual, breathtaking conclusion. The combination of this cataclysmic release and her knowledge that she had fulfilled her duty, satisfying both user and Goddess, filled the unit with a deep, utter satisfaction.

She rested her head against her user’s sweaty body and relished the electric tingles shooting through her skin and cunt left over from the monster orgasm. The man put one rough hand to her head and ran his fingers through 317’s long, dark hair. He stroked her, and she purred softly, squirming.

Part of her wished they could stay like this forever, but that was impossible.

The master would have to go back to work soon. He had greater responsibilities than comforting a miserable, lowly tool such as herself. And, too, already, from deep inside her, the unit began to feel her need returning, that ever-present reminder of her status as an ever-willing plaything. As much as she might have wanted to lounge for a moment, her need to be used never truly went away. It could be assuaged temporarily, leashed through her pleasure-service to others, but it always returned stronger than ever. Her craving for sex—for having a master’s dick inside her, or a Mistress’ pussy to lick and probe with her tongue—began with her mind’s programming and ended down in her genetic code, which had been rewritten to need a good, hard fuck the way other creatures needed air to breathe.

A pleasure unit felt complete only when she was fulfilling her life’s duty.

317 felt complete only when she was being fucked.

This master was still partially inside her. Perhaps if she could coax him . …

Grunting, the worker got up and pushed the eager slut off him. He stretched and yawned, then scratched his sides contentedly. Unit 317, immediately shaking off those terrible and selfish thoughts for herself—as if she were a real person!—crawled off the bed and moved around it to kneel in front of him. She arranged herself in proper after-fucking etiquette: head down, knees together, and palms resting side-down by her thighs. The master grunted again, permissively, and the unit reached up with her face and hands to complete her function. Dabbing gently with her tongue, she licked away both his and her own fluids from his body, nibbling gently around his spent shaft, rubbing and squeezing his thighs with her fingers. Sometimes, if she did it just right, she could excite a master into using her again.

Not this time, though. All the master let her do on this occasion was lick and gently fondle the tip of his penis in her mouth. She looked up at him, doe-eyes pleading to let her suck harder, swallow more, and pleasure him again, but he said no, and she desisted immediately. When he was ready, she went and got the hot towels she had put aside earlier and buffed him clean and fresh. The rings in her nipples—the chain had been removed some days ago and not replaced—felt cool against the blazing, constant randiness of her breasts, and she hoped the master would at least give her tits one last, healthy squeeze before leaving. Aside from the third ring set below, and her Collar, she was completely naked.

She helped him dress, holding out his leather pants and adjusting the codpiece. Being so close to him again was a torment, particularly since she was so close to that part of his body. The unit’s emptiness was acutely felt. The master paid her no mind, though, and it would have been wrong for her to beg him for another penetration when he obviously had better things to do. Before leaving, she knelt before him again—this time with her knees spread in gentle invitation and reminder—and he gave 317 an affectionate pat as he left. He walked up the stairs to the men’s barracks and left the unit alone in the pleasure chamber. Only after he was gone did she allow herself the mercy of a little moan.

There was no one left for her to fuck.

The worker she had just serviced had been the last to get up that morning. The new shift had hardly begun, and the previous one was still on duty. It would be an eternity—hours, perhaps even as many as three or four!—before any of the Goddess’ male servants returned for rest or relaxation. 317’s loins trembled with the notion of such loneliness.

Wiping a tear from her eyes, the unit sniffed and crawled over to the uniform closet. There were other things she could do in the meantime, though she would have much preferred her primary function. She pulled out a pair of low-cut, high-heeled boots, slipped them on, and stood. The riding costume she had worn when she first arrived at the Goddess’ Auditorium was not appropriate for the household and cleaning duties she would be doing while waiting to be fucked again. 317 selected and put on a more standard costume from the closet, a harness outfit similar to the other but with subtle differences she hadn’t noticed that first night. Like the other, it was black and stringy. An ebony, leathery ring at the top was designed to fit over and partially cover her true Collar, her Goddess’ Collar, without concealing it. Three thick straps descended from this ring. The outer two slipped around the unit’s large breasts to meet in back. The middle fell between her bosom and terminated in a metal ring. Six light chains, similar to the one she had worn earlier, stretched between the two side straps and threaded through the third, creating a kind of loose webbing that would rest coolly over the front of her body, hiding nothing yet providing just the right amount of almost unnecessary support. The lower half of the costume was similar. A single, long strap designed like a garter belt fit around 317’s narrow waist, with four narrower straps descending over her dancer’s legs to connect with the black, nearly transparent hosiery the unit drew up to her middle thighs. Another set of chains threaded through these straps in front and over the unit’s sex, concealing yet not concealing. The cold rustle of the metal was a constant added torment to her perpetual lust. Lastly, she bound up her hair into a thick ponytail and slipped on a set of large, circular earrings, similar in appearance and only slightly larger than her other piercings. The unit stepped back and looked at herself in the conveniently spaced mirror. She smiled, pleased with what she saw. She was extraordinarily beautiful, she knew, though the unit herself took no pride in that.

That was simple reengineering and bodysculpting. 317 smiled because she looked like a desirable little slut. She smiled because she was a desirable little slut. She was the perfect pleasure unit.

Or so she hoped and would forever pray she continued to be.

Chains jingling softly, the unit closed the closet door, looked around, and began putting the pleasure chamber back into order. She had serviced three workers earlier that morning, and other sluts had been used there the evening previously.

There was a lot to do. She scrubbed the floor on her hands and knees with a towel and brush, removing various stains, and changed the linen in the beds with replacements from the utility drawers. Other units had laundry duty this week and would properly clean them. 317 had had that duty a few days earlier. She closed her eyes with the pleasant memory, enjoying still the taste of all those spent fluids. She could hardly wait until it was her turn again.

She replaced some of the smaller toys from the drawers and refilled the massage oil containers. She hung up the whip and the electric prod next, kissing both gently, and then looked around for something else to do. But there was nothing.

Naturally, all the pleasure units in her barracks were very conscientious in the performance of their various duties.

Sighing, Unit 317 went upstairs to the main room and saw that her fellow units had already been there first. The beds were made, equipment had been put back in their proper places, and everything had been polished to within an inch of its life. Even the lockers were perfectly realigned and set into neat, attentive rows. 317 pouted. There was nothing left to do! A pair of sluts was even going around with dusters and brushing off lint from the bed covers used for sleeping.

Knowing the other pleasure chambers would be equally neat and tidy, 317 went to the nutrition dispenser in the wall and knelt before it, wrapping her lips around the small, round funnel set at the appropriate height level. She sucked—it was good practice for when she had a real dick in her mouth!—and the device registered her motions and body heat.

Thick, pulpy fluid squirted inside her mouth. She swallowed, praising the Goddess for making the taste so similar to that divine other. A few moments later she pulled back and licked her lips, the sperm supplement satisfying one kind of hunger at least. The efficient reengineering of her body required little else in terms of food or vitamins. She knew she couldn’t be made pregnant, and she was certain she had no monthly cycle. Certainly in the time 317 had been in her Goddess’ Service, she had not had any periods, nor had she missed them, for that matter.

Missed them? The unit frowned.

The unit’s past was hazy at best. Had she ever had a monthly cycle?

She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t even accurately remember how long she had been in the Goddess’ Service.

Weeks, certainly. But before that? There were a few vague recollections, a few faces that seemed almost perceptible, but they were unimportant. She knew she was a new unit, that much was certain. Units 231 and 289 had helped 317, 316, and the other new sluts adjust to life in the barracks. 317 envied them. They had memories of Serving the Goddess for years. They had seen this confusion about mythical pasts among other pleasure units before, had even experienced it once themselves, they said. It would go away in time, they explained, as the unit’s mind adapted more and more fully to her new status. Like laundry duty, and serving her masters again, the unit could hardly wait.

With nothing else to do, 317 walked over to the unmoving row of other pleasure units kneeling beside the barracks’ entrance and joined them, spreading her knees uncomfortably far apart. She settled back to wait, repressed yet another aching, empty twinge from her twat, and tried to relax. Sometimes the units would share knowledge in quiet moments like this, waiting for masters to fuck and serve, secrets and advice on how to best do things. Only two sluts at the end of the row were whispering now, though, and 317 could not hear them. The others knelt with their eyes closed, dozing.

317 decided to do the same. Like nourishment, her body hardly needed real sleep anymore. She averaged maybe an hour or so a day, which she usually got in short catnaps throughout the duty day and night whenever she wasn’t serving. She closed her eyes and dreamed of the Goddess.

An unknown time later, the unit was awakened by a hard, leathery slap across the shoulders. She looked up to see one of the Goddess’ Servants—a Female!—standing before her with a crop.

Naturally, all the other units woke too. The group knelt forward and held their faces to the floor and their asses high.

317 made to do the same, but instead she felt the crop lift up beneath her chin to prevent this.

“You are Unit 317, girl?” the Servant asked roughly. She wore skin-tight latex, black and red.

“Yes, Mistress,” the unit replied, trembling. The Mistress’ open crotch was practically in front of her face, and the smell of the woman’s lovely cunt drove the pleasure unit nearly to distraction. “How may the unit please the Mistress?”

“You’re wanted in Beta,” the Servant replied. “Now! Hurry your ass.”

The crop whisked from 317’s face and swatted her on the rump.

“Yes, Mistress! At once, Mistress!” she yelped.

Glancing once at the Servant’s eyes for confirmation, the unit was allowed the privilege of getting to her feet and ran out the barracks’ gate. The perpetual night sky of Purple Cloud Base—days and nights were by the clock here—shown down through the curving walls of the Grand Auditorium. 317 collected her bearings and hurried in the direction of Beta Section.

Who wants the unit? she wondered as she ran. A master? A Mistress? She had no clue, but, really, what did it matter? She was a pleasure unit, whose sole purpose was to bring pleasure. What did it matter whom she served, so long as she served? Whoever it was, she would serve their pleasure to the best of her augmented body’s ability.

It was her function in life. Her sole function.

The unit ran and saw that preparations for the Goddess’ Great Plan were well underway and nearing completion. Thousands of cots lay in the center of the Auditorium, surrounded by related projection equipment and other necessary tools. Men and their Female Supervisors were everywhere. They barely glanced at the jingling unit running past them, clearly on some assigned errand. 317 approached a wall nearly opposite the one her assigned barracks were and saw more Females than males working there. The unit will likely serve a Mistress, she thought, delightedly. Detailed images and instructions for how to give pleasure to her own gender flashed through the lowly unit’s mind automatically.

A large, square pit dug into the earth the Auditorium rested on was near the unit to one side. She heard animal noises coming out of it. She glanced briefly into the cavity as she passed. The noises came from the men and women rutting constantly at the bottom. They tore and clawed at one another, screaming, “Fuck slave! Fuck slave!” over and over again. These units had their minds destroyed, the unit thought, pitying, and yet, at some base level, envying them. At least their desires were constantly satiated. She had heard the Goddess’ men, and sometimes even her Female Servants, liked to jump into orgy pits like this one and join the perpetual bout, enjoying themselves with pleasure units who were little better than mindless automatons.

Unit 317 could see the attraction. Shivering, she came to the entrance to Beta Section and knelt before the first Servant she saw. “Mistress, Unit 317 reporting,” she said when the Officer Bitch finally deigned to look upon her.

The Female grunted something to a colleague, then told the unit to wait. 317 leaned back on her heels. The pounding of her heart had little to do with exertion. She spread her legs wider, prompted by inner voices and fervent desires.

Her lips felt hot and ripe.

The Servant came back a moment later.

“Mistress Celestra wants to see you, slut. On the Property World.”

317 barely heard the second statement. The Goddess! The Goddess wanted to see her?

Oh, Goddess, she could hardly believe it! “The Goddess?” she whispered, unbelieving.

The Servant raised the handheld projector she had carried. She made adjustments to the settings, took a final measurement, then aimed the device at the palpitating pleasure unit.

There was a flash of bright light, and 317 fell into it.

Looking out a window upon the skyline of the city she was going to change forever, Celestra was surprised to find herself in a mood that could almost be described as… mellow. Her troops wouldn’t have believed it. She hardly believed it herself.

Two hours, she thought, relative to the Base. Two more hours, and you’ll be mine.

A traffic helicopter flew by in the distance. The dominatrix heard the sounds of car horns and traffic, commuters and construction work. The sounds of nearly three million people filled her ears. In two hours a third of you will be gone from here, she thought, an inappropriately bland expression displayed on her beautiful face. Her ruby lips curled.

A million people. A million new slaves.

Celestra placed a leather-clad hand palm first against the glass. Back at her center of operations, with the time disparity factored in, her soldiers would have almost another three full days to finish up the last-minute details. Clio and her other lieutenants could handle those chores, however. Celestra herself wanted to get the show on the road. She saw a flock of birds huddling on a nearby roof and wondered briefly how they and all the other animal vermin of Chicago would handle the mass disappearance. The detailed instructions she had programmed into the modified relay were set to ignore everything other than a human being. She already had an idea how the remaining people in the city would react.

The relay she had stolen sat in the center of the room. So many modular pieces had been attached to the block’s surface it hardly looked like the same thing she had seen in the law firm’s office. The relay hung suspended in the middle of a complicated cagework of wires and metal tubes.

Celestra turned from her view of Chicago and stalked over to the hanging metal-and-plastic box, her boots raising small puffs of dust from the meat-packing factory floor. The open-frame wire container holding the relay up looked fragile but was anything but. The connections to the miscellaneous instruments surrounding the alien technology were purely inductive, though. There was no way to penetrate the Client machine directly, not without destroying it. Swirling lights continued to dance and flicker along its eerily smooth surface. It’s the stuff dreams are made of, Celestra thought, remembering the line from the last movie she had ever seen.

My dreams. In two hours, relative to her Base, her chosen lieutenant would aim and activate a handheld projector, one of dozens Celestra owned, only this time the device would have more power behind it than it had ever had before, not to mention selected targets existing in such a loosened space-time they might all as well have been dancing on top of a nuclear reactor. The resulting projection effect would have more than enough strength to grab a million people, possibly more.

The first ten thousand would be automatically filtered and transferred to the Auditorium, to be gassed and encoded. The remaining witless hordes would drift in a chronal pocket, identical to the ones her tachyon accumulators were hidden in, in temporal stasis until they too, an even ten thousand at a time, could be retrieved and enslaved.

Ten thousand a day, Celestra thought. Her figures said she could process an even ten thousand slaves a day. I’ll flood the market. No one’s brought in this many slaves at once. No one! She would make history, not only here on the nearly forgotten planet of her birth, but everywhere, in all the truly important places in the universe. She would have more wealth and power than she had ever thought possible. The awareness of that future wealth filled the blond dominatrix with a cold satisfaction.

Since her operation to relieve her body of the unnatural lusts some previous—and now unfortunately deceased—Slaver had instilled in her, Celestra experienced little in the way of actual physical desire. Her pursuits now were driven more by greed than glandular reaction. Still, she did enjoy, so to speak, the thrill of wielding power and accumulating wealth.

And inflicting pain.

Mysteriously, that part of her old self had remained intact as well.

There was a knock, and the door opened, as if on cue with that thought. One of Celestra’s bitches brought in the requested slave.

“Ma’am,” the latex-clad officer saluted. “This is the unit.” The slut in front of her dropped to her knees in utter adoration, gasping in pheromone shock and programmed worship.

Celestra dismissed the soldier.

“Well, well, well,” she was saying a moment later, circling the former Sandra Pitzler and drawing her coiled whip over the slave’s chain-encrusted, pierced, and shivering form. “My lucky charm.”

The slave put her face to the dusty floor. “The unit worships the goddess,” she spoke fervently. Her eagerness to serve was prevalent in every syllable. “The unit lives only to please her goddess.”

“Yes, I know,” Celestra said, lightly feathering the trembling girl’s body with her lash. She did some calculations. The slut had been caught late Monday night. She had been transferred to Celestra’s Base planet the next day around eleven in the morning. It was Wednesday noon now. So… from her perspective it had been about thirty or thirty-five days.

Time had seen many changes in the doctor.

Celestra kicked her in the side. “Crawl over there,” she indicated with her boot. “Stand and look out the window.”

The buxom slave hurriedly moved to obey this divine command. Celestra joined her at the glass and in a sudden motion pressed herself close against the former physician, her bustier-enveloped bosom pushed flat against the slave’s back and her pussy pressed directly against the slave’s ass. The embonded girl moaned deeply. Her eyes widened in shock and the unexpected divine favor. Celestra reached around and gripped one enlarged breast in each hand and squeezed.

The slave cried out in pain and happiness.

“Look out across your city, doctor,” Celestra told her. “That’s your home out there… your former home, I should say.” She gave the slave another powerful squeeze, and she yelped deliciously.

“You made it happen for me. It would have happened eventually, but you definitely speeded things up.”

“Thank you, Goddess, thank you,” the slave cried out. “The unit exists only to please you!”

“I think you deserve a reward, don’t you?” Celestra’s smile turned into a vicious snarl, and with a casual show of strength she hurled the slave away from the window to the nearest bare wall. She took her whip in hand again and uncoiled it in a wild snap. “Face the wall. Get your ass up.”

The slave quickly complied. Celestra carefully measured out the distance and length of leather she’d need. A moment later she brought the whip down in a loud crack. Despite her eagerness to please, the slave couldn’t help but flinch.

“Let’s have some fun,” the blond giant said. She raised her arm.

She had nearly two hours to kill, after all.

“God, I hate this,” Gordon heard Rosalie whisper from behind the screen. He smiled.

“It’s a common uniform for her soldiers,” he repeated. “You’ll fit right in. You’ll have to.”

“But it’s so… so gross!”

He heard her give a stunted sob. Gordon knew she would come out eventually. He had gained a lot of respect for the teenager over the last couple days. She still was a teenager, of course, and therefore prone to melodramatics, but underneath that she had a stubborn streak the Associate thought would help them considerably. And, he thought, putting a hand to his bruised side, she can be tough when she needs to be. She wants her mom back. That was his key to controlling her.

“Don’t look,” she said, rustling the thin plastic screen. She had insisted on the barrier, and he had given in finally. They had relocated from the deserted Base corridor to what Gordon supposed was the local equivalent of a motel. The only bed, he saw, though, had not been designed for sleeping.

They had needed to come to “town” to pick up a uniform. He would return to the empty corridor—their programmed destination coordinates—after she was on her way.

“I’m going to look at you, Rosalie,” Gordon said. “I have to. Others will, certainly. You’ll have to get used to it.”

He heard her sign deeply and tried to control his face. Most of the pain had gone away, finally, but it still hurt a little to smile. “Come out right now,” he ordered. “Just do it.” And he hoped she would.

“Fuck,” he heard the teen softly curse. Then she grabbed the plastic screen and pushed it aside.

“Oh, my,” Gordon whispered when he saw her and put his hands to his lips to still them.

Rosalie glared at him, and he thought, Maybe. Maybe there’s a chance after all.

“Good. Be angry,” he said. “Anger works.”

Fuming, Sandra Pitzler’s only daughter stood before the Associate in the skin-tight, black-and-red latex of a member of Celestra’s Bitch Corps. The glossy material flowed over the teen’s body like a liquid polymer, emphasizing her trim and womanly figure in polished, ebony curves, from her pale, swanlike neck to the high-heeled boots that drew such glorious emphasis to her coltish legs.

The suit fit her like a body stocking.

Gordon guessed, though, that it was where the uniform didn’t cover that Rosalie was having the most problems.

“Move your hands aside, bitch,” he told her. “You are a Bitch. Be proud of your body. Be proud of your sexuality. If you get embarrassed, there’ll catch on to you in an instant.”

Rosalie seethed with rage but did as he said, taking her gloved arms away from where they had been covering her bare breasts and exposed vagina. The slick stocking-suit left her intimate femininity showing, framed in blatant red outlines.

A similar set of spaces, Gordon knew, left her pretty ass cheeks out in the air, too.

“I hate you,” Rosalie said, her eyes fiery. Her face was made-up with black mascara and lipstick, all of which served quite well to add a few sexy years to her age. A similarly tinted rouge had been used to highlight her nipples and labia. The teen’s dark hair was coiled in a braided loop, also customary among Celestra’s soldiers. She really did look the part. If Gordon hadn’t known better, he would have easily taken her for a member of Celestra’s all-female military.

He looked at her for a long time. He leered at her, in fact, until the teen was even angrier than she had been.

“Turn around,” he said, and she almost raised the riding crop that came with the costume.

“Do it,” he said, unafraid.

She did, and he wolf-whistled. Rosalie did have a pretty ass.

She came back around, her face red. He noticed other things about her were red too.

“You know,” Gordon said, smiling. “Your nipples turn perky when you’re mad.”

Rosalie lunged for him. Gordon caught the teen by the wrists and held her gloved fingers bare inches away from his face.

“Good. Good. Stay angry. Stay really angry.” Roughly, he pushed her away. “The angrier you are, the more like them you’ll appear to be.” She glared at him from across the room, and her fingers tightened around the crop.

“When this is done,” she said, pulling herself back under control, “my mom and I go home. That’s it. Nothing else.”

“I promise,” the Associate said, and raised his hand in an odd gesture. “Scout’s honor.”

“Bastard.” She crossed the room to the exotic-looking bed (Exactly how do you work that thing? Gordon thought, finding the vertical and hinged device fascinating in its perplexity. It looked like a medieval rack on steroids) and picked up the projector. She checked the controls one last time, then attached the device to her belt. “Just be there,” she said.

Then, breathing once deeply through her nose, building courage, the teenager stormed up and out the motel-room door.

Gordon heard her stalk off down the hallway. She really was an admirable person.

He had had his doubts about her earlier, but she convinced him finally.

If she could stay angry, and stay in control, they had a real shot at this.

Of course, the best way he could have really gotten her angry would have been to level with her. He had stretched the truth with her, of course, and she was smart enough to realize that, probably, but she also knew she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted her slut of a mother back in one piece.

Not that that could ever happen.

Celestra’s crimes weren’t so much what she was doing, Gordon could admit. It was that she was planning to take so many slaves at once. The Firm’s Client either didn’t notice or didn’t care about one, two, hell, even a thousand or more slaves being abducted in any given year, so long as they were evenly distributed and nobody took notice officially. Taking everybody in greater downtown Chicago, though… that was going to attract notice everywhere.

Rosalie hadn’t needed to know the real circumstances behind her mother’s abduction and enslavement anyway.

Especially not since Gordon was planning on enslaving the girl himself if and when she returned from Celestra’s headquarters. It would be safer for him that way, he felt.

More enjoyable, too.