The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Rebecca Lemoine’s yacht, Medea, was too large to notice the gentle harbor swell, and it was as though they lay spent on a bed in the tower of a castle by the ocean.

As Rebecca stirred next to Trish in their afterglow, Trish reflected on the thing they hadn’t been able to make clear in undercover training. While Rebecca Lemoine was still a grainy but eye-stopping candid shot on the briefing screen, before she’d been warm against Trish’s belly, they’ d told Trish that, from Medea, she ran one of the fastest-growing and most efficient drug operations the Special Tasks Cadre was fighting. That she was a ruthless killer.

That she was a lesbian who liked pretty, longterm playmates. That some time ago another STC operative had probably lain like this beside Rebecca after sex, but that Jacqui had vanished, and they’d only recently figured out what their mistake had been.

What they hadn’t told Trish was that Rebecca’s body sometimes felt serenely cool and sometimes burned as though with a fever, and she could feel both ways in a single kiss. That the kisses Rebecca liked best to give were long and soul-deep, and that their taste was a self-sustaining thirst.

How could they?

This was a mission, and Trish was lying next to a woman who could order her killed and make it take days. But she was lying skin to skin with that woman, nuzzling her fragrant dark hair, and half of her wanted to squirm closer and tempt Rebecca to open her thighs again and let her in. The taste and feel of Rebecca’s soft breasts were in Trish’s heart now, and without any taint of danger.

Rebecca was still, and she felt almost like the other women Trish had slept with. Until now, Trish had never shared a bed with anyone she didn’t feel good closing her eyes and dreaming with, and it felt that way with Rebecca. Almost.

Rebecca was awake, sated but aware, and Trish knew there was an eye in the back of Rebecca’s head, unseen but all-seeing. If Trish even thought too hard about trying to hurt Rebecca—much less recall her STC duty and arrest her—the soft lover next to her would tense and uncoil and turn on her in a heartbeat. The hard fast fucking earlier had aroused and scared Trish with how strong and lithe and irresistible Rebecca could be, hungry. Or angry.

But as she lay slack beside Rebecca, savoring the taste of Rebecca on her tongue, Trish was dimly frightened by how hard it was to think of hurting her at all.

Trish wanted to believe it was the sex that was doing this to her. She knew she could find a way to believe it: her time with Rebecca aboard Medea, in fact ever since catching her eye at the club ashore in Ibiza where they knew Rebecca would come, had been little else but sex. Even the dancing and the foreplay left her dizzy.

That could make things even more intricate than before.

Trish was auditioning as Rebecca’s plaything tonight, and it had cost the STC a lot—it had cost them Jacqui—to learn that Rebecca liked to hypnotize her playthings, if she planned on keeping them.

She lay quietly and listened to Rebecca breathe.

Some might call that the problem. So—stop her breathing, stop the problem. Another druglord dead, even if this lord were a lady. But Trish knew they wouldn’t have sent her to do that, and in any case, they’d decided killing Rebecca would be like killing Hitler—the resulting chaos as her empire fell apart might be worse.

Rebecca shifted, and her ass brushed Trish’s groin under the sheets that were less satiny than she was. Trish stopped thinking about Hitler. She turned again and put her arms around the ruthless druglord and held her close, and her breath caught when Rebecca covered the hand that sought her nipple.

“Thought you might have gone to sleep,” Rebecca said, just above a whisper.

“No.” Trish stroked her hair, then closed her eyes as she felt Rebecca move against her. “I’m too . . .”

“Mmm.” Rebecca turned smoothly and they were lying face to face. Rebecca kissed her and she responded, seeking Rebecca’s pussy with her own when Rebecca held her hands. They relaxed together, softly tangled.

Trish kissed her again. “I want to stay with you.”

Rebecca looked into her eyes, and Trish wondered Does she induce her women like that? but the other cupped her cheek. “I want you to. But you remember I said there was a condition.”

Trish kept her eyes wide. “You said you’d tell me what it is, if you thought I could stay.”

Rebecca nodded slowly in the pillow. “You know what I do, Trish. You have some idea.”

Trish held her gaze. “I saw the bodyguards, and the guns, and it doesn’t feel like playgirl-heiress, no.” She looked, let Rebecca evaluate her. “Your security looks . . . used.”

She waited for Rebecca to ask how she could tell, but Rebecca said, “It is. You’d be behind it, with me, but you’d be as safe—or not—as I am, moment to moment. And if someone shoots at me—”

Now Trish nodded. “I know.”

“Do you still want to stay?”

Trish looked at her, and wanted to push her loins forward. Instead she leaned over and kissed Rebecca’s shoulder, and Rebecca let her. “Being with you is like nothing else I’ve ever felt.” Her throat was suddenly full—in her mind it had sounded like irony, but not now. Now it was true.

She’d veered from her legend a bit, but it felt right—almost disturbingly right. She let her eyelids droop a little and shrank onto the sheets. “And I’ve always dreamed of being the kept woman of a pirate.

“I just insisted she be a beautiful pirate.”

Rebecca smiled, and ran her hand lightly over Trish’s ear. Trish closed her eyes and turned against it. “I won’t picture you puddled in a gown on my deck as I stand astride you. That would be way too many clothes on you, for one thing. But otherwise . . . you’re booty all right.” Trish dissolved in giggles, and Rebecca’s smile widened.

“That’s not the condition, though.

“What did you think of Mickey&Lisa?”

Trish heard it as the single word Rebecca had spoken, and thought about the women sunning themselves on Medea’s prow when she’d come aboard. She realized she hadn’t gotten out of the captain’s cabin since getting here, and managed to blush.

As Rebecca saw it and grinned at her, she smiled gamely back and said, “They, uh, didn’t seem to mind when you brought me aboard.”

“Or the hours I’ve spent test-driving you.” Rebecca’s knee slid between her thighs and she squeezed involuntarily.

“Or . . . um . . . feeling . . . umm unsafe?” Trish wanted to let go and stop trying to make sense, but just then she liked being played with.

Rebecca relented. “That’s right. They’re not jealous, or afraid.

“They’re very deeply hypnotized.”

Trish tried to look surprised, and wanting to ride Rebecca’s leg was enough to widen her eyes again. She swallowed. “Your girlfriends are—?”

Rebecca kept smiling. “Mickey&Lisa aren’t girlfriends, exactly.”

The STC had data on Mickey, at least, before she’d become deckware on Medea, and she hadn’t been the giggling girl in the bikini who’d chatted airily with Trish as Rebecca had led her to bed. The word for Mickey&Lisa now was pets.

“I want to be certain of the woman who’s next to me when I sleep. For when she’s awake and I’m not.”

Trish looked hard into her eyes, and again she felt the lump in her throat. “Rebecca, you don’t have to hypnotize a woman to make her sleep with you.” She leaned over and kissed Rebecca hard. “Or to want to make you happy when she does.”

Rebecca’s smile seemed to reach her eyes again.

“I’m OK with it, Rebecca. And if you want to do anything kinky—I hope you know you can just ask. You don’t have to program me.”

“This one may be a keeper.” This time Rebecca kissed her. “In case you’re wondering, I don’t plan to have you join the Mickey&Lisa club.”

Trish relaxed in her arms and thought about saying Cool, because I’d get pretty bored, but then she envisioned Rebecca’s eyes hardening as she answered Not after I was through with you. The two pets weren’t zombies, quite, but she knew it’d be much harder to do the job she came here for if she had to pretend to be that kind of airhead.

If it would really be pretending, by then—after Rebecca was through with her.

“Your heart’s just racing, Trish,” Rebecca observed, though she didn’t sound suspicious.

Trish slid closer and let the feel of Rebecca all against her make her head spin.

“Will you,” she had to swallow again, “do it? The hypnosis?”

Rebecca looked at her, and she let Rebecca see the hope.

Rebecca’s kiss was gentle, and she kept kissing down Trish’s jaw and throat as Trish rolled to let her on top.

By Trish’s ear, she said, “Yes. No one goes into my girls’ bodies, or their minds, but me.”

2.

Rebecca had sent someone to the place where Trish had been staying to get her things, but Trish left the luggage in the compartment. After they’d risen and showered together, she’d taken a pale green bikini Rebecca offered, and an almost transparent aqua pareu to wrap her waist. It wasn’t quite a collar, but everything from her skin outward was Rebecca’s, from Rebecca’s hand.

She thought I own nothing on me but my smile but even that, she supposed, belonged to the woman who was going to keep her.

If she passed examination, when Rebecca hypnotized her.

Trish waited on the flying bridge, carefully ignoring and ignored by the young man at the helm. She knew his name, knew that his record was probably as spotless as hers at the STC, if not her party-girl alter ego for this mission. They’d seemed surprised that Rebecca employed men here, that she didn’t have a crew of amazons and houris, no Y chromosomes past the gangplank, though no one could say why.

But they’d been learning how Rebecca Lemoine policed her domain, and Trish knew everyone on Medea knew how to behave.

She looked at Medea and could hear Marquart back at STC HQ: bought with the misery of children and peasants and addicts. A death ship!

It sounded even lamer here, in her head as she stood on its deck. She knew Marquart was right, through the melodrama, but it was hard to connect misery with Rebecca.

A woman she hadn’t seen stepped out from the cabins and walked forward to where Mickey&Lisa had subsided, impressed or mesmerized by the Mediterranean sunset. She stopped and said something the offshore breeze carried away, and the two women suddenly straightened, gathered their towels, and followed her like ducklings back to the door she’d come from. Trish looked down at them and waved, but they didn’t see her. Or couldn’t.

“Hello.” Rebecca was beside her and holding her, and she just relaxed, almost elated that her defenses had failed her. Still, she leaned on the rail instead of back against Rebecca. “Odette will look after them for now.

“Nervous?”

Trish turned to her, and on an impulse undid the pareu and took it up round her further arm, baring herself a bit more. She saw Rebecca’s eyes flicker.

“A little. It feels odd—considering we made love that way—but this is the most intimate I’ve ever been. With anyone.”

Rebecca kissed her. “I like you. You’re not afraid to show you’re afraid. And you have interesting fears.” She looked into Trish’s eyes, but there was no trace of what Trish would have expected from anyone else: and I like it when people’s fears interest me.

Trish leaned against her now, happy to do it with the helmsman to see. “I’m ready now.”

They walked below, Rebecca leading, and paused in the cabin to drop off the pareu. Trish recalled schematics, and guessed they were going to one of the chambers at the bottom of the yacht. There were theories on what they held—hardly drugs, Rebecca was never within a kilometer of her own merchandise—but as they moved single-file through the passageways and down the ladders, Trish tried to let go of those thoughts. She was trying to enter the mindset the STC psych staff had trained her into, the way to survive under Rebecca Lemoine’s hypnosis, and she didn’t need taskings floating atop her mind when Rebecca plumbed its depths.

There was a small gym. It wasn’t up above deck level: Rebecca pursued fitness as a necessary evil, not something to be enjoyed while gazing out at pleasant views. There were mirrored walls, but here the profile didn’t help explain why Rebecca had them. It made the place seem larger, but it could have been vanity. Rebecca was beautiful, and knew it, but she didn’t otherwise make a cult of it.

There were some gleaming machines efficiently spaced around the room, and a chair that had more than the usual padding. Towels lay on it, and Trish took her seat, looking up at Rebecca uncertainly.

She smelled alcohol, and looked on the other side of the chair. There was a IV rig, and vials, and tubes, and needles.

Oh, god. Drug-induced hypnosis. They’d suspected it, but the resistance training might not work.

She flicked a look at Rebecca before she could stop herself.

“Not fond of needles, Trish?”

“Needles? No. I mean yes—not fond of them, but . . .” She had to explain the nerves now, or else Rebecca would be curious, and start asking when she was under, and helpless, no longer remembering what she shouldn’t ever say.

Nothing guaranteed the fatal questions weren’t on Rebecca’s list anyway, no matter what Trish did while she was still awake and thinking.

She breathed in. She wondered if Jacqui had made it this far. If she’ d seen the needles and panicked, realizing she could pretend to be hypnotized but not to be drugged. Or if she’d braved it out, and prayed until her eyes closed for a way to handle it, and damned herself while she talked in her sleep.

If Rebecca had ever let her wake up.

“It’s the drugs, Rebecca.”

“Are you on some, Trish?” There was a very slight edge in her voice. They’d discussed it before: Rebecca’s girls were always clean.

“No—never. It makes me nervous. I trust you in my head, but there are—”

“Do you have any allergies?”

“No.”

Rebecca knelt beside her and held her. “You’re going to be all right, Trish. I know what I’m doing with this and I always have. This will be even easier for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re completely suggestible or the most iron-willed person in the world. You’ll relax, and accept the suggestions, and everything will be fine.

“Trust me?”

Trish kissed her. “Yes, Mistress.”

They smiled, and Trish managed to keep smiling through the needles, and the chill-burn of the drug. She didn’t bother asking what it was.

When she was done, Rebecca held her hand and stroked her hair. “Just relax and let it take you, Trish. In many ways it’s a gentler lover than I am.” She smiled as Trish tried to respond and discovered how difficult it was.

With a crispness that disoriented Trish, she produced a penlight and flashed it into Trish’s eyes, and then held up a fingertip that Trish focused on and tracked back and forth without thinking.

Am I already under?

Rebecca stood and took up a remote. The lights started to dim, and Trish peered up at her.

“No, Trish. Look in front of you.”

Trish obeyed, and where there had been a matte panel in the mirrored wall there was a spiral, turning slowly enough to soothe her and quickly enough to tempt her into following it around as the pulse kept reaching into her brain.

She started to hear Rebecca whisper to her and almost turned to listen but part of what Rebecca was telling her so quietly and so clearly was to look at nothing but the spiral, and that it felt good to do as she was told, to look at the spiral and listen to the voice.

A light started to flash. Among the mirrors it flickered, and it kept luring her eyes from the spiral and tossing them back.

She was starting to fall out of herself, and it was starting to feel very good.

With what she found was the last of her will, she forced her eyes over to Rebecca.

Rebecca stood still as the lights flared across her, watching her. Vaguely she’d expected Rebecca to be wearing goggles or some sort of helmet, or even to have left the flashing, hypnotic chamber and watch it brainwash Trish from some insulated anteroom.

But Rebecca wasn’t brainwashed, as she looked down and watched her lights and her voice take the drugged woman further down. Rebecca was too strong for the lights to enslave the way they were enslaving Trish.

Trish almost felt proud to be falling under the spell of someone like that.

She sighed, and obeyed the repeating command to watch the spiral, only the spiral, and to think only of what the voice was telling her to.

Trish no longer knew how afraid she was that she wouldn’t ever wake up. She just watched, and listened, and relaxed, and obeyed.

When it was time for her to speak, she knew she would, and whatever it cost, anything she said would be obedient to the command to say it. That was all that mattered.

Then Trish was too deep even for that.

3.

She rose from the trance to Rebecca’s mouth as Rebecca kissed her awake. Trish lay back, gazing into Rebecca’s face as the other woman stayed close, studying her with a faint smile. Trish thought my god she’s so beautiful and only then recalled beautiful killer and oh yes I’m still alive.

For a millisecond she started to be afraid that she’d softened under hypnosis and trusted the compelling voice enough to say who she really was, and that Rebecca was smiling because she could tell Trish how she’d die.

But Rebecca closed her own eyes and kissed Trish’s closed again, as though tasting her, not wanting sight to distract her. Trish felt the air from Rebecca’s nostrils on her hairline and melted.

Presently, they regarded each other.

“How do you feel?”

Trish stretched. “Wonderful,” she said. She waited, but nothing inside made her need to add “Mistress.” She was relieved, because no one had known whether Rebecca might truly want her girlfriend to be a slave, too. She was starting to realize the other woman—the lady druglord—did want a lover, and that she wanted it to be Trish. It felt good.

“Can we do it again?”

Rebecca grinned. “Oh, we will. I implanted some suggestions, but they’re mild. They need periodic reinforcement.” She stood up and stepped back from the chair. “No need to go deeper now. You seemed very receptive.”

“I must have liked what you suggested.” Trish sat up and then got off the chair.

“I think you did,” Rebecca murmured. Trish looked aside and saw them both in the mirrors, the pale brunette in the loose shirt and shorts and the olive-skinned blonde in the pale green bikini. She looked herself in the eye but saw the reflected Rebecca looking only at her, enjoying her.

Rebecca waited for Trish to look back at her, and then she said something.

Something. Trish blinked, not really sure what she’d heard but tingling as though it had touched her clit. She found herself sinking to her knees before Rebecca and reached up to undo the drawstring of her shorts, gasping at the smooth warmth of Rebecca’s waist as she touched it. She looked up once at Rebecca but then her gaze was pulled down to Rebecca’s cleft, smooth and bare in pastels she could already taste.

Its folds were so soft, so vulnerable that she stifled a sob for them and didn’t fight the urge to lean toward them. Rebecca’s faint but distinctive scent woke memories of bed.

But it was so different now. Rebecca’s thighs were taut as Rebecca stood braced over her, taut under Trish’s hands as Trish positioned herself. Trish felt the carpeting of the gym under her knees.

It was so different now. She was kneeling to lick pussy. Her head spun and the clearest thought in it was I wish I were naked for this.

Rebecca’s inner thighs were silken against her cheeks and when her tongue slid into Rebecca the other woman grunted softly and put her hands on Trish’s head. It was hypnotizing her as the spiral had, drawing her in and making her want to fall deeper. She licked.

She heard a sigh and tried harder, blindly seeking the hood with her tongue, and Rebecca gasped something.

Something. Trish blinked, drew back, took a breath so rich with Rebecca’s essence that she nearly pitched forward again.

Willpower held her back. Her own, she knew, but welded to Rebecca’s as she’d lain in trance. She looked up at her lover and returned her smile, then leaned forward deliberately and kissed the folds, brushing her lip over the hood. “I’ll see you later,” she whispered softly, before standing and facing Rebecca.

Rebecca was dewy-eyed but Trish could already see her coiling again. She shivered, knowing the killer she was with and that she was privileged to be held close, to be trusted with the killer’s softest place.

Rebecca smiled. “Yes. I really think you liked that one. Very receptive.” She kept smiling as Trish blushed again, and kept smiling as she said, “I want to show you something.” Taking Trish by the hand, she led her back above, to the cabin. There was a tape in the VCR on the far wall, and as they entered Rebecca pushed it in.

They sat at the foot of the bed.

It was the chair in the gym, towel-set and ready. Rebecca on the screen led a bikini-clad woman into the shot, and Trish felt a frisson, part heat and part embarrassment. I don’t look like that, do I? And it made her bikini look so much darker . . . but the woman hesitantly sat down and swung her legs onto the rest, and Trish saw that she wasn’t about to watch her own session.

The girl on the tape was Jacqui.

She started and Rebecca felt it. The excuse was there, that she’d expected it to be herself, but she let it fade on her tongue, and Rebecca didn’t speak.

Oh god. The agent knows why she’s showing me this but the new playmate doesn’t. She let herself look curiously at Rebecca, shrug at Rebecca’s cool look back, and watch the screen.

Jacqui was already alarmed as she sat to be hypnotized, her eyes bright with the effort of improvising, and the camera caught the raw fear when she saw the drugs. Trish looked at her comrade and could feel that moment in her gut. She’s wondering if she could make it topside if she ran. Pure desperate fantasy. Past Rebecca and all her guards. If she could make the rail and dive and swim for it.

All over, now, but Trish felt it. It was the worst possible thing, when your panic-daydream was clearer than the danger facing you. It was the way it felt when Whoever watched over them turned Her face and hand away for the last time and all luck fled. As Jacqui knew that, she knew she was a dead woman.

Jacqui swallowed and lay back and let Rebecca apply the needles, playing out her losing hand. About to die trying.

Trish wanted to cry for her, to build her a hero’s shrine, but she said only, “Rebecca? She’s so afraid.”

This time Rebecca nodded. Then she fast-forwarded through the induction, and the flashes were too staccato to put Trish back into a trance, but Trish turned and put her face against Rebecca anyway, and Rebecca put an arm around her.

There was quiet. Rebecca was giving her time, but she was going to show Trish the tape. The agent didn’t want to see her comrade destroy herself, but the playmate shouldn’t be afraid to see that. Shouldn’t have anything but a vague disquiet at seeing a frightened girl who’d been sedated and tranced.

She pulled away, blinked at Rebecca, and looked at the screen.

Jacqui was sprawled on the chair, smiling broadly. The strings of her dark two-piece were undone and her small breasts and trimmed bush were bare under the lights. She purred and rolled her head slowly from side to side, her eyelids fluttering, and as her hips twitched Trish saw the slim little vibrator she was using on herself.

“Stop now.” Rebecca’s voice on the tape was flatter, but still commanding.

Jacqui subsided at once, sliding the vibrator out. “Yes, Ma’am,” she whispered, and her eyes glazed as she returned to focus on something in front of her. Trish thought of the spiral.

“Are you still resisting, Jacqui?”

Looking ahead wide-eyed, Jacqui shook her head like a solemn child. “No, Ma’am. I don’t want to resist.”

“What do you want to do, Jacqui?”

Jacqui smiled. “I want to obey.” She shivered and her eyes closed for a moment.

Trish felt herself dampen. At the word? At what just saying it did to Jacqui? She leaned against Rebecca but didn’t look away. Rebecca held her again.

“Good, Jacqui.” Jacqui squirmed and mewed, triggered again. “What are you hearing now?” “I am hearing the voice in my head, which I always believe and trust without question.”

“Mmm. What you should do now, Jacqui, is think about whatever it is that you’ve been hiding so cleverly. Just think about it, because you’ ve hidden it so well that no one can find it. Only you can.”

Jacqui grinned, swaying a little, still transfixed by the spiral.

“What are you thinking about, Jacqui? The cleverly hidden secret?”

Jacqui kept grinning. “I’m an undercover agent!”

Trish stiffened and felt Rebecca’s arm tighten. She stayed stiff and still as Jacqui prattled on about STC, her mission, her contacts. The hypnotized operative seemed to grow more comfortable the more deeply she dug her grave. Trish wondered how long the fast-forwarded section had been and what Rebecca had done to Jacqui with the vibrator and other things. Most of all with Jacqui’s own mind.

Trish made herself look at Rebecca. Of course I’m horrified. The rich beauty who’s accepting me as a concubine has to face devious narcotics agents who’d infiltrate her very bedroom to hurt her. My poor lover can’t trust the woman she sleeps with, without using mind control on her. On me. What a world!

Rebecca looked at her and fast-forwarded.

“I’m an undercover agent!” A recording on the tape, it sounded twice-tinny even on Rebecca’s state-of-the-art system.

Jacqui, wide awake now and gleaming with sweat, listened to herself spill it all, her eyes locked on Rebecca’s. Her lean body strained in the chair until her face spasmed in realization. Before Rebecca had awakened her to listen, she’d programmed Jacqui to be still, and it paralyzed her now.

The playback ended and the two women on the tape stared at each other. Trish was glad she couldn’t see the face Rebecca showed to Jacqui.

“I could tell you to swim to Antarctica,” Rebecca said. “And you would.” Jacqui tried hard not to quail, but even in the hypnotic paralysis she failed. “But you’re strong, and even if I suggest a cramp, you might stay afloat long enough to be found.

“Or you could skindive on a wreck with handcuffs after I have you swallow the key.”

Rebecca put her hand to Jacqui’s pussy, and Trish realized it was shining. She put the finger to Jacqui’s lips. “Your body’s already programmed, Jacqui. Your mind’s halfway mine. I can make you do those things, because I can make you want to.

“I’ve already implanted the commands. Reinforced with some orgasms so intense they’re the only thing I envy you for.

“You already know what you want to do.”

Jacqui blinked, twitched. “Want to do.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “Have to do.” Slowly rose. “Find the spiral.” She walked out of the shot.

“Want to do. Have to do. Find the spiral.”

She was still repeating the words when Rebecca turned off the tape.

Trish looked at her. She didn’t want to ask. She clutched her legend to her, the only woman she could be and survive in the same room with Rebecca Lemoine: the one who wanted to be a pirate’s plaything.

She put her arms around Rebecca and her face in the hollow of the druglord’s throat. “Rebecca,” she whispered. “I understand now. What you have to do. I’m sorry.” She turned and kissed the skin.

She felt herself mean it. The words, the kiss. Loyalty to her lover was everything to her. Rebecca was strong enough to stay awake and free and amused in the light show that turned Trish to putty, and Rebecca was strong enough to make an brave and cunning enemy helpless, then wind her up to destroy herself, without pity.

“It’s all right, Trish.” Rebecca kissed her. “I have you, now.”

It was later, when they were sailing northward from the islands, after dinner and long, slow lovemaking, that Trish slept, and dreamed about spirals, and swimming hard through a torrent of bubbles under a fiberglas roof to find a steel spiral. Medea’s engines thrummed smoothly in her dream.

Obeying the climaxes’ silent command, unable to do anything—not wanting to do anything—but swim back along the keel while the yacht slid over her, as she finally saw the propellor spinning.

Rebecca held her firmly but very gently until she stopped screaming, and her heartbeat soothed Trish to sleep again.

4.

Rebecca touched her lightly and squeezed her when she started, putting her mouth to Trish’s cheek. “Bad dream again?”

There was nothing there but warm worry for Trish. It was so strange to hear that in the same voice that had gloated to Jacqui and made her do that to herself.

She nuzzled the comforting lips. “Mmm OK . . .”

Rebecca’s chuckle aroused her, but she was too content to move.

“When you’re up, ring for Odette for anything you need,” Rebecca told her. “I need to be in my office but I’ll see you at lunch.” Trish heard her laugh softly as she watched Trish dreamily slide over to her side of the bed and purr her way back to sleep.

It was well past noon when she woke and showered. Before she dressed, she looked at herself in the mirror. If there were cameras, they’d be seeing her admire herself, and that was understandable enough. She’d seduced a very powerful woman into taking and keeping her. To put her under a spell.

She smiled, remembering the bliss of obeying that posthypnotic command to kneel to Rebecca, unable to do anything but move, to think of anything but how sweet it was to obey and serve. If Rebecca had asked it of her she’d have knelt just as quickly, licked just as lovingly. But being controlled into doing it . . . she considered that the conditioning didn’t end when the lights stopped flashing.

Trish wondered how it would feel after a while, if Rebecca kept doing that to her, teaching her soft lessons of obedience, training her to love it.

She stopped smiling. She wasn’t here to let Rebecca pavlov her into a more articulate version of the two pet girls, or to perfect her cunnilingus. She had to get the data the STC needed, and get extracted. She’d better make sure she did the job before she stayed long enough for Rebecca to subjugate her that way.

But it was too much to turn away at least the thought of that happening. Nothing but days of sunbathing and play and nights of glorious sex and being triggered now and then, unexpectedly, getting used to waking up on her knees smiling up at the woman who really would be her Mistress by then.

She turned away from the mirror and went to the drawer to find another bikini. She was dressing the part, she told herself, the decorative plaything, but there was also a slippery submissive thrill in being nearly naked for Rebecca. For Rebecca herself to enjoy, and for everyone else as another symbol of Rebecca’s ownership.

Trish posed in the dark red thong and bandeau. Red as blood. Betrayal. I’m not her lover, I’m a spy and a whore in her bed. She tried to make herself remember the Rebecca was one of the bad guys, that this was an honorable job someone had to do. That this was nowhere near as dirty as what Rebecca had done before, or bidden others to do.

She even turned reluctantly to the tape, Rebecca calmly mindfucking Jacqui to her death, but the feeling wouldn’t leave her. The devotion to Rebecca sang through her.

Trish looked herself in the eye, in the mirror.

So. Was she the rankest emotional weakling, hero-worshipping a charismatic monster, falling into her own sexual trap? Or was this some deeper indoctrination Rebecca had programmed into her? She thought about how malleable she’d have been, in the depths of her trance, after she’d somehow avoided betraying herself and lay there with her mind wide open.

Trish didn’t know which was more dangerous. But Rebecca’d spoken of reinforcing what she’d put into Trish’s mind. If this weird submission was something Rebecca was implanting in her mind to keep her behaving, then it would get stronger with every hypnotic session, and it was another way Trish could find herself becoming Rebecca’s willing slave.

The STC briefing had stressed care and caution. Time was of the essence because she needed to take it, not save it. She wasn’t to rush anything—casing Medea’s layout, making contact at any of the places around the Med where they docked, locating and accessing the files or the communications. They were staying away from the mistakes that had killed Jacqui—even the ones they hadn’t had a chance to make.

But if Trish waited too long to make her move, she wouldn’t remember how or why to do it. If she let Rebecca work on her mind, the STC would become the fragmenting legend, and reality for Trish would be lapcandy as a career.

Until Rebecca got bored, or found someone newer and cuter to cast her spell over. Trish shivered and couldn’t look away from herself. With drug-induced hypnosis and that voice, Rebecca could, if she wanted, make sure Trish’s departure was painless. That might mean programming Trish to fall in love with whoever Rebecca sold her to.

But Rebecca probably didn’t leave loose ends, even tied off as someone else’s slave.

Maybe she’d just swim to Antarctica. Smiling until the bubbles stopped rising.

Trish reached up and held her nipples through the lycra, realizing they’d be stiff and visible for a while, and unless she stayed in the cabin she’d be showing them off. She didn’t mind that—and the thought itself kept them hard.

But they’d come erect because she kept thinking about life after the conditioning had quietly destroyed her will, when she had no purpose in life but Rebecca’s pussy.

She’d be happy, and there’d be nothing else.

Trish thought about slipping the thong off and masturbating, but it seemed dangerous to do that now. It might let the tension out—but it might sear things in. She rang for Odette.

But the door opened instead to one of the pet girls, fetching and curvy in a suit of tiny triangles. She beamed at Trish, who looked at the silver-tinted pageboy and guileless brown eyes, recalled they both looked like that, and guessed, “Hi—Lisa?”

“No.” The girl seemed amused. “I’m Mickey. You must be Trish.”

“I must,” Trish said, and paused to see Mickey’s gaze go a bit unfocused.

“Sorry,” the girl said. “Things like ‘must’ can do that to us.”

“Oh . . . well, I’m sorry I got your name wrong.”

Mickey smiled brightly. “It’s cool. Sometimes we forget too.” Her giggle was too genuine for Trish not to laugh with her, even as her head spun at the implications. “In fact, one of us thought Rebecca might switch our names every so often. Except we can’t remember who!” Trish found herself laughing and worried again.

Mickey blinked and subsided. “So, anyway, I’m supposed to bring you up to the afterdeck to meet Philippe. C’mon!” When Trish reached for a more opaque wrap than she’d worn yesterday, Mickey brushed excitingly against her to push it out of her hands. “That’s OK. She’d rather just have you looking—” She stepped back and looked Trish up and down, and Trish posed again for her.

“Wow. Mmm.” Mickey hugged Trish, kissing her and putting her tongue in, filling Trish’s mouth and mind with soft sweetness. “You’re gorgeous! C’mon.”

She led Trish by the hand up and aft, where Rebecca was shaking the hand of a tall older man in a linen summer suit. She remembered the entry for Philippe Mersenne from the briefing: above board, he just sold Rebecca gourmet provender for Medea, but his network and hers occupied different niches in the drug ecology, not overlapping enough for conflict. She doubted that even with the control Rebecca had over her that she’d be allowed to sit in on anything high-level, but she was curious about what they might hint at.

Philippe looked avidly at her, and took Trish’s hand to kiss it while Mickey drifted to the side to sprawl beside Lisa.

“Charming,” he told Rebecca. “Lovely.”

“Trish, this is my dear friend Philippe. You have him to thank for that exquisite wine we enjoyed last night. He’s the only palate I trust.”

“Your trust is hard to earn,” Philippe said to Rebecca, but watched Trish as she stepped to sit beside Rebecca. The two of them chatted, Rebecca sometimes explaining something to Trish, but it was clear they were just giving Philippe a chance to look at her. She did her best to be worthy of display, attending to Philippe but letting her body language proclaim she was Rebecca’s.

Her pussy twitched, wondering if Rebecca would trigger her to kneel, and display her obedience.

Hoping she would. Obedience.

In public. Nude and owned. She thought of being displayed in the Casino itself, up there, but didn’t dare raise her eyes to see it. Even in this dark fabric she’d wet the thong too clearly to ignore.

“Mademoiselle’s mind has wandered somewhere wicked.” Philippe grinned at her, and she felt the blush he’d noticed, even under her tan. Rebecca looked at her, too.

“Mademoiselle’s mind has some wicked provinces of its own,” she said, and stroked Trish’s hair. Trish relaxed and let herself fall into her gaze.

“Regrettably,” Philippe said.

“Of course,” Rebecca said. “The girls will be bored by all this business talk.” Trish smiled, and started to think of some way to find a sunbathing perch nearby—if only to make the effort.

“Besides—it’s naptime.”

Trish’s body and mind went slack.

5.

Trish blinked. She kept blinking, suddenly leaden—it felt like the drugs from the hypnosis session, but hitting her all at once. She dragged her eyelids up, felt a pussy-pulse as she registered Rebecca’s patronizing grin, enjoying her vague struggle against the lethargy.

“They always try to fight it, the first time.” Rebecca’s voice bathed her thoughts like a warm wave.

She tried to grasp the idea of staying, of listening, of doing something on her own initiative, but acting for herself was suddenly too odd an idea to hang onto. She could barely remember the STC hypnotic-resistance training, but she knew it was the only thing keeping even a small part of her mind awake and functioning.

The next wave across her mind was pleasure, as she realized she was still helpless. Whatever Rebecca had done to her was stronger than the training. Her mind was a passenger in her head, and her will was eager to obey any command she heard.

Even if Rebecca ordered her to dive off Medea’s prow and chase the propellor.

There was no real fear. It dissolved in the sheer pleasure at obeying that deeply, which making the world blur for her. She couldn’t make herself remember the trance when the drugs had conquered her, but she tried to think of being used as her own enslaver, working the vibrator and feeling the lovely humming magnified as much as Rebecca’s hypnotic droning told her she could bear. She’d made this pleasure with her body and run it through her mind like a transformer until it owned her. It was an illusion.

It didn’t matter. She belonged to it. She sighed in joyful despair, letting it win.

“Mademoiselle seems very focused,” Philippe observed, his accent sounding so touchingly kind.

She tried to turn toward him, but her head lolled the other way instead. She managed to see Mickey&Lisa, as mindblown by the trigger as she was. The two pets were kneeling, faces slack and eyes half-shut. They rose slowly together and pivoted toward the ladder.

Naptime. Her fear was fluttering irrelevantly over her arousal and the deep, deep contentment of submitting to the buried commands. Reduced to a voyeur in her own mind, she was able to recall that this would be one of the reinforcement sessions Rebecca had promised, and each time it happened she’d be more controlled than before. Less free.

Someday, not even free enough to want to stay free. It made her so wet.

And this was just what would send her to the conditioning.

She tried to look at Rebecca’s face, and her heart melted at the sympathy she saw there. “Shh. Don’t fight it. Poor sleepy girl. Don’ t try to resist. Just relax and let the sleep take you.” She leaned forward and kissed Trish on the forehead.

“You will go with Odette now and do as she tells you.”

“I will go with Odette now and do as she tells me,” Trish intoned, lost in her eyes again. She rose, as languidly as the other two hypnotized girls, and knew she was soaking through the thong. She walked slowly to the ladder and stepped carefully down. Odette turned out to be the older woman who’d collected Mickey&Lisa from their sunset stupor, and she took Trish’s arm gently.

“Come with me,” she said, and Trish nodded. Obeying Odette was all she could consider now. She was told to walk after the others, and then to lie with them on the huge bed that nearly filled the cabin. She no longer knew or cared where she was on the ship.

The mind-numbing compulsion seemed to release her now that she’d obeyed its call, but she just lay there.

“Let’s put her in the middle!” one of the pets whispered.

“Cool!” Someone slid delightfully over her and she mewed. She felt the girls on either side of her, warm and softly moving, livelier than she felt. More used to being tranced, perhaps.

They whispered to each other, their breath tickling as it crossed her skin.

“Mmm, she’s sooo relaxed.”

“Wonder if we could pose her?” Giggles. She tried to move without really knowing what to try, and just shifted.

“Huh-uh . . . she wouldn’t hold it . . . mmm . . . so limp.”

Trish felt their fingers undoing the thong string and sliding the bandeau off her. “Oooh. These aren’t limp, Lisa.” She felt stiffened lips pluck at her nipple and managed a little meep. More soft laughter, and her other breast was in a hand, two hands, hefted tenderly, sniffed, kissed, nipped. “She is, she’s wonderful . . . can we play with her?”

Trish felt mouths exploring her, wet and delicate, and it eroded any desire to move. Their play was tender, and her weak little twitches and moans seemed to guide them to increase her pleasure.

“ . . . wow, she’s still in trance. Rebecca must have sent her way deep . . .”

“ . . . shhh . . .” Someone claimed her pussy and she started to cry softly.

“Ohhh! Poor Trish. The brainwashing hit her really hard.” There was warmth by her cheek, and someone lapped at her tears. It made her cry harder. She wanted to hug them or go down on them and all she could do was lie there while they sent her higher and . . .

“All right, mes petites.”

Trish’s eyes focused. Odette stood by the bed, looking down at them with indulgent contempt. She didn’t seem to mind that the pets, lost in tasting Trish, ignored her. Odette looked immensely tall, though as Trish peered up at her she remembered the woman had only come up to her shoulder when she’d led Trish here in her trance.

She tried, she tried hard, to make her mind work. Yes. Ceiling—call it overhead, on shipboard. Low overhead made Odette seem tall.

Right. She let her eyes blink shut and when they opened she was looking at the overhead, just starting to focus on it.

It started to pulse with light, and she realized her cunt was throbbing in time with it.

She felt the two gently writhing women sandwiching her relax together with beautifully harmonic sighs and melt back to lie beside her, mesmerized. The whisper of their breath fell into the rhythm, and her own was drawn in. She tried to reach for them, just to touch before they succumbed, but she didn’t know if the softness she found were a dream, or . . .

“Now, my little ones, a fairy tale before your nap.” Mickey&Lisa purred happily before sighing again to let the blinking overhead reclaim them. For a moment, over the potent undertones and perceptible other frequencies that were gently stunning her, Trish recognized Rebecca’s voice, but then she forgot why it mattered.

She relaxed, making her own unheard docile sound.

“Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess who longed to sleep, to sleep so deeply . . .”

6.

. . . Trish realized she was thinking, even if most of what she was thinking was how wonderful hot lovely orgasmic divine ohhhh it was to please Rebecca.

“. . . my will is your will is nothing is in your thoughts are weak and sleepy when you sleep you obey you are always asleep to hear me makes you sleepy and when you do not hear me there is nothing to do but sleep and obey you must obey . . .”

Trish was glad she could think, because she could stop thinking again, for Rebecca.

Mickey&Lisa were whispering, almost singing. “Yes yes yes yes yesyesyes obey yes obey obeyyyy . . .” It called to her and she joined it.

Trish didn’t think again for a while . . .

She giggled as she lay back in the warm sunlight, not recalling when another afternoon of sun-worship had taken over from orgasmic passive Rebecca-worship. She giggled again. She had no idea who’d started it, but both Mickey and Lisa were giggling, too.

It had something to do with the little inflatable duck that sat on the closed hatch, staring inanely past them all. But it was too much to think of now. She leaned down to lie still and look at the pet girls, enjoying how luscious they were together.

Her mind had cleared enough to wonder how alike they’d looked before . . . she’d seen pictures of them, she was sure, but it was hard to remember. But she was excited to picture them sitting tamely while Rebecca altered them, sculpting, changing each from the girl she’d been to the slave Rebecca wanted her to be.

Trish’s mind whited out, and only gradually she realized that they were looking at her.

“Cool,” said Mickey or Lisa, and both of them reached for their laps. She realized she’d pushed her thong aside and frigged herself to orgasm, thinking about Rebecca converting their bodies as well as their minds. She’d come down off the peak before she could picture herself being remade as another of Rebecca’s dolls.

She was relieved before she knew why.

“Mademoiselle.” Odette stood over her, leaning on the rail. She rose and stood unsteadily, only then seeing that she was on the seaward side of Medea, so few if anyone had seen her masturbating just now.

The mortification she was starting to feel, even so, was a good sign.

Odette led her to the cabin and she showered, wondering which swimsuit to choose when she emerged. But when she did, she found Rebecca on the bed, watching her. The shower had cleared more of the hypnotic fog from her mind, but she found that Rebecca’s magnetism was powerful even when she wasn’t stupefied.

She stopped in midstride and rose on tiptoe, hands behind her. “How do you want me?”

“Like that is just fine,” Rebecca told her. “I wanted to see if you were all right. It seemed to hit you a lot harder than I expected.” She spoke quietly and earnestly.

“I’m sorry to have done it that way. But it’s a place I’d like to send you, sometimes.”

Trish went to her and knelt, taking her hands. “I liked being there, Rebecca.” She kissed Rebecca’s knee through the skirt, which tasted of Rebecca’s perfume and the sun.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me. Or—if you wanted a girlfriend who’s this, well . . . submissive.”

Rebecca held Trish’s head. “I like a woman who likes to please me, Trish. And you do. Even above any particular thing you do, you want to do it.

“Come up here.” She drew Trish to sit beside her and then lay her back on the bed. Arousal was weakening Trish again. She lay quietly as Rebecca felt her body, brushing her skin, gripping her muscles, cupping her soft places.

Rebecca was palming gentle circles on her belly.

“So strong.” She breathed, and Trish breathed into her touch, feeling Rebecca taming her, soothing her into even deeper compliance with her eyes open.

For now. She struggled to keep them open as the warm circles tempted her back to sleep.

“You’ll be working out in the gym, I expect.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They traded smiles, and Rebecca read how much Trish meant it just then.

“I’ll have Odette prepare a schedule.”

“I’ll follow it,” Trish breathed, deliberately transfixing herself on Rebecca’s lazy stare.

Rebecca looked down at Trish’s belly, tensing and relaxing to her touch. “Mmm. A well-toned submissive. Flexibility is always a plus in a bedmate. What can we do with strength?”

“Put me in some leathers and I can stand menacingly behind you. Kick ass on command.”

“Really, Trish? You could be a jock—are you a fighter?”

Trish sucked in a breath as the palm-ring widened over her mons, waking it from the lulling above it. “Hhhh—yesss. Was. I was.” She smiled faintly, looking up at the headboard. It was a point where her life and legend matched. “When I was in college I worked at a bar. They had women as bouncers—you had to be hot but you had to handle it, too.”

Rebecca grinned. “And there were guys who thought you were a gimmick, hm?”

“Mmmm-hmmm!” Trish groaned and spasmed as she felt Rebecca’s lips ring her navel and then withdraw.

“Yes. I can see these legs twisting into a kick.” Rebecca ran a fingertip along Trish’s thigh, smiling as it flexed helplessly. “You can be my secret weapon. Maybe in some very, very brief leathers.”

Trish moved her thighs along Rebecca’s skirt. “I can be your—henchwench.” They laughed, and she echoed Rebecca’s throaty sound. She wasn’t sure if she should be disappointed that she didn’t giggle again.

If she wanted that she’d have one of the bimbo twins in here. And maybe I’m programmed to know that. She was quiet, suddenly sad that she might not even be pleasing Rebecca on her own. That what felt like learning and giving what Rebecca wanted was just something burned into her mind while she lay on her back with the pets, lost in the same brainwashing that left them drooling.

Rebecca sensed something—maybe knew, from experience, just how and when that sorrow crossed her latest girl’s programmed thoughts—but didn’t press it. Her palm-circles grew slower, deeper, warmer. More sleep-inducing. Trish was getting wet yet again, darkening the skirt and the bedcover.

Trish felt vertigo then. She wasn’t supposed to care about what pleased Rebecca, except to play her. This wasn’t real. It was a mission. She was out of her depth already, and the mind control was just pulling her deeper.

But there was nothing to steady her but Rebecca’s hand on her belly. The hand with so much blood on it, perhaps most lately Jacqui’s. The hand on her defenseless belly.

The hand so tenderly stroking her, seeking nothing but her ease.

“Rebecca.”

“What, Trish?”

“Please.”

Rebecca didn’t even undress. She slid down over Trish and her hand found Trish’s clit, and Trish felt the caress of cloth her skin was wrinkling. Then her clit was in control of her and she found strength to wrap herself around her lover, her target.

As they writhed, both of them cried out.

7.

The breeze was warm even as Medea raced over the waves. They’d be back to the Riviera, but Rebecca was going to the Aegean for now—archaeological interest, she’d said in bed last night before they left. As they ran down the Italian coast the weather was improbably gorgeous—blue water and white crests of foam below, blue with desultory cirrus cloudlets above, the high sun gold over everything.

There was coastal steamer over to port, picturesque but not conducive to the Homeric mood, so Trish stood at the starboard rail, watching the waves.

Oh, just try to mesmerize me with your soothing ripple. You have nothing on what owns my head now.

Rebecca mounted the bridge, chic in her linen—loving the sun but seldom greeting it with her skin. Trish liked that more and more—being the near-nude toy to Rebecca’s flawlessly-tailored socialite. She came starboard without even favoring the freighter with a glance.

“Goddess weather,” Rebecca said, letting Trish lean on her. “I keep expecting to see a galley come sculling over the horizon.”

“An embassy of Amazons sending you tribute?” Trish asked, looking up into her face.

Rebecca leaned over and kissed her. “Twerp.”

Trish looked out. “If there’s an island and a temple, could we go ashore?” She told herself it was a probing question, to start to learn what Rebecca was up to this trip.

“There aren’t many islands like that in this part of the sea,” Rebecca said. “But if we find one, what would you like to do?”

Trish moved against her. “It’s goddess weather,” she breathed. “I wanted to find a quiet place with laurel and fluted columns and give thanks for it.” She looked into Rebecca’s eyes. “To a goddess.”

There was the beginning of a laugh in Rebecca’s eyes but she gazed back into Trish’s and stopped at what she saw there.

“I could kneel. And dance. And . . . offer sacrifice . . .” Trish realized she was thinking aloud. She didn’t even recall this from the half-memories her training let her remember from the naptime sessions with Mickey&Lisa, or the other conditioning with the strobe and spiral Rebecca had her on, down on the gym, while she worked out.

Rebecca kept looking into her. “What would you sacrifice, priestess?” she asked softly.

Trish couldn’t speak. My soul.

But I’m betraying you—so I’ve already lost it.

Rebecca saw the turmoil. God—what if she were having second thoughts about letting her girlfriend actually feel this deeply about her? Didn’ t want the strings?

She put an arm around Trish and drew her head to her shoulder. “When I’m done at Izmir, we’ll find an island. Where you can dance.

“Where a goddess can send you gloriously mad.”

Trish curled against her.

Her head was spinning again. She didn’t know where they’d touch shore next, so she didn’t know whom she’d be contacting.

It had to be face to face—she couldn’t carry even the smallest, cleverest device. The STC knew how naked she’d be, here. A woman’s body would have no secrets from Rebecca Lemoine, when she owned the woman. Trish was still amazed that anything could hide in her mind, which was slowly becoming Rebecca’s chattel too.

So there was a whole STC team flowing eastward like an invisible caterpillar along the northern Mediterranean, tracking Medea’s progress, leapfrogging each other from port to port. They waited to see if the yacht put in, if Rebecca let her girls off to shop and play there, if they were even approachable past her bodyguards, if they had time and cover to get to Trish. It was elaborate but it was the only way they could stay in touch.

To a matronly woman in the next changing room in Monte Carlo, she’d chattered lists she’d memorized during an afternoon when Rebecca had taken her work to the shaded space below the afterdeck. She’d had to wait until Naples to get the confirmation request from the obnoxious Norwegian tourist when they’d collided outside the cafe, before the guards closed in to help.

Business had kept Rebecca in Naples for two days, and Trish had looked at the prospect of spending most of that time safely hypnotized with Mickey&Lisa in the big bed. She’d been relieved when Rebecca let her go below to the gym and work out. Then the lights had begun pulsing and her eyes had found the spiral unbidden, and she didn’t go under before she had time to be ashamed at how easy it was to submit to the trance.

Time to rub her soaked crotch along the saddle.

Trish was still under the spell that night, when Rebecca took her dancing. The girl in the ladies’ room practically had to chase her into the stall before her eyes focused and she mumbled back the recognition code. She was embarrassed to have nothing to tell the other agent about the business Rebecca had taken her clubbing to celebrate, to try to explain she’d been pedaling a stationary bike in a dream while repeating obedience mantras instead.

She could have contrived at least to stay and be decorative when Rebecca’s Neapolitan guests arrived, at least register faces or names before letting them see her triggered and sent back to her toybox. But their dinghy wasn’t even alongside yet when she’d gone obediently below at the snap of Rebecca’s fingers, juicing at obeying Rebecca and at the thought of another dose of rhythmic lights and Rebecca’s voice deep in her brain.

God. Trish wanted to explain, as the pretty frustrated girl with sharp Somali features swore in flat California vowels and wondered what she could salvage in the minute and a half they had left. She wouldn’t see this girl again soon, or the matron, or the not-really-Norwegian.

The scope of the coverage and the need to avoid recognizable faces meant she didn’t deal with the same agent consistently. No one could compare to see how she was slipping, how she was getting vaguer, how it was harder to remember the taskings, harder to keep her mind clear enough to carry them out.

Harder and more painful, every day, to make herself do anything to harm or thwart or disobey Rebecca Lemoine. Her free will was quietly eroding, and only she—and Rebecca—knew it was happening.

She felt a little lonely, but she was getting disconnected more and more. Her world was sex with Rebecca or just keeping her company, and she was most animated when she was diverting Rebecca from her daily cares. Or silly, free play with the platinum-haired pets, tickling and fucking and just fooling. Lounging. Sunning.

Going to naptime. Working out and trancing out. The STC—it took her a while now to remember what her office looked like.

Then she dreamed it had mirrored walls and a chair that let someone else condition her body and her mind to their specifications.

The girl had left her there, pissed off at her dimness and apparently thankful they’d had the toilet to themselves so she didn’t need to pretend to be hitting on Trish. Maybe they thought Rebecca was keeping her drugged . . .

She hugged Rebecca tighter, needing the touch, and Rebecca let her, perhaps needing it too.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rebecca said. “About your duties as henchwench.”

She chuckled as she felt Trish move. “Yes. Very brief leathers. You’ d need to greet visitors and be seductive yet unapproachable.”

“In addition to the ass-kicking,” Trish pointed out.

“Well, yes. In case of very quippy, or very boorish intruders. But I might want to train you as a femme fatale, too. To daze and distract.

“Perhaps to seduce.” Rebecca was looking at her, and Trish felt the familiar lightheadedness as she was transfixed. “Would you learn to do that?”

Suddenly Trish thought about strangers, male or female, lost in her and fooled by her apparent weakness for them. Using her, fucking their good sense into one of her holes and letting Rebecca get the better of them. She’d be a spiked cocktail that licked back.

But even if it was just body-sex, even to serve Rebecca, it would be outside. Sex didn’t count with Mickey&Lisa—they weren’t there enough behind their limpid eyes.

She knew how easily either of them would say Yes to Rebecca. For her, it would be hard.

A sacrifice. And Rebecca’s arms were temple enough.

“Whore for you?” she asked, softly but clearly. “If you ask me to, Rebecca. With anyone.”

Rebecca’s eyes flickered, and for a moment she almost looked frightened. Trish was lightheaded again. Rebecca had been playing, and now knew they weren’t.

She kissed Trish fiercely. “Don’t worry. I hate to share what’s mine.” Trish gripped her convulsively.

“Madame.” The guard’s voice was calm, and suddenly Trish was frightened. Rebecca’s gentleness as she pulled away from her to join him was even more frightening.

She made herself walk to where they were, and saw the speedboats arcing out from behind the freighter. There was a thump as though Medea had just caromed off a dock’s rubber fender, but the yacht didn’t slow.

“Bear away from them,” Rebecca said, without even moving as he hit the alarm and the helmsman pushed the throttle. It made Trish calm, and in the clear space the fear had left in her head she could remember how a single leader standing fast could stop a rout.

Then there was a gun in Rebecca’s hand, and as she watched the approaching boats she let herself show some feeling.

“Philippe,” she addressed the air. “You . . . fucking . . . jackass.”

8.

Trish couldn’t hear the others’ shots over the sound of Medea’s run and the snarl of the speedboats, but she heard the eerie ripping as the rounds chewed into the yacht’s surfaces. There was a heartening rattle from Rebecca’s people as they returned fire, louder and measured to her ears.

Her mission had run afoul of a gang war, and the shooting was waking part of her up, making her more aware than she’d been for days that she had a mission. For a moment she wondered wildly if STC had given up on her and just decided to get rid of Rebecca with some deepwater piracy. As she felt the bulkhead she cowered against along her skin, she felt just that ineffectual. She really was just a concubine in fio dental swimwear now that the shooting had started.

But she saw Rebecca standing still, peering back and assessing the attack as it came on, and her heart leaped. Very bad idea to try that against a real pirate, she thought.

She peeked over the rim of the spray shield at their pursuers. No, they weren’t her own people. Rebecca was having a war with her dear friend Philippe Mersenne. Rebecca watched them now, and Trish wondered if she hoped he were out there, or possibly on the freighter that had hidden the ambush as they’d sailed by.

Rebecca didn’t fire her weapon. She had produced a walkie-talkie from somewhere and was conning her guards lower in Medea, since they were the ones with the assault rifles. Like a good commander, Rebecca didn’t lose herself in the distraction of picking her own targets.

Recalling that assault rifles would punch through the spray shield like paper, Trish leaned back from it and wondered if she should crawl forward. Rebecca had glanced over and seen her already low and still, and turned away before her mouth had fully opened to command her down. Trish felt blessedly relieved that she wasn’t a worry to Rebecca now, but she discovered she didn’t want to be away from her. Waiting down below, in the gym, would be terrible. If they brought Rebecca down, wounded—or—

If the enemy got through and took the ship—

Trish wanted to pray, but her goddess was three meters away and too busy to listen.

The fire from Philippe’s men was audible now.

A piece of the spray shield vanished and something sighed over her head. She scuttled the opposite way and found herself on the glacis sloping down from the bridge, facing the bow, bare feet harmless on the polished surface.

Someone screamed, up forward. She saw Mickey&Lisa running from their basking spot at the prow, and she saw something shining and dark and inhuman climb over the gunwale behind them. It terrified her, even as she resolved it into someone in a black wetsuit.

Others were crawling up along both sides of Medea’s hull. There were shots but they fired back, and she realized most of the guards were aft, fending off the speedboats.

More fear cleared her mind, and she wondered who these swimmers were. They’d lain something across the yacht’s path and let it net them—that had been the shock they’d surged through without stopping.

The one at the bow stood and aimed at the fleeing women. Trish watched in horror, reaching out uselessly. His gun flashed silently.

One girl staggered and fell, trying to grip the rail. The other stopped and went to her, and Trish sobbed suddenly, unable to tell them apart even now.

The frogman who’d fired strolled unhurriedly along the deck while the two girls tried to pull something out of the kneeling one’s thigh.

A dart. The girl who’d been hit stayed upright and kneeling, but her movements were slower. She might not even be losing consciousness.

Trish felt cold in her bones. They hadn’t floated in midocean and risked getting run down by Medea just to tranquilize slavegirls. They wanted the pirate queen, alive.

Her pirate queen.

No.

She turned toward starboard, needing to do something, and found herself looking down at another gleaming faceless raider—blue eyes peering out of a black ball. She was startled to see the shape, very female and quite curvy, but before she could process it she saw the dart gun come up.

Trish curled her legs against the glacis. If she jumped right, she could knock the woman back overboard.

If she was tranquilized as she leaped, she’d likely be left to drown as the battle sailed past.

Rebecca would never know what happened. But she’d have one less enemy trying to make her helpless for whatever Philippe wanted to do.

She knew an STC agent had no reason to die for a target, but she doubted her chances were any better if she were part of the booty.

Booty. She remembered the joke, when first she and Rebecca had made love. I am only one woman’s booty, you cunt, she telepathed as she glared down at the blue eyes taking aim at her.

They showed surprise and then shifted. The dart sang past her and above, and she heard a man groan in a very odd loose way.

The frogwoman was reloading.

Trish threw herself back over the bridge parapet and found one of the guards staring heavy-eyed at the dart he’d plucked from his shoulder. He looked at her blankly.

Trish looked back at Rebecca, seeing her looking to port and forward. She’d seen the new attack. My queen. She looked down and there was the guard’s pistol, huge and black.

Black wetsuit rising over the parapet like a hunting dinosaur. The blue eyes crossed her again and narrowed as they found Rebecca instead. The dart gun rose away from her. Rebecca’s voice kept on. She wasn’t even looking. She didn’t know . . .

Trish’s hands found the gun and they, at least, remembered she was STC. Her fingertips told her palms the model as she raised it, and her thumb chose the catch to release by the time she had it up, her eyes full of shiny black, the sight between the two breasts.

She could hear the wetsuit creak, as Philippe’s hitwoman paused and turned at the movement. The instinct spared Rebecca the dart.

Trish met the blue eyes as they saw her, plaything behind a round muzzle, loving that the bitch knew it. She fired twice, letting the recoil lift it higher the second time but still into the chest.

The frogwoman collapsed and didn’t move as the dart gun clattered away from her.

Trish’s ears rang and she sagged back against the drugged guard. He seemed past noticing, but it felt good to lean on him. She looked over at Rebecca.

Rebecca was still muttering into the walkie-talkie, but she was gazing wide-eyed at Trish and . . . Trish’s kill. Rebecca smiled very faintly and nodded, and Trish felt kissed.

She turned away while she still could and peered through the opening the woman had climbed through, trying not to touch the body without really knowing she was. She was barely a stumble away from the cliff’s edge of remembering that she’d never killed anyone, not even after joining STC. And this hitwoman who hadn’t survived meeting her might well have killed fewer people than the pirate queen for whom Trish had killed her.

Killed her.

Killed for Rebecca. Even as it squicked her, Trish thought of dipping into the dead woman’s pooling blood and marking herself.

She looked out, down, forward.

The pets. One of them was standing still, weaving a little, while the other was fighting weakly in the grip of one of two frogmen. It looked like a fetish DUI arrest, but the humor of it blew away as Trish heard the thin sound of the struggling girl, the one who hadn’t been sedated, as she screamed.

Mickey. She thought it was Mickey. She listened to her, hearing no defiance, just fear.

She caught herself before she ran out along the upper deck to head down to help them—right into a dart, to join Lisa in a stupor and give Mickey more to cry over.

Trish looked at the gun. STC was a weird place in her mind now, and her heart beat fast now with what she’d given to Rebecca, but the gun was a quiet, unassuming bit of concreteness. It let her remember small things. She didn’t picture the instructor’s face or voice or gender, but she remembered what this model could do.

Accurate to 500 meters. The miss would be hers to make.

She leaned against the glacis and stretched the pistol out, not locking her elbows. She breathed out and didn’t think about Mickey moving suddenly into the sight. She breathed out everything in her head but a little of Rebecca’s feel that she couldn’t let go.

She let the man holding Mickey turn to his partner, and shot him in his hidden face.

His partner was still trying to take in the blood and the fall when she shifted the sight and fired into his back.

Mickey fell away from them and screamed, and Trish wanted to shout to her, in case she drew more like a lost calf calling wolves. But Mickey subsided when she saw Lisa still floating beside the railing. She was still half-hysterical but she pulled the other woman to her and dragged her to the nearest hatch.

Then the deck seemed to swarm with gunmen, but she saw they were only a handful, and all Rebecca’s. She rose slowly, realizing that the shooting had stopped.

She glanced back to see the helmsman doggedly facing forward, taking Medea through a turn and pushing the throttle forward. Looking starboard she saw a few black shapes bobbing in the wake-swell, and further away she saw speedboats manuevering off, collecting them. The freighter was a distant shape.

There was a hand on her arm, and Rebecca was beside her. Trish wanted to fall at her feet, but she looked at her face and made herself say, “I’m OK.” Rebecca nodded, but looked as close as she came to doubtful. “You need to . . .”

“Do you want to go—” Rebecca stopped, and moved between Trish and the dead abductress. She stroked Trish’s arm. “If you want, Trish, I can hypnotize you. Right here if you need it. Or you can go straight to the gym—or the naproom’s better. I’d want someone with you when you go under.”

Trish looked at her. She knew her pirate queen needed to see to her ship and to her crew, to clean this up and keep them moving, but Rebecca was giving her this time first. It felt like more than just gratitude.

Then she knew what Rebecca needed her to say.

She kissed Rebecca. “Thanks. But I can wait for you.”

Rebecca held her. “That’s my girl. My beautiful brave henchwench. I’ll see the girls are tranced and given something nice to dream together—but I want to take care of you, myself.” She stepped away and Trish watched her stalk down, to talk to her fighters, take reports.

Trish heard the walkie-talkie khhssh and saw Rebecca swing it up. “Still alive? Where? Oh, yes. Yes.” Even from here, Trish heard the channeled hate. “I’ll certainly attend to that.

“Just make sure he’s stabilized first.

“Know? What does he have to know? . . .”

My beautiful ruthless pirate queen.

She kissed the pistol, and then unloaded it and set it by the guard who’d dropped it.

9.

Trish delayed going to Rebecca’s cabin. Rebecca would be a while—even wanting Trish wouldn’t make her rush—and she didn’t want to wait there alone. It would feel too much like she’d lost her.

With her mind still clear, blown clear of the fog for a bit by the adrenaline, she found herself trying to compose all of this for a report. Not a breathless burst-conversation in a market stall at the next portcall contact, but an actual narrative picked out on her computer, with time to think.

She decided it might be easier just to give the highlights to the next contact after all. No details or explanations. Nothing that would make her face how deeply she was betraying STC by falling into the thrall of the woman she was betraying for them.

She went to see how Mickey&Lisa were doing. Odette had been wounded, she was told, caught in Rebecca’s area under Medea’s afterdeck when the shooting started, and one of the junior maids was trying to help with the pets. Lisa was still sleeping off the tranquilizer, and they’d lain her beside Mickey in the naptime room.

Even now, being in it started to dim Trish’s mind, but seeing Mickey listlessly staring at her motionless playmate kept her above the trance. Trish crawled onto the bed and lay gently atop Mickey to hold her. She nuzzled her and whispered nonsense until the other woman was smiling drowsily, and looked at her.

“You were very brave out there. I think you saved Lisa—if you hadn’t kept your head, they might have hurt her or taken her away.”

Mickey stared up at her, starting to tear up. She hadn’t known what she was doing—maybe it was instinct deeper than her programming. She swallowed. “I’m Lisa,” she whispered.

Then she laughed, completely without malice, seeing Trish’s face fall. “Gotcha,” she said. Trish loomed over her and mock-bit her.

Mickey’s eyes widened. “Somebody said it was you. Who shot them. You must have been scared too.” Trish nodded to her.

Mickey suddenly hugged her very hard. “I couldn’t have,” came along her collarbone, and Trish couldn’t disagree. She kissed the other woman and nodded to the maid.

“They’re going to hypnotize you now.”

“Aren’t you going to stay and obey with us?” Mickey looked over at Lisa, who was still thoroughly out of it. She looked lost.

“Rebecca told me not to,” Trish said, and saw Mickey automatically relax. “But why not cuddle with Lisa before the room puts you under? She’ll probably be in trance with you before too long.” Mickey beamed at her and undulated over to wrap herself around her friend, looking like an erotic sidewinder on a white desert.

When Trish got there, Rebecca’s cabin seemed to hum with her presence. Trish kept feeling the mental twinge of imagining it with Rebecca gone, and could neither understand why she was doing that to herself nor make herself stop.

She felt guilty for wishing she’d agreed to a session on the stationary bike, pumping her body deeper as the room hypnotized her. She felt so weak now, and it was starting to catch up with her.

It was also scaring her, because letting herself go loose now, relaxing in Rebecca’s wonderful hands, was playing russian roulette with her cover. She could explain the shooting, but she couldn’t afford to share a memory that she couldn’t have. One that an STC agent would have lived through but a footloose girl willing to follow a pirate queen who’d picked her up in an island bar, even a henchwench in training, would have no clue about.

But she wanted it. She wanted to be easy with Rebecca. Feeling this sheer liking from her object of worship was going to her head like no drug she knew.

She was shiveringly glad she’d saved Rebecca from whatever pain or . . . she shivered differently, wondering what Philippe Mersenne or his minions had planned to do when they had Rebecca tranquilized and helpless on her captured yacht.

Philippe knew how Rebecca controlled her girls. Maybe he planned to put Rebecca in the gym herself, to drug her and show her spirals until he was the voice in her head. She saw Rebecca nude and collared, staring mindlessly, an attentive zombie while he held court in Medea’s salon. Or Rebecca chained to his chair, programmed to beg endlessly and uselessly to be fucked.

Or Rebecca sold on any coast of this sea, specially priced for demonstrated obedience.

Trish realized she’d have taken the dart or a bullet to keep that from happening.

She stopped thinking. She slipped off the wisps of bikini and just left the loose necklace Rebecca had put on her neck this morning. She started to draw a bath and light candles, ready to lose herself in serving Rebecca and helping her queen to relax after this long, long day. She was kneeling when Rebecca found her, and she just looked up.

Rebecca looked down at her, and Trish smelled her. She showed no sign of whatever she’d done with the luckless Mersenne frogman who’d survived, though she looked more relaxed.

She was about to yield to it, to lean into her waist and press her face to Rebecca.

But Rebecca stroked her head and then crouched beside her. “Get into the tub while I undress, Trish.”

Trish stared at her, and Rebecca laughed at her face even as she stroked it. “Yes. Really. I’m not becoming a bottom—but I want to take care of you, right now.”

Trish thought of her dark vision before, of Rebecca enslaved, and it made her dizzy. She leaned into Rebecca, quivering with guilt and heat. Rebecca gentled her to her feet and they stood together by the tub, feeling the warmth from it.

Rebecca felt her hesitation and didn’t force it. She held Trish close and put her face near Trish’s. Lust and perilous admiration and the ever-deepening trances almost stopped Trish’s mind, but she held on to staying aware, for Rebecca.

“Trish, you’re brainwashed. I told you why and you let me do it. But seeing you today, after all the time since I found you on Ibiza . . . I’ ve never felt this safe or this close to a girl I didn’t utterly control.” Rebecca sounded breathless, as though she were close to spilling secrets too.

It was the intimacy STC had dreamed it could become, over time, and it killed Trish to know it now.

“You’re not completely brainwashed. I liked you too much, just to talk to, just to hear what you’d say or think, to take you that far. I’ ve already started tapering it off—you’re a little too glassy-eyed sometimes.

“I could have died today. So could you. I don’t—” Rebecca stopped. She looked almost as lost as Mickey had, for a moment, and it hit Trish like a blunt hammer. Trish started to reach for her. She could already feel the words.

But she couldn’t.

Something had her in its grip, more compelling than Rebecca’s hypnosis. She couldn’t do this, and there was only one other thing left for her. It was terrifying, but it was all she was worthy of, now.

“Rebecca.”

“Yes, love.”

God, no. No. “Rebecca.”

Rebecca regarded her gravely. “What is it? I promise—I’ll listen whatever—”

Trish was shaking. She was about to start crying, in relief and horror, and she absolutely could not do this while sniveling.

“Please. Out there.” They walked out to the bedroom, but Trish stopped before they reached the bed. “No. I don’t—you won’t want to be holding me.”

“Trish?”

She winced. She wished she could put her hands over Rebecca’s mouth. The concern was like a dagger.

She dropped to her knees. She made herself look at Rebecca, who seemed to be expecting some—she had no idea.

“I’ll say this while I still have the chance, Rebecca. I’ve fallen in love with you and I worship the water you walk on. I don’t know if it’s your mind control or you or—I don’t care. But you’re the most important thing in my life.” She was panting with the effort not to sob. She wanted to go on like this, praising Rebecca, but she had to face it.

A sacrifice. And the altar . . .

“I—saw—I remember what happened with the girl who came to spy on you. To Jacqui. What you did to her.”

Rebecca was staring at her now. Looking less lost.

“Rebecca, I found out today that I’d die before I let you be hurt. Or t-taken.” Rebecca’s eyes were lidded. But she nodded.

“I will die before I let you be . . . betrayed.” She swallowed. She made herself look Rebecca in the eye. “God, Rebecca, I know what you were giving me now and I want it, I need it, but—I . . . can’t take it from you. Not like this.”

She was crying now, unable to stop, because she was crying for Rebecca. “I know what I’m taking from you now and if I could . . .” She trailed off.

“I want more than anything to be with you, to be your lover, and I don’ t want to die the way Jacqui did. But . . . I can’t say she deserved it, but . . .”

Her body seemed to be trying not to let her say it.

Rebecca was perfectly, perfectly still. Rebecca was letting her say it.

“But I do.” She breathed out. “I’m from STC.”

She stopped. There was no need to dig it any deeper, even if she could.

Rebecca didn’t move, but Trish could see something in her eyes now.

I just took away the person you need most right now. The woman you thought I was. Oh, god, Rebecca . . .

Trish didn’t feel clean. But seeing how she’d hurt Rebecca, she thought she could swim under Medea into the props even without being hypnotized into doing it.

Rebecca looked at her, and something seemed to film over the pain in her eyes.

Whatever you want from me, Trish thought, and shivered.

This was so hard.

Rebecca didn’t take her eyes from Trish as she reached for the walkie-talkie.

“Yes.

“In my cabin.

“Now.”