The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TETHER

* * *

38.

Meredith left the shower, dried and glowing, and stepped over to curtsey before Miss Leslie, putting her hands behind her back. Miss Leslie, prim in her corset and boots, looked her body up and down, and when the governess nodded, Meredith squirmed. Miss Leslie looked into her eyes and she straightened as everything else faded out.

“You are in the music room now.”

“I am in the music room now.” As Meredith repeated it, she realized it was true, and at another nod she dutifully stepped around the bed and sat on the piano bench before her dresser. She expected, even hoped for cold varnished wood under her bare butt, but found soft cushioning instead and sighed.

She looked up across the piano, with its vanity top and cosmetics, and saw herself reflected in the mirror. After a brief glance at her breasts, which she couldn’t resist any more than the pleased sigh that moved them, she raised her gaze to meet itself, seeing her nude reflection with the dazed, blissful look she’d grown used to.

Miss Leslie was next to her, tall in her heels, her hand cool and controlling on Meredith’s shoulder. Without needing to be told, Meredith reported softly what she knew.

“I am in the music room now.

“It is time for my lesson.

“I am sitting at the piano.”

Miss Leslie’s hand slid up her neck, fingers finding familiar strokepoints behind her ear. Meredith swayed and leaned a little, her eyes drooping as she fought to stay focused. She must obey her governess and stay awake. She dampened as she saw Miss Leslie nod in approval at her obedience, and the fingers relented.

“What do you see when you look down, Meredith?”

Meredith lowered her gaze to the vanity, seeing an arm that felt like hers rise to push a couple of bottles quietly aside. The thought faded as she looked down at the smooth surface.

“I see the piano keys, Miss Leslie.

“As I always will, when I sit at the piano. In the music room.”

“Have you been a good girl and practiced?”

Meredith closed her eyes, found the empty place in her mind. “I do not remember, Miss Leslie. I was told not to remember.” A thrill came and went. She would be even more forgetful the next time she was told to be.

“Good girl. Position.”

Meredith straightened her back. She found the keys she must begin with, rested her fingers there, and looked up to see her attentive reflection again.

“See the music.” As Miss Leslie spoke, the music stand appeared, barely there, and the sheet music that took shape on it was transparent, hiding none of the topless Meredith in the mirror. She was mesmerized by the open spiral of a phantom F-clef until she realized it was her reflected nipple within it, earnestly stiff, that had really snared her.

“The music is there,” she said quietly. “I see it, Miss Leslie.”

“Do you recognize the piece?”

Meredith peered at it, wondering in faint surprise how the notes could be in curved array like that, forming the outlines of a plump, shaven pussy. She made a token grasp at wondering what the melody could sound like, but she couldn’t focus, not with that flower filling her mind.

“I can think only of pussy,” she whispered, too lost in it to see her reflection’s rueful smile.

“Of course,” Miss Leslie’s whisper soothed her. “Thus, you have been given an instructor.

“Listen to me.”

“I will hear only you,” Meredith sighed.

“No. You will hear the metronome.”

“Met . . . ro . . . nome.” Meredith felt herself stiffening again, a delightful fever in her joints that made her shake a little on the cushion.

Miss Leslie’s free hand moved from her bare hip to above her waist, and Meredith no longer had the strength of mind to wonder why her eyes swept past Miss Leslie’s lovely crotch to focus only on her hand, on the finger that extended, that began to move back and forth, back and forth.

I have been trained very well with the metronome. I lapse into trance instead of practicing, whenever I hear the ticking.

“Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .”

Miss Leslie has trained me very well.

Meredith heard the ticking. It was her own voice, but as she realized that, she knew the imaginary pyramid was real, there in Miss Leslie’s empty hand.

I can’t play while I listen to the metronome because it’s hypnotizing me. I’m too weak-willed to resist and Miss Leslie doesn’t want me to resist.

“Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .”

Each tick was another chip flaked from the foundation of her mind. She knew that and it primed her. Her clit surfaced like a periscope through the shallow tide between her thighs as the control deepened her need, but she had no thought of touching it. Besides, if she just waited, as she must wait, being so obedient . . .

Such an obedient pupil.

Miss Leslie would spank her when she failed to play. She would lie soaking across Miss Leslie’s bare thighs, her ass clenched. She wouldn’ t be able to keep her hips from swinging in appeal.

She tried to beg. She couldn’t. She hadn’t been told to.

She could only sit still like a good girl and not play the piano she wasn’t sitting at, and . . .

“Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .”

“Enough.” Meredith started, and Miss Leslie’s hand on her neck was welcome.

When it lifted from her she withdrew her fingers from the keyboard and slowly stood, moving aside so Miss Leslie could take the bench. Breathing faster, she held still until quiet words and touches guided her down to lie across Miss Leslie’s lap, warm and smooth and soft enough to make her crazy.

The knock at the door paralyzed her. She suddenly wished the whole household were about to come in, to see her sprawled nude across her music teacher’s lap, such a bad girl and so wet about it.

She heard measured footsteps, even breathing. She smelled light scent. Clare, accepting what she saw and fallen into trance before she’d even entered the suite, as she’d been programmed.

She felt Miss Leslie shift to look at the maid, as the music teacher’s hand rested in Meredith’s quivering asscheek.

“Mistress. Ms Stevens wants to speak to young Miss, at her earliest convenience.”

“Indeed.” God—the governess was so utterly in control. Meredith shivered, feeling how easily Miss Leslie dominated both her and the maid.

“That will be all, Clare. Return to your other duties.” With a swish of curtsey, Clare obeyed the dismissal. For a moment, Meredith thought of spending the day with her as a junior maid in an even shorter frock, being taught to dust and fetch and attend. Chastised when she erred.

Miss Leslie’s hand on her ass wiped the thought away. She held her breath.

“Meredith. You have earned ten strokes.”

“I will count them, Miss Leslie,” she rasped, sorry she was prone already and couldn’t bow her head further. She relaxed against Miss Leslie’s thighs and heard her governess sigh. It wouldn’t spare her a stroke, but she didn’t want it to.

“Trance, Meredith.” Her head went woolly and vague, and she accepted the next words without hearing them, as easily as she dreamed of opening for Miss Leslie’s finger slipping into her cunt.

She was awake when she took the first slap. “One, Miss Leslie!”

“Two, Miss Leslie!”

“Three, Miss Leslie!”

“Th—” She jerked again, moaning with how that felt against her governess’ lap.

She had no idea what came after “three.”

Miss Leslie had to start again. Several times.

Meredith was close to tears when the hand on her ass finally softened and stroked it, but not hurting quite that much. She did weep, quietly, when she felt Miss Leslie shift back and lean down to kiss Meredith’s reddened backside.

“Good girl.”

Leslie helped her upright, and then held Meredith curled in her lap. They kissed.

“Play with me?” Meredith could beg now.

Leslie shook her head, but was clearly disappointed too. “Sorry, honey. You need to see your mother now. If we’d had time—”

“—I’d be bawling now,” Meredith whispered, shifting her ass across Leslie’s cool, cool, skin.

Meredith thought about being sent to her mother as she was, her pussy fountaining and her ass a scarlet collage of Leslie’s handprints, so turned on she could barely stand. She’d need a hard posthypnotic suggestion just to be able to speak coherently.

But things weren’t that way in this house, outside of her suite or outside of the trances she and Leslie fucked each other in and out of.

Meredith slid, aimlessly, on her own juice. Her glowing ass slid down Leslie’s thighs and into her cool lap, and Leslie made a high, choked sound and put her head to Meredith’s.

Leslie’s arms tightened, but she didn’t give in to it. “Let’s get you wiped and presentable.” Meredith melted at what it must take for Leslie to resist pushing her to the floor.

Melted at the strength of the leash that kept Leslie tame.

Meredith was still weak with need, and after getting her to the bathroom Leslie had to trance her there to settle her, before kneeling to wipe the juice from her lap and thighs. Even Leslie leaned her head on Meredith’s thigh for a moment, and Meredith sighed, staring at herself in the mirror as she’d been told to. She felt lips on her ass again, cool and gentle, and then Leslie was standing beside her.

They stared into each other’s reflections, and Meredith went soft to see the longing in her lover’s face. It was a painful joy to see that Leslie wanted to do her as badly as she wanted to be done.

But as Leslie raised her hand, fingers poised to snap, she felt something darker probe her softness. They both must obey, and the orgasms when they did would be strong enough to destroy their minds.

They just weren’t their minds anymore.

Snap.

Meredith stiffened, instantly calm. She saw her obedient blankness drain something from Leslie’s face too, but she no longer knew what it had been. She just waited quietly and listened as the other slave programmed her for her next task.

39.

Frances watched her computer screen.

Meredith stood before her desk, watching her. Her mother had looked up when she came in, recognized her, and seemed to wait for a moment, but when Meredith did nothing, her mother blinked and turned back to the display. Her eyes tracked across it, held still and glazed over from time to time as the colors flared and flickered, then blinked wearily and followed text.

Frances nodded a lot as she read. What the screen told her seemed to make her tired and a little sad, but she accepted it. Now and then, it seemed as though the screen told her to put her free hand down under her waistband, and she did this with practiced ease. Each time, the screen would flicker and her eyes would widen markedly, before they rolled up.

Then the text claimed her again, and she nodded more vigorously.

Meredith absently tried to hear the sounds her mother made as she worked the software Meredith had given her, but, after a moment of teetering on the edge of being caught by the seductive sight of her mother enthralled, Meredith realized it had caught her. Frances had gone quite still, staring deeply and attentively at what the screen told her to look at, and Meredith could see the tiny, reflected pulsations of the spiral in Frances’ glazed eyes, just as she succumbed to them herself.

She woke when her mother’s eyes rolled back and freed her, the next time her mother was triggered to orgasm. Her mother’s sawing breath as she came down from it helped wake her further, but the sound did nothing to disturb Frances’ own transfixion.

Meredith waited.

There was a knock and the door opened. Clare stepped in with a tray and a carafe, pretty and earnest in her uniform. Frances swung out of a masturbatory plunge and looked brightly at Clare, much as she had at Meredith earlier. Clare smiled and said, “Ms Stevens. Your wine.”

Frances’ face flicked on an animated smile. “And just in time, too! Thank you, Clare.”

“You’re so very welcome, Ma’am.

“You don’t even know I’m here.”

The light left Frances’ eyes as she forgot the servant and she turned slowly back to the screen, nodding at once at what she saw there. Clare set down the carafe, looked once at Meredith, and then exchanged it for the empty one on the desk. Inspecting it to see if there was anything left, she put it on the tray, picked up the tray, and smoothed her skirt as she walked to the door.

Her movement seemed to rouse Frances again, but before Frances could do more than frown slightly and lean her head, still looking at the screen, Clare said without turning around, “Continuity.”

“Continuity,” Frances whispered, and went blank. She swiveled to face the screen again. She left her mouth open as she gaped at it and reached for her lap once more.

Meredith waited.

She heard the program shutting down and her mother breathed normally. “Oh, hi, baby. I didn’t hear you come in. Trying to get that spreadsheet set up the way I want it and still let the board understand what I want them to do.” She licked her lips and poured herself a glass from the carafe Clare had left.

“It’s OK, Mom. Clare came by before and said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes! I’ve been getting the greatest ideas since I started using this software—even when I get completely lost in a project, I come out of it with some more adds to the to-do list.” Meredith had to smile at how excited her mother looked.

“Anyway—I wanted to ask you what you thought about this. Do you think you and Leslie would like having a personal trainer? Someone to come out and get you involved in a conditioning program?”

Meredith nodded. “Actually, I’d been thinking of something like that. I don’t plan to be a complete slug here, and Leslie needs something to soak up energy too.” She didn’t blink, didn’t think of them draped across each other in a tangle of sheets on the floor.

“Of course, we’ll need to choose carefully. You don’t want your daughter and her SO falling under the butch spell of some fitness dominatrix or something.”

Frances’ eyes sparkled as she laughed, but Meredith saw the blush and the swallow. Frances countered the arousal she didn’t understand. “Mmm. Yes. Mistress Teutonica’s weight squad. She’ll even have you . . .” She smirked and shut up. Meredith wished she’d finished the image.

“Checks by Capaldi, of course.”

Meredith nodded. “Oh, definitely. I doubt the guys who grabbed me would be sneaky enough to get a woman to front for them, but to be literally grabbed and dragged off by someone else would suck a great deal too.”

Her mother smiled. “I hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and did a search for some prospects. I included Kia, my own trainer at work—who’ s been nagging me to get back to the office more and resume my own program—but more because I didn’t want her to feel overlooked.”

“I don’t mind at all, Mom.” Meredith felt a tug. “Umm—did you search while you were using the software?”

Frances smiled, her eyes sparkling again. “Of course, Meredith. I’m finding I’d rather do anything that’s worth doing on the system while I have it up. It just feels better.

“I’m really confident that it only enhanced my choices. I know I only want to select from names it produced.”

Suddenly it was important to know something. “Mom? Can you tell me exactly what the software does?”

Frances smiled while her eyes went wide and unfocused. “I really don’t need to know what it does. I just know I need to use it whenever I use the computer. I enjoy it and trust it.”

Meredith looked at her. “I think that you need to access the Help file next time you go in, Mom. You need to check out the index item ‘Cover,’ read it carefully, and memorize it. Then you can answer, if you’re asked again.

“All right?”

Frances closed her eyes, and they were bright again when they opened. “Whatever you say, Meredith.”

Meredith looked at her mother’s left hand. The fingers were moving, waving like soft antennae trying to catch the scent from her pussy. Her body wanted her to go back in and use the software again. Meredith had a warm feeling, realizing how much physical pleasure her mother must be earning as she drove herself, her Type-A nature making her bear down so intently on the use.

She didn’t know when the idea had come to her, but she’d once had a piercing need to know that someone would be there to hypnotize her mother into tranquility, and Meredith did know, now, that she didn’t need to worry. Frances Stevens was becoming quite tranquil, and she was learning that tranquility could be rewarding.

Even addictive.

But there was something else she needed to find out. Something more difficult.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to interfere, but . . . those servants you were talking about. Before? The ones—”

“Yes.” Frances looked less tranquil and her hand was still. “I’m still not sure why I don’t—trust them. It’s just a feeling, nothing I can put facts against. Their records are clean and their service has been impeccable.” Her face was strained. “Capaldi hasn’t been able to find anything, and that woman will look.”

“But?”

“But . . . I just can’t shake the feeling that I need to get them off the place. That they’re dangerous.”

Her mother’s eyes flared, and some of her normal steel glinted in them. “That you won’t be safe if I don’t get rid of them, and that, baby girl, is nearly enough for me to dismiss them out of hand.”

She closed her eyes and bent her head, and Meredith felt a deep chord of sorrow between them. She knew how her mother prized loyalty, and Frances saw it due both ways—from the patron no less than from the retainer. She’d never think about firing longtime staff, if it weren’t for something like danger to her child.

“I’m not ready to do that, yet. It’s not right, not without proof. I can’t end men’s jobs just because I’m having some post-trauma after what happened to you.”

Meredith saw her mother still on the near side of a barrier. She didn’ t know what it was or why it mattered, and she sensed she was unworthy of being disappointed—the purpose her mother had not yet fulfilled was not Meredith’s to understand, only to carry out. She’d report it, and then fall into Leslie’s eyes or a voice on the phone, and sleep, and forget.

In the meantime, she made a relieved noise. “OK. Clare’s worried, though. Some of them are her friends. She hasn’t said a word, of course, not to me, but Leslie’s noticed her being anxious.”

“One of them more than a friend?” Frances sounded almost happy to think about something like that.

Meredith pictured Clare dancing slowly before Leslie, wearing nothing but her sheer black stockings. “She’s a very pretty girl.”

She saw Frances’ half-joking, half-concerned look. “Mom. Please. I ‘m pretty sure Clare’s into boys, I have the girl I’m into, and what kind of employer is it who puts the moves on someone who needs the job?”

Her mother smiled. “Very sensible, but we’re not talking about sense, necessarily. Men aren’t the only ones who sometimes leave thinking to an underqualified organ.”

They laughed. “Hey, it’s not underqualified, Mom. It’s a temperamental genius in its own field.

“Even if thinking’s overrated, sometimes.” She smiled at Frances’ puzzled look, and took her time. Frances would understand soon.

Frances’ grin was already fading. “I may just turn in early,” she said. “I’m going in to the office again tomorrow, and I’d really rather just tune out for now.”

“Mom, it’s a tough decision. Why not see what you can come up with online?” She pointed to the computer, and Frances’ followed her finger almost reluctantly.

“Online? But I—just got off,” she said, as if in a dream, her protest utterly forceless.

You need to get off some more. Meredith did not laugh at all, in her mind.

She didn’t know whether she wanted see her mother staring serenely, or captured and suspended, but either way she knew it was going to happen.

“Then it’s time to get back on, Mom. Don’t fight it.”

Frances’ eyes widened again, this time in appeal, but Meredith saw with gentle satisfaction that Frances couldn’t know what she was appealing for.

“You need answers, and peace. You’ll find them—there.”

Her mother slowly, gracefully let the glowing box turn her toward it, drawn by a shortening bond. “But . . . first I need . . . to . . .” It wasn’t even clear what part of her mother was still resisting. Meredith opened her mouth.

“Continuity.”

“Continuity,” Frances intoned, and surrendered to the screen once more.

40.

Meredith curled comfortably on the sofa, hearing them approach but not looking away from the window. She already knew how high on her thighs the shorts had ridden, and how she curved in the afternoon light.

Their voices were low and warm, Clare’s higher than the other woman’s, and she felt pleased for Clare, hearing in the tones how close they already were.

Of course, Clare was an excellent pupil with an excellent teacher. Meredith squeezed her legs together on the half-dreamt memory of Leslie tutoring Clare on what she must do, and how. Clare was very singleminded, now that Leslie controlled her mind.

“Oh!” It was Clare’s companion who spoke, seeing Meredith there when she’d thought the room would be empty for the hour she wanted with Clare. Meredith smiled innocently up at her, imagining her eyes riveted to Clare’s exquisite backside in the tight black skirt as she let herself be drawn through the corridors to this parlor.

Leigh was one of Capaldi’s corps, one of her guardians, and she looked like a younger, slightly less wise version of her chief, severely beautiful and so competent. She wondered if Clare had already begun working the deeper magic on Leigh or if the sleek bodyguard was just sticking to the insidious femme web the maid had been weaving around her, light touches and moist admiration and infatuated sighs until the poor guard thought succulent Clare was in the palm of her hand.

Meredith smiled now as Leigh found herself caught on a nookie break by the girl who was the whole reason for her presence here. She smiled more as the guard grinned and brazened it out.

“I’m glad you noticed it,” she nodded to Clare after a wonderfully matter-of-fact bow to Meredith, striding over to the nearest window. “But the wires are designed to be invisible—I know there’d be a reading if this window weren’t—”

Clare laughed. Meredith enjoyed what it did to Leigh because she felt it a bit herself. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. I knew she’d be here.”

Leigh looked off-balance, not hearing the breathy damsel she’d been flirting with up to now, but turned on by the bad girl who’d apparently possessed the damsel.

“I told you I had something special to show you.”

Leigh turned to Meredith, asking without really knowing it for Meredith to do something and break the deepening spell, but Meredith just sat there. Leigh justified Capaldi’s choice of her by cocking a common-sense eyebrow at Clare: are you sure about this?

“Young Miss is completely at her ease when I’m around, no matter what I ‘m doing.

“Aren’t you, Miss?” Clare looked at Meredith, and Meredith let herself nod, slowly, half-unconsciously.

“For a while now, she’s found it soothing to watch me work—especially polishing the crystal. The crystal.” She watched Meredith blink, and Meredith was already feeling the little toink in her mind and her belly as the first trigger opened her. She smiled and nodded again, more slowly, more dreamily.

“It’s why she ‘decided’ to go braless today.” Meredith heard the playful stress and felt her own programming drooping her eyelids a bit in response. Her heart beat faster as she realized Leigh saw her respond. It was priming Leigh to understand what she was about to see. “Hmm. Crysssstal . . .

“She has a favorite piece, in fact. She finds it very soooothing.”

Clare walked to the sideboard and found the glass teardrop, a clear outer layer around a shimmering inner one of etched, milky mystery. Meredith could already see the hypnotic arabesques she’d been inveigled into finding the last time someone had made her gaze into it.

Clare turned to smile at her and then at Leigh, but Leigh couldn’t look away from Meredith as Meredith dazedly uncurled her legs, flashing them at the riveted guard as she sat upright, vulnerable, spellbound.

Meredith blinked, as though making a last effort to rouse herself. “. . . Clare?”

Clare was returning, holding the teardrop before her like an offering, her face radiating triumph over Meredith that made Meredith want to kneel to her on the spot. But it was hotter and sweeter to obey her instructions, and she let her eyes go wide and shallow as they shifted to the glass.

“The crystal,” Clare breathed, and Meredith’s lips tried to repeat it. She blinked again, trying to turn her eyes toward Leigh, but each time the pull of the crystal was too strong, and drew her back to stare and sigh.

“She’s nervous with me—”

“Shhh,” Clare said, with a soft command that made Meredith wet. “She’s fine. She’s very well-trained. Yessss. Yes.

“She’s already too deeply hypnotized by the soooothing crystal.”

Leigh gasped to hear it named—or to watch it put her ward’s mind to sleep before her eyes.

“Gaze into the crystal, little Miss.” Clare’s sultry witch-voice got inside Meredith.

“Gaze and sleep and hear only my voice.”

“Only . . . your . . . voice.” Meredith could look nowhere else. She was starting to see the intricate shapes on the inner teardrop, refracted through the lens the outer one made. The lines flowed and twisted and she saw lovers, curled on each other mouth to pussy forever, trapped in the depth of the glass.

“Yes. Only my voice. You will obey me now.”

Meredith no longer knew if she were following deeper commands or actually letting the pretty servant enslave her. “I will obey.”

“There.” Clare was suddenly casual, prancing off to set the crystal out of the way. “She’ll be a good little girl now, until I tell her to forget and wake her up.” She giggled sweetly.

“Unless I put some more neat new ideas into her head first.”

“Clare?” Leigh was still off-balance. “This is—really—”

“Oh, Leigh.” Meredith was staring blankly ahead, awaiting command, but she could hear Clare’s voice start to muffle, knew the maid was mock-pouting close by the guard now. “It’s hypnosis, duh. It’s not like I’ve imprisoned her soul in some mojo pebble or something. She gets off on this as much as I do.

“You’ll see that for yourself, in a minute.”

There was a soft, wet sound and Meredith heard them twist together in the kiss, Leigh’s strength and Clare’s softness, and heard Clare’s high moan as, perhaps, Leigh’s knee invaded her thighs.

“Mmmp. Oh. God. Leigh. Not yet.”

Leigh was panting, but subsided, and Meredith grew moister to contemplate Clare’s skill. She was playing Leigh like a lovely taut-bodied cello.

“We need to do this right. Let’s start with drinks.”

Meredith heard Leigh breathe in, almost felt the protest leak unspoken from her lips, vaguely envied her the look Clare must have stunned her with to silence her. This was the old playlet of the sentry and the chambermaid, grabbing ass in a quiet moment, with no time to waste . . .

But the daughter of the house sat hypnotized between them. Leigh was on completely alien ground now.

“OK—”

“No. Not you.” Clare paused, savoring it. “Stand.”

Meredith rose and stood still, staring ahead. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Undress.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Meredith stayed upright as she slipped her shorts down, swayed as she pulled the T-shirt over her head and let it fall, bent and high-stepped sinuously to get her panties down and off. At a gesture she stepped forward out of them, and then knelt to put her forehead on the carpet a handsbreadth from Clare’s patent-leather shoes. She saw her reflection blur in them.

“Well . . . fuck.” Leigh wasn’t hiding her excitement well. Even the short words vibrated.

Clare bent and tapped Meredith’s buttock, and Meredith raised it in invitation as another tap spread her thighs slightly.

“What did I tell you?” Meredith felt the maid’s fingertips near her pussy. “The girl is just dripping.

“Girl. Kneel up now.”

Meredith obeyed smoothly. “Yes, Mistress.” She let her voice go. She sounded sleepy and unbearably aroused, and was.

“Make us—what would you like?” Leigh must have stared. “Oh, whatever. Bourbon and soda. Two.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Meredith curled to her feet and stepped blankly past Leigh, feeling the woman’s stare warmer than the room’s air, and her nipples jutted proudly out. She let her mind clear of everything but the bar in front of her, getting the tumblers and the bottles. When she heard Clare coax Leigh to the sofa where she’d been sitting, a shiny new thought winked on in her mind. She found the little case, finger-small, gleaming next to the corkscrews, and emptied the powder into a glass.

She put a roll into her hips as she padded back across the room to them, and bent to set napkins and drinks before them, serving Leigh first. She was letting a cocktail-waitress smile start on her blank face when Clare smiled and reached up to tweak a nipple.

Meredith barely heard the muffled gong-sound of the tray as it fell from her hands. She knelt again, staring raptly up at Clare, who beamed down at her like a pet owner. On the other side of Clare, Leigh stared, and then knocked her drink back.

Meredith nodded, and Clare smiled.

Clare made small talk and Leigh stared. Meredith gazed adoringly at her Mistress.

Presently Meredith could see Leigh’s stare was a bit glassier. Clare had already noticed.

“Slavegirl, serve my guest. Show her what you can do.”

Slavegirl. It hit Meredith like a live wire, and her body convulsed without moving. She looked up at Leigh, on fire with the need to please her, and even as Leigh slipped further under the drug Meredith had dosed her with, she could see it. The slave-passion turned her on and made her nervous.

Meredith felt her tremble as she crawled between Leigh’s legs and reached for her tight waist to undo the slacks and pull them down. She wasn’t sure if Leigh was trying to stop her or help her but either way the sluggish movement let her slip them off the tall woman’s ass. She saw long tanned thighs and an achingly perfect abdomen trimmed with guilty-pleasure lace, incongruous and touching and very sexy, now that the bodyguard slacks were bunched at her knees.

She leaned forward to worry at the panties with her mouth, closing her eyes to savor the smell and taste of Leigh’s arousal and the feel of her firm body and the sound of her skin moving and her confused, rapid breaths.

“Just relax and enjoy her,” Clare’s voice said. Meredith nibbled and licked at Leigh’s delicate panties and teased the pussy they weren’t hiding. She heard slow, rhythmic skin sounds.

She felt Leigh’s breathing above her fall into the rhythm, and knew Clare had started to massage her temples.

“No . . . you won’t need a crystal, Leigh. Just look into my eyes and relax and let the slavegirl’s tongue take you away. Just keep looking into my eyes now . . . that’s right . . .”

Meredith had lost track of what she wanted to do, as though her own hypnotic programming had melted in the heat of Leigh’s cleft, but she knew she was as controlled as ever.

“Relax and let the slavegirl lick you.

“She’s paid for.”

The orgasm took Meredith by surprise and she stabbed her tongue into Leigh, her lips pushing the lace aside. She felt the guard’s thighs spasm and heard her gasp, and when Clare’s insistent murmur resumed it followed the broken tempo of Leigh’s need. Meredith felt Leigh’s fur rasp against her tongue just outside her velvet slit, and it made her crazy again. Only the hypnotic leash in her mind and the need to find and worship Leigh’s clit kept her from forgetting everything else.

She found herself at a slower pace, keeping the guard on a constant, rolling path of excitement as Clare hypnotized her. The pace controlled her, and she almost envied Leigh again, to feel adorable little Clare whispering her way into complete control.

Meredith knew that this was just opening the door, that when Clare had Leigh’s mind open and anesthetized, the main truth she would implant would be a need for Leigh to seek and submit to even more powerful conditioning. It thrilled her to serve. It thrilled her to know that she and Leigh would both leave here clothed and bright-eyed, and that neither one would remember how she’d danced on Clare’s strings.

As it thrilled her to realize that Clare, too, would forget what had happened until she was meant to remember, her tonguetip struck gold. Leigh’s clitoris had ventured from under its hood as though waking up to the orgasms around it, and Meredith took it captive. She felt Leigh shudder with the new pleasure, but she heard nothing but the panting.

Clare had told Leigh she would make no sound, and in the spell of Clare ‘s eyes there was no disobedience.

41.

Another day, another music lesson. Meredith’s ass sang Leslie’s hymn to her long after the hypnotic piano had faded from her mind.

She sat gingerly on the leather chair in the downstairs study they’d given Capaldi as an office. She felt immature in the shorts and T-shirt, but enjoyed it. She was no challenge to the security chief, not even trying to pretend to be what her mother was.

She wondered if Capaldi was oblivious to how she was favoring her bottom, or to the way her breasts moved softly behind the cotton. Capaldi sometimes made a cat seem like an open book.

Capaldi turned away from the sofa she’d been about to lead them to and accepted Meredith’s lead, sitting behind her desk. “I’m not even sure I should do this, but I’d rather see what’s there.

“Meredith, has your mother been acting a little odd lately?”

Meredith pictured her mother sitting before her computer. “Not really. Is there something in particular that’s worrying you?” She felt relaxed, and pleased with herself.

“There are some things she’s asked me to do—nothing improper, just odd. And she seems a little distracted.”

Meredith thought of sitting tranquilly with the cellphone, listening. “Those security checks she’s asked you to run?”

Capaldi didn’t blink, but skin near her eyes tightened. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“I understand.” Meredith tingled, recalling how submissive she’d felt saying exactly that to—whoever had called her cell and spoken to her. “But she’s trying to reassure herself that my abduction wasn’t something planned by people she trusted, inside the firm.”

“She told you that?”

Meredith thought about how she’d sat in her mother’s office last night, listening to the cellphone and watching her mother’s lips move soundlessly as her glazed eyes tracked something on the screen. “It was difficult for her. She doesn’t even want to think—about it.”

Capaldi looked at her thoughtfully. Meredith went on, as a new set of words slipped into place. “I think it’s the stress, finally. She’s accepting that I’m all right, and that my new cocooning here is keeping me safer than she’d hoped—and all the fear and guilt she was keeping down before is catching up with her.

“She’s a tough woman.” Meredith’s chest constricted, and for a panicked moment she didn’t know why. “She doesn’t know how to deal with being weak.”

Meredith visualized Leslie looking into her eyes and teasing her nipples while this had come through the headset. She remembered how wide Leslie’s eyes had been. Leslie hadn’t blinked even when the voice in the headset said “Prompt” and Meredith had repeated it and Leslie had dropped her hand and tapped Meredith’s clit, sealing the programming into her.

Capaldi was nodding.

“Anyway, thanks for running those checks on the personal trainers. Especially since we’ll only be choosing one today.”

“Quite all right. As it happens, all of them seem pretty clean—including the one that already works for your mother’s company, I ‘m happy to say.” She grinned and Meredith grinned back, much less sardonically.

I wonder what it’s like to see all that she’s seen. She’s not jaded, but it’s . . .

I wonder if she cries in her sleep. If I slept with her and she did, and I reached to hold her, would she nail me with some kind of reflex taekwondo before she even woke up?

Meredith blinked. Capaldi might have read the speculation, but she’d never given the slightest hint that she saw Meredith as anyone but her charge.

“They’ll be starting pretty soon,” Capaldi said.

They stood, and then Capaldi led her to the door. “Thank you for humoring me, Meredith.”

“It’s no problem, Capaldi. I feel more secure with someone who does ask. And I can’t tell you how good it feels to know someone’s watching out for my mother, too.”

Capaldi nodded. Meredith knew that if she didn’t have Leslie, and . . . everything else . . . she’d have fallen for Capaldi long since. For the best that she hadn’t—she likely would have driven the woman away, possibly even off the job entirely to avoid compromise.

Still . . .

Capaldi gave her yet another unreadable look, and then they traded smiles as she went back to her desk.

Meredith was almost running as she got back to her suite, and found Leslie already nude, with the two little piles of lycra on the bed before her. Meredith was pulling her shirt off and shimmying out of her shorts when Leslie put a hand on her flank and stilled her. She felt the cloth sliding down her skin as Leslie snapped her fingers again.

She blinked awake. “Did I do what I was supposed to?” She didn’t recall reporting her conversation to Leslie, but she knew that in the trance she had.

Leslie reached for the workout outfit, and they started dressing together. “Yes, Meredith. You did very well.” She paused, and stepped against Meredith, who dropped the clothing she’d just picked up. She closed her eyes and leaned on Leslie’s neck as Leslie’s palm caressed her bottom. “Still sore?”

Meredith moved her head against Leslie’s. “Feels wonderful. Anytime you touch it. Any way.”

Leslie stroked it once more, and then they started dressing. Meredith let go of her need to make love to Leslie as she recalled the shopping trip when they’d gotten these. Her mother had agreed that they should start some structured physical training, and then turned back to her telecommuting software tutorial again, and later that day she and Leslie had ridden the limousine out to another store.

They stood together and looked in the mirror, and suddenly she was fully aware of what they were wearing. High-necked, very tight workout bras, and very tight, high-cut briefs. Both of them were clearly excited, but Meredith almost didn’t see the telltale bumps. She was looking at the colors.

Black and yellow spandex. Supple wasps.

She was a spandex girl.

Something kept her upright and calm, and she knew it was no will of her own.

Leslie took her hand, and when Meredith clung to it, she let her, leading Meredith down to the gym. Meredith didn’t know why she was feeling this, or even whether she wanted to masturbate or run away. But the doubt was fading, as she felt the colors tight and smooth on her skin, shaping her and displaying her. Marking her.

The gym was spacious and quiet, as she remembered. She stood for a moment, until Leslie took her other hand too.

“We should stretch. That way we’ll be ready when the first one comes.”

They giggled a bit and groaned excessively when they started, but soon they were just breathing quietly and watching each other. Presently, they were foot-to-foot and gripping hands, feeling the strain in each other’s legs as they made diamond shape on the floor, watching each other’s faces for any sign it was too much.

At the wall, Meredith was amazed at how high she could raise her leg with Leslie pushing under it. When they faced each other, panting in synch, the pain a set of warm stripes in her thigh and elsewhere, she inhaled. It seemed to draw Leslie to her. They kissed, and pressed together.

“. . . Um.”

Meredith started but Leslie stayed still, easing back and letting her leg down slowly. They looked at the woman who’d come into the gym, a tall redhead with freckled skin that was blushing now in a way that utterly charmed Meredith.

Leslie didn’t let go of her, and it excited her to be possessed that way in front of someone.

The redhead swallowed. “Sorry. I’m Kia Riegert. I was—I work at the fitness center at your mother’s building, and she sent word you needed a trainer, and she seemed to—”

“Do we make you uncomfortable?” Leslie asked.

Kia blinked and her blush deepened. Meredith saw the possible answers flowing through her mind, none of them possible at all, not with the boss’s daughter and her boss’s daughter’s girlfriend.

Meredith remembered she was Frances’ daughter, and responsible for Kia as well as everyone else. She disengaged from Leslie and stepped toward Kia, smiling. She saw Kia try to summon a smile in return, and it made her sick to see the fear, and to know she was the reason.

Inside, she felt free to do something about this. The compulsion she and Leslie were obeying required her only to reject this woman, not make her miserable.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Nothing is your fault, Kia.”

Kia rallied. “I’m sorry. I felt like I was intruding. I’ve worked with couples before, but—”

“Are you worried we’d want you to play, too?”

Kia looked her in the eye, and Meredith almost wished she were the one they were to choose. Before Kia could say anything, she said, “Please don’t worry. The choice is ours, and we won’t be damning anyone—we’ll just accept one, and almost-accept everyone else. If we don’t choose you, it won’t cause you any trouble, with me or with my mother or anyone else.

“Besides, I expect they need you back at the main office as much as they can get you.” She held out her hand.

Kia took it and they shook. “If you do get any grief, of any kind, call me.

“I guess a hug would not be in order, would it?”

Kia’s eyes flickered and then she laughed. Meredith joined her—and then stopped when Kia did hold her. “Thanks.” She looked past Meredith and then looked quickly away, picking up her gym bag and striding out. She looked back once and said “Thanks,” and was gone.

Meredith turned to see Leslie standing with her hands loose and eyes narrowed, and realized the Taut Predatory Lesbian thing she’d been doing to stare down poor Kia.

She looked at Leslie. Any grief. She tried to summon her boss’ s-daughter duty, but it was all she could do not to beg to be the predator’s prey herself. She tried.

“Oh, you’re awful,” she managed. Leslie smiled and relaxed.

“I am,” she said.

Then she straightened and looked at the door, her eyes wide and docile. Meredith turned—and forgot Leslie’s eyes as she found herself coming to attention.

The next candidate walked over to them and came quite close, looking them up and down.

On her slicked-back blonde hair rested a pair of black wraparound sunglasses. Her top and shorts covered more than the girls’ but did not conceal how very lovely she was, or how strong.

Their spandex was black and yellow.

“My name,” the woman said, “is Ms Davitz.

“You will address me as ‘Instructress.’”

“Yes, Instructress,” chorused Meredith and Leslie.

42.

They stayed at attention as the Instructress inspected them. Meredith heard Leslie gasp as the woman stroked her, and knew from the needy whine that followed that her lover hadn’t broken position even so.

The Instructress’ hands were cool on Meredith when her turn came, and she shuddered. She felt a light pat on her butt, sweet on the sensitive flesh, and somehow knew to bend at the waist, letting the woman see and feel as she flexed. More pats, and she was moving like a horse to dressage signals, stretching and bending. A firm hand on her hip and she was erect again, looking forward.

The Instructress stood in front of them, expressionless but still clearly unimpressed.

“Soft. Weak.”

She stared suddenly into Meredith’s eyes and Meredith almost fell backward—but instead she seemed to hold herself up on it, barely aware of rising to tiptoe until she found her balance.

“Do you expect me to make you hard and strong?”

Meredith opened her mouth. “No, Instructress.” She heard something from Leslie next to her, a groan of disappointment or a dazed agreement. It didn’t occur to her to look.

“Well. Not too stupid to realize the obvious, at least, and a mind that can accept basic truths can be indoctrinated to produce an adequate bodytype.” She stepped closer again, between them, and palmed Meredith’ s belly—Leslie gasped again, handled that way too.

They stayed at attention, and Meredith’s crotch was warm.

“Left to yourselves here, you would just drift into a pile of discarded clothing and forgotten freeweights and fuck each other senseless. You haven’t the discipline to be strong.

“Have you?”

Her voice gripped Meredith as tightly as her possessory hand was loose.

“No, Instructress,” she whispered, and thought she heard Leslie, next to her, do the same.

“You will never be strong, but when you give me control I will train you to be supple, and to endure. When a strong woman conquers you, you will be graceful when you yield, and then you will be able to give her as long a ride as she wants.

“Which is all you want, isn’t it?”

To be a well-trained slave. Meredith felt her mouth open again.

“Don’t—” Leslie’s voice almost seemed to waken her. “—talk about her like . . . that.”

The hand on Meredith’s stomach didn’t twitch. Meredith made herself turn and look at Leslie, past the Instructress’ profile. She saw the Instructress’ lips sliding up into a lupine smile, but focused on her lover, who blinked with the effort of turning to her. She smiled and saw Leslie smile back.

Then her stomach was cool in the gym air and the warm strong hand was by her face, a fingertip on her jaw turning her forward again. She didn ‘t see whether Leslie looked away. She didn’t resist.

Leslie? I’m s-s-sorry . . . and I’m so so hot . . .

“Some girls just drift.” Meredith purred as she felt the hand own her belly again. “They need discipline to act when their own wills have collapsed.

“Others . . .

“Others need discipline to behave.” Meredith shivered, excited and a little worried at what the Instructress would do to Leslie to make her behave.

There was pressure and direction against her belly now, and it was easier for Meredith to obey what she sensed she was to do than it was to think. The Instructress had swiveled her and Leslie halfway toward each other, not quite facing.

“The best discipline is hypnosis,” the Instructress said. Leslie’s eyes widened and sought Meredith’s, but both girls stayed still, with their hands by their sides. “I am a qualified hypnotist, but with material like you I hardly need to be.

“Look at me.”

Leslie’s eyes snapped toward hers, widening more before they started to glaze.

She can’t be doing that. Leslie’s angry at her—for me!—and I think she’s scared. She’s as far from trusting and relaxed as she could get and she can’t possibly be . . .

. . . helplessly letting the Instructress take control of her mind . . .

Meredith watched.

“Look only at me. Listen only to me. Think only of me.”

Leslie’s mouth worked soundlessly and then slowed to hang slightly open. She seemed to be tensing to resist but as she fell deeper into the Instructress’ eyes, deeper under her spell, the tension was turning into obedient stillness. She looked fit and ready but so defenseless now in the black and yellow spandex, a weaker and more nearly naked shadow of the woman hypnotizing her.

Meredith thought of seeing Leslie tranced before, getting wet to see her lover’s mind put to sleep by a glance at a spiral, once in a crowded store and before that . . .

She forgot in the rush of seeing Leslie lose her will again. Leslie gaped slackly at the Instructress, her eyes drained of life. The Instructress placed her hand almost affectionately on Leslie’s neck and Leslie’s head drooped over onto it.

Meredith realized that each of them was only on her feet by grace of the Instructress’ touch.

She also realized that the Instructress hadn’t said another word to Leslie. Had just stared her girlfriend into mindless submission. Her pussy was waking up, and starting to go mad.

The Instructress pulled her hand away and Leslie’s head flopped back. Her eyes rolled back and closed, and she went to sleep on her feet. Her arms swung loosely against her for a moment. Then she was still, like a puppet hung by her strings.

The Instructress turned back at Meredith and smiled, her eyes glittering.

Meredith shivered, and her need was too deep for words, which saved her from begging. Instead she sank to her knees, sliding down the hand that felt her breast and face as she went down. She kept her gaze on the Instructress’ face, no matter the seductive hazard of becoming hypnotized into another sleeping marionette like Leslie.

She did that because she knew, with a certainty that lived between her thighs, that if she dropped her eyes she’d see only the Instructress’ spandex crotch, and then there would be nowhere else for her to be.

To think of it was to want it. Her own crotch was damp now. But there was something hurtful in the sick joy of seeing Leslie oblivious that way that held Meredith back. It was just—just—too much to degrade herself like that, instead of keeping futile watch while her lover slept an imposed sleep.

Of course, if the Instructress made it a command . . .

The Instructress nodded, and the downward motion was enough to push Meredith’s mind to the exquisite thighs. So treacherous to do it while Leslie was stunned witless by their Instructress’ irresistible willpower. So weak and submissive and whorish of her. So . . .

She was pitching forward to present her lips to the Instructress’ lower ones when the Instructress laughed.

“Discipline.”

She froze, and then settled back onto her heels as though set there by the Instructress’ hand.

“You are so easy. Such a pleasure to control.

“While your bedmate . . .” The Instructress’ sigh was pleasantly false. Then her tone shifted. “Wake, slut.”

Leslie stiffened, her head coming down, her face blank, and Meredith nearly wept to see how empty she looked. Then she focused on the Instructress, and everything aligned on the dominant trainer, as though she’d spent years conditioning Leslie.

They just met and Leslie’s—hers, now. I will be. God . . .

“What is your limit on that machine?”

Leslie turned obediently to look where the Instructress pointed, then turned back and resumed attention, reciting the number.

“You will add ten and wait.”

“Yes, Instructress.” Leslie stepped to the machine and shifted the pin, then stood at attention again. Meredith shivered to see her obey so smoothly and calmly.

“Mount it and take hold.”

“Yes, Instructress.” Leslie swung herself gracefully onto the seat and reached up, setting her arms against the pads and staring forward again.

The Instructress left her there and Leslie waited, blank, emplaced and ready and without any will to go further. Meredith hated to see it and couldn’t look away. The Instructress let the silence fill the gym.

“Begin.”

Leslie flexed and began swinging the pads inward, rhythmically. Meredith felt the rhythm in her thighs and started to fixate on the constant back-and-forth. Reflexively she tried to resist but looking elsewhere she saw only the same beat in Leslie’s muscles, her chest in its spandex, her lips opening and closing.

Only her eyes were still, empty, hypnotized. Meredith started falling into them.

The Instructress took Meredith’s chin again and she was almost glad to be turned away.

“No. You will accept your discipline only from me.”

“Only from you,” Meredith murmured, staring into the eyes of the spandex girl who controlled her. The room started to fade around her. Even the seductively-even clank of the weight machine behind her and the labored, submissive breathing audible over it were less important than looking into the Instructress’ eyes.

“Always feed the hand that bites you.” Even the eyes faded.

Meredith awoke with her hands on cool metal. She was at the head of a weight bench, and Leslie was at attention next to it. Her skin was filmed with sweat and her hair was damp, but she only breathed deeply and stared ahead. When the Instructress told her to lie down Leslie seemed too deep in her submission even to answer, but she obeyed promptly.

Meredith looked down at her past the bar, but Leslie looked up right through her.

“Begin.”

Leslie moved her shoulders a bit and then reached up, pressing the bar up and forward, and Meredith was holding it underneath before she even knew she was spotting. There was a moment, like a flash behind her eyes, as she realized that it was too heavy, much too heavy. Neither of them alone could hold it—she realized she had only idle curiosity about how much weight was on it, but she had no idea. She couldn’t find the will to look at either side of it, or at anything but Leslie’s lovely, blank face below her.

The moment passed.

“Do you feel sleepy, Meredith?”

She shuddered. The Instructress hadn’t called them by name, and Meredith had been lulled into thinking they deserved none before her. She saw it reach Leslie, too, as her lover’s eyes blinked and focused, first on the bar she was holding up, then on Meredith.

There wasn’t even a plea. Leslie just watched her.

The more she knew that, the closer Meredith drifted toward sleep. She could picture it, relaxing her legs and melting to the floor, relaxing her hands from the cool bar.

Leslie’s scream before it crushed her chest wouldn’t wake Meredith. The noise of the barbell crashing to the floor afterward might, when it was far too late.

She was falling asleep. She fought it, trying to wonder why neither of them just eased the thing back into the rests.

The Instructress spoke. “Hypnotize her.”

Leslie’s eyes glazed over instantly. “Yes, Instructress.

“Sleep, Meredith. Sleep.” Leslie was starting to pant with the effort of keeping the bar from coming down on her, but she seemed unaware of it now. “My eyes are warm and soft for you. Fall into them and sleep.”

Meredith was shaking.

“You must obey, Meredith. Sleep and obey. Relax and let go.”

Meredith opened her mouth. I can’t! Please! She looked at Leslie’s breasts, shaped by the spandex, remembering their taste and warmth and trying to stay awake by making herself imagine what would happen when the bar came down.

Leslie saw her do that, but there was something un-Leslie about it that had nothing to do with knowing a lover. She smiled, coldly. “You remember her indoctrination. It controls you now.”

Meredith’s head spun. She was in an airliner, a miniskirted flight attendant. Someone was resisting special drinks service and her resistance had to be destroyed. She was feeling another woman’s will collapse and watching her submit. The woman had to obey. They all had to obey.

Leslie knew the bar was slipping from drowsy hands, but she looked past it, seeing nothing but Meredith’s crumbling will. Leslie had to obey.

Meredith looked into Leslie’s eyes and saw only triumph at her submission.

She shared it and repeated, “It controls me now.”

She went to sleep.

43.

Meredith didn’t know why she was shaking or why Leslie felt so good, holding her so tightly. She saw the Instructress smiling at them as they stood together.

She accepted that it had been the hypnosis, and that was all she needed to know.

She looked at the weight bench and the almost decoratively huge load of weights on each end of the barbell. She couldn’t recall slipping them on for a joke but she didn’t know why else they would be on it. Neither she nor—

She looked at the Instructress, who tracked her gaze and smiled. Yes. She could probably handle it. She could probably do reps with that metal, over and over. The lights would ripple and flash on her contours as they shifted, back and forth. Over and over. Strength that could hold Meredith still or force her legs irresistibly apart—pulsing, making more of itself.

Meredith let the image mesmerize her.

The Instructress smiled more intently and now it was her eyes that mesmerized Meredith. Meredith felt her shoulders slump as she waited for the Instructress to put her back into trance for more training. She shuddered—even the weight bench.

Her thighs tightened, as she wondered whether the Instructress’ strength was so deep in her mind now that the woman could just will her to fall into trance, without speaking a word.

She heard Leslie standing next to her, docile, waiting placidly to see if their Instructress was going to put one of them to sleep.

“I will indoctrinate you now,” she said, and Meredith felt herself open to it, eyes and mouth, even her thighs loosening. “If you were worthy of real freedom and strength, I would teach you how to build and use your strength.

“But you are slaves, soft and weak. Pillows that lick.

“So I will help you embrace your weakness.” She smiled at them, and turned to take a small mesh sack from her gym bag. She held it out to them.

Seeing what was in it, they sank to their knees, weak-legged with awe and damp with submissive arousal.

Magic hypno marbles. Dozens of them. The Instructress held them in one hand.

Meredith managed to meet the woman’s stare, realizing how easily she could bend both of them into knots, tear them apart. Then she bowed her head, to the mercy that had kept that woman’s touch gentle on her.

When she looked up, the Instructress tossed the sack to the carpet before them. Meredith and Leslie flinched, hardly aware that the floor hadn’t broken or sounded loudly as it hit.

The Instructress stared at Leslie until Leslie started to lean over, wide-eyed. “Take one out of the sack.”

Leslie jerked out of the stare-trance and gaped at the menacing little cluster of mesh and glass. “B-b-but—”

“Now.”

Leslie gave her an imploring look but was already going forward on hands and knees. Her hips almost distracted Meredith from the difficulty of what her girlfriend must do now. When she knelt over the bag and delicately slipped the drawstring loose, she moaned to see the magic hypno marbles directly. She glanced up once but the force of the command bowed her head, and now Meredith could share the other force—the smoldering need to obey that was driving Leslie to try what she knew was beyond her feeble strength.

She reached her hands in and grasped, and with a frantic, almost disbelieving cry she lifted one out using both hands, her arms shaking spastically. She held it up to the Instructress, panting.

The Instructress nodded and Leslie almost fell over in her joy. But the stronger woman’s face darkened.

“You are forbidden to drop it.”

She left Leslie there, as Leslie’s arms shook and lowered and she whined and huffed and tried to keep them up. The magic hypno marble pressed down, and Leslie bowed to it at last, as it fastened her cupped hands to the floor.

Meredith saw her heaving flanks gleaming with sweat, her trembling hips. She wanted to pull Leslie’s yellow and black bikini down and tongue her.

“You cannot hold them.” The Instructress was oddly gentle. “Only I can hold them through you. When you are in my trance, when your mind can no longer think but only obey, then you can lift them and hold them forever.”

Leslie looked up, crying, at the promise. “Please. Yes. I must.”

“Then sleep!” Leslie stiffened, dropped into trance again instantly. It was so beautiful to see her so responsive to the Instructress, so ready to surrender her mind.

Again without words, the Instructress operated Leslie liked a puppet. Meredith watched her lover rise to her feet and then turn, unblinking and almost fanatical. She stood so stiffly that she quivered like a bowstring. The Instructress narrowed her eyes and suddenly Leslie swung her head to look at her, without moving the rest of her body. They glared at each other and then Leslie spun back to facing ahead of her. She stooped to take the sack in her hands.

She lifted it and stood again, holding it in outstretched arms, motionless and staring over it.

Meredith almost stopped breathing.

She belongs. She obeys.

The Instructress pointed at Meredith. Leslie pivoted her whole body, swinging the sack of magic hypno marbles, and walked over to Meredith.

She held them over Meredith’s head.

Meredith inhaled her lover’s pussy and looked up at her burden. If the Instructress sent another silent command to Leslie’s enslaved mind, Leslie would let it fall. Meredith felt the terror cold inside her.

If the Instructress freed Leslie’s mind from her power-trance, she couldn’t hold it, and it would crush Meredith just as horribly, but Leslie would see it happen, by her own hand.

Meredith stayed on her knees and bowed low to the Instructress. Her need to accept what the Instructress willed was too deep for her to know which she wanted it to be.

Leslie stepped away, and stiffly lay on the weight bench again, now keeping the immense weight balanced above her.

“Go to her.” The Instructress watched Meredith stand and walk unsteadily to halt beside Leslie, afraid to touch her and disturb the sack, drawn and repelled by her mad empty stare at the ceiling.

She turned to the Instructress. “Please. Make me like she is. Let me take it from her.”

“Your first command may be to drop it onto her.”

Meredith felt deja vu then, but she didn’t remember being this turned on by whatever it was. Even the very close danger to Leslie now didn’t cut the arousal—in fact, Meredith was heating up with the awareness that being helpless to protect Leslie was part of what was exciting her now.

She stared at the woman, her mind and body so pathetically weaker, and repeated Leslie’s prayer. “Please. Yes. I must.”

The Instructress didn’t need to command her to sleep. Her eyes filled Meredith’s mind.

Everything faded . . .

She opened her eyes. She was lying on the weight bench now. Leslie stood on her right, hands palm-up and pointed out to either side as though to say she didn’t know, smiling down a little foolishly. The Instructress stood on her left, and her smile at Meredith was scary.

“We figured it out,” Leslie said. “The Instructress realized that if she left a little of my mind working, I could still lift one little MHM in each hand. I can’t think about much else, though.

“But not-thinking is nice.”

Meredith squirmed to hear that. She considered being with Leslie, up against her, both of them not-thinking, pussy to pussy and too blank to rub.

“Enough of that,” said the Instructress, and Leslie’s face went blank again. She looked up, across Meredith, and swung her hands together, cupped before the Instructress. The Instructress nodded and reached over to take one. Meredith stared, to see the MHM held between fingertips, and forgot in her awe to be afraid of it dropping.

Then Leslie, with robotic slowness, lowered her other hand to rest on Meredith’s abdomen. With the strength of her hypnotist’s spell, she took the magic hypno marble in her own fingers and then deposited it precisely in Meredith’s navel.

Meredith flinched and found her way to deal with the weight, already having a hard time breathing.

“You have been prepared,” the Instructress said. “If you are obedient, you will be able to hold it up and breathe.” She walked out of Meredith ‘s view.

Meredith felt a cool finger on her pussy, but then her need to obey drew her eyes forward, to look up at the ceiling.

Everything faded . . .

She opened her eyes to see the Instructress. She didn’t look but she could see, just to the side, her own reflection in the mirror, stiff and straight and expressionless. A robot between commands, the lycra at her crotch too dark to show the moisture there.

She was holding the entire sack of magic hypno marbles, and it weighed nothing.

She was standing by the weight bench, and without anything more she knew it was the Instructress’ will that she look down. She saw Leslie limp on the bench, her face as blank as Meredith’s but her eyes wide and darting between the other two women.

Leslie started up at her. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t.

“I love you!”

Meredith obeyed the trigger instantly. The orgasm started as quickly, faint and deep in Meredith’s womb, growing with each millimeter as she lowered her arms to settle the magic hypno marbles onto Leslie’s slim, smooth belly. It was soft under her lover’s ribs, and undulating so prettily now.

“Pleeeeasssse . . .” It faded out, and Meredith came erect again, looking down as Leslie’s struggle grew weaker, pinned under the terrible weight that Meredith’s trance had let her hold. Weaklings couldn’t handle MHMs without complete obedience.

Meredith didn’t bother to think about how Leslie might have become disobedient. She still couldn’t think.

Not-thinking was nice.

It was so unbearably fucking nice that only the trance, the same one that gave her the power to lift magic hypno marbles, gave her the strength to stay on her feet and not tumble to the floor in a screaming orgasm.

Oh. It was obedience that held her upright.

Then there was something new for her to obey. It was the Instructress’ will that she come, hard.

The tension left her and she melted, the room spinning and blurring in the blaze of the pleasure. She felt something against her shoulder, Leslie’s hand on her like a caress as Leslie writhed in her own darker spasm.

Meredith fell away from it into the hot darkness.

Everything faded . . .

She brushed against Leslie as they trailed after Ms Davitz, who led them back to the shower. Even feeling each other slide on the sweat of the workout didn’t distract her from her almost trance-like fixation on the Instructress’ body, and a quick glance at Leslie showed her blushing with the same obsession. She realized she probably had slipped into a trance, watching the woman move.

Well, I hope I remember all the workout tips she must have given me, like good posthypnotic suggestions.

As they all stripped, Meredith found it impossible to resist, and walked over to where Ms Davitz was straightening after setting her bottoms on the shelf. The Instructress just smiled as Meredith sank to her knees and gazed up at her. She tore her eyes from the Instructress and turned to Leslie, who was slowly walking toward them, looking bewildered and excited.

“We must worship her,” Meredith rasped, and Leslie nodded vaguely before they both looked again at the Instructress.

They knelt on opposite sides and began licking the sweat from her, and it was sweet and intense. As Meredith kissed and slurped at the Instructress’ thighs, she put a hand between her own, enjoying how soft and easily parted hers were, how strong and firm the one she was worshipping.

A stronger, more irresistible woman-scent snared her and she followed it blindly, licking her way across the thigh and finding the Instructress’ fragrant, smooth pussy luxuriant before her eyes. She leaned in and kissed it, urgently sucking and stabbing with her tongue until the muscles flexed and honey bathed her face.

She came more awake in the shower, realizing she was alone in it with Leslie. Leslie was standing in the spray looking lost, and Meredith held her until she, too, seemed to wake.

Meredith remembered the rather domineering way Ms Davitz had taken control, but she was aroused even now at how eagerly she’d submitted to it, and she felt serenely sure that Leslie was equally—tamed.

“I don’t think we need to see any of the others,” she said, smoothing Leslie’s hair under the shower. “Do you?”

Her knees weakened to see Leslie’s eyes go blank, and she felt her lover’s arms go hard around her.

“She is the only one,” Leslie intoned.

Meredith stared back at her, deep in it and still plunging, driving her hips against Leslie’s. “Yes. Only she must train us.” The control was on her soul like a harness of quivering leather, and the heat of her lover’s pussy against hers was only a faint echo . . .

Leslie’s eyes rolled back as she moaned. “She must. She will—condition us!”

They were caught by then. They writhed together, no longer able to make words or think them.

As they came, together, Meredith saw only the Instructress inside her eyelids. She didn’t know what Leslie saw.

She didn’t think about Leslie at all.

Not-thinking was so . . . unbearably . . . fucking . . . nice . . .

44.

Meredith walked into her mother’s office, the business suit feeling pleasantly tight but odd after a couple of weeks of lounging around the estate with only light clothes, or none at all, or the delicious feel of the training spandex. She wished Leslie were with her, but she had a comfortably blank certainty that Leslie would be diverting herself with Clare. And there was a new, older maid that Clare herself seemed to have bewitched . . .

Meredith didn’t bother to wonder why she didn’t feel envious.

Right now, she felt like a spy in a rather uptight world, and teased herself with the image of stripping in public. As the limousine had pulled into the business district, she’d idly considered undressing on the back seat, to step out onto the sidewalk in front of her mother’s building in nothing but heels, hose and tasteful jewelry. She wondered how far she’d have gotten, strutting in the cool air, before someone covered her up and called her mother upstairs. She wondered if the first one to grab her might not know whose daughter she was, just a nude lewd girl in a weird headspace that would make her fun to play with.

Meredith licked her lips. Mmm. Kidnapped again, and this time carried off to be ravished. She thought about a very butch cab driver, how the worn vinyl would feel under her ass. Whether her abductress would be able to wait until she got somewhere before she turned on Meredith, and found out how wet and soft and yielding a captive she’d taken.

Frances looked up from her desk. “Hungry?”

Meredith licked her lips again, trying to find a way in that daydream for her mother to see her. “Yes, actually. Just happy that you’re back in the saddle, and that I need to come out here to the nerve center to have lunch with you, again.” Maybe the cabbie would rent Meredith to a private porn channel on local-access cable and make sure a flyer got to Frances with her daughter’s showtimes.

“I guess I am, too.” Her mother was, of course, oblivious to the daydream, and it made it more deceitful, hotter.

Stop, her mind told her, but it was a very languid order, and the inner voice sounded amused.

Meredith drifted to the other track she’d followed since the day started and she’d said goodbye to Leslie. When she wasn’t dreaming of becoming a decoration or a toy, she’d been pleasantly prodded by compulsions with an almost familiar feel. When she obeyed them—and she always, always obeyed them—the buzz rewarded her intensely.

“Keeping busy?” Frances asked, pulling papers together but looking up at Meredith’s neck. Meredith realized the headset was still draped there, and smiled as she unclipped the cellphone from her skirt. “Or just going on with Leslie?” She smiled, even now anxious that nothing she said about Leslie carry an edge.

Meredith took the headset and wrapped its cord, reflecting that she had no idea whose voice had been in her ear all the way in from the estate. She’d listened more than she’d spoken, and her hand had been up her skirt. “Oh yes. Amazing how much there is to talk about even when I’m with her all that time.”

“You seem to be keeping each other honest in the gym, anyway.” Frances was sifting the papers and putting some into her portfolio. Meredith wondered if she were going to bring them to lunch, and realized that she might have wanted to protest that, before. “You certainly seem to be getting full service from Ms Davitz.”

She looked up. “Though I have to say I was expecting you both to be growing more . . . Amazonian . . . not that I’m sorry you’re not, Meredith. Is it making you any stronger?”

I will never be strong. I will be taught to be supple and to endure. “We set up a fitness plan with Ms Davitz once she determined our needs. We’re not going to go for strength training until after we’ve done some basic fitness.

“Leslie and I need a lot of conditioning.”

Meredith returned her mother’s smile and then felt an internal prod. Her cleft spasmed efficiently, and she was already responding, going around the desk as she spoke.

“By the way, Mom—are you still focusing on the software as you need to?”

Frances had started to look at her quizzically, wondering why she was coming so close, but then she blinked and swayed, settling back to the chair and looking at Meredith in confusion. The portfolio thumped to the desk, and it blew a loose paper to flutter off the far end. Neither of them reacted.

Blinking again, Frances said in a subdued voice, “I need to call up the program,” and turned to the computer. Meredith smiled and moved behind her, keeping her eyes away from the screen as the swirling colors replaced text. She looked down at her mother’s head and put her hands to it, gently massaging Frances’ temples as Frances slumped in the chair, sounding half-asleep as she breathed. She saw her mother’s hand moving slowly to her lap.

“Everything’s fine, Mother. Just fine. Anything odd you’ve been feeling is just the strain of the abduction catching up with you. Any questions you have are things you can safely discuss with me, or with someone very special you trust.”

“Something’s . . . wrong,” her mother whispered.

Meredith felt the worry appear briefly, but the cellphone voice she didn’t remember blotted it from her head and replaced it with what she must do. She slid her fingertips to her mother’s jawline and stroked. Frances sighed and leaned her head back against Meredith’s belly, without looking away from the screen.

“What, Mom? What do you think is wrong?”

“My daughter was almost taken from me forever,” Frances whispered. “And I’m . . . so preoccupied . . . I’m weak when she needs me to be strong.

“I can’t fail her again.” Meredith heard the pain, but felt nothing more than a twitch inside.

Meredith waited for tears to warm her hands, but felt none. She leaned down and kissed her mother’s hair, pressing gently until she felt the warmth of the scalp against her lips, and felt her mother settle.

She kept stroking. “Just relax and focus on the screen, Mom. You have nothing to feel bad about. You focused before, when I needed you to, and then you took some time off, as I am.

“I need you to focus, now.”

“Focus on what?” Frances’ whisper was faint and pleading.

Meredith stopped stroking and leaned further down, hugging her mother’s shoulders and kissing her cheek. “Hypothetically,” Meredith said softly, and Francis straightened more attentively.

“Hypothetically. Yes. I understand.”

“Good. Consider this: your daughter bound for shipment to a foreign buyer but not yet put into trance, staring at the cash paid for her but no longer able to recognize what it is. No longer able to count that high.” Meredith didn’t know why she could keep her voice so calm and soothing, or what kept her from reaching one hand under her skirt and the other under—

“Now, decide: would you have invited the buyer to sample her, or insist that she be sold unopened? And if you allowed sampling, would you have trained her first, or just let her be tasted raw?”

Meredith listened to her mother’s breathing accelerate, and wondered how the other woman would respond—that was a complex question, actually several. It didn’t occur to her to criticize it—she’d spoken the words as they appeared in her mind, as she must, and she barely needed the pussy-buzz she’d felt to know she’d performed well. But it was a lot to ask someone.

“Buyer.” Frances seemed to have stalled on it. “No . . . I can’t. My baby. No.”

Meredith listened to the words, mildly astonished to be feeling something as she heard them, but all her mind took away from it was that whoever had programmed her to ask the question was less interested in the answer than in whether Frances could formulate one.

Yet.

Leaning down, she did see tears starting in her mother’s eyes. Gently, she wiped them, and then started massaging Frances’ temples and repeating “Relax, now” until the breathing slowed again.

“Back where you were, now.”

“Back where I was.”

“No longer remembering anything hypothetical, as usual?”

“No longer remembering. Yes. I understand.”

“Good.” She kissed her mother again. “Close your eyes.” When Frances obeyed, Meredith reached for the mouse and clicked the program off, then leaned back. She stepped away to collect the papers that had blown off the desk.

“Mom? Earth calling Mom?”

“Oh.” Frances smiled at her, blinking. “Getting more preoccupied lately.”

“Is it the software, Mom?”

“Oh, no, dear! That program’s a lifesaver. That alone was worth that education you got.” Frances’ smile was a little dazed, but genuine. She checked the portfolio, and they left the office, hearing Frances’ secretary calling for the car.

As they rode to the restaurant, Frances looked apprehensively at her. “Meredith, I know we planned to have lunch alone, just us two, but there ‘s someone I’d like you to meet, and—”

Meredith grinned. “Mmm. Someone special? Do I know him?”

She smiled to see how Frances’ eyes widened, and shone with confusion for a moment. “N-no, not like that. It’s a friend. Someone that I met that I’ve been getting to know. She was a friend of Tina’s—Aunt Christina’s.”

Meredith let her face fall into serious lines. She thought about kneeling naked in the Gossamer dressing room, going down on Aunt Christina for fifty dollars she paid someone else—a few minutes before she was run down by a bus. Meredith wondered whether Aunt Christina had told anyone else about using Frances Stevens’ daughter as a whore, during those few minutes. They weren’t likely to have told Frances, or she’d have said something—but what might they do or say, asked to share a table with Tina’s last fuck, and a prostitute too?

“Oh, honey.” Again, her mother misread her silence. “I’m sorry to remind you of that.”

“It’s all right, Mom. I was just thinking.” Meredith kept smiling to reassure her. She thought about being called a whore in front of her mother, and couldn’t stop smiling, even as they pulled up to the restaurant.

They’d booked a private room, and the maitre d’ led them there. “Your guest arrived a short while before, Ms Stevens.” Meredith felt a surge of excitement to hear that, but as they walked no one noticed.

The door was opened and Meredith followed her mother in. “You haven’t met my daughter, Meredith.”

She lost the rest of it and didn’t notice, seeing who it was. Something familiarly alien throbbed through her, a deep note that left her head ringing hollowly and stayed in her clitoris to vibrate.

This had happened before, and she’d been told not to remember. She’d obeyed and that was good. She was obeying a command to be still, and that felt even better than crying out and falling to her knees. She belonged on her knees, now.

She didn’t know who the woman was, but Meredith wanted to be hers.

She knew how her voice would sound, as though she’d heard it before, as though her mind had been soaking in it during a long lulling limousine ride she’d writhed in before forgetting.

She wanted to be naked and panting and begging. But she knew it was a deeper, more precious worship to wait, not to show it unless she was told, commanded to submit to it.

She prayed for that signal. Divine Mistress—let a slavegirl be Yours! Please! Please!

More than anything, she knew that everything would be all right. It was under control. She was under control, and soon all else would follow.

“Meredith, this is a new friend of mine.

“Alice Holloway.”

TO BE CONTINUED