The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

0.

The night was hot and humid and still, and the drumming rose out of it without anything stirring in the long, low stucco buildings near the beach.

Only when the beat was a strident, hammering demand did the women begin to emerge, walking slowly toward the trees behind the compound. They were the last ones left in the compound, the strongest-willed, on this third night of the music, but they had never known the music, only the strange hot dreams and the dazed wonder in the morning at where their friends had gone. If they remembered them.

Their hands were raised before them now and their eyes were wide and empty, mindless and clear as the moonlight they reflected. Their bodies gleamed nude in that moonlight, dewy with the island’s damp heat and sometimes each other’s, both forgotten in the call of the drums that pounded through them.

Each wore a collar.

The drums, as if sensing that the women had surrendered to them, drawn out of sleep without waking, grew louder and more insistent, drowning out the moans and the panting as the women’s dreamlike excitement broke their silence.

A sharp, higher note crept in, flutes and pipes with a bright disregard for sanity. The new sound maddened the women without freeing them from the bondage of the drumbeat, but their desperate whimpers and cries of arousal vanished in the shrilling. Unable either to stop moving or to run toward the sounds, many of the entranced women held their arms more stiffly before them, cried and moaned more loudly, stared more intently into nothing through the nude bodies of the others in front of them.

Soon the trees and the strange evil music had swallowed them.

After a few minutes, the music faded and changed, no longer audible from the compound near the beach. Silent and wide-eyed, other nude women arrived in two neat lines and then separated, not needing spoken orders to know the tasks burned into their brains.

Unlike the buildings’ hypnotized occupants in the end, these women were vacantly calm where the others had been frantic. They cleared the dormitory rooms inside of what little the women who’d been sleeping there had possessed, then cleaned the smooth surfaces and filled the rooms with sweet, drugging scents that lay heavy on the moist air.

There was still a hint of musk in the air, too, but that never dissipated. Sex and sleep were part of this place.

Now it was ready again.

1.

“Is she?”

The voice woke Kerry, and she came slowly to herself. Ship. Cruise. Vacation. Not at work.

Mmmm.

“You better believe she is. A natural hypnotist. Didn’t you feel it last night?”

Kerry sat up, pulling her T-shirt down reflexively before seeing it was just Andrea and Liz coming back to the stateroom, arguing good-naturedly. She lay back, listening to the distant, smooth hum of Shadow Queen’s engines and wallowing in the delight of being in something large and complex that didn’t need her to do anything about running it.

The fourth member of their party, Jennifer, was probably jogging around the deck—Jen the tall bodysurfer had little use for aerobics, and less for aerobics instructors. But it still seemed odd that both of Kerry’s more sedentary friends had been so up for an aerobics workout, since they’d all jokingly sworn off anything to do with “work” the night before Shadow Queen had sailed. Being half-sloshed from the bon-voyage party they’d thrown themselves might have helped.

But wasn’t it petite Andrea, too, who’d said “We’ve been gymming all winter for these bodies. Now we get to stop maintaining them and start indulging them”? Yet here she was, in a royal blue Queen Lines Resorts bodysuit, flushed and happy. Almost buzzed; she barely glanced at Kerry before she started stripping for the shower.

Liz sat on the bed, smiling at Andrea almost like a teacher at a student before turning to Kerry. “Feeling better?”

Kerry nodded, and for the first time in a day or so didn’t regret moving her head. The others had hit the deck chairs yesterday almost before Shadow Queen cleared the harbor, and the sunscreen the QLR tourguides had pressed them to use didn’t seem to have interfered with their tanning. Kerry’d gone straight to the stateroom, catching up on all the rest she’d missed in the frenzied runup to vacation: the price of being one of the left-brained organizing principles in an office of creative right-brainers, and it meant not really starting until the others were done. She was still amazed Ms Forsyth had let all four of them off together.

Maybe that was why everything seemed so off-base: she was the part that didn’t fit. “Sorry, guys. I’ve just never felt like this before.”

Andrea glanced at her but just kept on to the shower. Liz lowered her voice soothingly. “You’re just not used to not being stressed,” she said, and Kerry was about to laugh when she saw Liz wasn’t really joking.

She said, “So, what have I missed? Is this cruise the same as when you took it before?”

Liz closed her eyes and smiled rapturously. “Oh, just as good. Better in some ways. Well, you just missed some tanning and swimming and goofing around, and the aerobics. There was a meet-and-greet after we left the harbor. But a lot of us are a bit shy anyway, so there’ll be plenty of others still getting acquainted.

“And you missed the first-night show.”

“Show?” Kerry racked her tender brain. “Oh, the hypnotist?”

Liz shook her head. “No, not a hypnotist. Circe’s a magician.” She stood and started to take off her own ship-issue leotard, much more slowly than Andrea’d done. Kerry would almost have called it a striptease, if there’d been a guy around to disorient.

“OK. But does she do every cruise?”

“Every one. You can see her tonight. I don’t know why, but it’s just the perfect thing to cap off a day, and some of the other girls who’ve been on a couple of cruises swear by it.”

Kerry smiled. She didn’t see the appeal in being tricked about where scarves and pigeons disappeared to.

Jennifer walked in, done with her cooldown but still looking exerted enough to make Kerry feel like a slug. She smiled down at Kerry as Liz walked into the bathroom.

“If you’re just going to spend the day lying down, why not do it out on a deckchair with us?”

“Surrrrre.” Kerry stretched under the sheet, closed her eyes, thought about lying out in the tropical sun.

Woke up again. She looked sheepishly at the other three, but they didn’t seem to have noticed that she’d dozed off again, and were already smearing each other with fragrant Queen Lines Resorts sunscreen.

Part of the QLR deal was that they provided everything—clothes, shampoo, fat novels to read while tanning, tape and disc players. At first it had struck Kerry as a cheesy sort of promotion, but there was no one to advertise to, and it did make everything easier: it was all very high-quality, and there was no need to schlep luggage or worry. It would also make it simpler to live the simple life when they got to the resort itself on Isle Dormignonne, and played at being a tribe of unusually well-equipped savages.

Kerry watched her three friends in their deep blue QLR bikinis, seeing the gold piping on Liz’s top, and shook her head. It meant Liz was on her second cruise, and why they’d give her a special bra for that escaped Kerry at the moment.

Oh, well. QLR wasn’t Club Med, but the price was certainly right, and Liz had vouched for it fervently, freely admitting the discount she won by referring them. Beyond that, Liz had actually split it with them, an offer which made Andrea misty-eyed and Jennifer smile wolfishly as they each said yes.

Kerry slipped into the bathroom. Looking at the small travel bag she’d brought, she debated pulling out one of her own suits. But she decided not to start off by being the token protester, and put on the blue one, smiling to herself on how well it fit. It did set off her looks, too, she thought.

Stepping out to the stateroom, she had a sudden strange feeling as she saw the other three dressed identically, as if it were some sort of uniform. The idea was both frightening and reassuring, and both reactions were odd enough that her mind let them go when her friends all turned and applauded her as she preened in the suit.

Then they beckoned her over and began anointing her with the sunscreen. The coconut scent was heady, and it tingled as it touched her, and she was lightheaded for a moment, hit with that and the delicacy of six hands stroking her as she stood passively. She became aware that none of them were speaking, that her ears were hearing only the soft sound of their breathing, the nearly subliminal sound of their fingertips gliding over her skin. She closed her eyes and . . . enjoyed it.

“Fine,” said Liz, and Kerry opened her eyes.

Out on deck, skin to the sun for the first time, she closed her eyes again. Like the others, she’d brought a CD player out with her but barely listened to the disk. It’s OK, her mind whispered to itself. This is just getting there. The real vacation starts when we all go native on Dormignonne. And you do have several decades’ sleep to catch up on.

She felt the sun on her body, caressing, warm. She tingled, and wondered idly what might be in the sunscreen, but the quiet joy soothed her last fretful thoughts to sleep.

It barely felt like the same day when they woke her gently, and it seemed like a dream as they returned to the stateroom before dinner. They showered, and the multi-jet facility let them do it two at a time. She shared with Jennifer, who looked at her oddly and asked her if she were all right.

Kerry had to think about that, and thinking wasn’t her strong suit just then. The shampoo and conditioner and liquid soap and after-bath splash were a potent mix. Their fragrances weren’t overpowering, but like the sunscreen they seemed to get into Kerry’s head and blur everything in there. Her skin tingled, and there seemed to be an answering tingle deep inside her.

Afterward, she was even quieter than usual, and found Liz looking at her warmly. “You don’t relax a lot, Kerry, do you? It seems to hit you hard when you do.”

Kerry just smiled. She was still too sluggish to come up with an answer.

Jennifer leaned forward from where she sat cross-legged on her bed, her red college sweatshirt discordant amid the deep blue of the QLR clothes and bedlinen. “So we’re living like a native tribe there. Just so we’re clear, I get to be a huntress, right? Meat for the tribe?” Kerry smiled, hearing even in Jen’s kidding a need to be out doing something.

Liz laughed with the others. “If you want to, I’m sure you can. There’s nothing dangerous, but I think there are some animals like deer or whatever deeper in the hills. There aren’t any real natives to teach them fear, so I don’t even know if they’ll run from you.”

“They’d better. Since there aren’t going to be any guys I need something to chase.” The rest of them laughed.

“Guys don’t run that hard from you either,” said Andrea, always supportive, and Jennifer smirked at her and looked away, never one to know how to take a compliment. She didn’t see Andrea stare at her a moment longer.

Then Kerry saw Andrea’s eyes drift to the clock. “Time for Circe’s show,” she reminded them. Kerry started to think Didn’t we all do this to escape schedule-slavery? but decided not to be argumentative. Liz nodded, but Jen sat back.

“Um, no offense, Liz, but I don’t think Ms Magician was a very smart move on their part. Don’t they have anyone else? Some variety in the variety show?”

Does she have a studly male assistant? Kerry asked herself, without much hope.

“You stayed through the whole performance,” Liz said to Jen.

“Yeah. And fell asleep. I’d rather do that here.” She patted the bed.

Liz looked at Andrea, and then started laughing gently. “Fell asleep? Really?”

Jen’s expression darkened. “Yes . . .” Andrea laughed too. Jen glared at them.

“Oh, shit. I really went under? Don’t tell me I did anything really stupid.” She saw Liz shake her head. “So why didn’t you say anything?”

“Like what?” Liz asked. “’Gee, Jen, you’re easy to hypnotize by accident’ ? Besides, I don’t think anyone saw it but us. C’mon; if you pay attention tonight, you might see some others go under.”

Jen unlimbered herself off the bed. “I’m not volunteering for anything.”

Kerry threw a quizzical glance at Andrea, and suddenly wondered what Liz was getting at. She felt a bit abandoned, too. She’d wanted to ask Jen to join her at one of the other bars and unwind over a glass of wine or several. It almost sounded as though Liz wanted Jen to think she’d been hypnotized, and if Jen tried hard to stay awake tonight for Circe’s latest performance of magic and hypnosis, planting the idea in her mind that she’d been that susceptible might help make her susceptible.

Kerry’s head was starting to spin. Usually she could carry an ornate line of reasoning like that much farther, but now her mind seemed lethargic and numb, as though it were determined to force her into vacation blankness.

But Kerry felt no special urgency in figuring it out. She got up and went with the others.

2.

When the lights went down and Circe floated magnificently onto the dais in the center of the room, Kerry realized that for a moment she’d forgotten where she was, that she’d just finished eating, that this was the Shadow Queen’s dining room. Even the feel of silver and china under her fingertips meant less to her than how compelling the woman looked.

The drowsiness had stayed with her, and it seemed as though most of her fellow passengers here were equally dazed, but her thinking was too slow for her to be sure she wasn’t just projecting . . . and even that was too complex to get her mind around.

Easier just to look at Circe. The magician stood in a soft spotlight, glowing in a silvery sheath gown that could have been moonlight on sea foam or polished chainmail as it outlined a slim, strong figure but covered it from neck to floor, leaving her arms bare from the shoulders.

Circe was olive-skinned and hazel-eyed, exotic and quite beautiful. Kerry was suddenly ashamed of having thought there might be anything the slightest bit short of spectacular about her. As a larger display slid down from the ceiling, Kerry gaped at it, seeing it come alive with a larger image of Circe’s serene, chiseled features, her eyes larger and even more penetrating. It seemed less like show business than something religious, and Kerry was awed to be allowed to partake.

“Welcome back,” she said, and her voice reached out to where Kerry sat with the others without losing its gentle intimacy. She didn’t think excellent sound system. She could barely think.

“And hello to the new guests who could join us. Be welcome and relaxed.

“Last night we explored some of what suggestibility could mean, and many of my brave explorers will remember, now, how very suggestible you are.”

Kerry heard gasps near her and shivered as she realized the single sound ringing quietly through the room told her how many women here had fallen under Circe’s spell at last night’s performance, and willingly returned to do it again.

A movement caught her eye, and she saw that the trigger had captured Andrea, too. Andrea was sitting up straighter, her gaze focused raptly on Circe, her expression like a dazzled child. As she raised her hands, palm-inward, and crossed them in front of her, Kerry heard a rustle as the other hypnotic subjects all around her adopted that pose.

Kerry wondered wildly why that made her so . . . tingly.

On the other side of Andrea, Liz blinked slowly but smiled at Kerry, then turned, slowly, to watch Circe. Kerry suddenly wondered about Jennifer, but moved slowly to look, still caught up in the church-like hush. When she did she saw the tall blonde holding herself, blinking more quickly than Liz for a moment, then almost glaring at Circe. She flicked her eyes to meet Kerry’ s, and smiled briefly, not quite managing a wink. Fighting hard to stay awake, trying to resist something she didn’t know how to recognize.

Maybe fearing a weakness she didn’t have. Liz’s joke didn’t seem funny, now.

Kerry almost wanted to take Jen’s hand and hold it tight, but she hesitated. Then she turned back. Circe’s light alto plucked the thought from her head.

“But this is about feeling comfortable, and some of you might find it easier to consider hypnosis if you see how smoothly it can happen. For that I think we’ll need a volunteer that everyone can relate to, and one who hasn ‘t yet felt my . . . influence.”

Circe’s tone folded that word into gentle humor, but the laughter was softer than an audience of this size should produce. The effect wasn’t that it fell flat—it was like a light touch from a strangler’s fingertips, and Kerry was amazed at how hot that idea made her. But another thought was nearer.

Oh no. A new victim. What if she picks me?

Then Kerry was paralyzed by how it felt to wonder, What if she doesn’t pick me?

But Circe raised one smooth bronze arm from her side and pointed, and as her index finger extended, a spotlight suddenly threw a bright circle at the edge of the darkened dining room. It picked out a ponytailed young woman in the short-shorts and faux-wetsuit top of a Queen Lines staffer, catching the show as she stood casually by the far wall. Kerry could see the gleam of a polished whistle atop her cleavage. She looked up astonished and blinked in the sudden if muted glare, then looked back out at Circe, very unhappily.

She shook her head and gestured, and though there was no microphone, Kerry could see her lips forming something like But I was just—I’m not a guest— before the protest faded. Kerry wondered if this were playacting, and was amazed to get her mind to do that. Even to wonder if it were meant to be seen that way. Maybe this girl had been putting some of these women through their paces in the gym, and they would enjoy seeing her put through some paces of her own by the majestic witch in the silver gown.

“Come,” Circe said, and the girl hesitated.

Kerry felt sorry for her. The reluctance looked unfeigned, and she wondered how convincing—or uncomfortable—it would be to watch a truly unwilling subject try to pretend. Maybe it was the least-favorite part of the girl’s job, to be Circe’s “random” hypnotee . . . or just what she had to do to keep the job.

Then Kerry became aware of Andrea sitting next to her, still transfixed by Circe and with her hands devoutly crossed. The room was full of women like her, and Kerry was disturbed to know she had no idea what they made of it.

Circe hadn’t moved, her stillness as alive with power as the staff girl’s dripped weakness. Now her extended finger moved slightly downward. Drawing the girl to her?

Showing her where to kneel?

Kerry couldn’t look away now. Seeing Circe, and remembering how she must have conquered Andrea and most of the women in the room with whatever she did last night.

Circe wouldn’t use shills. This was for real.

Part of Kerry was chilled, but another part of her was hot at the knowledge. She was going to turn to Jennifer again when she saw the staff girl shudder, and then slowly, almost jerkily start to walk across the open area down the room’s center toward Circe’s dais. Her hands worked but her arms hung limply by her sides, and the spotlight moved with her like strings over a balky puppet. Fear and fascination warred for her expression, and Kerry was too confused to know how she felt, watching the girl try to struggle against Circe’s hypnotic pull . . . and try not to.

When she reached the dais, she hadn’t looked away from Circe once, though her face was still masked with a vague disquiet. Approaching had made her keep raising her head to look into Circe’s eyes, so she looked more dominated, more helpless with each step, and now, nearly at the hypnotist’s feet, her spotlight was absorbed in the deeper glow of Circe, and many of the women sighed.

Circe’s finger still pointed downward—now directly between the girl’s staring eyes. Circe slowly turned her hand inward and upward, and drew it toward herself, beckoning the girl to climb the steps and join her.

The girl obeyed, her eyes locked on Circe.

The video screen over their heads showed Circe’s face, calm and darkly pleased, and her voice flowed over the room. “What do they call you, pretty one?”

Then there was the staff girl’s pretty face, open and wholesome and sleepily worried. “Marilyn,” she whispered.

“Marilyn. You’re very tense now, but you’ll be relaxed and very content now in a moment.

“You are a strong, alert, well-trained member of Shadow Queen’s crew. You are devoted to Queen Lines Resorts and to the people who tell you what to do. Aren’t you, Marilyn?”

Marilyn moved her head, more fascinated by Circe with each word she’d spoken.

“Devoted . . .” Her whisper echoed across the audience, fascinated as well.

Circe’s hand and finger pointed up now and she folded her other arm under them, like a lecturer making an point. She let her forefinger move in front of her eyes.

“Yes, Marilyn. Devoted to anyone who tells you what to do. Right now I am telling you what to do, so you are devoted to me.”

Marilyn shuddered, and Kerry saw her throat work as she swallowed. “Devoted to you,” she said, unprompted.

Kerry suddenly knew the warm, shameful delight Marilyn must be feeling.

Envied it. Barely recognized herself as she did.

Tried to care . . .

“You tell others what to do, but now you want only to do as you are told. To do what I tell you.” Marilyn nodded. “You make others obey, and now you will obey. You will help me to make others obey, by obeying me.”

“Obeying you.”

Next to her, Kerry heard a desperate, whistling breath from Jennifer, but she couldn’t turn away from the sight of the blank, obedient face of the hypnotized crewwoman on the video display, or the two lithe figures who stood beneath it.

“You use a tool to make others obey. You wear it around your neck. You will give it to me.”

Nodding, Marilyn reached slowly up and lifted the whistle lanyard over her head and extended it in two hands to Circe, who lazily reached her finger and hooked the lanyard. As Marilyn let her hands drop nervelessly back to her sides, the whistle dropped, to hang in front of Circe.

Gleaming.

Swinging.

Kerry stared at it, magnified on the display, and let it hold her gaze. Circe raised it, sinuously turning her arm again to let it spin and swing, rising to eye level. It captured Marilyn’s glassy eyes instantly, and before it took Kerry’s as well she saw the liquid movement of those eyes as they swung back and forth, locked on the gleaming bit of hollow metal.

She heard the room sigh, and was no longer able to wonder why. Before she could realize that everyone was now under Circe’s thrall, that she was one of Circe’s puppets, it was already true.

There was no longer a need to envy Marilyn, but Kerry was too deeply under to know it now.

3.

Kerry had been standing in the stateroom, slathering sunscreen on herself, dimly looking forward to another spread of time in the warm sun, listening to the bright music the wonderful QLR staff girls brought to replenish the disc players.

The door opened and Andrea came in, staring at Kerry until Kerry realized that she was wearing only the dark-blue panty of her QLR bikini. Andrea kept her eyes on Kerry’s conical nipples until she was right in front of her, and then remembered to look up into her face.

Kerry stopped rubbing herself, unable to do more than one thing at a time and more interested now in just breathing. The cabin was suffused in coconut, as she was, as Andrea was, but Kerry had been learning to tell the individual flavor each woman’s scent made of her QLR fragrance. She just stood there now, inhaling Andrea. Enjoying Andrea.

Kerry wondered about the single-sex cruise for a few disoriented seconds, knowing she’d wondered about it before but no more able to focus on those memories than she was on memories of—wearing clothes. She couldn’t decide what to make of some dreamy encounters she’d had: with a woman she didn’t really know in the communal shower one morning; and then the next morning; waking up in a bed with Andrea—whose had it been?

The heat of watching the women Circe induced (brainwashed) each night at the show she couldn’t wait to see. Seeing them give up their wills to the cool, smooth woman who took it as her due.

The ecstasy of volunteering and being near the stunning woman herself, knowing she was being hypnotized (enslaved) and cared for (used and trained) in front of all the rest of the women on the ship.

There was a lot of awareness of the other women’s bodies, staring for what seemed like minutes at a time at some total stranger’s thigh, or bare shoulders. Kerry had felt stares like that on her own skin, and had absently surprised herself by basking in them as if in unexpected sunlight. She couldn’t remember anything happening, really, just a lot of touching . . . she thought . . . maybe they really needed some males around. But not a sign of one.

It didn’t seem too much of a problem.

“Kerry,” Andrea said, “do you . . . is there anything . . . weird . . . going on? Do you think?”

Staring at her for a moment, distracted by how Andrea’s breath (sweet with fruit . . . berries . . .) changed her scent for a moment, Kerry waited for her musky smell to return. Thought, more or less, returned with it.

“Umm. Mmm. Weird? I don’t know, ‘Drea.” Sensing Andrea was bothered, she rested a hand on her, feeling her stiffen and then relax. “What do you mean, weird?”

She blinked, suddenly feeling the beginning of some other emotion that she was too sleepy—though wide awake—to recognize just now.

But Andrea looked placidly at her, and then leaned in and hugged her.

“Don’t know,” she whispered. “Sorry.”

Hugging the smaller woman back was suddenly something Kerry wanted to do, like drinking deeply to empty a glass of something smooth . . . she wanted to make ‘Drea feel better, but (giggle) ‘Drea felt so good already. Against her skin.

‘Drea seemed to like it, making a humming noise against Kerry’s shoulder.

“Mmm. It feels nicer when you do it,” she murmured.

“Do what?” Small questions, like small thoughts, were easier for Kerry lately.

“Hold me. Like this.”

“Mmmm.” Kerry kept holding her. “. . . Nicer than what?”

“Than when Liz does.”

Kerry pulled back, and they went over to sit on her bunk. “When does Liz . . . ?” She forgot to finish, because she was confused about whether she was worried that something was bothering Andrea, or because . . . she wished she could hold Andrea as often as . . .

Andrea sighed. “Mostly at night. She tells me to come to her bed and I do.”

“Don’t you like it?” Something was weird, and Kerry was afraid she just couldn’t keep up with it.

“Yeahhhh.” Andrea shivered in Kerry’s arms, and Kerry almost leaned into her and pushed her down onto the bunk. But no.

A thought was in her mind, unannounced. Andrea has a boyfriend.

Kerry moved her chin gently across the softness of Andrea’s curly copper hair, waiting for that thought to mean something.

She was still waiting when Andrea said softly, “You’re always asleep.”

Poof. Andrea has . . . ? “Asleep?”

“Mm-hmm. You just walk in and take your bikini off and slip into bed. Liz likes watching you.”

Kerry got wet and just relaxed. “Well, I—” She was going to explain why she was so tired when she realized she didn’t know what she’d been doing the last couple of days as Shadow Queen sailed to the island.

Something surfaced. “Classes. Skill sets for Dormignonne.” She spoke the word lushly, as though it were a cream pastry. “I’m at classes. How to do things when we’re a . . . tribe—”

Tribe.

Her pussy clenched at the word and she felt Andrea spasm with her.

Tribe.

What they would be.

Kneeling dancing listening (fucking licking) working learning (worshipping obeying)

They relaxed and breathed together, and she found herself putting her lips to ‘Drea’s ear, its rim so much hotter than the cool skin by her hair.

Andrea whined through closed lips. Later she murmured, “You’re always at classes longer than anyone.”

“Maybe I’m dumber than you are,” Kerry said, and the idea made her feel like . . . a cream pastry.

Andrea tensed. “No way . . . you’re the smartest one in the office.”

Squeezing her, Kerry whispered, “Don’t think about the office.”

Andrea repeated it quietly.

“What about Jennifer?”

Andrea shivered even more, and Kerry wanted to comfort her just as intensely as she wanted to (fuck her brains out) hold her even tighter. “She’s getting . . . scary.”

“I haven’t seen her,” Kerry said, truthfully wistful for the sight of Jen’s long, tall bodysurfing silhouette—and her wonderful way of flavoring the coconut sunscreen.

“She’s been training.” Andrea curled up against her. “She and . . . Kathy, and Shannon, and . . .”

Kerry stroked the smaller woman’s hair without quite knowing why. “All the big girls?”

She felt the head nod under her hand. “Strong. They’re in a gym with that trainer, Miss . . . I don’t know. She made my aerobics teacher Ashlee take us all out of the room when they took it over, and Ashlee just looked at her and had to do it. Freeweights . . .”

Andrea pulled back and sat up, looking at Kerry, some light flickering in her eyes. Kerry tried to tell what was keeping it lit, and didn’t like her answer.

Andrea was afraid.

“What if they’re like that on the island?” she asked. “What if—” her voice dropped back to a whisper. “What if they’re not our tribe?” The jolt passed both women unnoticed this time.

“What if they . . . ?” Andrea couldn’t find the words, but the pictures were suddenly crowding into Kerry’s mind.

The athletes, the strapping women like Jen, the huntresses, preying on the others.

Warriors.

She thought about Jennifer in a skin bikini with a spear in her hand. A knife strapped to one long thigh. Her eyes cold over her tanned cheekbones.

Looking down at Kerry as Kerry lay at her feet. Jennifer’s captive. Her prize.

She squeezed her thighs together. It didn’t stop the images.

Kneeling next to Andrea, both of them massaging a Warrior—Jen, or Jen’s guest.

Being . . . sold.

Being stolen—taken by a woman who defeated Jennifer and . . .

“Kerry?”

She started guiltily, and when she looked into Andrea’s eyes she saw that despite her daze the other woman knew just what she’d been daydreaming. Andrea just shook her head.

“Me too,” she whispered.

They were kissing before they really knew it.

4.

She was helpless, mesmerized by the perfection of the horizon and following following following it slowly around until her tethered gaze ran aground on the headland at the . . . which end of the little bay?

Kerry blinked in the bright sunlight, dazzled by how it beat off the still waters of the sea. Right. They were here, on Isle Dormignonne. Had been, for . . . ever since they’d landed. How many days? She tried for something simpler.

How long had she been awake? She still felt half-asleep. Liz had said this vacation would be relaxing, but this was almost too much, like the really good pills they’ve given her after her wisdom teeth had come out. Maybe things would get more interesting when they left the compound and started the actual living-like-natives thing. When they finally went . . .

Tribal.

Kerry had to close her eyes for a moment.

Opening them, she looked down the beach. The loungers were full. Most of the women just lay there, soaking up the sun, not moving, probably dozing and not listening to whatever their various tape and disc players were offering them through the headphones.

A random thought drifted through her mind. Why was there no air conditioning in the compound? She was amazed she’d gotten any sleep at all, even without another warm, smooth body spooned with hers: Dormignonne was tropical in all the worst senses as far as she could tell, although oddly insect-free (even they’re too bored, she thought), and the humidity was enervating. That may be why the French never settled here, she concluded out of nowhere.

The sheer precision of the thought, clearer than anything that had been in her mind for the last few . . . days? . . . held her so awestruck that the rest of her thoughts vanished for a while in the wonderment.

After she could put ideas in sequence again, she tried to figure all this out, and had the nagging thought that it wasn’t the first time she’d done that. Trying, not figuring. Something wasn’t right. She’d tried asking Liz, but Liz just stared her down and repeated how wonderful it all was. Andrea and even Jennifer were just as lethargic as Kerry herself, and just shuttled back and forth when the staff members herded them to the beach, to the sparkling clean but austere dormitories, to the exercise area for very low-impact aerobics, to the . . .

Show. Circe’s show. The magician had disembarked with them to continue in the open-air theater. Every night, in fact, as Kerry strained to remember. Not a very interesting show, either, but . . . she loved to go to them—couldn’t stay away, and she had a serious, near-worshipful crush on Circe herself. From what little she could . . .

Hmm. There really wasn’t much to remember about the trip, was there? She shook her head, amazed that she didn’t feel more aggrieved at a trip she ‘d paid for but wasn’t worth recalling even while she was on it.

Well, her stress was gone. She felt so stressless she was also amazed that she could even stand up. The thought of slipping bonelessly to the sand and just lying there made her laugh, softly and shortly. It startled her into a momentarily higher alertness, and she swallowed the sound, pointlessly afraid of waking the other women.

She almost laughed again. Very little was likely to wake them. They’d doze through the arrival of a sea serpent, even if it started chomping down the row of them like a human sushi bar. A compelling image suddenly came to her that this was some magic by the native witchdoctor, that she and the others were spellbound sacrifices to the local . . .

The laughter died in her at the vision, but it wasn’t horror that did that.

The sleek deadly shape would rear out of the sea, transfixing them beyond any native spells and drugging. She and every other woman in the beach would fall still and nerveless as the shadow passed slowly over them, their minds captured by the glowing yellow eyes, the evil slit pupils narrowing with avarice. All of them would slip down to kneel, their bodies swaying in response to the hypnotic writhing of the serpent’s triumph over them.

Each one, eyes staring up into her death, moaning with joy as she was swallowed whole . . .

Kerry pulled her hand from her crotch, all but oblivious to the fact that everyone else was completely oblivious to her arousal.

She took a shuddering breath. Couldn’t—happen. Dormignonne, in addition to lacking known monsters, had no natives. The migrations had found the place as uninviting as the colonizers.

Kerry had almost given up trying to recover her original train of thought when she heard steps next to her. One of the QLR staff, Marilyn, looked at her, smiling; she must have heard Kerry laugh. Please don’t ask me why, because I can’t remember, Kerry pleaded silently, and saw Marilyn’s pretty forehead crease with concern.

Something bothered her. Something about Marilyn and . . . Circe? Why should she feel worried for the other woman, who clearly seemed more together than Kerry felt?

Marilyn rested cool fingertips in Kerry’s own forehead, and she couldn’t help closing her eyes and slowing her breathing.

“Too much thinking going on in there,” Marilyn said softly, but her voice carried through Kerry’s consciousness.

“Too hard to think,” Kerry mumbled, not meaning to say anything. She opened her eyes to see Marilyn nodding.

“That’s our mind telling us it wants its vacation too, isn’t it, Kerry?”

Kerry sighed. She was embarrassed, though whether it was at failing to think, or at trying to think in the first place, she couldn’t decide. She dropped her eyes, and looked at Marilyn’s body in her shorts and zip-front QLR top. Kerry felt strangely . . . (submissive) subordinate . . . in her own bikini, and it came to her that she’d really worn nothing but this tiny swimsuit or the other identical ones in her drawer in the dorm, since at least arriving on the island. It was QLR’s, like every other guest on the beach was wearing. And the idea of changing it was just too, too, difficult.

Where were her own things . . . anyway . . . ? The idea faded.

Through her fog, she was feeling a little nervous at having drawn Marilyn’s attention, and wasn’t sure why. Maybe Marilyn could explain some of what had just been confusing her. But did she want Marilyn to know all that?

“Maybe,” she whispered, “I’ll go for a swim.”

Marilyn frowned slightly. “You don’t want to do that, Kerry. You might wash off the sunscreen.”

Kerry felt a stirring of protest—a tropical resort where they didn’t want you to swim?—but it buckled under the greater urgency of sunscreen, which she’d had drummed into her head was vital to have at all times. Its reassuring coconut scent filled the dorm at night, as rooms of warm bodies marinated in sweat and sunscreen. (At night? Indoors? Her mind lost focus . . .)

This morning Kerry had found herself applying more when she couldn’t smell it as strongly on herself, and she recalled Andrea’s eyes focusing on her as she did. Her friend had taken her own tube of it and put more on.

“You’re right,” she whispered, and felt good to say that. To think that.

Then it hit her again. Not only not swimming, but not tanning? How could you even prove you’d been here?

Marilyn had already read her face. “Kerry, I see you’re having some trouble with this.”

Kerry spoke off the top of her head, as surprised as Marilyn looked to hear herself ask, “Do you have enough sunscreen on, Marilyn?”

Marilyn reacted oddly. She didn’t answer, or even seem annoyed. Instead her eyes widened.

She was afraid.

Kerry stared at her.

She recovered quickly. “I guess the best way to deal with that, Kerry, is to ask you to look at this.” She took the polished whistle on its lanyard from around her neck and held it before Kerry’s eyes, and despite herself Kerry let it abduct her gaze and her attention.

The shine of the polished metal and the slow rhythm of its swing burned the coherence out of her thoughts. The fog in her mind thinned to a blank emptiness. Distantly but clearly she heard Marilyn’s voice command her, “Remember the last time you saw Circe’s magic show.”

But I can’t remember anything . . . about . . . Suddenly Kerry was back in the audience, still wearing only her bikini like the rest, as the magician put her latest assistant, an audience volunteer, into a trance. She heard the magnified voice, saw the gestures on the large screen over the stage, forgot Circe was hypnotizing someone else, forgot there was anyone else there, anyone but Circe . . .

Kerry blinked in the bright sunlight, dazzled by how it beat off the still waters of the sea.

Where was . . . ? Oh. Right. Isle Dormignonne . . .

She was glad there’d been no pressure to join the scuba or sailing or other activities Liz had told them about. Watersports were fine, but not if it meant spending half the time reapplying sunscreen. Besides, she still felt half-asleep. As she looked for a lounger, she found one of the staffers, Marilyn, smiling next to one, holding a disc player for her to listen to.

Lying down, she smiled up vaguely. “I won’t be awake long enough to hear it.”

Marilyn smiled back down at her, filling her with trust and confidence. “Don’t worry about that, Kerry. Don’t worry about anything.”

5.

Kerry mewed in her dream. Her pussy quivered in a near-orgasm, and she swam through a dim memory of the magic show, that had turned with an odd sense of familiarity into a mass-hypnosis demonstration. Kerry stood with the rest, all volunteers, all willingly surrendered to Circe’s control, obeying her voice, and enjoying the fantasy she spun for them of passing out sets of dildos like party favors, lubing and inserting them and then enjoying long, blissful plateaux of arousal as Circe’s voice stroked their minds . . .

For hours.

A heartbeat woke her. A thumping, pulsing beat all around that throbbed through her body. It synched with the humming warmth between her thighs. She pushed herself up in the thick air, and in the dimness of the room, saw Andrea on her bed struggling upright too, her head lolling as she weakly sought the source of the sound.

Kerry saw she was wearing something around her neck: a collar. Reaching up, she felt one around her own.

She squeezed her thighs tighter. In the unreality of the drum-filled dark, she knew somehow that they’d been chosen, that the collars bound them to the drums, that they were helpless to resist the summons. She knew it was a fantasy she didn’t remember having, but its kick was too much to deny.

Inside the drums began a higher sound, a wailing of pipes or flutes that teased at her, maddened her, promised and lied deliciously. She swayed upright.

Liz walked past her. Liz was standing straight, her eyes wide and blank, her arms stretched stiffly in front of her, as if parodying someone hypnotized. It would have made Kerry laugh, but it was too damned arousing even to think of laughter. Liz’s steps even and completely under the drumbeat’s control. She was collared. She was mindless. Mindlessly obeying the call.

Kerry orgasmed, and she heard Andrea gasp too.

Kerry stood, her heart racing, her belly hot, her legs almost too weak to hold her, and stretched out her arms. She saw Andrea’s eyes widen to see her do this—and stay wide, as Andrea lifted her own arms, and they marched like sleepwalkers after Liz.

In the central hallway, Kerry saw other women, nude and collared, joining the parade of marionettes being pulled out by the music. She also saw others, uncollared, sleeping through the din.

They were not chosen, she intoned to herself, and forgot to laugh again.

Then she stopped paying attention to anything but her fellow sleepwalkers and the music, which grew louder as they left the building and went out into the hot damp moonlight. The drumbeat was more intricate, the piping more insidious, capturing more of her attention. It drew her thoughts away from the fact that she and the others were being led into the jungle behind the resort area, along a path no one had taken them on before.

It didn’t matter. Kerry was collared and called; she obeyed and followed.

This is weird, she thought absently, but felt no fear. It was way kinkier than anything she’d thought would happen, but it was a very exciting and very different way to spice up what seemed like the next phase of the . . . resort experience . . . something seemed more than a little off about it, but Kerry was too busy letting the wild primitive music, and the sheer crazy eroticism of joining a parade of naked somnambulists on a muggy tropical night, just overwhelm her. She kept feeling a deep, reassuring certainty that she could go along with this, submerge in it, enjoy it, and that it would be OK even to lose herself in it. It would be safe. She would be cared for. She would . . .

She would . . .

Do as she was told.

She came—hard—and didn’t stop walking, didn’t lower her arms, couldn’t hear herself moan over the music.

Didn’t care.

Brightness ahead became a torchlit clearing. Kerry dimly saw huts, but what riveted her were the dancers, women caught in the slow, inexorable pattern of the drums, their bodies quivering with an urgency as the pipes worried at them. She felt a molten longing to join them, but the passivity that shadowed her mind kept her still. If she were worthy she would be taken; meanwhile, it was exciting to wait, to stand, to be assessed.

Part of being . . .

. . . Tribe.