The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Zabzik, Part II

March 2006
mc: mind control
ff: female/female sex
mf: male/female sex
fd: female dominant
ft: fetish
hu: humiliation

Part II

5

Cassie had to sit in the sour, rotten reek of Tek’s apartment for three hours, watching him maneuver his character through a bewildering underground maze, fighting undead creatures that lurched toward him with bubbling growls, staggering onward, losing his way, cursing for a while, and then retracing his steps and starting over without making any appreciable progress. At last he had to go to the bathroom. “Hold my place,” he told her, backing the golden-armored computer-game hero into a stony niche. “Yell if anything charges. Don’t try to fight. I don’t want to die down here without finding a way out.”

“Okay.”

As soon as Tek had left the room, Cassie slipped the CD into a free drive. The drive tray clacked shut, and Tek’s complicated computer hummed for a few seconds as the program loaded. Then the drive popped open again, and Cassie retrieved the disk, quickly slipping it into her purse. On the monitor nothing happened: the mighty warrior Tek stood with his back to the stone wall, swiveling lightly as he remained alert for any attackers. His sword gleamed dully in the muted and gloomy light of the labyrinth. The ambient sound was of dripping water and strange whispery echoes, just as before. Well, Cassie thought with a smile, not quite as before. Tek was going to be absorbing some very special suggestions from this point on.

The toilet flushed, and Tek came back in, zipping the fly of his incredibly grungy jeans. As Cassie got up, Tek plopped down in his chair and reached for the joystick. “Maybe if I tried—”

Cassie picked up her purse. “Good luck with your quest, Tek. I’ll check in with you, maybe some time tomorrow or the next day,” she said.

Give it a few hours, she thought. Let it grow on him.

He didn’t glance up from the screen. “Yeah, all right. Okay.”

Looking back at him from the doorway, she felt a little twinge of guilt. He looked so hopeless, so scruffy, with a patchy growth of beard, circles under his eyes, a sad droop in his posture as he leaned toward the monitor. “Hey,” she said softly. “Don’t play that damn game all night, okay?”

“Okay.”

She knew he hadn’t listened. So okay, then, he’d been warned. Let him play it all night if he wanted. Let the suggestions get a hold on him. A good, strong hold.

Cassie attended her three Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, Music Apprec, then English, and ending with American History at two in the afternoon. She hadn’t seen Tek or Lacey all day, but that wasn’t unusual—they didn’t have classes together, after all. As she left the classroom, Cassie couldn’t help wondering if Tek had been mesmerized by that stupid computer game all last night, and maybe even all today.

There would be time to find out. At two-fifteen, Cassie strode into the gym and did her usual forty-minute workout on the treadmill and rowing machine. She took a quick cool-off shower, dressed again, and then as she walked across campus to the dorm, she finally took out her cell phone and punched in Tek’s number. One ring . . . two . . . three . . . .

“Yeah?” Sharp, irritated, his voice burred with fatigue.

“Hi, Tek. It’s me. Game going good?” Cassie asked sweetly.

“Oh, hi, Cass. It’s . . . uh, it’s okay, I guess. I’m, I got out of the, the maze finally, but now I can’t hook up with the rest of my party. I’m out in the wilderness now, and I’m looking for a crossroads that the wizard said would be—”

“Slave Tek?”

Her voice stopped his ramble dead in his throat. Silence for three or four seconds. And then Tek’s voice, now lifeless, flat: “Yes, Mistress?”

Damn, it worked! “Who am I?” Cassie asked, hearing a nasty little edge of glee in her own question.

“You are my Mistress Cassandra,” Tek said. “Command me.”

“Listen to me carefully, Slave Tek,” Cassie cooed in her sweetest voice. “I am going to give you some orders. You will carry each one out. You will find great pleasure in doing what I command you to do. It will make you happy to do what I tell you to do. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra.”

“Is your computer on?”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra.”

“Listen to me, Slave Tek. Do not save the game. Turn the computer off now.”

A pause, and then breathing on the line.

“Slave Tek? Did you do what I commanded?”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra. The computer is off.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel happy that I could do what you asked.”

Yes! Pausing beneath the big oak tree outside her dorm, Cassie said seductively, “Slave Tek, you have done well. You are happy. Listen carefully to what I say next. Now I want you to please me even more. That will make you happier, too. You will do everything I command. Listen to me very carefully. . . .”

When she’d finished giving Tek his . . . well, his orders, she flew up the front steps of the dorm. The first thing Cassie wanted to do was tell Lacey that it had all worked—but Lacey wasn’t in her room. Damn. Well, later, maybe. If this worked with Tek, then Shock—no, Lacey—Cassie frowned. Shock? Lacey—she’d want to try it on Eli, who’d been ignoring her while he, too, played “Zibzak.”

“Shock?” Cassie asked herself, puzzled. Why did she want to call Lacey that? Stupid thing to call her. Lacey was so—so predictable, so average. Even when she wanted to act wild, she went for tequila shooters and a stand-up quickie with Eli on some darkened corner of the campus. Nothing shocking about her, really. Huh. Shock—

Cassie had a sudden mental flash of a black-clad magician, buxom, pale-skinned, with jet-black hair and one streak of white. Shock. Must have seen her as a character in Tek’s stupid game. Come to think of it, Shock looked a little like Lacey. Better figure, though, and in that skintight black outfit everything showed, man, everything, you could tell her pussy was shaved, even, but Shock was a cartoon, a bunch of phosphors. Lacey didn’t look anything like her, really, and Lacey’s eyes didn’t glow as she worked up some arcane spell to disembowel a charging gorgon.

She had a weird sense of déjà vu, an odd little mental movie: Shock launching a green bolt at a slavering gorgon, while yelling “You got my back?”

“Gotcha, Shock!” Cassie shouted, wielding . . . her . . . sword? For an instant the illusion was so strong, so clear, that she had to look down at her empty hand. No, that hadn’t happened. That was in the stupid “Zibzak” game, when . . . when Wynn had made her create a character and . . . and train . . . alone? Yes, she remembered Wynn’s whispery voice: “You did this all alone. You were all alone. Remember that. I am your mistress, and you and I did this together, but you trained all alone.” Wynn had said that to her late at night, or in the early morning, when they lay naked, flesh pressed to flesh, their bodies relaxed and easy from all the orgasms, Wynn’s breath warm on her ear.

Cassie closed her eyes, and her twenty-four hours as Wynn’s slave came back to her clearly—except that there seemed to be some other person there, some other girl indulging herself with the two of them, sucking and licking and coming. No, there hadn’t been—had there? “All alone,” Mistress Wynn had insisted at one point, so of course that must be true. No one else. Just Wynn and . . . and . . . “Karr?” Cassie whispered. Had Wynn called her Karr? Crazy.

Crazy, crazy. Feeling sweaty for some reason, despite her quick rinse under the gym shower, Cassie showered again, wincing as she soaped her—well, her place down there. Wynn’s rough lovemaking had left her sore and swollen, and the tenderness had not altogether faded. Not that it was all that painful. If Tek were in the mood, she thought, she’d show him a thing or two about having a demanding Mistress. With an immoral smirk on her lips, she rinsed, luxuriating in the hot water, and then turned off the flow and reached for her armor.

Her hand closed on a towel.

For a dizzy minute Cassie stood naked and dripping, feeling as if the floor were spinning under her as she held the towel, confused by its softness, its lightness, its lack of heft. Her chrome and blue armor—who had taken her—armor? “Whoa,” Cassie muttered, drying herself. That was crazy. What had Wynn’s program done to her? She felt as if her brain had been taken out and scrambled, then poured back into her head.

Lacey didn’t show up in the TV lounge later, nor did Wynn. The other girls gossiped, did their nails, made fun of a stupid sitcom. Cassie stared at the screen without really noticing what was going on. She was starting to feel really irritated. She’d planned on telling Lacey all about her experience with Wynn—well, maybe not every little detail—and about the program that, she hoped, would get Tek’s mind off that idiotic “Zabzik” game and back to her.

Oh, well. Maybe Lacey had made up with Eli. It would wait, Cassie decided. No rush there. In fact, on second thought maybe it would be better not to tell Lacey anything at all about . . . being with Wynn.

“Slave,” Wynn had said, her breath warm and pussy-scented as she whispered in Cassie’s ear, “this is our secret. Do you understand?”

“Our . . . secret.”

“If you tell anyone else, your heart will stop and you will die. Do you understand?”

“. . . will die. Don’t tell.”

It all slipped from Cassie’s memory as quickly as it came, leaving less than a shadow of itself behind. As she thought matters over, Cassie decided maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell Lacey or anyone else. Too embarrassing. I’d die, Cassie thought. I’d just die. Lacey wouldn’t understand. She was kind of down on Wynn anyway. Didn’t like the idea of a girl doing a girl, not like Shock at all—

Shock. That name again. Where had she heard it? Cassie wished she knew.

6

Cassie was just leaving the gym when her phone chirped. She answered right away: “Hello?”

Tek’s voice, more animated and lively than it had been lately: “Hi, babe. Say, you want to hang out tonight?”

Cassie leaned against the wall and wrapped one arm around herself just below her breasts, smiling into the phone. “Depends. How are you doing on mid-terms?”

“Aced the Poly Sci, aced the CS, did okay on the physics, B or a low A. Still got history and diversity to go.”

“You ready for them?”

“As I’ll ever be.” Tek sounded like himself again, all the old cockiness there. Maybe, Cassie thought, it was time to put his cockiness to the test. He said enticingly, “How about it, babe?”

“Okay,” she said sweetly, as if he had persuaded her. “I’m doing all right on my mids, too, so I suppose a little celebrating is in order. Not too late, though, okay, because I have my math exam tomorrow, and that’s a killer. All right with you?”

“Sure,” Tek said. He was unusually agreeable, as Cassie couldn’t help noticing. “Dinner and a couple of drinks?”

“Sounds good. Meet you at your place, six?”

“Fine.”

“Okay. Slave Tek?”

A pause while something kicked in. Then that flat tone: “Yes, Mistress Cassandra?”

“Are you ready for me?”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra.”

“All right. When we hang up you will be yourself. You will not remember your Mistress Cassandra questioning you. See you at six.”

And at six o’clock she used her key to unlock Tek’s apartment door. She took a deep breath of . . . piny freshness, the commercials might call it. “Hey,” she said, unable to conceal the pleasure in her voice. “You cleaned up.”

“Couldn’t stand it any longer,” Tek agreed with a grin as he emerged from the kitchen with a couple of beers. “Funny, but once I started getting the shit shoveled, it was like I couldn’t stop. Worked all damn night on the place, and I actually enjoyed doing it!”

“Looks better. Smells a lot better. Thanks.” She took the beer and popped the top. “Mm, that’s good. I’ve had a long day.”

“Yeah, me too. So where do you want to go eat?”

Cassie tilted her head and ran a finger around the cold rim of her beer can. “Are you hungry yet?”

Tek gave an indifferent shrug. “Not really. I could eat.”

“Why don’t we think about it for a while. Is your bedroom clean?”

“You know it, babe.”

Cassie smiled. “Let’s think there.”

They finished the beers and cuddled for a while, but Tek didn’t make a move—so unlike him. “What’s wrong?” Cassie teased.

Tek shrugged. “Cassie, I’m really beat. Man, I worked day and night to clean this place, and then I had to hustle my ass in for my classes. Just tired.”

“So how’d your game turn out? That Zabzik thing?”

Tek’s brow furrowed. “Uh, okay, I guess. I kinda lost track of it, to tell the truth. I think I was starting to obsess on it or something.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Cassie wondered . . . it would be naughty, but fun, too . . . and she really wasn’t hungry yet. She tossed her empty beer can into the trash, stretched, and said, “Slave Tek?”

Tek froze, his beer halfway to his mouth. “Yes, Mistress Cassandra?”

“I’m in the mood for some sex. Finish your beer. Yes, that’s a good slave. Now, Slave Tek, I want you to strip for me. Give me a little show.”

Cassie couldn’t help giggling as Tek began a—well, a very bad imitation of a male stripper. Stepping to a tune that evidently only he could hear, he peeled off his shirt, pranced with it, dropped it, then shucked his khakis and finally his shorts. He stood in front of her at last, naked, his cock dangling. He didn’t even have an erection.

“Slave Tek,” Cassie said, “you have a nice fat dick.”

“Thank you, Mistress Cassandra.”

“But it looks so lonely and soft. I want to taste it. Come here.”

He stood by the bed and Cassie, sitting on the bed, leaned forward and took his soft member into her mouth. She sucked and licked. Nothing. Not a flutter.

“Slave Tek,” she said softly, letting his cock flop back down, “when I tell you, you will have an erection. Not until then. Is that clear?”

Tek groaned but mumbled, “Yes, Mistress Cassandra.”

“Undress me,” she said. “Do it gently. Do it well.”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra. Thank you, Mistress.”

Cassie stood up, and Tek removed her blouse and then her bra, carefully folding the blouse and even cupping one half of the bra in the other before setting it down. Then he unzipped her low-slung jeans and pulled them down. She stepped out of them and stood in her naughty thong—that was a surprise she’d packed just for him—and he tenderly, almost reverently, pulled that down as well so she could step out of it. She put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself and said, “Very good, Slave Tek. Now I want you to lick my pussy. Make me come.”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra. Thank you, Mistress.”

Cassie spread her legs and enjoyed the experience. Tek occasionally went down on her, but he was always clumsy and too fast. She cued him now, and he gave her a sensuous tongue-fucking, going deep, spreading her eager, sensitive folds, then softly, hotly licking upward, over her responsive clit, over her labia. I could get used to this, she thought, moving her hips gently to his slow rhythm. Maybe that damn game wasn’t such a bad idea—ooh—if it could improve Tek’s cunnilingual technique to this extent—mmm. “Right there,” she breathed. “Oh, yeah, make me come, make me come!” She put her hands on his head and guided him and then she jerked and moaned in release as a hot, electric orgasm spread from her clit all through her body.

She sneaked a peek. He was still flaccid, his penis limp and dangling. Mm, maybe a little experiment. “You have pleased me, Slave Tek. Now lie on the bed, on your back.”

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra.”

He did, and she straddled him. She fished with her hand for his cock, found it, all flabby and useless. But she worked and kneaded and finally managed to stuff the poor soft thing into her snatch. She tightened her muscles and could feel the pound of his pulse down there, but no stir of erection.

“Do you think I have nice tits, Slave Tek?” she cooed, caressing herself, making her nipples sharp and throbbing.

“Yes, Mistress Cassandra. Your tits are beautiful.”

“Play with them.” She leaned forward, careful not to lose him, and he began to fondle her breasts, softly, more gently than he had ever done—he was a bit of a look-and-grab lover, really. But this, having him in her power, in her control, this gentled him.

“Slave Tek,” she said, “I want your cock hard. I want you to have an erection now.”

God—she felt him suddenly expand inside her, an incredible feeling. His fucking had always had an edge of eagerness, of intrusion, invasion, but this was a melding of the two, a sweet and full joining, his cock held tight in her wet pussy. He filled her in a way she had never experienced before, and she moaned in subtle delight. “Let me do the work,” she said. “You just enjoy. You can come when I tell you to come, and not before. Do you understand, Slave Tek?”

“I understand, Mistress Cassandra.”

She rode his cock, feeling its hot impalement, welcoming it into herself. Her clit rubbed wonderfully over the rigid shaft, rippling with pleasure. She controlled the speed, a lazy, sensuous tempo, gradually speeding: adagio becoming andante, then accelerando to allegro, and then she was pumping him hard, hearing the slap of her eager flesh against his, and she felt the ooze of her secretions, the heat of her lust, and she came, yes, with a flash like lightning through her whole body. She threw her head back, snarled in her release, and ordered, “Come now!”

And his cock inside her leaped and throbbed in a spasm of release, and oh, God, she felt the hot, burning jet of his cum shooting within her, and oh, she came again!

She lay atop him for a long time, her breasts flattened on his heaving chest. His cock softened and slipped from her grasp. She whispered, “Slave Tek, when I count to three you will no longer be in your slave persona. You will be normal, and you will remember this as a wonderful fuck, and from now on you will want to fuck me slowly and gently, like this time. One, two, three.”

Under her, Tek exhaled. “God, Cassie, that was so good!”

“Mm-hmm,” purred Cassie, smiling to herself wickedly.

It was the beginning of a wonderful evening. They got dressed and ate lobster at the Roundhouse, a campus favorite. Then they headed to the Inferno for a little noise. The visiting band wasn’t that great, but they made up for that shortcoming by being enthusiastically loud as they covered tunes by better-known groups. Tek and Cassie danced for a couple of hours, then as midnight came on, they decided it was time to pack it in—after all, both of them had exams the next day.

They left Inferno, and Cassie happened to glance across the street, toward Secret Rose, a lesbian hang-out. She stopped walking, feeling a chill close its icy fingers on her.

Wynn . . . there was Wynn, striding along in a leather coat, nearly long enough to reach her ankles. And walking beside her was a black-haired beauty with one streak of white running back from her temple. God, she looked hot. Even on this cool evening, the black-haired girl wore abbreviated clothing: stiletto heels, diamond-lace stockings, a short leather skirt that barely covered her ass, and a leather corset that gave her swelling breasts a deep, tempting cleavage. A heavy leather dog collar encircled her neck. Every item of clothing she wore was midnight black, gleaming here and there with chrome studs.

“What is it?” Tek asked. He had stopped a step ahead of her, still holding her hand.

Cassie found her voice and yelled, “Lacey?”

For a heartbeat the girl across the street paused in the pink neon spill of Secret Rose’s sign. Her face turned toward them, the pink light and the yellow glare of the sodium-vapor streetlights making her expression unreadable, a chiaroscuro woodcut of deep shadows and sharp highlights, as blank as a medieval saint’s on the liver-spotted page of an ancient book. She swept an indifferent gaze over the two of them, and then Wynn tugged her arm and the two of them vanished into Secret Rose.

Groping for Tek’s arm, Cassie asked, “Was that—was that Lacey over there?”

“Nah,” Tek said. “You kiddin’? Lacey in a lez bar? That’s some cunt Wynn picked up, is all.”

“Looked like Lacey,” Cassie said, and as she walked away with Tek, she thought hazily, No, no it didn’t. It looked like . . . like what’s her name.

Like Shock.

Except there was no Shock. Someone had told her . . . to forget . . . Shock . . . and Lacey.

Tek led her on, and somehow the memory of the names faded with their footsteps down the midnight sidewalk.

7

By the time a week had passed and another weekend arrived, Cassie found it hard to remember anything at all about—you know, that dark-haired girl who lived in the room next door—couldn’t even remember her name. Lay—something. Sounded like that. Lady, Lainey, not that but something like that.

But it didn’t matter, not really, not when Cassie was enjoying life so much at last. She was harmlessly indulging herself. It was pleasurable being in command of Tek, of having him and his darling cock answer to her every whim. She didn’t abuse the power—told herself she didn’t, anyway—but every evening after classes they had various types of fun together.

She could keep his dick erect, straining, throbbing for two hours at a stretch without letting him come. She could make him pamper her in any way she liked. He gave her gentle kneading massages, head to toe. He knelt beside the bed and tickled her clit with a little feather held between his lips. He took her any way she instructed him—doggie style, from behind, while she added to her pleasure with a vibrator stimulating her clit; he lay back and she rode him like a cowgirl, her back to him and his cock deep inside her, rocking to a climactic explosion of delight; he stood and held her tight against him, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and squirmed and wriggled and came three times that way before she finally permitted him to shoot his load.

Innocent play, that was all, and he enjoyed it so much when she let him remember . . . well, parts of it. She instinctively knew that she had to erase other bits from his memory, or he would be hurt. So some of it she made him forget, some of the remaining memories she tweaked into different, kinder contours, and the orgasmic relief of it she let him keep and hold in his remembrance. Mostly she forced him to think the experimenting was his idea, not hers. She could leave him some illusions.

Still, under her instruction and discipline, he was becoming a terrific lover, the best lover in the world, and she found herself increasingly greedy for more. When she felt especially gracious, she rewarded him without controlling him. She sucked him off, the slow way he liked, taking his cock into her mouth and toying with it, swirling her tongue with gradually increasing speed and pressure until he yelped as the hot cum erupted from him. She oiled her tits and let him fuck them, his shaft slick and shiny, and she giggled when the jet of cum splashed under her chin, bleach-scented and feverishly warm.

So much fun, so much play. She had never thought of herself as that kind of a slut, really, but here she was, dreaming up new ways to get herself off, new ways to use her man-toy. Well, anyway she was only a one-man slut. Though at times . . . at times when they made love, she fleetingly thought I should let her in on this without knowing who she was thinking of. Some . . . girl. No, couldn’t be. She wasn’t a lesbian, not really, girls didn’t do anything for her. She’d been with Wynn, that was all, and she didn’t like Wynn, she wouldn’t do it again, ever. No one could . . . could make her . . .

Who had ordered her around? Someone. It didn’t matter.

Quite apart from her sexy fun and games, Cassie found life becoming somehow easier, less demanding. She did okay on all of her exams, pulling a couple of C’s and a couple of B’s, with one A in English, and Tek, of course, scored A’s on all of his. He seemed happier, too—well, he should, with a cum-hungry slut fucking and sucking his brains out every night, Cassie thought with an evil leer. But he was better, he kept the place clean and neat, himself clean and neat, a model boyfriend. She even let him play his game, but only for an hour each night. As the week passed, she kept him otherwise occupied.

Very pleasantly so.

“Hey, Cassie!”

Cassie heard the voice and stopped outside the classroom door, and she looked back over her shoulder. A tall, burly guy with a shaved head and sinfully attractive dark-brown eyes was making his way toward her against the outflowing crush of students from her Music Apprec class. “Hi, Eli,” she said.

He took her arm and guided her to a relatively empty corner of the hall, where they paused in front of a window through which noon sun streamed. “Listen, what’s up with Lacey?”

The name seemed to spark an echo in her mind, faint and distant. “Lacey?” she asked uncertainly.

Eli Flannigan wasn’t a jock, though he was built to be one. He bent his shaved head and looked almost sick, his dark eyes anguished beneath their straight, heavy brows. “She’s made with me or something, and I don’t know why. I can’t get her to answer her phone. She’s never in at the dorm. What did I do, Cassie?”

“I—don’t know,” she said, trying to remember who Lacey was.

“Come on,” he said desperately. “She’s your best friend.” He glanced around, but the crowd was melting toward the stairways and no one seemed to be paying attention to them. In a wheedling tone, he asked, “Did she say, you know, that she was upset with me or anything? Did I, like, forget her birthday or something like that? Because I swear to God, I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Uh, no, no, I haven’t heard her say anything like that,” Cassie replied, frowning. Lacey. A girl with—with black hair, yeah, it was coming back, sort of. A girl who—who she liked, but—she couldn’t quite picture her.

“Look, tell her to call me, okay? Tell her I said we can work it out, whatever’s wrong. If it’s my fault, I’ll make it up to her if she’ll talk to me. I just got to know, okay? Tell her for me?”

“Sure,” Cassie said, feeling her cheeks hot with embarrassment. As soon as Eli turned, she laid the books she carried on the windowsill and opened her notebook. In big black letters she printed LACEY. After a moment of hesitation, she added two more short entries and underlined them:

my best friend

Eli’s girl

Lacey, Lacey, Lacey . . . what was it? Morton. No, not that, but sort of like it, too. Something a little odd.

“DeMore,” she said.

Unbidden, a strong memory flooded through her: Cassie lying back on the bed, hugging Lacey’s hips, her fingers clenched in those delicious soft yielding ass cheeks, drawing Lacey’s pussy down to her face, feeling Lacey’s busy tongue pleasing her—

Cassie staggered against the wall, nearly slid to the floor. She could taste Lacey on her tongue, could remember being with her, making love—

“Oh, my God!”

She cut her last class and ran home to her dorm.

Cassie rushed straight to Lacey’s room when she got to the dormitory. No one was in. After thinking for a minute, Cassie climbed the stairs to hunt Sarah, the gravel-voiced, middle-aged housekeeper who emptied the trash, occasionally vacuumed, and changed the bed linens twice a week. She found her slapping her mop down on the third floor. “Hey, Sarah, have you seen Lacey DeMore lately? You know, in the room next to mine?”

“No,” the older woman said, leaning on her mop. “I figured she’d flunked out or something, ‘cept she hasn’t taken her stuff. What’s she done, shacked up with a boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said slowly.

“Happens this time of the term,” Sarah said with a shrug. “Girls flunk out, move out, happens every semester. Like that Brandon girl up on the top floor—”

“Wynn?” Cassie asked quickly.

“Yeah, funny name. She packed up and left about Wednesday. Got her a scholarship, she said, so she’s planning to move off campus, get her an apartment. Probably got herself a girlfriend, though, is what I figure.” She leaned closer and said confidentially, “She’s queer, ya know.”

God, another quick flash, Wynn in a strap-on dildo, and I—I let her do that, I liked it when she did that—

Sarah plopped her mop in the bucket, smacked it down on the tiles, and resumed scrubbing the hallway floor. “Got to get that end, hon, move out of my way.”

Cassie made her way down to the front desk of the dorm. Mrs. Rollinger, the elderly dorm director, sat at a desk there reading a celebrity magazine. Cassie could make out the upside-down title of the article: We Go to the Hollywood Awards: Skanks, Pimps, Ho’s and Mo’.

“Hi,” Cassie said with an uncertain smile. She cleared her throat and said more loudly, “Uh, I need to return something to Wynn Brandon, and she’s, like, moved out?”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Rollinger said, her wrinkly old face expressing nothing but boredom. “She came into some money. Decided to move off-campus.”

“Did, uh, she leave a forwarding address?” asked Cassie. “Because I think she’d really like to have her stuff back.”

With a grunt, the old woman got to her feet and shuffled to a computer. She moused around on the screen, pulled something up, and then turned away, shaking her head. “No. Said she’d be in touch, but I haven’t heard from her yet.” Mrs. Rollinger collapsed back into her chair and reached for her magazine.

“Thanks anyway.” Cassie trudged back to her room. God, when she had been doing Wynn, Lacey had been there—or had she? Wynn had wanted her alone, just Cassie, and the two of them had—well, made love, and Cassie had enjoyed it, had come so many times that—she shook her head. Concentrate, she told herself.

Wynn had—Mistress Wynn had taken control of her and—and that was how she got the program that turned Tek off that stupid game. Yes. But the price had been—Wynn had made her—what?

God, what did Wynn do to me? I can’t remember if Lacey was there or if I just dreamed all that. This is so screwed up, I’m like—

She collapsed on the edge of her bed. She knew what she was like. She was exactly like Tek after she’d given him a follow-up suggestion: “You’ll remember this, but you’ll think it’s your idea. The next time we fuck, you’ll want to get behind me and take me that way. When you come, then you’ll want to eat out my pussy.”

That kind of stuff. And if she didn’t want him to remember—“Slave Tek, you will want to play ‘Zabzik’ for only one hour each night. You will forget that I told you this. It will be your idea. You will be happy. If you play one minute more than an hour, you will feel miserable. You will be happy if you stop after just one hour. This is your idea. You will forget I said—”

Forget.

What the hell had Wynn made her forget?

Cassie clenched her hands. If she thought of Wynn, if she tried to concentrate, she felt—diminished. Insignificant. She, Cassie, was worthless, a worm. Mistress Wynn was beautiful, powerful, strong, desirable.

Oh, God, she let me put my tongue into her pussy, she was so sweet to me, so kind to me—

“Stop it!” Cassie yelled—to herself, to her memory, to that other her, that helpless slut—what was her name when she had been Wynn’s plaything, what was it?

“Karma?” she whispered. Not right, not quite right, but something like that. And she had been a slave, and Wynn had been her Mistress.

And . . . Shock had . . . been there, too.

No, not Shock. That was . . . that was a character in the game, in “Zabzik.” But not hers. Hers had been—Caramel? Carmine? Something like that. Shock was the character played by—God, not by Lacey?

She closed her eyes. “You will remember,” she told herself fiercely. “You will remember, damn it! I command you! I’m Mistress Wy—Mistress Cassandra, and I command you to remember!”

Flashes: a charging monster. Shock’s breasts, so full, creamy, their carmine, yearning tips hard between her lips, yielding to her teasing tongue, oh, so soft and so hard at the same time. Lacey begging “Don’t make me do this” like a sick child. A dragon, all fire and smoke, corkscrewing through the air, and they had to bring it down. Wynn, Mistress Wynn, cooing and whispering, orchestrating the mutual sucking, Wynn fucking Shock, then fucking her—oh, God, it was so good—no, no, she wasn’t that way, the slave hadn’t liked it, she had been . . . not forced, she loved it, she was a nasty slut wet from Shock’s pussy, wet from Mistress Wynn—

Slut.

Her eyes flew open as, in her mind, she heard the echo of a deadened voice, someone else’s voice, not hers: “Mistress, I am a dirty whore bitch cunt skank slut.”

A dreadful, hopeless look from half-dead eyes.

A hoarse frog-croak of a despairing plea: “Help me.”

All piecemeal, all unconnected. God, Wynn had stolen something from her, had stolen part of her self, part of her memory—

“Karm,” Cassie said suddenly, staring at the popcorn tiles in her dorm room ceiling. “I was . . . I am Karm.”

She lay back on her bed and closed her eyes. She had to get that part of herself back. If she could. She had to find what had been taken.

In her head, and just to herself, she said firmly, “This is Mistress Cassie, Slave—Slave Karm.”

END OF PART II