The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Once they were out of the pitched battle in the slavers’ complex it was peaceful, and Vanessa was tempted to stop running. The tunnel exit was in a stand of trees by the edge of the back pasture, and she looked up the slope to the little farmhouse that she dimly recalled her captors taking her through. Back when They’d still just kept her drugged, before the serious brainwashing to redesign her mind.

She thought she remembered trying to escape through it, once, early on when she’d still been able to think of wanting to get away. When she’d still been able to think, period. She wasn’t sure. There was something about needing to keep running, keep trying, keep . . .

“Keep going!”

She turned, and Heather was slowing down to yell at her. Heather was still disguised in the tight black leather of one of Their guards, and at the sight of her Vanessa’s conditioning was already sending pulses of obedience through her body.

But there was more, and it wasn’t just that the agent had come to rescue her and the others, or even that Heather was gorgeous. Heather’s lovely Asian features had been the first face she’d seen when Heather had cracked open the indoctrination pod, even before her eyes had refocused. Vanessa knew why she was ready to do anything the other woman asked, or wished, or commanded.

Right now Heather was commanding Vanessa to move her ass.

Vanessa resisted, with an effort, the treacherous joy of exploring Heather’s interest in her ass. She saw Heather’s frantic look around at the other runaway slaves, and remembered why they were running. She saw two of them starting to falter, and went to the one furthest from Heather—Kat, her name was. She took her hand, and Kat gaped at her.

“Please,” she said, unable to marshal the crack of authority in Heather ‘s voice. But this slavegirl was even further along in her brainwashing than Vanessa had been, and she obeyed even a plea.

Heather looked back again as she ran, seeing Vanessa with the other stray, and her grin of approval was like a warm hand on Vanessa’s groin. She ran faster, and Kat followed puppylike, bonding to her as she’d started bonding to Heather.

No one was coming out after them, but Vanessa saw another backward glance from Heather, and she looked more worried, not less.

Vanessa tried to think, though she hadn’t had much practice lately. Heather was running them toward the property-line fence, into the scrub pine beyond. A warm night was falling, and they might be able to hide a half-dozen scared but very compliant girls if the slavers did come out looking for them.

In the chaos, did the ones who’d been turning Vanessa and the others into obedient drones even know some of them had fled?

Oh—mistake. Even trying to make sense of the noise and confusion back there was triggering a weird excitement between Vanessa’s legs with the memories of the place. A need to be there. To return there. Now . . .

She clung to Heather’s command, trying not to slip into a trance that one of the other Mistresses had implanted in her. She felt Kat’s hand in hers, and thought If I go back she’ll follow me. She won’t even know she had a chance.

The chill kept her going.

There was a noise ahead, familiar and arousing. The warbling electronic tone was something she couldn’t quite remember, but even as her pussy warmed, her gut froze—there were other tones and sequences, burned into her mind, that would turn her into a windup toy, and she had no way to resist.

She saw the others collecting at the fence. Heather and three of the runaways were slowing down.

Two of the girls had stopped dead and were standing rigid. Heather was looking at them wide-eyed. Vanessa heard the almost-seductive beeping, and saw that in addition to the thongs they all wore, the two in trance had collars.

She was near them now and heard them start to chant together. “Must . . . return. Obey . . . return . . . obey . . .” As one, they swiveled to face the tunnel and began walking stiffly back to their controllers.

She felt as though They were watching, and reaching out. Their powers had taken the collared girls’ minds first, and then something else would put her to sleep too, and she would lead Kat back to slavery . . .

“Perimeter,” Heather said breathlessly. “The trigger’s automatic—but there’ll be an alarm that there were slaves here. Even if these two go back—”

“They can’t,” Vanessa said desperately, trying to block the nearest and reaching for the other. But the first slave marched into her, and the silken body, bare as her own, pressed softly and relentlessly against her.

She pushed back and they tumbled to the grass, and Vanessa found her body trying to wrap around the other girl, needing to fuck her as even the danger faded. She wanted to call to Heather but glimpsed the leather-clad agent harrying the uncollared, still-awake escapees over the fence.

The other girl was oblivious as she squirmed against Vanessa, her eyes blank. Her body was reacting to Vanessa, too, but her programming was far too strong for her lust. She got up first. Vanessa climbed up her body, fighting how good it felt. Still obeying her collar, the girl was panting her obedience to its signal. She pressed against Vanessa, dreamily trying to get past her but too stupefied by her trance to think of trying to get around her.

Whatever They’d done to her had reduced her to a windup toy, and it made Vanessa terribly sad.

And terribly damp . . .

“Listen to me! Think! Fight it! If it pulls you back inside you’ll never get out!” Vanessa started to panic, no longer sure if her voice was breaking from horror or envy.

“Return . . . obey . . .”

Vanessa looked at the other woman as she chanted, pushing mindlessly so she could return, and recognized her. Vanessa had still been weak and splay-legged as a newborn colt, moments out of the pod’s strange sleep with her body and mind still half-tranquilized, leaning on Heather just to stand up. This girl had come by, crying in rage because she hadn’t been able to get to the pods in the other chamber. Full of fire, trying to help Heather and the other agents, not wanting to leave people behind.

Her head floated like a tethered balloon now, and her eyes were beautifully glazed. Their empty gaze rubbed against Vanessa’s awareness.

They’d snuffed this girl’s fire with beeping from a cheap microchip. The tones had erased her memory of trying to fight them or even of having a reason to fight. She could remember nothing now but the need to obey Them embedded in what They’d left of her mind.

Before Vanessa could remember that it was embedded in hers, too, she realized the slave’s urgent chant was tickling her from inside. She heard herself start to whisper, “Obey . . .”

The girl was so hot in her blankness. She’d never know her sleepwalk was seducing Vanessa to follow her back to the slavers, a moth drawn by another moth back to the flame that would burn them both to soulless automata.

It felt awful to slip back, to surrender when she was so close to the fence, and Vanessa moaned, sliding her cleft against the other girl’s flexed thigh.

“Snap out of it!”

She hadn’t realized her eyes were closed, and when she opened them Heather’s face filled them. She was held tight in warm leather, and her cheek was warm from a slap she hadn’t felt.

“Vanessa!” The fear in the agent’s dark eyes was unbearable.

“Still with you,” Vanessa made herself hiss, and fought the need to lean into Heather and dissolve.

Oh god. The girl . . .

She turned in Heather’s embrace, but the reenslaved girl Heather had pulled her off of was already striding placidly back to be owned again. The other girl who’d been caught in her collar and triggered was even further away, almost to the tunnel again.

Vanessa tensed, torn between the need to submit to Heather and the scalding thought of leaving the nameless girl to be reeled back in by Their summons.

“We have to leave her,” Heather said, and even as it sank in as a command, Vanessa heard the pain. She turned back to face the agent. Heather hadn’t invaded the complex alone, but no one else, runaway or agent, had come out. Heather knew about leaving-behind.

Vanessa stopped resisting it. What the pod’s brainwashing had started, awakening from it to Heather, and seeing Heather’s strength as she faced this, now, was completing.

Straightening so Heather could let her go—her own tiny strength letting her part from the other woman’s touch—she allowed herself only to nod.

I’m in love with you, agent Heather.

Vanessa knew Heather probably couldn’t take that right now, and just followed her to the fence. The other girls had scattered: two, including Kat, had just kept going to the trees as they’d been told, but the other two were standing slackly just past the fence, looking frightened but too drowsy to think of running.

She and Heather each took one gently by the arm and ran to catch up with the others.

2.

They’d found a small bowl-shaped clearing ringed by trees with good visibility around, and Heather had kept them here. Vanessa worried about her, but she seemed calm enough as they waited.

As night deepened, none of them seemed inclined to sleep. No one had pursued them, and Vanessa didn’t question that. Her own memories of the complex were too gapped, and too tampered with, for her to form any idea of what They might be able to know or do now. She knew Heather’s team would have sold themselves dearly if they could, and the slavers’ setup might have been quite wrecked when the last of the agents went down.

Now she reclined near a broad oak and looked over at Heather, trying to explain why she was so fixated on her.

“It was to imprint me on one of the Mistresses,” Vanessa said, finding Heather’s eyes like onyx in the moonlight. The agent nodded.

“It’s easier now to remember some of what I was being conditioned for. I think I was supposed to become the executive assistant/pussylicker for one of the senior Mistresses, and from what I think I remember, from before I was spending more time in trance than awake, those personal girl-toys tend to be real devotees. Whoever she was, I would have lived to die for her when they were finished converting me.”

Heather did her the courtesy of not looking away, but Vanessa knew she could understand the real message.

“I recall they were pleased with what they kept calling my ‘potential.’ There was some kind of aptitude battery they gave me when I was hypnotized—the memory feels early, right after I was abducted.”

“Do you remember much about that? Being abducted?” Heather seemed glad to change the subject.

“No,” she said, not sure if she was entirely unhappy about that. “I’m not even sure ‘Vanessa’ is my name or one they gave me—like Bitsy.” She nodded to where the four other runaways huddled quietly at the other end of the clearing.

Heather followed her glance and kept looking at the others, all she’d been able to save.

“Heather.” The agent turned back to her.

“You got seven people out into the open. It may not seem like much after that hive, but it’s way more than none. I owe you that my eyes are open and my mind can think.” She blinked, almost too full of the need to make Heather feel better to be able to do it. “I think you’re the only reason I still know what ‘I’ means.”

Heather nodded. “I lost two of those seven when their collars took control of them. My own crew . . .”

Vanessa recalled standing up against Heather in the pod chamber, almost laminated to her, still coming down from the half-complete imprinting. Heather’d had some kind of walkie-talkie and the woman at the other end was frantic. “They’ve got something else! The helmets are useless! It’s low-frequency—I don’t know what it is but J.Z.’s a fucking zombie now and she was almost ready to start shooting at us when she fell over!”

Heather’s eyes had widened. “Heather, God help me, I was ready to shoot her first.

“Whatever it is, thank god it’s not mobile yet or—I’d be calling you because they told me to.”

Seeing her rescuer’s own fear, then, had been some kind of moderator on the imprinting. Vanessa’s mind had been full of the Perfect Goddess the pod had been remapping her reality to worship, and she was well on her way to giving her soul to the sleek Japanese deity in leather who’d drawn her up out of obedient sleep. But Heather, the flesh-and-blood goddess who held her gently until she could stand and speak again, was a few heartbeats from panic hearing her comrades being routed and taken.

She heard what Heather had been hearing—heard it with her whole mind now. Heather’s leader had told her to get anyone she could and get them out. It was all they could do. It was goodbye.

That was it. The raid had been a disaster, and the other agents . . .

Vanessa didn’t know if it was her interrupted programming, or something more real, but she wanted more than anything to go over and hold Heather, in what might be the worst hour of her life.

“I don’t even have the commbox anymore,” Heather commented, sounding almost bored. “Lost it in the melee. And I was the technical geek on the team.”

Vanessa looked at her, realizing that in the slaver disguise she hadn’t been able to carry much of what Vanessa supposed agents usually liked to tote around. She had a hazy memory of being subdued, early on before They’d tranced the fight out of her and she resisted each trip to the conditioning room, and recalled Them drawing things from unguessed sheaths and seams of their leathers—things that had stung and dazed her, made her sleepy or left her purring on her knees. Slaver guards were equipped for Their war on the defenseless victims They were converting, not for a chase across open country.

She tried to picture Heather in her own proper livery, black T-shirt and combat pants in jump boots, maybe, gear on a belt slung from her tiger-slim waist and more on a web-harness over her shoulders.

But here-and-now Heather gleamed in skintight black leather, beautiful and lethal as a dragon in repose, and while that streamlined glory was enough to make Vanessa’s breathing pause, it was apparently empty of useful gadgets, at least for their present needs. Heather was trying to keep them awake and running, not stun them into obedience.

Oh. Oh my.

Stunned. Into obedience.

To—Heather.

Vanessa bit her tongue, hard.

Tearing her eyes from Heather, she didn’t bother to look down at herself. There wasn’t anything to inventory. Maybe I could make a slingshot from my thong. Just have to hope a breeze doesn’t come by and set me off while I’m aiming.

The other girls were likewise essentially out here in nothing but smiles.

Not even that, she realized, hearing the low sound from the others and stung by another half-memory from the holding cells, before she and the others with her had been hypnotized out of remembering to weep.

She saw Heather blink at them, and said, “I’ll take care of her.” As Heather nodded and she stood to go to them, she realized that she was taking a feminine role, comforting the women while dark strong Heather fought for them.

She shook her head before she could start planning the wedding, and knelt by the other freed slaves. Bitsy looked up at her artlessly.

“She’s crying. Her name’s Lori, I think.” Vanessa nodded to her and put out her hand to stroke Bitsy’s cheek, thanking her—rewarding her—for being the dutiful pupil. Bitsy closed her eyes at the caress and then sat back placidly to watch.

Kat, the girl Vanessa had dragged out before, was holding tearful Lori, who curled against her breasts, looking ready to suckle. Kat nodded up to Vanessa and kept looking at her, and despite herself, Vanessa had to smile. Even this motley crew had fallen into its own fucked-up hierarchy: she herself was ready to be Heather’s love-slave the moment Heather cared to lift her finger, Kat was still devoted to Vanessa for taking control of her as they’d fled, and now Lori was imprinting on Kat.

Bitsy smiled back at her and Kat did too, but Lori was too inward just then. Vanessa knelt, realizing that the four of them, curled there on the shadows away from the moon’s shine, were radiating their own quiet erotic pulse, and it was sneaking up her thighs.

Resting her hand on Lori’s warm shoulder, she said, “We’re here, Lori. We got away and soon we’ll get a ride to someplace safe.”

Lori looked sidewise, not quite toward her, and closed her eyes, seeming to shrink in Kat’s hold. Vanessa remembered seeing a rabbit, too frightened to bite, trying to disappear that way as someone held it.

Fresh tears leaked from Lori’s eyelids as she whispered.

“I need to obey.”

3.

Vanessa went cold. Lori was still enslaved. She’d only run because someone had yelled at her to—maybe the collared girl, before the collar beeped away her will to resist—and Lori was too mindfucked to disobey anyone who took control of her.

But They still owned her heart and soul, and she cried now for wanting them to take her back on a leash.

Vanessa looked at the others. Bitsy was still docile and Kat seemed to have a spark in her eyes, but she didn’t know how deep their brainwashing was. She didn’t want to think of them lapsing back into obedience, and wondered what sort of deep compulsions might be waiting under their conscious thoughts, even hers, ready to turn one or more of them into Their remote-control weapons.

She blinked and looked at the fourth woman. “I’m Vanessa. What’s your name?”

The woman blinked back. “I don’t know,” she said, and Vanessa nearly missed the note, it was so quiet. The woman seemed calm, but she was frozen with the terror of not even being anyone. Even the rest of their little pack had names.

She’d run with them, but she was no one.

Vanessa took her hand and the woman squeezed back. “What name would you like?”

The woman looked at her. “The one I used to have,” she whispered, and Vanessa blushed deeply.

“No. I’m sorry. I know what you meant. But I knew it just a few—days? hours? ago—they told me I’d just passed my lessons, I’d just forgotten what they wanted me to, before I could start to be reprogrammed for my . . . true function.” Her eyes were dry but she held Vanessa’s hand more tightly.

“I can’t remember what they took away, but thank you for getting me out while I can remember I lost it.”

Vanessa felt like an imposter, but realized she was standing in for Heather’s lost people now. She leaned over and hugged the woman. She held her and whispered, “I think I had a sister, and her name was Jennifer. May I lend you her name, until we find yours again?”

The arms around her tightened. “Yes,” she felt against her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Vanessa leaned back. “Bitsy, Kat, Lori—this is Jennifer.”

“Hi, Jennifer,” Kat said, and Bitsy echoed her, looking curiously at the new person. Lori didn’t stir from Kat’s breast, but reached mutely for Jennifer’s hand, and Jennifer took it, and looked at her.

Vanessa was starting to guess what “true functions” they’d all been destined for, if Heather and the others hadn’t freed them. Bitsy and Kat seemed blissful and easy to control, and they were both pretty in a very . . . accessible way. She could see how attractive they’d look kneeling by the walls of an office. The vision was so sharp she fled from it, tasting the seductive flavor of what they’d been implanting in her thoughts while she was helpless in the indoctrination pod.

God. In the sick infrastructure they’d been melted and reshaped to fit, Vanessa would have emerged from the pod as someone’s obsequious lackey, and she would still have looked down on playtoys like these. She suspected she’d have used them thoroughly, and they’d have loved it.

Jennifer held Lori’s hand. “We can talk about obedience, if you’d like,” she said, and Kat stroked Lori’s hair as she nodded faintly.

Jennifer turned to Vanessa. “I think if we’re gentle, we can make her comfortable with being—free. At least enough so she’ll go along with whatever you need us to do. We can take care of it.”

Vanessa smiled, embarrassed a little that she hadn’t really noticed Jennifer before now. Lori’s susceptibility could endanger them all in ways they might not even know, but leaving it in Jennifer’s hands seemed safe, somehow.

“We’re not free yet,” she said, trying to make it sound wry and not defeated.

The woman who wore her sister’s name so well stroked Lori’s wrist and looked around at the trees. “Oh, I don’t know, Vanessa. I’ll do what you and Heather tell me to because it makes sense and you’re both trying hard for us, not because you’ve got some kind of whammy on me. I’m out in the woods on a warm summer night and not being hypnotized in some concrete cubicle.”

She met Vanessa’s eyes. “I’d be happy to lie down with any of you and make love sometime, just because I want to know how you sound when you’ re that happy.

“I think I’m pretty free, considering.”

Vanessa kissed her, and left them all, smiling, before she fell apart.

She knelt beside Heather, looking down at the exquisite face and the onyx eyes. “I’m sorry. I just need to be near you now.”

Heather nodded. “You’re in love with me, aren’t you?”

Vanessa shivered with a bedroom delight at being as soul-naked as she was body-nude to Heather. “Yes. That’s about it.

“It’s like one of those love-potion things. The pod was programming me to love and worship and obey the woman who’d open it and take me out.”

“Me.”

“Yes, as it turned out.”

Heather didn’t blink. “I notice you’re not calling me ‘Mistress’ or anything—not that I mind.”

She smiled. “It’s different. I think you broke the cycle before it could implant the real slave protocols, or seal them with the pleasure reinforcements.” She swallowed, seduced and repulsed. “If I’d been under that far when you opened the pod—I’d either be completely insane, or else completely your . . . creature.”

She wondered about being that dedicated a slavegirl to Heather, unable to separate the real adoration she felt for the other woman.

“I’d have killed you,” Heather said quietly. “If you’d been that far gone.”

“Thank you.” She meant it, and then she saw Heather’s eyes, looking past her at the friends Heather had left back there. The ones Heather couldn’t even hope to release by killing, now.

“We’ll get help,” she said, staring deep into the dark eyes. “You’ll get them out if they’re alive.” She was lying against Heather before she realized it, tripping on the way the leather and the taut body in it felt against her skin. Even the little weapons and slave-control tools dug wonderfully into her own softness as she pressed close.

Heather lay very still and Vanessa suddenly looked up at her, lifting her head from the agent’s breast. “I’m—sorry. I literally can’t help thinking like this when it comes to you. But—you’re not into this at all, are you? Into me?

“This is repulsive to you, isn’t it?” She pulled away and sat up again.

Even the mortification of trying to seduce a hugely uninterested heterosexual woman felt good in a bad sort of way, but she wanted Heather’s respect, too, and she pulled away, seeing herself at last from where Heather lay. She was only just realizing how much of Their world she’d absorbed while They’d been enslaving her, and she’d forgotten that some women didn’t fancy other women.

Maybe neither had she, before.

Trying to swallow tears, she had to turn again before Jennifer and the others saw her crying. She wasn’t sure if it was to guard their morale or her own pride, such as it was by now.

She didn’t turn when she heard the leather creak, but she did give a quiet cry when she felt the leather enfold her gently from behind and bear her gently back to the ground. She let herself soften as Heather lay over her, and went boneless as Heather’s lips kissed her tears.

“No,” Heather said to her. “Not repulsive. I tend to prefer men, but a beautiful woman”—she kissed Vanessa’s brow—“who’s brave”—and her cheek—“and smart”—and her lips, lingeringly—“would never repel me.

“And when she’s in love with me . . .” Now she held Vanessa, as tenderly as Kat was holding Lori.

“I can’t say that I’m in love with you, Vanessa. On top of everything else I’ve just lost some people I did love, and I’m not happy to care that much about someone else I could lose.

“But I could love you, I think. Very easily.”

Heather kissed her again, with great deliberation. “We’ll have drinks, after we’re out of here, and talk about it.”

Vanessa looked up at her. “I’m there,” she whispered.

“No!” said one of the others.

Heather pulled her to sit upright. They both looked to see if someone had appeared in the trees, but the four other women were absorbed in each other. Unwrapping herself from Heather, Vanessa trotted over to squat by her charges. They seemed to be talking quietly now.

The sound was so soothing and steady that it nearly put her into trance, too, before she spotted their wide, unseeing eyes.

“The Mistresses are too powerful to resist we can only obey we cannot think we can only obey . . .”

She couldn’t even call out to Heather, who was too far to hear—it was all she could do to keep her teeth clenched over the urge to join the chant. She knew the words. It was part of Their basic programming, and now that it was flowing through her head again it was echoing from inside—again.

The women’s voices weren’t quite in synch, and that helped her resist. Lori and Kat were making a seductive harmony, with Bitsy chirping solemnly along, but Jennifer was hesitating—barely, but it was enough to distract Vanessa from the cadence that might have snared her.

Jennifer had had just enough willpower left to send up the distress flare of “No!” before slipping. She’d tried to reach Lori, but it was dangerous to talk about obedience with a completely obedient person.

Vanessa started to slap Jennifer, but kissed her instead, wrapping her tongue around Jennifer’s to seduce it from the words. She kept on until she felt Jennifer respond to it and pull her closer. When they parted, she said, “I knew you could hold out, Sis.”

Leather on her shoulder let her know Heather had seen it, and now each of the free women took a tranced one and held her with a hand over her mouth until she subsided. Lori curled up and went to sleep, while Bitsy looked dazed and Kat started to cry.

Heather looked at them. She stood up, and Vanessa felt all of them respond to the gleaming dark guardian at whose feet they crouched. This was a Frazetta or Vallejo moment, she thought madly—Heather resplendent in her black, naked slavegirls wrapped around each leg.

Demons out behind the darkness.

But Heather just looked down, and Vanessa knew she was seeing her friends, being brainwashed back there into learning the same self-hypnotic chant. Into exceptionally fit playtoys, or more fanatical myrmidons.

“We’re moving. I have an idea.”

4.

Heather got them to another huddling place, a hollow near the top of a bluff, overlooking the road. Vanessa kept expecting to see war-movie partisans with grenades or something, about to ambush the convoy of blunt old trucks that would be along presently.

Nobody here but us naked fugitives, though. She saw Kat holding Lori again, and Jennifer sitting apart, a more aware failsafe if Lori hypnotized Kat or Bitsy again.

Vanessa and Heather lay side by side, looking down at the roadhouse. Heather had pointed out what looked like an old phone booth in an alcove in the shadows in back of the building, and there seemed to be wire going from the roadside lines to the vertical timber beside it.

But Heather had turned to consider the few vehicles on the gravel in front. She looked longer at the red Barracuda, aloof under the white glare of the streetlight, that hunched forward, parked nose-out.

“I could get it started, but I don’t know if I could fit us all,” she said softly.

Vanessa let their arms touch. “Mmm. Yes. I can see the problem. How would we stand it, all piled onto each other in the back? Quivering soft warm flesh everywhere. The agony.”

“Very funny.” Heather scanned the area again. “How could I stand it, listening to the noise you’d all be making?”

“You could keep me in front.” Vanessa refused to touch herself. “I could ride the stick—you could just grab my ass when you wanted to shift.”

“Slut. You’d be praying for hills every two miles.” Heather looked around quickly, realizing how “slut” might have sounded, and Vanessa wasn’t ready to show her how it had nearly set her off to hear it so casually.

She sighed, instead, inclining her head toward Jennifer and the others. “Well, honey, now that we have kids, you’ll just have to hotwire something sensible instead.”

Heather grunted. “Yes, dear. But look—that windowless cinderblock longneck emporium down there is fresh out of minivans.”

Vanessa looked down at it. “Are you sure we can’t just go down and tell them we need help? Get the sheriff or the state police or whatever, until you can get more agents here?”

Heather rolled onto her side and eyed Vanessa, making her weak with the way she looked her up and down. “Just how many beer-buddies do you want pinning you to the pool table? I wonder how they’d deal with Lori wanting to obey.”

Vanessa couldn’t find words for how that made her feel. “You could go. You could kick the shit out of anyone in that bar. Out of everyone.” She relaxed and let the idolatry flow, and it was utterly sincere. Heather was staring at her.

“You could kill them and bring them back to life and kick them away when they licked your boots.”

Heather’s eyes were so strange—slavegirl-wide, but Mistress-hyperalert. “You mean that, don’t you, Vanessa?”

Vanessa stopped her hand before it crawled under her thong. It actually helped to be so riveted by the other woman—it was something to block out the lust. “Yes. Oh, god. I do.” She looked at Heather. “I really hope you’re a decent person, Heather, because I can’t think anything wrong about you. I don’t know where the conditioning stops, and where—”

“What begins?” asked Heather, in awe.

“The reality. You’d be a goddess even if I weren’t brainwashed to think so.”

“Maybe you’re just thinking that because the pod trained you to.” Heather said it gently.

“No. I don’t know. You’re just . . . so . . .” She stopped, because Heather slid over to her and stared into her eyes. She fell silent and realized happily that she was dissolving into Heather now, and . . .

“Vanessa. Stop it.” She tried to help Heather break her from it, not because she wanted to be free from Heather-worship but because Heather wanted it, but she was too deep.

“Please, Vanessa.”

It was enough to remind her, knowing that her deity could plead. She shut her eyes and leaned until her forehead rested on Heather’s shoulder. “Trying,” she gasped.

She clung to admiring Heather. She remembered the way Heather had smiled to see her catch Kat when Kat had nearly lapsed back into trance when they left the tunnel.

She doesn’t want a slave. She wants a friend.

She—needs a friend.

Putting her lips to Heather’s shoulder. “Better now.”

Heather released her carefully and rolled to look again at the roadhouse.

“I need to contact someone very quickly, Vanessa. I don’t know how long my friends have in there before the slavers destroy their wills permanently.

“We’ve all had training in resisting hypnosis and even drugs, but that subsonic thing—really scares me. They made J.Z. into a slave and they had her about to start fighting her own people . . . god, how did she feel when her mind told her that her friends were her enemies and her enemies were—” she looked at Vanessa “—goddesses?”

Heather shook her head and looked at the grass. “It sounded clumsy, experimental, from what Polly could tell me before I lost the commbox. I’m praying it is, because I don’t want to look back as we’re running across some field and see some fucking mind-melter on the back of a pickup chasing us.

“But the worst thing is that we should have known. They told me in training that one of the typical reactions to a failed mission is someone set us up. I want to put that aside and try to figure out what I can still fix.” Heather grasped at her night-black hair, loosening it a bit from the severe style that had helped her blend in with Them.

“But. But. They were warned about us and they had a weapon we should at least have heard rumors about. Distance-enslavement’s just a joke, gallows humor, like mentant-mutants or the ghost of Anton what’ s-his-face.

“Someone I work with, or for, is giving information to them and keeping it from us. They might have her under mind control—I hope so, because to help them willingly . . .” Vanessa shivered, seeing how cold Heather ‘s rage was, and Heather let go of it, seeing how open Vanessa was to her mood.

“All the timelines are trash now, Vanessa. I can’t count on Polly or J.Z. or anyone holding out against whatever they’re doing to them back there, not for the days we thought we could.”

Vanessa was feeling despair by now, and ready to do anything. “Heather, I don’t know how long they had me, but it was more than a few days. Or weeks, I think. I think it was winter when I was kidnapped.

“But I’m still me. Not quite me—I’m fairly sure I didn’t used to worship other women.” Heather smiled. “Even perfect ones.” Heather blinked and flushed, but she didn’t look away.

“But if They could turn a woman into Their catspaw that fast, I’d be a desk accessory by now. I’d have died fighting you before I let you take me out of my owners’ fortress. And no one trained me to resist hypnosis, either—I’m as easy as easy meat gets. So maybe your friends can resist.”

Heather wanted to believe her, and was refusing to let herself.

“I won’t argue, Heather. But I believe in you, and the women you call friends.” Well, of course I do. The indoctrination pod told me to, and I Must Obey. But it felt like more than that.

“Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Heather looked at her and nodded. “Okay, Vanessa. I need to talk before we can run. Plan A is to use that phone at the back of the social club down there, to call in and let the others know what happened. Then Plan A2 is to get something running down there—that king-cab looks good—and haul ass with all of you, down to a retrieval point.

“I don’t want to let anyone down there know we’re here until I have to—fuck, I don’t want to have to.”

“As in, ‘Thank you for not raping us,’” Vanessa murmured as she looked down.

“That’s not the worst case,” Heather said, too evenly. “We haven’t cleared this area. The hive back there is just one installation the slavers have, and it may have gotten so large because they have local help.”

She didn’t seem to notice Heather’s eyes widen. Just one? How big were They? She knew Heather was—an agent, she’d said so, but she hadn’ t even considered—

Local help?

“I’m not even authorized to talk to local law enforcement,” Heather was saying, and Vanessa flashed on what might have been a memory, an aborted escape attempt up through the farmhouse . . . if she’d made it to the road, flagged down a car, fallen to her knees in joy to see the lights on the roof, the shield on the door. Thanking them.

Until they drove her back. Worst case.

Turned her over to the leather controllers, and watched Them put her back on her knees. They were all women, but They didn’t mind using men.

Was she remembering that? She wasn’t sure she’d even made it out of the house—or had she even tried? Had she only dreamed of escaping, in the cell before they’d made her dreams wetter and all about submission? Or listened half in trance as a stronger woman remembered trying?

“So, trusting people in a bar this close to the complex not to be in on it—no. Too risky.”

Vanessa looked at her and knew Heather was playing that martial-arts bar fight in her own mind, without Vanessa’s filter of adoration. She was seeing herself go down, leaving Vanessa and the others defenseless.

Heather didn’t change expression, but uncoiled to squat on her haunches. Squinting down over her samurai-daughter cheekbones, she looked like a hunting cat about to lunge down the hillside and take something down with her teeth. It was only when she looked over at Vanessa that Vanessa realized she’d come upright, too—to kneel.

Vanessa wanted, a little, to be the prey of this long-limbed black huntress. The heat of Heather’s mouth on Vanessa’s throat would be worth dying for as she closed her jaws on it.

When Heather saw that—and humanity shone out of her again—the joy of it almost killed Vanessa.

But when it didn’t kill her, she knelt up, proudly suppliant.

“Please, Heather. Let me go down there instead.”

Heather stopped moving completely. “If they caught you—”

“I know.” Vanessa’s mind was catching up to where her heart had brought her, but even the vertigo of what she heard herself volunteering for didn’t throw it loose. “But if they catch me, they just get a runaway. If they catch you . . .” She fought the pod-conditioned admiration for Heather’s warrior prowess and made herself see the crueler scene, where the too-numerous enemies swarmed over Heather. A lot of them would never get up, but in the end she’d lose.

She’d try, though, and in a tearing way, this made Vanessa readier to worship Heather than the mind control had.

A goddess couldn’t die for Vanessa, but Heather would.

5.

Before Heather said anything, Vanessa pointed to where the others lay. “If they catch you, Heather, that’s it. We’re as good as back in the hive. If we used to be able to defend ourselves, or had the sense to run away when someone wanted to hurt us or own us, They’ve brainwashed us out of it. Jennifer and Kat need you, whatever happens down there.”

Heather looked at her, perfectly still. “They’d have you, Vanessa.”

Vanessa jerked quietly but kept upright. She almost bowed to the ground at the praise—but her mind held the idea she’d started with. The mind she still owed to Heather.

“Thank you,” she managed. “But even if I could get them moving, we’re just so many baby rabbits hopping around loose. I might find us some place to hide.

“But They’d make us come out to Them.” She trembled, trying not to enjoy the dream of obeying the summons when it came.

“We weren’t collar-trained yet, but we still have all sorts of posthypnotic controls buried inside. Bells or beeping or flashing lights—they’d just troll for us and we’d come stumbling out of hiding like good little sleepwalkers.” She looked imploringly at the agent. “You’d just think the triggers were silly, and I think you could keep the girls quiet.

“Maybe you could just knock them out.” She had to smile, and it made Heather grin, too.

“But if it were me, I wouldn’t—want to. I might not even remember they were there with me.” Heather’s smile faded, and the bond between them let Vanessa read her mind again. Heather was cold now, weighing the value of a pawn’s courage against the rest of her gambit.

It scared Vanessa—but it also blissed her, in a clean way she vaguely remembered from when she’d been free. Heather took her seriously enough to consider sacrificing her in the battle.

Touch me with your sword, Lady, and send me forth.

“I may need to knock them out anyway,” Heather said.

Vanessa was dizzy for a second. Heather was . . . agreeing with her. And Heather couldn’t bear to say so outright.

She couldn’t meet Heather’s eyes just then and turned to see Jennifer’ s, instead. Her new-named sister knelt a little away from the other three, and nodded reassuringly. Heather was right, though—if she were keeping an eye on Vanessa’s progress down by the phone, she couldn’t monitor the others if Lori had another spellbinding relapse and put the others under again.

It was frightening, to picture them kneeling passively, watching each other sag safely unconscious under Heather’s no-doubt scientific sleeper hold or customized agent karate blow or whatever.

But if Heather cold-cocked them, she might never get them up and away if there were active enemies in the roadhouse, and they came up the bluff after they took Vanessa.

“No.” The solution was dirty, but by now she wasn’t surprised to feel aroused by it.

“I’ll hypnotize them.”

It felt odd to be taking the initiative but wonderful that Heather was allowing her to. She slid back from the top of the incline and stayed low as she walked back to the other girls. Jennifer looked up, achingly alert, and Kat smiled up from holding Lori, like an elder sister proud to be minding the baby.

Vanessa knew she might not see any of them again. If she came to grief down there, whether it was a nest of Their collaborators or just a bar full of garden-variety gang-rapists, she’d wish not to see any of them caught after her.

She pushed it away and knelt, choosing Kat to begin before she knew why. The other woman was still drawn to her, bound by the memory of Vanessa leading her safely away from the shooting and screams of the disintegrating rescue.

“I need you to listen to me very carefully, Kat. I see you’re really relaxed now, very relaxed and feeling very safe and happy. Lori’s very warm in your arms and it feels good to hold her, and my voice is very soft in your ears and it feels good to listen to me. You don’t want to listen to anything else, Kat, you just want to listen to my soft voice and keep Lori warm as she keeps you relaxed and you keep her safe.”

She went on, and Kat was looking into her eyes without being told. Vanessa wondered whether she was starting to put herself under, but trusted Heather to spot that and rouse her.

“Safe and warm, Kat, listening only to my soft voice and whatever it says to you, soft and warm in your ears. So soft and warm and keeping Lori safe.”

Kat’s blinking had slowed, and her eyelids moved sluggishly up and down as though they’d forgotten how. Vanessa was trying not to use any of Their triggers—that felt too dirty, and it might put her into trance too deeply even for Heather to snap her out of it easily—but there was an evil allure to how receptive Kat was even to this gentle induction. The slavers had conditioned her perfectly.

Conditioned all of them. They were all this easy to hypnotize, now.

Vanessa wondered what she’d do if she were spotted down there, far enough to run—but someone just commanded her to stop.

“Safe now and ready for sleep, Kat. When you sleep you’ll be at peace and free from any hurtful thoughts. When I tell you to close your tired eyes you’ll be asleep, but in your special sleep you’ll be able to hear my voice and you’ll be able to do whatever my voice tells you to, won’t you? Kat?”

Kat’s eyes were like bright coins in the moonlight, moving with slow grace as she nodded. Vanessa reached to hold her temples, speaking as she touched them.

“Sleep now, Kat. Safe and asleep.”

Kat trembled at the combined impact of quiet words and cool fingertips as she sighed and let herself fall into the trance. Vanessa felt almost sick with the need to protect her and keep the promise of safe and warm.

She looked down at Lori, who’d been docile against the rhythm of Kat’s slowed breathing. Even under hypnosis, part of Kat’s tranquilized awareness kept her holding Lori, and Lori seemed to sense and soften into it, trusting her.

“Kat’s asleep now,” Vanessa whispered to her. “Would you like to dream with her?” Lori blinked, half-lulled by Kat’s own slumber and now lured by Vanessa’s offer.

“Just relax against her, Lori. It’s so easy to relax and sleep like Kat. Kat’s hypnotized now and her trance is glowing out of her, keeping you warm. She’s even softer and smoother and warmer now.

“It’s hypnotizing you just to be next to her, and it’s easier with each breath she takes in, each breath she lets out, like rocking on gentle waves . . .”

She could see Lori already breathing with Kat, her eyes fluttering and starting to roll up. She put her hand on Lori’s forehead.

Lori went limp, but Kat shifted to take the new balance without leaving her own trance, and Vanessa felt awe seeing them together. “Lori, you can still hear my voice.

“You will obey my voice.” It was disgusting to do that to her, but Lori’s overwhelming focus on obeying was the whole problem.

It worked now. Still rapt in synch with Kat, Lori mouthed “obey” like a kiss, and her thighs moved—only slightly, but seeing it warmed Vanessa between her own.

6.

She turned to Bitsy, but just watching her hypnotize Kat and Lori had put the other girl deeply under already. Bitsy knelt slackly now, her eyes on the two entranced women but seeing nothing outside her own blankness.

Alarmed, Vanessa looked around, praying she wouldn’t find Heather caught up in trance that way, too—and hating the self-destructive jolt it gave her to think of rendering her leather warrior helpless. But the agent still smiled at her and offered her a thumbs-up, and she turned back to her work.

“Bitsy, you too will obey my voice.” Bitsy nodded slowly and didn’t move otherwise.

Now it was Jennifer’s turn, and Vanessa felt different, somehow. Jennifer was breathing faster and seemed tense as she knelt, and her eyelids were drooping. She’d resisted the seduction of seeing the others submit, but she was fighting hard to do it, and there was real fear in her eyes as they tried to focus on Vanessa.

This really would be dirty. Jennifer remembered what it felt like to cherish her free will, and even as surrendering it made her wet, she didn’t want to give it up.

“Vanessa . . .

“Please. If I go under one more time—I don’t know if I could wake up again. Please tell me this is right.”

Vanessa could see how weak Jennifer was. Her will was smoke now, from running and fear, from however long she’d been being slave-trained, from seeing the others sent to dreamland by the woman who’d given her a name again. Vanessa could blow that smoke aside with a soft word and Jennifer would melt for her.

Lori had earlier pushed the word, slick and firm, into Jennifer’s moistening mind. Vanessa could taste it on her tongue.

Obey.

Vanessa took Jennifer’s head in her hands, and kissed her. “It’s right, Sis, but I think you’ll be okay without it.”

The look in Jennifer’s eyes took her breath away.

Jennifer held her and shook against her once, but then settled back on her heels. “No—I mean yes. I want to, Vanessa.” When Vanessa looked at her quizzically, she lowered her eyes but raised them again. “For you. I—trust you.

“I need you to know how much I do.”

Vanessa reached back and felt Heather take her hand. Is this how it feels?

Vanessa looked into Jennifer’s eyes and they nodded to each other. She kissed Jennifer once more and began.

“You’re already very sleepy, Jennifer, and as you listen to me you grow more drowsy. I’m hypnotizing you and you have no desire to resist.” She wasn’t going to seduce Jennifer’s mind like the others—Jennifer’s submission deserved something as honest.

“You’re focused on my words and my words are transmitting my thoughts into your mind. Your mind is willing and open and more and more deeply hypnotized.

“You’re becoming more and more deeply hypnotized as my words flow over your thoughts, and as you relax and submit to the hypnosis it’s becoming clearer and clearer to you that what you must do now is let my words become your thoughts so that what I speak is what you think.”

Jennifer stared into her eyes and relaxed against her body. Jennifer still looked afraid, but as her features softened into trance-slackness she was still trying to show her trust. Vanessa knew that when she’d put the rest of Jennifer to sleep, Jennifer would still be sending that quiet message.

“You’re deep in trance now, Jennifer, deep enough to be safe.” She wanted to say more—to leave some gift of peace here in the depths of Jennifer’s mind that were opened to her—but there was too much to try to convey.

She kissed Jennifer on the forehead and leaned back, softly calling each of them by name. “You’re all asleep now and very calm. You all want to stay very quiet and relaxed for me now, don’t you?” They nodded slowly. “Good. That’s very good. Each breath you take makes you want even more to do what I tell you to.

“You want to obey Heather, too, and do whatever she tells you to. If she tells you to be still and quiet, you’ll feel very warm and excited to curl up and rest just as you are now, asleep and calm, but still able to hear her and obey her.

“If she tells you to run for it—” Vanessa felt cold, and a moment later Heather’s hand was on her shoulder. She swallowed, already tasting grief, trying to remember this was only just in case. “Then, girls, you’ll want to run, and not listen to any triggers or tones or anything that makes you sleepy. Just run.

“Just—keep—running.

“And don’t look back.”

She saw them nod and heard them whisper it back—all four of them taking her posthypnotic suggestion without resistance. It was part of their minds now. She didn’t know if it would last more than a few strobe-flashes against one of Their capture teams, but it would make them easy for Heather to herd to safety if she could.

She saw Jennifer nod, too, and whisper the lesson to herself. Jennifer had let her do it.

Vanessa couldn’t look at her anymore, and Heather was holding her when she realized she’d been crying over what she’d done. She made herself look up at Heather, and remember that Heather was agonizing over another handful of women in Their hands, whose hypnosis would be a lot less gentle.

She thought about the pod, trying not to squeeze her thighs together, and doubted mere hypnosis would figure in what They were likely already doing to Heather’s team. Seeing what she’d been able to do to four runaway slavegirls when she was just a fifth of the same, she shared Heather’s urgency.

They needed a phone, fast. Every second one of the captured agents spent under Their machines might cost her memory and willpower no one could ever restore.

Heather was patient, nevertheless, waiting for Vanessa to recover, and Vanessa loved her even more.

“What’s the number?” she whispered. “And do they take collect calls?”

Heather gently helped her stand. “Collect? Don’t you watch those commercials?”

She let a giddy shudder loose the tension a little. “Which commercials?”

“I don’t know,” Heather said. “I never watch TV.” Vanessa batted at her arm, admiring how firm Heather’s bicep was as her hand bounced off it. As they walked back to the sloping incline, looking for activity by the roadhouse but seeing none, Heather told her the number, and some mission codes, and a grid reference.

Heather patted at the jumpsuit here and there, and slid something from a sheath on her inner forearm. In the moonlight the Subduer looked like an engineering pencil on steroids. Vanessa tingled, from the times she could remember being tamed with one.

“I wish I had a real gun to give you, Vanessa—god, I never thought I’d be saying that to a civilian.” She took Vanessa’s hand and guided it to points on the shaft.

“Be careful. If the tip’s touching you when someone presses that stud, your mind and your body get very loose, very open, very fast.

“If anyone down there sees you—” She started to look at Vanessa and stopped herself, but Vanessa hadn’t forgotten for a second how nude she was, thong notwithstanding. “First thing, just run—not back up the hill but that way.” She pointed.

Vanessa nodded. “Right. I’ll lead them away from you and the others.”

Heather looked into her eyes, and slowly shook her head. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?

“No—run along flat ground and you can go faster. If you try to run up, the going’s harder and they could catch you on the slope. When you can, and when there’s cover, turn and go for it. Like you told the girls—just keep running.

“I’ll find you.” Vanessa looked up, and believed her.

“But if one of them gets close, use that. Don’t try to command them—just drop them and get away.”

“How about if I say ‘Drop dead’?” Vanessa wiped the smile. “Sorry.”

“Vanessa, if you screw around they could get it away from you, and if the screwing-around gives them an idea of what they could do to you with it—”

Vanessa took it and kissed it and slipped it into the waistband of her thong. “I understand, Heather. I won’t let you down.

“Anyway—I’m yours.” She looked up. “And I’m responsible for not losing your property.”

Then Heather was holding her close, and Vanessa looked up at her as long as she could before the feel of her against Vanessa’s skin softened her too much and she leaned into the agent’s chest. The leather jumpsuit had started to come unzipped and Vanessa’s lips were against Heather’s skin, warm over her collarbone.

Heather moved her head away and then took her mouth in a long kiss.

“Be very careful, Vanessa.” She held Vanessa’s gaze, and Vanessa was her trooper, her pawn, her vassal. Her lover. “Come back to me.”

“Yes, Heather.”

Then Vanessa started down.

The back of the roadhouse, especially shadowed from the streetlight on the other side, was dark and featureless. It loomed like a squared-off hornets’ nest as she picked her way down. Averting her eyes, she noticed the gravel and broken concrete she’d have to cross at the bottom of the slope to get to it.

There was something oddly exhilarating, exhibitionistic, in stalking this place in her skin. She felt so vulnerable that it was almost pleasant, and she wondered if that should make her afraid. Lamb to the slaughter. She thought about the men inside coming out for some mysterious male reason and coming around back and seeing her, coming after her.

Thrown down on the soft grass or the razoring concrete, slammed against the grimy harsh cinderblock wall next to the phone if she’d made it that far. The thong just gone in someone’s fist, and then they’d start.

It was ugly enough to burn through the mist that any submissive image laid across her mind, and her mind spun in another direction.

Maybe the phone wouldn’t even work. Who maintained phone booths, nowadays? Especially out here—wherever out here was. Maybe this was a cellular dead zone, and they had to.

She looked at the decrepit lot and its farm of debris. Maybe they didn ‘t care who couldn’t call out.

She didn’t want to have to turn and gesture back up the hill that she couldn’t make the call. Plan B and the hotwired king-cab might get them to safety, but it wouldn’t save Heather’s comrades.

Exposed in the warm wind as she tried not to step on broken glass, Vanessa’s mind worked wildly. She thought about striding all the way around and inside, for the phone there. They might be too stunned at a naked woman strutting right to them to jump her right away. Long enough for her to sashay up to the bar, stare down the bartender, and mount the stained wood.

Lost already, phone forgotten.

Start dancing to whatever that was she could feel, more than hear, hammering through the walls. They might not even think she was real, until she made eye contact.

Or until they saw her soak through the thong.

And then, they’d start.

She was faintly horrified to feel excitement about that for a moment, but she was strutting for one pair of eyes, now. Onyx and watching all around her for danger—and she was the gleam in them. Thinking about Heather put rape out of her mind.

She was here. She put a hand to the Subduer against her hip, reached the other to the handset.

please

Vanessa held it to her ear.

Dialtone.

It was like an orgasm.

But the number was in her head and pressing the buttons was glorious.

7.

Heather took hold of her while she was still scrambling up the incline and almost carried her back out of sight. Vanessa let herself weaken and be carried, spent.

Heather stopped before they reached the others, who were still kneeling where Vanessa had left them, peacefully entranced. Vanessa envied them. Now that it would be over soon, she was actually feeling an itch to slip under and float without care, doing and thinking as she was told.

She wanted to feel ashamed of that, and of the rape fantasies she’d writhed through on her way to the phone, but she felt too good now. Thinking about slave-eros now was playing with a gun she knew was unloaded. She’d called, and she’d told them everything, and they’d be here soon.

Heather lowered her to the ground and held her, and Vanessa curled up with her. She relaxed for whatever Heather wanted to do.

Heather wanted to kiss her and touch her, almost as though to confirm she was back and safe. Vanessa lay back and basked in being felt up.

Heather rolled onto her back, swinging Vanessa upright and astride her hips like a nymph surfacing on a playful dolphin. Vanessa gazed down at her goddess in leather, and pressed her thighs against the smoothness. It felt like that—she was the soft plaything of a powerful but tender animal, riding her but never mastering her. If she rode Heather she’d be asleep, or lost in the way Heather was touching her—never the one with the reins.

She loved it, as she loved Heather. She sat up and let Heather take her hips.

Heather looked at her. “What did they say?”

Vanessa couldn’t help sliding against the smoothness at her pussy. “Th-they said they’d be here in a half-hour. You missed contact or something, so they mpved to standby.” She remembered a name. “Stafford said they were afraid of something like this.”

“Was Korologos there?”

Vanessa blinked. “Yes—no.” Heather looked surprised. “They said she was around and they were going to get her but someone said one of the codes you told me.”

Heather named it and she nodded. “That told them you were very nonsecure—no time for anything but data and run.”

Vanessa felt the excitement returning, and looked around. Her eyes rested on the four hypnotized runaways but moved on. “How will they get here? Helicopters?”

Heather gave a token glance, but looked back at Vanessa. “Probably. But they may have forward-based some vehicles, too. Did they say whether they’d be going straight in? It’d be hairy, this soon after, but they might . . .” She saw Vanessa looking lost.

“I’m sorry. They said some things very fast I didn’t understand and I can’t remember and I hope it’s—not—”

“Vanessa.”

She looked down, breathing more slowly.

“It’s all right. One of the contingencies we train for is just like this—a civilian intermediary. You told me the important parts.

“Come here.” She reached up and pulled Vanessa down on top of her, and Vanessa slid her soft inner thighs down Heather’s taut outer ones. Their faces were very close, and Vanessa got dizzy again, so close to Heather’s almond eyes and subtle smile. Her golden skin.

They kissed, and Vanessa wanted to be syrup, poured over Heather to soak into her. She felt Heather’s tongue invade her mouth and pressed harder against her.

Something stopped her, and Heather sensed it and let her pull back. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled and stroked Vanessa’s neck, soothing her. Vanessa realized that if Heather’s commander arrived and found her here, supine between Vanessa’s legs, Heather would be proud of her rider. She wouldn’t hide it. It was a current warmer than the hot thrust of desire that kept her slick as she rode Heather, the respect that Heather was giving someone who didn’t remember her last name.

Name.

She thought of Jennifer and looked up again, seeing how helpless the other women were, still utterly under her spell, still obeying her last command, asleep until she woke them.

Heather sighed. “Okay . . . I’m getting too comfortable. I need to have a look around, just to see who else might be roaming around out here.”

Vanessa didn’t move off her, and Heather indulged her for a moment. She looked out at the night, suddenly not afraid of it or what might come out of it. An owl called out from the woods they’d come through before, and she arched her back to look up at the moon. The lust ran up her body like sap and her thighs tensed with urgency around Heather. She smiled and bent to kiss Heather again. Her hands were mobile, seeking and stroking.

She giggled softly as Heather swiped her left hand gently away from the jumpsuit zipper. She sensed Heather wasn’t entirely opposed to being unzipped, and ground her crotch against Heather’s.

“Vanessa . . .”

She leaned down, and reached for her cleft, and too late saw the feline glint in Heather’s eyes. Heather had flipped her over before she even saw the world spin, and held her so tightly she was on her back without missing a breath.

She looked up, adoring once more, loving her woman for strength and care. She fluttered her hand at the place where their loins flirted, and saw the zipper was down to Heather’s muscled belly. Heather smiled at her.

Vanessa was lifting the Subduer before she even knew she’d taken hold of it.

Heather’s eyes widened and there was shrieking grief in them before they lost focus. That would have made it hard, but Heather was already Subdued by then.

The orgasm humming in Vanessa had nothing to do with Heather, or with love. That made it much easier.

8.