The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

14.

Anita woke up.

She hadn’t expected to, and for a few moments she didn’t react to what it could mean. She looked around at the small, warmly-lit room. She lay on a futon and as she rolled over she realized she was nude.

The last thing she remembered was the reception area at the Oasis Center, in the strange quiet of morning. Someone had come . . . she’d asked to speak to someone first, but apparently they had no time even for that.

She sat back against the smooth wall and pulled her knees up, trying not to think she might have made a frightful mistake. She thought about the book, and the Way, and being the uncarved block. But she kept realizing that Valerie liked to carve.

Why did Valerie want her awake?

The door started to slide open. Anita unrolled and stood, deciding to meet whoever was coming on her feet, with a level gaze.

It was Sheila.

Anita forgot about wanting to stand.

She sank slowly to her knees as if in water. Her bones were on fire with the wanting in her marrow as she looked at the slave standing in the doorway. Sheila looked back at her calmly, as calmly as she’d let the buyer fondle her breast that night, and her calm just heated Anita’s desire.

Sheila stood in her bodysuit looking dangerous and succulent, and in control of whatever lust she felt even as Anita was falling under the control of her own. Anita tried to speak, tried to say I wish I hadn’t lost everything I have because then I could give it to you!

A small part of Anita’s mind stayed rational, but even it was starting to shake, remembering. If Sheila had been on the roof that day Anita would have been drawn helplessly out of hiding, would have dragged herself on her belly to Sheila’s feet.

Belly . . . Anita inhaled sharply, and dropped to all fours. Sheila was here now, she could go to Sheila now, it was . . .

“Anita.” The voice subdued Anita, like a cool palm laid across her . . . belly. She sank to a kneeling pose and looked up, slack-jawed and glad to be.

Sheila looked down at her, and stepped into the room. Anita ignored the door sliding closed, lost in watching Sheila’s thighs twitch exquisitely past each other as she walked toward the futon. When Sheila stopped and turned toward her, she waited almost without breathing, feeling her heart bludgeoning her, inside.

As if forced into a last cramped refuge in the jungle of desire her mind had become, Anita’s thoughts coalesced enough for her to gasp, “Please, Sheila. What’s . . . happening?”

The slave smiled, and the sympathy in it nearly weakened Anita into falling over. “Poor Anita. Come!” As if calling a dog, she tapped her thigh lightly, and Anita crawled over, the soft skin sound echoing in her. She was at Sheila’s feet, feeling the gleaming leather of Sheila’s boots in the crook of her elbow, smelling her skin and feeling her heat. Anita was unable to resist sliding her face up Sheila’s leg, moaning at the coolness against her own flushed cheek.

Just as she felt Sheila’s fingertips on her scalp, she followed Sheila’s thigh to the elastic edge of her leotard, and rested her lips against the border, smooth cloth and smoother skin, the soft fragrant heat of Sheila’s mound just by her cheek. Anita forgot the discomfort of squatting and resting on her extended arms, forgot the embarrassment of resting blissfully just above another woman’s crotch.

“Onto the futon, please, Anita.” She pressed against Sheila before releasing her to obey, but the thrill it gave her to obey surpassed even the way touching Sheila made her feel. She was still settling back when Sheila slipped down beside her, and took her hand. Staring into Anita’s eyes, she caught her gaze instantly, and Anita thought dreamily She’s just going to hypnotize me right now and then it’ll finally be all over but Sheila spoke.

“Anita, relax now and try to think. You will still obey me.”

Anita closed her eyes, and only when she opened them did she realize that Sheila was touching her shoulder.

With a shuddering breath, she tried again. “What is that?” she whispered, and Sheila nodded approvingly.

“Conditioning, of course. It was incidental to the sale. It just makes you easier to control.”

Anita looked at her, still almost drunk on being this close. “’Handling controls?’” she barely breathed, and Sheila smiled. Her pleasure that Anita remembered nearly gave Anita an orgasm. She was mesmerized just by the curve of Sheila’s thigh as she sat, by the tiny crease where her throat rose under her jaw.

“Easier to control . . . Sheila, I want to die for you. Do you realize . . .?” She was aware, now that Sheila had given her permission for awareness, that she was on the verge of tears.

Sheila nodded again. “Yes. i could make you do anything.”

Anita’s heartbeat was so heavy she didn’t speak for a moment. “Will you?”

Sheila looked at her, then leaned forward, and Anita felt lips on her own. She slid closer and held Sheila tightly, feeling the answering pressure.

After a moment Anita couldn’t fight the urgency inside anymore. “Sheila, you can. You can. Anything.” A perverse thought veered into her mind and became a compulsion. “Sheila, if you were holding the brand I would beg for it.”

Her mind filled with things Sheila could, with a few soft words, make her do to earn the joy of being branded. She fixated for a moment on how Sheila ‘s asshole would taste, how the muscle ring would feel to her lips and probing tongue, if Sheila wanted her to . . . but she couldn’t speak now, to tell her.

Sheila stroked her hair. “Anita, you’re calm, and you can keep yourself under control. Be at peace.”

Anita nodded. She grasped at being allowed not to be afraid.

“i’m just a slave girl, Anita. i have no desire to command you, and i don’ t want to hurt you.” She smiled and held Anita as Anita shuddered. “Mistress wants you to be able to think when She speaks with you, so i’m going to deprogram you from this submission set. You won’t worship me anymore.”

Anita felt a terrible sense of impending loss, but Sheila was already holding her head and telling her to look into her eyes, and obedience bore Anita like a gentle wave. Sheila’s words slid into her, and then she was in Sheila’s arms, resting her head on the slave’s shoulder, no longer obsessed by the scents of her skin but enjoying them. Anita still liked girls, it seemed.

She shifted to look up at Sheila, who looked back down with a faint smile. “What happened before? At the Oasis Center? I can’t remember.”

“You were hypnotized as soon as they realized what your message meant. they instructed you to forget it, but i understand there wasn’t much to remember.”

“Did I tell anyone anything?” Anita had an image of some poor dupe with Carly’s face who worked for Valerie with no idea what she really did, hearing Anita’s story and perhaps thinking the expressionless women with flashlights that would have come into the office by then could explain Anita ‘s horrible delusion to them both. Another victim of Anita the bleeding dolphin.

“You had no time, Anita. They put you under when you were still waiting.”

Sighing in relief, Anita settled her head against Sheila’s shoulder again, and almost dissolved into tears when she felt Sheila stroke her hair. She cupped Sheila’s bare hip with her far hand, and wished she could just lie there for a while. She didn’t dare ask.

Sheila must have let her, because the next thing she knew she was being lowered to the futon, curling onto the warm place where Sheila had sat. Sheila leaned over her, and Anita felt for a moment like the kitten of an attentive young girl.

“Sheila,” she whispered. The other woman nodded. “I don’t worship you anymore, but . . . thank you. I really needed that.”

Nodding again, Sheila leaned down further and kissed her. “You’ll be more relaxed after you sleep some more, Anita.”

“Five,” said Anita, settling back. Five?

Crossing to the door, Sheila turned and seemed to be thinking for a second, which was the first time since she’d come in that Anita had seen her hesitate.

“Anita, just something you might want to know. The way you felt about me up to now, before I deprogrammed you, is how we all feel about Her. All the time.”

“Four,” Anita said, realizing what was happening even as the question she meant to ask got away from her. “I’m putting myself under, aren’t I?”

“Pleasant dreams, Anita.” The door slid open and Sheila slid through it.

“Three,” Anita sighed to herself. She no longer had any idea what Valerie planned for her, and she was starting to feel afraid of how good Sheila had been programmed to make her feel. She started to fight the drowsiness, but recognized that as old instinct, and took a deep breath, trying to relax as she’d been told to, waiting for the impulse to say . . .

“Two.” She lay back, letting her eyelids grow heavy. She’d chosen to surrender, even if everyone so far insisted on hypnotizing her before she could say it. She tried to remember the book and what the Old Teacher had said, but gave up. Either she’d be rested and calmer when she awoke, or this time she wouldn’t awaken.

Her lips were parted for One when sleep took her.

15.

Among the slaves in the otherwise empty barn, it was easy to tell the Masters. They were the only ones not standing straight and tall. They had no weapons, and all the weapons were pointed at them. They were also male.

slave joyce, barely feeling the chill in her dark leotard and boots, looked at them as she walked back from the side door, where the heaviest of the brief fighting had been. There were five Masters lying dead on the concrete. Two of Mistress’ slaves in dark leotards and boots lay outside, where others were zipping them into bags. joyce had walked through their blood to get in here, and when she reached the Masters she rested her right leg on its boot-toe to let her heel dry before setting it down again.

It showed off her long, pale thigh, and even standing in front of the weapons her slave-cadre held, the Masters stared at it, at her. Feeling the stare, she stood taller, showing herself to them as her Mistress’ well-trained property, even if they didn’t understand all that meant. She heard slave collette’s softer step halt behind her. collette wore the headset through which Mistress would send orders, if She saw fit. But joyce was an experienced slave, and this was going smoothly despite the casualties, so Mistress hadn’t used collette this evening to control joyce very much at all.

It was rare for Mistress to expose slave joyce by sending her out on such a minor task, to take slaves from weaker, more isolated slavers like these hapless entrepreneurs. Mistress had let her have enough mind to wonder why.

Two other women dressed like joyce and collette came up from the shadows of the barn, herding eleven naked girls looking barely out of their teens. The girls looked trapped; they didn’t want to go anywhere near the Masters, but the expressionless women with the belts and guns frightened them, too. joyce knew how long they’d been here, and how compliant they’d learned to be, even outside the trance the Masters put them in for training and working. she looked at their eyes, and through the film of shock saw fear. Sadness. Homesickness.

Someone’s daughter, each of them. she thought of her own daughter, and breathed out.

she wondered why Mistress had told her not to hypnotize them with one of the inducers, but didn’t think of questioning a command.

Closing her eyes, she remembered a computer screen she’d been shown in her own trance before the mission started. A list of names. she opened her eyes and spoke to the girls.

“Which of you is Cory Antonio, please?” she asked gently. she waited. Mistress hadn’t been sure if these Masters would have erased the victims’ identities.

But a petite girl with dirty-blonde hair shuddered and raised her hand, and joyce smiled encouragingly and motioned for her to step away. “Steph

Blake?” This time it was faster, and joyce saw one of the remaining girls look at another, grinning faintly. she knew the dynamic: the first girl had been keeping the other one sane and hopeful when they were both awake, and was now signaling that they were being rescued.

joyce remembered doing that with her own fellow captives when she’d first been enslaved, and the memory stung her even as it brought a quiver to her pussy.

joyce’s list ended, and two girls were still standing alone, looking stricken at not being named. No one had claimed them. They were sagging under the apparent knowledge that the Masters’ indoctrination had been right: they were no one, anymore. People they’d been brainwashed to forget had forgotten them without any help.

Oh, god. Two? a very, very distant part of slave joyce cried out. Only two?

she waited for that part to plead, but it was silent.

Thank You, Mistress.

she smiled at the two orphans, waited until they hesitantly smiled back. she asked their names, and one said, “I’m Lynn, Ma’am. Lynn Parizianski.” The other said, “Shauna Heller.” She looked at joyce’s bodysuit and weapons and grinned, whispering “Told you—girl power!” It lit a faint light in Lynn’s eyes.

slave joyce closed her eyes and saw nothing for Parizianski or Heller on any of the screens she’d hypnotically memorized. she looked at collette, but the light on the headset stayed dark, and collette’s eyes stayed open. If Mistress’ systems had found the last two girls’ names, Her voice would have put collette under instantly.

she kept smiling. “Just relax. We’ll take care of everyone.”

Looking back at the Masters, slave joyce’s smile vanished. she judged that her boot had tried and shifted her leg to balance differently, and saw a couple of the Masters stare at it again. she moved it slowly, posing. she looked at one and waited for his eyes to climb to her chest, her cleavage, her face.

“Do you have a single trigger for them all?”

The leader looked at her. “If I tell you to eat me instead,” he asked with convincing menace, “will you kill me? Or be a good girl and do it?”

she looked back at him. Mistress had channeled slave joyce’s hatred away from Herself, not destroyed it, and she urgently needed to send it somewhere now. “i won’t kill you.”

He saw what she meant, and swallowed.

Perhaps to his credit, he nevertheless held her gaze, and then actually began trying to hypnotize her, speaking to her quietly, telling her he was ready to be reasonable, and very quickly moving to how important it was to be calm, to relax.

joyce looked into his eyes, as he told her.

Then she shot him between them, as Mistress had taught her.

The shot was silenced, and her own cadre didn’t blink. One of the named girls began to cry, but she was also smiling. joyce looked at another Master, who tore his gaze from the still form at his feet to look at her unbelievingly. she gave him his turn.

“Do you have a single trigger for them all?”

His first attempt to comply failed. she nodded and waited for him to salivate enough to speak. He stage-whispered it. He was a little louder when she asked for the deactivation command that would rouse them, but still she barely heard him, and there was no chance the captives could hear.

She turned to the girls, one or two of whom looked at her doubtfully.

“Blowjob bonanza,” she called into the echo of the barn, and felt arousal and despair as the girls came to attention, their eyes staring into nothing, one whispered conversation fading into a duet of sighs.

“Tell them to obey me,” she told him.

“They’re yours now,” he said. she didn’t bother shaking her head at the incompetence of not bothering with layered controls. Slaves like her had no opinions, but she knew what Mistress had predicted.

Calling Lynn and Shauna to her, she motioned for one of her team to come as well. Taking each girl’s chin on her fingertips, she saw them focus on her. Gently she turned them to face the other slave. “This is slave alicia. You will hear only her voice and obey it without question. she will tell you whom else you are to obey.” she kept her voice low and soothing, and Lynn began to tear up without seeming to be aware of it.

she hadn’t told them how to respond, but they nodded, wide-eyed, accepting the new control, and turned away sleepily to float after slave alicia out toward one of the vans. “Two more for You, my Mistress,” joyce murmured to herself.

she turned and gestured to her slave team. Smoothly they shifted and fell back into line until Cory Antonio and Steph Blake and the others, still standing mindlessly, were alone, and the surviving Masters realized they were all on the same side of the guns.

The one who’d given her the trance-triggers gaped at her. “What—?” He cut his eyes over at the oblivious girls. “Why them?“

joyce wondered why he cared. she realized there were no Mistress instructions that would block her from answering. Mistress liked her to consider these things. It seemed also that if she reasoned with him, she could hold off the disaster she was suddenly afraid was coming. Someone here was ready to do something horrible. But she could explain.

“Because Mistress told me to.”

‘But . . .”

“Because of the names. They are listed missing, and we did not help them disappear. You did, poorly. People are looking for them. Families.” It took less effort to say that word, lately. Even to think it. “So they cannot disappear again like those two. They must be found.”

“You can’t use them at all?” he breathed.

“my Mistress cannot,” slave joyce said, searching his eyes. Past the terror she saw only astonishment, which pleased her remotely, and a realization that he was looking at something worse than he was.

she felt a leaden agreement with that.

Then her pussy clenched, as she realized exactly what she was programmed to do now. she remembered why Mistress had forbidden the inducers. she felt the hideous warmth of the compulsion sliding up inside her brain, taking her from within. she could barely stand for the intensity of loving it.

Something horrible.

she pointed her pistol between the faraway brown eyes of Cory Antonio, who stared back through her as if she weren’t there.

slave joyce let her voice carry so each of the hypnotized girls could hear her. “Hear only my voice, and obey only my voice.

“You are feeling deep arousal now. Your pussy owns you and rules you, and you will only do what pleases your pussy.

“When you awaken, your pussy wants you to remember everything that has happened to you.

“Your pussy will not want you to be able to remember how to move, except to touch your pussy. she likes it when you speak, though.

“You know that the more you obey your pussy, the more she will reward you.”

she extended her free arm to the side. “Prepare,” she ordered.

“we obey.” Mistress’ other slaves were as musical as a choir. Then they took aim.

“Assfuck awakening,” she told the entranced girls, barely aware of how she smiled.

she watched Cory Antonio’s eyes focus on her, and widen, and begin to glaze with shock, never letting go of her own. her peripheral vision caught the other girls’ return to awareness. she waited as she’d been told to, letting them see the muzzles and think about them.

Then she let the gasping and begging and panting and screaming caress her, until the moisture between her thighs made her want to slide them together. Some of the girls shook where they stood. Others were frozen stiff unable even to touch themselves. she wondered if they could breathe.

There was screaming inside her head, faint and far, but it blended with the girls’ terror and pleas. The harmony vibrated down the hollowness within her until her clit hummed like a reed.

At the crest of her need, she realized what would make it better. Send her over the edge.

Still holding and held by Cory’s eyes, marveling that they were still desolately sane, she kept the gun balanced and lowered it by feel, following the centerline of Cory’s erect posture as Cory stayed helplessly at attention.

The distant part of her hoped Cory would just keep screaming. That she wouldn’t speak.

Cory did neither, waiting to be gutshot.

slave joyce dropped her free arm, and the other slaves obeyed their programming until the screaming changed pitch. The silenced gunfire slowed, and slave joyce’s orgasm ebbed in a beat with the last few shots. It seemed to take forever.

When the last one died, they went back out to the vans.

16.

In a corridor of what might have been the Oasis Center’s restricted area, Anita walked nude and noiseless down the carpet on the leash of another nude woman, who’d awakened her and clipped the lead to the collar Anita didn’t know she’d been wearing. She hadn’t said a word, but so far Anita had guessed what was wanted of her and done it. Perhaps it was a test.

The woman had first led her to what turned out to be a restroom, surgically clean but without stalls. Anita found she had no problem, though, even with the woman standing beside her, and she wondered why it didn’t feel worse to recognize that someone’s mind was so gone that they didn’t make her as pee-shy as she usually was. Or why she didn’t really feel like a dog being walked. Anita just felt glad that someone had thought of it.

As they continued, other women passed them. Some were as naked as they, others in the bodysuit and boots of guards, and a few in variations of businesswear. Anita didn’t look at their faces, suddenly remembering all the blank, mindless stares that last night at the group.

She averted her eyes like a well-trained slave.

Coming to an office door, the slave leading Anita tapped the code and entered.

Valerie Joplin sat at the desk with half-glasses perched attractively on her nose, poring over notes before turning back to her computer and typing again. Another woman, probably her secretary, stood rigidly beside the desk, staring across at the picture of the bird of prey that dominated the opposite wall. Anita saw other related symbols around the office, and it reminded her of the talon symbol on the medallions hanging from the slave collars she’d been seeing tonight. Sheila’d worn one. Anita realized that a visitor might interpret the eagle/hawk iconography as symbolizing the freedom she sought and Valerie offered, and was chilled at the depth of Valerie’s coldbloodedness. This was a shrine to predation, and it bespoke a nasty kind of humor that she’d never seen in Valerie.

The secretary was deep in slave mode, too, with her skirt and slip draped neatly on one of the guest chairs. Anita wondered if this was another part of the girl’s job, just standing there where Valerie could see her, embodying obedience and nothing else.

“When I wake her up,” Valerie said, still pecking at the keyboard, “slave ann will be booking me on a flight to Atlanta for Sunday. There’s a state sex-crimes unit that’s trying to develop some self-defense tips to prevent mind-control assault.” She turned to look across the desk at Anita. The sheer malice in her face made Anita feel weak. Sheila’s tenderness in the cell was as distant as a dream. Or worse.

“I’m sure these remarks will inspire them. Tempting as it is, I won’t tell them the best way to outsmart a hypnotist is to look right at the hypnotic focus and listen carefully. But there will undoubtedly be referrals to the Oasis Center.” She went on smiling in a way she never used to. “And strapping young policewomen, eager to learn. Undoubtedly.”

Anita thought of Deputy Klein, certainly strapping, wanting to help, eager to stay up-to-date on the mind control threat. Someone like her out in Atlanta would seek Valerie out, accept an invitation for a private chat, drawn by the charisma coming off her in waves. Even agree to be hypnotized. Safe in a hotel room with Valerie Joplin.

Anita was concentrating on acceptance, giving in, letting go. But Valerie wasn’t an abstraction anymore. She was leering at Anita from a couple of meters away, and Anita was remembering that the heart of everything Valerie had turned out to be was—betrayal.

She was starting to shake, because she was starting to think of why Valerie hadn’t just made her a zombie before. She’d assumed all along that she wasn ‘t a major concern for Valerie, but what if she’d been the single flaw in an otherwise perfect maneuver? Or if Master had been impugning her reputation, blaming Valerie’s work for Anita’s breaking programming?

Dear merciful God. And she’d thought Master wasn’t about killing her quickly.

Amelia. The forgotten prisoner on the island. Whom they’d made kneel by her grave when they cut her head off.

“julie.” Valerie’s voice startled and then frightened Anita in its mildness.

“Yes, Doctor.” The girl who’d fetched her was already at attention, but she tautened.

Doctor? How many titles did Valerie want?

“Take Anita to a chair, please. She’s about to fall.” Anita followed the girl, hoping she hadn’t misheard “the” chair, some special place Valerie liked to put victims . . . but it was just a chair, actually a quite comfortable wing chair, and as she sat she realized Valerie was right. She couldn’t have stayed upright much longer.

God. She’d actually laughed about Master’s inability to forget his wounds. Would they let her remember, when the punishment started? Or would that be part of it?

“julie, go now. ann, go with her.” Anita’s guide left, letting the leash hang off the nearer wing, and the secretary swayed, turning to follow her out. ann’s eyes moved across Anita without the slightest flicker of awareness, and she found herself breathing a bit harder.

Valerie looked across at her. “What are you thinking right now, Anita?”

The arousal vanished. Anita took a breath. “I’m . . . not thinking, really. I’m very afraid.” Cooperate, cooperate!

“But you’re here.”

“Yes.” Anita got it out before her shiver broke it in half.

Valerie’s amusement was clearer, and Anita was starting to go numb with dread, as she realized she should be angry, but no longer had it in her. “I don’t have much time to spend with you. But I do need to acknowledge your submission.” Her smile faded, but her expression was softening. “That matters to you. You could have come to us in any number of ways. But you came right here, on your own.

“It matters to us, too, Anita.”

Anita looked at her. “It’s . . . " Valerie leaned over the desk with a familiar openness, and Anita remembered their very first interview, when she ‘d been invited to the group. She remembered how good things had been after that and felt herself about to dissolve. She waited, letting self-contempt build and keep her from dissolving. That was gone, the group was gone, and she was naked in the presence of her enemy. “It’s that I just can’t do this anymore. I want to be . . . gone.”

Part of her wanted to slide down from the chair and kneel—no, prostrate herself. But that wasn’t why she’d come.

She stared across at Valerie, and remembered the strength that Valerie, all her friends, had given her. Lies and deceit or not, she reached for it again. “I’m weak, and I’m tired, and I’m poor, and I helped drag a blameless woman into all this. I should keep fighting, but I can’t. There’ s freedom out there but I can’t reach it.

“I won’t blame it on whatever you did to me. Or Master. I don’t even know why I got away. But there’s nothing left.” She looked at Valerie, but Valerie just looked back.

“There’s not much I can do. I’m a fucking coward, and I denied my friends and everything we were, just to get away from you. But here I am.” Finally the pressure was easing, as she said it. “It’s the only thing I have left to do that’s still mine. I can give up.

“Valerie, I surrender. Do whatever you want. Please just give me peace.”

Anita waited.

“valerie.”

The voice was quiet, and barely startled Anita. What did startle her was the way Valerie reacted, sitting up, her face suddenly open and hopeful, staring off toward the raptor-portrait, as though Anita were no longer there.

“Mistress?” she whispered.

17.

“valerie, there’s something you need to find.”

Anita watched as Valerie nodded very slowly and stood up.

“Look for it now, valerie.” Moving around the desk, Valerie only looked away from the picture of the swooping hawk when she had to turn to walk in front of Anita’s chair.

Anita had heard the voice before.

Now it said to Valerie, “There it is.” Valerie suddenly broke into a blissful smile, her eyes focusing on a point in empty air before her, her whole body relaxing.

“It will always put me deeper into trance,” she whispered with urgent wonder, making the most wonderful discovery of her life. Her eyes closed.

Anita stared.

“she’s even more beautiful that way,” the voice said, “and I wish she could see it. Pictures just don’t really capture it for her afterward.”

Sinking into the chair, Anita looked around. Speakers. But . . . Mistress?

“You were starting to tell your story to valerie, and you really need to address it to Me.”

“Who . . . are you?”

“The hypnotist of your hypnotist, Anita. valerie is Mine.”

Anita looked up at the spellbound woman, and gripped the arms of the chair. “My god. Is that why she—?”

“Yes, Anita. Your trust wasn’t misplaced. she was everything you thought she was. she fought very hard against Me. It wasn’t her own pride or fear that sustained her so long against the brainwashing. It was her horror of doing what she knew I’d teach her to want, to all of you.”

“But . . .”

“Yes. she surrendered in the end. Now that passion and courage go where I want them to.”

Anita looked up at Valerie, and almost lost it again. “I hated her. I thought . . .”

“Perhaps you should hate her, Anita. she believes completely in obedience now. Left to herself, she would have brainwashed you into what she calls a ‘bonbon.’ You’d make slave sheila look virginal, and I doubt you’d even have any idea how to install handling controls.”

Shaking her head, Anita tried, and completely failed, to avoid the image she had then, of feeling the same abject submission she’d felt toward Sheila before Sheila deprogrammed her, but toward everyone, spending the rest of her life on her knees. Closer to the floor she’d be kissing in gratitude, when she could remember anything but serving, when she wasn’t begging to kiss something else. Lick it, wrap her tongue into . . .

“Your voice,” she whispered, fighting free of the need. “It was you, that night.”

“A recording. But yes.”

Anita felt her breathing slow. There was something luxurious in being this helpless, and something calming in the voice, an absence of the immediate hunger that Valerie had radiated.

Just before the voice had hypnotized her.

“You could do it to me again,” she said into the air. “Maybe you did. Did you bring me here? Was it just a posthypnotic suggestion?”

“No, Anita. Take credit for the decision. You came to Me on your own.”

Anita tried an old method to steady herself and looked for trivia to focus on. “Should I . . . how am I to address you? As—’Mistress’?”

“How do you think you should? Not a trick question, Anita. I want to know where you think you stand.”

“I don’t . . . you may not want anyone but complete slaves using that.”

Mistress breathed audibly. “Well thought of, Anita. You’re thinking about where the line is. And distinguishing those who’ve given their selfhood to me.

“Have you given me yours?”

Anita considered. She’d surrendered, even if she hadn’t quite known to whom, and she knew what it was to fight instead. She’d given up any real chance of escaping or resisting whatever Mistress chose to do to her. But . . .

“I enjoy dealing with someone as careful as you are, Anita. You’re correct to hesitate, but I can assure you that if you belonged to Me, you’d know.” A chuckle, and in her complete defenselessness, Anita found no reason to withhold her own smile. “At least I would.” The answering smile was audible, but Mistress did not laugh again. Anita was almost glad: there was a very seductive undercurrent to that laugh, and she wondered what it had been like for Valerie in that last, losing struggle.

“You haven’t given up your self, Anita, but you carry it very loosely now. As it happens, I’ll take a self when I find it, however I find it. Carelessly left for the seizing, tremblingly offered up to Me in the depth of submission, or even after a woman’s long desperate fight.

“Pried from her warm, slick fingers.”

Anita shivered. She had no idea what to feel now, but there was one feeling she recognized, and impulsively let it speak from her.

“Will you sell me back to Master?”

She got it out without thinking about it, and it didn’t hurt. She wondered if that was just the shock before the nerves realized they’d been stung again.

“That’s a risk you took, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“From some points of view, selling you back would be the best thing for Me to do, wouldn’t it? As a businesswoman warranting Her merchandise, or as one dominant keeping faith with another?

“Or just to get a troublesome piece of girlflesh off My floor without bloodying it up?”

Anita swallowed. “As you say, Mistress.” She tried to keep her voice steady.

“I won’t sell you to that person, Anita.” Anita shook, but kept her head up and waited. “There are several reasons. You’re too interesting to let go of that easily. You’re very bright, and I always like to deal with bright people. You’re certainly quite pretty to look at. You’re altogether much better than he deserved.

“And if he managed to lose a high-quality slave like you, I won’t reward his incompetence with a second chance. He’s the sort of idiot that makes life difficult for the rest of us.” Anita heard the smile around the breathing.

“If I ever did, I might program you to be able to kill him. Would you be willing to do that?”

Anita looked up. “I don’t know, Mistress.”

“Indeed.” The voice was approving.

“If I tell you to, Anita, will you give Me someone you love?”

Anita looked down. This was inevitable. She didn’t know what was safe to say, but she sighed and said what was true.

“No. No, Mistress.” There was no answer, and she said, “I know you can make me do it. Make me want to do it. But if you want them . . . or if you want me to be the one who takes them . . .”

“I would be obliged to make you do it. I see.” Mistress sounded pleased. “You understand. Do you also understand, pretty Anita, that I don’t think I ‘ll do that for a while?”

“Yes, Mistress.” Anita shivered and breathed in. “And I believe you, Mistress. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, Anita. But what now?”

Anita looked up, her eyes drawn again to Valerie as she stood, rapt in Mistress’ power.

“I thought . . .”

“You wanted oblivion. I can do that at any time. But as I said, you’re too interesting to let go of, whether to some other owner or to walking coma. I have enough slaves in that state.”

Anita looked down. “What do you want me to do, Mistress?”

Mistress said nothing, and even the sound of breathing was gone. Then, “I’ ll get to that in time, Anita. Know that I won’t hold you responsible for doing anything I haven’t prepared you for. Know also that preparation is as I define it.”

She wants to play with me. Anita knew she should be more afraid, but by now she was just tired.

She formed the words, realizing that they’d mean more each time she said them, telling herself that the fear, the want, the guilt were over: “Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. valerie, awaken now.”

Valerie blinked and came smoothly back to herself. “Thank You, Mistress,” she murmured. She looked down at Anita and smiled.

“Anita will be with us now, valerie. She needs some light programming to ensure that she knows how to behave.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Valerie’s smile seemed fractionally less hungry now. “i obey Your Will. i will leave her will intact.”

She stepped over to stand over Anita. Anita breathed in and said, “Valerie?”

“Yes?” Valerie stood still, and Anita had to fight the need to lean back and expose her throat to the woman standing over her.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what, Anita?”

“For . . . blaming you. I thought it was you, and it was Mistress instead. I hated you for betraying us, but she said that you really fought her. You must have . . .” Anita couldn’t speak, and now she decided to free the tears.

Valerie looked at her curiously, with a shadow of her old compassion. Even knowing it as just a trick of the facial muscles, Anita cherished it. “I don’t think anyone ever had a chance to thank you for trying, Valerie. I know you don’t care anymore. Or you’re glad you lost.

“But . . .” Anita stopped. She didn’t want it to come out in hacking sobs.

Valerie spoke gently. “So much is important to you, Anita. Submitting instead of being taken. Telling me this.

“Mistress knows, and that’s all that matters.” She leaned down and drew her fingertips, warm and soft, across Anita’s cheek. “Now it’s time to give in and sleep for a while.”

Her eyes took hold of Anita’s, and Anita didn’t look away. She leaned toward Valerie, opening herself.

Valerie began to speak, as softly as she touched, and Anita wrapped herself in the old, lost trustfulness to listen. It was like that other night when Valerie had bewitched them all but she knew, now, and there was no fear as she let Valerie’s voice work its way into her mind, soothing her fretful will into a daze, and then a trance. Even though she knew, with a certainty that grew vaguer as time grew less distinct, that she couldn’t stay here in this dreamworld because Mistress wanted her to awaken at the far end, she no longer minded.

It was stepping off the roof, and finding she could fly.

18.

The sensory deprivation tank, like all the others in Mistress’ conditioning area, had a speaker. It was seldom used, but slave joyce listened now. Inside, the girl who was ceasing to be Shauna Heller had probably lost track of how her arms and legs were straining against the bonds, and presently would stop straining. The whitenoise in her ears was still empty, leaching out her own thoughts and much of her ability to think before Mistress’s truths could be dripped and then poured into her mind.

Shauna moaned.

It was muffled around the mouthpiece, and Shauna couldn’t hear it anyway. She had probably learned already to edit out the vibration in her head, the same way her heartbeat and other familiar sounds would betray her attempts to use them as grips on reality. And there were new vibrations from time to time from the probe in her anus which more easily captured what was left of her attention.

But Shauna moaned, almost a soft singing at certain moments, and joyce listened to it for minutes on end, feeling as if the piercingly lonely sound from the girl in the brainwashing chamber were somehow calling to her. She was alone, and what little there was of her was spilling out, and no one was there.

Shauna was alive. She could have had a listed name. She would have stayed in the barn. slave joyce thought for a moment of Cory Antonio, curled on the floor of the barn around the holes joyce had shot in her, her hands still under the posthypnotic order, stroking the honey from her crotch but making no effort to stop the bleeding. slave joyce saw her pretty face but couldn’t know or remember whether it contorted from the pain or the orgasm her pussy was giving her for her obedience.

she wanted to remember shooting Cory in the head to end it, but she knew Mistress hadn’t allowed that. slave joyce had obeyed her Mistress. she remembered her own serial orgasms as she listened to Cory.

slave joyce stopped thinking.

she removed a hand from the tank housing she didn’t remember placing there, and went to watch slave cynthia at the controls. Attending slave cynthia, who needed no help, was another task she neither questioned nor understood, but after the barn, slave joyce was no longer inclined to peer into Mistress ’ plans for her.

slave patrice was back in the processing chair. Mistress had broken her, but Mistress believed that no one was truly broken until there were no pieces left of her big enough to recognize. Now patrice stared blankly at a screen in front of her face, her unblinking eyes reflecting its green flicker, which pulsed slowly and then ran into a rapid strobing in an irregular pattern. Following slave patrice’s errant brainwaves, it fed the interference back into her mind.

slave cynthia adjusted the image transfixing patrice, adding another rhythm, nodding when she saw how compliantly patrice’s EEGs bent to join it. How much faster, now. she keyed the next graphic. slave patrice’s hollow stare intensified, loosening joyce’s thighs with its open, agonized need. patrice recited.

“Mistress. i obey Mistress. Obedience. i obey Mistress. Submit. i obey Mistress. Forget. i obey Mistress. Believe. i obey Mistress. i obey only Mistress.” her voice was shaky, halting, but she forced herself deeper. slave joyce almost felt herself sliding deeper as she listened to patrice worship Mistress. she couldn’t remember her own time being broken in the chair, when Mistress had ravished her will and made her a slave the first time, but she envied the other woman the experience of having her selfhood taken from her, wondering if patrice had been aware of the moment when the tide turned and Mistress began to win.

i’m a complete slave, she asked herself. Why envy this bitch, who’s still not perfectly Hers? who hasn’t tasted Her yet?

cynthia waited until another subliminal cue turned off patrice’s lesson, even as it stayed in her head, deeper than the last dozen times she’d done it today. she slid the guard off the control that activated the special chime, the tone patrice was programmed to awaken to, as fully as anyone in Mistress’ hands was allowed to be awake.

slave joyce recalled what happened to the strongest metal when it was stressed and released, over and over. she remembered surfacing into Mistress’ softly drilling voice, into unbearable conscious thought. Learning how much safer it was to sink deeper.

As the chime faded, patrice made a whining noise without thinking, before she even felt the painful fatigue of her sleepless training. As her eyes focused, the screen showed her the next image cynthia had for her. The little boy. her eyes blinked rapidly, and then widened as she saw the picture and recognized who it was. A smile tried to creep onto her face. her mouth opened, but she had already learned not to trust herself to speak.

Not soon enough. she’d remembered what she’d forgotten. she shook her head very slightly, and cynthia’s voice was gentle enough to make joyce cringe as she whispered into the microphone, “patrice . . . is that even him?”

patrice’s eyes were glassy as she repeated it. “Is that . . . ?” joyce realized the woman could no longer tell any conditioner’s voice from that of her own liquefying mind now. But her pain was sharper. she knew enough to know what she’d lost, but she was controlled enough to believe she’d given it up

Mistress had already drained her memories of how hard and long she’d fought, screaming her son’s name over and over as though to resist the brainwashing by conditioning herself. It was as pointless as a sigh against a hurricane. Mistress had smiled. She liked patrice even more after that.

Now cynthia whispered, “Would you like to go back into trance, patrice?”

patrice nodded, and for the first time joyce saw no trace of the hesitation she’d always shown. After the picture and what it did, this time, trance was bliss.

slave joyce understood.

she turned and ran her hand lightly down slave cynthia’s back. “Mistress will be very pleased with you.”

slave cynthia turned to her and smiled, knowing Mistress’ plaything would never think or say such a thing if Mistress hadn’t put it in her head. Then she turned back and began conjuring more graphics and whispers to continue patrice’s processing.

The intercom light blinked on top of the panel. joyce answered. “Report to the Director’s office,” said the duty slave, recognizing her voice.

“i obey,” joyce whispered, leaving cynthia. A last look at slave patrice showed her already stupefied by the screen’s dancing shades of green.

valerie’s office was familiar. As Director, she usually saw new people in a smaller, friendlier one downstairs, but joyce found it easier, and more arousing, to deal with the new true valerie in this sanctum. First she saw slave ann reentering from the far door, with nothing on below her waist but high heels, to stand at her accustomed spot by valerie’s desk.

Then she found valerie herself standing over one of the guest chairs. A dark-haired young woman sat in it, nude and erect, hypnotized, her right hand drooping from an upraised arm, her left one limp and cupped atop her thigh, a classic pose: valerie was indulging herself again. The entranced woman’s face was familiar to slave joyce, who cautiously tested her memories, wondering if she wanted to know. It was an attractive face, earnest and careful, vulnerable now with the circles under her closed eyes, the tension around her full-lipped mouth that even hypnosis hadn’t yet started to ease.

Anita. From the group. One of the quiet ones, who seemed to say little but were usually there to help when someone in the group found her limit and broke down. joyce remembered her from the night valerie had taken them all, trying to fight the layered mind control that stunned most of the others into obedience before they’d even known what happened.

But Anita kept trying, even when the others had submitted and left her alone, even without hope. slave joyce thought of someone else . . .

slave joyce stopped thinking.

Stepping into the submission thickening the room as she would into a warm tub, slave joyce knelt smoothly a pace or two from the chair. Looking away from Anita, she waited, admiring the woman who’d been her friend. valerie was thinner than she’d been before joyce had helped enslave her: the rapid program on which Mistress had put valerie to finish the credits for her Ph.D. had been a strict regimen. It had burned out valerie’s tutor, Professor Taylor. Mistress had reassigned her to undemanding work as a spa attendant after instructing her to take a sabbatical from the university.

Everyone had praised their dedication.

valerie turned now and looked at her with interest, drinking in her disorientation without sharing it. Then, smiling down at her, valerie reached out to snap her fingers. It awakened slave ann, who focused on valerie instantly.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Undress me.”

“Yes, Doctor.” joyce watched as ann deftly slipped off valerie’s business suit, the lavender satin lingerie that set off her light brown hair, all without forcing valerie to move much from her graceful stance. ann settled to her own knees by valerie’s left leg, hesitating now that her superior was down to lavender hose and the gleaming pumps, since valerie tended to favor that when she played.

But this wasn’t play, and valerie nodded down to her secretary, moving to cooperate as the girl unshod her and eased the nylons down and off. Taking a deep breath, valerie knelt across from joyce, spreading her knees and straightening to match the position joyce always assumed so well. they stared at each other, listening to the precise click of slave ann’s heels as she came back from the credenza and stepped between them.

joyce looked at the curve of slave ann’s soft buttocks, her eyes following them inward to the secretary’s thighs, watching them tense and relax as she leaned down to valerie. she heard valerie’s faint ecstatic sigh and saw her friend’s head bowed as slave ann stepped away from her to lose herself again in the hawk mural.

slave valerie straightened her back again and looked at slave joyce with shining eyes, swallowing deeply behind the collar she could wear now, her last outside duties done. slave joyce only rarely went clothed and uncollared, and she sensed how much valerie looked forward to having her secretary collar her each day. she watched as slave valerie leaned forward onto her hands, closer to joyce and looking up at her.

valerie’s whisper was urgent. “Oh, joyce. i wish i could go to Her just like this.”

“you will,” Mistress’ voice said. “you did very well tonight, slave valerie. you treated little Anita perfectly, despite what you deeply wanted to do to her.”

“Your Will is my will, Mistress,” valerie sighed, but the sheer malice in her face hardened joyce’s nipples. joyce looked past her at the woman valerie had just hypnotized sitting oblivious in her trance, her arm still tirelessly raised, and joyce’s nipples stayed hard.

“Of course it is, valerie. you’re a licentious whore, but it’s a disciplined license.”

valerie wriggled, looking up at joyce.

“And you did well too, joyce, in your several projects.”

“Mistress, i—” Suddenly joyce knew words were not enough. she leaned down and let her head touch the floor, barely hearing slave valerie’s sigh to see her so lost in self-abasement.

“you’ve been such a good girl, joyce, that i’m going to let you keep a

pet.”

19.

Anita woke up.

It wasn’t the same room. She froze. Was all that about Sheila and Valerie and Mistress some delirious concoction of her mind? In a few seconds would she remember what was really going to happen to her? She looked around the new cell, and curled up into a ball on the unfamiliar bed, waiting for it.

But meeting Valerie had been too real. And finding out about Valerie’s Mistress, that it hadn’t been the betrayal she thought . . . it was what she wanted to hear about Valerie, but not if it meant Valerie had been enslaved.

And Sheila . . . even now Anita gasped softly, and put her hand in her mouth, gently sucking the finger to keep from thrusting it down into herself. It wasn’t the crazed humiliating lust from before. She just wanted to curl up with the slavewoman somewhere warm and make love, on and on and on.

But it had been real. She’d made it inside, without trying to sneak in. She’d found the eye while trying to let the storm blow her away. She’d expected some hell of mindless robots. Instead, she’d been treated gently, and all the slaves she’d seen had seemed . . . happy? Not-screaming?

Mistress wanted to study her.

Anita shivered slightly. It might be just an evil game with pain at the end, even if the reward of final mindlessness followed, but Anita was just too tired of fleeing to bother with that.

The door slid open. This time she stayed on the bed, pushing herself up with one arm.

A woman stood at attention in the fluorescently-lit corridor outside. She waited until the door was fully open, then stepped inside, waiting again as it closed. Anita started to speak, but the woman was deeply entranced. She found herself staring: faint tanlines that traced out a swimsuit more modest than her graceful body merited, light muscles that spoke more of work than workouts. The startling way the collar made her seem more naked than she was.

More owned. Anita tensed as she wondered what she looked like, in her own collar.

When it seemed as if minutes had passed while the woman stood blankly, she decided to test her autonomy and stood to walk over. She reached out and . . . put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. It was warm, and smooth, and Anita moved closer, suddenly feeling protective. With her other hand she touched the woman’s face, puffy with fatigue and possibly crying, gingerly turning it toward her, feeling no resistance.

Gently, she whispered, “Wake up!”

The woman did, her eyes slowly blinking, fluttering, fixing on Anita. Then Anita was hugging her, as the woman almost fell with a wordless, quiet cry. “Hold on to me,” Anita told her, exhilarated by the way the other body felt. Together they made it to the bed. For a moment, the woman just lay in her arms, breathing. Anita rested her face against the woman’s hair, her lips so close to her temple that the kiss was almost a quirk of her mouth. She left her lips there, tasting the salt of the woman’s struggle, feeling the woman move gently against her in response to the soft touch.

She murmured, “I’m Anita.”

The woman moved again in her arms, and she realized her new cellmate was just trying to keep moving, to respond. She felt a warm breath against her throat and moved her head carefully to hear the repeated whisper.

“Patrice . . . i must obey . . .”

Anita shivered, feeling Patrice absorb the movement, and nuzzled her head again.

Patrice’s sigh made Anita hold her tighter, and then she eased them both back onto the mattress. She just held Patrice, feeling her exhaustion, and warmed herself with the unaccustomed joy of helping someone. Every so often Patrice would twitch, or move. Anita would stroke her, kiss her, whisper to her, urging her back to sleep, and Patrice would subside, soothed like a child.

Something felt different, and she realized she’d dozed off and Patrice had awakened, looking down at her with haunted alertness. Anita flinched from the expression she’d grown used to in mirrors.

“Anita?” she asked, as if she wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamt it.

“Patrice.” Anita slid over to sit up. Patrice had the fragile beauty of the very weary on top of native good looks, and lying open beneath her was too much like a lovers’ awakening. Anita wanted her, but she knew it might not be mutual, and she wanted Patrice’s trust more than her taste.

“I don’t remember this place,” Patrice said, slowly. “I’ve never woken up here before.” She looked at Anita. “Or with anyone.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s so hard to think. Not like when I was drugged. My mind feels clear. Just—empty. I can’t . . .”

“Maybe you do need to sleep.” Anita blushed. “Oh, shit, that sounded like—”

“It’s OK,” Patrice said with an effort at a smile. “But it’s so easy to obey the command to sleep, now.” Her eyes started to glaze over. “So easy to obey.”

Anita found herself moistening to see Patrice falling so easily back into the trance, though there was something different in it this time. Patrice’s sharp awareness a moment ago made Anita want to see her stay conscious.

Patrice forced her eyes to focus, staring intently into Anita’s. “Please. Help me stay awake. Don’t let me . . . slip . . .”

You’ll just get sleepier, Anita thought sadly, but smiled and touched Patrice’s cheek. “Yes. I’ll help you.” She wondered if Mistress were watching now. Did she expect Anita to help brainwash Patrice somehow? Anita didn’t feel anything but sympathy for the woman.

But what did Mistress make Valerie put into my head when I was hypnotized?

“Can you remember things?” Patrice was looking at her desperately. “It’s hard to do that, too. I don’t know what I’m . . .”

She leaned forward, and her head drooped to Anita’s shoulder. “Don’t know . . .” Anita felt cruel to wake her, but anything else felt like disloyalty.

“Patrice . . . Patrice, please stay with me . . .”

Patrice lifted her head, her dilated pupils mostly focused. “Thanks.” Patrice shook herself, and blinked.

“Not drugs. It’s hypnosis. They hypnotize you and then you want to obey them.” She closed her eyes. “Obey them.” She breathed deeply. “No,” she said very quietly, opening her eyes. “I won’t.” Anita squeezed her shoulder.

Patrice looked at her. “Thanks again. I’ll be OK for a while. I have to try.

“Listen. I . . . this is the first time I’ve met someone else. Is this some kind of trap?”

Honey trap? Anita helplessly thought about what Patrice’s juice tasted like. She noticed that Patrice didn’t pull away. She shook her head wordlessly.

“They’re changing me,” Patrice said. “They train me. I want to fuck women and I don’t think I did before. But when they start doing me . . .” Patrice’s eyes were glassy again, and Anita felt Patrice’s nipples stiffen against her arm. Whatever sex training they were doing must be deep in Patrice’s programming. “I feel dirty but it . . . just . . .” She sagged against Anita and her whisper was hot against Anita’s ear. “I never feel them.” Anita held her closer and for a moment there was nothing of lust in it, as she thought about Patrice, hypnotized and alone, fucked but not touched.

This time Patrice had to drag herself out of it. Anita felt paralyzed—her every impulse was to soothe, and Patrice was fighting to stay awake.

“Maybe we can escape.” Patrice looked at her. “How did they take you? Were you able to tell where we are? If there’s a way out?”

Anita looked at her, and suddenly she was in freefall. There was no uncarved block, no Way, no stillness. She wished she’d stepped off the roof.

“They didn’t take me, Patrice.”

She swallowed. “I gave myself up.”

Patrice stared at her, blinking at her as if she’d spoken in Sumerian. “You were free?” she whispered at last.

Anita was seeing all her fear and exhaustion from another angle, the view through the cage Patrice was in, and almost didn’t recognize the shame, as intense as it was. She saw Patrice’s eyes clear, as the other woman saw her realize it all, and she waited numbly for Patrice to push her away, kick her to the floor. The least she could give to this woman who still tried to be free was someone to look down on. A coward.

She saw Patrice watching her. She waited, lowering her arms, not even wanting to hit back when it started.

But as Patrice saw her withdraw, her own face clouded instead.

“I’m sorry! No! Please, I’m sorry!” Anita was sicker as she heard the pleading. Patrice was so wretched she needed a coward’s kindness, and she was no longer too ashamed to beg for it.

“Patrice. Don’t be sorry.” She leaned forward and held her. “Don’t ever be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“No . . .” Patrice was collapsing. “I can’t judge you. I don’t know.”

“Patrice.” Anita looked at her. Patrice thought she’d misfired her anger, and the guilt had completely defeated her. All she had now was her fear, and the dark siren call of the hypnotic submission she’d fought.

Anita leaned in, and kissed Patrice, deliberately and slowly. Patrice held her, and as she gently explored Patrice’s mouth, she felt it open as Patrice ‘s tongue came shyly out to meet hers. She barely knew what she was doing, but she felt the deep, deep need to help this woman feel good. She began to stroke her body again as she had while Patrice slept, this time exploring, lightly tracing over smooth skin and muscles, letting Patrice feel gentle hands on her.

Patrice wasn’t resisting, and Anita began to lose herself in the woman’s passive reactions and in her own. Her fingertips rode the soft fissure between Patrice’s thigh and abdomen, down into the warmth of her crotch, and Anita’s pussy heated up as she felt Patrice’s thighs slowly parting. Delicately she felt down, finding her way to the lips.

She felt stubble, and wondered whether Patrice had shaved her pussy or Mistress had had it done. The detail tore at her with Patrice’s vulnerability. She let her touch there grow even lighter, but she could already feel the slickness, and soon she was coaxing Patrice’s clitoris to venture out. Patrice rested her head against Anita’s, neither cooperating nor struggling, making small sounds against Anita’s cheek that drove Anita into fiercer tenderness with each breath.

Patrice’s thighs spasmed around her hand, but she kept her precise touch on the clit, guarding it as other fingers found their way inside. Patrice shook against her and slipped her head down to Anita’s neck.

Only when Patrice’s whole body stiffened and Anita felt the warmth bathe her fingers did she slowly, slowly pull out. She let Patrice’s dreamlike fall to the mattress bring them both down, and flowed into another kiss.

Patrice was half-asleep, but her smile was ecstatic. Anita stroked her, and kissed her again. Patrice’s eyes cleared for a moment, and she whispered, “Anita . . . love . . .”

Anita wanted to cry, but instead she smiled down. “Just feel good,” she whispered back, and found another way to bring Patrice to another long, slow cascade of orgasms.

When she finally fell asleep in Patrice’s arms, she realized that wet as she was, she hadn’t climaxed. She realized she didn’t care, and kissed Patrice as the other woman slept.

There was deja vu when she woke again with Patrice over her, but the lingering smile on Patrice’s face dispelled it. Anita smiled sleepily back, and lay quietly when Patrice leaned down to kiss her.

“I don’t know why I feel this good,” the other woman said. “But thank

you.”

Anita wanted to say “I think I know why,” but she had the same odd feeling she’d had in the first cell as Sheila was leaving. What she found herself saying was, “Is Scott too old for lullabies?”

Before Anita could think What the fuck? she was already thinking Oh no please I didn’t—

“Sc—?” Patrice tensed very slightly, and pain crossed her face, but then her eyes rolled back for a moment under drooping lids. “Lullabies make me so sleepy . . .” she breathed. When she looked back down at Anita, her face was empty and blissful. “Mmm. Thank you, Anita. Everything is clearer, now. i understand Mistress’ Will and i can . . . obey it now.”

Anita stared at her, paralyzed.

“Thank you for teaching me that obedience really is pleasure. You’re really the sweetest trainer i have had.” Patrice smiled at her, then stood and walked toward the door, coming to attention. Anita looked at her, seeing her posture slacken. She was going under hypnosis by herself.

The door had closed behind her, and Anita still lay on the bed. She hadn’t known what she was really doing, but it was all her. The only thing she could blame on Mistress was that posthypnotic trigger.

She did not want to know who Scott was.

Mistress’ words came back to her: A self. Pried from her warm, slick fingers.

Anita raised her own hand to her mouth, and began to suck on the fingers as she stared up at the ceiling.