The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

20.

Joyce’s eyes.

slave julie was lifting the leash, and Anita raised her eyes when it brushed her arm and then her nipple. She looked up into Joyce’s eyes.

They’d been walking from the cell where julie had fetched her, where she’d lain unsleeping since Patrice had left. Anita had been trying not to think, trying without a bit of irony to hypnotize herself, and she’d stayed zoned enough to believe it was working. Now—here was Joyce.

As Joyce took the leash from julie and nodded to dismiss the other slave, Anita drew a breath and worried about fainting. Joyce was one of the ones from the group she’d trusted most, revered for what she’d been through but still been able to give. Joyce was the sleek and terrifying vision of enslaved strength that had burned into Anita’s memory and had transfixed two of the women that night—two of Anita’s friends, Joyce’s friends—just by being there.

Joyce was standing in front of her, nude and collared as she was. Holding Anita’s leash.

They looked at each other, and Joyce shifted as though she were about to touch her, but she seemed to sense that, if nothing else, would probably send Anita collapsing to the floor. She stepped away, and Anita followed her. Neither of them let the slack in the leather tighten. Walking almost as equals made Anita even more aware she was leashed than if Joyce had dragged her.

They came to a door in a small quiet hallway of doors, but Anita was beyond trying to think of what it might mean, of what this part of Mistress’ complex was. Thinking was a self-punishing crime for her now.

It was more than a cell and less than a windowless studio apartment, and despite herself Anita considered what it meant about Joyce’s status. She wondered where Valerie spent her off-hours and tried to avoid the bleakness she felt.

Joyce led her to the bed, and Anita sat down, sighing. I’m going to be on everyone’s bed. I’d be a whore, but no one’s paying—

Then what Patrice had given up for her favors slashed icily through her self-pity and she gasped as she sat, unable even to resent her mind for turning on her.

Oh, I’m a pricey enough fuck, all right . . .

She felt Joyce next to her. “Are you all right?” She felt gentle pressure forcing her to lie down, though Joyce mercifully pressed her down somewhere other than beside the swell of Joyce’s own hip. “It’s all right, Anita. Just relax. Nothing’s expected of you now. Mistress has given you to me.” Her hand on Anita’s neck absorbed the start she’d expected. “No, not as a slave. You’re a . . . pet.”

Anita took that in, and murmured past the cloth by her face as she lay, “Thank you for taking care of me, Mistress.”

Nothing in Joyce’s touch changed, but Anita rolled and looked up into her eyes, not even aware of how she knew. “Oh, god. I didn’t mean to call you that, Joyce.” She hesitated, then put her hand out and rested it on Joyce’s leg. “Joyce. If I could take it back—”

Joyce looked down at her, but tightened her hold on Anita’s neck, not threateningly. “i understand, Anita. Relax now.” She smiled. “Mistress tells me you’re a lapsed Taoist. Try thinking that way. Or not-thinking.”

Anita put her face back to the mattress and couldn’t tell if her cough were laughter or a sob.

“Mistress let me watch, Anita. You’re beautiful. A beautiful woman and a beautiful lover.”

Now Anita tried to rise, and instead of pushing her back down Joyce moved over to hold her, sliding her up to rest her head over Joyce’s breast. Too many things were trying to come out, and Joyce spoke softly over the low moaning sound Anita was making. “slave patrice endured a lot. What you gave her was sweet and soothing, and it made her happier.” Joyce paused and said even more softly, very carefully, “Not everyone is allowed to have that. Or to give that.”

The least unendurable question found its way to Anita’s lips. “Joyce. For god’s sake . . . what does she want from me? What does she want me to do?”

“What did you want Mistress to do, Anita?”

She breathed. “To take me. To put all my memories to sleep.”

“To kill you and leave you breathing.” Joyce began to move her hand slowly across Anita’s skin, not arousingly. “You were committing suicide.” Her kiss on Anita’s forehead took the edge from the words, even as it stung her with the memory of how she’d soothed Patrice.

Even as it faintly enticed her: perhaps it was her turn, now, in Joyce’s arms.

Too good to be true. “I committed euthanasia instead.”

“Ssssh. patrice was strong but she was already controlled. she would be worshipping Mistress now no matter what you did. This way there was more moisture in her pussy than her eyes when it happened, and she has you to thank.”

Anita shook. “She did.”

“i heard her.” Joyce kissed her again. “And she was with the only person here who could give her that for real.” Joyce’s voice grew softer. “Who could touch her with love.

“Anita. Pet . . . there are other things to regret. i pray to Mistress that She never asks them of you.” Anita raised her eyes again and saw Joyce staring off at the wall, and had another intuition. This was a yawning pit Joyce lived beside in her mind, and she felt the need to step around its edge, to be on the side Joyce was. She leaned back down and kissed Joyce’s breast beside her aureole, leaving her lips there for a moment.

“Joyce, she can ask. I’ll do it. I’ll obey. I’ll be her slut, her bitch, anything.” Anita heard herself and cringed, remembering what Mistress had asked the first time they’d spoken. She held Joyce tighter, and saw Joyce, still looking at the wall, close her eyes as though she’d just made an awful mistake.

“But she has all these others to do that,” Anita went on, feeling she was babbling but unable to stop. (Joyce was one of “all these others.") “One more bitch won’t matter to her.”

“Oh.” Joyce shuddered.

This had somehow led them into very hard territory for Joyce, and she had to draw herself together with visible effort, but her hold on Anita never tightened. Whatever was rearing up inside her, she was protecting Anita from it. Feeling Joyce protect her warmed and hurt Anita even more than seeing the old, healing Valerie surrounded and enchanted by Mistress’ heraldry in the shrine to the stooping hawk. But Anita could see in this slave the friend she’d known.

She realized then what a curse Joyce’s strength must be to her.

“Oh, Anita, no. Mistress is like . . . Mistress is God. She scorns nothing. In Her eyes every self She can take is equally . . . precious . . .”

Every self.

Patrice—

Anita clung tighter to Joyce, fleeing the grief as fast as her soul could run. She fled toward the other, unknown hurt Joyce had just given herself, and nuzzled her. “Joyce. Thank you, Joyce. You’re helping . . .”

Joyce’s hand did tighten on her back, and she felt the other woman’s chest heave once, twice. Then Joyce’s other hand stroked her chin and drew her gaze up. Joyce was smiling tightly, but she was smiling, and Anita blinked the sudden blurring from her eyes because she wanted nothing to keep her from seeing Joyce, just now.

This is a woman I could belong to. And worship. She didn’t dare say it.

Breathing smoothly, Joyce said, “All right, pet, let’s have a look at you.”

Comforted and excited now by the role, Anita stood up before her, resisting the urge to kneel. She enjoyed the way Joyce’s eyes traveled over her, and warmed at the pleasure Joyce took in looking at her. She wanted to offer herself, but didn’t know how. She was almost grateful when Joyce drew a startled yelp from her by touching her bush.

“my pet needs to be properly groomed,” mused Joyce, looking at Anita’s groin with fascination and then up into Anita’s eyes. “To the sink,” she said, and Anita obeyed, feeling lightheaded again. It was like some college game; it couldn’t be happening here.

She turned, her bottom flinching from the cool wood bordering the vanity, facing Joyce as she came after her. She reached back and braced to hoist herself onto the tiled top, when Joyce reached to stop her and said “Wait.”

Anita shook, and looked fearfully up. Joyce looked down and smiled, and gently drew Anita up against her, reaching out. Anita heard the soft snap of a towel and leaned against Joyce, enjoying her skin as she felt Joyce’s arms working behind her back. Joyce helped her settle back, her cheeks protected now from the cold tile.

I should have played that game in college more often, Anita thought, spreading her thighs and finding her balance.

Now Joyce was delicately moistening her with a washcloth and lathering her hair, and Anita was staring at Joyce’s bare pussy, breathing harder. She started to think of Patrice’s, but the new dismay on Joyce’s face distracted her.

Joyce was holding the razor. It was closed. It was straight.

She stared at it as if it were hypnotizing her, but her voice was low and aware. “There was a safety razor beside it. i couldn’t pick it up.” She looked at Anita. “i couldn’t.” She blinked but looked Anita in the eye again. “i don’t know what it means.”

Anita felt the room’s air, Joyce’s other hand on her canted thigh, the tiny frothing of the lather on her, and she forced her gaze from the razor to Joyce’s eyes. Reaching, she took Joyce’s hand and took the razor from it. She kissed the lacquered case, warm from Joyce’s hand, and then she kissed the hand and put the razor back.

She thought of saying “We haven’t got all day” but suddenly had a horror of another of Mistress’ posthypnotic surprises leaving her lips instead.

Like a request for . . .

But she looked at Joyce, and there was stronger feeling than fear in her, now. Life was too short for fear, or bravado either.

“Joyce.” She kept it level. “I don’t know what it means, either. But before we find out, no disrespect to . . .” she looked around for the cameras and microphones “. . . anyone . . .

“But I wish I could call you my Mistress.” Joyce looked at her sharply, but Anita held her gaze.

“It would be no shame to be yours, Joyce. It would be an honor. I wanted you to know that. I felt it before, and I’d be pr—”

Joyce’s hand was on her mouth, gentle and implacable. “Please, Anita. Don ‘t say it.” Then she leaned in and held Anita tightly. “Thank you for that, more that i can tell you. But please . . . i can’t bear to hear it again.”

Not understanding and not sure she wanted to, Anita kissed her. “As you wish,” she whispered. Holding Joyce to her, she whispered, “Where it counts, Joyce, I sing it.”

Joyce straightened, and her smile was lovely and crooked. She wiped an eye with the heel of her other hand. “How am i going to do this now?”

Anita leaned back. “Slowly and carefully.” Her breath caught as Joyce nodded, and then caught again as flesh and steel touched her with equal gentleness.

21.

Mistress had let them sleep, and Her forbearance was starting to terrify slave joyce. she clung to the idea that Mistress had, in Her dark way, taken a liking to Anita, who was stepping lightly and so far relatively unscathed across Her open jaws like one of the birds that cleaned crocodiles’ teeth.

Anita would never know how close slave joyce had come to using the razor on her own throat when Anita had almost spoken of being proud of her. Even now joyce wondered if Anita had been speaking her own mind, or if Mistress had programmed her.

Maybe what interested Mistress was in what Anita would do to Joyce all on her own.

The door opened.

Two other slaves entered without ceremony. joyce hugged Anita and told her Mistress’ slaves went anywhere She sent them. Anita looked at her, nervous but accepting, and whispered her understanding. she held her pet closer when these slaves said they were to bring Anita elsewhere for obedience training.

Anita was agitated and looked to her for guidance. Before joyce could tell her to go with them and submit to it, one of the slaves smiled at her. “Look, slave joyce: a present from valerie.” she held out a small plaque with a hologram before joyce’s eyes, and joyce felt herself compelled to follow it automatically, vaguely aware of Anita’s sharp breath at seeing her captured by the lure.

The other slave twitched it once, twice as it passed before joyce, and she felt it pull into a light trance as the second look at the image completed the trigger. she heard the slave’s smugness, an emotion which like most emotions Mistress’ slaves never needed to feel.

Dimly she realized it was for Anita’s benefit, to show her that her keeper, the woman to whom she was submitting so happily, was just another puppet on hypnotic strings. she opened herself as the other woman told her how happy she was to let her pet be trained by others, answering sleepily that she understood and obeyed.

At the door Anita turned, and stepped back to her. She knelt at joyce’s feet and looked up at her. “May I go with them?”

She swallowed. “Ma’am?”

The new word reached slave joyce through the light trance she was already rising out of on her own. Swallowing in her turn, she looked down into Anita’s eyes, seeing real submission, and other things that she didn’t want to see but felt sorry to turn from. But Anita was asking permission, making her own declaration in front of these pawns of Mistress. She’d just seen how helpless joyce was, how much she was just another robot, but still she knelt and acknowledged her. Honored her.

Trusted her.

Not again. she didn’t waste mental breath on “please.” she wanted to sit and let them take Anita to her training, hoping she could ignore the hurt she’d see, hoping Mistress might actually start brainwashing Anita into the obedient bliss she seemed to want. But she thought about Anita’s lovely horizontal minuet with slave patrice, and about how just a while before she’ d lain back, opening herself to joyce and the blade. Trusting her.

joyce couldn’t take that gift for naught, or the deliberate gesture Anita was making to her and to Mistress now. she reached down and cupped Anita’s cheek, feeling the heat of her flush and almost wincing at the joy that lit Anita’s eyes.

“Yes, pet. You may. Do as you’re told.” she breathed. “You please me.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.” Anita bowed her head without breaking contact with joyce’s hand. She was inventing her own submissive protocol, and joyce knew it was all a message that said I’m yours. she felt Anita’s lips in her palm as she had when Anita had taken the razor, then felt Anita’s voice along her wrist: “Your pet won’t shame you, Ma’am.”

Then Anita was on her feet and standing straight between the slaves who’d come for her, theirs to command now but not apologizing for first begging her keeper’s leave to go. She went with them, ready to behave and obey.

For joyce’s sake.

joyce stared at the closed door for a while. she remembered the last woman who’d trusted her, who’d bewildered and scalded her with being proud of her when Mistress’ bonds were heaviest on her. she thought of Anita up on the vanity, helpless and gravely passive, and suddenly found she could try to glimpse Amanda in her mind without ripping it open.

Mistress was steering her here, and Mistress never sent her anywhere that didn’t hurt.

i’m going to end up destroying this girl, she told herself bleakly. Mistress will trigger me to kill her, and the poor bitch will see me get off while I do it. But she thought of her climaxes as Cory Antonio bled out while orgasming on her own hand, and realized Mistress wouldn’t repeat Herself.

she wondered if Anita had realized, yet, that if Mistress believed oblivion was what she wanted, then—as joyce could tell her—it was the last thing she’d get. But telling Anita that would require joyce to tell her devoted pet the reason why.

Maybe that was the skewer Mistress wanted to thrust through joyce.

joyce stared at her smooth knees, unmarred by all the kneeling, and appalled herself at the idea that, offered Amanda’s role in the ugly little play . . . Anita might look her in the eye and accept it.

Or maybe that was it.

she stood, stepped to the middle of the floor, and knelt. “This slave begs to serve her Mistress. Please command me.”

“Very wise to stay occupied, joyce.” Mistress did not surprise her by speaking, by being the one who’d been watching them. joyce pictured the duty slave who usually watched and tasked the others kneeling blankly by her chair as Mistress took the panel for a moment. she felt her body responding to her Owner’s voice, and felt the craven need rising from deep inside: Please command me to do something evil.

“Don’t worry. your pet is just being given some additional etiquette points. Really, joyce, I’m not going to all this trouble just to program her to kill you in your sleep, or start chewing when she eats you out.

“Yes, joyce? Something?”

Keeping her head bowed, joyce said, “i understand, Mistress. That is why i am so afraid.”

“Ahhh.” Mistress paused. “Well, you’re very clever when you’re afraid, joyce, so I’ll look forward to it.

“Now: to please Me, you may look in on the two young women you rescued and see how they’re progressing. slave lynn was born to the collar, but Ms Heller seems to have some fight in her yet.”

“i hear and obey, Mistress,” joyce murmured. Maybe she could find a way to persuade Shauna to join her friend in submission. To look into her eyes and tell her there were worse things to be than hopeless.

But Mistress wouldn’t want that, so soon.

Nor was joyce so sure she could look into eyes that were still part free, and speak that kind of offer.

“By the way, joyce, it was nice to hear you compare Me to God, so naturally. And you were so quick to groom your pet, too. “If you’d like, joyce, you may now have the question I told you that you might ask Me.”

joyce always dreaded this. Mistress knew everything in her mind, and exactly where all her buttons were for the pushing. She knew what joyce ached to know. Perhaps what She wanted to see was which way joyce would jump. Which question joyce would choose to spend.

But slave joyce already knew that the answers would hurt.

Where is my daughter?

When may i die?

Why . . . ?

“Thank You, Mistress. But . . . instead may i only serve You, now? Please?”

Mistress laughed softly. One of the few things joyce felt remotely safe in believing was that She would never spoil Her own enjoyment by making joyce play that kind of game. In Her own . . . unique way, Mistress was honest with Herself about the authenticity of a slave’s reaction. It showed in Her choice of fucktoys. joyce wondered which She’d choose tonight, or if She’d sleep alone.

“Poor joyce. Always so dutiful. your new pet may help you unwind.

“Yes, you may report to cynthia now. I want to hear your reaction to her new idea for bending Ms Heller to My will. I think cynthia is too mesmerized, so to speak, by the geometry of using friends to break each other. It’s lovely to watch, but she has more creativity than that.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

After a moment slave joyce rose, looking at the room and feeling warm—then very cold—at the way the simple space was changed for her by being shared with Anita. Another hostage to fortune was not a good thing to have. But Anita was beautiful, was growing devoted to her, very likely without much of Mistress’ indoctrination, and was demonstrably a skilled and ardent lover.

In the midst of this she was giving herself to joyce, telling her that in the eyes of one person joyce was more than Mistress’ plaything.

As slave joyce left the room for the conditioning area to help destroy what was left of the mind and will of Shauna Heller, it occurred to her that perhaps Anita was real, that she was untainted and true. Mistress might have made a pact with Herself to let Anita alone, perhaps from fascination with the free woman’s thought processes. Mistress might be counting on joyce to suspect such an offering.

To pass it up.

That would be like Her.

But She was letting joyce think of it . . .

slave joyce closed her eyes for a moment. Before she chose, if it weren’t denied to her, she wanted more time with her pet.

she needed Anita.

22.

Anita had a car outside this pleasant suburban house where Janine, from Valerie’s group, lived. Anita had gas and money, and she’d run before with less.

She didn’t even think about running. She had not the slightest hope in succeeding, and she’d failed at running already. More than all that, she would not discredit Joyce. She didn’t even reach what Mistress might do to Joyce if her pet ran away.

She’d awakened behind the wheel in a parking garage. They’d brought her from wherever they’d been keeping her. She had a car, and orders. She wondered idly if they were watching.

She hoped so. She would do Joyce proud.

There were the practicalities, too: she had no idea what sensors Mistress might have in the car or on her. She’d laughed as she drove here, picturing a whacking huge radar dish on the compact’s roof that she was programmed not to notice. Well, no one else had stared. Or maybe she wasn’t programmed to see that, either.

The humor wisped away as the door opened and she found herself looking at a woman her own height, a frosted blonde with her petite frame wrapped in a dampening towel, peering through large round eyeglasses that brought out her almost Slavic cheekbones.

She thought of Janine enslaved to a pair of her own students. She didn’t know how to feel about the arousal it brought. She knew Janine had never gone back to teaching.

“Anita? Hi! Come on in!”

Anita smiled at her, suddenly grateful for the distant-but-clear instructions Joyce had given her under hypnosis. More than the attraction she was feeling in her feverish joints, Anita remembered Janine’s first meeting at Valerie’s group, her collapse after so much strength at just being believed. Anita remembered what she’d told the police after running away from Master, scorning the claim of mind control abuse itself, spitting on Janine’s agony and the others’, and part of her wanted to beg Janine’s forgiveness and just go away.

But the part of her that proudly wore Joyce’s leash just pressed her thighs together unobtrusively under the short skirt as she followed Janine into the house, and began to obey her instructions. This was beginning to turn her on the way being near Sheila had, before Sheila deprogrammed her. But it was different than being slaved to Sheila: she could think, and she was actually finding something worthy in doing things for Joyce. Joyce wouldn’t want her to crawl, or sit to be branded.

But if Joyce wanted something else . . .

“Just a second,” Janine said, peeling the towel off and striding on through the kitchen to the back deck. Anita heard splashing. “Hey you guys!” she heard Janine call, and again before the splashing subsided. “Try not to drown each other for a few minutes, OK? Someone’s here.” Then she was back in, and Anita drank in the way the tankini flattered her long-lined body.

“Get you something?”

Anita shook her head. “There’s something I need to tell you, about the group.” Her excitement was rising, seeing the vibrant curiosity light the eyes behind the glasses. “Do you remember how you knew I’d be stopping by today?”

Shaking her head, Janine folded her arms, frowning prettily. “Actually, no, I can’t recall. Isn’t that weird?”

“How about the sessions at the gym over the last week?”

“Oh—” Janine gave a start. “What does that have to do with . . . anything?” She was blushing now, and her eyes flicked to Anita’s legs before returning to her face. “I can’t really remember that either. Billy’ s given me some grief about it and I almost think he’s really worried that I ‘m having an . . .”

What she was here to do still bothered Anita slightly, even though she knew it was inevitable, and far from the worst that Mistress could order done. She remembered Joyce’s voice at the end of the trance, just before telling her to sleep: “You will do well, Anita. You will please Mistress.” Her tone had changed. “And me.” Anita thought she could remember lips on her forehead, but she was already going under.

She needed it now. “Janine, there’s a reason you don’t remember. It’s training, and you’re responding perfectly.” Janine blinked at her. Anita stepped forward, and Janine backed against the island in the middle of the kitchen without seeming to know it.

Anita went on, calmly, soothingly. “What you need to do, Janine, what you want to do right now, is just to look directly into my eyes.” She reached slowly for Janine’s hand, glad when Janine didn’t pull away. Part of her just wanted to be able to touch, to let Janine have something human to hold onto.

The rest of her said, “I’m going to hypnotize you now. Look into my eyes.”

She stared between Janine’s eyes, avoiding the trap of hypnotizing herself, but Janine fell into it, into Anita’s eyes. Anita felt something like a humming vibration as she knew the other woman was so conditioned that she was already starting to submit. She was amazed at how loudly she gasped until she realized Janine had gasped with her, both of them caught up in the spell of a surrendering will.

But Anita was casting the spell, and she began to recite the induction. She felt a tug on her hand as Janine relaxed back against the marble of the island.

“Just relax and look into my eyes and you’re finding that your thoughts are slowing down, much too slow, and as I explain, you’ll find that you accept everything my voice tells you.”

Her peripheral vision showed her the tiny signs of Janine’s struggle: the twitch of a neck muscle as she thought of turning away. A tic on her forehead as she tried to hold onto a reason to turn but grew too unfocused to choose one and too sleepy to remember why. The trembling of her lips as her deeper self, remembering pussy-training, realized she was being hypnotized at Mistress’ will.

There was a louder splash suddenly from outside, and laughter, and Janine’s eyes moved to the side, though she couldn’t make her head follow. But in the cautious hush after the noise there was no distraction for her to take hold of, and with a hiccuping sigh she slid back into Anita’s gaze.

Keeping her voice soft, unable to pitch it too low but letting it take a whispery edge, Anita spoke the words Joyce had taught her. “You’ve been meeting women selected to help condition you for your next task. Women who’ ve been hypnotizing you and exposing you to very intense programming.”

She found herself almost starting to pant as she saw Janine shrinking back, her gaze locked on Anita’s face, her eyes open wide.

“You were already having regular sessions. The gym trysts were just reinforcement.”

Janine’s eyes were starting to reflect the dull glow of the afternoon light through the windows, but there was still something in them that begged silently, Please. Don’t. I can’t.

Her pain hurt Anita, and Anita felt the compulsion to soothe her.

But the power was a sickening rush, as if she were actually sucking it from Janine. Trying instead to sustain the other woman, she squeezed Janine’s hand gently, realizing now that she’d been past the point of no return when she’d come inside this house like an invited vampire. When she’d knelt by Joyce’s feet and looked up at the wall and said to the cameras, “Yes, Mistress, I’ll do it.”

When she’d turned away from the edge of the roof.

“The thing is, Janine, our group was taken over by a mind controller.” Janine shivered. “She enslaved Valerie and Valerie helped her take control of the rest of us. None of us could resist. When she was finished none of us wanted to.”

Anita felt herself smile, and for a moment she was afraid. “They programmed us all to obey. They told us not to remember it. We’re very good slaves: we obeyed, and we forgot.”

Janine was shaking her head weakly, almost imperceptibly. She looked so young and artless behind the glasses. Anita wanted to protect her, but she knew only one thing she could do.

“Some were sold off right away. But most were kept as they were, so that everyone else would think we were still free.”

Anita saw the brightness in the other woman’s eyes, knew why she wasn’t moving, or reaching for something to fight with. Am I really doing this?

“They did. They do. Valerie created Oasis, and gets new applicants all the time.”

“No,” Janine said in a small voice, but she stood passively. She could take no more. Anita saw the last bit of it in her eyes, the last breath of the candle flame.

Kill me but leave me breathing.

She tried to will something to Janine, holding her hand, to let her know.

“But we’re not free. We’re tame. And when they want to take one of us away, we come . . . when we’re called . . .”

There was another splash outside and an explosion of laughing and squealing. Janine didn’t blink.

Staring helplessly into Anita’s eyes, she stood limply, as if only Anita’s gaze held her up.

Squeezing her hand, Anita stepped back and drew Janine erect again. Still transfixed, the other woman swayed slightly, as though her body were as drained of energy as of will. Then she knelt, and Anita found herself lost in the way the other woman’s thighs flexed to lower her gracefully to the kitchen floor. Her eyes never left Anita’s, and she stared blankly up. Anita took a breath and lifted her skirt, and Janine leaned forward under it. Anita stared unseeingly, her eyes going for a moment as blank as Janine ‘s as she felt the cool air against her smooth crotch, and then the delicate warmth of Janine’s breathing. Then the skin, the lips . . .

More splashing and the sound of a brief, fierce fight. Quieter splashing. Anita’s pussy was Janine’s world, and she knelt, lost in it.

Anita held the other woman’s head, feeling Janine’s face against her pussy but not fucking it or telling her to use her mouth. She let Janine kneel passively, breathing her scent, and then stepped back, able to let go because she had to obey the rest of the instructions.

Janine rose, her eyes lidded now, and followed Anita’s beckoning hand like a sleepwalker as Anita led her back to the living room. As she went she pulled the tankini top off, moving her head but not her eyes, and dropped it, pulling the bottom down then and walking out of it. Anita watched to ensure she didn’t trip, and then, settling herself, slipped out of her skirt and shoes, leaving them on the floor. The blouse and bra followed, and she took Janine by the hand up the stairs, to where she knew the bedroom would be.

23.

The unmade sheets were cool and smelled of Janine and someone else, and the stranger-scent excited Anita as she slid in next to Janine. Sighing, she slipped the other woman’s glasses off, savoring the warmth of the bows on her fingers as she set them on the nightstand as if to watch, and leaned down. Janine, looking even more helpless now that her face was naked, reached for her.

Anita had enjoyed sleeping beneath Joyce and found it pleasantly different under Janine.

Suddenly, she remembered Patrice, whose memory emerged from hiding in this daylit, furnished room so different than the starkly-lit cell where she’d seduced Patrice the rest of the way into Mistress’ power.

But here was Janine, and it was another perverse chance to help. Anita saw the alternative, booted robot-figures dragging her to the door past her entranced family, the last thing she’d see before they blanked her own mind with an inducer. In Mistress’ world, this was kinder.

She held Janine closer, and Janine reached down, responding mindlessly. Anita’s eyes started to roll up and she heard herself make a mewing noise.

She saw something over Janine’s shoulder and struggled out of her orgasmic trance.

She stared over Janine’s shoulder into Billy’s eyes.

He stood by the bed and looked at her as though he didn’t know her. Looked down at Janine, watching his wife suck obliviously on Anita’s breast, and then he was unrecognizable, his face twisting into someone else. Someone else reached into the nightstand and stepped back, and Anita heard the click.

I can’t let her be—!

Moaning, desperately fighting the arousal, Anita wrapped her arms around Janine and rolled over on top of her, dropping her head into line in front of Janine’s face and looking back at Billy.

He was still someone else as he looked down the gun at her. She saw a square muzzle, all black, and suddenly it stabbed through her god it could go right through me and I’ll still let her die. She held Janine tighter and somehow Janine grew still.

Anita held her closer, and stared back at Billy, someone else with a gun.

He could kill her.

She wondered what she should be begging for.

But Janine’s breath was warm in the hollow of her neck. The woman she’d hypnotized and seduced in her own . . .

It would go right through her.

“Billy. Please. Don’t.”

As she spoke, as he heard her, he was Billy again, and he pulled the gun back slowly, his face pale and terrible. He backed out of the room. “The kids,” he said. “How . . .” His voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. “Fucking dyke!”

Anita lay there, holding Janine and letting the hypnotized woman hold her to stop her shaking. She wondered suddenly why her thighs were dry, amazed she hadn’t pissed herself. Presently, she heard noise from outside, screaming and an abortive splash and a male voice shouting, and felt lightheaded. When the SUV’s engine raced angrily and then faded, she felt herself melt over Janine. She couldn’t move.

The rest of the instructions. Mistress hadn’t said anything about Billy, but Anita had the feeling he was planned for. She looked down at Janine and kissed her. Thank you, Mistress, for letting me leave her in trance for all this. Please, please, please don’t make me the one to awaken her.

She was glad for the commands she was remembering now, since without them she would just have lain there, trying to lose herself in stillness and Janine. Softly she instructed Janine to dress, and tearing herself away from the sight of Janine dreamily moving around the room to obey, she went out to find her clothes.

They were wadded by the wall halfway down the stairs, and she was chilled as she remembered Billy. She looked. He hadn’t torn them. She tried to think of what he must have felt, how he felt now, taking the children and going . . . where? Driving too fast . . .

No. Don’t think. There was nothing left she could do but obey Mistress. She climbed back up and slipped the clothes on, then went in to find Janine standing blankly in a sundress, staring at the wall. Anita went to the nightstand, suppressing a shiver as she remembered the gun (did he have it with the kids now? oh christ) and took Janine’s glasses, settling them gently back on her. Janine blinked through them.

Anita led her out to her car, one hand on the cell phone in her purse, ready to speed-dial the number if she found the tires slashed. All was well and in a moment they were rolling away, past a Neighborhood Watch sign with what might be an eye drooping into trance.

She drove along the route they’d implanted in her mind, letting go the occasional twinge of nostalgia for the days when she drove these streets as her own woman. She smiled thinly as she remembered that for a while even then she hadn’t been: she’d been Master’s own fuckslut. Not even false nostalgia was working for her today.

They pulled up to a medical office building, and Anita went in, Janine docile behind her. In the suite behind the nameplate C. CALVERT M.D. they found a receptionist alone in an empty waiting room. She motioned to Anita to wait, disappearing into one of the hallways.

Anita saw the magazines strewn artfully on the table but she looked away. They belonged to a world she no longer lived in. Free people read magazines, watched screens for reasons other than to be hypnotized, sought information because they had decisions to make.

She did have decisions, she admitted to herself, and turned to face one, brushing aside a strand of Janine’s hair unnecessarily and swallowing hard at how easy to hurt Janine looked. She didn’t know if this was just how they’d programmed Janine to react when harvested, or if the sex had deepened her as it had . . . Patrice . . . She hoped it wasn’t some kind of withdrawal, that it hadn’t somehow struck through Janine’s trance that her husband had found her fucking another woman in their bed and come within a few trigger-pressure ounces of killing them both.

“We’ll take her now.”

She turned. The woman walking toward them had dark skin and wide-set eyes, and a presence that reached out and pressed against Anita where she stood. She nearly backed away, and her own self-esteem would have let her crawl away, but she was Joyce’s, and for Joyce’s pride stood her ground. It was hard to picture the woman as a slave, but she was bare above the waist, and wore a collar and talon medallion.

“Janine, focus on what you must do,” the woman—Dr Calvert?—said firmly, and Anita reeled inwardly at the power of her voice. Seeing it reach Janine was even more intense.

“Focus. i must obey,” Janine whispered fiercely.

“Go inside. Michaela will prepare you for indoctrination.” Janine walked to the hallway and disappeared.

Dr Calvert looked at Anita now, and Anita repeated to herself I’m Joyce’s pet. I’m Joyce’s. Mistress can take me if she wants but no one else. No one else.

Dr Calvert smiled. “You’re the . . . yes.” She’d taken the edge off of her delivery, and Anita didn’t feel so overwhelmed, but she held herself in anyway. The doctor saw that and her smile widened.

“Do you understand what you did?”

“No,” Anita said, biting down on Doctor because she didn’t know how far she’d fall under the spell if she started deferring to her.

“Mistress needs her to disappear, as you were told when you were programmed.” Dr Calvert’s eyes gleamed more avidly, and she clearly enjoyed the image of Anita under hypnosis. The way it made Anita like the idea frightened her even more. She actually found herself trusting in Mistress’ control, and wishing Mistress had enslaved her, just to be safe from this . . .

This was a slave of Mistress.

“The marriage is over. If the man somehow finds it in himself to try to work it out, he’ll find her with someone else, perhaps in public. But this way she’ll be meat for the lawyers. By now, after the process which you completed, she’ll get nothing in the settlement, and if she so much as whispers ‘custody’ they’ll throw her bodily from the room.” Dr Calvert was still smiling.

Anita tried to picture Joyce standing behind her, even tried to picture Mistress watching through a camera. Shit, she probably was! She would make Joyce proud. She forced her mind to work. “She’ll have nothing and no one. When Mistress disappears her, she’s not worth looking for.”

Dr Calvert’s eyes gleamed and sought hers, and Anita stood taller and braced herself as if against a strong wind. She stared back into what might have been blue eyes, or violet, or some tawny brandy that swirled in a snifter as heady fumes wafted up and . . .

“It’s all right.” The voice was indulgent. “You’ve been mindfucked enough that you lube automatically, so it’s not a fair test.”

Anita blinked. “I . . .”

“I envy slave joyce—very few things,” Dr Calvert said. “But I do envy her you. she probably doesn’t enjoy inducing you as much as I would.” She actually licked her lips, but it was a delicate gesture, a cat’s good manners. Anita shivered, wanting to leave this woman’s presence but dreading dismissal.

“Her husband keeps his money, which also diverts attention, but her price will more than recoup that, and Mistress thinks this will pay dividends in goodwill later.” Dr Calvert breathed deeply and closed her eyes, and they were glazed for a moment when she opened them. “And Mistress is always right.”

Anita had glanced away, and kept her eyes averted even when Dr Calvert chuckled. “I could make you look. But you have other tasks, little one.

“Go in peace. You’ve done very well. Beguile joyce’s hours.”

Anita bowed her head, and then looked up into Dr Calvert’s eyes, almost falling when she didn’t feel the wave of command.

Dr Calvert stared at her. “Admirable. I can see why Mistress is studying you. ‘Because it does not struggle—’”

“’—it is never faulted,’” Anita finished, from the Old Teacher’s book.

The smile was broadening again. “Mmm. Obeying Mistress is pleasure, but not having you is becoming torture.

“I’m not going to take your mind, little one, so I wish you’d just leave.”

“Thank you,” whispered Anita, and wasted no time.

Outside she sat in the car and blinked and breathed deeply. Please let me really be in the car, she thought. Please don’t let me be lying hypnotized in Dr Calvert’s office as she tells me I’m in the car. But she thought about Joyce, and smiled.

Then she processed a thought that had been lost, inside: who, or what, was Dr Calvert?

Anita had never met any of Mistress’ slaves that powerful. She wondered what Dr Calvert had been, before Mistress had enslaved her.

A mistress herself, perhaps. Anita tried to picture the war between them.

It was so frightening and so arousing that she stopped, and told herself that it might have been more one-sided: Mistress had seen a kindred spirit, perhaps traced mind-tampered women to her practice, and preempted her, destroying a rival empire before it rose. But kept her talents, and used them.

Another experiment, like converting Valerie, or whatever painful game Mistress was playing where Joyce was piece, player, board, and prize at once.

Or like Anita herself.

She started the car and headed back to the downtown garage, not remembering how she’d go back to sleep when she got there but knowing they’d see to it.

She needed Joyce.

24.

slave joyce came awake and turned the light up when the door opened and Anita came in. her pet was nude again, having stripped while in trance, in the van that brought her back from the parking garage. Anita stopped in the middle of the room, and slowly sank to her knees.

She looked up at joyce on the bed, and seemed to be making an effort to ask something, but she started to lean slightly to one side as though about to collapse on the floor.

“Ma’am?” she whispered very softly. “May I have permission to go to sleep, now? I’m very, very . . .”

“Won’t you come to the bed, pet?” joyce asked, and slid back further to make the point. Anita started to rise gracefully, but stumbled and joyce was up to help her. They were lying together when joyce realized Anita was crying silently, her eyes shut tight. she held her pet and felt the light shaking. Spooning behind her, she rested her mouth behind Anita’s ear and said nothing.

she heard the whispering and listened. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come to bed, Ma’am. I couldn’t. Pets don’t sleep in bed unless they’re told they may.”

Something turned inside slave joyce, knowing Anita was carrying around that sort of inane humiliation programming after doing whatever she’d just done for Mistress. she presumed Anita had successfully carried out whatever task it had been; Mistress had told her nothing, and among the slaves there was no such thing as a rumor.

Then she registered that Anita was still calling her Ma’am. joyce was inclined to think that wasn’t Mistress’ doing: it was Anita, her loyal pet, keeping to her role even at the end of her tether and asleep on her feet.

Pressing her lips below Anita’s ear, she kissed her and then whispered, “You’re a very good . . .” she couldn’t say it, and didn’t want to try.

“Anita, i am proud of you.” Gently, she turned Anita toward her onto her back, and propped herself on an elbow to look down at her, resting her hand on Anita’s stomach, rubbing slowly.

Anita murmured, “But . . . I took her away. I almost got her killed.”

joyce presumed they’d sent Anita to harvest someone. It was different and easier with a target who was already conditioned, with all the surprises and resistance already charmed out of them. But ease was relative. Compared to some of what Mistress had set joyce to, it was effortless. But Anita wasn’t even the drone that joyce herself was most of the time. What did she have, to help her make sense of triggering some woman out of her freedom?

She had . . . joyce.

“Oh, god.” Anita was still whispering, the crying done for now. “Oh, god. He could have shot right through me and she would have died. She wouldn’t even have known why . . .”

Cold now, as she began to guess what Anita meant she’d risked and done, joyce put her hand on Anita’s cheek and leaned down to kiss her quiet, letting her tongue touch Anita’s before rising away from her.

“Anita,” she said, “just listen to my voice. It’s dark and quiet here and you’re warm next to me and there’s nothing to distract you from just listening to my voice . . .” she heard a faint protest against the hypnosis, barely above the sound of Anita’s breathing, and ignored it. For this moment, Anita was her pet, and hers to care for. she continued the induction until, lying close beside her, she felt Anita’s breathing even out and slow, and then had to struggle to keep herself out of the mesmeric rhythm that drew her in through that same link of their bodies, sucking her toward sleep.

she thought of whispering something more, even as she felt Anita was programmed more than enough. But she knew Mistress was listening, and the less she did, the less Mistress would find to undo if whatever ill spirit it was moved Her.

Besides, there was little enough to offer her submissive, even in dreams. And joyce had learned to fear dreams.

she stroked Anita and whispered to her that she was brave, and that she’d saved a life. Then she moved close again and let Anita’s smooth breathing take her down.

Anita cried when she woke, and for a moment joyce was genuinely afraid that Mistress would see Her game spoiled and just give Anita to slave cynthia for processing, or to valerie for one of her bonbons. Since either one was what Anita had wanted, joyce wasn’t sure why she worried, but she had not yet figured out what the dynamic was.

But Anita calmed down, and no one bothered them as they lay together. Anita whispered what she’d done, and joyce told her how stellar it was, though she didn’t tell Anita how other missions had gone wrong.. Or how some were just as bad when they worked.

“But I liked it,” Anita said very quietly after they’d lain together without speaking for a while. “Not almost getting shot, of course. Even more than just going to bed with her. But I . . . liked seeing her try to resist. I didn’t want . . .”

Rolling over, she put her face against joyce’s shoulder. “One minute I’m so turned on a soft breeze could set me off, and then I’m thinking I made a terrible, terrible . . .” She breathed.

“But you’re here, Ma’am. And I’m yours. I . . . This is . . . I’m almost glad in a way, Joyce—Ma’am—because—”

“Pet, hush.” joyce felt Anita stiffen, and drew her up for a kiss, looking into the eyes that still hadn’t run out of fear. “i think i know what you’ re trying to say, but again please don’t.

“i love that you feel that way, and . . . i do—” she felt Anita’s hold tighten and squeezed back “—but i heard things like that before. From someone i loved, and then betrayed. In the worst possible way.”

she felt Anita relax, waiting, and in her mind she heard herself speak the half-dozen words that would make it known. i gave my family to Mistress. she didn’t know how Anita would react. she had a fair idea how badly she’d feel herself, saying it aloud to someone other than Mistress. Would holding it back be something that would hurt, later, if Mistress told Anita in Her own way how much of a slave joyce truly was?

Not now, joyce thought. Not for my pet, not for me. i will give us some peace, until it’s taken.

“But you are my pet, and there’s no need to speak of such things.” she smiled into Anita’s quizzical look. “Pets are to be pampered and cared for and played with.” She reached down and found Anita’s thighs parted, and had her fingers in place when Anita closed them in surprise.

Anita tried to say something, but joyce just hushed her again, and soon she wasn’t doing anything but squirming weakly against her as joyce slowly, delicately strummed her.

25.

Just the feel of the skintight fabric made Anita warm as she fitted herself into the leotard. It was almost to much to look at her arms encased in the smooth dark-grey as she slipped the boots on and tightened them, closing her eyes for a second to do nothing but smell the leather. She settled both feet delicately on the floor, and gathered herself. She stood.

She felt so . . . strong. No, not strong. Like the tool of something strong.

Like one of Mistress’ robots.

She took a ragged breath and stepped across the floor toward the full-length mirror, each bootheel’s click flicking her mind like a light crop. She remembered crops from the days when Master had played with her as an equal, before he’d decided to hypnotize her into deeper slavery. The memory was nothing now, and she knew that if just the sound could turn her on, then . . .

Anita was walking differently, just in these few steps. She could feel it. Her legs were straighter, she was strutting, and it wasn’t just the balance of the heels, which weren’t that high . . .

Ah!

In the mirror. God.

Dangerous and succulent. It looked like Sheila but it was her.

She felt herself come more erect, bringing her legs together, symmetrical.

Lethally soft. Voluptuously hard. Sex and death.

Anita looked at herself. Saw—killer robot? She almost giggled, but she saw the preliminary tremor ripple over the killer robot in the mirror, and it turned from a laugh into a husky click of arousal.

Sex and death, and they were both real.

They were both her. She brought sex, or death—or both oh god both—to whomever Mistress aimed her at. She was no longer a person but a weapon.

I belong to someone who turns on to this. To turning women into this.

God forgive me, it turns me on too. Is that Mistress’ hypnosis? Or me?

Do I want to know . . . ?

She remembered the dread and lust the night Valerie took them all, when she first saw Sheila and Kit in Mistress’ livery, like zombie warriors come to life from Joyce’s horror stories of her captivity. She remembered the deeper fear to see Joyce under the same sorcery, turned into a mindless tool of their mysterious enemy.

And she remembered the way, afterward, her heart burned to see Sheila dressed like this. Now she stared into the mirror, turned into her own lust object. She blinked and the booted girl with sleeved arms and bare thighs was still there, staring out at her, horny and confused.

God. Mistress depersonalized what she lusted after. Her fetish wasn’t boots, or women in them. She liked them, but her sexual focus other-than-people wasn’t the kinky uniform.

Mistress’ fetish was the mindfucked victim wearing it.

The thing that had been a free person. The object that breathed.

Which makes me . . . ?

Anita closed her eyes, freeing herself from her own fascination. Promptly she knelt, keeping her eyes closed, not daring to learn what seeing herself do that, dressed like this, would do to her. She wanted to get some blood back in her head, and didn’t want to end up worshipping herself.

Worshipping— Her thighs tightened, and she gasped as, a moment later, the boots’ cool leather touched her all along the backs of them, the swell of the heels against her bottom.

She heard the door open, and raised her head, wondering how she looked. I look like a killer robot who really needs to be fucked. And fucked.

Sheila stepped inside, resplendent in her own uniform, and Anita breathed deeply, seeing not a goddess now but another of Mistress’ breathing obedient objects. She rose gracefully, one eye seeing her own form straighten in the mirror. Sheila’s eyes brightened as she looked Anita up and down.

“Yes, Anita. Oh, yes.” She came closer and made light, pointless adjustments to the bodysuit, smiling up at Anita. Reading Anita’s posture she nodded, and they flowed together, kissing with painful intensity and then pulling apart. Anita enjoyed the warmth of Sheila’s body through the lycra above, the cool heat of her legs below, and the hotter place where her legs met. She remembered kneeling dazedly next to that place, but now . . .

“You’re a perfect slave-unit, Anita. All you need is an inducer and some programming in your mind and you’re ready to please Mistress a lot.“ Sheila spoke with the same calm excitement she’d always had, and along with her closeness and the rush Anita was getting just wearing the outfit it drove her words deeper into Anita’s mind.

What is happening to me? Anita thought, as she realized what they meant. The sexual fog that dimmed her memory of Patrice and Janine still blurred her thoughts, but she was no longer fantasizing about protecting Mistress’ prey from the fear and pain of being taken. She’d been the anaesthetic then, but dressed this way she’d be the scalpel.

The women she helped take this way wouldn’t be slipping onto trance or sleep, falling in love with her or the pleasure she gave. They’d be fleeing, screaming, fighting, sagging into slack obedience in the flash of her inducer. They’d fear her and hate her.

Just thinking of it moistened her. It was the uniform. If she’d thought of this before putting it on, Sheila would’ve found her curled up naked across the room from it, crying. But she was already turned on.

Sheila pulled away gently. “i have to go now. we’re to be programmed for this mission.”

Programmed. Brainwashed. “Should I come with you?” she whispered.

Looking puzzled, Sheila shook her head. “i don’t know. Mistress will have told the trainer.” Her exquisite mouth quirked into a grin. “If you leave the obedience chamber and you’re awake, Mistress didn’t want you

hypnotized.” She took Anita’s hand and led her out.

They reached a large room with a smaller glassed-in enclosure with rows of seats. Joyce, in uniform, met them there as other slavewomen filtered in. She smiled as she looked at Anita, and her nipples rose visibly behind the dark fabric, but there was something else in her eyes. Something sad.

Distracted from that by all the identically-dressed slaves reporting for programming, Anita wondered how large an operation it was, and then felt wonder that she was only thinking about logistics.

Somewhere out there were women whose lives were about to be changed, whose minds were about to be changed forever. What was she doing here, on this side?

She was starting to breathe harder. She went from Sheila to Joyce, standing close and requesting leave to touch her keeper. Joyce reached out and took her shoulder, holding her but keeping her at a distance, then slid her hand up the slope of her neck. Anita closed her eyes as Joyce’s fingertip caressed her ear: a soothed pet happy to be petted. “Thank you, Ma’am,” she murmured.

“Mistress wills that you stay outside the chamber, Anita. She doesn’t want you going under hypnosis with the rest of us. You’re to watch from over there.”

Anita started to reach up to touch Joyce’s arm, but the feel of the uniform drove her to come to attention instead, still under Joyce’s touch, hardening submissively under her dominant’s soft hold.

“I will obey, Ma’am.”

Joyce nodded and let her go, then followed Sheila into the glassed area. In moments she stood alone in the outside room, seeing the slaves sit still and face forward, quiet and subdued with none of the conversation or restlessness of a normal group of people. Past them she could see the display, and suddenly thought to find the place Joyce had identified. When she turned back she realized she could no longer see the display, but was looking in at them from the front, as the outer lights dimmed.

“Just in time, Anita.” Mistress’ voice carried its usual amusement. “No, they couldn’t see you now in the dark, but then none of them can think of looking anywhere at the screen even when nothing’s on it. When it starts, they won’t really be thinking at all.”

“I understand, Mistress. Thank you.”

Anita saw the green glow reflected across the faces, and saw them all lose expression together as they simultaneously shuddered. She felt a chill as she realized that she could no longer pick out Joyce’s face or Sheila’s as the glow began to flicker, rhythmically turning as if showing them a spiral. She saw colors, but gave up trying to guess what was being used on them. She was half-afraid that if she figured out the effect, her mind would put together enough of it for her to fall under its power, and she didn’t want to embarrass Joyce.

“Mistress? May I ask a question?” She saw the light reflected from their eyes, and looked away to avoid what it might do to her. The pattern was constant because none of the women were blinking.

“Of course you may, Anita.”

“Thank you, Mistress. What will I need to do on this mission?” As one, they slumped slightly in their seats, and the light dimmed and began flickering rapidly. Anita covered her eyes and heard Mistress chuckle.

“A good question, Anita. You’re almost as diligent as slave joyce.

“You received hypnotic instructions earlier and forgot them, as you were told to. Your role is more limited than theirs, but essentially you’ll do what Joyce instructs you, and otherwise use your common sense.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” Anita peeked out to find the flickering was now slower but had changed to a high-intensity strobe effect, and covered again. Her brief glimpse had shown her Joyce, sitting just like the others, her eyes frozen wide, open to the flashes. Anita worried to see her so vulnerable, much more deeply hypnotized than when the training slaves had come for her that first time and put Joyce under.

Mistress said no more, and Anita waited until women began leaving the chamber, walking purposefully to their next tasks. She went over to Sheila and Joyce. Sheila’s whole carriage was tighter, as though she’d literally been pumped up. She stopped and turned only her head when Anita came up, her eyes still a little wide and staring. She seemed almost exalted.

Anita found it arousing, and when she spoke she felt almost as though she were seducing the other woman. The words came to her from a strange place inside that was still seeing the fetish-Anita in the mirror. “You will obey Mistress perfectly, Sheila.”

Sheila looked at her very sharply, and for a second or two Anita worried that the conditioning had made Sheila into something more fanatical, immediately dangerous, who would be angry at invoking Mistress. She remembered the predatory Sheila who’d taken such vicious pleasure in entrancing them all that night.

But Sheila smiled sensually and said, “Oh, yes. It is why this whore breathes.”

Joyce’s hand was on her again, and Anita straightened. She looked into her keeper’s eyes and was glad to see there what she’d always seen, not the utterly converted look Sheila had.

“We will leave soon. Mistress has chosen some new slaves to take, and She is allowing you to help.”

Anita breathed in. “This pet will obey, Ma’am,” she said, feeling her heart pound. She saw Sheila look puzzled at her improvisation, but then smile, and it made her feel wonderful.

Joyce’s touch intensified very slightly. “Good girl. You will be using the talent you have already made useful to Her.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

Joyce looked at her. “Mistress has decided that the company where we found you is something she wants.

“Danziger Associates.”