Escapee
33.
Anita stared into the dark, too frightened to weep for now.
Joyce’s breath had slowed against the hollow of her throat, and her keeper’ s shaking had subsided. They lay quietly, and Anita wanted to stay here in the cocoon of dark and silence, cradling Joyce.
She’d been terrified, waking from Joyce’s hypnosis to Mistress’ soft urgent command, to find Joyce sprawled on the floor, convulsing.
“Anita, she’s not ill but she’s very upset. Take care of her now. Do what you need to.”
At first joining Joyce on the floor, Anita had started chanting softly to her, yet another improvisation. Her desperation gave way to wonder as Joyce fell under the spell and slept. Anita hugged her gently with relief, and only as she lay still, licking the salt of a tear from Joyce’s breast and wondering which of them had wept it, did she feel a pang at how vulnerable Joyce must be, to have let her own pet hypnotize her.
The hard floor felt too cruel a place to let Joyce lie. Anita tested the trance she’d created, coaxing Joyce to rise, and then manuevering them back to the bed itself. She whispered Joyce back to sleep, and the fact that her voice hitched didn’t seem to affect the power of the gentle suggestions.
She’s held me like this. She’s taken my hurts. God, what’s she carrying of her own?
Anita wondered if she were strong enough to ask Joyce, or to hear the answer.
Her thoughts darkened. Part of it was selfish: what if Joyce were no longer able to keep her? She shivered, wondering what might happen. But she pushed that aside; perhaps she’d ask Mistress to be given to Valerie as another of her “bonbons” after all . . .
Then she thought of Joyce seeing her later, as a mindlessly smiling doll. How Joyce would feel . . .
Joyce. She leaned down and nuzzled her keeper, jealous of this chance to be with her. She had Joyce with her now, and wanted to lie here with her always. They might have hours to spend like this, or minutes already gone.
She needed to do something.
Sitting up in the dark, she whispered, “Mistress?”
After a moment, Mistress answered, “Yes, Anita.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mistress. May I ask some questions?”
“Of course, Anita. Don’t worry about waking joyce. she’s very deeply under now.”
“Thank you, Mistress.” She swallowed. “Is there anything I can do for her?”
“You seem to have calmed her down, Anita.”
She stroked Joyce’s shoulder, left her hand on Joyce’s ribs, feeling her breathe. “Yes, Mistress. Are there things she was to do, that I can cover for her?”
“joyce’s duties? If you really knew what you were asking, Anita, you wouldn’t ask it.”
Chilled, Anita lowered herself onto Joyce, suddenly reminded of how she’d tried to shield Janine against her husband’s gun. Right through her. Useless, useless, but she had to try. She kissed Joyce’s ear and felt Joyce stir gently under her.
Her mind fled the other memory, Livvy’s gun inches from Joyce, with no way to get herself between . . .
She tried to keep her voice even as she raised herself again. “I think I understand that, Mistress. Thank you. You’ve let Joyce take care of me, and I’m very grateful. I just wanted to do something for her. I don’t presume to bargain, or make demands—”
“I understand, Anita. Speak freely and don’t worry about giving offense.” There was the soundless smile again. “Among your prior owner’s shortcomings was a great deal of insecurity, so you learned to be much more careful about speaking out of turn than you need to be.”
“Thank you, Mistress.” Anita recognized the off-balance feeling. Master’s hard use had scarred her mind very deeply after all, and the soft attraction of an even more powerful dominant who wasn’t avidly trying to hurt her was making her lightheaded. It was so tempting to open herself, just pour it all out like a libation to a goddess.
Give in.
It was what she’d come for . . .
Then, in the stillness and the velvet dark, she felt something.
Joyce’s pulse, patiently tapping against her inner arm.
Anita came back to herself, aware and aroused as she felt Joyce under her, warm and still. She leaned down with her eyes closed, finding Joyce’s hair with her lips and tracing her way lightly to Joyce’s mouth. She kissed her, probing gently with her tongue until Joyce’s lips parted and she tasted Joyce again.
In Joyce’s ear, she whispered, “I love you, dear Joyce. And I am yours.”
She straightened. “Thank you again, Mistress. I’d ask just to stay here with my keeper, but I don’t know if that’s something you’d allow.”
“There are some tasks you can perform, Anita. You obviously can’t do a lot of what I’ve trained joyce for, but I have others who can do that. You may help with processing some of the take from the Danziger operation.”
Anita’s head spun but steadied. She felt the panic of the frightened trio by the restroom door, the defiance of the one who’d tried to fight back . . . she floated on Laurie’s graceful dip into sleepy submission, Livvy’s glazed blankness after she was induced . . . she clung to Kit’s austere approval, to Joyce’s touch and smile and You did well.
“Yes, Mistress.” She swallowed. “If I’m going to do that, I’ll . . . need to be hypnotized again, won’t I?”
“Yes, Anita. No need to wake joyce for that; you’ll report to slave cynthia and she’ll put you into trance.”
Pulling herself away from Joyce’s warmth, Anita swept the sheet over her and slid to her feet, standing at attention in the dark. “I obey,
Mistress.”
Mistress laughed pleasantly. “So very sweet.
“Since you know both kit and joyce are no longer capable of having thoughts that differ from Mine, you know their praise reflects Mine, but you do deserve to hear it directly. Considering that you were operating much more on your own resources than any other slave of Mine has ever had to, your performance was impressive.”
Anita stood straighter. It was more remote than Joyce’s approval but it counted in a different way. And it might benefit Joyce somehow.
“Thank you for telling me, Mistress.” She tasted her next words, knowing they were true but not yet sure how true. “I’m very glad I could please you.”
“Yes.” Mistress had heard the truth. Anita shivered as she knew that. “Just relax and continue as you’ve been doing, Anita. A slave will come for you.”
“I obey, Mistress,” Anita said again, and had to squeeze her legs together.
In the silence that followed, she guessed that Mistress was no longer observing. She leaned down to touch Joyce again, not wanting to tempt herself by climbing onto the bed again and feeling Joyce’s body.
She compromised by sitting on the edge and leaning down. “Joyce, I’m going to do some things,” she whispered, with no idea whether Joyce could hear. “I’ll be back, and we can be together. Thank you. Thank you for making me brave enough to do this.”
Joyce sighed, and her eyelids fluttered, as though despite Mistress’ reassurance she’d been awakened by the voices.
Anita leaned down again. “I do love you.” She left her cheek against Joyce’s until Joyce was still.
34.
slave joyce was standing and turning to the door before she was fully aware of getting off the bed. Anita was gone.
she blinked dazedly, feeling the slow, rhythmic beeping inside her head before she heard it coming over the speaker, as her body already obeyed the imprinted stimulus. her conditioning walked her out of the room and into the corridor, and she sighed hopelessly as she felt every muscle relax.
her body had forgotten even how to try to fight it.
she didn’t worry about why that should still matter. she wondered why she was being summoned in the old way, like someone still in early-phase brainwashing being drawn bewitched from her cell. It called up the memory of helplessness when it had still felt new.
she remembered to be glad Anita wasn’t watching her reduced to this zombie state, and was glad again that she could feel that. she tried to close her eyes and picture Anita, but the programming held them open and staring as she moved down the corridor. she made do with the remembered softness of the other woman’s skin.
Anita had hypnotized her and murmured to her as she slept, taking the edge off pain she didn’t know why joyce was feeling. slave joyce was worried, as she had been in Livvy Danziger’s office when Anita induced them both, about being controlled by the woman she’d been given as a pet, but she knew she wasn’t strong enough to resist the peace it had brought. Not now.
Why had she opened herself to Mistress that way?
her eyes blinked naturally and she half-consciously stole a mental glimpse of Anita.
That was why. Anita.
she’d opened herself to Anita, for her, with her. It still felt good.
A sob escaped her as she walked.
she realized where she was going, and tried to turn the fear around. Mistress, your slave girl obeys. Do as You will with me. Please Yourself . . . please . . .
she let her body walk her into the conditioning area.
slave valerie waited by a reclining couch.
she looked like she should be dancing to the hammering of drums at the end of a chain: belled bands of pale gold shone on her wrists and ankles and upper arms, and the tips of her breasts gleamed in the same color. The therapeutic dance classes she led in her public persona as Oasis Center director were never this openly erotic: she might have been performing for Mistress before coming here.
“valerie?” she was surprised to be able to speak, but felt the compulsion leaving her body.
“joyce!” valerie smiled brightly. “our Mistress told me that you were having difficulty and needed some readjustment.”
“Yes . . .” joyce felt Mistress’s words become her truth. “i need to be readjusted.” What will she take away?
“Just lie here and relax, joyce, while i check the settings.”
joyce complied, not wincing at the cool surface as she lay down. Averting her eyes from the display over her head, she watched the woman who’d been her friend. valerie moved sinuously as she worked, as if still dancing but slowly, and joyce realized she was keeping the bells from sounding. Mistress’ training was thorough, and Her slaves always retained it perfectly.
“joyce?” she came to stand by the couch and look down. “When was the last time i thanked you for this?”
“Thanked . . . me?” joyce couldn’t look away from her eyes.
“Yes! i could be in some dreary little room tonight, trying to convince a vanload of runaway slaves to deny their slavery and think for themselves. Teach them to hate their owners, to believe that they have the same right . . . i will always owe you for saving me from that.”
joyce blinked again but fell back into valerie’s stare. “Mistress wanted you, valerie. she programmed me and sent me to take you. you owe what you are to Her Whom we obey.”
valerie bowed her head for a second. “Yes, joyce. But when i remember it, i see your face. i hear your voice putting me into trance.” she closed her eyes. “i had a gun, joyce. i could have died. Or killed you.”
Looking up into her eyes, joyce saw nothing but gratitude. she tried to remember how it had felt, facing valerie’s gun, but the possibility of release like that was as dim for her now as the memory of Livvy Danziger’s silent offer of death was becoming.
Mistress had won, each time, and added to Her herd.
“She’s attending to other matters now, joyce, and this is just a routine job for one of Her whores.” valerie smiled, and joyce smiled back, wondering.
“Lie back now and just look up into the spiral.” valerie leaned down and put her lips to joyce’s ear, but only her breath touched joyce as she whispered something else. joyce shuddered as it passed into her mind. valerie had just disabled the programming that kept joyce from being accidentally hypnotized while attending to her duties.
joyce remembered that she could never resist spirals.
When valerie leaned back, there was only . . .
swirling
. . . Mistress’ voice was in joyce’s mind, and she felt the old wonderful dirty openness, suspended between wanting to bleat out her secrets and needing to be still and meek and let Mistress take what She fancied.
Mistress in her mind was peeling back the loose layers She had so often penetrated. “you’ve given Me your soul, joyce.”
joyce’s hand moved to her thigh.
“you’ve given Me your heart, and your heart’s hearts.”
joyce’s hand found her pussy already slick, and moved.
“you’ve given Me your integrity, and the right to say that one equals nothing and make you believe it.”
joyce adored Her. i am one. i am nothing. Yes, Mistress. Yes . . .
“What, slave joyce, can you give Me now?”
35.
Hypnotically calm now after staring into slave cynthia’s eyes, Anita followed her and another assistant into the confinement area.
Her trance let her perceive everything through a calming filter. She faced forward but saw the Danziger prisoners from the corners of her eyes. They filled the facing rows of transparent cells, stripped to their underwear.
She herself was still nude, and knew that would send a different message than the uniform—she already felt shorter and softer and weaker than the robotic sentries that led her in. It also showed the captives that there were layers to what they themselves faced. As clothing disappeared, so did resistance. Awareness. Willpower.
Self.
The chamber’s acoustics ate the captives’ voices as they cut off when the guards entered, and Anita heard a low sound that might have been ventilation. She remembered the subliminal signals in the sound system Valerie had used to tranquilize them all at the last meeting, and thought about the frightened women in these cells, exposed to that for hours, or days.
“God. It’s—oh god. Amelia.” Someone knew her.
“It’s Amelia.” Anita blessed the numbness the trance gave her. Had any of them recognized her on the raid? Know she was Mistress’ woman, even before all this?
“Look at her. They’ve done something . . .” The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Tried not to.
“Amelia?” A fainter voice, but braver: this woman was trying to talk to her. “Amelia, please, can you hear me? Do you know us? Please?” That was the hardest to take, but the hypnosis still held.
“No no. They’ve made her one of them.”
I am. I’m one of Them. I don’t have to be afraid now. I just have to obey. Make Joyce proud. Please Mistress.
She halted and came to attention as she’d been programmed. She felt shocked eyes on her, but felt the same thrill as when she’d braced to Mistress’ command in front of Livvy.
Naked and collared and enslaved. She stood on a narrow summit of pride and dared not move, because everywhere else the pit was just too fucking deep . . . She didn’t think about it.
All the captives looked tired and afraid. Some were glassy-eyed with shock, while others were still finding reserves of anger. Like a scratchy tape from long ago, Anita recalled one of Joyce’s accounts of her first stay as Mistress’ slave, and knew Mistress and her helpers were watching and listening. They would see which of these women the others looked to, which ones kept their eyes focused, which ones recovered soonest.
Which ones, seen walking back blankly after a brainwashing session, would most likely kill the hope in the others.
She thought of a camera finding Joyce, back then, detecting the courage that doomed her to special attention. She didn’t dare try to find strength for her task, this time, in Joyce . . .
I must obey.
She swallowed and her throat was clear. Mistress had given her this to do. She would.
“you will all listen and obey,” slave cynthia said. Her voice had resonated in Anita before, even after she’d finished hypnotically preparing her, and Anita saw some of the captives grow docile despite themselves.
Anita’s pussy moistened as she saw women who’d been staring blankly at slave cynthia since they’d entered, already that far surrendered.
cynthia had seen them too. “Anita. cassidy. Take the captives in 12 and 13 to conditioning prep, then return.”
“I obey,” Anita chorused with the other woman and stepped to the nearer cell, where she recognized Sandra, the girl she’d induced before taking Gail, her Gen-X panache looking pathetic now. Her T-shirt was gone with her jeans, and she had only teal panties and piercings to relieve her slender nudity. Her eyes looked even blanker now, and Anita wondered if she’d been repeating the hypnotic mantra to herself uninterrupted for all this time.
“No!” Someone called, trying to put power in the shout. “No! You can’t! Leave her alone! Let us go!“
Anita twitched but didn’t look aside, only looked at Sandra as she walked toward her as she’d been told, trusting the cell door to slide open before her. Sandra didn’t blink or try to run past her, just stood, her lips perhaps still moving.
Anita wondered if they’d seen her falter, but in her hypnotic calm she realized they’d see what they expected—she was a soulless tool now, perfect and machinelike, and they would have edited out anything that didn’t accord with that fearful picture.
This group wouldn’t last long, she reflected as she took hold of Sandra’s cool limp shoulder. They were already just a scattering of individual victims. The woman who’d shouted was silent now and no one had backed her.
Some were half under cynthia’s spell. The rest were too scared, and, as she led the entranced girl away, Anita took the knowledge that part of that was her doing, with her deceptive example of how strong and fast the conditioning was, and held that knowledge like a smooth dark stone.
It’s better this way. Faster. If they just surrender and sleep . . . like Janine . . .
Sandra had had a pretty tattoo put at the base of her spine. Anita looked up at her narrow shoulderblades instead.
They followed slave cassidy as she led her own charge, one of the secretaries in pantyhose who’d been downloading Danziger’s personnel and client databases, out of the holding area, until other assistants took the unresisting captives. slave cassidy was dismissed and Anita was told to return to slave cynthia.
Retracing her path she entered the holding area alone and felt all eyes on her as she padded carefully past the motionless guards to slave cynthia. She came to attention and met the other woman’s eyes.
Clearly, not letting her voice fade, she reported, “Both captives are being prepared for processing as you instructed, Controller.
“slave cassidy was retasked.
“I am ready to obey.”
“Await command,” slave cynthia told her. She couldn’t tell whether slave cynthia had found any flaw in her behavior, but she was realizing that this was mostly theater for the benefit of the other captives. She and slave cynthia, and captive Sandra for that matter, were visible cogs in the mechanism that was going to digest these women and produce more slaves, being shown them to stun them with the sheer inevitability of it all.
It was working. Anita’s eyes were focused on the inner wall of the cell she faced but she could see the slumping postures, the widened eyes, the trembling.
Then there was a face in front of her. “For god’s sake! Amelia! Amelia! Wake up and do something!”
The screaming distorted the woman’s face into something ugly, almost threatening even behind the cell’s plastic, and Anita froze before she could react any other way. The woman stared into her wide eyes, searching for something. Anita didn’t recognize her, guessed she’d heard the others calling to her and used her name.
The woman kept staring. Waiting. Searching. Anita awaited command, but slave cynthia did nothing. They were all looking at her.
She stared at the woman, through the woman, found the only thing she could safely think of, and let her mind empty of anything else.
“I must obey.”
The woman moved back as though Anita had hit her. Anita felt heat between her thighs.
Too easy. More words crept up her throat, and it felt almost like triggering Patrice.
Without the regret.
“Soon you will obey,” she told them.
slave cynthia gestured silently. Anita pivoted with the guards to follow her out again.
No one else spoke, but as the doors closed Anita heard someone crying. Her breath caught again but she didn’t know why.
36.
What Mistress had finally done to her was buried now, and joyce was too tired to dread when it might surface.
valerie had kissed her awake and joyce had reached for Anita, hearing the bells on valerie’s arm as she realized where she was. valerie’s smile at her confusion was warm, and valerie’s head, backlit, kindly hid the cold gleam of her eyes, where Mistress lived.
slave joyce could move, now. As she stood, she realized her next task would keep her here in the conditioning area. she bent to prepare the couch for another subject. In her early training, Mistress had her taking and breaking other women, not the fine art of mind control She’d seduced valerie into but menial lab-slut work, strapping them down and carrying them away, waiting desperately until the faces and the pleas could just blur and she could burn out into callousness.
she didn’t know what Mistress was really doing to her until she found herself masturbating as she watched them being conditioned, and didn’t remember when she’d started. slave joyce couldn’t remember the face of the subject who’d been going under then, but she could still taste the girl’s bitter sweat, salted with the blood she’d drawn from joyce as she’d fought being tied down.
joyce touched the couch, still warm from her own session, and closed her eyes, knowing the next woman wouldn’t feel it. she reached underneath for some of the attachments the quiet pressure in her mind indicated. As she looked at them and remembered what they did, she recognized the empty space inside her where the person she used to be would have started to cringe, and noted the way none of her muscles flinched from touching them now.
In a melodic few flourishes, slave valerie divested herself of the bells and busied herself with the instrument panels, while joyce tested the couch’ s apparatus.
As she was finishing, the subject walked in so quickly and alertly that joyce didn’t realize she was the subject until she stopped pertly in front of valerie and said in a light voice, “Here i am, Doctor. my Controller reassigned me and told me to obey you.”
“Welcome, carly,” valerie said. “Just sit there while slave joyce restrains you and installs the control devices. joyce?”
joyce watched Anita’s friend obediently recline and relax her limbs, and tried to think of it as an easier-than-usual mechanical problem as she tightened the bands and began to apply the probes and attachments. Even in her slave orientation, joyce wasn’t used to someone beaming up at her from a couch like this, as slave carly lay back passively, and opened herself at a touch for the necessary insertions.
she stepped back and adjusted the overhead, and without being told carly shifted her gaze to focus on it. When it came on and a circle of red light wreathed her face she lost all expression, and as it narrowed to a coin-sized point between her eyes, they closed and her lips parted slightly.
Fainter red light lit her face now as her eyes opened slowly to the new cue, squinting nearsightedly, and a voice began speaking.
“i am a slave. i live to obey. i used to be . . . i used to think for myself but then . . . i mean i used to not be a slave, but then i was . . . brain . . . washed . . . and now i . . .”
For a moment it seemed as though Mistress’ machines had reached into her unconscious, but joyce heard softer acoustics behind the voice: a carpeted room, with drapes and furniture. A human place. One of the hypnotists who’ d been enslaving carly while she was still at Danziger must recorded an indoctrination sequence, as the new slave repeated her new knowledge, when they were doing her in her apartment, nights and weekends.
joyce thought of that place, Anita’s refuge until she’d fled to the heart of her enemy.
This was Anita’s friend, until she’d tried to help her. joyce knew that much from her lover’s sleepy tearful whispering.
Oh, Anita. i do know what you feel.
slave carly was nodding very slightly, responding to the voice and the embedded lesson. valerie was putting the other woman in phase for what would follow. joyce watched.
Suddenly she wondered who else was watching. If this were just to condition carly, she’d have a complete headset on, as valerie herself had worn, even in the primitive setup when joyce and kit and sheila had captured her and started reprogramming her. Either a computer or an operator like valerie now could monitor her progress and resistance graphically. This kind of mind control wasn’t usually much for visuals, unless it were being done as a display in itself.
Mistress Herself was quite beyond getting off on anything this basic . . .
slave joyce stopped thinking.
carly’s voice started to race as someone started stroking her. “. . . i . . . yes . . . i love to fuck be fucked . . . be . . . uh-huh . . . uhhhh . . . oh yes yes yes . . .” On the couch carly’s eyes rolled up and her mouth began quirking into a shy grin. Slowly, almost invisibly at first, she began to move, writhing delicately, as the machines began to tweak her, low-intensity for now but building.
“ . . . be fu-fu-fucked in . . . pussy? pussy . . . mmm yes, i do . . . do? love to lllllick pussy . . . pusssssy . . .” On the tape she giggled, and the carly strapped to the couch echoed herself.
So good . . . yes . . . obey and lick pussy . . . and—oooh! Obey! Aa-ah . . .” The orgasms were small, and simultaneous. For now . . .
slave joyce felt herself heating up as she watched carly move, naked and bound and lost in her dual trance. she could smell someone’s heat, but she was past being able to tell whether it was carly, or herself, or even valerie, who gazed over the glow of the displays like a witch over her cauldron. her eyes met joyce’s but both women looked back to the subject as she squirmed.
joyce realized her hand had found her crotch and licked her fingertips. The voice had changed, and the light in carly’s face was blue.
joyce knew what was coming. There was still enough of who she used to be to hate herself for leaving her hand where it was.
“. . . no. Danziger doesn’t just look for women who know they want to go into business.” This carly’s voice was deeper, more assured, a little abstracted under the hypnosis as she was questioned, but focused. Sitting in her apartment and describing her job proudly and clearly to one of Mistress’ slavewomen. “We try to find the ones who haven’t thought of it yet because they don’t know it’s possible, and we . . .” Listening to herself, the nude and sweat-slicked carly on the couch paused, her mouth pursing, her eyes closing and a frown beginning.
“The key to it is—”
carly screamed.
she stiffened and relaxed from it, and as her lungs filled she screamed again. The volume of the calm, taped carly talking about Danziger’s outreach rose, and carly’s writhing resumed, but in jerks this time, as she wrung herself trying to flee the pain valerie was dosing her with. The blue light glowed on her face like moonlight.
slave joyce watched.
The agony followed the rhythm of carly’s words, and as her monologue reached moments of insight valerie intensified it, and it was carly’s misery to have been very perceptive that day under hypnotic interrogation. Soon joyce was shaking just from the physical impact of the drilling shrieks it was ripping from carly.
In the pauses carly was crying, frantic gasping sobs as her lips worked mutely. she was trying to find a way to plead, to apologize, to explain.
But her voice was already explaining something, and each word was driving more torment across her nerves.
she spasmed up against the bonds and then fell back panting, going silent as the tape did, staring wildly until the blue light faded and warmed to red. Her eyes closed and opened.
“Fuckslut. Yes . . . am i . . . everyone? Anyone? Ooooh . . .” Another orgasm, deeper than usual after the pain. “. . . lick and suck and lick and . . . ummm . . . like that . . . yeah . . .”
Both carlys giggled again, together.
37.
Joyce was gone when Anita returned, and she fought down a moment’s panic. She couldn’t stop herself from going to the bed and curling up, trying to surround herself in Joyce’s scent.
I can handle this. I’m an adult. My lover’s an adult. We both have . . . responsibilities. We can’t always be in bed.
Actually . . .
I’m a . . . pet. My—keeper—is a slave. We’re both property. Of a woman I’ve never seen, who kidnaps and brainwashes other women for fun and profit.
Oh, god.
I’m helping her. That’s my . . . responsibility.
Anita lay still, breathing, fancying she could feel Joyce’s warmth in the sheets.
Something hurt Joyce. I don’t think it’s me. But I could make it worse, if I keep draining her. I have to sustain her.
She didn’t want to ask Mistress again. She knew Mistress and Joyce had some sort of strange balance and that she was part of it, and she was already uncertain about what she’d done to it.
For a moment the bottom fell out of her stomach and she thought again about what Mistress was and what she did and the thought of being able to do anything for anyone was so pointless that she had no word for it.
The women in the cells—looking at her, screaming in fear at . . . her . . .
But she breathed in again. Joyce was here. She’d been here, they’d slept here, they’d fucked and made love here. Somehow it was happening. She’d adapted. She’d keep doing it. In a few minutes or hours, they’d be done with their—responsibilities—and touch each other again, and she’d look into Joyce’s eyes and make Joyce know she mattered.
“Anita.”
She came to attention in the room, feeling odd now that no one else was here to see her do it.
“Yes, Mistress?” She heard the relief in her voice and presumed Mistress did, too.
“Unless you need to rest, I have something else for you to attend to.”
“How may I obey, Mistress?” God, it came out so easily.
“I’ll want you to return to Olivia’s room. There are some things she needs to go over.”
Anita swallowed. Facing Livvy again. She had no idea how much time had actually passed since their last encounter and Fuck you, or what shape Livvy was in after spending that time under the spiral. If that was all that had happened to her.
“Yes, Mistress. Are—” she swallowed again “—are there any special instructions?”
Mistress waited. “Anita, would you like Me to have you hypnotized before you start with her?”
Anita closed her eyes. It’s all right. Mistress knows I’m not . . . not used to this.
“Thank you, Mistress. But it sounds as though you hadn’t planned to. I can handle it, I think.”
“Yes, Anita. I think so, too. To answer your question, no. I’ll be observing you, and I can instruct you if I see the need.”
“Thank you, Mistress. I obey.”
She stepped confidently out of the room to do Mistress’ bidding. She almost smiled at the other slaves she passed. I have a function here, too!
The warmth fell from her like a cloak as she stepped into the dim room. Its air was warm and scented with some light perfumes, but she could smell other things. It was like sickrooms she’d been in as a child, but they hadn ‘t been . . .
In the chair, her legs splayed as if for an OB-GYN exam, Livvy trembled in the restraints, and at first didn’t seem to notice Anita. She stared up at the place where the spiral had turned, but a cautious glance showed Anita it was off. Anita saw the needles and tubes, and saw where they’d been collecting Livvy’s waste. Someone had been cleaning her . . .
Anita’s unconscious assumptions of nurses surfaced and vanished as she realized other naked women in collars had been sent to change Livvy’s fluids and wipe her mess as she sat, stripped and staring stupefied into the whirlpool. Had Mistress doped the IVs?
Had Livvy felt the women as they tended her or was she already partly withdrawn?
Had it made her feel better?
Anita knelt by the chair and reached over to touch Livvy’s thigh, feeling the skin dry and cool. She squeezed slightly, trying to decide what to whisper.
Livvy tensed. “Get your stinking paws off me, you . . .” Her whisper rasped off into confusion as the rest of the quote from the old movie escaped her.
As her head rolled to face Anita and her eyes opened, Anita coughed out a laugh and sagged against Livvy’s leg, hugging it as Livvy looked at her. She turned and kissed it, and leaned her head against it as she turned back.
“Oh, God, Livvy.”
“This isn’t all that impressive,” said Livvy, softly. “If she’s actually hypnotized me with that thing, it just makes it easier to last. Less time awake. Fewer math problems I have to come up with to stay occupied.”
“You like math problems,” Anita said.
Livvy looked at her. “What is it this time, Amelianita? Do you ask me to spare myself again, all that pain and anguish?
“Or do you seduce me? Do you think you’re that cute, girl?” Livvy’s scorn sounded real.
Anita looked her in the eye, and turned and deliberately, tenderly, kissed Livvy’s thigh again before letting go and settling back to squat by the chair.
“Some people think I am,” she said, and was grimly pleased to see her tone reach Livvy. “Yes, she can do that, eventually. I don’t think I was gay before all this started, but whether it was my first master wanting a bisexual playtoy or . . . shit.
“Livvy, I meant it, before. I care about you, and that’s from before I started here. You saved my life. I want to help—”
“What have you done with my people?”
Anita stared at her. Livvy hadn’t turned aside and asked Mistress. She’d asked her.
But that was . . .
Yes.
Anita stood. Livvy’s contempt had shifted up to something hotter. She realized Livvy didn’t have the luxury of time to decide if she were a despicable traitor or a mindless tool, and was dismissing her as just another fixture in Mistress’ dungeon.
She breathed. Her promises to Mistress—to obey, and to handle this—rang more real to her than the tangle of shame and guilt that drew her to Livvy. It was more than knowing that she couldn’t sanely afford to try to free Livvy now, more than knowing she couldn’t.
“You don’t have people anymore,” she said gently. “Mistress owns them now. She’s processing them, as she told you she would be.”
She swallowed and looked Livvy in the eye again. “I just took some of them for initial conditioning a short time ago.” She drew a breath and plunged. “Including one of the ones I hypnotized and took for her when we were
there.”
Anita was thinking That was stupid she heard me breathe and I sounded weak when she realized something else had happened.
Livvy’s eyes had widened. She might have been bluffing before, or she might have been trying to call Anita’s bluff, or even bolstering Anita’s credibility for unseen watchers.
But now she believed. Anita belonged to her enemy.
And now Anita knew she’d hoped otherwise, after all.
Anita looked at Livvy’s eyes. Remembered who and what Livvy was, and that she’d tried to free Joyce before herself.
Livvy looked at her, and mourned for them both.
Anita remembered Patrice’s eyes, when she’d admitted surrendering. She remembered wanting to die.
This was different.
So was she . . .
“Thank you, Olivia.” Mistress’ voice was there again. “You bring us to a topic I wanted to discuss with you.
“Anita, please cant Olivia forward. Olivia? The screen in front of you, please.”
Anita found the controls and elevated Livvy to watch whatever it was. Livvy seemed to welcome the distraction. The room darkened and the screen lit to show a nude blonde woman strapped down under bright lights that dimmed. Red highlighted her pretty face.
Seeing Carly, Livvy said, “Oh . . . no . . .”
Anita just breathed.
Carly smiled. Her voice came clearly over the speakers, its softness even more vulnerable in the bleakness of Livvy’s chamber. “i am a slave. i live to obey. i used to be . . . i used to think for myself but then . . . i mean i used to not be a slave, but then i was . . . brain . . . washed . . . and now i . . .” Anita remembered her sigh as she was triggered.
“One of what had been your people, Olivia. she became something of Mine earlier than the rest; in fact, she’s the first Danziger asset I acquired. As I mentioned, though, I’ve passed her to another slave for conversion into something more recreational than she was.”
Anita saw motion beyond the girl on the conditioning couch. A tall, nude woman, graceful even as she stood at attention by the couch. Even as she reached to her glistening groin without seeming aware of it.
Joyce.
“Bear in mind please, Olivia: this is not how we usually do things like this. But we can be a teaching facility as well as a clinical one, and what we do is adaptable to show a lay audience.”
“. . . i . . . yes . . . i love to fuck be fucked . . .” On the screen, carly moved, dancing sex. “. . . be . . . uh-huh . . . uhhhh . . . oh yes yes yes . . .”
Anita resisted the urge to touch herself.
“ . . . be fu-fu-fucked in . . . pussy? pussy . . . mmm yes, i do . . . do? love to lllllick pussy . . . pusssssy . . .” An eerie duet of giggling.
They watched, wondering. After some playful stroking, Carly sobered and started to talk about the Danziger outreach program. Anita heard a bemused sound beside her.
Then Carly started screaming.
“Oh!” Livvy choked down something.
Anita barely heard her, watching her friend thrash in the bonds, sag back when it seemed to stop—then rear back up again while her voice discoursed with drowsy earnestness on business concepts.
Oh. God. Carly—? No . . .
Joyce was watching as Carly agonized. Joyce was playing with herself, glassy-eyed but clearly aware.
Mistress entered the silence as the pain paused and let Carly lie stunned and still. “This is actually an expanded detail of what we’ll be doing to her.”
After a horrible moment of nothing at all but what sounded like Livvy holding her breath, Carly resumed: but it was the sex-kitten again, periodically moaning into a shallow climax.
“But I think you get the essential idea, Olivia.” Mistress spoke between the moans. “To be certain, though . . .
“Anita? Kneel now and begin pleasuring Olivia. Gently, and she may need some moistening, but you can supply that.”
Anita breathed into it.
“No.” The voice was barely recognizable. “Don’t . . . don’t you touch me.”
Staring down at her, Anita waited quietly, welcoming Mistress’ commands, whatever they were.
“Exactly, Olivia. We both know the tradition about not being able to watch your dear ones suffer what you yourself might endure. Even if, as Anita correctly noted, neither slave carly nor any of the others is ‘yours’ anymore. You have all the vulnerability and none of the power.
“On the other hand, you have only one horn of the dilemma. I’m not asking you to do or confess or betray anything. Just to lie back and enjoy some orgasms from one of my more skillful whores.”
Livvy stared at Anita now with loathing.
“Olivia, if you don’t let Anita service you, I’ll tell her to hurt herself very badly with one or two of the things in that room, and she’ll obey me without hesitation. If you despise her that much it won’t matter. It won’t affect what happens to you, and it certainly won’t do anything for slave carly. she’s not being tortured; she’s being brainwashed.”
Livvy kept looking at Anita. Anita was afraid, and when she tried to lean on the thought of Joyce she saw the vacant-eyed slavewoman pleasuring herself while Carly shrieked as she was trained to hate her own voice speaking reason.
God. Maybe I should have let them hypnotize me.
She met Livvy’s eyes. “Mistress. I hear and obey.”
Livvy said nothing. Anita put her hand to her slit and found juices there. Sparing a taste for her lips she sank to her knees before Livvy’s spread legs, never taking her eyes from the other woman’s.
Livvy said nothing. Anita reached forward, touching very gently on Livvy’s mons to let her know the feel before approaching the softer part of her.
Livvy flinched and gasped, but a moan from Carly distracted her, and Anita’ s next touch, closer and longer. matched another soft cry from the speakers.
Livvy moaned and shook. Anita kept stroking, feeling Livvy’s light bush softening in the wetness, and feeling it heat as Livvy began to respond.
Anita reminded herself that Livvy was bound fast, unable to kick or move, and leaned in, blowing softly on her crotch. She heard a low sound from Livvy, and thought she was already starting to come. But Livvy was crying. Anita had never heard her do that.
As Livvy wept quietly, her hips began the slow roll to the beat that Anita was teaching them. Carly’s sighs and cries grew louder, and Anita inhaled deeply and put her lips to the salty heat of Livvy’s pussy.
When the screaming started again she listened to Livvy’s nearer sounds instead, closed her eyes, and licked harder.
38.
slave joyce was swooning on blood and honey.
Mistress’ thighs were warm against slave joyce’s ears as she leaned into Her crotch and lapped gently. When Her period ran She always sent for joyce to attend Her, and joyce felt more of herself slip away each month as she did.
slave joyce came up for air, and the smell of Mistress was strangely more intense a few handbreadths away from Her pussy, with the air contrasting it. Before she could sink down to her task again, she felt Mistress’ fingertips on her brow and looked up, inhaling sharply at the way the power of Her gaze struck down to the depths of her.
“you’re not programmed to remember, joyce, but during your initial conditioning, at the height of your resistance to Me, before you learned how much you need to obey, you once told Me you’d drink My blood.
“I don’t think you thought you would. Still less that you’d crave it.”
Trapped in Her eyes, joyce drifted. This close to Mistress, she couldn’t keep even simple thoughts on her head for very long and no longer tried. But as always, Mistress’ voice pressed her with the compulsion to think, to respond.
“It’s all right, joyce. Just the effort is enough.” Mistress’ touch shifted, and joyce’s training had her moving back in, slowly, her eyes half-closed at the pleasure of the smooth skin by her face, the sharp scents of Her.
At the moment the tip of her tongue found the slippery delicate tip of Mistress, joyce’s innermost mind recited clearly to her, as it always did, i pleasure the One Who destroyed me.
As always, the little orgasm took her by surprise, and her moan against Mistress sweetened the beginning of Mistress’ next session on joyce’s mouth.
But joyce felt the touches that moved her away before she tasted more of Mistress’ come, and reared up slowly to await Her other pleasure. joyce dreaded what Mistress might fancy over using her mouth.
she longed to provide it.
“you performed well with slave valerie,” Mistress said. “Don’t worry. you ‘ll remember better later. carly’s on her way, and I think valerie’s earlier experiments have borne fruit. But it’s good to see that you’ve retained your old skills, and it’s lovely to watch you as you do it and feel it, joyce.”
slave joyce swayed on her knees, feeling the glow in her pussy. In her mind flickered a lovely dark-haired silhouette.
“I can assure you that you also make a very telegenic Igor, too. Helping one of My resident deep thinkers create a monster, even if it may not be the one she thinks it is.”
Mistress laughed and joyce’s bones seemed to soften in the sound.
“Oh, joyce! joyce. Ordinarily I have to be quite extraordinarily bored to amuse Myself by playing rigged riddles with a hypnoslave. No battle of wits is fair with the unarmed.”
Shadows. Vanished in the sheer dark brilliance of Mistress.
“But I congratulate Myself, again, on you. Because somehow there’s still someone inside there that appreciates that there’s a point. Not what it is, perhaps. But that it is.”
Shadows. A faint whisper: Love you. Yours.
“Yes. Perfect.”
Dimly joyce sensed She addressed someone else who was honored by Her presence. Sometimes Mistress did other things while joyce serviced Her, and joyce could only feel smaller at Her self-control.
“Just one moment,” Mistress told the newcomer.
“slave joyce, have you considered My clitoral hood?”
Suddenly joyce felt her mind empty of everything but Mistress’s ownership and that feature of Her, and found herself staring raptly at it. The shadows, love you, the newcomer disappeared. Only a hint of laughter in a half-familiar voice wafted into her thoughts, and out again.
Mistress voice murmured to the other, “Yes, as you were taught. Yes.” joyce sensed she was to continue her study . . . until . . .
“Worship Me.”
joyce pitched blissfully forward again into Her warmth and fragrance and firm softness, and became aware that another slave was attending Her from behind. Mistress had risen from Her seat and guided them both to follow, but joyce did not worry over the mechanics. she licked and kissed and pleased.
Blindly she linked hands with her fellow-slave, and as Mistress straightened Her legs She pressed on joyce’s head. Obediently joyce’s mouth worked its way lower.
she was close to the other slave now as they both leaned up into Her crotch like baby birds, eagerly flicking their tongues to win their Owner’s varied nectars. Then Mistress’ hand, and a growing realization in joyce, and joyce ‘s own center of gravity all drew her against the other slave and as Mistress stood up and away from them they fell together, eyes closed, smearing each other’s faces with Her juices.
slave joyce clung to the other woman and found her mouth, and they drew closer in a deep kiss, tastes of pussy and asshole and their own ardent mouths mingling.
Mistress’ laughter was long and deep and joyce knew the pleasure of it, and of knowing it was at her, thrilled through the body of the other slave as it did her own.
she lay tangled on the floor with the other slave, content to play until She commanded differently, and licked along the other woman’s jawline to her ear, while her partner reached between joyce’s thighs.
Mistress stopped laughing.
slave joyce leaned back to look at her play partner, enjoying her long trim body before turning to look her in the face.
slave amanda looked back at her.
“i love you, mom,” she purred, and puckered her lips to suck joyce’s tongue.