Escapee
44.
Anita spun in the rapids, her thoughts already lost in the froth.
So many women vied for her mouth that she was gasping for breath between clefts. She lost touch with the floor, sometimes sitting back on her heels, sometimes kneeling at an angle, held up by thighs and by hands gripping her gently and roughly. Sometimes she might have been suspended entirely.
Her mind was blown, and she couldn’t bother to wonder.
Some hands slipped off her as she grew slick and sticky. Others took her firmly with the matte of leather or the arousingly sickening smoothness of latex.
Anita was lost in it. The pussies whose flavors were steeping her mind and dissolving it weren’t like anything she’d had before. It wasn’t controlled like Livvy in her bonds, or loose like sleepy Patrice, or caring and tender, like . . . like . . .
As she thought of Joyce, she imagined Joyce watching her, seeing her fall into this.
Seeing her dive into this. Less than a whore. Somewhere inside, Anita felt herself curl into a ball, wanting to die.
But the shame seeped out, tingled on her like tiger balm.
Her pussy burned. She struggled for breath, so she could speak.
So she could beg.
But there was no need. As she struggled for balance she lost it with the smooth passage of a bonbon—another bonbon—crawling between her thighs. Someone drew her forward to bend into a lap and she bowed her head, following the smell of the nectar like a dazed honeybee. Her blurred vision brought her in for a landing amid creamy skin, and then she felt hair.
Some of her could still be surprised that a slave of Mistress’ went unshaven, but not enough to wonder why. Most of her just squealed with the startlement and the tickling, warmed by the laughter she was dimly aware of.
Hands played with her as she serviced the unshaven redhead, teasing her pussy and leaving her to twitch her ass pleadingly as the laughter grew and moistened her. Anita found she enjoyed the sensation and soon was moving her ass in a slow ellipse. At each narrow end she received a sharp slap on the nearer asscheek and moaned into the pussy that possessed her.
Above her head a choked voice demanded, “Harder. Harder.”
The sting ran red heat to her own crotch and her moans became muffled pleas until the woman came and she won the hot fountain she was dowsing. The redhead convulsed and softened in her climax, and when she could no longer defend her morsel, someone took Anita under the ribs and pulled her away, flipping her backward to the floor.
It knocked the wind from her, and as she gasped her new captrix slipped a new cunt like an avid mouth over Anita’s face, greedy for her suction. For the blink of an eye, Anita felt only the discomfort, tried to awaken herself from the throbbing trance of submitting to this.
But Anita’s eyes were covered, and she blinked in the damp shadow of another slave’s thighs, and in a moment she forgot to care again.
The woman moved her hips, nimbly following Anita’s feeble thrashes, leaking come that Anita couldn’t help tonguing from her.
Anita’s vision started to darken and she thought of dying smothered under another slave’s cunt.
It made Anita orgasm, rewarding her captrix with a cry that passed it on. The thighs squeezed Anita’s head and pulled her up and in. Anita reached up to grasp the hot skin, too far gone to wonder why she wasn’t held down.
She pressed them against her, trapping herself and licking with devout frenzy.
Someone was between her own thighs, spreading them with a gentleness that, in the middle of all this, turned her will to smoke and blew it away. Anita opened. The tongue took her into flight, and she attacked the pussy that was devouring her with greater ardor.
She lost track of whose orgasm it was.
And again . . .
Cool air roused her, even as a divine ray of pleasure swept up from her loins. She’d passed out and they’d left her to recover her breath. She had no strength to rise and recline on her elbows, so she half-rolled and curled herself to look lopsidedly down at whoever was lightly, maddeningly lapping at her crotch.
It was her wonderful round blonde, back to her like a fascinated kitten, and the girl leaned to follow as Anita listed. Anita smiled blearily at her, and almost fancied the laughter of the slaves that watched them was as friendly as she felt.
The girl raised her head and grinned, then lunged up between Anita’s legs to pounce on her, and Anita went boneless at how it felt as the girl’s smooth body slid between her thighs and against her crotch. She felt the girl all over her.
Their pussies touched and their duet sounded above the laughter and light applause.
As they panted, the bonbon looked into Anita’s face. “Hi!”
Anita captured her head and drew her down for a kiss. The girl gave it to her and rose. She giggled, and the sound sent something through Anita.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
She saw the eyes shine as the girl leaned down to whisper. “Hi!”
The bonbon giggled again.
It struck through all the haze, as Anita remembered wondering who this woman had been before everything but pussy had been scrubbed from her mind.
This was going to be Carly.
Anita hated this sudden clarity but couldn’t escape it. She thought of the woman she’d known, worked with, lusted after. The last that Carly would know would be the pain phase that finally destroyed her, her own voice speaking ideas she would never again understand as she was freed from the pain of thinking.
Gazing into the bright flat eyes of the sex-slave that held her, Anita remembered Carly’s words the night she’d discovered what Anita was running from. “I’m sorry. I’ve just heard so many things about what mind controllers can do. Not just making you—obey, but making you want to.”
This was what they would make Carly want, forever.
I did this.
The slave sensed Anita’s distraction and leaned down, and Anita found herself clenching her thighs around the girl’s hips as she pictured implanted commands making the girl’s fried bonbon mind function, like one of those simple sensing robots children built in school. Seeing Anita recover triggered the bonbon to dip her into sex again.
The girl leaned down to her ear. Waited. Licked. Formed a thought.
Shared it: “Hi!”
Anita heard herself giggle at the horror, and harder as the girl responded. Then the girl’s grip tightened and she hummed to herself as more thoughts gathered.
“Ummm . . . know something?” Her voice was sweet and her diction was clear, and hearing the fragment of the smart girl this had been reached through to rouse Anita further.
Her eyes started to blur as she looked up and whispered, “What, sweetie?”
The bonbon paused thoughtfully. Anita grew sadder and colder, wondering suddenly if she were Valerie’s work. “Ummm . . . hmmm.” She chuckled and purred.
“ . . . i suck ass.”
Her giggle sent Anita off a deep end she hadn’t known was there. The idea of this girl, and Carly, being reduced to this . . . Anita came just thinking about it, and when she pictured herself strapped to the table . . .
She awoke again, the faint too brief for anyone to react, and the idea was in her head.
Her tongue up the bonbon’s ass as she dripped onto the carpet and they all watched.
Next to it, shimmering in its power, was the knowledge that there was no way back from that.
She’d leave this place on her knees, when they stopped using her any other way. On her knees until she died.
Anita wanted it.
She lay there, and let her mind drift, staying away from directly thinking about sinking below bonbonhood, knowing that vortex would suck her mind down in less time than it took to . . .
. . . giggle.
For a precious few seconds the slave lay on top of her, and it let her remember Joyce.
Yours, Lady. Help this girl.
Anita held her chance gently, afraid to drop it. She knew if she tried just to twist loose and leave they’d just laugh and take her to the floor—a nd being gangraped by the rest of the hypnoslaves was an image she didn’t dare let form.
No. It does not contend, so— She found the answer inside herself, found the feeling she needed, quiet among all the other sensations in her body.
She summoned up a moan and made it articulate, hoped her grimace passed for a bashful smile, and looked up past the bonbon’s head into the first pair of eyes that met hers.
“Um?” She let herself giggle, and didn’t let herself wonder how close to real it was.
“Gotta pee?” she asked.
45.
The bathroom air was still and cool and she tried not to be obvious as she let it swab some of the fucktrance from her mind. She was acutely conscious of the woman who came in with her, and looked up at Elise as the other slave smiled down. She wondered if Elise had figured it out.
She’d almost panicked when she thought Elise was going to make her stay in the refreshment room to pee and turn this into water sports, and her nipples stiffened as she imagined what Elise might come up with. Her nipples started to hurt as she realized she’d want it, and she’d let her last chance dribble away in a stream of piss.
But Elise had just followed her in, and Anita was enough a part of Mistress ’ world now that she sat under Elise’s gaze and peed without a qualm.
The plan that had come together in her spinning head was so bent that she could hardly know its value, and she knew many points where it could fail. She looked up as she reached for paper, saw Elise licking her lips, and decided not to risk hearing what Elise would suggest. Anita knew she might not want to resist after she heard it.
“Elise?”
“Slut?” The word, the tone tightened Anita’s thighs over her hand as she wiped. She rode it instead of resisting it.
“Yes, Elise. I’m a slut.” She heaved a sigh as that thought rolled up her body. “May this slut speak to Mistress?”
Elise looked at her, off-balance, and Anita felt vaguely pleased with herself.
“Not here in a toilet, of course, but—”
“Why not?” Mistress’ voice was magisterial against the tiles, but amused.
Elise swayed to hear it, her eyelids sinking before she recovered.
“Mistress,” they both chorused softly, and for a moment Anita looked at the other slave in empathy, as they shared devotion.
“I have no problems with a bathroom, Anita. Do you?” As Anita shook her head, Mistress went on. “Perhaps you’re uncomfortable talking in front of slave elise.
“elise.”
“Mistress!” Elise stood stiffly, gazing past Anita at the row of bowls.
“That point in the air we’ve discussed is hypnotizing you again. Sleep until awakened.”
Elise stared into space ahead of her, her face going blank and her eyes closing. She went into trance without a sound. Watching it, Anita kept her thighs together.
“There. What is it, Anita?”
Anita hadn’t planned for this, and just let the ideas come. “May I serve you in some other way, Mistress?”
“Do you think you’re not serving Me wonderfully now? My hardworking slaves have been enjoying all their lapcandy. You’re an excellent whore, Anita.”
Anita stood and forced her hand away from her legs. “Yes, Mistress. I know. And I—love being their candy. I’m afraid, Mistress. This isn’t . . . it doesn’t seem like what I should be doing. It’s too easy to let go.”
Mistress waited. “And if I instructed you to go back in there and suck ass until you pass out from coming?”
Anita gasped. “I . . . would obey without question, Mistress.”
“Ah. But you’d prefer I didn’t. Hmm. Well, they had enough bonbons already before you succumbed. What would you do instead?”
Shivering, Anita listened to herself. “If you wish, Mistress, I’d like to help indoctrinate more of the new slaves into obedience.” Balance control with my own obedience, before I’m addicted to—obeying . . .
“I see.” Mistress said nothing for a while, and Anita began to worry that the smell of the women on her, the silence of the bathroom, Elise’s helplessness as she stood entranced, the tastes, would all combine to drive her to her knees again. Forever.
She thought of ending her free will in a bathroom with a hypnotized slave for company, and remembered Gail, lost and weeping at Danziger, blinding her friend and waiting to be taken.
It backed her away from the pussy-swoon for a moment.
“An interesting alternative, Anita. Certainly your skill as a fucktoy is beyond debate and beyond any need to verify. Again.”
Anita stood straighter. “Thank you, Mistress.”
“You’re quite welcome. Olivia’s occupied just now, and I’d rather not have her imprint on you yet, but there are some others who might benefit from a little friendly advice. You can report to slave cynthia and see what she’d like done. You’ll need to clean up a bit first. Perhaps a valet . . .
“elise. Still asleep.”
Elise bounced very slightly where she stood. “Mistress . . .”
“When you awaken you will remember that you must obey Anita, that the sound of her voice controls your thoughts and desires. Attend her until you are reinstructed.
“Wake now.”
Anita saw Elise’s eyes focus and suddenly saw the other woman reorient on her, helplessly, and heard the intake of breath she’d experienced before. The need.
For her.
Anita’s head swam. It was like coming out of a drugged fog into too-clear awareness, and she had to focus on her immediate tasks for Mistress, because her mind started to fill with the things she could do with a hypnotically obedient Elise.
“Elise, I’ll need a shower and a uniform.” She thought about Elise, bathing her. “No. Just a uniform. And boots.” She sighed. “Take me where I can get them.”
She handled Elise, but the locker-room mirror was harder. She rinsed her hair and let Elise brush it back, but the rest of her still had little smears and tacky spots from her bonbon moment. While she was able to breathe her away past the circling urge to strip and kneel and let Elise lead her back (and trigger Elise back to her vengeful self with her tongue buried deep inside Elise, oh god), she was starting to get wet seeing her used-whore exterior sheathed in the austere fetish-robot garb. Her hair was pulled back severely, her face a mask, but she was a virgin huntress with swollen lips and rug burn.
She looked at Elise, her valet courtesy of Mistress. She closed her eyes. “The near occasion of sin,” she remembered; avoidance of. This was likely to get complicated, and having Elise there to play with would make it much more so.
Anita found herself smiling. “Elise?”
“Yes?” The other woman shook with the need to please, and Anita remembered her smug assurance as she’d dropped the golden disc, snaring her eyes—and Joyce’s.
Joyce’s. She’d had to turn her lover’s mind off in front of an enemy, to keep her safe . . .
“Go back to the refreshment room, Elise. With each step you take to get there, you will discover and surrender more deeply to a new need. You need to crawl.“
Elise strained, realizing dimly what Anita was doing to her, but unable to resist the power Mistress had given Anita over her.
“Neeeeed . . .” Elise crooned, and cried out as she felt it becoming part of her. Anita stood tighter and clenched her ass, refusing to let this tip her over as the submission trip had—barely—failed to do.
“You became so aroused watching me sink to the level of a bonbon that you must try it. You’re already certain pussy will taste wonderfully different, so much sweeter, when you become candy yourself.” Anita heard herself and didn’t recognize the voice.
She saw Elise shake, but the other woman’s gaze remained imprisoned in hers. This might be fucking up Elise’s own slave programming, but until Mistress objected Anita presumed she had a free hand. Some day, Elise is going to kick my ass something awful, Anita thought.
But today—
“Obey.” She nodded, and Elise turned to go. “Each step you take, Elise. Remember.”
Elise whimpered, but as she went off she said, “Yesss . . .”
Anita looked at the come-smeared killer robot in the mirror, and stopped smiling.
46.
slave cynthia stared at her without reaction when she reached the conditioning area. Mistress had already spoken to her, and she told Anita the cell number. As Anita walked down the hallway, she heard muted moaning, the whispers of the few captives who still tried to communicate. There was a weary silence over most of it, and she wondered how many just stayed half in trance between the programming sessions.
Not this girl, though. Not Rosalie.
Anita swallowed. This might be make-work, as Mistress abetted her desperate gambit to resist the seduction of submission by drinking in the lust of dominance. Or it might be crucial to something Mistress was planning for this Rosalie, or someone she planned to use Rosalie against.
Either way, Anita was going to do her best. She wasn’t sure anymore if she were an overassertive sub, or a soft-centered domme, or a switch, or just fucked up beyond all repair . . . but she was going to come through for Joyce.
“Miss?”
She stopped at the diffident whisper, and the feel of the lycra and boots made it so much easier to faced forward stiffly before turning. Being seen as one of Mistress’ machines made her feel like one.
As she turned she heard the light breath of dismay. Seeing the automaton-Anita swivel to face her, the prisoner was realizing again she was no longer anywhere that a female attendant was a friend. Miss . . . !
The woman was older, growing softer but still lovely to look at, forlorn in the cell. She tried to meet Anita’s unblinking stare. Anita found her pulse pounding as she sought the beat of the other’s, and began to smell the woman’s fear like a new spice over the sauce of lust that covered her. She stood straighter.
This one will crawl, was the cold knowledge inside her. Bend over before she even knows why. Anita felt the woman falling into her eyes.
She knew the dark joy Sheila had felt, that night when she and Kit and Joyce had taken them all. Remembered what she’d said.
“Sleep and obey!” she snapped.
The woman shook slightly, as though Anita had thrown water on her, and backed unsteadily away into the depth of her cell. Her eyelids were fluttering . . .
Swallowing a moan, Anita walked further down. She heard muffled, fearful sounds from nearby cells, and it made her step more briskly.
Time for Rosalie.
She heard her bootheels on the stone floor, felt what Rosalie might be feeling as she heard them growing louder, slowing to her cell . . .
Rosalie stepped back awkwardly when the door opened, and part of Anita wanted to help her to bed. She remembered Patrice.
Love, Patrice had said, half-asleep after the pleasure. Then—lullabies . . .
Rosalie, dazed from hypnosis or the drugs some of them were kept on, peered at Anita, and then sat heavily on the bed, her gaze running dismally down Anita’s uniformed body, seeing her taut stance.
“Amelia?” Her voice was quiet, harsh with prior days’ fruitless screaming. “Do you remember me? Rosalie? Do you remember—”
“I am Anita. There is no Amelia.” Anita wondered at herself. It was true, but she intoned it like programming as she stared at Rosalie, seeing her shiver at Anita’s blankness.
Rosalie was persistent. “Please, Amelia. Try. Try to remember. I remember. We used to take lunch outside sometimes, even when it was cold.” She closed her eyes and inhaled, and Anita could see that she was talking to herself, too, trying to get her mind elsewhere.
Anita remembered that. Feeling so lonely that a fragment of happier days could seem like a friend.
How much worse when an actual friend was standing collared by your captor, her mind apparently someone else’s tool and toy. Doing your captor’s bidding and not giving a shit about you.
“You used to like those mini-baguette things. I used to be so jealous that you could—”
“I have those memories,” Anita said, her mind buoyant in the hypnotic insulation. “I serve Mistress now. The memories don’t matter.”
“Amelia. That’s all there are. They’ve brainwashed the big things from you. Freedom. Maybe even love. Start with the small things and remember.”
“I remember them,” Anita said. “Freedom is what each of us surrenders to Mistress. Love . . . is what we feel for Her.” She tasted the new tone, wondered at the feeling it gave her.
Saw its sincerity rock Rosalie.
“I must obey Her. You must obey Her.” Anita felt the mindless finality in her voice, realized she’d been staring at Rosalie without blinking. She felt as if she were on a daisy chain, licking Mistress’ virtual pussy as Her obedient hand-puppet and at the same time fucking Rosalie’s mind out of its last confused resistance. Anita submitted and controlled.
Joyce knew this feeling. It seduced her each day.
Its taste snared Anita. She shuddered and had to close her eyes and a soft high groan escaped her, and when she looked Rosalie was watching her, eyes wide.
She looked at Rosalie, saw her sitting fearfully. Trapped. Spitted between hypnotically-driven spikes of fear and lust.
Remembered a purchased girl in an isolated cabin, pinned naked to a chair by her own reformatted will, hooked on the obedience, her whole world lit by a brand she was doomed to plead for.
Dear . . .merciful . . .
Anita thought of stepping forward, holding Rosalie, telling her the lessons of Mistress gently.
Anita stood where she was, and watched Rosalie sink against the wall, pinned to it by Anita’s cool glare.
“you must obey,” she began.
47.
Joyce was still asleep when Anita came in, and Anita ran to her when she realized Joyce was lying just as she’d left her after putting her under hypnosis again. But Joyce was warm and breathing, and Anita found herself not even wanting to touch her, seeing her face so calm.
She knelt by the bed and leaned over, feeling the warmth from Joyce’s skin, feeling her breath soft over her own skin. Anita fought her need to hold Joyce and kiss her hard, then stopped fighting when she found she could brush Joyce’s hair with her lips and not even change the rate of her breathing.
“Dream of me,” she whispered, realizing that when she’d whispered it before, the trance had probably made it into a command Joyce was obeying. Joyce’s faint smile suggested it was one she enjoyed obeying, and Anita felt warmer. “But dream of whatever makes you happy,” she murmured.
Forcing herself up, she turned to the bath area and stopped, greeted by the razor which still lay on the towel where Joyce had rested it. It smiled at her from the floor, and she stepped to it almost ready to warn it away from her lover. She picked it up and closed it and opened a drawer to put it away, out of sight, looking for the safety razor for the next time she and Joyce shaved each other.
She remembered the first day, when Joyce had been programmed to be unable to use anything but this, and when she’d lain back and trusted Joyce’s touch.
Anita had kissed the razor then, and raised it now, its case already warming in her hand. She kissed it again. Joyce trusted you, as I did her. So I trust you now.
Next to it now, in the drawer, she saw a longer, darker shape, and carefully took it out. Leather-cased and hefty, and she knew the wicked shape before she’d finished drawing it. A killing knife. Her former master had gotten catalogues with things like this, and until he started brainwashing her, she’d scorned them as part of a smug male fantasy.
She wondered why it would be here. Nothing happened without Mistress’ will, so she’d given it to Joyce. She was shocked to find a part of her mind wondering coolly why Joyce hadn’t selected this as the weapon when she was thinking of suicide.
Maybe she could only use it at Mistress’ command. Maybe she was programmed not to remember she had it, to see it but not see it whenever she opened the drawer.
Maybe she was too repelled by what she’d already done with it . . .
Knowing what she was learning about Mistress, Anita closed the drawer slowly and quietly but as fast as she could, feeling like a burglar for having seen into it. She turned to the shower and started washing off the sweat and the come and the rest.
It wasn’t working.
The seductive coldness of what she’d done in the cells to Rosalie and the older woman was too far away, still too painful. Thinking of what she’d done to Elise just brushed her clit with a sweet, craven, urgent premonition of what Elise would shortly do to her.
Anita tried to fight it.
The arousal started building. She saw the contempt on Elise’s face as she pleaded to lick her clean, felt her need for the humiliation fuse with Elise ‘s taste and shiveringly imprint itself on her nerves. The tang of pussy, of a dozen pussies like an exquisite assortment of sushi, started to smell more real to her than the shampoo and soap she was trying to wash it off with.
She remembered her head dragged away, someone’s hand grasping her cheek and pulling her from Kit’s crotch to someone else’s, someone she still couldn’t identify. They hadn’t wanted to look at her face, they’d wanted to ride it, and she’d given them a lovely canter . . .
Anita found her hand sliding into her slit and realized she wanted just to step out dripping and run down to the refreshment room and beg to be everyone’s bonbon again. She wanted them to see how badly she needed it, how hooked she was.
How much lower than they were. Unworthy even of the fellowship of Mistress ’ zombie janissaries.
They might like sliding themselves along her soap-slicked limbs as she posed for them.
Anita fought it.
She felt her weakness and decided to forgo the escalation ladder and use the express elevator to the most powerful weapon she had just now: Why did Mistress give Joyce that knife?
It froze her desire not like icewater but like liquid nitrogen, turning the lust at her core into a sharp-edged shard of crystal, ripping at her. Worse than what that dagger itself could do to someone was what Anita knew Joyce would feel as she wielded it.
Now she bent over in the streaming hot water, crying for conjuring even the idea of Joyce in more pain.
She stepped out and dried off and then she was in bed with Joyce, finding a way to curl around the taller woman, melting herself as she felt Joyce’s completely limp relaxation. As she slid under the sheet, Joyce stirred, and Anita held her breath praying she hadn’t woken her—but as she hugged her she felt Joyce turn to face her, soft as a sleeping kitten.
Anita pulled her close and drew her head down so Joyce could sleep against her heartbeat. Joyce was still sticky with her own use but Anita barely noticed, knowing only the bliss as the woman she belonged to settled against her and slept more deeply.
Thank you. She didn’t know who might be hearing that, but she thought it again. Thank you for her. For this.
Lowering her head to Joyce’s, she let the moment last, stretch, fade . . .
There was nothing specific to tell her this was a dream, she knew as she sat in Livvy’s office. There was too-bright winter sunlight out the window and her body was dressed for summer, but . . .
And as Livvy read her resume, she tried to think of what was wrong with the way her prospective employer was dressed, and Anita felt odd that she should know so much about someone she hadn’t worked for yet. Why would she feel certain that Livvy wouldn’t wear the PVC opera gloves, the studded collar, the demibra that held her nipples out on display?
Anita’s suit felt right. It better; she’d gone without lunch for three days to ransom it from the cleaners and air it for this interview.
More deja vu, as Livvy looked up from it, and Anita’s heart sank to know that this woman was going to ask questions . . .
She thought she remembered Livvy putting the resume on the desk, as though to separate herself from it. But that couldn’t be right, because with the short chains holding her manacled wrists within inches of her nipple rings, she had to hold on to it . . .
Livvy’s words were verbatim from memory, and just as exact was the glance that went right through Anita to her core, and weighed it. And accepted it. “You’re clearly a woman who can do what she has to.” Livvy smiled. “Amelia.
“Welcome aboard.” Then Livvy started to sign the paperwork.
Anita sat helplessly, unable to move or speak, as Livvy’s hands stretched to the desk while she kept her almost militarily upright posture. The rings pulled and distended her nipples, and while she didn’t miss a word her tone was wavering. She moved papers and signed, over and over, more forms than Anita remembered, each flourish of her proud signature pulling on the piercings and hurting her more.
Anita watched, shaking her head, as Livvy started to tear the rings out, slowly, move by move as the papers got signed. Anita’s tears ran silently and her scream was just a low sound in her throat, and the words she needed, Please—not for me, were just unfulfilled twitches of her lips.
She watched horrified as one of the rings started to—not yet, but the blood was dripping . . .
In a strangled voice, Livvy forced out, “And there’s . . . someone . . . you can stay with. Her name is . . . Carly . . . and I think . . . it could . . . work out . . .”
Anita screamed mutely, and balled her fists, angry and appalled at how much Livvy was suffering, and there was nothing she could do nothing nothing nothing . . .
Then it all began to fade, and there was a warmth in Anita’s body that almost seemed like her own heart, clumsily consoling her.
Anita heard the moaning, and as she felt vertigo she knew it for her own, even as she realized she was horizontal in bed, not sitting paralyzed in the nightmare office.
Her body filled with the warmth again, and she felt Joyce stir against her. She looked down.
Joyce slept against her chest, her face smooth and untroubled, and had taken Anita’s right breast in her mouth. She was slowly, dreamily suckling. Anita let herself cry for a little while, but as she stroked Joyce’s hair and lay there, she just let it carry her off.
She thought of lullabies, and there were no more bad dreams for a while.
48.
Anita wandered the halls. She guessed it was late; there seemed to be no clocks. Slaves must not need to know the time.
It was insane to leave Joyce’s side, and she’d fought herself as she slid away and covered Joyce again, but the feelings inside were nothing she wanted to inflict on her Lady now.
Holding her like a child, Anita had felt certainties cool like metal inside her. There were things she wouldn’t do, now, and letting Joyce carry her was one. She was learning more about the kind of sway that Mistress held over her Lady, and it fascinated her as it repelled her.
She was almost queasy with how it had felt to hypnotize Joyce each time, and the dangerous power it gave her. In a way it helped: putting strangers like Rosalie or even Patrice into a trance wasn’t nearly the world-shift involved in putting Joyce under.
But Anita was beginning to realize that she was falling, and she knew her tour de force before, balancing between a submissive party toy and Mistress’ merciless puppet-domme henchwench, wasn’t something she could repeat. A familiar fear crept back to its niche.
I can’t do this again.
She reached for a familiar solution, smiling at the irony.
Following a route she’d learned, she approached a recessed reception area.
slave ann looked up, smiling to see her.
“Hello,” she said. “I just wanted to see if I could get in to see Valerie. Dr Joplin. At some point. I need to talk to someone. It’s not—” She found herself faltering, wondering where she’d gotten the idea that one of Mistress’ key slaves would have any time for her at all.
Would needing to talk make any sense? slave ann, Valerie herself—they were Her willing tools, with no doubts or fears, and always open to a command or new truth to keep them tranquil and happy.
She pictured them under a command to use that hideously lovely knife she’d found in the room. She could even picture the blissful smile they’d wear.
Knew, suddenly, why Mistress would have preferred to see Joyce use it when She wanted it used.
slave ann moved her head from side to side as though tracking Anita’s thoughts. “It’s all right, Anita. It’s already been explained to us that you’re not like a normal slave. You can’t just trust in Mistress.” her regret sounded real, if not intense.
“But Dr Joplin would want you to go right in.” she moved to get up, but Anita stepped to the office door and smiled at her. It was like the old days—Valerie always had time for you when you needed it.
Anita thought about what Mistress did. For every woman like Carly or her nameless blonde playmate (clench) whose mind She obliterated, She seemed to preserve some, like Valerie and Joyce, with their admirable selves intact but reoriented. She tried to remind herself that Valerie was much deeper under Her dominance, and this was not going to be like confiding in Joyce.
It was just the only thing Anita could think of.
Inside, wearing nothing but her collar and the half-glasses, Valerie looked up, and Anita thought about the night she’d hypnotized them all. And the night Anita had come here, convinced Valerie was the evil genius behind it all, and about to punish Anita for being a problem slave.
Valerie looked at her, then came around the desk to take her hands. “What do you need, Anita?” she asked softly. As ever with Valerie, she sounded like she meant it.
Anita stood there a moment, just enjoying how it felt to hold hands.
“I’m going crazy,” she said. “Do you still deal with that?”
Valerie smiled and led her to the armchairs.
She looked at Valerie. “I know you just obey Mistress. You get pleasure and you do it again.” She felt warmth between her thighs, and wasn’t sure if it was just her residual crush on Valerie or something that oozed up from her flattery of the slave ideology. She relaxed and enjoyed it.
“I’m getting turned on by . . . everything. I just humiliated myself more than I ever thought possible and I nearly didn’t . . .” She swallowed. “But when I’m putting down other slaves, helping to break the fresh ones, that makes me wet, too. I know I’ve been conditioned. I’m just trying to—”
Valerie looked at her. “This is what Mistress looked for, i think. All of us are the same way, but it’s because Mistress needs us both ways. i can want to bring a roomful of police cadets to their knees begging to serve Her . . . but i can dream about their lining up and using me as Her reward to them.
“It’s Her pleasure that matters.”
The door opened and they looked over. A tall, elegant black woman entered and slave ann came around from behind her, looking disoriented but unhappy. Anita recognized the newcomer but couldn’t place her, but the floating mental file was tagged Dangerous. But there was something about her, almost coming off her in waves . . .
The woman smiled at them and stood by while ann sputtered. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I tried to stop her but I—”
The woman turned to look at her.
Oh no.
slave ann’s eyes found hers and the secretary jerked like a gaffed fish, her eyes widening. her gesturing arms stopped and she stared, lost, into the other woman’s eyes.
Dr Calvert’s eyes. Anita was petrified.
slave ann settled to a calm, blank posture and gazed placidly over their heads.
“i’m sorry, Doctor.” she spoke in a docile calm. “i don’t know what happened. i apologize for my confusion. Your 4 AM is here precisely as scheduled. i’ll leave you to your discussion as i’ve been told. i will enjoy a restful nap until i am awakened.” she turned and walked out, closing the door behind her.
Dr Calvert looked back at them and smiled, undoing the chic wrap that draped her from shoulders to waist, letting it fall to rest on her inner arms, and she was as wonderfully topless as Anita remembered from delivering Janine. Anita heard Valerie breathe and read it as anger, but she could barely pay attention, too confused by the clash of her fear at what Dr Calvert could do and her almost painful heat at watching her do it with such arrogant skill.
“How dare you?” Valerie said, squeezing Anita’s hand before letting it go and standing up. Anita looked at the cant of her braced hip as she stood to face the intruder.
Anita tingled at the contralto laugh and had to slip back in the chair.
“Oh, valerie. you love this. you’ve begged me to fuck with you more than to fuck you.”
The tawny-brandy-twilight sky eyes reached out for Valerie. “Even when i was training you to be a good little slut for Mistress.” The eyes brushed over Anita, stunning her before moving over and up again. “And ann’s just such a kick to play with.”
Anita realized she’d had no business worrying about Elise, when there were beings like Dr Calvert loose. She thought about Dr Calvert and Joyce, and about trying to put herself between her Lady and this, and felt icy despair as she easily pictured being—told—to move aside. And wait her turn.
“Come here and please me, favorite pupil.” Dr Calvert’s tone was suddenly cold, but Valerie dropped to her knees and mewed as she crawled to kneel before the stronger hypnotist and waited. Without looking down at her, Dr Calvert moved her long wrap skirt to give Valerie access. With a tap on her head, Valerie bent to her work.
Now Dr Calvert smiled at Anita, her breathing slightly uneven.
“Pretty as i remembered. You know why i’m here, don’t you?”
Anita curled up in the chair and closed her eyes, trying not to hear the small eager sounds Valerie was making.
I could make you look.
Breathing deeply, Anita looked.
“Ahhh. Still wise and simple. But we do have to talk, little one.” Anita marveled that this woman was another woman’s willing slave, and her constellation of feelings about Mistress grew more complex. She looked at the collar and medallion that marked Dr Calvert as owned, tried to picture her kneeling, worshipping Mistress, quivering helplessly in orgasm.
Tried to picture those dazing eyes unfocused, transfixed. Blunted by trance.
Anita still avoided them.
She let her eyes rest on the medallion, but then, flanking Valerie’s head, she saw the symmetrical darker acs rising from the skirt’s waist on either side of Dr Calvert’s smooth mahogany belly. Wingtip shapes.
She thought of the hawk tattoo that must glory Dr Calvert, down there. She knew she couldn’t ever afford to look, to kneel: Dr Calvert might use it to trap women that way. She didn’t risk imagining Dr Calvert lying there as it was applied.
She wondered if that would be Valerie’s next task. But there was more to it.
Anita raised her eyes now, and found they were moist. “You did that, for Mistress,” she whispered, and Dr Calvert looked at her more closely, smiling more gently.
“Yes. For Her. As i do all things, but . . .”
Anita followed the intuition. “You asked for this.”
“i begged for it, Anita. On my belly, humping the cold tile floor.” The memory, or Valerie’s tongue, made Dr Calvert’s voice shake.
“You know how that need can feel, i understand.”
Anita closed her eyes, and felt the arm of the chair brush her nipple. She thought about Joyce’s mouth on it.
She’d knelt and begged. Her Lady hadn’t left her cold and prone.
She was Joyce’s.
“No,” she said quietly. She knew a word from the other woman would have her out of the chair to tongue her ass—or Valerie’s—but she trusted Mistress.
She’s letting me choose. She’s not making it easy, but She wants to see what I do.
“No,” Anita said again. And, “Thank you,” and she heard Dr Calvert laugh softly at the yearning she couldn’t keep out of her voice. She heard the laugh seem to double as a climax went through Dr Calvert and the outcries crossed in her like ships’ wakes.
“i can wait,” the hypnotist assured her, her voice already steadying. So powerful.
Anita curled up and waited for them to leave.
She barely had any time left.
49.
slave joyce was in the shower when Anita returned, and as she dried off she saw how subdued her lover was. Anita busied herself fetching new sheets from the cupboard by the vanity and stripping the bed, and joyce wondered with concern where she’d been.
Anita sat on the mattress amid a billow of linens and stared. joyce sat down beside her.
“I’m sorry,” Anita whispered. “About hypnotizing you. That was a dirty trick. The last thing you need is your own girl controlling your mind.”
joyce hugged her, worried at how cold she felt but relieved when Anita hugged her back.
“my lover is the one i trust most of all, Anita. If anyone can make me feel good about giving up control of my thoughts—it’s you.” she kissed Anita under her ear.
“i was still aware of things, in a way. i heard elise after you put me back under. i heard you, too, Anita.” she squeezed, delighted at how Anita felt against her. “You were magnificent. i was afraid for you and i wanted to help you, but it felt too good just to relax, as you’d told me. It was easy to obey you—and then i saw how you handled it.”
she stroked Anita’s hair. “i can’t remember when it felt that good to be controlled, Anita. Oh, i’m hooked on the brainwashing, all right. i’m conditioned to juice at just the thought of one of the others—or Mistress Herself—pulling my string and turning me into . . .
“But it’s the difference between fucking and making love, Anita. All the difference in the world.
“When you hypnotized me you made love, to a part of me that’s just been—fucked.”
Anita held her tighter but made no sound. joyce felt her lips work against the skin on her collarbone.
“i know what slave patrice felt, i think. What you helped her feel when Mistress put you with her. Maybe Mistress will let us talk about how lucky we were to know your gift.
“God. It felt so good, Anita.”
Anita breathed in, delicate warmth against her. “Joyce. Thank you for telling me. Thank you. You’re what I live for now.”
slave joyce held the shudder inside from long practice, marveling at whatever had given this woman to her care. Anita knew what slave joyce was, and did, and understood, and still she—?
joyce thought of how she’d been after Mistress had released her, when she’d left hearing what amanda was begging Her to do, and she’d knelt here.
she’d been so low that she actually considered trying to use Anita, like a reaching tool, to use the razor the way Mistress forbade to her. she remembered the expression on Anita’s face—below the fear, the apprehension for herself, she could see Anita’s heart breaking for her.
Even so, Anita had come, and knelt, and promised.
Given herself.
Pledged herself to someone she knew was unworthy of her own soul and had given it to her Owner . . .
“i frightened you very badly, Anita, and you stayed with me.
“i heard you. i remember it. Hearing you, knowing what you were doing . . . it pulled me back from where i was.”
“I think,” came Anita’s muffled reply, “that I know where you were, Joyce. I never, ever want you to have to be there.” She breathed.
“It’s still true, Joyce. I’m yours.” She leaned back and looked up, and they kissed. Anita held her and rested against her shoulder, looking up. “It’s very hard, but just the idea of you can keep me . . . myself.”
slave joyce nuzzled her forehead.
“Joyce, it hurt you before but I ask your permission to tell you how I feel. About belonging to you.”
joyce considered. “It will still hurt, Anita,” she whispered. “But maybe there are good ways to hurt. And if you need to—”
Anita’s hair tickled joyce’s arm as she shook her head slowly. “If you know that, Joyce, you know what it is. You may not feel it’s true. But I know it.” Her lips brushed at joyce.
“You did say,” she said, and joyce could hear her voice thickening with feeling and the effort to hold it in, “that you didn’t deserve me.
“You don’t.”
joyce looked down, confused. Anita was—glaring up at her.
“My Lady. My Queen.
“I am less than you deserve.”
Anita’s quiet ferocity almost frightened slave joyce.
“You deserve a woman as perfect as you are, Joyce.
“And it’s our curse that there’s only one of you in all of humanity.
“But it’s my gift from God that I’m with you. Thank you forever for accepting this girl even so.”
joyce couldn’t move. For a moment she couldn’t see. She felt Anita holding her tightly. She tried to open her mouth, but nothing emerged.
“You said you’d never ask me to help you die, Lady Joyce. I need you to know you could. Because I love you. You know there is nothing you can’t have from me.”
joyce moaned and held her. “Anita, I promised you, love. I will never ask you for that.” she looked away, ashamed that she’d even started to, back then, just after—amanda.
“I know, Joyce.
“Joyce—”
joyce was turning back to Anita, feeling her grip shift, when there was an awful pressure in her chest and a sudden intense pain at its core.
“Joyce—I love you.”
Her eyes widened and she saw Anita’s eyes reddened but unblinking.
Mistress’ knife.
joyce heard “I love you” over the rising silence in her ears and felt her body strain for the blood it knew would never come now Anita stabbed true! Goddess bless her and as joyce’s pierced heart stopped and she started to grieve for her lover’s grief she knew she had less than seconds last effort she would ever but for Anita always—Anita
no time to speak no air no no no no!
Anita!
everything she had or Anita would never know
lastthingshewould . . . ever . . . Amanda! I understand—!
Joyce was graying out and desperate but she could still fall and she did and Anita caught her and Joyce fell, straining, nothing to hold back now
yes yes yes thank you thank you
Joyce’s lips found Anita’s.
The last thing was love.
The last thing was dying in Anita’s arms.
50.
Anita sat perfectly still, holding Joyce.
She didn’t move.
Wouldn’t.
The knife was there and her hand still gripped it to numbness and she ignored it, her other arm around Joyce. She clung to Joyce’s last kiss, knowing when their lips parted it would be over and there would be nothing.
Joyce was warm and soft in her arms, and her own breathing could fool her into thinking she felt Joyce’s. She let it. She knew it was not even a dream now but even the trace of a dream of Joyce was too precious to let go.
Joyce had kissed her.
She’d felt Joyce fighting it, and she’d screamed inside when she thought her own bad stroke and Joyce’s curse of strength would combine to make Joyce ‘s death a hard one. But even dying, Joyce was still protecting her. Sending the most important message she had, the only way she could.
Joyce had kissed her.
Goodbye. Thank you. I love you.
My Lady, my Queen, I am less than you deserve. You deserve a woman as perfect as you are. Thank you—forever.
There was only one of you. Now— Anita didn’t even tighten her hold, but felt the tension in herself.
Joyce had kissed her.
She savored Joyce’s soft mouth. There was warmth there, some of it Anita’s own, but as she lost herself in it Anita remembered heat after their lips had touched.
Joyce’s last breath.
Anita held her.
The door opened and Anita heard footfalls, booted and barefoot. She stayed as she was, jealous of Joyce, wanting to defend even her body when her soul was gone.
To heaven, Joyce. I’ll believe in one, if you can be there.
They didn’t touch her. Someone else came in and they moved aside for her.
“Anita.” The voice was soft, and she could even tell herself she heard something in it.
“Anita. She’s gone now. Let her go.”
Anita held Joyce, still soft, still warm.
“She can’t be hurt now, Anita.” It was Sheila. “We can attend to her. You can’t . . .”
Consequences.
Mistress.
As long as I can, Joyce, I will make you proud of me. She pulled back and made herself look at Joyce.
Joyce had closed her own eyes, and her face was calm now. Her head lolled down now, and Anita held it up. Her arm was against Joyce’s throat. The pulse was gone.
The sob came up and she rammed it back down hard enough that she sang it behind closed lips.
She leaned Joyce back onto the bed as gently as she could, and before she could stop them she felt a slave on each side, helping to take the weight. One drew a pillow down under Joyce’s head.
Lowering Joyce had been hard because she’d only used one arm, and she looked down at the one that still held the knife, releasing it now. So little blood. She’d stopped the heart that quickly with the evil thing. And still Joyce had held on, taken care of her.
She leaned down and kissed Joyce again.
Then she tried to stand and turn and face them, and she collapsed on legs that wouldn’t hold her.
The two nearest caught her, and Sheila took her, settling to the bed with her, facing her away from Joyce.
Sheila touched her cheek, looking into her eyes with the same soft concern as when she’d first freed Anita from the trance controls. Anita could almost believe that inside, among the vast walls of programmed obedience and erasure, something in Sheila understood.
Or Mistress had wound up Her toys to make her think so. To hide—or soften—the fact that Anita had just murdered the only other self-aware person here.
She was already becoming colder. She looked into Sheila’s eyes.
She pursed her lips, remembering the light touch and taste of Joyce’s last breath. In me, now. A small bit of her. I’m still Joyce’s and now part of me is her.
Strong and brave. That was Lady Joyce. Doing what’s needed.
Now as she thought of Mistress, she remembered more, and what she’d come here for, and realized why some people walked onto the scaffold serene. There was a way she could go, flowing like water. I do not contend.
I surrender.
“Yes,” she said softly, and Sheila smiled.
“Do you want me to hypnotize you, Anita?”
Anita considered. She thought about Livvy (marveling how calmly she did, but . . .) and remembered the last time Mistress had offered her trance before a difficult task. She’d declined then, almost ended up as another pain-hostage for Livvy with no buffer.
But it had been right to do.
And when Joyce had asked the same . . .
“As our Mistress wills,” she said, looking back at Sheila. “But if She lets me choose, I will go to Her awake. I am Hers to hypnotize as She desires. Or yours.”
The room where they brought Anita was dark and cool, and though she hadn’t paid attention to where they were going, she knew it now: the polished, elegantly bare throne room where Livvy Danziger had struggled on the stone floor and gallantly traded barbs with Mistress. The room was much darker this time. Spaced along the walls but standing away from it in pools of indirect lighting, nude slaves stood, deep in trance or aware of her. She couldn’t see their eyes.
In deeper shadow before her, she saw the stone dais, the black metal seat with the bird-of-prey motif.
Someone sat there, in the shadows.
Anita felt the fear, wasn’t sure whether it was the faint outline of the One Who sat there regarding her or the potential for what She might look like if She showed Herself.
She put it aside.
Her escorts stopped and she stopped with them, and as she felt them step away from her, she raised her chin and looked at the seated figure.
Very deliberately Anita knelt, keeping her back straight until she was down and then bending forward to touch her forehead to the cool stone.
She raised herself to kneel and look up and wait.
She was trying to keep her mind clear. Perhaps this time, she would be punished, with pain.
From nowhere it came: Joyce is gone.
It streaked to her past every defense, and she couldn’t help herself as the tears came, with a grief as intense as lust. She looked through bleary eyes and then bowed again.
“I am sorry, Mistress,” she made herself croak after a moment.
“No need,” the voice came, gentle and irresistible, like a padded dildo around a metal core. “joyce was a remarkable woman.
“Certainly worth tears.”
Anita looked up, and the grief swung tidally to a new direction. “Yes, Mistress.” She swallowed. “And she was Your slave, and I destroyed her. I took something . . . that You valued, too, somehow. I knew there would be consequences, Mistress.”
“You freed someone from hypnotic enslavement, Anita. You ended your lover’ s pain. Some people might consider that its own justification. Don’t you think you should go free from any punishment, since you did the right thing after all?”
Anita looked at the shadows. “What I think, Mistress, literally doesn’t matter. Does it?”
Mistress sighed. “joyce herself told you, Anita. I would not bother if it didn’t matter.”
“I understand, Mistress. But I know there are many standards and I broke Yours. Nothing’s for free.” She blinked. “It’s like—like—” Her mind flew in search of an analogy, glad of the distraction and sensing Mistress liked seeing Anita think . . .
“—like Chushingura, Mistress. The forty-seven ronin avenged their master Asano-sama but broke the Shogun’s law. They accepted both duties.”
“And opened their stomachs, yes.” Mistress seemed to be smiling there in the dark. “I’m amazed that you even know that story.” As Anita blinked, dazed by the praise, She went on, “But I’m not at all surprised that you grasp the idea of Loyal Hearts.”
She waited, let Anita wait.
“Anita, please understand this: I will not punish you. I let you act with only a minimum of control over your will and thoughts. You did what you decided to, knowing the risk of punishment—and if punishment didn’t work then, as a threat, it will do nothing after the fact.
“Whatever you did is My responsibility. If I start deceiving Myself about what My slaves and others do or think, I lose My anchor in reality and I get eaten by someone smarter.”
Anita sank onto her heels. She’d expected the rage of a thwarted sadist. She didn’t know what to do.
“In any case, Anita, all decisions are Mine, and I’ll worry about the inconsistencies. slave carly can’t even conceive of resisting Me, but I had her tortured when she did nothing but worship Me devoutly and obey Me faithfully. You did defy Me, at least as you see it. I choose not to punish you. Why does it make less sense?”
Anita considered. “Lady Joyce said You were God, Mistress.”
“Is she your lady, Anita?”
Anita remembered her first encounter with Mistress, with Valerie standing over her, tranced into oblivion. She remembered how easy it was, with nothing left to defend. And there’d been nothing with Joyce yet . . .
Nor was there now. “Until You take that from me, Mistress. Even while You were hurting her, she was—”
“Yes,” Mistress said. “She was. And I saw the effect that had on you. I think even if you knew I’d have you lowered into acid afterward, you would have done the same thing for her.”
Anita flinched. Her mind was so open she was smelling it before she could defend herself. She looked up. “I don’t know, Mistress. But I hope I could.”
Mistress looked at her from the dark for a while. “I think you might surprise yourself, Anita. But you wouldn’t surprise joyce.
“she would be very pleased with you, Anita.”
Breaking, Anita sank to the floor, holding herself as though to keep the sobbing inside. Mistress had found the seam in her and split it neatly. The heat of the tears on her face was almost soothing. She barely felt the floor as her forehead touched it.
“I know that you appreciated what was happening to you, Anita.” Mistress spoke between Anita’s choked sobs. “In time you would have gotten wet at even the thought of betraying her to Me—or just betraying her.
“Making her think, perhaps, that you were both escaping, then hypnotizing her in a bus terminal and leaving her with amnesia and an addiction to being buttfucked until she bled.”
Anita’s thighs clenched over a hand she didn’t know she’d put between them.
The orgasm buzzed through her head and left it humming.
“There. I knew that would help.”
Looking up at Mistress, she shivered, and began to realize in the marrow of her bones Whose ass she really wanted to lick out.
Needed to.
“Hmm. You were that close, Anita.”
The need rose.
Joyce was gone. There was torn-out place in Anita, torn but numb, but it meant Joyce was safe. Free.
There was nothing now, and Anita felt suddenly free, too. If she were allowed to crawl back to slave elise and beg to be punished—and she was really starting to drip about that possibility—there was no one to leave behind if she took that plunge. If she were allowed to tear her way down the cells, sucking the wills from the captives, there was no one to worry about.
No one but herself.
Her self.
About to stroke herself to another orgasm, she stopped, feeling the warmth of the new imperative like a sunrise on her.
she brought her hand back up and licked it. Must ask permission.
Mistress waited. she realized that when she finally met her Owner, looked into Her eyes and smelled Her pussy, she wouldn’t remember slave elise or the bonbon or the terrifying trap of Dr Calvert unless she were commanded to.
she wouldn’t remember Joyce . . .
Something tore inside her then, and the pain felt good and then it was
—gone . . .
she floated. “Mistress?” she whispered. she needed a command, desperately, and she was so empty of will that she couldn’t even ask for one.
“you’ll think soon enough.” Mistress’ voice ran over her skin and inside her veins. “you’re not to be wasted, anymore than—she was.
“But for now, I want candy.”
A sliver of her brain looked forward to solving the mystery of Mistress’ face, Her eyes. But most of her, beneath speech and thought, keened in joy and need as she drew herself across the floor to worship her Mistress for the first time.
slave anita escaped.