The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

8.

Nancy cleaned the apartment in blocks of time as long as she could stand. She was almost nude as she worked, and there were too many mirrors.

When she let herself look, she kept seeing a collared slavegirl in a dark blue panty. The slavegirl was trying to focus on her tasks, but her wide eyes and stiff nipples showed how hard that was for her. It had been a game—may as well do something constructive!—and for a while Nancy had been amazed at how much she could get done by making herself feel controlled into doing it. She’d only had to take one pause to masturbate, and she rationalized how useful it was to clean while naked—easy and quick to shower when she got too dirty.

The CD played something light and rhythmic, an easy beat to fall into even if it was too shallow to immerse her. She left it on repeat.

It had been like this for the last couple of days, since Cherie. She could wake to the alarm and stay clearheaded enough to make it to the office. Work took her mind off those stinging moments in the hotel, and Nancy realized, after one meeting had ended, that she’d just had an exchange with a pretty, voluptuous blonde visitor and hadn’t once guiltily flashed on Cherie, or on how much this apparently un-hypnotized woman looked like her. Hadn’t even thought about the other former Dormignonne mindslave for an entire hour.

When she got home in the evenings, normality clung to her like cold air entering a hot room. In those first moments after the door would close, she could still be the competent, free woman she’d become, again, after Dormignonne. She could think of other things, of connecting with other free people.

She’d picked up the phone only once to try calling Cherie, but put it down before she even started dialing. Every other time, she’d given up without even touching the phone. She kept Cherie’s business card, but didn’t look at it. It was too easy to imagine Cherie wishing she’d never given it to her and dreading to hear Nancy’s voice on the phone.

Beth was still away, and Nancy resisted the urge to call her, too. Beth might have no problem talking about Nancy seducing another woman, but Nancy did.

Normality, by then, would have condensed and run off her like sweat in the humid air of the apartment. The privacy was tempting, and the memory of striding around slave-naked was fresh. Nancy had tried to fight it, the first time. Then she’d undressed.

She did it carefully. Each evening, she watched herself in the mirror as she slipped the clothing off, stripping away her defenses.

By then, she didn’t think of calling anyone. The phone became something she waited to answer.

Peremptory nebula.

I am export lot 602. I must obey.

The phone didn’t ring, but she was aware of it. It seemed aware of her, too, and her pantomime slavery.

Nancy finished cleaning the kitchen and stuck on what to do next. Then she paraded to the bedroom, where the candles had burned low. She stared at her dim reflection, gazing down at the golden horizon where her light sweat caught the glow.

“I must—”

She looked up, into her own eyes. “I must rekindle the flame,” she intoned, though her voice caught on flame. There was a rushing in her ears as she swiveled to fetch more candles, and realized that for a heartbeat or two there was nothing else in her thoughts but that new task.

She lit them from the old ones still burning, and returned to attention.

What if they saw her now? She shuddered. The women she’d been in therapy with. She pictured herself like this at one of the meetings, led in and presented by her new owner.

Her owner’s voice would echo in Nancy’s head, but the others would hear only quiet silken glee. This slut will not be returning, it would tell the other survivors. My slave remembers who she truly is, now.

Fingers would snap and Nancy would orgasm for them, darkening the bikini. Or her owner would not have dressed her at all, and instead of QLR’s royal blue, she’d have only the tag on her collar to show whose bitchflesh she was. Her shaven pussy would gush in front of the others, to shatter them.

Or tempt them. She begged me for it, the owner would say, leaving that worm in their minds as she led Nancy out. They’d see how Nancy needed no leash to prance eagerly after her mistress.

She’d prance as slowly as the owner walked, waiting to hear other footsteps as someone followed, the indrawn breath before the plea to be taken too. Perhaps the sound of clothing stripped off and floating unheeded to the floor.

Nancy started to lift her arms to cover her breasts. Then she spoke.

“Peremptory nebula.”

She lowered her arms.

Submit to it. Masturbate.

Let it take you.

“Yes,” she said, and found her way to the bed again, stepping out of the bikini. Once more she was probing her cunt before she hit the bed, and as she rolled she squeezed her thighs.

I’m sorry tried to get out, too, but this time she didn’t speak.

Climax hit her and she lay there, panting. For a change, when the arousal was discharged for a while, she let her mind go empty, not hypnotized-blank but just free-associating, and thought about saying I’ m sorry to Cherie.

She kept seeing Cherie half-entranced before her in her suite, while the trust was still there, letting Nancy anoint her as though they were still on the ship, falling deeper into the slavers’ power.

She imagined Cherie on that ship, adorable in sunhat and shades, vamping like a starlet but giving it away with a puckish grin. It was digital-photo clear in her mind’s eye. It would have been early on Cherie’s voyage, before she and her shipmates knew what was being done to them, while they could still joke and think. But Nancy could already see the compliance: Cherie wore Queen Lines Resorts livery, the royal blue bikini tight on her breasts and loins, like a good little guest. And her skin gleamed with the sunscreen that was already seeping into her will.

It took Nancy a moment or two to stop imagining Cherie like that, and it was hard, for another moment, not to start seeing Cherie later, as the brainwashing deepened and she learned other poses, and how to slip into them without thinking.

Cherie ran to her across the deck, her blue eyes dazed but frightened, begging silently for help.

Nancy twisted on the bed, denying the vision. It hadn’t happened—they ‘d been on different ships, at different times. Cherie had been on Dormignonne, coming out of her endless trance before the hesitant, chivalrous lust of astonished French marines, when Nancy was already home and programmed, obeying the triggers.

Cherie had never fled to her when QLR was active. It hadn’t happened. Nancy tried to think it couldn’t have. She left the bed, but lured herself to the mirror again.

Nancy looked down at her body, which had been merchandise for other people. They’d never have shown her off to ex-slaves as she’d just daydreamed, but somewhere in the world there really was someone who’d paid money to own her, because QLR had shown Nancy to them, naked and hypnotized. It might have been on some online catalogue, or she might have been displayed on the island to a buyer who’d felt her in person, perhaps even used her sexually. Her controllers had bent her will and desires to suit that owner’s need, and programmed her to deliver herself to them when she was told.

As Nancy thought about it, she knew once more that her mind had been freed of all that. Lot 602 had been unable to think any other way—Nancy Sheppard was free to say No. But now that it was safe to contemplate, she saw her nipples stiffen in a way that would have pleased that buyer.

She swallowed. She didn’t know who it would have been. It might have been someone wealthy who wanted a completely submissive concubine. But it could also have been someone who owned a string of brothels who’d never care to set eyes on her, letting underlings command her and make her worship strangers that they’d erase from her mind, an hour later.

They were still out there. She wondered if they knew who she was. She wasn’t afraid they’d come after her—they’d let QLR do their dirty work—but there was someone in the world who thought of her as lost property.

If her plane had left before the authorities had stopped it . . .

Cherie ran to her across the deck. Her body was already sluggish with the sleep that was conquering her mind, but she was trying.

She imagined standing on Mystery Queen’s deck, her head still humming from the instructions on one of the hypnotic CDs, as Cherie might have run to her. It would have been Cherie’s last valiant attempt to resist the mind control, while even part of her could remember that wanting to obey that badly was wrong. Cherie’s last moments of hope, before she looked into Nancy’s eyes and realized there was no hope, not on this factory ship for making slaves.

By then they’d already have made a slave out of Nancy. Nancy the slave would obey, when they commanded her to help them make one more slave of Cherie.

Nancy tried to tell herself That’s not real but it was. It had been, one sunny day on the ship.

It just hadn’t been Cherie.

9.

Nancy looked at herself, nude and aroused. She hadn’t stood still that day on Mystery Queen—she’d been the one to cross the deck. And when she’d been told to move, she hadn’t run.

But it had made her even wetter than she was now.

It had started so quietly.

She’d been on deck, an oiled woman in a blue bikini in a line of others like her. When she could think, she thought how much she was enjoying this time. It was wonderful to be able to surrender her cares and surrender her will, and just to do as the beautiful, strong QLR women told her.

Nancy looked at the other women, as still and dazed as she was. They’d all been here before, outside this door. She remembered them all walking around, waiting for it to open, laughing, meeting each other.

Now they stood quietly, passively, because they’d been told to come here.

Suddenly Nancy remembered it was dance class, where they were being taught how to perform Tribal ceremonies once they were on Isle Dormignonne. She felt a twitch of excitement that she hadn’t even recalled that until now. She’d just obeyed a sudden impulse to come here, turning abruptly away from a conversation with someone she no longer remembered.

She wondered how many of the other women were dreamily enjoying that same confusion, as they stood there empty of any other impulse. She wanted to touch herself, but she had no will to move her arm. That excited her a bit more.

The door opened. Nancy and the others instantly turned to face it and stood still. Her heart raced as she recognized the dance captain, Grace, lithe in her leotard.

“Good morning, girls.”

“Good morning, Grace!”

Dimly Nancy remembered them saying it together as a joke, in the beginning, but everything from that time really was . . . dim. Even then, she’d felt an odd tickle when she’d thought, briefly, of not joining in. Now there was nothing joking about it, just the pleasure of greeting their instructor like good girls.

They filed into the dance studio at her nod. Nancy tried to wonder if any of the others could recall when that had felt like a prank instead of tranquil subservience. They lined up facing the mirror. Other memories slid into her, things she was to do and feel whenever she stood here. Activated whenever she saw the mirror and the tranquilly subservient women coming into line on either side.

Whenever she saw that, she would be drowsy but alert, she would wait and listen, her body would . . . she blinked, still locked onto wondering what the others remembered but starting to forget it herself.

Forgetfulness was good. She would remember that. A voice had told her to.

Nancy no longer knew why she was looking at the expressionless faces in the mirror. But seeing all the other women, hypnotized into stillness, was its own pleasure. She couldn’t see anything in anyone’s eyes now but bliss. She found her own, and they were as flat as the others.

Like a pill suddenly taking effect, she could almost feel her mind shut down.

Nancy straightened, seeing the shiny girl in the mirror align with the other shiny girls, all awaiting Grace’s command. She remembered only that she enjoyed this. Waiting to obey, with nothing else in her thoughts, was as deep a pleasure as obedience itself.

Then, unexpectedly, she was more awake again, seeing Grace stand back from her. Grace had done something to wake her from the trance she’d been trained to fall into. She found herself following Grace to the side of the room, and caught sight of another wide-eyed girl leaving the line.

The rest of the women stayed still, hypnotized by their own obedient reflections.

Nancy came back to attention, sensing a new opportunity to submit to Grace.

“Nancy, where is your cabinmate? Gwen?”

“She is in the cabin, Grace.” It felt like she was talking in her sleep. “She didn’t want to participate in dance class.”

Grace stared at her. “Gwen doesn’t seem to want to participate in any group activities, does she?”

“No, Grace.” Nancy sensed this was bad. But she knew it was for Grace to decide what to do.

“Has she been letting herself be hypnotized, Nancy?”

“No, Grace. She hasn’t attended any of Mistress Rusalka’s . . . hypnotic . . . I . . .”

“Stay awake for me, Nancy.” Things swam back into focus. “When you are answering or obeying me, thinking of Mistress’ Rusalka’s performances will not put you into trance.

“Gwen isn’t learning to be Tribe, is she?”

Nancy quivered. “No, Grace.” Tribe had tautened something in her. “She is resisting the will of the group. She is not accepting group thoughts.”

“Gwen is resisting. Hmm. Does Gwen suspect that you are all being brainwashed?”

Brainwashed buzzed wonderfully across her crotch but the control was already tight enough that she answered instantly. “No, Grace. She jokes about ‘zombies’ but she doesn’t seem to be afraid.”

“But she still resists belonging and obeying.” Grace sounded disappointed.

Grace’s gaze stroked her, and Nancy felt her mind soften under something alien and delicious. “She must submit to Tribe,” she heard herself say, huskily. Saying it was pleasure, and Grace’s smile was joy.

“Submit to Tribe!” hissed the other woman Grace had harvested from her mesmerized dancers. Nancy recalled her name was Terri, but Grace’s dominance blurred any other thoughts.

Grace smiled at them and lifted the bright whistle all QLR staff carried. Nancy and Terri gasped, feeling their eyes pulled to it as it swung gently and spun.

“Look and sleep,” Grace told them. “Hear and obey.”

As she kept droning that into their minds more and more softly, Nancy felt the world swinging as the whistle shone still, fixed in her world. Soon there was only the lovely brightness and Grace’s voice crawling through the folds of her brain.

Nancy and Terri were striding across the deck before she knew Grace was finished with them. She heard voices, one or two vaguely calling her name, but they sounded drowsy and hesitant. They were not part of her commands, and she ignored them.

Just a little while ago, before remembering dance class had triggered her, she’d been as half-mindless as they were. But Grace had programmed her with a task to perform, and she would obey. The drugged women they passed sensed that she and Terri were obeying, and might be envying the two of them. She could smell her own arousal at the idea.

They were at a cabin, and as she entered she realized it was her own. Terri followed her in, and Nancy knew that after implanting her commands, Grace had put her to sleep to shape Terri’s mind separately. She had no idea what Terri was programmed to do.

That dampened her as she locked eyes with Gwen, who lay on the bed with her book and did not get up.

Gwen wore her own swimsuit, a modest black one-piece that just made her look that much sexier. It bothered Nancy that her cabinmate hadn’t put QLR colors on her body, just as she was resisting QLR’s insertion of its truth into her thoughts. But now Nancy’s mind hummed with Grace’s hypnotic commands.

Gwen would not be a problem for long.

“Dance class cancelled?” Gwen’s voice trembled. She could sense something strange in Nancy and the girl with her. Nancy realized she hadn’t blinked since coming in, and felt herself standing stiffly.

Not too stiffly to spring, if she needed to.

“You must come with us,” she intoned. She could sense Gwen’s fear before Gwen could, and it tasted good.

Gwen opened her mouth, but her nerve failed. “Not funny,” she said, more quietly than she’d meant to. She set her book aside and swung her legs to the deck, but she was moving slowly. She was realizing Nancy and Terri weren’t kidding, but didn’t really grasp what that meant.

When she did, she’d be chanting it. Nancy twitched with the heat.

“Oh my god.” Gwen rose, trying to look for a way out without letting them see it.

“You cannot escape.” Terri’s voice was utterly flat. Nothing in it but hunger.

“Nancy—?”

“You have been resisting,” Nancy told her. “If you had come to the show and let Mistress Rusalka hypnotize your mind, you would understand.

“And you would obey.”

Gwen looked even lovelier now, panicked breath flexing her, balanced tensely on her long legs.

“Just relax. Soon you will be one of us.”

“I don’t—want—to be one of . . .” Gwen couldn’t speak anymore, but that she even tried impressed a part of Nancy.

“When you are hypnotized,” Terri told her, “you will want it.”

Nancy saw Gwen judging whether she could slip by them. Maybe she thought hypnotized slaves would be slow and dull, like Hollywood zombies. Nancy felt wonderfully loose and ready if she tried, her body in scraps of blue like the QLR tool she was, like the other identical QLR tool behind her. Their minds stamped with the identical compulsion to make Gwen obey.

Gwen lunged right at her, almost growling, but Nancy jumped toward her and to the side, half-flipping her to the bed, and Gwen’s own momentum stunned her as she hit it flat. Gwen’s struggling turned Nancy on hard, but before she could lose herself in it Terri was slick and warm beside her, holding the free woman down as she squirmed. Gwen was screaming but it wasn’t rage or even fear now, just misery.

Remembering, as she masturbated slowly now, Nancy thought that may have been when Gwen let herself realize she had nowhere to run on Mystery Queen even if she’d gotten past them.

The door had opened again to Grace, who led in a blank-faced nurse in a short skirt with an upturned syringe.

“Keep her still, girls. Until the drug takes her.”

Safe in the apartment, Nancy remembered it now and moaned and looked at the window.

The phone rang.

She orgasmed, but even through the haze the ringing reached her. The old imperative to answer and wait had been cleansed from her thoughts, but she stood up anyway. It felt better to go through the motions, walking to the phone, waiting to be entranced and commanded.

There was no mirror there but she could imagine how straight she stood.

“Hello?”

“Nancy? Hon? It’s me.”

“Beth.”

“The same, Nance. Got back early and I wanted—”

“Oh, Beth.”

“Ohh.” The voice changed. “Just wait there for me, hon. I’m coming.”

So am I, Nancy told the dialtone.

10.

She’d showered and dressed, and cleared the candles, and stared obsessively around as though there might be signs Beth would see that she’d been . . . playing. The place looked almost pristine now, and that might catch Beth’s eye. But she’d more likely attribute the cleaning spree to sexual withdrawal, and picture a frustrated and frumpily-dressed Nancy externalizing her libido. She might lecture Nancy gently on why open relationships were open.

Beth would not imagine Nancy sashaying nearly naked from task to task, like a captured Tribe girl hypnotically domesticated into a chambermaid. Or pausing more and more often to jill off about it as she listened to the not-quite-Tribe music.

Nancy jumped and ran to the CD changer, sliding the percussion disk out and looking at the rack to find something else. Her mind froze as she searched the titles and she switched to the radio, finding the abstract jazz station she and Beth usually liked as background music. Then she switched again to the classical one she knew Beth preferred, and found herself halfway into a Telemann suite, smooth and sane and not at all reminiscent of predatory mind control.

Beth knocked and she flew to the door, making herself stand still as Beth looked her up and down, using the time to enjoy Beth’s lean, tomboyish form another time. She saw Beth’s smile crook to the side as it always did, and the fine lines on the freckled, pale skin that followed, and she stepped forward to hold her girlfriend tightly.

She felt Beth swallow another joke and felt Beth’s lips and tongue on her neck instead, and she realized how she was mystifying and worrying Beth.

Beth held her away for a look, keeping hold around Nancy’s waist. Her blue eyes glowed as she asked, very softly, “Who was she?”

Nancy shook, even as she realized Beth’s question was friendly, even eager.

“You’d like her,” she said, knowing it was true. Even if that was because Beth found something to like—and often as not something to want to nibble on—about most of the women she met.

“What would I like about her?” Beth held Nancy’s eyes.

“She’s pretty shy. You’d be teasing her and stroking her until her head was spinning.” She wondered what it would have been like if Beth had been the one to meet and seduce Cherie. If she’d wept at all, it would have been when she came.

Beth saw something of that, but left it. “This is the first time, hon, isn’t it?”

Nancy nodded, realizing that Beth was proud of her for venturing out and tasting someone else, and would chalk up any weirdness to day-after shakes. Beth hadn’t seen her dance, half-praying to the phone to be activated with a hypnotic code. As it was, Nancy could skate.

It let her know part of her might have wanted Beth to figure it out after all.

“She was wonderful, Beth. But she wasn’t you.” She kissed Beth, and felt Beth’s contented purr.

“Hell,” Beth told her earlobe a moment later, “sometimes I’m not me. That never seems to bother you.”

“A girl can tell,” Nancy said. They parted long enough to close the door, and she made herself go get them drinks, Beth’s red wine and a beer for her.

“Besides,” she said, curled on the sofa, “I’ve already scent-marked you.”

“Cool.” Cross-legged on the rug, Beth leaned forward. “Mating rituals and pheremones. Madness in the wind. How often is our species in heat?”

“Oh . . . it’s . . .” Nancy looked at her and felt herself start smiling like an idiot as the hunger hit her out of nowhere. “We’re a pretty nympho species, so heat’s essentially open all night.” She was proud to get a sentence out. Even that one.

It was when she stopped thinking of how much prettier, or more vibrant, or courageous Beth was than other women that Nancy would realize that there were no other women. Just glorious Beth, and Beth wanted her.

She flicked the widely-spaced buttons on the flowing shirt, basking in Beth’s avid stare. “As her need takes her,” she narrated huskily, “the Receptive female makes herself available.”

Beth grinned and rose to her knees. “It catches the . . . Horny female ‘s interest. She approaches.” She mock-snorted a couple of times, then stopped and inhaled in earnest. “She takes the Receptive female’s scent.” Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, and Nancy shook, as if feeling the oils leave her skin.

Squirming on the couch, she was trying to lose her skirt. “The Recep . . . fuck . . . the Receptive female . . .” She wriggled and got the skirt down, and flung it blindly over the sofa. Papers rattled and fell.

She leaned back. “Sensing the Horny female’s nearness . . .” She smiled at Beth, seeing Beth tense. “The Receptive female’s inner needs are quickened. She begins to respond to her need.”

“Helplessly,” Beth hissed.

Nancy nodded. “Bound in the primal rhythm, she signals her readiness for mating.” She swung her thighs wide and cocked an eyebrow at Beth.

Beth licked her lips. “The Horny female approaches, smelling how open and ready her prey is.” She rose and loomed up between Nancy’s thighs, taking the weight of the one Nancy couldn’t rest on the sofa but only sniffing gently at the inner skin.

Nancy quivered under her, feeling her moisture run down her crotch, wanting to beg now and to hell with the game. Beth grinned at her again, and there was something almost dangerous in her eyes.

They hypnotized Nancy for a moment and Beth was stroking her thighs gently before she even realized it.

“The Horny female soothes her Receptive mate with rhythmic touching, to which the Receptive female instinctively relaxes.”

Nancy panted but felt herself loosen, sinking into the cushions as Beth slowly took possession of her. “The Receptive female . . . needs . . .”

“It is now,” Beth breathed, blowing onto Nancy’s breasts before looking up into her face, “that the sex-crazed Receptive female can be the most dangerous. Her need to mate can control her completely, and even a soft, sweet, yummy-cuddly Receptive can become a voracious, unstoppable sexual machine.”

She leaned down, transfixing Nancy again with her unblinking gaze. Sometimes Beth was like an animal—direct, amoral, beautiful, elusive. Gentle . . .

“At this point,” Beth let each syllable touch Nancy’s skin, “many Horny females lose control of their mates.” Her face came slowly, slowly toward Nancy’s. “Some of them are taken themselves, and eaten.”

Beth waited, a lip’s width from kissing her. “Eaten quickly. Thoroughly. Without pity.” She smiled, feeling Nancy’s desperate trembling.

“Few surviving Horny females have complained.”

Nancy wanted to laugh.

“None. The. Lesssss.” Beth deliberately blew onto Nancy’s lips. “The experienced Horny female keeps control of her mate.” Nancy felt a finger on her mons, gentle, a scout for more. “That is the primal way.”

Nancy whined, quietly, knowing her eyes and her pupils were insanely dilated. She was not playing.

Beth nodded. “She does this,” she turned her head and brought it just a little closer yet, “by waiting until the Receptive female is helpless . . .

“And immobilizing her.” Her head darted in, but to the side. Nancy kissed air, as lips suddenly owned her throat and sucked. The pleasure whipped through her. She screamed thinly and her pelvis thrust out, impaling her pussy on Beth’s waiting fingers.

She felt Beth’s teeth then, and let go. The orgasm hit her full on with no buildup, a tsunami into a drained harbor, and Beth’s hold on her was the only part of reality she kept as her mind washed away.

Nancy was still spasming, still trying to draw Beth into her again, still chained by Beth’s lips. Then she was drifting, safe in Beth’s arms as Beth lay over her, still clothed. She hummed and closed her eyes and felt Beth kiss them. She slept.

She woke to the calming throb of the tub filling, and found Beth’s clothes draped over her. She wanted to cry but lacked the drive. Then Beth, undressed now, was a slim, lovely pillar of ivory next to her, holding out her hand, drawing her to stand. They went to the bathroom wrapped in each other, Beth softly wishing she could have carried her.

In the tub they said nothing, and moved little.

Later, on the sofa, Beth stroked her hair. “I’m glad you watch nature channels so much.”

“Hmm?”

“Instead of those things on GlobalSat about—” Beth stopped and just breathed.

They’d watched the “special encore” last week of GlobalSat’s award-winner about Isle Dormignonne. Its updated segment of the ongoing search for the ones the authorities hadn’t caught spoke of both the anonymous small fry and the truly dangerous ones, the mind controllers like the woman who’d called herself Circe. Nancy had turned away when they showed Mistress Rusalka, and listened only to Beth’s heartbeat until her lover kissed her and moved her hand from her other ear. She hadn’t watched the special the other times it had aired.

Beth rubbed her back now, and Nancy relaxed and let her think. She spoke again.

“I’m glad you watch nature channels instead of the war documentaries.” Nancy moved against her in agreement. “Then you’d have been the Pacific Fleet and I’d have been, like, two bazillion dive bombers or something coming at you.

“Which would be a little much.”

Nancy moved her head lightly against Beth’s breast. “Actually, they were torpedo pl—ouch.

“Well, they were.

“Ouch. All right. Dive bombers.

“Anyway, you need to think tactically. Like a couch potato. It’s all in picking the right bizarre analogy.

“You could be—a U-boat. Sliding up underneath to torpedo me.”

“Torpedos? Feeling phallic tonight, are we?”

She giggled softly as Beth moved her hand across her belly. “That’s it. Ja. Torpedo—los!”

Beth resumed rubbing her back. “Oh, Nance. I love it when you speak Latin.”

11.

They were back to back when Nancy woke in the dark. She’d said nothing to Beth about Cherie having been a slave like her, describing only the afternoon’s dalliance she wished she’d really had.

If she woke Beth, Beth would hold her and listen. But she liked the warmth of the sleeping woman beside her, and it was easy to let Beth sleep, and let herself sink again into remembering what it felt like to obey.

Thinking about it wasn’t as dry and draining as it had been during deprogramming. This wasn’t being eased through each restored memory of enslavement and brainwashing by clinicians trying to break its hold and keep her guilt-free.

This was like watching porn she didn’t have to imagine. She wasn’t sure how to tell Beth that.

She thought about being Dew, instead.

They’d gone out from the Tribe village, skin and minds tingling from the morning sunscreen, following Sweetberry’s wonderful ass as it swayed, leading them to the woods. Some were still half-asleep. Tribeswomen tended to be numb until they were hypnotized with their tasks for the day, so Dew and the others just followed Sweetberry blankly, enjoying the synchronization of their steps, the warm air, and the emptiness of their thoughts.

In a clearing they stopped when Sweetberry did, and she smiled, going to each woman and touching her forehead. When she came to Dew, her touch sent Dew to her knees like the others. When they were all kneeling, Sweetberry instructed them, and they found baskets next to a bush that another group of Tribesisters had brought here.

Gather leaves. It echoed in Dew’s head. Her mind wrapped itself around it. She was too deep in it, as she stepped dreamily from branch to branch, to hear herself and the others murmuring it.

Dew stirred briefly from her trance when she saw one of the other women watching her, her eyes a bit more focused than the others’, but a breeze rustled the foliage around her and it was as though Isle Dormignonne itself whispered to her Gather leaves.

She forgot the woman, and obeyed the breeze.

They filled the baskets and carried them back to upend them onto a growing pile at the edge of the clearing. Dew did not wonder what it was for, or what would be done with the piled leaves. She just got quietly excited to be adding her basketfuls to it without knowing why. It was enough, and it was hot, to know that Tribe willed that she do it, and Sweetberry had told her to, while she knelt in trance.

Later—the sun seemed to glow differently through the trees above—the woman stood beside her, blinking and breathing harder than their sleepy toil called for. She opened her lips to speak.

Dew looked into her eyes and said “Gather leaves.”

The woman’s eyes went utterly blank as she repeated their programming and turned to obey.

Sweetberry freed their minds slightly, later, and the woman came to Dew again. Dew’s mind had room to think, now, and she remembered the woman was called Seashell. She stared at Seashell’s royal-blue panty, tight over her pussy.

“It is wet for you, Tribesister,” Seashell told her, her voice low and shaky with need. “I watched you last night, after the Priestess chose you to dance again. I saw the drumbeat take you and the fire glisten off the droplets that ran down . . . as you swayed and . . .” Seashell reached over and rested her fingertips on Dew’s breast.

Dew sighed, and felt the heat between her legs, and made herself turn away and walk slowly past another tree, away from the others.

“Please.” Seashell began following her, and Dew paused after a bit. Seashell stood against her.

“I need you, Dew. Beautiful Dew. It is as if I am under a Priestess’ spell.” She looked beseechingly into Dew’s eyes. “When Tribe lets me think, I can think of nothing but you.”

Dew looked at her. Seashell seemed to awaken slightly and looked around. “We should . . . Dew, would it not be nicer to go to our sisters as they rest? Before we go back under Sweetberry’s hypnosis? There may be tree spirits here, watching us. Waiting for stray Tribeswomen to bewitch and lure off as captives.”

“Tribal lore says that tree spirits come in the night, Seashell. When we toil together in the warm day, they seldom come. Perhaps they like to see us labor and obey.”

Seashell blinked. “I know. Tribal lore is the only truth, but . . . I am weaker. I have already heard their whisper, calling to me. Promising me, soothing me.” She clenched her fists. “I was with others and they stopped me from walking off to be taken, but they heard nothing.”

Dew nodded, picturing Seashell in thrall to the summons. She might have resisted vaguely before her sisters woke her from the strange trance. “You should go back to the others, Seashell. The tree spirits know your name and they must desire you for their own. Their voices are in you, now.”

Seashell trembled, afraid and tempted. She stepped closer to Dew, cupping her breast. “Yes, that is true, I am marked for them, but—She kissed Dew, and Dew fell into the kiss, pressing against Seashell’s body, warm and slick under the ointment. Dew thrilled at how Seashell’s desire made her Dew’s captive, too aroused to go back to safety.

Pressing her thighs around Dew’s, Seashell looked into her face. “If they call to me, Dew, and they put my will to sleep with their pretty voices, will you protect me? Will you hold me back, until my wits return to me?”

Dew eased her thigh deeper between Seashell’s, and waited until the other woman’s gaze was clear again. “I am just a simple Tribeswoman who obeys. It is Tribal lore that when the tree spirits want someone, their spells can bewitch and soothe those with her, if they wish. Tribesisters who watch the night are put into deep, lovely dreams and forget their duty as the chosen ones are led away.”

She kissed Seashell. The other woman’s eyes widened in dismay, but there was a film of excitement over that. “It is said that they can charm Tribeswomen into a sweet daze and then draw the one they covet unresisting, from their midst. Sometimes those left behind recall moments of submission, words in the spirits’ voices. Others remember nothing but bliss.”

She recited the lore and held Seashell tighter, rubbing herself against the frightened woman. If Seashell really worried about tree spirits, Sweetberry and the others, relaxing and fucking quietly back in the clearing, were probably too numerous for tree spirits to molest, even if their prey were there. But Seashell was under Dew’s spell now, and begged silently to be taken as she stood, or borne down to the ground and pleasured there.

Dew held her, feeling and smelling how wet Seashell was for her. “If the spirits call, I may be put to sleep, too. They may fog my mind and stop my thoughts, and I will know nothing until I am roused. We will both drift into obedient trance, but I will hear and obey only their command to be still.

“How can I resist?”

Seashell shivered now at how coldly Dew explained it, but she was pressing herself against Dew now and losing track of her fear. Dew relented and slid down, suddenly. Seashell’s arms slid off over her shoulders, and she stood paralyzed when Dew kissed her belly and tongued her navel. Dew worked her bikini loose. It fell ignored by Seashell’s feet, as Dew leaned forward to lick the flower gleaming with sweat and need.

Seashell’s labia were bright and puffy, and her clitoris was peeking out too, as lush and moist as the tropical growths around them. Dew smiled as she drew the tip of her tongue along the clipped, matted hair fringing Seashell’s slit, and closed her eyes as she heard her Tribesister hiss.

Seashell said she was wet for Dew, and she might actually think so, but she gushed for the tree spirits now, theirs to take whenever they wanted her. Her body was as aroused as a dancer’s in the throes of Ritual, just to stand here, trembling for their call. Her will was half-gone.

Dew’s smile deepened, and she pushed her tongue slowly between the other girl’s nether lips, savoring the dark taste of her submission. Perhaps Seashell was trying to seduce her into being her protector, as though any Tribeswoman could even think when the tree spirits called. Or some part of Seashell not yet under the strange spell was trying to distract herself with sister-sex.

Her licking seemed to be blurring Seashell’s fears. The other Tribeswoman mewed sweetly and her pussy floated nearer, wooing Dew’s tongue again. Dew felt fingertips on her head, leaned up to stay steady as Seashell mindlessly shifted some of her weight.

The pressure eased and Seashell’s cleft drew away from her before Dew heard it.

“Seeeeeasssshhhheeeelll . . .”

Dew trembled, feeling the power dull her will and her wits. She saw Seashell shake, and focused on how it made the gleam of her juices flicker. She stopped trying to look away from Seashell’s pussy.

Seashell’s pussy was hypnotizing Dew.

“. . . help . . . me . . . plea . . . pleassse . . .”

Her head weighed so much. Dew finally looked up. Seashell was trying to keep her eyes open and looking down at her. She looked so sexy that way, as her eyelids fluttered and drooped and then popped open over her wide, glazing eyes. There seemed to be tears, too, amid the sweat.

“Seeeeeasssshhhheeeelll . . .” It was like a million knowing fingertips over Dew’s skin, taming her more with each stroke. She guessed what the call was doing to Seashell’s mind, as far as she still had one.

“D-Dew?” Her mouth opened but no more came out but her ragged breathing.

“I cannot resist it,” Dew told her, feeling her own knees weaken. “You cannot resist.”

“. . . cannot resist . . . not . . . res . . . ist . . .”

Dew shivered to see Seashell now, straight and expressionless. Her eyes were flat and half-lidded.

“Not resist,” she intoned. “Call. Must obey. Slave. Asleep. Dream. Obey.”

She turned to face the inner forest and began to walk stiffly away to the trees. With an effort, Dew made herself turn her heavy, heavy head, seeing her Tribesister utterly spellbound, walking obediently to her mysterious doom. At some unheard command her hands twitched at her hips and the Tribe bikini floated to the undergrowth.

Seashell never broke stride, her smooth ass heartbreakingly bare as it swayed, step by step. Dew watched and lusted, and when the whisper faded and the girl had vanished likewise, Dew bowed to the ground and rested her head.

She didn’t know she’d gotten back to the others until Sweetberry spoke to her a second time. She stared into the senior Tribesister’s face and tried to remember words.

“Her eyes are strange.” Sweetberry sounded frightened. “Who has seen Seashell?” She held Dew firmly but gently as the whispers came back.

“Others?” asked someone.

“No—Others would have taken both, and likely come for us too.” Sweetberry put her hand on Dew’s cheek. “They put Dew under their spell while they charmed Seashell to obey and go with them.

“Tree spirits.” She looked around, then at Dew. Dew felt her eyes watering. She was remembering pleas, someone who had wanted her. “Do not,” Sweetberry said, and kissed her. “You were in a trance.”

Nancy remembered. Sweetberry had been kind, and made sure someone held and guided her until her head cleared as they fled this place.

But even if Dew had been lost in dreams, Nancy remembered.

12.

Nancy woke insane.

It was a hot madness that she hadn’t known for years, and Beth’s warmth against her just stoked it, made it naughtier. She marveled that her breathing didn’t rouse her lover, that her heartbeat wasn’t making the bed lurch.

She oozed out from under the sheet and stood by the bed, feeling the air on her skin.

When she was younger, sometimes just the thought of rising naked in the dark as if obeying an incubus’ call would keep her in bed, jilling off until quieter dreams reclaimed her. When she did rise, she’d done some elaborate things.

She looked at Beth as she slept, and breathed faster. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she started doing it. She moved in the dark, knowing where things were, and fancied herself possessed, her will captured by a power that didn’t need to see what it wanted her to do.

Not even through her own eyes. She let them close for a moment as she padded silently across the room. Sleepwalking awake. Her nipples stretched yearningly, and she forbade herself to touch them.

She shunned the lights. She didn’t want to wake Beth, but there was an older reason. When she’d played like this before, anything more than dim lamp-glow from another room had broken the spell.

When the match flared, it found her kneeling before the mirror, before the candle she’d found and placed by feel. She gazed at herself, glowing and submissive. She reached for the choker, but as she looked at her neck to imagine its darkness there, she saw Beth behind her in the shadows.

She realized what she wanted, and her heart sped, as her body welcomed her mind to the knowledge. She took the choker after all, and the crystal pendant on its braided cord, but put neither one on.

Carefully she placed the candles, lit from the first, each lit while she knelt. In the shifting light Beth slept on.

Nancy eased the sheet from her, smiling at how Beth’s T-shirt had ridden up above her ribs. She reached forward and rested a hand on Beth ‘s long thigh, and pressed gently. Beth sighed and let herself be rolled onto her back, and Nancy gasped at how slim and vulnerable her girlfriend seemed. Feather-light stroking between Beth’s knees parted them, and Nancy crawled up between them, weightless as a spider. She set the choker and the crystal by Beth’s hip, then moved them nearer the bed’s edge.

She paused then, listening to Beth breathe, imagining the candles’ flickering having a sound like moths’ wings. She saw no gleam of moisture on Beth’s cleft or in the fox fur above it. Beth’s dreams were quieter and cleaner than hers, perhaps.

Nancy leaned down, inhaling her lover’s scent. How different Beth looked, spread nude in candlelight, completely unaware. Utterly trusting.

Peremptory . . . ?

Nancy blinked and remembered.

She kissed Beth’s pussy and began to worship it.

She was gentle, waking it in slow stages, careful not to startle it, coaxing juice and warmth from it. The thighs framing it shook and tensed and loosened. Quiet sounds from Beth as her dreams began to melt started Nancy’s own moisture, and she started to shift her balance to spare a hand to reach back to herself.

Instead she leaned forward, lowered her ass and back, and slid her hands up to hold Beth as she started to writhe, slowly, still held in her dreams. Nancy’s tongue reached deeper, and inside, too, Beth was quivering. Her walls fluttered against Nancy’s tongue, trying to snare it and pull it in, but it ravished them without dallying. Nancy’s nose filled with the scent of Beth’s arousal.

She pulled out and moved along, walking with her lips to find Beth’s clit, kissing it awake and taking it inside.

Beth was crying out softly, and her hands suddenly clenched. One knotted the sheet and the other glanced off, grasping empty air. Beth’s cry sounded like pain but Nancy knew it for pleasure, and she fought the need to stab deeper and harder with her tongue. Everything was different in the firelight, and Nancy was nude between her lover’s thighs, focused on pleasing her and making it last.

She let herself fall into a trance, mesmerized by the ancient senses, letting Beth’s soft pressure and divine smell keep her licking and kissing.

Fingertips woke her, and the need in the voice that finally moaned, “Ohhhh, Nancy—!”

Nancy looked up into Beth’s eyes, glazed with confusion, taking in the candles and perhaps seeing what lit Nancy’s eyes now. She smiled deliberately back into Beth’s eyes and reared up where she knelt.

She bowed and very lightly, reverently, kissed Beth’s pussy.

Bowing more deeply, she put her tongue to Beth’s anus, licking the ridges of puckered skin until Beth’s spasm pulled her asscheeks tighter.

Nancy slid off the bed and stepped to the side, standing over Beth for a moment, showing herself golden in the light. She knelt, looking up now at Beth.

“Did that please you?”

Beth blinked. “Nance, are you k . . .?” She stopped and breathed, and looked again at the candles, letting Nancy see her look.

“It pleased me . . . it was like nothing else I’ve ever felt.”

Nancy lowered her head for a moment and looked up. “This girl lives to please.”

“Does this girl have a name?”

Nancy swallowed the gasp. “This girl is who she is told to be.”

Beth turned to recline on her side, staring at Nancy, and Nancy settled onto her heels, keeping her back straight and her thighs spread.

“Is this girl a gift for me?”

Nancy trembled. “This girl is yours. She asks only to beg that you own her.”

“Does this girl know the term ‘Mistress’?” Beth’s tone was even.

Nancy looked up, and tried to swallow. “This girl knows it. Using it is a privilege this girl has not yet been given.”

Beth looked at her. “Beautiful slavegirls come in dreams. I love a girl who is no dream, and one kiss from her is sweeter than the touch of the prettiest dream-slave.”

Nancy nodded. “This girl hopes she will be no dream. She will be the girl you love, and she will be any girl you wish.

“She will not be your only girl unless you wish it.”

Beth’s eyebrows rose.

“This girl is yours. She lives only to please. She knows that being your slave is the one thing better than freedom.” Nancy felt her voice wavering and breathed deeply.

“This girl is already enslaved. Please take her.” She reached up and held the choker. “Please. She asks that with all her heart.

“Let her first words to her Mistress be ‘thank you.’”

Beth took her hand with the choker. “I don’t—” She stopped. “Taking a slave is not something to do lightly. Or quickly.

“Or at—” she started to look for the clock.

“This girl had to ask now,” Nancy panted. “She couldn’t . . .”

Beth looked back at her and didn’t let go of her hand. “This girl’s need can only seep out of her in a dream?” she whispered.

Nancy nodded gratefully.

Beth looked down, and Nancy felt herself hoping. Beth hadn’t said No, and this long without it meant she might not entirely want to.

Beth had always tried to show Nancy that she didn’t think of her as a former sex slave. That what had happened to her was something of Nancy’ s that Beth would never explore uninvited.

Now she looked at the collar Nancy offered to wear for her.

“To own—” She stopped. Then she noticed the crystal.

“Is that what it looks like? To hypnotize?”

“Yes.” Nancy barely whispered it.

Beth looked at her. “To change my mind in case I say no?”

Nancy shook her head. “Never. It is to bind this girl’s obedience, if you say yes.”

Beth blinked and swallowed.

“You really want this?”

Nancy could only nod again. Her lips moved but no sound came.

Beth held her eyes and rose to sit upright, so that Nancy looked even higher at her. Beth kept hold of her hand with the collar. She took the crystal and put it in Nancy’s hand, and held it all with hers.

“The girl will listen,” she said, and Nancy bowed. “Take these and set them before the candle on the dresser. Go to each candle and put it out—leave this one.”

Nancy looked up and Beth touched her face. “The girl’s plea was heard. I know she spoke from her heart and I will listen. I cannot promise to take her.” Beth breathed.

“But I would never let anyone else wear my collar.”

She leaned down and kissed Nancy and Nancy shook, straining up to her. “Good girl. Obey now—the candles, and then come to bed.”

Nancy walked carefully, setting down the choker and the crystal, suddenly not sure whether she was relieved or mortified, afraid to hope for a morning that would find her on her knees. She worked her way around the room until only the pillar candle on the bedside table lit Beth, watching her.

Beth let her kneel and lean in to kiss her pussy, then softly bade her climb up beside her. She curled up into Beth and Beth held her tight, rubbing her back until she slept.

She woke to Beth lying over her, waiting. Beth’s arms still held her and for a few moments she thought about the incredibly hot dream she’d had about adoring Beth’s pussy and begging to become her slavegirl.

Beth’s taste on her mouth and the look in Beth’s eyes oriented her.

At least Beth was still here.

Beth sensed some of this and very deliberately kissed her.

“I love you.

“You were a slave once, not by your choice. Whenever I think of that I hate the people that did it to you—not just for making a toy out of your body but for making a tool out of this—wonderful—mind.”

Beth closed her eyes and Nancy felt her shake, tightly. She opened them. “Nancy, I won’t make you a slave again. I’ll care for you, I’ ll—no. Please, don’t ever ask me.

“I wanted to kill them. I still do. I won’t be them.”

Nancy felt herself floating. Beth kissed her again and held tighter.

“Last night was beautiful, Nancy. I have never been trusted that deeply. No one has ever offered me that much. I want to have you, Nancy, but I don’t want to own you. I—”

Nancy kissed her and Beth softened into it. Nancy just lay there. Beth was crediting her with something better, something she should have felt.

Last night was not about trust. Nancy realized she had prayed for Beth to collar her and rename her and fuck her raw, with nothing but lust lighting her eyes. She should be waking up in Beth’s crotch with her spread legs tied to the bed with hose.

Beth wasn’t even going to blame her.

Despair drugged her for the rest of the morning. She and Beth agreed over coffee that it had just been one of those things, a masturbation fantasy that took wing in the dark. They agreed things like that happened, not just to women who’d spent time in a brainwashing complex. Beth wasn’t going to hint heavily that Nancy recontact her therapists, nor would she do that herself behind Nancy’s back.

Beth spent the day, and they even went out for dinner. When Beth left, after they’d made love again, they kissed, and Beth smiled into her eyes.

Nancy waited an hour and a half, measuring Beth’s likeliest cycle of afterthought and worry, that might bring her back. She gave it another half-hour before she stripped and lit the candles.

13.

After the last disobedient girls were subdued, life on Mystery Queen became even smoother.

“Awaken, Nancy.”

Nancy opened her eyes and smiled at Grace, slim in the tight Queen Lines uniform. “There. All alert and refreshed after our session!” Grace’s perkiness had a strange weight that seemed to paralyze Nancy’s usual distaste for it.

“Isn’t it a pretty day today? So much nicer than yesterday.”

Nancy followed Grace’s hand as it swept across the high blue sky, and almost felt grateful. It just seemed natural to accept everything, food and fun and peace of mind and sparkling weather, as something the firm, commanding women in blue doled out to her.

“Umm . . . yesterday?” She tried to remember.

“Yes, there was a squall. We had to keep all you girls below all day, for indoor activities.”

“Oh, yes. It was fun. Thank you, Grace.” Nancy vaguely thought of a room where she and some other women knelt while something dim pulsed over and over and over. She stopped remembering before it made her forget why she was trying to.

“It’s all right not to remember, Nancy. I’ve noticed this happens to you a lot.”

“I’m not stupid,” Nancy said, uncomfortable at disagreeing.

“Of course not,” Grace said, reaching to stroke her hair. “You’re very smart. Smart women make the best hypnotic subjects, and you’re one of the best ones we have aboard this trip. So you must be smart.”

“Umm . . .” It excited Nancy to please the QLR woman, and especially with her openness to being hypnotized. She felt a little embarrassed as she reached for her cleft and stroked herself through the lycra, but not much. She looked around and saw some other women in bikinis, passengers like her, and it hit her that they’d all been in one of the upper-deck cabins watching a video. They looked as dazed as she felt, and her embarrassment faded when she saw a couple of them touching their laps too.

“Nancy.”

She straightened and attended. “Yes, Grace.”

“What will you do now?”

Nancy tried to think. Lately, she’d known what to do and where to go onboard without even having to think, but none of what she thought of—going to sunbathe, playing in the special mineral pool, spending some time being touched and soothed at the spa—had the compulsive quality that usually told her what she must do.

“Grace? Uh—what do I want to do now?”

“It’s a free period, Nancy. Is there anything you want to do?”

“My mind’s a b . . . huuhh a blank . . .” Saying that about her mind felt like taking three very experienced fingers into her cunt. She sagged, and wondered if she’d just crumple at Grace’s feet. “I m-mean I can’t think—of anything . . .” Nancy clasped her hands behind her to keep from ravishing herself in front of Grace. Even if talking about how emptyheaded she was feeling made her even hotter and more embarrassed than her tentative masturbation a moment ago.

The avid way Grace stared at her as she squirmed wasn’t helping.

“Here’s an idea, Nancy. Why not go for a walk along the deck here? I’ m sure it will help you relax, and I’m also sure you’ll find your way back in time for the next activity.”

“Thanks, Grace!” Nancy’s gratitude was even more intense. “Umm—which way should I walk?” She kept the tremble out of her voice. It was almost scary how hard it was to decide something that simple. And how easy it was to need Grace to tell her.

“That way.” Grace pointed aft, and then stepped away to greet another sleepy passenger. Nancy followed the point as though she still saw Grace’s strong tanned arm and made her way toward Mystery Queen’s stern.

She passed another guest walking the other way in a slow, almost liquid motion, her eyes lidded and unseeing. She looked sedated and fucked, and Nancy felt a pang of envy. She nearly stopped the woman, not sure why—to ask what had done that to her, just to be part of the woman’s moist morning—but she had no will to act. Grace’s arm and words still glowed in her mind. She walked aft.

As she came to where the rail curved inward to the stern she found several women standing at it, separated by several yards and seeming unaware of each other. Each of them was gazing up at the sky. She saw someone in a chair under an awning near the stern, and as she stepped nearer, she saw the seated woman gesture, and heard a soft word come across the deck.

One of the passengers at the rail lowered her head and stepped back from it, then turned and began to walk forward, her hips swaying and her whole body loose, barely able to keep her eyes open. The other women kept gazing obliviously up into the blue yonder.

Nancy was excited to realize that the woman in the chair now putting aside a book and rising to meet her was the hypnotist, Rusalka. Nancy had never seen her away from the stage where she and so many others—every woman aboard, by now?—had fallen into Rusalka’s eyes and submitted each night.

Feeling that gaze on her, hoping she was pretty enough in her blue bikini and sheen of sunscreen, Nancy stopped. She crossed her open hands before her, palms in, the reverence gesture they’d all learned under Rusalka’s influence. Something stopped her from kneeling. Just.

“Mistress Rusalka?” she whispered.

“Hello, Nancy.”

“Yes, Mistress Rusalka. You—know me?” Out of the drowsy legion of women she enthralled each evening? Nancy’s head was spinning.

“Of course I do, Nancy. I appreciate susceptible subjects, and you’re one of the most receptive women I’ve ever had the deep pleasure of putting into trance.” The hypnotist’s voice was low and smooth. It felt intimate, almost a caress, even over the sound system, and now, in person, up close, the intimacy was igniting a fierce need in Nancy.

Nancy shivered, too, to be praised again on her vulnerability to hypnosis. It was even more arousing to know that as she had melted in pleasure to give in to Rusalka’s power, it had pleased the hypnotist to take her.

“Lovely eyes with a weak will behind them are so erotic.” Rusalka looked her over, approvingly. “Arms down now and by your sides, Nancy—good girl.

“Out for a walk?”

“Yes, Mistress Rusalka, I . . .” Nancy was unable to think, now. Just looking at Rusalka brightened her pussy and darkened her brain.

“I obey only Rusalka. Rusalka thinks for me. I sleep and obey for Rusalka.”

Fingers snapped. Nancy blinked awake but she was still deliciously drowsy.

“I’m sorry, Mistress Rusalka. I just drifted off in your hypnotic gaze.” She felt prouder, not sorry.

“I love your shows, Mistress Rusalka. I really . . . seeing the women sleep and obey, I . . .” She closed her eyes and snapped them open, to see Rusalka as much as possible. “It’s so erotic, Mistress Rusalka. When I masturbate, I—”

Nancy blushed. Rusalka smiled openly. “It’s so arousing to be hypnotized, Mistress Rusalka. I . . . I have to p-play with myself afterward. Seeing other women surrender to you, the way it feels when you do audience participation and so many of us are trapped with our hands clasped or . . .”

She felt hot. “Mistress Rusalka?”

“That’s so complex to say, my child.” The hypnotist’s eyes bored into her. “You may address me more simply.

“’Mistress’ will do.”

“Yes, Mistress!” Nancy found herself on her knees, now. She looked up at the other woman, and felt something tip inside her.

“I think I’m your slave now, Mistress. You asked me for my willpower and I gave it to you. You helped me forget to want it back. Each time you entrance me or let me watch while you entrance someone else just takes me deeper.”

Rusalka stepped slowly forward until she stood over Nancy, never freeing her gaze.

“You’re very deep now, child. So deep there is no longer anything above. So deep there is no freedom to go back to. If I offered you your will you would not see it. You would not want it.”

“I would not want it, Mistress.” Nancy obeyed the slight emphasis without really being aware of it.

“Look into my eyes, slave. Here under the sky you are mine and you desire only to become more mine.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Nancy heard the feeling seep out of her voice, and felt the wetness seeping from her pussy as Rusalka pushed her further into submission. Rusalka kept speaking, holding Nancy’s eyes and awareness captive as the sky blazed above her, and Nancy stopped hearing her. She was already too deep in trance to know she’d reached for her cleft again and begun slowly, steadily milking it to keep herself hot and suggestible while Rusalka programmed her.

“I obey only Rusalka. Rusalka thinks for me. I sleep and obey for Rusalka.”

Then she was at the rail, the polished wood warm on her belly, the metal hot on her thighs. Rusalka was next to her, caressing Nancy’s ass through her bikini bottom, avoiding any contact with the sunscreen that kept Nancy tame. She was a little dizzy as she watched the more distant ocean loom blue and still, while the water nearby flowed majestically past as Mystery Queen plowed through it. She heard the soft roar of the water, felt her Mistress’ hand, knew her Mistress’ will was even stronger over her own.

“Beautiful.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Nancy didn’t know if Rusalka meant the sea, or Nancy’ s body, or how easily she put Nancy in thrall. She just agreed with her Mistress.

“Look down, slave.”

Nancy saw the frothing water rushing by.

“Will you jump for me?”

Nancy twitched against the hand on her bottom. Wanting it. “Please command me, Mistress,” she choked out, wanting so very badly to please Rusalka this way. Her life worth so little and yet all she had to show her devotion, as it thrashed out of her here in the empty Pacific while she watched safety and her Mistress sail away before exhaustion sank her.

She felt Rusalka’s fingers once, gently, against the front of her bikini and orgasmed helplessly, thumping against the rail. Rusalka’s hands were on both sides of the bikini and her breath was close and warm in Nancy’s ear.

“I know you would, my child. It pleases me. You please me.” Nancy wept a little.

“Relax now, child. Look up now. See?” Her arm was by Nancy’s face as she stood so wonderfully close, and like Grace’s before, it took and aimed Nancy’s gaze. “See that cloud? Small and faint, barely visible—like your mind, Nancy. It is only by my will that you can see it.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Nancy breathed, seeing it. She thought about the other women beside her, each one focused on her special cloud by Rusalka ‘s voice. She marveled that the hypnotist could find a special one to bind the will of each woman she was enslaving.

“It is my will, child, that you see and think of nothing else until I bid you waken and leave. Do you understand?”

“I will obey,” Nancy whispered, already letting her mind become as bland and translucent as the bit of cirrus Mistress had instructed her to see.

There was a point in her rapture when she thought she heard steps, and a woman’s soft voice: “omigod—Mistress Rusalka—you know who I am?” But it meant nothing to her.

She waited, hypnotized, waiting luxuriously for the next person to tweak her will.

14.

Beth had gone away again. Nancy had gotten an interview.

Ms Wing looked at the form-fit lace between the lapels of Nancy’s tailored blazer. Nancy’s skirt was short enough that she looked like either an office toy or an executive so powerful she could enjoy being yearned for as a pastime between meetings. Nancy did not stand like an executive.

Nancy had not been told to sit, and she presented herself, legs together. She’d stopped wondering whether the skirt was short enough to show her stocking tops. Ms Wing seemed to sense where they were. Her eyes had been there the last time she’d smiled.

Nancy’s head spun that she was here, that she’d even thought of it. At what it would mean for her if she were accepted.

This interview had come through connections Nancy had never thought she ‘d use, and some people she knew would never look at her the same way again.

They might look at her as the staff here had, when she’d taken off the trenchcoat. It was the sort of stare she’d gotten when she’d left Cherie’s hotel, and this time she felt even more like a pricey whore, visiting an executive who wanted her afternoon eased.

Ms Wing looked at her. “I never like to use the word ‘overqualified,’ Ms Sheppard, but I’d expect someone with this background to apply for a junior management spot. Maybe more. A personal assistant . . .” Her gaze dipped again to Nancy’s chest. Perhaps she wondered whether Nancy wore anything under the lace bodysuit. Nancy wondered when she’d ask to see.

“I understand that your requirement for an assistant was something unique, Ma’am.”

Ms Wing smiled. “That’s a clever word . . . Nancy. But we know it’s not the most precise.”

The first-naming made Nancy feel petted. “I’ve directed people for a while, Ma’am. But I’m really at my best when I focus on serving one superior, implementing her plans and pursuing her goals.” She straightened, letting the pleasure move her slightly as she stood.

“What about your goals?” Ms Wing looked up from Nancy’s thighs, and Nancy felt warm there, even on the bare skin between her stockings and the bodysuit.

“I would have no goals but hers.” Nancy looked at her levelly. “And any others she set for me.”

Ms Wing leaned forward a bit, interested. Nancy moved her thighs a little, without needing to imagine why.

“I researched this before taking up your time, Ma’am. I’ve heard the rumors, that harassment suit that was settled. I think she was a silly bitch, but I’m sorry she wasted your time. I saw the kind of leader you are.”

Nancy swallowed. “I saw—I am—the kind of follower you need.

“You have many employees, Ma’am. What you are entitled to is a personal slave.”

Ms Wing looked at her.

“Someone who works for you. Not for herself. Who has no other purpose but carrying out your will, whether it’s making you coffee to your taste, recording a confidential meeting, or staying in the office for three days straight to conduct a file search.”

Ms Wing said nothing. She didn’t look again at Nancy’s body.

Nancy licked her lips. “Someone who will obey any command without question. Who understands her life is an instrument of yours.”

“Very interesting, Nancy. No other applicant has volunteered to become my slave.” Ms Wing looked at Nancy’s legs again. “Or give up her will to become my robot.”

“I thought it was a selling point, Ma’am. No one else is really willing to obey you.”

“But you are.” Ms Wing said it quite calmly.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“What orders of mine do you think you’d be obeying, Nancy?”

Nancy’s heart suddenly raced.

“’Any and all’ is easy to say, Ma’am. My focus will be doing your will. I don’t think there are limits.”

“What about right and wrong, Nancy?”

Nancy thought about standing in one of the QLR indoctrination chambers, reciting the new truths. She felt even more naked and degraded here in this boardroom-courtesan clothing, saying it with no hypnotic spirals in sight.

“Right is obedience to you, Ma’am. Wrong is disobedience. They are also whatever you tell me they are, and you may redefine them at any time.”

“Is breaking the law wrong, Nancy?”

“Not if you tell me to, Ma’am.” She tried not to grind her thighs together so obviously. “Or if I need to do it to obey you, and it won’t implicate you or thwart your goals.”

Ms Wing let out a sudden breath, barely audible. Now she sat back.

“Remove your jacket. Set it on the other chair there.” Nancy obeyed. “Come here.” Nancy walked to where Ms Wing pointed. The woman looked at her as she stood, hands by her sides. She admired Nancy in the form-fitting lace for a while.

Her nipples were stiff under the lace but hard to see. But Nancy knew her aureoles, large and dark, were visible through it.

“Tell me what you want to do, now, Nancy. If I gave you permission.”

Nancy looked at her. “I want to crawl to you, Ma’am. And beg to service you with my mouth.”

Ms Wing didn’t blink, and the wonderful mortification gave Nancy gooseflesh. “As any personal slave would.

“But you didn’t say you wanted to lick me. Only to plead for it.”

Nancy moved her hand by her hem, not wanting to hide her nerves. She wanted the predator to take her scent. “A slave waits on her mistress’ pleasure, Ma’am. She does not impose it.”

“What if I just kept you as decoration? Flaunting those legs in even shorter skirts at meetings, by my side.

“Yes. At meetings. I might just have you stand there. We both know you’d feel nude but you’d be better than nude. It would distract, it would tease, it would show them how much power I had.”

Ms Wing smiled. “Some would envy me my hold over you. Some might envy you. Or be terrified that I could turn them into you.” She savored that. Nancy tried not to pant.

“And you would really be the slave you seemed, and everyone who saw that would know it. It would drive them insane.

“Take off your skirt.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Nancy undid it and put it over the jacket, feeling the air on her hips and upper thighs. She was panting now.

“Or if you were told to deliver yourself as an evening’s gift to someone I wanted softened up or placated for a deal.” It wasn’t a question. It was an image, and Nancy let herself see it. She pictured meeting their eyes the next day, by her mistress’ hand in the boardroom, the only one standing.

“I would be as high-quality as any other gift you gave, Ma’am. I know how to please but I can be trained to do more.”

Ms Wing’s eyes filmed for a moment, and Nancy foresaw how she might be trained.

“I might tell you to befriend someone. In my organization, in a competitor’s. Elsewhere. To seduce her. Would you?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Or him?”

“As you commanded me to, Ma’am.”

“And if that was all to betray them? To set them up for blackmail, for public disgrace, to destroy their life?”

Nancy closed her eyes. When she opened them she realized she’d been moving her hips, slightly, slowly, without knowing it. Ms Wing had been watching her gently fuck the air.

“I would cherish the chance to be your weapon, Ma’am. Not just your tool.”

Ms Wing studied the edges of the high-cut bodysuit where they arced over Nancy’s hips.

“What will that do to your personal life?”

Nancy smiled very deeply. “A slave would have none, Ma’am. Or need one. Or want one.”

“Not what I meant.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. I’m on my way out of a relationship now.” Seeing the question, Nancy shook her head, and didn’t think about Beth in detail. She hadn’t told her about this interview. Beth had been the one who’d passed on the rumors about Ms Wing and her assistants.

Ms Wing looked at her and drew breath, and Nancy could almost feel the carpet on her stockinged knees as she crawled to worship.

“I think you would be a very obedient slave, Nancy. I wish I could own you.” Ms Wing turned back to her desk. Nancy’s heart fell but she stayed as she was, submissively at attention in lace and nylon.

“There was no place on your resume to say that you’d been brainwashed and enslaved on Isle Dormignonne.” She smiled. “Arguably it could go under special skills.

“No obligation to say so, either. But you can’t be surprised that I’d know this.”

Nancy closed her eyes. “No, Ma’am.” Using the honorific was effortless. Even if Ms Wing didn’t want her as a slave, she was still a dominant whose charisma filled the room.

“You had to try. Just as I had to hear what you would say.” Ms Wing’s smile grew a little lighter. “And I don’t imagine this would have gone even this far in many other offices.

“But I can’t have someone serving me who’s already been that kind of slave. Many reasons—for one, I don’t want anyone who may be watching QLR survivors finding you in my chains and thinking I’m one of them.”

She looked at Nancy. “I don’t presume to know what’s in that lovely head, Nancy. Which is another reason I have to decline. What looks like erotic resolve can be post-traumatic stress waiting to explode. But I won’t judge you.

“And I’ll tell you this. I do wish I could keep you.”

Nancy looked at her and genuflected. “Thank you, Ma’am. That does . . .”

“Stand.”

Ms Wing stepped over and wrapped Nancy’s skirt around her again, deftly avoiding any caress. She took Nancy’s jacket and had a last look at Nancy’s breasts before she put it on.

Nancy thought about begging, but realized she’d found an edge of debasement that stopped feeling good.

Could I have changed her mind, if she’d let me between her legs?

But with a shudder she saw that wouldn’t have mattered. Ms Wing’s self-control was far beyond hers. They’d controlled Nancy’s mind through her pussy, but not even cunnilingus from the most perfectly-programmed drone would sway Ms Wing. She might even be sparing Nancy more humiliation.

Ms Wing walked her to the elevators personally, past the other applicants, and chatted to her about the company as if to make the others think she were a visitor and not a reject.

At the elevator, she took Nancy’s arm. “I see no need to pursue this.” Since it never happened.

“Thank you, Ma’am. I understand.”

“I think I do, too.”

As the door started to close, Nancy looked at her and saw it was true. There was a darkness in Ms Wing’s eyes that no woman had shown her since her training on Dormignonne.

She’d liked what she’d seen. Later she’d damn her own wisdom at letting Nancy go, and she knew it now.

The doors closed as Nancy saw, clearly, how life would have been as a slave here.

Now she wanted to cry.

15.

The bar, trendy and trop as it was, felt like a refuge. Her corporate-slut outfit didn’t stand out as much, and the activity let a lone woman drift by herself. Nancy wasn’t sure she wanted to be by herself, but it seemed easier than anything else.

She thought again about calling Ms Wing, privately, and offering herself. No strings, no job, just obedience and her mouth and whatever else the executive wanted to use.

Nancy smiled to herself—shopping for her own mistress, and being turned down. In the world where Queen Lines had flourished, where she’d been chosen and softened and programmed, there were people who’d pay to possess her.

One who had. She wondered if they were spending even this much effort to reenslave her.

She swallowed some of her gin and tonic and waited for it to work. She wondered how it would feel to walk back into her apartment still belonging to herself. The unreality was still with her, the spell that had cushioned her from the moment she’d seen the reference to Ms Wing’s unique opening. She realized she hadn’t done anything irrevocable—quit her job, moved to an efficiency flat closer to Ms Wing’s office, or had SLAVE tattooed somewhere sensitive.

It was knowing that she herself hadn’t really believed in it that depressed her. Ms Wing had told her it never happened, and that would be the only command of Ms Wing’s that Nancy would get to obey.

Going home and dancing naked in false firelight and harmless oil seemed so empty now. She wondered what she’d do if someone pretty, or someone with a cruel enough smile, bought her a drink.

No one did, and she felt insulated. She sipped more of the G&T she’d bought herself, and girlwatched.

How long would each of these women be able to hold out on a Queen Lines cruise, before the hypnotists and the drugs took control? A lissome woman with deep-brown skin gazed out at the room as mildly as a deer, and Nancy perversely imagined her as the last in her cabin to resist, watching her more willful and assertive roommates soften and obey before her, falling sooner and deeper into the group trance.

They were free here, and as safe as anyone was in the outside world. Nancy recalled when she was walking around like that, and on the top of her mind was a button, ready to be pushed. It had turned off Nancy Sheppard, and activated flawlessly obedient export lot 602 with a couple of words that meant nothing, and everything.

Nancy remembered, now, the moment in her drone processing when they’d made the words part of her. They’d programmed her with what she’d need to do when she heard and succumbed to them, like every other woman in the sequence before and after her, but now they gave her what made her unique—her sale number, and the nonsense that would reduce her to nothing more.

She wondered if anyone had been triggered in a public place like this, the puppet of a quiet voice that walked her out past her friends, already forgetting the excuse that had ruled her tongue. Not even wanting to ask for help.

No. QLR was risk-averse enough to make sure its livestock was alone before putting the yoke back on. They would have been safe enough, here, even sitting alone, even with a cell phone.

A party of friends moved away en masse to migrate somewhere for dinner, letting Nancy see some of the nearer tables they’d obscured. A group of women caught her eye, gathered on and around a semicircular banquette set against the rising wall of the walkway to the upper level of the bar. She aimed her fancy at them, seeing them mass-hypnotized under a shade tree at midday by a Tribal priestess.

She sat up straighter. The body language felt so real. There was one speaking to another, and the others were looking at her . . . Nancy recognized the devotion in the way they sat, held themselves, oriented on the woman who spoke even when they looked away. She had recreated their universes, and she was at the center for each of them. They belonged to her, and she’d made them want to.

Nancy closed her eyes, took a drink, and looked again.

It was like an optical illusion. Now they were just a few attractive women enjoying what the wittiest or wisest was saying. No one else paid more than admiring attention to them, either.

One of the women stood and turned to walk to the bar, not far from where Nancy perched. She looked frankly at Nancy’s long stretch of thigh and smiled at her, and then ordered drinks Nancy couldn’t make out. The nearest bartender had them done very quickly, and she flashed the woman a smile that vanished before the woman had turned back to her table.

Nancy watched the group as she returned. She kept looking at the one she thought was in control, wanting to see from here how she kept each of her women docile, invisibly leashed. She laughed at how hard she was trying—the other women weren’t sitting dazed, or repeating some mantra in unison to deepen themselves. Like the conspiracy proven because no evidence at all was a little too good to be true. Hypnotic control so thorough it couldn’t be seen. Riiiight.

She adapted and tried to see them sitting in a row on stage aboard Mystery Queen waiting to be hypnotized, the feisty volunteers in the “before” picture. Still able to smile without being told why.

The woman who seemed to hold them turned now, glancing across Nancy as she looked up at the drink-order girl.

Mistress Rusalka.

Nancy closed her eyes again and opened them. The woman had turned again, but now Nancy could see the contours of her face. It took her back to the first night, seeing the hypnotist from the distance of what had seemed the safety of the shadowed audience.

She caught herself before she slipped from the seat. It was like waking, and falling asleep.

Was Rusalka silently stalking her? Hunting down women who thought they ‘d been freed?

No. Rusalka had better reason to run than Nancy did. It was impossible to say what she’d be doing here, and with her harem (or only part of it, oh god) but it might be wise of her to be in a place more public than her pursuers would think to look.

Nancy could tell them. She had that much power over the woman who’d made her powerless. Unless Rusalka had brainwashed some of the people hunting her, or had branded the minds of her followers with the command to slaughter and die to guard her escape, she could be netted here if someone called the police.

Nancy looked over and signaled the bartender.

The woman leaned toward her, looking more sincerely attentive than she had been to Rusalka’s slave. She looked smart in her white blouse and smartly-cut black vest, pretty but careful not to outshine the women she served.

“That woman over there.” Nancy didn’t point or look, but she didn’t have to. The bartender’s eyes narrowed.

“Something wrong there. I told Joanie to ignore them and let them order here.

“She was a little weird about it but she didn’t go back. She wanted to.” The bartender looked down, suddenly embarrassed.

Nancy looked past her at the phone, then away from it.

“I’d like to buy her a drink.”

The bartender looked up. “You can take it to her.” She was curious, and it tempered the hesitant contempt. Nancy moistened to see Mistress Rusalka’s polarizing effect. The bartender hated her without knowing why, and instinctively protected Joanie, wherever she was, who had already started to submit with the same lack of reason.

A free woman would stand with the bartender. A free woman who was using her brain would ask the bartender if she had a gun, while she dialed.

Nancy told the bartender what drink she wanted, and tipped her well.

Then she stepped down and took the drink to the table. It seemed to cool in her hand, and she knew she was growing hotter. She was a volunteer again, sleepwalking to the stage. Rusalka hadn’t chosen her, but this still felt wonderful. She enjoyed how the lace gently abused her nipples. If she had to be dressed when she came to Rusalka, she was happy to be dressed like this.

Rusalka looked up at her, and Nancy didn’t feel the jolt she expected, even looking directly into her eyes.

Of course not. I was deprogrammed. Trained back out of the obedience and sexual thrall she held me in. She has no power over me.

The other women followed their mistress’ gaze, as though her interest had commandeered theirs for a moment. Their unified gaze fell over Nancy like a net and she stopped. They broke lock in a synchronized eyeblink, and Nancy realized no one but her had even seen it happen. No one else in here sensed Rusalka’s power.

No one else in here had been conquered by it.

Nancy made herself move closer, more slowly, holding the drink with both hands.

A woman near Rusalka, not next to her, rose gracefully from her seat as though drawn to her feet by an invisible dance partner, obeying no signal Nancy could see.

Rusalka nodded once. Nancy took the empty chair, and placed the goblet on the table like an offering.

They were near enough to speak. Nancy knew it was Rusalka’s to begin, and waited, feeling the warmth of the slavewomen’s awareness on her as she sat in their midst.

Rusalka didn’t look at the drink. “What is your name?”

The voice was the same. Nancy gasped to know the danger was there, even in this safe place.

She thought Nancy and wanted to say Dew and export lot 602 and as each one sounded in her mind, her mind liquefied a little more. None of them would mean anything to this woman, who had crushed and replaced so many minds before and after she’d charmed Nancy’s away.

“I don’t know, anymore,” Nancy told her, and realized she hadn’t looked away.

Rusalka smiled. “You need to drink.”

Nancy saw the goblet as Rusalka did now. She wondered what the hypnotist thought she might be. There was no need to entrap her—Rusalka already had a price on her head. But a QLR brainwasher, of all people, wouldn’t accept a drink from a strange woman, however enthralled she seemed to be.

Nodding, she lifted the pina colada, meeting Rusalka’s gaze and keeping it as she drank. I shouldn’t mix gin and rum. She drank half before setting it down, licking her lips at the sweetness.

They stared into each other’s eyes, and Nancy lost track of the time as Rusalka waited to see what the drink would do to her. She wasn’t hypnotizing Nancy, not yet. Nancy was just relaxed.

The woman beside Rusalka on the banquette smiled and moved aside, and Nancy saw the hypnotist nod again. She rose, with a headrush that owed nothing to what she’d drunk, and settled onto the leather beside her enslaver. She felt the warmth of the girl Rusalka had willed to move, and squirmed for a moment, trying to find if she’d juiced, sitting so near her mistress.

Rusalka looked into her face without smiling. Nancy leaned to her, and felt the others tense. Rusalka smiled now, fearlessly, knowing how close she’d let someone come without having her searched. Nancy realized she could love someone like this, and would never have the chance.

She kissed Rusalka, and let the woman taste her.

Only after that did the hypnotist take hold of her, still looking at her. “Yes, child. I understand you.”

Nancy whispered. “I obey only Rusalka. Rusalka thinks for me. I sleep and obey for Rusalka.”

Rusalka kissed her again, and licked her lips.

“Yes. Flavored with coconut.” She looked approvingly up at one of her slaves. Her other slaves. “So clever.” She smiled again.

“Exquisite.”