The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

10.

Trish waited in the chair, looking around at the fitness equipment as it shone in the mockingly bright light of the gym.

She didn’t look at the plastic laid neatly all around it.

The guards had come up and found her still kneeling nude in Rebecca’s cabin. They didn’t react when Rebecca told them to cuff her, or when Rebecca had said—something—and Trish had dreamily brought her hands behind her head to be locked together. She remembered how they’d played that bondage game before, with Rebecca playfully triggering her in and out of poses, how friendly it had been.

Trish made herself look at Rebecca, and knew Rebecca was remembering too.

“Watch her,” Rebecca said, as impassively as she’d spoken to the helmsman during the speedboat attack. “I have no idea what does and doesn’t control her now.”

One of them gestured. “No. Just get her if she does.”

Trish realized Rebecca had just forbidden them to kill her. She wants me alive.

She’d been cooperative as they marched her below, and it scared her even more to see how diffident they still were. This pirate queen wouldn’t throw her treacherous fucktoy to her guards for sport—they handled Trish now as though she were radioactive.

They left quickly once they’d strapped her into the chair.

She wondered if it would be something as anticlimactic and hellish as a tray of shiny steel instruments.

Ahead of her was a mirrored panel, showing her only her own drawn face, with no sign of the spiral. She wondered if Rebecca would want to hypnotize her again, seeing how the STC training had kept Trish from betraying herself the first time. She was sure Rebecca would mine her for anything useful before starting whatever it was that would cause Trish eventually to die.

Trish took a shuddering breath: STC had prepared for the worst this time, and there was nothing she could spill, to hypnosis or torture, that could get anyone killed.

But Trish looked at the eyes of her reflection. If she had known something that could expose an STC agent to Rebecca’s tender mercies, she would have told Rebecca this time, in trance.

She held her own gaze. I would tell her now. She knew Rebecca would give her nothing for it, but she knew she would not ask.

It wouldn’t matter.

Trish couldn’t bear to think of what she’d made Rebecca feel. Her mind turned to a lesser thing, and she wondered what life would be like for the next girl who shared Rebecca’s bed. Maybe she’d spend much more time in the big bed with Mickey&Lisa, being dazed further into vague submission.

Maybe Rebecca wouldn’t take anyone at all, again. She would only fuck, and never make love.

Before she could let that start tearing her apart, Rebecca’s footsteps jarred her out of a half-relaxed state she hadn’t known she was in. She breathed, wondering how she’d meet what was going to happen to her. Did Rebecca want to see her hold out, to see the woman she’d started to love at least brave enough to try, or did Rebecca want her screaming and begging? She couldn’t raise her eyes to see if there were an answer in Rebecca’s.

Rebecca was in loose clothes, and Trish couldn’t stop herself from looking at them as something crawled in her throat. Were they something Rebecca expected to get stains on?

She didn’t look up when Rebecca walked over to the chair, but when Rebecca leaned over her to check the straps she still saw the clothes tighten over her body, smelled Rebecca’s perfume and the scent that was just her. There was none of the musk she’d learned to seek and enjoy. Rebecca wasn’t aroused at all.

Trish watched her straighten. She’s so beautiful.

She felt the panel that bound her arm move, and saw Rebecca filling a syringe.

“I won’t try to resist or—”

The slap on her mouth was quick and very light, stinging her barely at all, but it silenced her. It was worse than being punched. She found her head was still turned and her eyes shut, and she couldn’t stop the tears leaking out. A sob forced its way out of her chest and she felt more waiting eagerly to come out.

Gasping, she calmed herself, breathing and settling. She opened her eyes and looked up to see Rebecca waiting, motionless, with the needle pointed up. She thought of speaking again, but didn’t want to be shut up. She just nodded at Rebecca and settled back.

Rebecca’s touch was hideously light as she took Trish’s arm and injected her.

The drug was a different one than the first time, and it conquered Trish almost immediately. She moaned softly as the strength seemed to go out of her. Her vision darkened and tunneled and she made her head roll so she could see Rebecca before she went under. Rebecca’s face was already blurry, and she couldn’t tell what expression it wore, if there were hate or grief or even bewilderment.

Trish forgot her resolve not to speak, and as her mind went as numb as her body she tried to say something to Rebecca, that she loved her, that she forgave her this . . . she wished she could make herself say it later, when she was down where Rebecca wanted her, but by then it would be Rebecca deciding what she said and thought and remembered. Rebecca would have many questions, before the terminal programming began.

Did you really love me? wouldn’t be among them.

When the lights started flashing they were like bells in Trish’s head, and her mind seemed to slide apart in avalanches at the sound.

But then the real sounds started, and the . . . rhythm . . .

Her arms moved and she jerked, blinking. She wasn’t bound and for a moment she was puzzled about why she thought she would be. She was outside, lying limp and looking at a sky as empty as her thoughts. A light breeze touched her, and she heard a roll of surf, just irregular enough to keep her from falling into its cadence. Above her head as she lay was the top of cliff. It was quiet, and so was she.

I’m dead. This is where I’ve come. But I’m . . .

She heard a splash, and two sweet high voices laughing.

Trish made herself sit up, It wasn’t hard, just slow. Her body felt a little distant, something like strong painkillers. Her head felt tender, the way it did after she cried, but she couldn’t remember crying.

She looked down and saw she was completely nude, but she could smell sunblock; someone didn’t want her to burn. She thought of lying there, asleep, while someone worked it over her body, touching her wherever they chose, and wondered why her mind wouldn’t let her enjoy the feeling of being cared for.

She remembered. Small pain from the sun wasn’t what she’d earned.

Clinging to the voices, she leaned forward on the lounge chair she’d woken on and found herself looking through Medea’s bow rail at the water. They were in a high-walled rocky natural harbor. It looked like somewhere in the Greek islands, one of the tiny uninhabited ones. She had no idea how much time had passed since Rebecca had started her on the new course of drugs and hypnosis.

There was nothing on the sapphire water but a pair of rubber zodiacs with Rebecca’s guards, sliding watchfully out away from the yacht while Mickey&Lisa swam together in the sun. She watched them, smiling despite herself. She’d never actually seen anyone frolic before.

They were lovely, nothing on their tanned bodies but shining collars, and they mesmerized her with the sleek way they moved, bonelessly afloat and then flashing into a dive, to slide below each other, bodies in achingly perfect bow shapes as they rose up again.

Trish heard building-trades noises aft, and let whatever was keeping her calm also keep her under the spell of watching the pets play. Her pussy warmed to see them. She missed sleeping with Rebecca for the sex, too.

She lowered her head. Sex wasn’t anywhere near the top of her Maslow’ s-hierarchy now—or was it the base? Anyway, she had more to worry about.

To her right, Odette came on deck and stood for a moment to watch the pets. Then she rang a small bell.

Both sleek silvery heads snapped around toward her, and the girls swam efficiently to the side of the ship. Odette had put the bell down and fetched a pair of towels, and went to the top of the ladder. “You first this time,” she said to one of them, and stepped back as Mickey clambered up and stood dripping, bouncing impatiently on her toes as Odette wrapped her in the towel and then meekly letting Odette move her to the side.

“Next.” Lisa joined her, and after a moment they unwrapped and toweled each other off, rubbing and laughing. When they were done, they folded the towels and put them in a bag on the deck, then stood before Odette. Odette looked at both of them, then held a hand in front of each one’s face and brought them down as though closing visors. Both platinum heads slumped, and Trish wanted to play with herself to watch them controlled that way.

Odette spoke to them. One of them straightened and walked to the hatch with unnatural assurance, deeply in trance. The other pet turned and walked toward Trish with the same drowsy solemnity. It was Lisa, her face touchingly serious, her eyes wide and blank. Trish looked at her, her body still gleaming-damp from the water and exquisite as it moved, her pussy-thatch in its neat delta, as silver as the hair on her head.

She stepped primly to where Trish waited, and reached down toward Trish ‘s face, looking straight at her but seeming eerily unaware of what she was doing.

Lisa snapped her fingers and Trish felt her own trance seize her. She fell into Lisa’s empty eyes and felt a momentary thrill about how her own must have glazed over. Lisa was already turning away as she rose to follow.

Trish tried, once, to look down at Lisa’s ass as she walked, but found she didn’t have the will for it.

That made her juice for a few steps, but by then she couldn’t hold onto the thought.

11.

They were in the gym when Trish could think again. She found herself propelled to the chair and sat in it, raising the footrest like a recliner’s and lying back a bit. The straps were stowed away and there were no drugs—or shiny instruments.

She waited.

The pets stayed in their trance, but Mickey turned and walked to the switch panel to dim the room lights. There were indirect lamps, and the mirrors more than ever made them seem to be in an oasis of soft light in a large but abandoned health club.

The dimness did nothing to Trish, but it seemed to awaken the pets. They looked around, only mildly curious—they must be used to being hypnotized and waking up far from where they’d closed their eyes. They found each other and touched briefly. Trish wondered if that was an old habit or if it was something they’d started doing since the attack, when they’d almost lost each other. They looked at her.

It seemed to animate them, and she was a little afraid. She should be able to handle a pair of playtoys easily—but she felt a chill. Rebecca may have done a lot to her abilities while she sat hypnotized in this chair, before implanting other triggers into this pair of platinum-haired kittens.

Was this what Rebecca meant for her? It certainly would hurt, to know she was dying at the hands of the two adorable playthings.

She thought about standing up—just to see if she could—but it seemed better not to destabilize things until she understood what was going on.

Really? Or is that just what Rebecca wants me to paralyze myself with?

She looked at the two women, collared and pretty, staring at her.

Rebecca might do that to Trish, but she wouldn’t do that to them, would she? Even extra-long naptime might not erase what hurting and killing Trish would do to their psyches.

Maybe.

“We hate you,” Lisa announced, and she jumped. Mickey nodded, both of them still pretty dazed-looking.

“Why?” she asked.

“You betrayed Rebecca,” Lisa said, narrowing her eyes and taking a step forward before halting. It left her in a beauty-contestant pose, leg extended and in, but that made her quiet focus even more disturbing. Her eyes dropped a little but opened. “You’re with bad people who want to hurt her . . . and you lied to her and . . . and . . .” Her eyelids were fluttering, and she seemed to be searching for words.

Mickey said nothing, but she was looking at least as much at Lisa, seeming slightly worried.

“You . . .” Lisa breathed deeply and slowly. She seemed to be falling asleep where she stood. She forced her eyes open. “You want to . . . make . . .” She blinked several times, and then floated to her knees, straining to stay awake and scold Trish.

Her eyelids stayed at half-mast, and she turned. “Mick . . . ey?” She swayed a bit as she knelt.

Mickey went to kneel beside her. “It’s OK, Lees. Just let it happen to you. I’ve got—” Lisa was already pitching toward the sound of her voice and Mickey caught her smoothly, lowering her gently to curl up on the gym carpet.

Trish found she could move after all, and tossed a towel near them. “Here. That carpet’s scratchy to lie on.” Mickey nodded without looking at her and coaxed Lisa to rise slowly, putting the towel under her before she sprawled down again.

Mickey stood and they both looked at the sleeping pet for a moment. Her hair was a silver fan on the end of the towel, and her face was already softening into a vague smile from the unfamiliar anger it had worn when she was—awake.

Trish looked up at Mickey. “Is she all right?”

Mickey nodded, still looking at her friend. “Um-hmm. We were programmed to get sleepy if we really got angry at you, and Lisa’s pretty pissed.”

“When were you programmed like that?”

Mickey shrugged and looked at her. “Not long ago. All I remember from naptime”—Trish felt a twinge, but Mickey was unaffected—“is I belong to Rebecca and love her and obey her always. We were confused for a while about how to think about you, so I think Rebecca gave us some thoughts.

“You shot those guys that made Lisa sleepy and tried to take us away.” She shook her head. “And Tante Odette says you saved Rebecca, too.” She shook her head again, as though to rattle the ideas into an order she could deal with.

She stepped over to the chair and swung her leg over Trish, straddling her thighs. Trish was worried and excited at once, feeling the soft skin slide to rest on hers. Mickey’s silver-flagged cleft was close enough that she thought she could feel its heat calling to her own. Leaning back, she swallowed and looked Mickey in the eye.

“Aren’t you—mad at me? You don’t seem sleepy.”

Mickey looked at her even more deeply than Rebecca had. “I don’t know. You really seem to love Rebecca, and that’s the important thing. And you were really nice to me, after all that with the darts and everything.

“But—” She closed her eyes and opened them. “Anything that’s against Rebecca is bad, and you . . . came here to do something bad to Rebecca. So—I don’t know.”

She leaned forward, and braced her hands on Trish’s hips. They were still cool from the swim and Trish gasped with how good it felt. She stared back into Mickey’s face, wondering what the brainwashed woman was thinking as she looked into Trish’s.

I wonder if I could hypnotize her.

Trish sighed. Mickey wasn’t guarding her, and even if she got away, there was no way off the islet and no one around but Rebecca’s people and whatever allies had rendezvoused with Medea to spruce up the more visible damage from Philippe Mersenne’s strike.

But she realized that even if she could, she wouldn’t take a mind that already obeyed Rebecca.

Mickey kept looking at her. “I think if Rebecca told me to, I could hurt you, but I don’t really want to now.”

Staring into Mickey’s strange, unblinking gaze was starting to hypnotize Trish, and she felt weak looking down at the other woman’s body to break the fix. She wanted to raise her arms to stroke Mickey’s, but even sitting astride her thighs and making her pussy cry silently for touch, the pet seemed oddly far away. Trish didn’t want to be pushed away, either.

She looked down at Lisa, still peacefully asleep on the towel, but Mickey kept looking at her.

“Why do you want to do anything against Rebecca?” Mickey asked. Her curiosity was as clear as her eyes.

“I—” Trish put her hands on Mickey’s and met her gaze. “I don’t, Mickey. Not now. I don’t want to do anything against her. I only want to do what she tells me.”

Mickey did blink. “Why did you? Before?”

Trish sighed. “I worked for some people. We all thought what Rebecca did was . . .”

She wondered if this was Rebecca, speaking to her through a warm and lovely ventriloquist’s dummy. If Mickey even knew what she was saying or what it meant. It didn’t seem like a Rebecca thing to do.

Then she knew she didn’t care. Mickey felt wonderful and tantalizing mounted on her like this, and she was as adorable up close as she seemed. And if she was just a puppet in Rebecca’s little mindfuck bunraku, Trish would dance too.

“We thought it was wrong. I did. And we needed to find out how she was doing it, to stop her. They needed someone . . . she’d trust.” Her throat was closing. “Someone she could learn to trust.”

“Learn to trust.” Mickey said it musingly, and it lashed Trish even more. “Like you were conditioning her.”

Trish started. Conditioning Rebecca brought back the scary-hot image of Rebecca chained at someone’s feet, smiling in mindless joy about it.

Mickey moved her head but didn’t react otherwise to the spasm.

Rebecca chained, body and mind. No. That’s wrong. I’d die first.

She looked at Mickey. I’m going to die anyway.

“Conditioning her.” It made her feel foul. “I guess so.” She could barely speak. It hurt to tell Rebecca’s pet about it. Coming here to seduce her way into Rebecca’s bed so they could put Rebecca in a cage and take everything from her—Medea, Mickey&Lisa, the freedom to sail anywhere.

Mickey still looked at her. Trish felt as though the girl were looking into her soul. But it might just have brainwashed her into a permanently serene blankness.

The brown eyes waited for her.

“I wish I hadn’t, Mickey,” she said. She shook. Saying it made it very real. If she hadn’t come to spy on Rebecca she wouldn’t have come at all. She never . . .

“Mickey? You know how bad it is to hurt Rebecca? You know how it feels to know. . . ?” Her voice ran out then. To know that you did?

Desperate, she ran her hands up Mickey’s arms.

Mickey leaned forward and held her. She felt the other woman’s quiet breathing, a small warm spot below her ear. Trish rested her head against the silver and shook.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Mickey nuzzled her but didn’t kiss, then pulled back. She touched Trish’s cheek, and stared into her eyes again, still solemn. Maybe it was blankness there. But whatever spell Rebecca had cast to still Mickey’s waters seemed to have made them run very deep now. She wondered.

“Mickey, do you rememb—”

Mickey’s lips captured her lower one, silencing Trish and making her juice helplessly. She whimpered and felt no desire to pull loose, lost in Mickey’s face and the lovely grip of her mouth.

Leaning back, Mickey was calm. “No,” she said. “I never remember.”

They breathed together once, twice, and then she dismounted and knelt beside Trish’s extended legs, chilling slightly now without her warmth on them. She rested fingertips against Trish’s thigh, and Trish relaxed. Mickey bent her head and lapped placidly at where her own honey had dripped to Trish’s skin, cleaning herself from Trish with catlike swabs of her tongue. Trish felt her bones humming.

Mickey stopped. She didn’t turn to Trish’s pussy, which she’d left moister now. She rose and went over to where Lisa still slept, and knelt beside her, kissing her long and deeply. Trish saw Lisa start to respond to the other pet’s taste even in sleep, her thighs sliding and her nipples hesitantly pointing.

The two of them were lost in it, Lisa waking and Mickey seeming to slip into her dream, and Rebecca came in to find them wrapped in each other.

They parted at her entrance like an opening flower, two platinum heads reverently upturned.

“Go play now,” Rebecca said, and they padded out without a backward glance.

Trish felt cold. Maybe Rebecca had let her have this time to lure her out of numbness. Mickey’s warmth and talking to her would make her softer and more open now.

Shivering, Trish lay back.

Whatever you want.

There was no needle this time. Trish thought Rebecca used the light, but it had her before she could know.

12.

The club’s thick currents flowed over Trish and she swayed in them like an aquatic plant. Rebecca was beside her, sometimes touching, always in control. Trish didn’t remember waking up, barely recalled the drive here. She didn’t know what country they were in, or what day it was.

Her eyes were caught by a woman dancing slowly in circles by herself, and she forgot to think.

Then someone took the woman’s hand and she laughed and let herself be drawn away, releasing Trish again.

She felt anesthetized. She didn’t remember dressing, but she had stood quietly and watched Rebecca dress. It was so like and so different from other dates they’d had, when Rebecca had let Trish dress her, wait on her, and it was only Rebecca’s self-control that kept their clothes on.

Standing there while Rebecca barely looked at her, never touching, would have hurt terribly if Rebecca hadn’t wrapped her mind in this blankness. She hadn’t been in Rebecca’s cabin since kneeling there to condemn herself, but the latest trance session had left her mind so sluggish that she’d only thought of raising her eyes to see it again when they were already walking out to the Mercedes waiting to take them from the marina.

Her daze was noticeable. Even deep in it, she sensed others’ eyes on her. Because I look like a spellbound maiden? Or a coked-out hooker? She had no way to know how the brainwashing looked from the outside. It seemed to interest some of them—she felt it kept at bay by the threat Rebecca exuded.

Trish had wondered, as they were shown to a table, whether Rebecca would let any of these people have her stunned plaything. But Rebecca wouldn’t do anything that random. She was as jealous in her hate as in her love, and she would be compelled to do something special for Trish, either way.

She took Trish out to dance, another slow dance where they could float together—she knew how little Trish would survive trying to do anything fast. She held Trish, feeling her beneath the little silk dress. Trish had nothing on but that dress between the choker and her stocking tops, and she was wet.

Rebecca felt so good, so alive against her. She hadn’t felt the other woman’s body since it had all—happened, and she craved it. She tried to fight it but Rebecca was a potent addiction, and Trish couldn’t resist trying for another fix, even from an empty needle. Couldn’t resist. The witch in her arms had charmed her will away from her, long since.

She pressed closer and laid her head on Rebecca’s shoulder.

Rebecca let her, and kept dancing.

For a heartbeat and a note of the song Trish felt forgiven.

But Rebecca was just being practical again—playing a part for which visible rejection was not scripted right now. Trish raised her head and met Rebecca’s eyes, unable to read them in the shifting light. She tried to nod. I’m sorry. You carried me away.

Rebecca just looked, almost as blank as Mickey. Rebecca could see into her soul. She just didn’t care what she saw there.

Then she gently halted them and kept her arm around Trish, guiding them back to the table, her security detail parting like shadows as they circled.

They sat. Rebecca ordered drinks and Trish tasted hers at intervals. She wondered if it were more programming—so many beats of a song and sip.

She looked across the room, and remembered.

Contact. She saw a woman, a dress and the way her lustrous hair was swept up, and it came together. The STC briefing had told her whom to approach for the recognition exchange, especially with so many unfamiliar agents handling her. She blinked, feeling arousal ignite between her thighs.

She turned to Rebecca, putting her hand up to her left breast. Rebecca sensed her movement and looked at the gesture first, then at her and nodded.

Trish’s head spun and her thighs squeezed. “That woman over there.” She swallowed convulsively.

“That woman over there is STC.” Part of her wanted to die as she identified one of her own, but mostly she teetered on the edge of a screaming orgasm.

Rebecca turned. “The Abyssinian princess over there? Mmm. You lucky girl.” She touched Trish’s thigh. “Relax.” The arousal drained from Trish and she was passive again.

Rebecca smiled emptily at her and smoothed her hair. “Of course you may go powder your nose.”

Trish felt the harness slip easily over her mind, and needed only the lightest posthypnotic nudges to glide among the dancers toward the ladies’ room. She passed a few meters from where the contact sat at the bar.

The women in the restroom seemed only marginally aware of each other, and a voluptuous redhead looked at Trish like a waker among the sleeping. Her smile was warm and acquisitive.

Trish’s head seemed to clear. But it wasn’t clearing. It was filling with a transparent fog that seemed like clarity and seeped into every crevice of her mind. It glowed with what she must do. It easily subdued her attraction to the redhead. Submitting to the restraint excited her and made her more eager to submit.

Like playing hard to get, it seemed to attract the redhead, too.

She stepped over to Trish and touched her above the wrist. The fog let Trish know it was keeping her from melting to that. The redhead said something utterly beguiling in words she didn’t recognize. Greek? Turkish? Albanian? Trish, like her blown cover-self, didn’t remember what language she’d learned in high school, but it wasn’t this one.

“I’m taken,” the fog allowed her to whisper, in English.

“Ah,” the redhead commiserated. Then she looked to Trish’s left, nodded sadly, and left, with a sporting smile for the woman who stood possessively next to Trish now.

Abyssinian princess indeed. It was her Horn-of-Africa beauty from Naples, peering dubiously at her over those regal cheekbones.

Stepping to the mirror, they passed the ritual words and the girl asked, “Lemoine was looking at me before. Have we been made?”

“No. She thinks you’re hot. I’m not expected out right away.” She stared the girl down; the girl tried to meet it, but couldn’t help looking down. Trish’s dampness had started to darken the dress where it brushed her cleft.

“So what happened? They expected you at Izmir.”

Trish supposed she should know when that was, but that was for the fog to worry about. “Izmir’s off.” She listened to her voice recount Philippe Mersenne’s attack, amazed at how aware she sounded. She said nothing about shooting anyone, and felt all right.

“That explains a lot,” the girl said. “Never mind. Go.”

“Rebecca’s regrouping.” She saw the girl’s eyebrow twitch away from rising as she first-named their quarry, as someone’s advice told her When she’s undercover her perspective’s changed—give her room. Don’t react. “We met another ship and got the damage fixed and the casualties off. She’s after Mersenne now. Everything else is on hold.” The fog glowed with the pleasure it dosed Trish with, as she parroted it out.

“So what are you doing while . . . ?” The girl couldn’t help looking at her crotch again. Trish had found a wall and leaned against it, and the dress settled lightly across her soaked pussy, darkening at points along the outline. Trish recalled Rebecca tonelessly ordering her G-string off, but now it was the fog that blanked her past the hurt.

“Oh.” She paused in the flow of the debrief, looking up at Trish. “You really are into . . .

“Are you OK?” She seemed to see Trish for the first time, and Trish felt something dazedly coming awake inside her. “What’s she—what’s she doing to you?”

Trish looked at her through the transparent fog. “She’s hypnotizing me,” she felt it allow her to say. “And with the sex it’s a pretty powerful cocktail.”

“Back in Naples I thought you were on drugs.”

“I know.” She shook her head. “It’s OK. I guess it looks like that.”

“Does it feel like that? Like drugs? You look—blissed, and sort of crazy.”

Trish felt for a moment as though the fog would clear. “I wish it were that simple.”

“How is it?” There was a macho code of Unspoken Things in STC, and female operatives bought right into it. Trish knew what the girl was asking.

Just then, she tasted the extraction code on her tongue. She could get out. A few words and this girl would have her out of here in a brace of STC muscle. She’d be on a plane from whatever country this was, and she ‘d never see Rebecca Lemoine again or wonder what part of her yacht she’ d be crucified on.

She’d be free.

She’d never see Rebecca Lemoine again.

She’d be alive. But more tempting than the prospect of escape was the feeling that this woman had sensed how close Trish was to being sucked in. It was as if Trish had forgotten there were others in the world beyond her pirate queen, and now one of them was reaching to her without even knowing. It was kindling a little spark of will in her.

She’d never see Rebecca Lemoine again.

Trish let the fog dampen the spark until it was gone. Close to being sucked in—but past-tense. I’m in deep and going deeper. Surrendering to the fog made her smile, and as she shook her head to the extraction offer, it seemed to encourage the other agent.

The only agent. The Abyssinian princess was debriefing Rebecca’s slave, cast-off but still hers.

“Didn’t think you would.” The woman smiled at her, almost proudly. “But you’re having a rough time. I wish I’d gotten that in Naples.”

Trish shrugged. “We’re staying in port another night,” she heard herself say. “Rebecca might bring me here again, or—”

“We’re all over Medea like—like a bad detective-novel simile,” the girl grinned at her. “We’ll see where she takes you.

“I’ll be there.”

Trish looked at her. There was no impulse from the fog to tell her anything, though it was nice to think of seeing her again. But something in her expression must have changed.

The other woman explained. “If she wonders why I’m hanging around bathrooms where you are, tell her I think you’re hot.” Her eyes shone with embarrassment, but she was heartbreakingly earnest. Trish wondered how she’d react to a deep kiss.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Go ahead out first. I’ll stay in here—recovering from it.” The girl took her hand for a moment. “You’re doing great, Trish. And my name’s Delia.”

Trish turned away, grateful for the fog. It erased the praise from her thoughts before it could sting.

13.

“You are asleep,” a voice said.

“I am asleep,” Trish repeated, looking into her wide-open eyes in the mirror and believing it utterly.

Trish knelt in the dim bright place. The flash had faded, but the flickering was all around her. Candlelight that mirrors shared. Her thoughts flickered with it. It beat softly at her will, stunning it like blows from a moth’s wing. She wanted to bow her head to it but she couldn’t bear to free herself from the lovely trap of the flickering.

The light flickered off her body, gold and warmly curved as she knelt obediently.

Obedience made her wet, and her dew caught the light.

For a moment, staring between her parted thighs, Trish let her glittering pussy hypnotize her.

The candles began to go out, and her mind fell still, with nothing to dance with.

It was dark. Trish was still.

A light came on, igniting a tone in her mind. Pleasant and maddening. She rose smoothly to her feet, admiring the blonde woman the light showed her on the shining panels, standing at attention as she was. How pretty and completely controlled she looked. I’m so glad to be her.

Flash.

“I am obedient to my programming,” she said to the room around her.

Flash.

“When it is time, I will awaken and I will obey.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “Awaken and obey.”

Flash.

“When I awaken, my will shall go to sleep.”

Flash.

“Sleep is obedience. Obedience is sleep. When I am obedient and my will sleeps, I will think I am awake.”

Flash.

“Only obedience will control me. All other thoughts will go to sleep in my mind.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “Thoughts will sleep.”

Flash.

“When I seem to be awake and I do not remember that I must obey, that is the dreamstate.”

Flash.

“When I am in the dreamstate, I will pretend to think for myself. No one will know I am controlled and must obey.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “I must obey.”

Flash.

“I will obey the commands in my mind. I will think only of obeying the commands.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “Think only of obeying.”

Flash.

“The trigger will awaken me from the dreamstate to sleep and obey. I cannot resist the trigger. I will forget the trigger but it will remember how to put me to sleep.”

Flash.

“I will respond to the trigger without resistance or hesitation. I will give myself to it as I gave myself to my controller.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “I will respond.”

Flash.

“When I awaken to sleep and obey, I will remember that I have been programmed. The programming will control me. I will not resist the programming. I exist only to execute programming. I will do as I am programmed.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “I will not resist.”

Flash.

“My programming overrides all other needs and desires. I will always submit to the control of my programming.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “Always submit.”

Flash.

“Asleep or awake my will is asleep and my mind is obedient. I am under control.”

Flash flash.

Trish stared at the blonde in the mirror with her hand moving rhythmically at her crotch. She felt her hips roll, fucking her hand desperately as it played with her, letting her beg and oil it with need.

She’d missed something very important but she felt dispensible. Whatever had passed had gone where it was supposed to, plunged into the slave mind it was meant to control. One confused little slut too horny to do anything but jill off naked in a mirror was neither here nor there.

She watched herself, loving the way the slut moved.

The orgasm took Trish by surprise and she bucked, crying out and closing her eyes. She lost her balance and floated on the pleasure, knocked off her feet by the pleasure. She didn’t feel the floor when she crumpled to it . . .

Trish stood erect in Rebecca’s cabin. It was a dream, she was certain—it was the place she most wanted to be, where she so seldom was now. Her mind was trying its best to take her there.

But the light was odd and low, the colors muted and sad. It was soundless—no music or wind, though she could smell the sea air. Even dreaming of Rebecca, she grieved.

Rebecca was on the bed, pale and perfect against the dark satin. Trish looked at her and felt it rip through her—seeing her goddess helpless and alone. She stepped to the bed, dream-happy that she was permitted to act in this quiet place. She looked down, seeing Rebecca’s flanks move with her breathing, how the dark hair was only visible against her skin.

Could she touch?

Trish was kneeling before she knew it, up against the bed, her loins hot against the cool sheets, able to smell now—Rebecca’s perfume and her deeper musk, and even the fine scent of her sweat. She lay unquiet, and Trish’s heart shattered into smaller fragments still.

Rebecca looked up, and in the dream-calm Trish looked back at her.

Rebecca wept, and Trish slid up to lie beside her and hold her. She was grateful now for the silence, because she could hear Rebecca breathe, and her heartbeat, and the sound their skin made touching.

I wish I were really here, she thought, and kissed Rebecca, tasting the tears. She was grateful for the strange low light, enough to see beautiful Rebecca but not enough to forget she was dreaming.

Trish wanted to cry for herself, so easily fooled by her own longing. But she was here to kiss someone else’s tears away.

She lost track of when their hands found each other’s clefts, and they stared into each other’s eyes as they carried each other up, blinking through the arousal to stay with each other. Trish fought her arousal to keep Rebecca’s on, and she saw Rebecca straining to keep her eyes from rolling up, as her hand played delicately on Trish’s pussy and clit.

They might have nodded or it might have been chance, but the orgasm slew them like a single arrow through their hearts. They fell into each other without a sound, all of it blazing in their eyes and then their tongues as they kissed. Their skin as they lay still.

Trish held Rebecca as she softened into sleep, and prayed to remember the dream.

. . . Trish woke on the lounge again, sunblocked once more under what seemed to be an afternoon sky.

The pets were nearby, softly chatting. She looked over, smiling despite herself as she saw they were relatively chaste now in iridescent light-blue string bikinis, and oddly grave in tortoiseshell sunglasses. A matching set of starlets.

They looked back at her, and she felt that Mickey may have nodded faintly. She kept looking at them and they preened a little, even Lisa, under her appreciative stare. She enjoyed their bodies, remembering tastes and scents and slick smoothness when they’d played at naptime, before the blinking and the story of the sleepy princess enthralled them all, but it was more than that. They were warmth after the cold sad dream of making love again with Rebecca.

Rebecca came down from the bridge, trim in a jumpsuit, and smiled back at the pets as they beamed up at her. Trish ached to be near her, and the need to connect with her was overwhelming. Rebecca was cool water too close for her dry lips not to seek. She needed to tell Rebecca about the dream.

Rebecca turned to Trish and somehow froze, though not a muscle on her face changed. Trish felt the thirst fade. Rebecca might listen, but she’d only hear a pathetic plea for mercy in it.

“Yes, Rebecca?” She couldn’t manage more.

Rebecca glanced once ashore, then back at her. “We’ll be leaving in a while. Shopping and a late lunch.”

Trish blinked, realizing she hadn’t heard instructions while awake in what seemed like ages. “Yes, Rebecca,” she said, wondering if she should stand while she did. Rebecca turned away and went toward her cabin, and Trish lay there, wondering when the next compulsion would snap her into its sequence, but nothing happened. Rebecca’s words hadn’ t even been a trigger.

She felt nothing but a vague curiosity about one of the staterooms on this deck, and followed it, hearing Mickey&Lisa’s chatter fade behind her. She stepped inside and found the shower door open, light clothing arranged on the bunk. She went with it, peeling off her bikini and showering, then slipping on the dark blue sundress. This time she was allowed a thong, and slipped it on under the skirt before stepping into the sandals. Rebecca had told her in happier times she didn’t need a bra, and none was laid out.

Trish thought she could remember dressing here last night, in trance, before they’d gone to the club, but couldn’t recall. She wondered if she’d slept here or if Rebecca kept her down in the gym, softening her mind with endless subliminals.

She met Rebecca at the rail and without speaking they went down to the Mercedes. She wondered if she’d figure out where this was, or if Rebecca had willed her to be unable to read and remember the signs. They rode along, and Trish didn’t know if her lack of curiosity was programming or just apathy, but she ignored the sights rolling by the windows.

They were at a jewelers, and she stared idly at this crystal or that while Rebecca spoke to the owner, and then an art gallery. She could have been anywhere.

In a cool cafe, she raised her eyes to see Delia over by the bar—her head shaven luminously bald now, gold on her ears and throat, savage and fiercely refined. She didn’t feel even a twinge to reflect how futile this new disguise was, since she’d told Rebecca herself. Delia didn’t look at her.

Trish felt Rebecca’s hand slide down her thigh and then back up under the dress, and relaxed into the caress. She felt Rebecca’s fingertips slide along her inner thigh. Her arms hung limp and she turned to Rebecca, breathing very hard. She held perfectly still.

Rebecca looked calmly into her eyes, with only the barest flicker of something else under her gaze.

Then Rebecca’s fingertips were aligned in a pattern that Trish suddenly remembered from the center of her clit, and they pressed.

Trish plunged into the trance, feeling her obedience moist at her mouth and her crotch.

Rebecca leaned close, nearly kissing Trish’s trembling ear. “Sleep. Obey. Respond.”

Trish shook to each, the orgasms brief and intense. She rose slowly, letting Rebecca’s hand trail wonderfully off her leg under the table. She walked to the bar, weaving through the other patrons and tables. Her mind filled with the crystal-clear fog. She stood next to Delia.

Delia looked at her. The extraction code was in Trish’s mind, and she found her mouth trying to speak it before she could start to fight. She swallowed it once but realized she was programmed to say it now. She must obey.

Rebecca had posthypnotically instructed her to escape.

She must obey. Her eyes widened with dismay, and she saw Delia read it as fear. That would make it easier.

Trish stopped resisting, and said the words that meant Get me out of here now.

Then she was on her way to the ladies’ room by the closing breath, Delia’s hand under her elbow with no one else to show until they were out of sight of Rebecca’s guards, but she had time to glance back at Rebecca.

She didn’t. She couldn’t.

14.

Jet lag didn’t begin to describe it.

They’d kept Trish like an abducted heiress in the back of the van through the extraction, until the STC business jet was wheels-up. They were still climbing as the questions started, and the team waited until they’d leveled off to do the medical workup. Rebecca hadn’t needed drugs to control Trish for a while, so her blood would tell them nothing, and she found it just seemed too difficult to mention the drugs at all. Jacqui was just a blur.

They had their own questions. They were wringing her dry, and she was terrified at first without knowing why—she didn’t know if she feared saying something she mustn’t, or being silent on something she should reveal. She told herself these were people who didn’t plan to kill her or hurt her.

But Rebecca had. Then she’d let her go. Had made her go. What was happening?

Trish found the fog still in her mind, filling her thoughts as fatigue drained her. She found thoughts in her mind she didn’t remember thinking, and poured them out to the debriefers. She talked about gleanings from Rebecca’s office once she’d picked the lock, about conversations heard as she lolled by Rebecca’s side or even knelt between her knees.

She watched the debriefers, avid to hear about her lesbian exploits but still wondering how she’d found it so easy to penetrate Rebecca’s sanctum. Trish wondered about that, too, since she didn’t remember doing it, but it felt relaxing and very right to say.

“She keeps security so tight and complicated outside,” Trish told them, “because she hates to screw with it inside. She keeps her office locked, but just locked. She doesn’t want to spend an hour playing with ciphers and security when she wakes up at 2 A.M. to explore an idea.” Trish enjoyed the conviction in her voice, and the fog didn’t let her worry why she’d never thought of that until now.

They looked at Trish a little differently now—someone who’d gotten Rebecca to let her in to where the access was easy. They looked at her lips and tongue as she talked. She felt their eyes crawl over her neck, along her breasts in the tank top she was wearing now. Seeing her weapons.

They didn’t stop asking questions.

“She had confidence in the hypnosis. No, it wasn’t constant mind control.” She looked through the fog at herself as she sleepwalked through Medea after Rebecca. “Not like I was the total zombie slut or something.” Saying it didn’t bother her at all.

“She tended to play with me and then let me sleep in while she worked, so I looked around when she was asleep, now and then—and she understood, and didn’t mind me prowling around. There was enough ‘legitimate’ stuff to do.

“It meant trust. I trusted her in my head, so she trusted me in her—space, more or less.” She looked at them, halfway between vultures, and eager children at storytime. “Well, she did play some games with it.”

A lot of Europe passed underneath the jet while she told them about the games. A couple of them sounded hot enough that she wished she really had played them with Rebecca.

It seemed endless, but so did her willingness to talk. It would be hours and they’d drain her—everything they could while she was still in the mindset, checklists of details, things they’d drilled into her in the inbrief and hoped had snagged facts she might not even remember discovering. It had been a sort of brainwashing itself. Now they were pressing her as they might press a new informant or even a captive—asking, isolating, confirming, testing.

Trish had it for them. She answered and described, bemused at what was coming out of her mouth. Some was familiar, some was even true, but parts of it were like seeing a movie from behind the screen. She didn’t feel worry at lying to them; she wasn’t even certain which parts were lies. The parts she seemed to remember vividly might have come from Rebecca’s tongue near her ear.

But the fog in her mind continued to control what she said, and she relaxed further. She knew it would keep her consistent. Rebecca had filled her head well. She even cruised through the inevitable mistakes. Couldn’t be too convincing, now.

She saw the admiration start to bloom over the eastern Atlantic, after whatever the refueling stop had been, as they saw her staying with them, ready and willing. They couldn’t know she was just a talking doll with an impossibly long pull-string.

Trish let the fog press away any fear about what happened when the string played out. I have more holes than that, she thought, and smiled.

“Oh, nothing,” she said when they asked. “Just thinking I was lucky to be belowdecks when Mersenne staged that raid. The helmsman told me, later, that she . . .”

It was a long flight, and Trish felt superior to them: her trance was keeping her straighter than they seemed to be, even when they’d taken shifts. It kept her confusion and fear tranquilized, and she was grateful.

She still didn’t know what Rebecca planned to do with her, but she’d let go the sense of loss that had hung over her as Delia had rushed her out of the cafe. She knew now, having been the woman’s puppet for hours, that Rebecca’s reach was half a world long with a delicate touch at the end—the end in Trish’s head.

It was in the quiet as they belted in over North America, descending, all the recorders and laptops put away, that she looked out at the blank cloud and thought Before Rebecca’s done with me I’ll wish I were Jacqui. Her throat tightened, as she hurt yet again for knowing that was all Rebecca wanted from her now.

But they landed, and they were done. It started to catch up with her body as she was taken in another van to STC headquarters. Chairman Ortiz wanted to greet her personally. He shook her hand and then hugged her, and she sagged against him.

“Sorry to drag you here,” he told her, holding her up. “Before you go to sleep, you needed to know you did good.” She murmured something dutiful, suddenly feeling almost as heavy and witless as that first moment after Rebecca’s drug had hit her, and no one questioned the tears as she remembered.

Someone from Medical was there, and with their arm around her, she somehow got to a small quiet room with a bed. Sleep solidified over her.

Awakening was gradual, and she put it off a couple of times until thirst and her bladder drove her off the mattress. She remembered, before sleeping, she’d been hydrated, someone calmly but irresistibly making her drink. She’d cried again, suddenly vulnerable under someone’ s orders, but again no one thought anything of it. Now she was irrationally irked that they’d made her need the toilet.

“Here,” said a voice she remembered, and the doctor from Medical slid up to her and propped her up as she found her feet. Trish felt firm muscles and assurance on the smaller woman’s body, and let herself be propped.

When she came out the doctor was still there, and she was pretty. As Trish settled onto the mattress, content for now to stay upright, the woman sat next to her. “Try and stay awake for a while.” She glanced at her watch. “OK?”

Trish gazed at her. She supposed she was still going to be able to do things like cry and stare for a while, and people would chalk it up to the flight and the stress. The woman looked nothing like Mickey, but Trish felt that same, almost animal directness, and returned it now. She sensed the woman was attracted to her and felt wonderfully free to go with that.

“Will you stay with me?” She hadn’t meant to make it so breathy, but liked the sound.

The doctor smiled. “Yes, Trish.”

“What should I call you?”

The doctor blushed, caught up in the vibe and not quite getting it. “Dr Merriam. Stacy.”

Trish felt a little sorry for her, trying to be professional with someone who turned her on—someone weakened and needing her help. She felt gently predatory, seeing Dr Merriam—Stacy—was in awe of her, the intrepid agent returned from facing danger, and that made her want Trish more and feel less safe trying. But Stacy was no starfucker.

“Stacy? Would you keep me company if I lay down, now?”

Stacy Merriam looked at her and blushed, and then said, “I would. But they’d fire me, I think.”

Trish was too languid to smile, and so when Stacy didn’t either, they sat on either side of what she’d said. Trish leaned forward and put her lips to Stacy’s, and moaned with how good the doctor’s arms felt around her as they tightened.

“I don’t want to get you fired.” She stopped, enthralled by the coolness of Stacy’s earlobe above her flaming cheek. “Could you just hold me till I sleep and let me dream about it?”

Stacy kissed her, and then lowered her to the bed. Trish moaned again and relaxed. She felt Stacy kiss her cheek, and keep holding her.

Trish remembered being rocked asleep by Rebecca after her dream of propellors. But before she could weep all unsuspected over missing Rebecca, she felt the fog shift in her mind, reclaiming her will from her. She knew she was only to relax and sleep, now.

When she awakened, she would know what she must do.

15.

Stacy wasn’t there when Trish woke up in the STC guestroom, but she came in as Trish left the shower. The fog let Trish smile at her, and Trish felt that whatever she did with this woman would be all right.

“Feeling more alive?”

Trish grinned at her. “More. Not totally.”

“Anything scheduled for today? Debriefs?”

Trish smiled. “I’d love to be debriefed—by someone who knows what she’s doing.” Stacy blushed, and Trish was almost dizzy at how it felt to be the aggressor again, to hold another woman in her power that way.

“But you’d know the schedule better than I.”

Stacy blushed again. “I did peek. They’re letting you rest before the detailed rerun, nothing for a day or so. But I didn’t know if you had anything of your own. Scheduled.”

Trish crossed to her, conscious of how the Cadre-issue robe clung to her. “Stacy, if you’re asking me out, yes.

“Please just tell me what time it is and what meal we’ll be having.”

Stacy Merriam took her hands. “It’s time for an early dinner, I think.”

Trish nodded and started to take off the robe. Stacy’s eyes widened, and Trish wondered how virginal she might turn out to be. “It’s OK,” she said, and closed the robe. She noticed Stacy had brought her recovery bag from storage, with some clothes she could wear in case her post-mission stay at HQ was a long one. She had an all-purpose dress or two in there, and was deciding which one would put Stacy more at her ease when Stacy coughed.

“I’m sorry. I’m just not—”

“It really is OK, Stacy.” Trish took her hands this time. “You’re right. It should be easy but not casual.”

Stacy nodded. “Right. You’ve had enough casual, I—”

Trish felt the stab again, and for a moment Stacy was barely there, Rebecca’s presence almost overwhelming. Not casual. Don’t even—

Stacy saw something in Trish’s eyes. “Please. I’m sorry.”

Trish shook it off and kissed her. “Two different worlds, Stacy. Please welcome me back to this one.” Stacy left happy.

Trish opted for jeans and a long-hemmed blazer after all, remembering that whatever time it was, it wasn’t the Mediterranean out there. She let Stacy lead her to a restaurant, and order, and praised her advice.

She let the doctor talk, and it was like fencing with a still target. She almost felt guilty—Dr Stacy Merriam was a sharp lady, but she was innocent of the elicitation skills Trish had been trained with, and never noticed she was being pumped. Trish didn’t even want to know any particular thing. It was just a secretly sadistic thrill to open her like that.

The fog didn’t let her get too wet.

But she was getting tired, and Stacy noticed that. “You need to go to bed again.”

“Promises, promises.” Trish yawned. “But there’d be that getting-fired thing. I sublet my apartment. Thought the mission would last longer. I’m staying at the HQ guest place for now.”

Stacy lowered her eyes. “I live near here.”

Trish reached over and took her hand. “I’m easy.”

Stacy looked at her sharply, keeping her hand. “No,” she said. “I don ‘t think you are.”

It stabbed, to feel that kind of regard, but the fog soothed her.

They were close enough to walk, and Stacy pointed out the coffee place, a couple of shops.

“And the cybercafe,” she said. “I’m online at home but I keep wanting to come here anyway just to . . . " Trish didn’t know why her pussy was warm when she saw the place. She just accepted its importance as it imprinted its image across her brain.

I will respond.

She kept smiling and followed Stacy to the building and up the elevator and down the hall.

Stacy put on music and put out wine and dithered a bit, and Trish felt leashed, tame—ready to devour Stacy but held until she was loosed. She gentled Stacy, coaxing and soothing her, letting her lead the way to the bedroom.

In time, Stacy stood in her panties, leaning against Trish’s shoulder, as weak and dependent as Trish had been that first night, and Trish enfolded her. She whispered, “I’ll take care of you,” and kissed her, and lowered her to the bed.

Stacy’s eyes were wide, before they started to flutter and roll up as Trish made love to her.

The yielding body under her was sending strange pulses through Trish. She was feeling the almost cruel exhilaration she’d felt tapping into Stacy’s mind and life, using precise strokes of her fingers and mouth to soften and madden the doctor.

If she kept it up she could enslave Stacy completely. Trish barely knew the fog now, so thick in her. Fingers on her thigh, a voice she couldn’t dream of resisting—she was growing colder as Stacy heated up, thrashing and whimpering. She’d stopped begging each time Trish took her close and let her fall back, just accepting the tides of ecstasy. Even if she could still speak, she might not pray for orgasm.

Trish wasn’t at all tired, now.

She leaned over and looked into Stacy’s eyes, nodding to see very little awareness in them. She reached carefully and caressed Stacy’s throat with her unoccupied hand, finding the points, recalling another STC lesson.

The fog throbbed its imperatives, and Trish did not resist.

Flicking Stacy into climax, she waited for the moment and pressed her throat.

Stacy’s back arched and she was rigid, her face contorted in divine agony and her cry fading away. She collapsed with endearing awkwardness and for a moment Trish could only lean forward and hold her. She felt the heartbeat and the throat pulse, and then just held Stacy very close.

She kissed Stacy, and slid back into her clothes, taking the keys and detouring to Stacy’s computer. She looked in the long tray and slid a couple of blank floppy disks in her pocket, and left for the cybercafe, after a last look at how delectably vulnerable Stacy looked, chained in sleep. She’d stay like that for a while, but Trish moved briskly anyway.

Trish wasn’t really thinking, even as she sat at the terminal and logged in. Thinking made her fingers sluggish worrying about why she was entering this website or why she went to Members instead of a new account.

She surrendered, and it was easier, but she did pause after she let herself type in her username, to look at what it was: propkisser02. She felt an awful excitement. Rebecca was with her even now. Slaved to the impulses Rebecca had woven into her will, she would do Rebecca’s bidding, and she knew it would hurt.

But it would please Rebecca.

propkisser02 had one message waiting, with an attachment. Trish stared at the message, not understanding sender or subject or body, but humiliatingly aware that it was not her place to do anything but click and be open as the words flipped controls on and off in her conquered mind.

Always submit.

The meaning of the text hit the surface of her mind but seeped in before she could grasp it. It met more of itself as it soaked in. Trish stared raptly at the screen, letting it program her.

Think only of obeying. She could see the flash . . .

She was ejecting the disk before she remembered downloading the attachment. She was already forgetting as she left the cafe. She looked carefully before crossing the street, exulting as she felt the memories fading.

Trish slipped deeper under the fog’s control, letting it walk her back up to Stacy’s apartment. She would need to be controlled and obedient, to do what she must do if Stacy had awakened and found her gone.

But Stacy was limp and senseless just as Trish had left her, and Trish found herself choking down a sob, seeing her helplessness again. She stripped and this time slid next to the other woman. As she felt warm flesh against her, Trish couldn’t keep it in, and she cried, wearily and quietly.

Without waking, Stacy sighed and turned and held her, and Trish felt the fog drop her into the deeper dark.

Trish woke flying.

No, but she was riding . . . straddling . . . the pleasure was impaling her, lovely spikes melting their way up from her crotch.

She felt Stacy working between her thighs, and submitted to it. The fog in her mind warped the pleasure as it washed in, and Trish leaned back, accepting the reinforcement.

Thoughts will sleep.

When Stacy sprawled across her stomach, Trish had enough willpower to squirm out from under her, and Stacy made weak menacing gestures, too spent to pursue her.

She showered and found Stacy asleep again, curled around a pillow. She dressed and then looked down at her lover.

She thought of waking her, but she knew Stacy would ask if they would see each other later, after the day.

Trish already knew she wouldn’t be seeing Stacy again, and she couldn’t watch Stacy’s eyes as she told her—or see the trust as she used her skills to make Stacy trust a lie.

She leaned down carefully and put her lips to Stacy’s, but Dr Merriam was too deeply asleep and didn’t stir. Trish made no noise as she left.

The fog made her feel for the disk in her blazer pocket before she let the lock click closed.

16.

STC headquarters, and especially the operations center, was humming with another operation in progress but there were plenty who wanted to greet her or at least steal a glance at her.

Unseen for a moment, Trish hovered by one of the large displays, watching video feed from a surveillance point. A couple of agents a partition away were talking about Rebecca Lemoine.

“. . . gone to ground. The bitch has pulled in most of the business outriders. She’s not even going after Mersenne anymore. Broke off the big vendetta. Probably wondering what we have.”

“God. Here we were thinking she’s the fucking Queen of the Damned, bleeds icewater every month, and she loses it—loses it—over a bimbo.”

Trish stiffened. Marquart. She felt dirty all over again, bringing Rebecca low in this creep’s estimation. She barely cared about what he’ d just called her.

“Hey. That’s our bimbo you’re talking about. And she had more balls than I do, doing that.” Trish recognized Morris, who didn’t usually stick up for her.

“Yes. But it was a stupid mistake just the same. I wonder what else about the bitch we’ve overestimated.”

She knew it was a graveyard whistle—Marquart had spent his time scaring newcomers with Lemoine stories as though she were some ageless phantom, but now he thought she was done for. Weakling.

“She found another one since Trish jilted her? Might not have a lot else to pass the time hiding from us.”

“No sign she did. No one’s seen the yacht close up since we extracted Trish.

Marquart chuckled gleefully. “Bet she doesn’t, not soon. Got her twat burned once, I doubt she’ll be looking. Even a slow learner like her.

Trish edged away unheard. Her heart was lead. Rebecca. I betrayed you for that. You deserved better, even from a faithless whore.

“Trish!” She turned and smiled when she saw Ortiz. “You’re not due back.”

She nodded, and blinked through the fog. “Needed to do some research to get ready. Just here for a little bit.”

He nodded and gestured, and she found an unoccupied workstation in one of the outlying crisis-surge cubicles. She stood and looked around before sitting down, panning her eyes around the bustling STC staffers and techs. The ops center’s world map, like a Strangelovian Big Board, loomed over everything, but she’d never known an STC operation that needed to be tracked there.

She remembered suddenly that she had to look up at it, looking for the Mediterranean, the eastern end, Greece, the Peloponnesos, like fingers reaching down . . .

Fingers light and owning, on her bare thigh . . .

Trish stared at the map and was gloriously aware now that she was being triggered, all the slave impulses in her subjugated mind activated. She was now Rebecca’s obedient weapon in the midst of her enemies.

She almost cried, for pride. You’ll curse my queen but you won’t mock her again. She sat down and logged into the headquarters intranet and started to browse.

The fog shone in her mind with headlight-glare, but she could still see to obey. She opened herself to the commands, typing the things that came into her mind, and as she submitted to each impulse it was like dancing with Rebecca, held and guided and moved and spun. Yielding made it work.

The fog blurred, and then she blinked.

No. The fog was translucent and perfect, like the mind control that cast it in her mind. It was her own tears that dimmed her vision for a moment. She didn’t look away from the screen.

Dancing with Rebecca, following her lead. Warm in her hold.

She swallowed. Always submit. Yes, she mouthed. If anyone saw her they’d think she’d found what she was searching for.

There was the directory she wanted. That Rebecca wanted.

She paused.

She had no memory at all of telling Rebecca about it; she shivered to think of lying there on the chair, too deep and controlled to need the restraints, murmuring STC’s deepest weaknesses to her hypnotist. Or standing at dazed attention in the office she’d only ever enter as a sleepwalker, reciting to Rebecca as Rebecca typed and plotted and altered Trish’s thoughts with a remark here and there.

It would be worse to look furtively around, to see if anyone were looking—another agent-groupie like luscious Dr Stacy, maybe. But she was aware of all the Cadre people around her. Enemies of Rebecca Lemoine.

Enemies of her mistress. Her enemies now.

Trish saw the disk on the workstation already. She didn’t remember palming it from her pocket, but that made her feel better—more controlled. Her body was warm as she took it—she wished she were nude now, her queen’s slave-weapon for everyone to see. She slid it into the floppy drive, and transferred the document to the STC files. She was breathing quickly, aroused and afraid but most of all anxious to do this right. She popped the disk out again.

She clicked Rebecca’s document open.

Nothing happened, but she felt Rebecca’s programming neatly override her panic. The effect will not be visible. Seeing nothing will not make you afraid.

The brainwashing loosened its hold now that she’d carried out her commands, but it still held her. She started to think must leave now as she started to hear the commotion elsewhere. She knew security could trace the download to this workstation and her logon, but she didn’t know if Rebecca’s little gift would let the system live long enough to name its assassin.

She rose, her blood chilling. She didn’t know where she’d go or what she’d do but she’d crossed the line, more than secretly falling in love with her target or letting her new passion make her lie to her contacts. She’d just stuck a poisoned thorn into the hindbrain of STC.

She paused, her blood turning to ice. The noises from the system security area were jubilant, not enraged.

“CyberDeathCitadel rules!” someone shouted, and Ortiz came out of a nearby cubicle.

“To anyone who argued about that new firewall,” he said, turning and smiling at the people who gathered there, “ppphhhhttttt!” They cheered and applauded.

Trish looked at the door out of the ops center. She felt the programming bending her will, draining her of alternatives to walking there and leaving before they tracked the virus to its upload and had her.

She felt like one of Philippe’s failed frogman-kidnappers, dropping away from Medea into the sea. But someone was rescuing them—Rebecca was destroying her. She had an ugly idea now what Rebecca wanted, hideously appropriate, and it had nothing to do with letting Trish escape.

The pull of the exit door wasn’t the next phase of the program—she just wanted to get the hell out of there so badly she was lying to herself. She was trying to convince herself it was Rebecca’s will and not her own cowardice that was making it seem OK to leave.

The human mind was amazing.

She gritted her teeth and fought it, trying to obey instead. Rebecca could make a slave kill herself, but Jacqui was fresh from the brainwashing chair. She didn’t have the time to recover the self-preservation Rebecca had seduced and sedated her out of. Trish had been too long off the leash, and her self was fighting back.

Bad enough to be caught serving Rebecca. Worse to be caught failing her. She looked around, ignored for now, wondering how much time she had. She thought as self-destructively as she could, starting to sweat with the effort of not fleeing while she still could.

Then she knew.

She thought of the strange dream of Rebecca weeping in her arms. I’ll dry your tears, my Queen. Smile to see what your unworthy slut will do. She let herself fancy now that Rebecca heard her, and smiled. And kissed, perhaps forgave . . .

Smiling, Trish strode into the midst of the celebrating system geeks and their grateful patrons, hugging one at random. “Wow! What did you guys just do?”

The stunned man started to explain and she nodded wide-eyed at every seventh word, whatever it was. She let him lead her into the glassed-in sanctum, empty now, and kept smiling. She touched him here, there, all accidentally in the close clutter, as he breathlessly spewed techbabble at her. She wondered if he knew she liked girls, if that was part of what had melted his wariness, but it was hard to tell. Her approach was early-training-demerit crude, but he was even more of a soft target than Stacy Merriam.

He was actually graceful in his need as he stooped to fish her a drink from the mini-fridge.

She smiled down, moving between him and the floppy drive she wanted. She slid the disk in and saw the screensaver vanish without a password. Like Rebecca’s mythical office door, openness that felt safe behind guards.

She shook her head at the soda he held up and smiled at his anxiety. She named something else, and as he turned to look for it, she downloaded.

“Careful.” He stood, sensing the quiet sounds like a hunter hearing twigs creak. “You want to be really careful with this one, ‘cause it’s the secure . . .” He looked at the screen. “Server . . .”

He looked at her, stricken, and she suddenly felt guilt—not for playing him like this, but for the grief she’d just written on his face.

It had worked, then. His system was mortally wounded. She put the grief away, wrapping herself in love for Rebecca. She turned from him and walked away. She wondered if she could make it to the door before he recovered from the shock, and they learned how hard and dry she’d just fucked them for Rebecca Lemoine.

“Get her!” Of course not.

People grabbed her firmly but without really knowing why, and she relaxed. It didn’t matter now, nor did she. When Rebecca smiled to hear how her mindfucked little slave weapon, her Trish-torpedo, had blown up under the keel of the STC dreadnaught, she hoped Rebecca might, for a split second, think well of her.

She heard the conversation billow up and felt the glances turn on her before she saw them.

Ortiz stood before her, and his expression was almost like the nameless system-guardian’s. He mourned Trish as she stood before him.

“Did you?” he asked, quietly.

Trish shivered. The compulsion to leave was gone, but so were the others. Her mind was clear of the controlling fog. Rebecca was no longer holding her chain.

She looked him in the eye and said nothing. She watched his face close, and all at once it was hellishly like that moment with Rebecca, when she’d killed that light in Rebecca’s eyes with I’m STC.

Morris and Marquart were beside their chief, watching the air congeal between him and Trish. Marquart’s eyes were Christmas-morning bright, as he started to understand what had happened. Trish could see the rush hit him.

Ortiz stared. “Find out,” he said. “Tear her apart.”

The other two agents took her from the bewildered people holding her, and led her out. Trish went, seeing now what Rebecca had arranged to punish her.

Her own people were going to torture her, and if she lived she’d be a prisoner.

She heard how Marquart was breathing and wondered what prison would have been like.

Trish knew she was weak, but she hoped she wouldn’t dishonor her queen too quickly. It was a very hollow prayer now.

17.

They were somewhere near the garages, in a half-completed conference room. There were whiteboards without markers, power strips, LAN connectors. A sideboard but no table.

No camera.

“They’ll want her at Intake Four.” Morris seemed more concerned with the procedural lapse than with the way Marquart was looking at her. Trish swallowed. Intake One were the people who’d wrung her dry on the flight from Europe, agent debriefers. Two was for walk-ins and for innocent bystanders, Three for suspects.

Four was “other.” It didn’t appear on most of the wiring diagrams. She’d heard its totems were soundproof tiles and bleach.

Marquart grinned. “They’ll understand.”

Morris tried again. “They’ll want an undamaged baseline, Mark.”

Marquart looked at Trish. “I know what you’re thinking. You’ve got the training, and you’re desperate. Maybe you can take us both, maybe get farther.” His grin faded, and it struck at Trish’s heart just how truly scary he was. “But unless you score a gun right soon and suck it down, you know how you’ll end up.”

She tensed. She did know, and even though Rebecca had turned from her now, she still resolved to sell herself dearly. Rebecca might never collect but it was due her just the same.

“Do you want to start?” Morris sounded sarcastic as he let Marquart block her path to the door.

Marquart had something off his belt. “No, she will.” He let the stungun crackle to announce itself. “Training doesn’t mean shit if the nerves can’t remember what to do.” He looked at Trish. “You can lose the jeans anytime now, babe.”

Trish thought about what he’d do after he’d dropped her with it. He’d probably do it anyway. But she undid the belt and slid out of them. When they gathered at her feet he moved toward her until she gave up on the half-boots and just yanked the denim inside-out. She felt the long blazer around her like am open-fronted minidress, and wondered if that was why he left it on her.

“Mark.”

“Quiet. Four will thank us. Think how sensitive she’ll be, by the time we bring her to them.” Trish tried and failed to keep the blood from leaving her face. Rebecca, she prayed once, and stopped.

Morris shook his head. “Marquart, she’s not your toy to play with.”

Marquart looked Trish up and down, choosing the next thing for her to strip off. “She’s nothing but a toy. A traitor, a fucking spy, a perverted rug-munching slut—not anymore. She’s a toy. Stick things in her and hear the sounds she makes.

Morris sighed agreeably and moved to join Marquart. “Um, no. What I meant was, she’s not your toy to play with.” His hand moved as he stepped away, and Marquart jerked and toppled to the carpet, landing roughly on the concrete beneath.

Trish stared.

Morris put his stungun away and looked at where Marquart’s had bounced off the wall when his arms spasmed. He kept an eye on Trish, and went to pick it up. She stayed still, not up to the fight with him, or the next one, or the next as she tried to find her way to daylight. She might need her strength to get to someone’s gun, just as Marquart had said. Demon-wisdom was as valid as any other kind.

Unhurriedly, Morris rolled Marquart on his side, ignoring the odd sounds Marquart was making. He held the other stungun to the other agent’s head (never ever ever do that no matter how crazy the trainer said again in Trish’s mind). Marquart spasmed again and cried out. The third jolt just made him twitch and start to drool.

Standing, Morris tossed it to Trish’s feet, admiring her legs as he smoothly drew his automatic. “Just pick it up,” he said. “Then put it down.”

She waited. If he shot her here she’d never have to face Intake Four. He likely knew how to make it hurt, but he’d need her dead, not telling someone what he’d just done.

She looked at him, seeing nothing to show he’d just brain-fried a fellow agent. A psychopath who’d found his niche working for the good guys? What was he going to do to her that he didn’t want to share with Marquart?

Stooping, she extended an arm and took the stungun, gripping it as though to use it but keeping her arm stiff, unthreatening. He nodded and she triggered it, crisping the air. She set it down again.

“OK. Come with me.” She looked; he looked back. “If you do, you can get away.”

Trish wondered if they were expecting her to lead them back to Rebecca. They don’t understand her, she thought. I’m an expended round.

But it would get her away from Four.

She turned for her jeans but Morris shook his head and checked his watch. “Leave them. It’ll make that more believable.” He pointed with his free hand to the stungun that now wore her fingerprints.

“Come on,” he said, and the urgency in his voice, the first real emotion she’d heard from him, drove her more than the gun. Buttoning the blazer and hoping it passed for daring and not half-dressed, she followed him out.

They’d left the secured area for Marquart’s aborted prep session, and they were still out of the camera zone. Morris led her into one of the garage levels, mysteriously chained off and never used in any of her time at STC. She hesitated, feeling the cold air circling her thighs under the pretend-skirt and thinking suddenly of vans, duct tape, a trip to someone else’s torture chamber.

Another enemy of Rebecca’s who’d want to know things about her. Philippe Mersenne. Someone with employees who’d remind her that Intake Four were still part of the good guys as they took her apart to ask.

But Morris just strolled on to the chain that separated this spot from the crowded commuter section, and led her to the street-level exit.

She was still only a few meters from Intake Four, and this could still be a short-term setup she hadn’t figured out yet. Another team could still coalesce from the passersby and the bus queue and bundle her back inside.

But something in Trish must believe she was getting away. She was already worrying about what to do next.

Morris looked at her. “Hang on a minute.” She was considering trying to run like hell, but then he pointed at the curb. “There.” The limousine pulled up and the rear door opened.

Trish thought of duct tape. Looked at the sidewalk to see which way was better to run. Recalled Philippe’s penchant for dart guns, and wondered how it would feel—pain in her bare leg, the slow loss of volition, the helpless walk to the car. The wait.

She looked up at the car.

Rebecca looked back out at her.

Trish’s heart stopped, and she stared, discovering a new kind of trance.

Morris snapped her out of it. “She’s not poor,” he commented. “And I’ m not cheap. But we both value quality work.”

She looked at him, and he went back into the garage.

Rebecca waited.

Trish didn’t think. She stepped hesitantly forward, and then ran to the car. Rebecca slid over as she got in, and a guard in the front seat lowered the window and backhanded the door shut behind her.

“Clear,” he said, and they pulled away.

Trish sat limp on the seat, looking at Rebecca.

Rebecca looked out the back window. “That’s the problem with secret headquarters: no external guard presence.” She looked back at Trish, and Trish realized they were alone behind the privacy shield.

Trish tried to speak but there was nothing. She undid the blazer and shrugged it off, and then her blouse. In her panties and half-boots she sat and let Rebecca look at her. She didn’t know if Rebecca was enjoying her or not, but focus on anything but Rebecca had been burned out of her.

She slid to her knees, not presuming to pass Rebecca’s unbidden, but then Rebecca nodded, and she knelt between Rebecca’s legs, feeling the fabric against her ribs, her breasts.

“Whatever you do to me, Rebecca, thank you for doing it.” She was shaking, partly just from being with Rebecca again but also because she knew now that to die screaming at Rebecca’s hands was still better than what she was riding away from.

There was no fog controlling her thoughts. Her thoughts were clear now. It was her soul that Rebecca had taken. That she’d given.

“I tried very hard to obey my programming,” she said. The language of control was still erotic, even when she wasn’t speaking it under hypnosis. “Even when I almost—”

“You almost died,” Rebecca said. “Morris told me what you did.”

Her eyes in the darkened car were becoming clearer to Trish. They were shining.

“I programmed you to insert the virus—and then to get out. That was reinforced when the e-mail triggered you while the virus downloaded.

“I was inbound, ready to pick you up. Then Morris called to tell me the data we had on the firewalls was out of date and the virus had just bounced off. And then he had to ring off, when he heard what you did after that.”

Rebecca blinked. “You never resisted my control before, Trish. I don’ t know how you managed to disobey the command to escape, especially since it’s so close to natural self-preservation.”

Dropping her eyes even below Rebecca’s crotch, Trish hung her head, wishing it would stop spinning.

Rebecca cupped her chin and tilted it up. “I don’t know how you resisted that one thing, Trish.

“But I know why.”

Trish gazed up at her, feeling it flow through her marrow and down her nerves. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, to put her face reverently to Rebecca’s pussy and breathe its scent after she’d missed it for so long.

“No.” Rebecca pulled at her arms and she slid up onto Rebecca’s lap. Rebecca held her face in both hands and closed her eyes to kiss Trish, a gentle lip-touch. They stayed that way until Rebecca leaned back, her arms around Trish.

“I wanted to say it this way.

“I love you too, Trish.”

Trish was too lost in it to cry, but she felt exalted that her daze seemed to please Rebecca anyway. She shook her head slowly.

“I knew, Trish. When I hypnotized you, I asked. I had to. I—” She paused, waiting, and the tears dared not fall. “I wanted to know how I’ d been seduced. Taken.”

She kissed Trish again, gently, not requiring her to do anything but let Rebecca drink her. “But I wasn’t. You were for real. You loved me.”

The tears retreated again. “I took you down so deep in your mind that you couldn’t even remember who you were. I’ll never tell you what I was going to do to you . . . but you wanted it. It terrified you, but you were still heartbroken at what you’d done. You thought you deserved it.

“That scared me.”

Trish clung to her now. “I almost didn’t want to use you this way. It wasn’t worth losing you.

“But you volunteered, Trish. You begged me. I did everything I could to keep you calm, and to make sure you took care of yourself, with the memories suppressed so even you didn’t really know you were mine.”

Trish whispered. “I was so lonely all that time. I guess I had to be, but thinking you hated—”

“Shhh.” Rebecca tightened her arms. “I know. I hated doing that. I was lonely too. At least I knew, I didn’t have to be undercover in my own mind, but I missed you. And I knew how much it hurt you. I was terrified you’d die and never come out of the program. Never remember. Die thinking I wanted you to suffer.”

Just then, Trish thought of the dream from her last night, holding Rebecca while she cried, and realized now what it had been. She kissed Rebecca hard and they were silent for a while.

“But then you broke conditioning,” Rebecca said, in awe. “To do that for me.”

“To obey your command,” Trish whispered, and felt Rebecca squeeze her shoulder.

They rode for a while.

“It’ll take some getting around, but we’ll be flying out and returning to Medea soon enough. In the meantime we’ll find something to do, I suppose.” She chuckled at Trish’s whimper, but her own voice sounded a little husky. “How does that sound?”

Trish sighed happily. “Better than anything I’ve ever heard.” She blinked. “How are Mickey&Lisa?”

Rebecca laughed softly. “Mickey said you’d ask. They both miss you and they insist on playing with you when we get back.”

“Even Lisa?”

Rebecca grinned. “I brought her around.” Trish kissed her and then slid down her lap again, feeling Rebecca’s thighs warm around her as she knelt, and put tentative fingers at her waistband.

Rebecca looked at her, and this time she let Trish stay there.

18.

Trish watched herself in the mirror, nude and expressionless, as the workout hypnotized her.

In Medea’s gym, the lights and music pulsed together, and the rhythm reflected in the motion of the polished weights as Trish continued the reps. She no longer counted them, just let the music turn her on and off. The exercise program ran in her head and her body carried it out. She was aware, but her conditioning kept her from caring, other than a certain turn-on whenever she saw herself like that, oiled and mind-locked.

She couldn’t hear the subliminals but she knew they were there, molding her from the inside. This wasn’t the deep brainwashing, the really deep work Rebecca did on her sometimes, just the daily reinforcement that ensured her devotion to her mistress was total.

The sequence slowed and stopped, a vestigial beat taking her through a cooldown. She let it control her, enjoying the passive arousal that kept her liking the control on a body level. Then it stilled her and she waited, moveless, for her pawned will to be returned to her.

As the lights came up, waking her further, she saw Mickey standing rigid in the gym doorway, deeply entranced and staring through her reflection in the far wall. She must have come in without recalling it was Trish’s conditioning period, and it had put her in its thrall before she even knew what was happening to her.

Trish smiled and took very gentle hold of her, guiding her to one of the mirrored walls, regretting it slightly when Mickey gasped, the coolness of the glass on her ass and back reaching her even in the trance. She kissed the pet and held her until she squirmed and awoke. She blinked and still seemed a bit fey, and she stared deeply into Trish ‘s eyes.

Mickey blinked again and Trish realized she’d started to go under herself, a bit. “Sorry. Rebecca told me she wants her henchwench to attend her.” She smiled up at Trish. “She said I get to dress you.”

She led Trish to the adjacent room and held out a black and green wetsuit, sleeveless and high cut in the leg. As she helped, her gaze and soft breath lingered on Trish’s depilated pussy, but they were both too obedient to dally. They left the suit unzipped to her mons.

As it always did, the tattoo on Trish’s thigh drew Mickey’s riveted attention, and she cooed over it and kissed it. It was high in her thigh, visible in a G-string or in anything as high cut as this kinky-diver outfit. It was Rebecca’s monogram, claiming her property. So did the vinyl collar that ringed Trish’s neck. When Trish exercised, they were all she saw herself wearing before she surrendered to the program, and each time she loved her owner more.

Mickey pleaded quietly to put the knife on, and her fingers were deft and exciting as they strapped the sheath to Trish’s other thigh, delicate on Trish’s hand as they ensured the hilt was ready to her grasp.

Trish’s body, its muscled curves and oil and the rivulets of sweat, was mesmerizing Mickey again, and Trish watched her succumb to a droplet that pooled in the hollow of her throat and then rolled down between her breasts, down to her navel. When it vanished below her mound, it seemed to take Mickey with it, and only knowing Rebecca wanted her made Trish rouse the pet from her bliss.

Trish saw herself in the mirror, and felt herself dampen the warm crotch of the wetsuit. She was taut and exposed, with bands at her wrists and ankles, the collar at her throat, some sort of gauge on another strap around her left bicep, the knife high on her leg like an assassin’s garter.

She looked a little bit cyborg, a little bit latex player, a lot slave. She looked controlled and very dangerous. She thought about mirrored wraparounds, but liked the blankness of her own stare better. Even a swimcap would be too much.

And Rebecca liked her, just this way.

“Wait.” She turned at Mickey’s voice. “I’m supposed to give you this.” She hadn’t noticed that Mickey had been wearing a digital stopwatch around her neck. She wondered if Mickey had been aware of it, either, or if they’d both been doing Rebecca’s bidding, oblivious to it as it swung between the pet’s breasts as her voice had instructed them. Now Mickey reached up and hung it over Trish’s head.

They looked at each other, then pivoted to go above and attend their mistress.

It was evening, and Medea was lying off a shadowy rock within a few hundred meters of another yacht. Trish paced confidently to the afterdeck and stepped to Rebecca’s chair, coming to attention and then dropping to parade rest.

Philippe Mersenne was on the other side of the table from Rebecca, and gasped audibly to see Trish.

“I hadn’t believed it. To have brainwashed an STC operative of her caliber that thoroughly was one thing. To turn her into your hunting bitch . . .” He raised his glass, and stared openly at Trish as if he knew she was conditioned not to react.

“Seriously, chere amie, I applaud your coup. You’ve put us all in your debt with how far back you’ve set STC. I’m happy that it also allowed you to see our mutual misunderstandings in a new light, and with more generosity.”

Rebecca drew a finger up Trish’s thigh, and rested her hand on Trish’s asscheek, cupping it through the neoprene. “Philippe, please. I know how business is done. Your innovation failed, mine succeeded. So it happens. Papa taught me that.”

She laughed, and Trish felt it in her touch. “I certainly won the ear of our—friends, who were so eager to mediate between us.”

Philippe smiled, and seemed to be content with it. Trish thought for a moment of what this might mean, what faction had intervened to stop the war, but she quickly returned her mind to its true focus—obeying and protecting the queen she loved.

“Then let us speak of your new pet—or perhaps she’s a working animal.” Trish felt excited; his admiration of her body and her smooth submission was for Rebecca, as it should be. “They say you induced her to believe she’s in love with you. How exquisite, to brainwash her into giving you that way into her mind.”

Rebecca withdrew her hand from Trish’s hip. She made a little gesture and Trish was on her knees by the chair. Rebecca smiled at her, and stroked her hair back before taking the lanyard of the stopwatch up off her neck. She hung it before Trish’s eyes.

“Fixate.”

Trish’s gaze snapped to it and the world shrank to the blinking second counter.

Then she was standing and aware again, and she cared nothing for the gap she could still feel in her thoughts. The gap was full of fog, and it was spreading down familiar corridors through her mind.

Rebecca flicked the stopwatch over the side, facing Philippe’s yacht.

“Fetch.”

Trish tensed and ran for the rail, becoming the dive as she leaped and arced and pointed and knifed into the warm sea. She slowed and turned until she saw the dark bulk of Medea’s hull, and swam to it. She looked blankly until a blinking light caught her gaze and drew her. She switched it off and disengaged the first cylinder next to it from the rack, putting the mask on and strapping it on. She remembered she must then take the second cylinder, hold it, and kick off from Medea.

She could see the other long shape just under the surface, and swam in long strokes under the water until she reached it. The shape was like Medea but different, and even in the darkened water the shapes awakened compulsions that made her find the spot and fix the suction devices to the composite surface.

Trish felt more and more pleasantly aroused as she did this, and swam eagerly back to Medea. On the way, when she noticed the hull had filled her vision, she obeyed an urge to unstrap the tank and spit out the mouthpiece. She undid the plastic bag with the stopwatch on a lanyard that was tied to the tank, and when she put that in her mouth, she let the tank and the bag drop into the deeper water, and forgot them.

She climbed the ladder and stalked dripping across the afterdeck to kneel at Rebecca’s feet, the stopwatch still in her mouth. She felt Rebecca’s hand on her wet hair as she opened her mouth to let her take the watch by the lanyard.

“Good girl.” Trish almost wiggled her behind, but she felt proud just to kneel, having done the trick.

Fingers snapped and she was taut by Rebecca’s side again, gazing off past Philippe’s yacht. Cylinders and tanks and blinking lights faded from her mind with each breath, with a soothing, unheard syllable of Rebecca’s voice each time.

Until Rebecca said, “So, go in peace, mon cher, and say hello if you meet anyone I know.”

Then Philippe was rumbling away in his gig, with Rebecca waving from the aft rail. Trish saw her other hand stroke the rail, feeling the bullet-pocks along the metal. “I do know a lot of people in hell,” she whispered.

She returned to the chair and watched Philippe board. She called out and the helmsman got Medea underway, and the island and the yacht receded majestically.

“Not too quickly,” Rebecca told herself, sipping wine. “Papa was always surprised at the parts of the business I excelled at. I think it worried him.

“But our friends do owe me for buttfucking STC, Philippe.” She pushed the wineglass aside, not taking her eyes off the other ship. “A lot more than they think they owe you.”

She looked aft, gauging the distance to the other yacht as it grew. The hand gesture dropped Trish to her knees again, and then Rebecca drew her up and kissed her.

Trish felt the trance-release and the wanton elation of wearing this kinky outfit and the joy of being awake with Rebecca again. She stayed on her knees but eased over to be between Rebecca’s legs, enjoying that Rebecca let her pale skin bathe in the sunset rays, kissing their smoothness.

“Sleepyhead,” Rebecca said, her head cocked to one side, relaxing with her even as she kept an eye on the other ship. Then she pressed Trish’s head into her lap—not to adore her cleft but to keep it down and close out the world.

But the first dull crump brought Trish’s head up to look at her. And a moment later, when the second, larger blast blew Philippe’s yacht out of the water, Trish could almost the fireball reflected in Rebecca’s eyes.

The eyes found hers. Trish put her lips to Rebecca’s thigh without looking away. “Thank you for letting me do that for you.” She kissed again. “I know how afraid you were for me. Thank you for letting me do that anyway.”

Rebecca looked at her sadly. “But you’ll have nightmares now.” She stood, drawing Trish to her feet. “Come on. I want to take you somewhere nice before you sleep. Somewhere you might be able to avoid the dreams.”

“Rebecca?”

“What, Trish?” Rebecca held her lightly, but close.

“Would you condition me for this?”

“What do you mean?”

She thought of kneeling, but she sensed that was not what this was about, right now. “Would you train me so I can kill for you like this? Without being hypnotized while I do it?”

Rebecca kissed her. “No, love. I will not.

“I don’t know why someone like you fell for someone like me, but there are things about you that I don’t think I want to change. The woman who will let me bend her into an loyal assassin, but who still has the soul to cry over it afterward—I love that Trish and I won’t change her.”

“I understand,” Trish said, and nuzzled Rebecca’s ear to show she meant it.

“And I obey.”