Bound to the Turnings of the Wheel

An adult stories – Bound to the Turnings of the Wheel by Eisenloewe,Eisenloewe Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters within it are completely fictional. The Wheel of Time universe is also completely fictional. Even the universe you and I inhabit may be partially or completely fictional. The pseudoscience portrayed as serious by this fictional work is completely fictional, and classified government research sites that take it seriously are either completely fictional or complete wastes of black budget money.

Names and characterizations of real-world people, places, and things have been altered to fit this story. There is nothing particularly magical about Atlanta and any work that suggests anything to the contrary is inherently fictional.

The fictional Seanchan were complex villains in the fictional Wheel of Time universe, but were nonetheless villains. Their practices regarding human slavery in myriad forms were villainous. The author does not condone villainy in any forms that are relevant here, including human slavery, condominium owners’ associations, drinking whisky before noon, and run-on expository sentences.

If you are still reading, I salute you and welcome you to the dark, twisted, and seldom-shared corners of my mind.

Chapter 1

Barely an hour had passed between the release of the final episode of season one of The Wheel of Time when Isabel Bauer got the FaceTime call from her—well, whatever they were after two years apart, that was actually a complicated topic—but from Adalynn Shields. Isabel couldn’t hold back a laugh, and also couldn’t completely suppress the butterflies in her stomach. The two summers they had spent together had been wild, erotic, and surreal. But they were still friends, and were both Wheel of Time fans, and Isabel had just gotten done watching the season finale herself, too. After a moment’s hesitation, she took the call.

The moment she saw Adalynn’s face appear on the screen, Isabel was about to ask, are you about to head out for a date? The woman’s hair and makeup were done up far too much for crashing on the couch at 8 p.m. Isabel’s were decidedly not. But Isabel never got the chance to ask what the big occasion was. Adalynn jumped right in.

“Oh my God, did you see?!”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “You mean the ridiculously wasteful use of the One Power to make a tidal wave to attack one girl on an otherwise-deserted beach?”

“Yes, that. Also, the damane!”

“Oh, is that what those were? I couldn’t tell. Given, you know, how not-like-the-books they looked.”

“Adapted for the screen, my dear marath’damane. They needed something big and dramatic for the cameras.”

“As if bright silver collars and leashes wouldn’t have been enough for that?” Isabel ignored the flush of heat and tingle of electricity that spread throughout her body at Adalynn casually referring to her as marath’damane, ‘those who must be leashed.’ Isabel had spent many an evening, and even the occasional entire day, in a collar with Adalynn–or Mistress Lanfear, as the Wheel of Time uber-fan preferred to be called when “in character”–holding the leash. Though of course back then they had both just turned eighteen, and Adalynn had been off to MIT in the fall, and the collar and leash in question had been acquired secondhand from a local Buckhead trophy wife on Facebook Marketplace, and had previously been used on said trophy wife’s trophy dog. It had been pink with white rhinestones.

“Why stop there when you can have a massive torc and magic gag?”

Isabel had spent a certain amount of time wearing Mistress Lanfear’s various gags that wild summer before college, too, often in resigned silence, sometimes in helpless mewling as Adalynn drove her crazy. The memory was not exactly helping calm the wild and erotic lightning tingling in her flesh, stronger now than it had ever been when Adalynn wasn’t Mistress Lanfear and wasn’t playing with her in person. Strong enough to raise the most tentative and easily-ignored of red flags in the back of her mind, a reminder of why Isabel had used her safeword for the final time at the end of the one summer that Adalynn had come home for, after her freshman year.

“Of course what you’re really thinking is why stop at a massive torc and a magic gag, isn’t it, Mistress?” Dammit, did I really just slip back into calling her that on a FaceTime call from a thousand miles away? Though, in fairness, the subject matter had a certain effect on her state of mind.

A knowing but sharp smile spread across Adalynn’s face. “Two years and you still know me as well as ever, Isari.”

Isabel blew a long, nostalgic breath at the pet name Mistress Lanfear had given her when she wore the woman’s collar. It might have been a heavy sigh. “We went through a lot together, you know.” It was clear now she was referring to more than just D/s cosplay.

Adalynn’s smile softened, though lost none of its brightness. “I’m well aware, Isari.” Then her soft smile re-sharpened into a smirk. “Looking forward to going through even more together.”

Isabel’s breath caught. “You know we can’t. I can’t,” she said reluctantly.

“You still get the headaches?”

“Yeah. And … you know … the other things.”

“The spasms?”

“Sometimes, but also … you know.”

“I do. And yet you took my call. So the part of you that’s scared of it isn’t the only part of you with a hand on the steering wheel.”

Isabel shrugged, mostly to fight back a tear. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

“There are two schools of thought on that, Isari. Pull the phone back. Pan down your body. Slowly. Show me what you’re wearing.”

Isari’s breath caught. “The fact that I’m a submissive geek doesn’t mean I can be your submissive geek.” she breathed. It would have sounded like a lie even if she had just been talking to the mirror.

“Mistress Lanfear wasn’t asking, Isari. Do it.”

Isabel gulped and took a breath to steady herself, but her hand was already moving, slowly, hesitantly panning her phone’s camera down her body. No one who wasn’t a Wheel of Time geek themselves would know the significance of the fossil-grey maxi dress that Isabel was wearing. It was not an obvious cosplay; Isabel had gotten it from the clearance rack at Belk. But Adalynn and Isabel were Wheel of Time geeks, and Adalynn had a sharp, knowing look in her eyes when Isabel finished and turned the phone screen back so that she could see it.

“Very good, Isari. That’s what I like to see. In fact, that’s what I like to see on what I like to see.”

“Addie, I …”

Adalynn’s eyes sharpened further, and a cold spark flickered there. “What was that, Isari?”

“Mistress,” Isabel continued without missing a further beat, despite the feeling like the fire in her veins had just done an awkward dance, “I wish things could have been different. But, thanks. I’m glad I can still at least geek out with you at a distance.”

“You’re very welcome, Isari. And as a reward for being such a good damane today, I’ll let you see how I just enjoyed the season finale. Oh, and Isari? Don’t look away.”

With that, Adalynn held her own phone back and began to pan slowly down her body. It was apparent in seconds what the woman was wearing, but she drew out the moment nonetheless. The bodice of her dress was soft leather and almost a corset in bold red marked with golden lightning bolts. It had a deep neckline, form-fitting across her breasts and lifting them just the right amount. The leather across the top of her breasts was thicker and flowed up and out to two short wings that stood up from her shoulders. The full sleeves were royal blue, as was the flowing hem of the dress below the waist, with red panels on the sides matching the bodice. And on her wrist, where she let the camera linger longest just to make extra sure that Isabel saw, she wore a silver bracelet attached to a long, thin, coiled silver leash, and thick, elegant silver collar that gleamed so brightly that it practically glowed in the dim light of Adalynn’s surroundings. Isabel was awestruck, and not just at the stunning curves of her erstwhile lover and the way the dress hugged them. That was no close-enough red-and-blue dress from the local thrift store that people sewed a couple of lightning bolts on. It was unmistakably custom-made by someone who knew what they were doing. Even without the a’dam, that was the kind of cosplay that people spent more than a thousand dollars on, and an entire week in the workshop if they were costumers themselves.

And the a’dam itself–that was no repurposed dog collar with a bit of painted rope. It wasn’t even something you’d find just by browsing the catalogs of some of the higher-end BDSM shops on the Internet, even those who had the means to use genuine silver plating for their more statement pieces. Isabel had spent an aroused evening or two doing just that kind of browsing. The collar and leash hanging suggestively on Adalynn’s hip were more than that, though. The set was clearly a custom-made masterwork. If the show itself had intended to stay more in line with the books, it was something that the costume and set designers of the show would have paid top dollar for.

Isabel gulped, and the tingle in her flesh, especially between her legs and in her now-erect nipples, surged in intensity.

“Like what you see?” Adalynn asked, still panning the phone down her body and showing off her cosplay. She had reached her feet now, revealing that she had taken one small liberty with the books. Sumptuous black leather boots with five-inch heels and a familiar red sole graced her feet, and all of her statuesque legs that Isabel could see, so they at least went up past her ankles. The Wheel of Time books never focused too much on the kind of footwear worn by the sul’dam, the Holders of the Leash. They most likely wore durable, practical footwear because they were often sent into combat by the Seanchan empire they served, but in Adalynn’s headcanon, they apparently wore Christian Louboutin.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Kinda, yeah what?”

Isabel felt like she was going to roll her eyes, but they wouldn’t even move, even though the gesture was more than deserved. “Kinda yeah, Mistress.”

“Is it what you like to see on what you like to see?”

Isabel gulped harder. “You know me too well, Mistress.”

“Oh no, marath’damane. I know you just well enough.” Adalynn had by now slowly panned back up her body to her waist, where the a’dam hung coiled from the slender belt that tightly gathered Adalynn’s sul’dam dress against her hips. She had shifted into a pin-up centerfold pose now, too, one leg forward and bent, with her hip held high and prominent, accentuating both hip and the silver leash and collar hanging there. “You want to feel this on you, don’t you? And not just to see how it looks as a cosplayer. You want to feel it, and you want me holding your leash as you kneel beside me, don’t you?”

Isabel was beginning to lose control of her breath, and the red flags that the tentative red flags she had ignored earlier were waving a big more urgently in the back of her mind now. But she still simply couldn’t look away, couldn’t break the connection—and not just the phone connection, either. “Mistress … you need to …”

Adalynn quickly panned back to her face. Isabel realized that Adalynn probably did not have a date tonight. She had brushed out her midnight hair until it practically glowed dark, and done her makeup, just for this FaceTime call. “I’ll decide what I need to do, Isari. And what you need to do. And what you need to do is clear as day on those adorable cheeks of yours, and the way your tits are moving even under that rag. And your hips, too. My God, Isari, you are squirming, aren’t you?”

Isabel said nothing and just continued to squirm and try to get her breathing under control. The fire danced in her blood and the lightning in her flesh.

“I asked you a question, Isari.”

“S … sorry, Mistress, I know …”

“And?” Adalynn, clearly now slipping back into her role as Mistress Lanfear, panned back down and tapped her fingers suggestively on the collar resting on her hip.

More breathing, more squirming, more lightning and fire, strong enough now that it practically sounded in her ears like a roar so deep it was just on the deepest edge of the range of human hearing.

“Lift your dress, marath’damane.”

The dress was long but not tight, and it was not hard for Isabel to slide it up around her waist.

“Pan down. Let me see. Good. I remember those panties. I got you them. Now get rid of them.”

Isabel knew by now where this was going, and still couldn’t muster the strength to say no. She thought briefly of her safeword, but the part of her that wanted this, wanted the release, wanted to relive the memory even though she knew how it ended, was starting to reawaken and reassert control. Or, more accurately, respond to Mistress Lanfear’s control the way it always had. Consequences were only the concern of those with control, and it was so much easier to give it up.

She slid the red lace panties that Adalynn had given her off her hips. Had she known the night was going to go this way when she dressed for the evening, before the season finale started? It no longer mattered. It never had.

“Still keeping yourself clean down there. Good girl, Isari.”

Isabel’s mouth was dry.

“I said, good girl, Isari.” Mistress Lanfear was clearly prompting her to respond. After another pregnant pause, she continued. “Someone’s Southern manners are slipping. Get off the couch, Isari. Put the phone on top of the TV and start screen mirroring.”

Isabel did so, still wordlessly, her mind still too focused on the chaos inside her to form words. Still, the moment she had actually switched the call to the TV, she blinked at the increased effect of seeing Mistress Lanfear’s powerful face now on a 50-inch screen instead of a phone screen, and hearing her voice in Dolby Atmos.

“Very good. Now, I know you still have some of the little keepsakes I left you two years ago. It’s a special occasion. Bring them out.”

Isabel turned, and with her mistress’ face no longer dominating her view, made one last feeble protest, a last-ditch defense of the red flags that were by now war banners flapping in the storm within her. “Mistress … Addie … those memories … you know how it all …”

The storm was stronger, not to mention speaking with both passion and Dolby Atmos. “Those were the two best summers of my life, Isari. I will have you collared again, marath’damane. You will be mine, and we will be spectacular. What you’re feeling now is only the faintest taste of that.”

“Oh, God, Mistress …” The roar at the edge of hearing deepened, and a single tear for the battle lost, and for the inevitable, leaked from her left eye. She reached under the couch and slid out a small, nondescript storage box of rigid beige fabric. It had a zipper with a lock on it, but Isabel had left the key right next to it the last time she had dared to open it, more than a year ago. Isabel unlocked it.

“Mmm-hmm, and glad to see that you had it so close at hand, too,” Mistress Lanfear’s resonant voice said knowingly. From where Isabel’s phone was perched on top of the TV, Mistress Lanfear couldn’t quite see the contents of the box as Isabel opened it, but she had no need to. She knew everything in there, and had lain awake more nights at MIT than she could count lost in the memories of how they looked on Isabel. “Now, one thing in particular that it looks like the show wised up to was that the sul’dam would definitely want to have a gag on hand to keep a misbehaving damane in line. Or maybe even just to remind them who was in charge. No sense in relying only on the a’dam. Pick it up, Isari. The one with the chinstrap.”

Adalynn had left two ball gags with Isabel when Isabel had broken things off at the end of two summers prior. The first was a dirt-cheap one with an orange foam rubber ball and cord-like strap that Adalynn had bought at a Lion’s Den not long after Isabel had turned eighteen. (Adalynn had turned eighteen a couple of months earlier than that, but neither of them had any money to their name at that point.) The second one was somewhat higher-quality, bought during the summer between their freshman and sophomore years of college. The short straps from either side of the ball attached to small chrome rings. From there, straps with simple roller buckles led both back and down.

“That’s it, Isari. Now put it on. And buckle it as tightly as I would.”

Isabel brought the ball to her mouth and guided it past her teeth, where it settled with a faint pop. The ball was only an inch and three quarters wide, but that was still enough to fill Isabel’s mouth snugly and firmly. Isabel was of average size for the women in her dance club at Emory, but that was not exactly a group of giants. She still could barely believe that this was happening, but since it apparently was indeed happening, there was no room for her to half-ass buckling it just as tightly as Mistress Lanfear commanded. She carefully threaded the strap behind her head, avoiding getting any of her full blond mane caught in the buckle as she buckled it, feeling the straps and the two chrome rings on the sides pull tightly against her cheeks and the ball anchor firmly in her mouth.

“Oh Gaahhhd,” she mouthed around the ball, savoring the helplessness of her voice already being taken from her even before she buckled the chinstrap, forcing the ball even more firmly down against her tongue.

“Good,” Mistress Lanfear continued, seeing that Isabel had done the job satisfactorily. “Much better. If you’re not going to answer properly when you’re supposed to, this at least gives you a fig leaf of a reason. Though to be clear, I still expect you to do so. I’ll just enjoy the sound more now. And so will you. Won’t you, marath’damane?”

“Hyehf, Mifhwehf.”

“Oooh, I’ve missed that sound so much.” Mistress Lanfear’s voice might not have changed as dramatically as the woman wearing the gag’s had, but it had changed enough from one sentence to the next that Isabel took a closer look at the woman’s face, now screen-mirrored in 4K in her living room. The combination of Mistress Lanfear’s greater emotional control and the greater amount of make-up she had put on for the evening made it slightly harder to tell, but it looked like the other woman’s face was beginning to show a flush, too.

The woman stayed poised enough, though. “Now, on your mat there, kneel and face me.” Mistress Lanfear nodded to the purple yoga mat that Isabel never bothered to roll up and put away, since she tried to do at least 45 minutes every day.

Isabel knelt, naturally assuming the position so familiar from those past summers. Hands resting upright on knees shoulder width apart. Eyes down. Long, loose, blond ponytail draped over her left shoulder. The meditative pose sometimes had a steadying effect on her mind, but with the ball gag she had worn for those wild summers once again wedged in her mouth, and the woman she had always worn it for dominating the big screen in her flat–and her–after so long, the calming effect was as muted at she was. And it was clear enough that Mistress Lanfear had no intention of just watching her kneel, much as the woman had enjoyed countless hours of that when they had months together.

“Let’s do this properly this time. Lift your dress, marath’damane.”

Isabel took long, almost heaving breaths, but she slid the fossil-grey dress up her thighs.

“Keep holding that dress up with your left hand. Draw your right finger along your slit. Start at the bottom, work your way up to your clit, slowly. Do it the way I did. Do it the way you wish I was there doing it right now.”

“Mifhwehf …” Isabel was not bad at pleading with her sapphire eyes. With a well-pitched Daddy or two, they had seldom failed to win her father over, even when he was more than a little irked at his daughter’s apparent failures to fully capitalize on her Emory opportunities. If her pleading gaze had any effect on the woman dominating the big screen, though, it was only to encourage her.

“Hold your right finger up so I can see.”

Isabel did, and the sheen of her juice was unmistakable even in the dim light of the living room at night.

“Repeat after me: ‘Please, Mistress, I need this.’ But only if it’s true.”

“Mifhwehf , vwo, fweev.” Mistress, no, please.

“Is it not true? Because if it’s not, your body is lying to me. Is your body lying to me, marath’damane?”

Isabel didn’t trust herself to answer anymore even through the gag. Mistress Lanfear had never had particular trouble understanding her gag-talk through a simple ballgag anyway. She couldn’t stop herself from giving a helpless, noncommittal, treasonous mewl, though.

“Say it, marath’damane. Say it, Isari.”

Taking the phone call had been either the worst mistake she had made in two years, or the best decision she had made in her life. She could feel the tantalizing, rippling edges of subspace at the farthest edges of her vision, the farthest edges of her consciousness, what she hadn’t felt in so long. She had never felt it at all via a mere FaceTime call, or she probably would never have picked up.

“Fweev, Mifhwehf, I heew fis.”

“So you do, Isari. I’m glad to see that your mind has finally caught up with your body. Continue. Put your finger back where it was. Hike your dress higher.”

The second part of that actually proved harder than the first, for the dress was ankle-length, wide but not overly so. She managed it anyway. In the meantime, the first part was much easier, for her sex was hungry for attention, even if just from her own fingers. It had been longer than she wanted to admit, or to think about. The moment she touched her clit, the electric current went straight from there to her brain, bounced around inside the most carnal parts of her mind, and arced back down her body to every finger and toe. She arched her back wantonly, cursing the baggy maxi dress that made it hard to display her breasts they way they deserved, the way the eager sub in her wanted to display them, had once displayed them in person to the very woman now present only by screen. She thrust them forward as if determined to overcompensate for her drab choice of clothing, particularly given the daring and exquisite ensemble that Mistress Lanfear had found for the occasion. It didn’t matter that the enslaved damane in the series also wore drab gray dresses. What mattered was that her mistress wanted a show, and she wanted to give it. Her breathing was already fast and urgent through her nose, but she increased it further now, just to give that little extra prominence to the movement of her chest.

“That’s it, marath’damane. More than marath’damane. That simply means Those Who Must Be Leashed. But you, you were born for it. Oh, I wish I was there to put this on you. Don’t you?”

“Mmmm-hmmm!” Isabel—Isari—was already lost in the fantasy of exactly that, and had neither the breath nor the mental bandwidth to even attempt to form words around the rubber ball in her mouth. If she had had anything close to that mental bandwidth, she might have even used it in a last feeble attempt to turn aside, to pay attention to the red flags that by now were tattered remnants, banners left on a battlefield that had already been lost.

Mistress Lanfear held up the gleaming collar, open and facing the camera, so that it nearly filled the screen. Its impossibly high quality was even more apparent blown up to such size in 4K. Heavy and solid, delicately but ornately engraved, beautiful, teasing, taunting. “When I snap this closed, you know where to feel it, and you know what to do. Now, Isari.” She snapped the collar closed in front of the camera, and the sound echoed both in the Isabel’s room in Dolby Atmos, and in Isari’s rekindled submissive soul.

“Oh Gaahhhv oh Gaahhv oh Gaaaahhhhhvv!!”

The orgasm crashed over her body, which had been starving for it for beyond forever.

And the fire and lightning within her burst free of their dams as well.

There was only the briefest warning crackle, and Isabel, still writhing in the midst of her orgasm, turned to one side and focused as much of her attention as she could muster on an innocent floor lamp. Both the main bulb and the reading bulb shattered and died in sparkling blazes of glory, and the lamp itself flashed with coruscating electrical arcs before it toppled, leaving a scorched circle on the ground where the base had rested. Worse yet, the outlet in the wall, which fortunately was just an exposed box backed by exposed brick rather than set into drywall, sparked and a thin rectangle of flame outlined it and began to creep up the conduit that ran along the wall. Isabel writhed still more and threw herself onto her back in a lewd, undulating mockery of a bridge pose, but there was no relief there with her eyes pointed skyward. The pendant lamps hanging from the ceiling of her little industrial loft sparkled and shattered as well, and one fell crashing onto her breakfast bar.

She forced her eyes closed, simply by instinct, even though she knew this never worked, because the lack of sight only heightened the strength of the orgasm that she was still in the midst of. Mistress Lanfear had blindfolded her more than once during their summers together for that very reason, among others. A very distant corner of her mind was aware that she was also not exactly doing anything to help regain her focus with her finger still teasing her clit even as the disaster unfolded around her, but she would have had trouble enough stopping at this point even if her mistress had commanded her to—and Mistress Lanfear had commanded quite the opposite. And both her young, healthy, sex-starved body and whatever impossible, hungry energy hid within her had needed this release for so, so long.

Something she had still never been able to describe rippled and rolled out from her in all directions. She felt the yoga mat burn beneath her, and her smelled the smoke. She leapt up, her eyes snapping open again. She quickly shed the dress, every inch of the hemline burning, and cast it onto the already-doomed mat. The twill storage box in which she had kept her mistress’ toys and other mementos smoldered and then burst into flame. She grabbed the closest of the three separate fire extinguishers that she kept in her little flat, and, still naked and gagged, quickly turned the foam on the blaze. At first, it did no good, like throwing water on an electrical fire, as the torrent of energy continued to rage. It literally hurled the foam back from the mat and the dress and the box, scattering it across the room, even on the TV, where it looked like it landed in Mistress Lanfear’s midnight hair, and just above her right eyebrow. The items on the floor burned to ash, ten times as quickly and completely as any normal fire would have consumed them, leaving nothing but blackened pieces of metal from some of the toys in the memento box. Only then, as if the energy was satisfied that it had already devoured what it could, did the firefighting foam begin to land and prevent the fire from spreading any further. With the energy subsiding, Isabel finally dared look at the circuit breaker box by the front entrance, hurrying over to it and deactivating the circuit to the outlet where her martyred lamp had been plugged in. The electrical fire had crept a yard or so up the conduit on the wall, but she was now able to turn the firefighting foam on that as well. Without the electricity–or anything less explicable–feeding it, the last little blaze was extinguished in seconds.

Isabel turned back towards Mistress Lanfear. A partial silence fell. There was still a faint crackling sound in the air, and it wasn’t coming from the ruined pendant lamps or anything in particular. The odor of smoke was there, too, but it was surprisingly thin, only a trace amount from the burned conduit. Isabel’s dress, yoga mat, and under-couch storage box had burned so completely that there was nothing left to rise as smoke. As it was, the odor of smoke was thin enough that it couldn’t hide the rich, musky smell of Isabel’s own arousal, which also glistened on her now-bare pussy.

The TV and phone were both somehow undamaged. Mistress Lanfear had stood by now and stepped back from her own camera, so she and her sul’dam dress were visible to her chest. She had crossed her arms over her chest, and the silver bracelet was visible on her left wrist, with the cord leading down to towards where the a’dam would be resting, coiled, on her hip. The woman on the screen had not said a thing the entire time. Her expression now was unreadable, but at the very least, it was not shocked.

“Aaaeee,” Isabel moaned through the gag. God, even now, that sounds so hot! Oh God, please tell me she’s not going to push me to round two after this. Because I’d probably do it. As powerful a release as that orgasm had been, she would have gladly ridden that wave even further if she hadn’t had to jump up to save her loft, and possibly her building. It wasn’t completely out of her system. She shuddered at the memory of continuing to finger herself even as the power surge had begun. Part of her couldn’t believe she’d mustered the willpower to stop even as the yoga mat beneath her and the dress she was wearing had caught fire. She quickly unbuckled the back buckle of the gag, and gently squeezed the ball out of her mouth. “Addie, why?”

There was another partial silence. Then Mistress Lanfear’s face softened and warmed, and there was Adalynn again. “Because, Isabel Desiree Bauer, you needed that even more than I did. And, unless my eyes greatly deceive me, you could still do with a little bit more. Maybe even a lot. I know I could.”

Isabel shrank slightly in humiliation, both at the truth of the words and at how easily Adalynn had apparently seen it even through nothing but a phone camera. However, she had vented enough at this point now to not fall quite so effortlessly under Adalynn’s spell anymore. “This isn’t funny!” She gestured around her apartment, the ball gag still in her hands. “Look at this!”

“I’m looking at it,” Adalynn replied. “And I will take care of it. And you.”

“Addie, you can’t help with this!”

“Bullshit. I’ve spent the last three and a half years at MIT, two and a half at least, working on ways. You wouldn’t even believe the sacrifices I’ve made, the pseudoscientific rabbit holes I’ve wasted time on here, the rules I’ve broken, the things I’ve had to hide, for no reason beyond wanting to touch you again.”

“Do you even remember what happens when you touch me?!” And Hell, apparently what happens now if she even talks to me?! Isabel gave a sudden, involuntary tremble, and realized that she shouldn’t have asked that. Nearby objects suddenly catching fire wasn’t the only thing that happened when Adalynn had touched her, and in fact, the other things were even more unforgettable. That was, unfortunately, the problem. The frisson of that memory made her newly conscious of her nakedness with Adalynn’s face still dominating the miraculously-undamaged flatscreen, and she looked around for something to cover herself with. Unfortunately, there wasn’t so much as a sweat towel here in the living room, and she still somehow couldn’t just walk away.

Adalynn’s voice lowered, and she was almost perfectly balanced between Adalynn Shields and Mistress Lanfear as she continued. “Don’t make me repeat myself, marath’damane. Those were the two best summers of my life. I remember everything. Don’t you?” And with that, she licked her tongue across her lips slowly and winked.

The frustrated stub of the orgasm—and other kinds of release—within Isabel that had been interrupted mid-course responded as if pleading from a cage within her soul.

“Oh, good God, girl, when was the last time you came?”

Isabel blushed to the roots of her hair. “Addie …” Please don’t make me say it.

“Were you thinking of me whenever it happened?”

Oh God, don’t make me say that, either. Not that Adalynn needed her to admit it. It had been a rhetorical question. God damn that gorgeous evil genius.

Adalynn give a tiny, soft laugh. Even that tiny movement of the other woman’s breasts in the form-fitting bodice of the sul’dam dress was somehow impossible for Isabel to look away from. “You say the nicest things when you say nothing at all.”

Isabel buried her face in her hands. The chrome buckles on the gag she was still holding jangled together as if laughing in her face. “A girl has needs. But I’ve had to start going outside of town when I really need to cum.”

Adalynn arched an eyebrow. “Outside of town? Say, maybe, forty-ish miles to the north?”

Isabel actually flinched. Even knowing that the woman had gone to MIT, every time they talked, Isabel still got a new revelation of just how smart Adalynn was. “I have unhealthy ways of processing shit. But seriously, I’ve had the condo association, the fire department, a social worker, even the cops all come here. Daddy’s had to smooth things over, and he might not next time. He thinks I’m crazy, or spiraling, or who knows what, and his help is just enabling my slide, and telling him about this is not going to convince him that he’s wrong.”

“Good thing I didn’t say I was going to get him to take care of you, then. I said I was going to.”

“No offense, but he’s a partner at Kaplan Stabler and he knows people here.”

“And?”

“And you’re a thousand miles away and dead broke.”

The background behind Adalynn on the TV rotated as she got to her feet. Her smile shifted, too, somehow becoming more powerful and confident without sliding back into Mistress Lanfear. “Oh for two.”

“What?”

There was a mysterious twinkle in Adalynn’s eyes. “Never mind. But I do need to get to work. I don’t want you to worry about anything, OK? Get some sleep if you can. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, so we can hope that means no one gives you any shit. And if anything happens there and you need to crash somewhere else, you don’t need to go all the way back to Red Top. My parents have a new place in Atlanta, and they’re not there now. There’s food and everything, linens, toiletries, could be an AirBnB but they’re not using it for that. Wine cellar and liquor cabinet included.”

Isabel was so dumbfounded at that last remark that she forgot to ask when Adalynn’s parents had moved into the city from Chattanooga. “Adalynn, I haven’t had a drink since Red Top. Have you?”

Adalynn set the phone down on some surface that was higher than the one it had rested on before, just below head height. When her hand came back into view, there was a rocks glass in it, with traces of brown liquid in the bottom, clearly finished.

“You didn’t really think I was going to watch the season finale without oosquai on hand, did you?” She drained the last few drops in the glass, more water than whisky at this point. “I went with a George Dickel reserve. Highest corn content I could get my hands on.” It was mixing cultures within the fandom—oosquai was a strong, maize-based spirit favored by the desert-dwelling Aiel in the far east of the setting. The Seanchan that Adalynn and Isabel were cosplaying as for the finale were naval invaders from the across the ocean to the far west, more than a thousand miles away. But to Isabel’s eyes, that was hardly the gravest sin Adalynn was committing.

“Addie, are you serious?”

“A hundred percent. I told you, I’ve spent almost my entire time here at MIT working on this. And gotten some real results, too.”

Isabel didn’t know what to say, so she just fidgeted, naked, before the woman on the screen.

“Isabel. Do you trust me?”

“Too much. That’s my problem.”

“No, Isabel. It’s no one’s problem, and it’s my honor. Get some sleep. You’ve had quite a day. Even if it was a desperately needed one. Oh, and Isari?” she switched back to Isabel’s damane name, and her eyes suddenly hardened to Mistress Lanfear again. “No clothes. I’ll enjoy thinking about you like this while I take care of things.”

“W … what?!”

“Did I stutter, Isari? Did you fail to understand me?”

The caged, unsatisfied yearning within her strained harder on the bars of its prison. “No, Mistress,” she said. Why do I do this? Why do I feel like this when I do this?!

“Good. Later, beautiful.” With that, Adalynn–Mistress Lanfear–finally cut the connection.

Chapter 2

With the TV suddenly off, Isabel suddenly realized how dark it was in her living room, with the pendant lamps overhead and her floor lamp both shattered. The windows were large, though, and covered only with thin gauzy curtains, so the ambient light of Castleberry Hill filtered in from behind the TV. Without that, Adalynn probably would have had a hard time seeing more than Isabel’s silhouette. Isabel inched slowly along the wall, then climbed up onto the side of her couch, which let her get close enough to the TV that she could reach one long dancer’s leg across the gap between the couch and her entertainment center and grab her phone. She dropped the gag on the end table that sat catty-corner between the couch and the TV. She switched the phone flashlight on, which helped a little bit more, but not really enough to see where it was safe to walk on the path to her bedroom. Also, she almost immediately got her low battery warning. You and me both, phone, she thought.

Well, the couch was plush and had been the site of many a luxurious nap, including the occasional nude one. There was a wireless charger on the end table, and Isabel set her phone there to charge. Then she positioned her favorite throw pillow behind her head, and snuggled down to sleep. She could deal with the mess in the morning.

Fate had other plans. Or more accurately, her condo association did, but the two were equally relentless, possibly in cahoots.

She was just on the dreamy, meandering threshold of sleep when there was a loud knock at the door, followed within femtoseconds by the familiar Ring doorbell chime. She grabbed her ailing phone and quickly loaded the doorbell camera view, praying that it wasn’t who she already knew it was.

Ximena Gomez, a woman whose resting bitch face belied the fact that she was quite an active one, was the president of the condo association. She had retired from the compliance department at SunTrust just before the merger with BB&T, and her first retirement project was attempting to change the condo bylaws to prohibit renters. Not a week after she learned that Isabel was not really paying rent, she was staying in a loft owned by her father, she had changed the proposed amendment to include any non-owner-occupant. There was no one else like Isabel in the development, so the amendment had had no other purpose than to get rid of her. The other owners had voted down the proposal 27-28, in part because of a combined charm offensive from both Isabel and her father, Isabel saying as openly as she dared that it was unkind of Ximena to have changed the language just to get rid of her, and her father making the pitch to other owners that the condos were worth more if you could rent them out either to long-term tenants or as AirBnBs. Castleberry Hill was an up-and-coming neighborhood. Ximena had never forgiven Isabel.

“Bauer! What the hell is going on there?”

Even in the heavy shadows, with the only light being the ambient light through the gauzy curtains, Isabel crouched lower on the couch and crossed her arms over her naked body.

“Two different people just smelled smoke and said it sounded like a transformer blew in your loft!” Isabel knew well enough that Ximena herself would have been one of them, and she just would have said it like that to make it sound like she had even more complaints about her.

A headache that had nothing to do with the phenomenon that had been responsible for that fact earlier started beating on the inside of Isabel’s skull.

“Your car’s in the lot, I know you’re there!”

If Mistress had let me wear clothes, maybe I’d answer.

Honestly, more likely I wouldn’t.

If Mistress were actually here, she might make me. Now there was a humiliating thought. And unlike many others, this one did not stir even the faintest tremor of erotic thrills in her. Actually, that probably means she wouldn’t make me. She always somehow knows.

“If you make me call the fire department, I swear to God I’m calling the police, too, just because!”

Isabel cringed, and the threat almost worked. Her hand hesitated on her phone, about to at least talk through the Ring. But her nerves were too fried, and a thought occurred to her, as Adalynn’s words from only minutes earlier came back to her. She was willing to do a lot to not deal with this tonight.

“I just can’t even,” Ximena said as she pulled out her phone. Isabel tensed, watching the woman’s fingers. But Ximena was cautious enough not to dial 911, whether that was due to a genuine desire not to push the envelope too much when the smell of smoke was faint and not growing, or because she was at least a little afraid of Isabel’s father, who owned the loft. Just by the number of buttons Ximena pushed, Isabel could see that she wasn’t calling an emergency line. And it was after hours.

Isabel’s hopes were dashed, though. Ximena wasn’t actually calling the fire department after hours, which would have given her at least until morning, and maybe more considering that the next day was Christmas Eve. “Brian, it’s Ximena. Are you on-site? OK, well, did you leave the master key in the office? I think we need to do an emergency inspection on Unit 404. Both for health and possible rule violations. I can still smell a little bit of smoke from inside, and we had another resident say he heard something like a transformer blow but from inside the unit, and no one is answering.” She hung up. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. I really hope that you’re not OK in there, because I’ll be really pissed if you’ve just torched your unit and you’re just making me stand here because don’t want to deal with it.”

It’s not really my unit, it’s Daddy’s. Also, I didn’t really torch it, just singed it a little. And you’re always pissed. And I always don’t want to deal with it.

None of those barbed retorts crossed her lips, and Ximena steamed off. Adrenalin pumping, Isabel dialed Adalynn’s number. She still had it on speed-dial even after two years.

Adalynn picked up on the third ring. “Well, well! Been a while!” she quipped.

“Addie, I’ve changed my mind. I need to get out of here. Please tell me you were serious.”

“Isabel, when I said …”

“I’ll go to Daddy if I have to, but I’d really …”

“Isari,” Adalynn continued more forcefully.

“.. rather not, I just completely can’t deal with all the questi …”

“Isari,” Adalynn pressed, and her voice had changed. Isabel’s throat constricted closed. There was no doubt who was taking over. “Put me back on the TV, Isari. You babble less when you can see me, and I enjoy life more when I can see you.”

“Ad … Mistress, I’m going to be in big trouble here in fifteen minutes.”

“Then you’d better put me on the TV, hadn’t you, marath’damane? I just rewatched the ending scene, by the way. Still as ridiculous as the first time.”

Isabel had by now gotten Adalynn’s face back on the big screen. The raven-haired woman was not reclining on her couch anymore, she had her own phone slightly farther away from her face, so Isabel could see both more of her body, still wearing the exquisite sul’dam dress, and the even more exquisite silver bracelet sill on her wrist, the silver leash still connected, though her hip where the collar would have rested was out of sight below the level of her desk. She was seated at a large desk in a small library, or small corner of one somewhere. The wall behind her was half covered in sturdy, build-in oak bookshelves, the other half in maps or charts of some kind that Isabel couldn’t really see in the dim yellow light.

“Mistress, I know, but I’m a little busy freaking out to rehash that right now … the COA president was here and she’s coming back in fifteen minutes with the skeleton key and she’s going to be coming in here, and I’m going to have to get dressed and deal with her and I just can’t …”

“Isari,” Mistress Lanfear cut her off, taking full advantage of the Dolby Atmos system once more. “Your gag is still within arm’s reach. Put it back on. Now. I won’t waste your time, but your babbling will.”

“Mistress, really?”

“That’s a demerit, sub of mine. Now do it before you make things worse for both yourself and me.”

Isabel didn’t even have the mental capacity to spare to think about what kind of punishment her mistress might come up with her from a thousand miles away to purge a demerit. She spared a faint thought that they didn’t even have that kind of relationship anymore, but that was a feeble thought indeed as she found herself reaching over to the nightstand where she had dropped the gag earlier. The ball found its way behind her teeth once again, and both the main strap and the chinstrap were quickly fastened as tightly as Mistress Lanfear herself would have done. Without even thinking, Isabel slid back into the mindset she had adopted so effortlessly when they were together, letting her pleading soul speak through her eyes, letting them express, even highlight, the knowledge of her helplessness and her trust that Mistress would make everything OK.

“Much better. Now, put your special heels on. The ones with the steel heel that I got you on Etsy that second summer.”

Isabel’s eyes went wide, and tears welled up in them unexpectedly. Mistress will be so disappointed … man, I just fuck everything up … without any further prompting, she moved back to where she had knelt for her display so recently and knelt again, head bowed in apology and supplication. She reached into the ruins of the fabric memento box and lifted two steel stilettos to show her mistress. The heels alone. She had indeed kept them, but everything but the heel had been reduced to ash earlier. In fact, even the metal heels, all that remained of them, were still hot to the touch.

“Oh,” Mistress Lanfear said. “Marath’damane. Isari. Look at me.” Isabel looked up and saw that the woman had risen from her desk, and her head was now slightly above the level of her phone, so she looked down. But while she was still very much in character, there was still somehow a softness in her smile now, one that reminded Isabel that Adalynn Shields was still very close to the surface of Mistress Lanfear’s persona. “You kept them. That’s what matters for tonight. But don’t get me wrong, Isari. I will see those gorgeous legs of yours in the heels that they were meant for again. And again and again and again. But now is not the time. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Isabel nodded. “Ehhf, Wihfwehf.”

“Do you still have your big trench coat, boots, and the fur hat with the ear warmers by the front entrance?”

Isabel nodded again.

“When I hang up, start your car warming up by remote, then text me the contact info for this COA person. Then put those outer clothes on. Nothing else. It’s frigid outside, but those will be warm enough, and I don’t want you rummaging through your unit for clothes and make-up and all the rest, we don’t have that time. I’m texting you the address of my parents’ house now. Charge your phone in the car. Drive to this address. I have the ability to open the garage door from where I am. And do not remove the gag between now and when you get there. I don’t even want you babbling to yourself in the car, or being tempted to answer any calls you might get from the COA, and keeping you silenced will keep you focused. When you get there, FaceTime me back, and I’ll open the garage. Do you understand?”

Isabel was flabbergasted, but worse, aroused, even though it was fifteen degrees outside.

“Ehhf, Wihfwehf.”

“Do you need me to repeat anything?”

Isabel shook her head. “Fwo, Wifhwehf.”

“And?”

Isabel hesitated, not sure what to say for a moment. But one thing came to her as worth saying, even if it might not have been the specific response Mistress Lanfear was looking for. “Ann I hruff oo.” And I trust you. She tactfully left off what she had added earlier to that—I trust you too much.

“Then get started.”

Isabel again retrieved her phone from the top of the TV, now down to 12% charge. True to her word, the text from her mistress was already there with the address. Despite the low battery, Isabel used her phone flashlight again now, knowing she was going to be able to charge in her car soon enough. She found her way to the coat closet by the front door, and quickly put on her black leather walking boots, and her cashmere trench coat that came all the way down to her ankles. Finally, she donned her big, fluffy fur hat, and settled the ear warmers into place. One would have to get surprisingly close in the dark, even with the streetlights in the parking lot of this little loft complex, to see that a red rubber ball filled her mouth. And one would have to get even closer to see that she was wearing nothing under her outerwear. There were security cameras mounted on the lightpoles, and if someone watching them paused the video and zoomed in, there would probably be an angle from which they could see the gag, but even they would have trouble being certain that she was naked beneath her coat.

The most nervous, adrenalin-pulsing part of the trip was the first minute, from the door of her loft, down the back stairs, and out to the parking lot. The indoor lighting would have made it much harder to hide what she was wearing—and not wearing. And an encounter with Ximena at that point might have caused both of them to spontaneously combust. Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened, and she was soon safely behind the tinted windows of her car, and had seldom been more grateful for them. They hadn’t been her idea, because the car was a hand-me-down from her father, a 2010 silver-grey Cadillac CTS that was far too corporate for an undergrad, even an Emory one. It came in handy today, though, as did the pop-up navigation screen, which she quickly raised from within the dash and plugged in the address that Mistress Lanfear had given her.

Her eyebrows raised slightly when she saw the destination on the map. It was in the Sherwood Forest pocket neighborhood in Atlanta, backing up onto Clear Creek. The neighborhood wasn’t all that far from Castleberry Hill, certainly closer than her parents’ place in Mt. Paran Parkway. And while Sherwood Forest was nowhere near as expensive as Mt. Paran Parkway, she had never understood Adalynn’s parents to have even Sherwood Forest kind of money. When Isabel and Adalynn had met at dance camp all those years ago, Adalynn’s parents had lived up in Cartersville, and not in any kind of mansion there.

The drive began uneventfully, at least by the standards of naked and gagged women driving Cadillacs with tinted windows through downtown Atlanta, but about twelve minutes into the drive, her phone did light up with another Ring notification. Ximena had returned to Isabel’s door back in Castleberry Hill. A minute later, she got an incoming call from her, just as Mistress Lanfear had predicted.

“Uuhhhh,” Isabel groaned through the gag. And the sad thing was that Mistress Lanfear had also been right that Isabel would have had a hard time resisting answering at this point if she’d been able, maybe even browbeaten into turning back, even though talking with anyone from the COA at the moment was still the last thing she wanted to do.

She let the call go to voicemail.

Only a few minutes after that, Isabel was turning off of Peachtree Street into the leafy, tucked-away enclave of Sherwood Forest. Soon after that, she reached the address that Mistress Lanfear had given her. Adalynn’s parents’ new house was among the smaller ones in the neighborhood, a simple, sprawling, dun-brown ranch among many larger, stately, two- and even three-floor homes. And even if Isabel were inclined to doubt her navigation system, the sign in the yard at the front corner of the driveway would have been a giveaway. A spoof of the more familiar version, it read:

In this house, we believe

The Dark One and all the Forsaken

Are bound in Shayol Ghul

Beyond the Great Blight

Bound by the Creator

At the moment of Creation

Bound until the end of Time.

Isabel laughed even through the gag as she pulled into the short driveway, then FaceTimed Mistress Lanfear as promised. On a small whim, she turned on the overhead light in the car to give her mistress a better view.

This time, Mistress Lanfear picked up on the first ring. Isabel was about to say I’m here as best she could with the red rubber ball in her mouth, but Adalynn didn’t wait and make her. She gave a quick smile of acknowledgement at the light falling on Isabel’s gagged face. “Glad you made it, Isari,” she said. “Go ahead in.” The two-car garage door rolled up and the light on the overhead motor came on, and Isabell pulled in. As the garage door closed behind her, Isabel pointed to the ball her in her mouth and gave Mistress Lanfear a questioning look.

Mistress Lanfear’s emerald eyes sharpened momentarily, and she shook her head. “Just a little more. Go into the house, there will be a big open space on the right with the kitchen and living room and stairs down to the family room and the rest of the downstairs. Straight ahead will be the hallway to the bedrooms, with the master bedroom at the end. Leave your coat and boots and hat in the little nook to the side as you go in, then go on through past the kitchen to the living room—well, the living room area, it’s all one big space—and turn on the lights. There’s something there I want you to see before the gag comes off.” As she said this, Mistress Lanfear herself was walking out of the library or office she had been working in, her face and the impossibly distracting sul’dam dress and her breasts underneath it fading from view as she walked into a darker hallway, leaving only her voice.

Isabel rolled her eyes and gave a brief uuuhhh, but got out of the car with the gag still securely buckled behind her neck and under her chin. Sure enough, the door into the house was unlocked, and there was a little closet nook to the left. Isabel hung her coat on a waiting hanger, stashed the hat on the shelf above the hanger bar, and then shed her boots. She shook and wrestled her blond mane back over her shoulders, then picked up the phone again and headed into the living room. There was just enough light from the garage to see the light switch. She flipped it on.

The living room had a high, angled ceiling, higher than one would have expected from the street. The angle swept up away from the street side, so the rear of the house was higher, and floor-to-ceiling windows that apparently spanned both this floor and the one below it, which also would have been invisible from the road, as the house was built into a hill, gave a beautiful view of the little creek behind. A flatscreen even larger than the one in Isabel’s apartment hung above an elegant gas fireplace, and a rectangle formed by a sectional, a chaise lounge, and an armchair was positioned for a group to watch TV. A mirror-backed liquor shelf close at hand held probably forty bottles of different spirits.

At best, one percent of Isabel’s brain registered these views.

There, rising from a reclining position on the chaise lounge, red and blue dress with lightning symbols highlighting every beautiful curve above her waist, silver bracelet on her wrist, was Adalynn—Mistress Lanfear—in the flesh. The utterly perfect flesh. She was grinning like the cat that caught the canary, and the brilliant silver collar at her hip might as well have been, too.

“Welcome, marath’damane.”

Isabel’s eyelids climbed backwards over her skull. “Aaaeee!!” She cried through the gag. Reflexively, her hands shot back to the buckle at the back of her neck.

Mistress Lanfear somehow crossed the room with blinding speed, particularly in the long dress and five-inch Christian Louboutins. Isabel had only had a second or two to fumble with the buckle, nowhere near enough to actually take it off, before her mistress’ hands were there on hers. Her mistress’ face, those blazing emerald eyes and lustrous midnight hair, were now only inches from her own. Even just that first firm touch of their hands was electric, and she began to feel the heat and electricity building in her again, the frustrated partial release from earlier making itself known again, the prison bars inside her rattling ferociously under the sudden onslaught of feeling.

“Did I say you could touch that?” Mistress Lanfear asked.

Isabel’s fingers stilled, but she said nothing, frozen, doe-eyed, both too overwhelmed and too busy drinking in the sight of Mistress Lanfear here, really here, right in front of her! Her breathing began to quicken.

“Isari? Isari. Mistress asked you a question.”

Her breathing quickened still further, but she still couldn’t force any words out, could not so much as try to mumble something through the gag.

Mistress Lanfear shook her head sternly. “I leave you alone for a while and this is what happens. I’ll have to remind myself never to do that again. Well, time for some remedial education.” She spun Isabel around, then marched her across the room to the fireplace. As she approached, two stones in the façade just beneath the overhang of the mantel, one near each upper corner of the façade, rolled back and away. From the recesses revealed behind them, Mistress Lanfear withdrew two stainless steel cuffs lined with faux suede, each on a long nylon tether. She had lost none of her practiced efficiency as she fastened a cuff around each of Isabel’s wrists.

Isabel’s mind at this point was barely coherent enough to register her shock at the built-in devices. Why on earth does Adalynn’s parents’ house have anything like this in it? An extraordinary possibility took shape in the back of her mind, but in the back of her mind was where it stayed for now, because the rest of her mind was still dominated by her mistress’ impossible presence and the surging erotic fire in her sex again, the lightning once again beginning to dance along every nerve, more insistent now than it had been even at her loft, even with the release—powerful but partial—that her mistress had brought her to there.

Bound facing the fireplace with her arms spread, Isabel could only strain to look back over her shoulder. She got the sense that Mistress Lanfear had knelt down and was withdrawing something, or some things, from under the chaise lounge.

“Mihhwehhf?” She asked uncertainly.

The first thing she felt then was the tip of something soft but firm under her chin, lifting it and turning it back to face forward, at the fireplace and mantel. More distant memories of those past summers reactivated, and she almost melted, leaning forward onto the façade to steady herself.

“Good, I see you remember this. So I won’t have to ask, and risk you earning another demerit. You’re already at two, one from earlier, and one just now. You know what comes next. Spread your legs.”

“Oh Gahv, Mihhweff, hii?” Oh God, Mistress, why? Was the woman trying to destroy her parents’ beautiful new house?

The tip of the riding crop came down on Isabel’s left ass cheek, and white fire spread from the impact, some up, some down, mostly straight to her pussy, where she could already feel the slickness even without the use of her hands. A moment later, the crop came down again, this time on her right ass cheek, and the sensation repeated and heightened.

“I was neither asking questions nor inviting you to do so,” Mistress Lanfear observed. “Remember, first and foremost, your role is not to question, and not to resist. It is to surrender, and obey. Now. Spread your legs.”

Isabel spread her legs.

“Hold still,” Mistress Lanfear continued, and Isabel felt more cuffs, matching the ones that had been hidden in the fireplace façade, being securely fastened on her ankles. A moment after that, Mistress Lanfear attached a sturdy metal bar of some kind to the ankle cuffs, holding Isabel’s legs spread three feet apart. Then she stood, and drew the tip of the crop slowly, sensuously up and down Isabel’s exposed backside. Then, she shifted the crop to her left hand and reached through Isabels spread legs and gently caressed her pussy, slowly finding her way to her clit.

“UuhhuuuhhhUUUHHH! Mihweh, weeef, moh!”

Mistress Lanfear withdrew her hand. “At least your body knows how to respond even if your mouth doesn’t.” She leaned forward and held her index finger, damp with Isabel’s juice, right under her nose to drive the point in. The rich fabric of the sul’dam dress brushed all up and down Isabel’s backside.

The raven-haired woman continued, “one demerit from earlier and one just now. You know the rule, little girl. Ten strokes with either the crop or the paddle for each demerit. But you can reduce that to six for each demerit by accepting what you’ve done wrong and promising to do better. Are you ready to do that, marath’damane?”

Tears were beginning to well up in Isabel’s eyes, but she nodded, dutifully resisting the urge to turn her head. “Ehhf, Wihfwehf.”

“Good. You know what to say. Say it.”

“I iih a vaahv giwh. Weev heeh fe oo fe a goov giwh, Wihfwehf.” I’ve been a bad girl. Please teach me to be a good girl, Mistress.

“Well done. And I will indeed teach you to be a good girl, Isari. Let’s begin. And remember, lose count or forget the appropriate mantra and you’re back to ten strokes per demerit.”

Without further ado, the crop came down once again on Isabel’s left ass cheek, and the erotic fire flashed outward from the sting. A gasping breath broke forth from Isabel’s nose, and a helpless mewl from within her throat, but her discipline held. “Uuh. I wiw hruff.” One. I will trust.

Again a swish in the air, and again the crop descended, this time on her right ass cheek. The helpless mewl came unbidden again, and the explosive breath through her nose harder, but she recovered. “Hoo. I wiw oh-ay.” Two. I will obey.

Back the swish and sting of the crop came to her left ass cheek, just a hair above where the first two strokes had fallen. “Hree. I wiw hruff.” Three. I will trust.

Right again. “Howh. I wiw oh-ay.”

Mistress Lanfear continued with Isabel’s discipline, slowly, deliberately, in near-perfect rhythm. There had been times in their summers together when she had deliberately mixed up her strokes when Isabel had earned a spanking, to keep the summer-haired dancer guessing and off-balance, but this was not one of those occasions. The perfect rhythm helped the pain and pleasure blend all the more effortlessly, without interruption. Isabel was sweating, panting mess by the twelfth stroke, gasping, and pleading through her gag, and worse yet, the headaches that warned of another power surge were building rapidly—but she never lost count and never faltered in the simple alternating mantra that her mistress had established in their very first session of their very first summer, to mitigate her transgressions.

“Hwewf. I wiw hruff. I wiw oh-ay. Fhanh hoo, Mihwehf, hif awahmheh haf wurmf uhr weffom!”

Mistress Lanfear began releasing Isabel from the wrist and ankle restraints. The spreader bar and the ankle restraints still attached to it fell to the carpeted floor with a thud and a muted jangle. The tethers and the cuffs attached to them retracted into their alcoves. “Good, Isari. Maybe you haven’t fallen out of training as much as I feared. And I’ve missed that sound so, so much. But as thrilling as your gag-talk is, I want to hear your final act of contrition without this in your mouth, too. I’m going to take the gag out now. And I want the first words you say to be repeating what you just said. And Isari? Make me believe every word.”

That last sentence was a deep cut for super-fans of the Wheel of Time books; it was a line said by one of the sul’dam assigned to break and train one of the main characters of the books, who had been captured and collared by the Seanchan.

The part that Mistress Lanfear had forgotten to mention, and that was definitely not in that scene in the books, was that as her left hand began unbuckling the gag strap, her right hand found Isabel’s slick pussy and engorged clit, and began caressing it, ever so slowly. The smell of arousal was so thick in the air that Isabel could taste it on her tongue. Even standing bound like this—perhaps because she was—she was all too close to the edge, and her mistress was riding her at a gallop with no fences.

The gag came loose in Mistress Lanfear’s hands, and the words came immediately to Isabel’s lips. “Twelve. I will trust. I will obey. Thank you, Mistress, this damane has learned her lesson.” She quivered, about to burst out with more of the same objections that she had raised so many times already tonight. This time, though, she had surrendered, or been reeducated, enough to understand that her mistress was fully aware of what was going to happen, and that clearly wasn’t stopping her. Also, between the headaches and the wet fire already burning between her legs, which her mistress’ adept fingers continued to stoke, she doubted she could have made the slightest objection sound like anything but a plea for mercy that would only encourage Mistress Lanfear. Would only encourage both of them, honestly.

“Good. Trust and obey, marath’damane. Lift your hair.”

Isabel forced her sore arms to obey and lifted the golden curtain off her neck. There was no doubt what was coming now, and she knew the first touch of it had a good chance sending her over the edge.

“Mistress, the headaches …” It was half a gasp, half a prayer, and sounded exactly like the teasing plea for mercy she had predicted it would. “You know what’ll happen …”

“Oh no, Isari. And neither do you. But it’ll be worth it either way.”

At long last, Isabel felt the cold feel of metal around her throat, and the collar that had been waiting for her all this time closed with a soft click that echoed in her mind like thunder. It was, as it had appeared to be, nothing resembling a typical cosplay replica. It was heavy, heavier even than stainless steel, thick, and had to be two inches high, enough that no one wearing it would ever forget its presence, especially if they tried to look down.

She was Isari, the collared damane of the Wheel of Time’s most brilliant and insane superfan, once again.

The click of the collar closing brought her right up to the edge, but did not quite send her over, because at that moment, things got even stranger, even by the standards of someone whose orgasms had been high-energy environmental hazards for almost four years now.

An entire overlay of new sensations descended upon her, somehow familiar even though she had never felt anything like it before. It was clearly a feeling of arousal, too, similar enough to her own to be recognizable as nothing else, but still unlike she had ever felt when she was aroused, unlike what she was still feeling from her mistress’ maddeningly slow fingers between her legs. Like an aroused spirit had suddenly decided to inhabit her body, not that she had any clue what that would actually feel like.

“So much better. I was tired of calling you marath’damane. Now, damane Isari, tell me: How are your headaches?”

“They’re … wow, they’re uuuuhhh, oh my God …”

Mistress Lanfear had finally begun increasing the pace of her finger on Isari’s clit. And while her headaches weren’t gone, there was suddenly definitely something different about them. They were still there. Still strong, in fact. But if before they had constantly pulsed angrily like caged monsters, they were now suddenly hesitant, as if they had a new warden five times harder than their old one. They didn’t bother her like they had a moment before the gleaming silver collar had closed upon her neck.

“That’s what I like to hear, Isari. Now, remember, trust, and obey. Only two more things you need to do now. First, close your eyes.”

Isari closed her eyes. Mistress Lanfear increased the pace of her fingers still more. They were careening towards the edge again now.

“Are they closed?”

“Yes, Mistress!” Isabel’s breathing barely qualified as breathing anymore. She was panting.

“Good. Keep them that way. Second. Kiss me back.”

Mistress Lanfear spun Isabel around once more, and then her hand was firmly knotted in Isabel’s hair, and their lips met for the first time in more than two years. The thick, luxurious fabric of the front of the sul’dam dress slid teasingly along Isari’s naked front, including her upright nipples. And that impossible second set of sensations within Isari, suddenly more aroused as well flooded through and over into her, like it was kissing her as well from inside herself, or like she was kissing herself on the lips and loving every moment of it.

The prison bars within her disintegrated in a blaze of pure, wild ecstasy. She mewled and screamed and writhed and clenched her thighs together around her mistress’ fingers, fully intended to never let them go. She tossed her head backward with a stronger, undulating scream as the power surge burst forth from within her and screamed at the ceiling. She half expected to see it already falling on her as the leading edge of the tsunami blasted her eyes open, swirling and surging around her. There actually was something different about the ceiling, but nothing she had anywhere close to the brain cells to spare to figure out in the throes of the fullest, most unrestrained orgasm she had enjoyed in four years.

Mistress Lanfear pulled Isari’s hair, forcing her head even further back and sending yet another adrenalin spike into the blazing release surging within and around her. “Eyes shut, damane!”

Isari snapped her eyes closed again, but if her mistress had ordered her to be quiet, too, at that point, she would have been completely unable to obey.

“Keep cumming, Isari. Hold nothing back. Go. Let it all out,” Mistress Lanfear’s fingers continued to work.

Isari needed no urging. So deep in subspace, having so completely outsourced every single thought about consequences at this point, and the accursed headaches somehow mercifully under control, she no longer cared if she burned the entire neighborhood to the ground. Even when she had snuck back to the darkened shores of Lake Allatoona in Red Top Mountain State Park, where their lives had changed all those years ago, she had felt the need to be furtive, had held back, mentally and physically, afraid of starting a forest fire or something worse, allowing herself just enough release to take the edge off. And she had been so terribly, desperately alone. Here, with both her mistress’ collar and undivided attention on her, she no longer needed her own unsteady boundaries. She had better ones. Or she didn’t even care if they were worse ones. She didn’t need to care. All she needed to do was trust. And cum. She needed that even more, and she seized the opportunity with a maniacal fervor. Her orgasm went on, and on, and on, somehow amplified and extended by the strange new sensation that Mistress Lanfear’s a’dam had brought with it.

As the waves pouring out of her surged to another peak, she leaned forward and licked and nibbled on Mistress Lanfear’s earlobe.

And at the same instant, the sensation was matched by the sensation of licking and nibbling on her own earlobe. Did she just realize what I was going to do and do it at the exact same time?!

“Oh, there you go, good girl, little damane. There’s the little sub I remember!”

How is she talking and teasing my earlobes at the same time?! And she just leaned her head back, not forward, as I started working on her!

A terrifying, exhilarating hypothesis came to her. In the Wheel of Time books, to prevent the enslaved women who could use the One Power from physically turning on the sul’dam who held their leash, the a’dam mirrored and doubled the physical sensations felt by the sul’dam back to the damane in the collar. Egwene, the main character who experienced the effect of the a’dam firsthand, knocked herself almost senseless by punching the woman who had collared her in the face.

For a brief moment, she stopped teasing Mistress Lanfear’s earlobe. The licking and nibbling sensation on her own ear ceased immediately. She started again, and it returned.

The a’dam is a lot more than a best-in-class replica or prop. The damn thing is functional! A moment later: That extra layer of sensation I’m feeling, aroused but focused, celebrating my release but not sharing it yet, familiar but not–that’s her arousal! And I really was kissing myself when she told me to kiss her back!

“Keep your eyes closed, Isari! Think later! Cum now!” She let go of Isari’s hair at this point, and caught in the invisible eruption, the golden strands lifted and fanned out away from Isari’s head in all directions, a tattered golden sail caught in an unseen wind.

“Yes, Mistress!” Isari gleefully returned to the erotic rollercoaster that she had continued to ride even as that stunning realization had hit her. If anything, she was even less inhibited now because at some level, she realized that the house was not on fire, and the TV and other electronics in the room had not been reduced to sparkling paperweights, even as she continued to feel the waves of that impossible phenomenon pouring out of her in a Plinian eruption. She nibbled on Mistress Lanfear’s earlobe, and then slipped one hand inside the low-cut bodice of the sul’dam dress and teased her mistress’ nipples straining against the inside of the leather, relishing the sensation mirrored in her own naked and achingly at-attention tits. The sensation helped push her to another crest, and one more after that, before she finally felt herself begin to coast in for a landing. As if to emphasize the end of the ride, her hair floated slowly downward and settled into place on her naked back again.

She snuggled into the curve of her mistress’ neck, and took advantage of whatever impossible sensation-mirroring technology had been built into the collar on her neck in a different kind of intimate way. She ran her hands up through Mistress Lanfear’s hair and scratching her head, enjoying the post-coital grooming mirrored on her own scalp. “Wow,” she breathed. She wouldn’t have had enough breath for another syllable.

Mistress Lanfear wrapped her arms around Isari and breathed huskily in her ear. “Don’t get too comfortable, my dear damane. You see, I haven’t cum yet. And I think you’ve figured out what happens when I do. And you’re still going to bring me there.”

Isari went to take an over-dramatic breath of feigned exasperation, but it didn’t work. Instead, she just giggled. She couldn’t remembered the last time she had genuinely giggled. “I will trust. I will obey. Teeheehee,” she giggled again. “But Mistress?”

“Yes, Isari?”

“Can I look?”

Wrapped in the other woman’s arms, she felt as much as heard her mistress low, humming laugh. “Yes, Isari. In fact, it’s high time you did.”

Isari opened her eyes, and it turned out she was not as completely drained of adrenalin as she thought. A startled, frightened eep burst from her lips, and she suddenly jumped and threw her legs forward and around Mistress Lanfear’s waist, almost getting her right leg tangled in the a’dam leash, though how she was able to jump at all under the circumstances was just another part of the impossible mystery around her.

The two women were floating six feet off the ground, rotating gracefully in midair. Isari’s brain reengaged enough at this point to realize that when she had seen something different about the ceiling in the midst of her orgasm, it was because the high, sweeping, angled ceiling had been closer than she remembered.

Shimmering golden energy flecked with the occasional spark of blue or purple or less recognizable colors flowed and rippled over the furniture and floor beneath them, and even some distance up the walls. It did not flow not quite like water, nor like fog, but perhaps something in between. A thinner mist of the same energy hung and drifted in the air around them.

There was not a scratch or singe on the room or any of the furniture.

Mistress Lanfear’s whisper in her ear was excited, but for once soft and tentative. “Are you afraid, Isari?”

“I … yes, Mistress. A little.”

The other woman nodded. “How much?”

“I … don’t stop.”

“I don’t intend to. Ever.” Her arms tightened around Isari, and her lips found Isari’s again as well.

Chapter 3

They drifted in silence for a while, kissing and snuggling as if they weren’t hovering in the air.

“Want to see a little something more before I put you to work on me?” Mistress Lanfear asked.

Isari giggled again. God, how do I stop giggling, I’m too old to giggle like a kindergartener! “I’d love to, Mistress. And I maybe could use a break before we start again?”

“I’ll be the judge of that, damane. I’m the one horny as hell who hasn’t got a chance to let it out yet. And never forget that I own you utterly now.” Mistress Lanfear continued. She took Isari’s head in both hands and brought it firmly forward for another kiss. Then, with no warning, she casually revealed another way in which the silver collar and bracelet set were very much a functional a’dam from the Wheel of Time books: it felt like a stinging smack landed on Isari ass, like a stroke from a switch with nettles on the end. Except that her hands were up around Isari’s head, and held nothing except that head, helping to hold their lips tightly together.

“Gwmmmph!” Isari gasped into the kiss. She broke free a moment later, just by an inch or two. “It can do that, too?!” In the books, the sul’dam wearing the bracelet had complete control over the sensations felt by the damane in the collar, and thus be could be punished as mercilessly and continuously as necessary to break and train the Empire’s prized property without physically damaging it.

“It obviously can,” Mistress Lanfear replied sagely. “But earlier, I was using more mundane means to get you back in line. And you responded magnificently.” Isari blushed at the compliment. “So I can at least do something about that while we’re just hanging here.”

Isari rolled her eyes. Just hanging here? Really? They were here literally in the middle of doing the impossible–and each other–both in spectacular fashion, and the woman was cracking dad jokes. She held her tongue, though, in part because she really wanted to see what the raven-haired woman had in mind.

Mistress Lanfear extended her hand, and a small bottle leapt from the top of the mantel to her hand. She showed it to Isari quickly. Vaseline intensive care sensitive skin relief lotion. She pumped some out onto her hand, then slowly rotated Isari in her arms so that Isari’s back was to her.

“Bend over a little. It’ll help the lotion sink in if the skin is a little cracked.”

“And you just like looking at me like that.”

“What was that, Isari?”

“And you just like looking at me like that, Mistress.”

“Better. And yes.”

Bending over in midair was something of a surreal experience, but then again, so was hovering in midair in the first place. She found herself leaning over, almost parallel to the ground but not quite. It was good enough for Mistress Lanfear, who began working the cooling lotion onto Isari’s tender buttocks.

Isari purred at the sensation and closed her eyes again, dreamily this time. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“My pleasure, babygirl.”

Mistress Lanfear worked another dollop of the lotion onto Isari’s other ass cheek. Isari opened her eyes again at last as she felt her mistress finishing working on her aftercare. She realized that they had begun to descend while her eyes were closed, and she had no more felt that than she had the rise into the air in the first place. Also, it looked like aftercare wasn’t done just yet. While the lotion bottle was floating back to the mantel, a long, flat-backed hair brush was floating into her mistress’ hands now.

“Oooh,” Isari cooed in anticipation.

“Mm-hmm. You have such beautiful hair, Isari. It’s beautiful as a post-orgasmic mess, too, but we shouldn’t leave it that way.”

Isari a soft, dreamy laugh, still with the edge of a childish giggle, and closed her eyes again. Soon enough, she felt the bristles of the brush working their way through her hair, first in short, slow strokes to get the few tangles out, then in longer ones. She steadied her breathing into long, rhythmic breaths, occasionally purring or humming as she enjoyed the bristles working their magic, and relaxed. Another two or three minutes later, she felt something soft underneath her. She opened her eyes. They had landed on the sectional.

Mistress Lanfear stood, and a long, wide, low, wooden box on recessed casters rolled out from under the chaise lounge. She gestured again and three intricate, imposing catches on the lid turned and clicked open, and then lid hovered up and onto the lounge. Then the spreader bar and cuffs that still lay discarded on the living room floor lifted up and settled themselves softly back into the box.

“All right, damane, break time is over. Time to pay the piper. And this piper has not been paid in a long time now. There is a lot of interest on your account.”

Isari rose from the sectional and then knelt at Mistress Lanfear’s feet, her face about level with the her crotch. The red-and-blue paneled sul’dam dress was ankle-length. It wasn’t that she was unwilling to try like this if her mistress wanted, but she looked up at the raven-haired woman questioningly.

Mistress Lanfear chuckled softly. “Very good, I definitely love your enthusiasm, but up first. I’ve got something else for you first. You’re not going to like it, but you’re going to love it. And so am I.”

Isari rose to her feet, the questioning expression still on her face.

The woman in the red-and-blue dress gestured behind her, and Isari, who was looking over Mistress Lanfear’s shoulder at the box that had emerged from under the chaise lounge, saw another gleaming silvery contraption emerge from within it. Two heavy curved arcs of metal with another one arcing between them.

“Spread your legs, Isari,” Mistress Lanfear commanded as the contraption flew into her hands.

It suddenly clicked in Isari’s mind what she was seeing. She had never seen one in person before, though in her occasional furtive browsing of BDSM sites, and some more risque Tumblr feeds, over the last two years, she had seen more than a few of them online.

“Mistress, oh my God! Where did you …? How did you … eeeep!”

A stinging shock like two cattle prods had just been pressed into both of her ass cheeks brought her up short. “I didn’t say ask questions. I said spread your legs.”

Isari spread her legs, then continued, “can I do both?”

“An acceptable compromise.” A bottle of lube also flew into her mistress hands, and the chastity belt hung suspended in midair at chest level between them, perfectly still as if held in place by a vice, as the woman in the sul’dam dress began applying lube to the two plugs that sat on the inside of the crotchpiece. Isabel shuddered just looking at them, and did her best to steady her breathing. She had never been penetrated anally before. “We do have a moment. I forgot one other thing I need to do to prepare you for this. Take your hands and spread your ass cheeks.”

Isari complied. A moment later, she gave a startled shriek and went to surge forward, but an unseen force like a massive upright mattress in front of her prevented her from moving forward. A moment later, she felt the same force behind her, too.

“Mistress …?” she was suddenly timid and uncertain again, the post-orgasmic peace beginning to flee at the first touch of whatever was intruding back there.

“You know where this is going, right?” Mistress Lanfear gestured at the smaller of the two plugs on the chastity belt that she was lubing.

“Y … yes, Mistress.”

“Well, to do it properly, you need to be cleaned out down there first.” She gave a tiny nod of her head in the direction of whatever it was that it had inserted itself past Isari’s rectum. And a flood of warm fluid rushed into her colon. Isari gasped. It was not unpleasant, though if her mistress demanded the truth from her, she would have to admit that it was decidedly not erotic. She knew some people had an enema fetish. She now knew that she wasn’t one of them. But at least she hadn’t also discovered a brand-new phobia. “Now, hold perfectly still, Isari. Even with the link from the a’dam that lets me feel inside you, I need to concentrate to do this properly. Anything inside someone else is always an interesting challenge.”

Isari nodded as much as the thick collar around her throat allowed, and held herself as still as possible.

She felt the liquid within her begin to swirl, and continue to swirl like–well, the best she could think of under the circumstances was like water circling the bowl of a toilet. Her stomach reflexively contracted now to expel it, but the water pushed back at first, swirling a while longer.

“And in answer to your earlier question, I think you can see that this,” she nodded at the chastity belt, which she was still lubing, “and this,” she held up the bracelet and leash, “are made of the same metal, maybe not exactly a set, but close enough that anyone would consider them that just because almost nothing in the world is made of this alloy. That’s partly because it’s expensive as fuck, and partly because I just designed it at MIT this past spring. So if you’re wondering how I made this belt that you’re about to experience, I bought a regular, but really good, chastity belt from a top-tier Etsy custom maker. Then I made perfect 3D cast or mould of it using some 3D software and printers I can use as an MIT student. Probably against terms of service somewhere, but shit happens. Then I made this using that mould, and my own alloy, and transferred the rubber pieces, the dildo and plug and the lined parts, from the original to this one.”

“Wow. What about this?” Isari tapped the collar at her throat.

Mistress Lanfear grinned. “That one was all me. Well, I used that 3D design program I was telling you about just to help me fix the shape, but there was no 3D printing or casting or moulding there. Once I had enough of that alloy, I forged it one tap with my mind at a time. Not an easy thing considering that rhenium and tantalum are part of it.”

“Are those part of the … uuhh oooh …”

The swirling water within her finally surrendered to Isari’s powerful core muscles. She instinctively went to turn, though it was again like trying to turn her head while it was stuck under a pillow.

Since the force around her slowed the turning of her head, she was still looking forward when she saw Mistress smile. “Hmm, you really want to look?”

Isari suddenly stilled the movement of her head and turned back to stare into the emerald eyes in front of her. “Um, now that you mention it, in truth, no, Mistress. Just … habit? Bad curiosity?”

Mistress Lanfear laughed. “I told you years ago, Isari. Your job is to tell me the truth. My job is to handle it. Also, I could see your face the whole time, you know.”

Isari nodded. “I hope that wasn’t too much of a turn-on for you.”

“A little, maybe, but not too much. Mostly just because I love doing things to you for the fun of it. You can be adorable when you’re uncomfortable. But this,” she nodded again, and the chastity belt began to descend and encircle Isari’s waist, “definitely will turn me on. Not that I need much more of that at the moment.”

Isari blushed. Had she shared her orgasm-denial fantasies with her mistress before she had called things off before? She couldn’t even remember anymore. But she hadn’t just browsed those BDSM shopping sites and Tumblr feeds out of academic curiosity. She had definitely fantasized more than once about what it would be like to have a loving, powerful mistress seal her pussy and ass away, to drive her crazy but deny her any chance at orgasm. Of course, one layer of those fantasies had been based on the fact that her orgasms were dangerous to anyone and anything nearby, and her mistress, sometimes faceless, sometimes Mistress Lanfear, being sent by the United Nations to keep her in a constant state of orgasm denial for the good of the world. That seemed less necessary now, but Mistress Lanfear was apparently taking no chances, so it seemed like she was about to experience that fantasy, one way or another.

“And your earlier question, you were about to ask?”

“Mistress, are rhenium and tantalum part of the … uuhh oooo OOOO!” The well-lubed anal plug had just slipped past her sphincter and settled firmly in her rectum. The head of larger dildo on the front had just pushed past her waiting pussy lips, still wet enough from earlier, and was slowly gliding in up to the hilt.

“That’s the second time you’ve asked that, Isari. No, they’re not part of whatever that is.”

The chastity belt was tightening, slowly, smoothly, snugly, and evenly now, both between Isari’s legs and around her hips, and Isari’s breathing was accelerating again as the feeling of fullness and the reality of her increased helplessness and her mistress’ increasing control sunk in. “Hmmm, hmmm,” she attempted to form words but the first few attempts were a false start, “are they part of the periodic table that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen but never looked at?”

“Good memory, Isari. And yes. They’re elements, they’re metals, and they both have melting points above 5400 degrees Fahrenheit. Or 3200 Kelvin, to say it like a proper Beaver.”

“Beaver?”

“MIT Beavers. Get your mind out of the gutter. You’re a chaste woman now.”

And she’s still telling dad jokes! Only Daddy wouldn’t be laughing at this at all. That thought, as much as any humor of the joke itself, brought a laugh from Isari’s lips, which then collapsed into another uuhh and oooo session as the sensation of laughing while so thoroughly filled reached her. “Apparently,” she wheezed.

The belt had now finished tightening snugly around her waist, and the crotchpiece was fully flush to her skin, sinking the dildo in the front firmly into her. Ten tiny pegs of the same lustrous silvery alloy now floated to Mistress Lanfear’s hands. “Hold extra still again,” she said. “I’ve got you, but this is delicate work again. And I can’t do what you can.”

“Mistress?” Isari asked, but another quick pair of shocks on her ass brought her up short and convinced her to save her questions for later. She can’t do what I can? She can do ten times what I can! Things I can’t even understand, let alone do! What is she even talking about? Even more than the shock, though, the fact that Mistress Lanfear didn’t even bother to say anything, no “silence, damane” or “I said hold still,” that convinced her of the seriousness of her mistress’ words.

The raven-haired woman now wore a look of powerful concentration, and the feeling in the air changed, charged, somehow, even without another surge of that golden energy that Isari had seen below the two of them earlier. The ten tiny pegs began to glow red, and then they began to descend towards the chastity belt.

She won’t hurt me, she won’t hurt me, she won’t hurt me.

Trust and obey.

The pegs fanned out and found a set of holes waiting in the various connections of the belt. The mattress-like force around her softened slightly above her waist, and she was able to cast a quick look down. The little silvery pegs brightened from red to golden-white as they slipped into the waiting holes, and Isari felt little pricks of warmth on her skin, including behind her where the pegs she couldn’t see must be inserting themselves into matching holes in the back of the belt. Then they dimmed to red again. Mistress Lanfear let out a long breath, and Isari realized that the other woman was sweating, and not like she’d just had an orgasm–which she hadn’t yet. More like she had just run a half-marathon. Or at least a 5k.

“Mistress, did you … did you just weld this onto me?”

The other woman seemed to be recovering her energy quickly, or perhaps was just excited by the question. “And tough work it was, too. Like I said, there are some elements in that alloy that are tough for me to melt. Trust me, little damane. You’ll have plenty of time to get used to it.”

“Mistress … Addie … I’m starting to freak out a little here …”

Mistress Lanfear put a gentle finger to Isari’s lips. She also ignored the use of her out-of-character name this time. “Like I said. You’re not going to like it, but you’re going to love it.” She sent another sensation through the collar, this time of the riding crop being drawn slowly up and down Isari’s ass, on the exposed cheeks on either side of the inescapable metallic prison. “And I’m prepared to deal with a little bit of your freaking out, in quite a variety of ways–” Isari wasn’t sure that she wanted to ask whether she meant a variety of ways of dealing with Isari freaking out, or a variety of ways in which Mistress Lanfear expected her to freak out– “but you just renewed your vow to trust and obey, and I am going to hold you to that now. But if you want me to answer some more of your questions, I think you know what might put me in a more indulgent mood.”

Isari gulped, and bit back a torrent of questions and responses that immediately came to mind. Maybe answer some of my questions first? I’m the one with the welded-on pussy prison here! This is pushing the limits of trust more than a little, even just after giving me my best orgasm of the last three years, maybe my life! But that thought brought back the memory of what had happened just a few minutes ago, hovering in the air, the extraordinary phenomenon that had defined her entire life since that fateful night at Red Top Mountain tamed and turned from a curse to something beautiful and powerful. It said something about how upside-down her life had become that she was on the border of freaking out now. Not, for example, when she had looked down and found that she was levitating above a wild lake of energy that no physicist alive, except for maybe the Wheel of Time superfan that had just collared her with a functional a’dam and then added a near-matching chastity belt for good measure, could explain.

She closed her eyes, which of course only heightened the sensation of the intruders within her most intimate places, her consciousness of the power her mistress now wielded over her. The aphrodisiac of helplessness was strong. Strong enough to let her live the fantasy a while longer, and deal with the reality–which was beyond her control, apparently, anyway–later.

“Isari?” Mistress prodded. Controlled, but urgent. Isari grinned inwardly. She might have missed that extra note if she’d had her eyes open and had been lost in the power of the emerald-eyed woman’s own gaze. Mistress definitely wanted to cum. More indulgent mood indeed.

Isari opened her eyes, letting herself drown in those emerald eyes again, but also bringing a thousand-watt smile to her own face, and giving her newly-brushed hair a coquettish flip. “Just one question, then, Mistress.”

Mistress Lanfear arched an eyebrow. She had clearly seen the change come over the collared woman. If the collar really worked in all ways like the a’dam from the books, she might even have been able to feel it. “Yes, damane Isari?”

Isari lowered her eyes in a standing bow. “May I undress you?”

Mistress Lanfear’s own smile brightened then. “You may.” She turned and slid her own hair slowly off her back, past the low shoulder wing of the corset-style leather bodice, revealing the laces. Isari took her time unlacing them, starting at the middle where the drawstring had been bow-knotted, then working her way up and down. The bodice had been pulled fully closed, but there was no modesty panel nor shift underneath, so the pristine skin of Mistress Lanfear’s sleekly muscled back began to appear as soon as the sides began to part. Isari took advantage. When she had loosened the laces enough, she reached through and around with both hands and cupped and fondled her mistress’ breasts beneath the now-loosening leather in the front.

“Oooh,” the raven-haired woman purred.

“Ooh-ooooh!” Isari echoed, suddenly feeling the fondling on her own breasts, still sensitive from her unrestrained orgasm from less than half an hour ago. Sensitive, but recovered enough for round two, apparently, or three, counting what had happened what seemed like an eternity ago now at her apartment. They immediately stood at attention, and the familiar pool of magma formed there in her flesh, and the lightning danced outward from there along her nerves. She slid her hands up and lightly dragged her fingernails over the upper curve of Mistress Lanfear’s breasts, savoring that sensation on her own as well, and also prying the once form-fitting leather further away from the breasts they had so recently hugged so tightly.

“I remember the books,” she breathed. “The damane feels what the sul’dam does physically, twice over. Didn’t the connection go the other way, too, just not physically? Did you somehow make that part of this, too?” She jangled the leash suggestively.

Mistress Lanfear laughed, and doing so jiggled her breasts slightly in Isari’s grasp. “I did indeed, Isari. And just like the books, I can even feel your physical reactions, too, they’re just not directly mirrored onto me. But yes, your mental state as well. Though of course I hope I was good enough at reading that even without this.” She jangled the leash right back.

Isari blew a stray strand of hair away. “I don’t even know why you’d want to be inside my head. Hell, I don’t even want to be inside my head half the time.”

The laces had been loosening further just due to the motion of Isari’s arms reaching through, and the dress’ wearer’s light rocking under the attention her breast were receiving. The bodice slid down in front at this point, and would have slid down further if Isari’s arms in the back hadn’t been holding it up. Mistress Lanfear brought her own hands up and put them on top of Isari’s, stilling them for a moment. She turned and looked over her shoulder. “You have a beautiful mind, Isari. You gave me a window into it years ago, and I loved every view. I’m loving having a VIP seat inside it even more. The way you respond to the collar, to the belt, and most importantly, to me putting them on you, to me doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing to you—if I literally die tonight, everything I’ve had to do to get to this point will have been worth it.”

“Mistress …”

“… but I don’t intend to die tonight, and if I do, I don’t intend for it to be of frustration. Get me?”

The sound that came from Isari’s lips was something between a chuckle and a sigh. But she slid her hands slowly back along the sides of her mistress’ breasts, then under her arms, and back to the remaining laces. A few more pulls and the bodice dropped free, and Mistress Lanfear’s naked back was exposed. Isari nibbled the newly-exposed flesh, then worked her way up to the curve on the side of her mistress’ neck. “Mistress,” she whispered. “You can’t leave me hanging like that. This isn’t over.”

Mistress Lanfear shuddered, closed her eyes and inclined her head back slightly. “I promise I won’t,” she said. “But I’ve needed this since even before I got that collar on you. And the inside of your mind is a fucking aphrodisiac.”

“I live to please, Mistress.” With that, she brought the bodice slowly down around her mistress’ body, ready to help her step free of it.

At this point, Mistress Lanfear had to take off the bracelet for a moment to slide her arm free of the sleeve of the sul’dam dress. It was only for the briefest of moments, but for those briefest of moments, the connection between them was broken. She was drawing her hands slowly up and down her mistress’ arms at that moment, helping slide the sleeves of the sul’dam dress off, and there was no matching sensation on her own arms. The sudden loss of the overlay of Mistress Lanfear’s sensorium on her own brought home something to Isari. Oh, God, I’m addicted. First dose and I’m a complete and total addict. I want it back.

The other woman snapped the bracelet closed around her wrist a moment later, and Isari purred contentedly as the connection was restored. If her hands hadn’t been back on her mistress’ waist at that moment, she might have missed the intake of breath, and she smiled knowingly at the raven-haired woman’s back. Mistress Lanfear had missed the connection, too. Isari wasn’t sure if the bracelet could at all distinguish between feelings she tried to hide and feelings that she didn’t, but just in case, she let that contentment fill her mind, broadcasting it down the link. Missed you for a whole four seconds there.

Whether it helped or not, Mistress Lanfear felt the emotion through the link. “You know, in the books, the sul’dam called it being complete, when they wore the bracelet connecting them to a damane. I kind of get that now.”

“Pretty sure none of the ones in the books used the a’dam like this.”

“Their loss.”

“No kidding.”

The dress finally fell free and pooled around Mistress Lanfear’s ankles, and she stood there now in all her dark, pale, and perfect glory, wearing nothing but her calf-length heeled boots and the bracelet with the leash attached. She, too, had either waxed for the occasion, or shaved recently and well. The glisten of her arousal was plain to see, and to breathe. She stepped out of the pool of fabric and over to the armchair, where she settled down and extended one leg. “Kiss it as you take it off,” she commanded.

Isari knelt, and even just being in this position, kneeling before her mistress’ chair like it was a throne, Mistress Lanfear seated there like a queen, if not a goddess, sent the familiar heat spiking in her pussy, and it clenched around the intruder held firmly within. It and its little brother on the other side had made their presence felt keenly as she had lowered herself into a kneeling position.

She kissed the sumptuous black leather, beginning with the toe and working her way up, once, twice, then several more times as she eased it off her mistress’ leg.

She kept kissing the boot even after it was all the way off, too.

“Um, Isari, hello?”

“Can’t help it, Mistress, this is legit Christian Louboutin. Ow!” Another cattle-prod shock, this time on the soles of her feet. She gave a coquettish pout, then smiled. “Worth it,” she continued.

“Mmm-hmm. Focus.” Mistress Lanfear extended her other leg, and Isari turned to kneel facing that leg and then repeated the trail of kisses, this time without the extracurriculars at the end. As she was doing so, the seated woman continued, “but I do understand the distraction.”

This time, when the boot came off, Isari set it to one side, then turned back to the seated woman’s leg and began kissing her way up. She slowed down now, not just because of the powerfully distracting sensation of kissing up and down her own leg mirrored and doubled through the a’dam, though that was strong enough. She was unmistakably getting closer to the main event at this point, and the mere thought of that would have been driving her to distraction even without her lower holes plugged and sealed away. The fire in her muscles and blood was burning hotter again, and the little sparks of erotic lightning danced almost continuously along every nerve around her tits and pussy, and even her fingers where they touched her mistress’ leg. She was building up to another power surge.

Something occurred to her at that moment that she had been dancing around in her mind for a while now, since not long after Mistress Lanfear had put the chastity belt on her. She had been both scared and excited by the thought of having her mistress have complete control over her private areas, of her ability to orgasm, and while that was kind of true, the power of the a’dam put a huge asterisk over it. The belt isn’t orgasm denial at all! Not completely, anyway. Apparently that’s for normie kinksters. Maybe I can’t get myself off now, but belt or no belt, I’m going to feel double what Mistress does—and she is starving for this, maybe almost as badly as I was going almost a year without.

Mistress Lanfear apparently felt something through the a’dam. Isari had continued her trail of kisses and caresses and had reached the side of the seated woman’s knee. Suddenly, though, she felt a soft jerk on the leash, and followed the unspoken command, rising up from kneeling seated on her heels to kneeling upright and leaning forward, her head rising to just short of the hollow between the raven-haired woman’s breasts. “What’s on your mind, damane?”

“These, now, Mistress,” Isari answered, and without another word, stretched her torso out just another inch or two to bring her mouth down on the areola other woman’s left breast.

The surge of sensation within her own breast as she did so was so powerful that she almost collapsed, but she had braced herself for it, and her dancer’s torso was equal to the task for the moment. Nevertheless, a gasping moan muffled to a sensuous hum burst forth from her lips, with Mistress Lanfear’s breast in them. Then that sensuous vibration was mirrored and doubled on her own nipple. Her pussy clenched again around the dildo inside her, and she squirmed and shuddered, and in the momentary spasm, her teeth gently grazed the engorged tip of her mistress’ nipple. That was mirrored and doubled as well, and she finally came up for air, panting. She felt a headache begin to form in the back of her mind, and spots even danced over her vision for a second, but after what had just happened in the last hour, the headaches didn’t threaten the way they had. They didn’t even hurt quite the way they had.

“And this,” she added, sliding a finger teasingly around the lips of Mistress Lanfear’s shaved slit. Even around the outside, there was still moisture: sweat, and more. A harder spasm took her, and she braced her left hand on the front of the arm of the armchair even as her right hand continued to slide up and down around the smooth edges of her mistress’ sex. Her hips gyrated in the belt with less and less control every second, the discomfort of the tight metal and the intruders meaningless against the surrender they signified. “Oh God, oh Go … eeep!”

More shocks, this time at the base of her throat, the back of her neck, again on her buttocks, and even one against her tender rosebud.

“I can feel you getting close. No jumping ahead this time, babygirl. We cum together.”

“Please, Mistress, please! I’m … so … close … eeyaah!” The collar’s phantom-but-all-too-real shocks came again, harder, and the tsunami of pleasure and pain carried Isari deep back into subspace. With a silent flip of her head to get her hair out of the way, she half flowed, half melted down Mistress Lanfear’s stomach, and her tongue found the sweet and spicy taste of her mistress’ slit again, for the first time in years. It was like coming home after an unexpectedly long and dark journey.

“Oh, there’s my girl,” Mistress Lanfear breathed. “There’s the good girl I remember.”

Isari melted even further at the praise, and with the sense of an invisible mouth—her own invisible mouth—eating her out even within the steel embrace of the chastity belt, the magma danced along every inch of her skin. It felt so close to the surface that she was amazed that her skin wasn’t glowing.

Wait. Mistress Lanfear’s skin was glowing. A faint, translucent, crystalline electric blue radiance seemed to bubble up from within her and evaporate from the surface of her skin like steam. And her hair was again lifting up and away from her shoulders as if she were holding her face just barely underwater.

A moment later, the faint corner of Isari’s mind that was capable of perceiving anything other than her mistress’ desire at the moment noted that her own skin was indeed glowing, too, as if a stream of golden magma was indeed held back by nothing but the top layer of her skin. The erotic electric tingles swept up from her plugged orifices, up and down her back, and she felt her own hair begin to float off her shoulders, full of static and caught in an invisible wind. The vast majority of her mind filed this information away as inconsequential, though, as her subspace-narrowed attention focused overwhelmingly on the shrine of need in front of her, that needed the worship of her tongue. She flicked and she jabbed and she teased, and repeated it in every order, responding to a rhythm of summers past that she had never forgotten, could never have forgotten. Mistress Lanfear sent another shock to slow her down through the collar, and it only served as a scintillating reminder of the beautiful thing that her mistress had made just for her, the only one in the world. The shocks slowed her down like a speedbump in front of a tank.

Fortunately, Mistress Lanfear didn’t need to slow her down that much at this point.

“That’s … my … gggiiiiiiirrl!” Mistress Lanfear bucked and undulated in her chair as the orgasm took her.

And, without fail, the collar encircling Isari’s throat mirrored and doubled the sensation in her. Only moments later, the mirrored stimulation on her clit sent her separately over the edge of her own orgasm.

From Mistress Lanfear, the radiance blazed forth like a beacon unveiled, pulsing but stable and firm, now every color of blue from powder to midnight, flecked with argent and pure white.

But within Isari, the two storm cells merged, her own orgasm with the overlay of her mistress’ on top of it, both felt all the way to her core, and the combined vortex screamed for release. Isari threw back her head and screamed with them. Prismatic energy surged out from her in all directions, still perhaps tinged more golden than any other color, but no longer merely flecked with other colors and no more just stirring in a gentle pool beneath them. Both the collar and the chastity belt blazed silver-white, and she could feel them straining on the prismatic tsunami, bounding it, channeling it, trying to hold it back.

Mistress Lanfear staggered momentarily to her feet, drunk with power and emotion now as her VIP seat in Isari’s mind turned out to be a seat in a whitewater raft on rapids that normies were never allowed to attempt. She collapsed to her knees next to Isari, and then physically threw Isari to the carpet. A moment later, she was lying there as well, limbs entwining with Isari’s, the leash tangled in the pile. Isari returned the tangled embrace with willing abandon. The storm raged on.

The blue radiance from Mistress Lanfear flexed and rose, first in a pillar of coherent, almost solid light, then fanning out like liquid and descending to form a blue dome maybe as high as the fireplace over them. Isari’s eyes widened as the blazing prismatic flood still erupting from her in all directions was now trapped inside the dome with them. The surging energy seemed to recognize that it was trapped as much as the woman emitting it, and erupted with renewed vigor. Isari screamed in ecstasy, and convulsed in Mistress Lanfear’s arms as the front of the new wave burst forth. Bright hairline cracks formed in the dome and spread.

“It’s not going to …” hold, she was about to say, but whether through the a’dam or just throwing knew, her mistress read her mind.

“It doesn’t need to!”

The dome shattered. And there was no living room beyond it. They still somehow lay on the small circular section of floor, but that was now a platform suspended in nothingness, in everythingness, an endless expanse that might have been black, except that it was full of streaming trails of mists and clouds and whirling balls of light, some of one color, some of many. More than that, there was the unmistakable sense of presence there, of life, of will, somehow all around even if unseen.

Isari still writhed and screamed as her double orgasm went on, and the impossible energy streamed forth. Now, however, it had somewhere to go—infinite, and home. Isari was the birth of a prismatic star in the alien expanse, the energy now flaring off of her as light, now spraying forth as mist, now pouring forth as water off the edge of the tiny circular platform of the living room floor and into the world beyond. And from the ethereal constellation of mists and lights and other extraordinary phenomena, there came a barrage of thoughts, like a clamor of voices or musical notes that only the soul could hear. Joy. Anticipation. Hunger. Laughter. Envy. And many a contented sigh.

Mistress Lanfear now rose to a sitting position. Among other things, the low wooden toybox had been within the circle of the dome. A quick gesture, and two things flew from within it to hover just in front of her. The first, a panel-style gag with a rubberized phallus on the inside. At this point, Isari couldn’t even pretend to be surprised that her mistress owned such a thing, but she couldn’t believe the woman had thought of it now of all times. The second, a small plate, smaller than a saucer, of whatever strange silvery alloy formed the collar and belt that now held Isari inescapably in their grip.

“M … mi …” Isari couldn’t even pant the full word. All this had happened in less than twenty seconds, and her multi-orgasm had maybe only just barely descended from its peak. She could feel through the collar that Mistress Lanfear was still in the midst of her orgasm, too! How the woman could concentrate at all in the midst of this was mindboggling.

The gag darted over through the air, and the feel of a lashing whip across Isari’s back made her cry out just as the phallic plug reached her mouth. “Mmmhhrrrmm!” The squeak was thoroughly muffled as the plug settled into place, and the leather panel wrapped tightly around her lower face, from just below her nose to more than halfway down her chin. The straps running from the sides of the panel, which were meant to go around the sides and top of the head of their prisoner, as well as under her chin, stayed flapping loose on the floor around her. The panel was held in place by the power of Mistress Lanfear’s mind alone.

“Keep cumming, Isari! Let there be legends written about this!”

“MmmRRRRUUUUUUHH!” Her pussy and ass contracted mightily again against the dildo and plug as she writhed around them, and if anything, the loss of her voice again sent her back to the summit. Her orgasm rolled on.

Narrow, controlled flows of the pulsing blue energy descended and hovered in a ring of spokes around the plate. Then far thicker, wilder, gyrating flows of the prismatic energy joined them, and together they surged into the plate, which glowed and seemed to soften in midair. A thin layer of blue energy stretched out over one side of it.

Mistress Lanfear leaned down to the woman on the ground again. “Close your eyes,” she whispered fiercely. Isari complied, still moaning wildly in helpless ecstasy around the gag and sucking in air through her nose. A moment later, she felt the half-molten plate pressing down on the panel that already covered her lips.

Her eyes flew open, and she reflexively tried to struggle and spit the gag free, but it would not budge. Her initial fear lasted only seconds, even though she trusted that her mistress would not willingly harm her, it was terrifying to think of molten metal being so close to her skin. Except the warmth was nothing more than she might have felt lying on her back on the beach on a sunny day. With that initial fear fled, she took another breath and closed her eyes again, shutting out the alien world around them, filing that with everything else that she could ask later after she had ridden this incredible experience as far as her body and soul could handle. With her eyes closed and that endless alien vista momentarily blocked out, she suddenly realized what Mistress Lanfear had just done.

It’s from the show! In the middle of a fucking orgasm, not even half a day after the finale came out, she literally just forged a copy of the metal panel gags the damane were wearing in the show! Except that this one is no prop!

Liquid fire spread across her left nipple, and her eyes shot open again to see Mistress Lanfear’s mouth suckling gently on her nipple. Another helpless, unintelligible moan burst from her, and she sucked in another wild breath through her nose. And just as the a’dam let her locked-away clit feel the same attention given to Mistress Lanfear’s clit, her lips now tasted the taste of her own breasts in her mistress’ mouth. The sensation was intoxicating, though also tender, for which she was grateful, because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

The prismatic energy continued to flow, though she could see the sheer volume of it was less now than it had been, and she could feel herself beginning to descend further from the peak. It was a long, languid, glorious descent. Mistress Lanfear’s gentle teasing of her nipples gave way to another round of entwined petting, and from there to quiet cuddling. The silver-and-white-flecked blue radiance emanating from the raven-haired woman faded, and maybe a few minutes later, the prismatic eruption from Isari herself slowed to a trickle and went out. As this was happening, the endless illuminated expanse faded. The living room of the Sherwood Forest house appeared first as a translucent image superimposed over the alien realm, and gradually fading back into reality. The only thing that stood as a testament to what had just happened was the new panel gag, which despite no straps at all—Mistress Lanfear had severed them with her mind at some point during the glide in for a landing—Isari could not spit free of her mouth.