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Back Where . . .

By: sr71plt



I rolled over in the bed, reaching for Esteban, but he wasn't there, setting off in me a mild zing of irritation. He'd gone to sleep last night while I was fucking him and now he wasn't there at all in the morning. This brought the decision I had to make back to mind and was, perhaps, yet another nail in the decision—two decisions actually. I had an opportunity to head up the Radio y Televisión Martí radio transmission operations from Marathon Key targeting to Cuba what we called information and the Cuban government called American propaganda. So that was one decision. But another decision was whether to ask Esteban to go with me or to encourage him to stay in Miami. It's unlikely the Miami Herald would have anything for him to do on Marathon Key.

I smelled the coffee brewing out in the kitchen. That might have been what woke me up to begin with. Groaning, I crawled out of bed and stumbled toward the shower. I had a full day's work to wedge into a half day in the office before I started out driving from Miami down to Marathon Key and then on, the next day, down to Key West to check out our Cuban radio-monitoring activity down there. And I hadn't even packed yet.

I'd needed a good fuck last night or this morning. I was strung out, and I needed something to siphon off some of the tension. Esteban had let me down. Esteban had been letting me down a lot lately—not least by letting himself go. We'd been together, what, fifteen years now? And it had only been of late that he'd slowed down. And it was showing in his waistline and the effect of gravity on his face.

This was all bringing my decision to a head. Maybe I was in a rut. Maybe Esteban was getting too old and slow and uninteresting for me. Something to think about. This had a great deal to do with going down to see the operation at Marathon Key. I didn't really have to see that operation for a decision on whether I wanted the job there. It was the further trip down to Key West that was motivating me to take this exploratory journey. Key West was less than fifty miles from Marathon. I could live there and just do with the overnight facilities at the Marathon office when I couldn't be more than an hour from work. Sometimes it took me more than an hour through traffic just to drive to work across Miami from my apartment.

Key West was where it was at; Key West was where it was happening. Life was short, and I had a lot of delicious young men to go through yet.

I started to include that I wasn't getting any younger, but that gave me a twinge. I looked into the mirror over the bathroom sink and then at myself full length in the tall mirror on the bathroom side of the door, and I choked down those words. I looked damn good. And I worked hard to stay that way—unlike what Esteban had been doing of late, whenever he took the time to try to keep in shape.

Esteban was just pouring the OJ and coffee and setting out an omelet and toast when I got to the kitchen.

"Gotta gobble fast," I said as I sat down to it. "Gotta pack. I'll be leaving from the office."

"You're all packed," Esteban said, as he sat down in a chair across from me and looked at me. I hadn't told him anything about the Marathon Key operation offer, but I could tell that he sensed there was something going on. "I did that last evening while you were on the computer—you'd left most of what you'll need out on the chair in the bedroom. I packed after I got the Jag gassed up for your trip."

"I'm packed? I wanted the glen plaid suit—"

"I'd taken it to the cleaners," Esteban said. "You somehow struggled with some marinara sauce at the paper's annual banquet last weekend, so I took it out to have it cleaned. Got it back yesterday afternoon, though, and it's packed with all of that other stuff you put out. You're taking an awful lot of party clothes for a business trip, I must say."

"Have you seen the radio script I brought home last night for editing? I thought I left it by the computer, but when I looked for it—"

"It's in your briefcase. I edited it for you. It's a good piece, but you really should read those aloud more when you write them, Carlos. It's not like written essays. Certain words don't come out right in spoken form when they are put together."

"You're always saying that."

"Because it's always true. I've been editing your radio copy for what? More than fifteen years now. I edited your copy before we hooked up—before I left the station and went to the paper."

"Yeah, yeah. I picked you because of your editing abilities."

The kitchen went silent. Esteban gave me a hurt look and went to the kitchen stove, turning away from me, and moved pots around in meaningless patterns on the stove top.

Embarrassed at having said that, and not meaning it, of course—we'd really had something going, at least until late—I swallowed my coffee in big gulps and stood to gather everything I needed and hit the road. He was so sensitive, getting to be high maintenance.

He wasn't at the door when I left; he was still puttering and pouting at the stove, facing away from me. I was relieved, really. We had a rule that when either of us left the apartment, the other one would be at the door for a kiss. Esteban was pretty adamant about that ritual. The man he'd been living with before he had hooked up with me had left one morning without a kiss, was run over by a hit-and-run driver, and died without ever returning. Esteban always said we needed to treat even the most temporary good-bye as if it was our last. But I wasn't in the mood for that sort of contact this morning; I thought that maybe all he had to do was look into my eyes and he'd know where I really was going—and why.

At the door, not wanting to leave in silence, I called out. "I think we're out of red wine."

"I'll stop and get some more on the way home tonight," he answered without turning.

"Well, I'm off."

"Have a good trip."

It was almost as if he knew what I was thinking about our relationship and how this trip might end it.

There was no kiss at the door.

* * * *

It had been a good decision to drive my own car down—well, Esteban's and my Jaguar convertible. This was an encumbrance I guessed I might have to face—who got the Jaguar. But I was the one who had wanted to buy the Jag. I had the top down all the way down the key-hopping Route 1 from Marathon down to Key West, and every cute guy I passed coming into Key West was attracted by the Jag and then gave me the eye. I loved getting the eye; it told me I still had what it took. I'd have a ball here, I just knew I would if I could keep Ramon Famosa off the scent.

Ramon was the sole employee of our Key West outpost office. Its facilities included an office and a house on the government's Truman Annex at the very southeast tip of Key West—and thus also of the United States. He recorded and translated radio broadcasts from Havana and sent the transcripts up to Miami to our studios there, where we composed radio content that responded to what Havana was saying. He also somehow managed to get some regional Cuban newspapers down there that we didn't always get up in Miami.

I had been glad when the office sent Ramon down here. Otherwise I might have gotten into trouble. Ramon was quite the looker, and if he'd shown the slightest bit of interest in me, I think I would have gone off the deep end. Office romances were the kiss of death in Radio Martí, however—and there was Esteban. I don't know how it came about that Ramon was sent down here; it had seemed to have been an overnight "now you see him/now you don't" move at the time.

But as good looking as he was, he would be in the way of what I wanted to do in Key West. I wanted to party and to share all of this goodness I had in me—which included, I've always been told, a cock to die for. Key West was just the playground for this sort of death. And if—I was thinking more in terms of when now—I moved to the Marathon operation, I could Key West myself away. The more serious and conventional Ramon was sort of a waste down here, I thought. Although I had overshot the Key West position some time ago, there was a time when this would have been the perfect assignment for me. Key West was one of the gay male magnets of the world.

That evening, after pretending to be fascinated by Ramon's briefing on his operations—at least as fascinated as I was with seeing him, as two years away from Miami had just made him more attractive and arousing than I'd remembered him to be—I had the hardest time breaking away from him so that I could cruise the gay bars on and off Duval Street. Ramon said he wanted to show me the night life here. I assumed he was talking sedate jazz bars, as he seemed to be crazy for that music, and this wasn't how I wanted to spend my time.

So, I told him I was tired and wanted to go back to my hotel off Mallory Square, and, eventually, he'd reluctantly let me go. He'd offered to let me stay with him in the small house we provided for him on the Truman Annex, but I wanted to wake up in someone sweet's bed, and he surely would have been shocked if I'd brought a little honey back to his place for the night.

I was driving the Jag, so I took it out to Duval and parked it on the street in front of a gay bar I'd already researched as someplace I wanted to visit.

The Bourbon Street Pub was right on Duval, and the crowd around its entrance left no doubt that it was a gay bar. I got enough cat calls when I pulled myself out of the Jag before pushing through the crowd and entering the dimly lit bar area that I knew I wouldn't be lonely tonight unless I wanted to be. It was noisy and crowded. Soft-core porn films were flashing on screens on all four walls, and the shadows on three sides of the room enveloped booths offering some semblance of privacy, although I could see from the undulating bodies there that all forms of pleasure were being explored from smoking weed to blowing cocks and even more intimate pursuits.

This was what I was looking for and this is what I loved about Key West. Anything goes there; no need for inhibitions. One of the deep-side walls was fronted its entire length with a long bar, and along this at intervals rose shiny metal poles running up from the bar top to the high ceiling. Barely legal young men in thong bikinis were playing the poles to something close to the beat of the loud, heavy-metal music.

I saddled up to a bar stool and ordered a scotch on the rocks. It had barely arrived when a young blond, with a curl hanging down over a blue eye topped by long lashes and sparkly gold shadow paint on his eyelids, insinuated himself in beside me. He was dressed in white cotton trousers and shirt, which was opened to the waist, and had a filmy blue scarf around his neck that matched the shade of his eyes.

"Buy a girl a drink?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. He was very young. Just what I was in the mood for. Esteban no longer was any sort of young.

That done, he took a sip, primping like he thought he'd learned from Bette Davis, and pulled my face down to where he could whisper in my ear.

"If you take me someplace, I'll make you a very happy man," he whispered.

"Take you someplace, huh? But I just got here, and I understand there's something called The Pile downstairs."

"You drove up in the Jaguar convertible, didn't you?"

"You noticed."

"Drive me down to the beach in your car and I'll take you to heaven."

He gave me an expert and efficient blow job in the front seat of the Jag in the parking lot of a beach at the northeast end of the key not far from the airport. Esteban actually gave better—and longer-lasting—head, but the novelty of a new, young man doing it did, indeed, take me to heaven.

"I have a room at a hotel," I said when he was done.

"Maybe I'm interested," he said. "Maybe if you do something nice for me."

"What would that be?"

"Let my friends and me borrow your Jag for a day."

I paused for several seconds. There was no way I was going to let a stranger drive off in my car. "I'll take you back to the Bourbon Street Pub," I answered. "And we'll see what is what."

Well, what was what was that the young man disappeared into the crowd when he couldn't wheedle the keys to the Jag from me. And in his wake, I looked around the room. No one else even close to my age was in there, and I was suddenly feeling out of place. The music also was so loud I couldn't think. I hit the street.

Just down the block from there, I stopped in front of a bar called KWest. I remembered the name from my research and I went in. The music was more subdued, and the place wasn't as crowded as the Bourbon Street Pub had been. The clientele looked a little older too, and the bartender, who was mouthing off to a guy at the bar, looked like he was as old as I was.

As old as I was. I thought back to the blond trick I'd just left. Jaguars are nice, but back when I was cruising the scene, no guy would look at a flash car when I was in view. There it was again. "In my day." How many years had it been since I'd even cruised a bar? Maybe five. Esteban and I had done that together for several years after we moved in together, but then we just fell out of the habit. He was a great fuck; we'd just stay home and do it when we had the time. We both had demanding careers. At some point it had just been simpler to stay home and fuck than to do all of the preliminary shopping.

Once more I went up to the bar.

"What'll it be, Pops?" the rude bartender said when I finally got his attention and he'd come over.

"Pops." The old guy had called me Pops. The guy who must be at least as old as I was.

"I don't got all day," he said. "Order a drink or take a hike."

That was my second scotch on the rocks of the evening.

There were some nice-looking guys in here. Still, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone not being of age with this crowd.

It wasn't long, though, before an Italian-looking dark-haired beauty, with an androgynous look and brilliant red lipstick, slid down the bar to perch on the stool next to mine.

"Lonely?" he asked. He had a smooth, deep baritone of a voice.

"I've been lonelier," I answered.

"Sort of quiet in here tonight."

"Yep, but I like the music here better than the last bar I was in," I responded. "That gave me a headache."

"It's a little livelier upstairs."

"Upstairs?"

"Yes, they have rooms. Would you be interested in making a little music up there tonight, darling?" He added, "Just you and me?" so I wouldn't miss the implication.

I looked him up and down. He had a good body. A lot better shape than Esteban. He was maybe in his mid twenties. I'm not sure I would have been interested at the height of my cruising days, but . . .

He leaned into me and whispered, "I'll blow you for twenty-five; we can go all the way, either of us top, for a hundred."

He wanted me to pay! God, I'd never paid for sex in my life. He was OK, but no Apollo, and he wanted me to pay him a hundred bucks for sex.

I must have been displaying a shocked expression, because he gave me a slightly irritated look and said, "It's the going rate on Duval Street, honey. It's not like you're a prime stud or anything. I see some friends at a table over there. You make up your mind while I'm still here, you let me know, ya hear?"

He pulled himself off the barstool next to me, and clumped over toward a line of tables in shadows. It was only then that I realized that he was wearing a skirt and high heels.

My emotions were mixed. He was kinkier than anything I'd ever considered before, so, on the one hand, I felt relief he'd backed off. But on the other hand, I'd never paid for sex in my life—and he'd said I wasn't a prime stud.

In front of me there was a ceiling-high mirror running behind the bar for its whole length. I looked hard at myself in the mirror. I hardly recognized the man staring back at me. That wasn't the same face I'd seen in my bathroom mirror just that morning. This was the face of that face's father.

As I stared into the mirror, though, I saw movement at the tables across the room, and, with a sense of horror, I recognized Ramon Formosa, our man in Key West. He had seen me too, and he rose and walked toward me.

He was smiling. "Hi, Carlos," he said. Then he laughed. "If you'd let me show you around the key this evening, I'd eventually have brought you here."

"Here?" I said.

"Yes, of course." There was a pause and then he laughed. "You didn't know I was gay, did you?"

"No," I murmured, still in shock.

"I'm sorry. I thought you knew. That's why I was transferred from Miami so quickly. A bit too friendly with Renata's husband. You, know, the chief Spanish linguist, Renata. But I knew you were gay too. I guess you didn't know I knew that."

"No, I didn't," I said weakly.

"Sort of too bad," he said. "You know I had a crush on you then. I would have done anything you asked of me."

"I . . . I didn't know that."

"I think I might still have a crush on you."

We fucked in his bed in the company-supplied little house on the Truman Annex. Ramon liked twisted positions—me sidesplitting him or jack hammering down into him from above with him supported on the floor on his shoulders—and he wanted it again and again, being obviously pleased at the size of me. He exhausted me, and, with him, it was I who first cried uncle and drifted off into a spent sleep. He wanted it again in the morning, and I did what I could, although my back was in pain from the calisthenics of the previous evening.

As we lay there, panting—me panting more heavily then he was—my cock still inside him as he lay cupped into my lap, he whispered something to me. I had to have him repeat it because there was a pounding in my ears still from the exertion of the fuck.

"Was I good for you?"

"Yes, of course," I said. I realized I might have been lying, though. As vigorous as the fucks had been and how insistently he asked for them to start again after we had both come, I wasn't sure I would survive a week with him. With Esteban, it was slower, more sensual. Not nearly as athletic. And after the time we had been together, we fit perfectly, each knowing what the other wanted—and when he wanted it.

"If I was in Miami, we could fuck more often," he whispered. "And isn't it true that you are on the promotion board? I sure could use a higher salary."

So.

I made my retreat as diplomatically as I could. I had planned to stay two more days in Key West, but suddenly I felt so old and out of the game. I had found out what I needed to know in Key West, but it certainly wasn't what I had thought I'd learn.

With each mile north on the Overseas Highway up the spine of the keys to Miami, I remembered yet another trait of Esteban's that was laudable and that I should have appreciated better.

"You're home early," he remarked when I came through the apartment door.

"I missed you," I said. "I found that I missed you too much."

"And the job in Marathon?" he asked.

"You knew about that? You knew I was considering taking a position in the keys?"

"Yes. Jorge at your office told me you had that opportunity."

"I can't take that job," I answered. "You're here. I can't—and won't—ask you to give up your position at the paper."

Estaban's face took on several expressions at once, running from shock to relief to the look of love. It took him a moment to get control of his voice because he said, "So, you're back?"

"Yes, back where I belong." I turned away from him so he couldn't see the tears of my realization of what I had almost lost swell in my eyes.

"Do you have to go into the office this afternoon?"

"No. Is the bed made?"

"Yes, of course."

"Can we muss it up?"

"Yes, of course."

Back Where You Belong



Felicia wasn't sure how long she'd been waiting. The room had a timeless quality to it; there were no clocks, and she'd left her phone and watch in her locker when she got undressed. The music that played had no discernible beginning or ending-chords flowed from one to the next without ever coming to a crescendo. The jasmine-scented air felt just warm enough against her skin that she never got chilled, and just cool enough that she never felt stifled. She felt like she could wait here for hours, and a little bit like she already had.

At last, the door opened. A tall blonde woman walked into the room, smiling gently as though she worried that a big, beaming grin would disrupt the tranquility of the moment. She wore a white tank top and a loose, flowing gray skirt that came down to her knees, and her bare feet padded silently across the room's tiled surface. "I am Ilona," she said, her voice hinting at a trace of an accent that Felicia couldn't quite place. "It's good to have you with us again."

"It's good to be here," Felicia said. And it was-the massage hadn't even started, and already Felicia felt completely relaxed. She didn't need to worry about a thing, not in this room. The moment she stepped inside, it was as if she'd walked into a bubble of total peace and contentment that had washed away all those little nagging worries and left her utterly at ease.

"That's just the response I was hoping for," Ilona said, walking over to Felicia and setting down a bowl of warm oil between her ankles. Felicia smiled a little at the foreign idiom. Ilona shifted Felicia's legs a little, just to get her into the right position, and began gently drizzling handfuls of the oil onto her skin. Felicia sighed in relaxation. This felt so good. She wondered why she'd waited so long before getting her first spa treatment.

Ilona's strong, warm hands began working the oil into Felicia's skin. They moved up her back, then down again, pausing every few moments to scoop another handful of oil out onto Felicia's body. Then they moved further down, sliding easily over Felicia's buttocks and gliding along the backs of her legs. It felt unbearably good. No wonder she'd decided not to cover up with a towel this time.

"Tell me, Felicia," Ilona asked as she drizzled oil over the small of Felicia's back and down onto her buttocks, "what did bring you back to us today?"

Back. What brought her back. Felicia ran the words through her head again and again as Ilona's fingers smoothed the oil into her skin, but they never quite seemed to gain purchase. Back. This was her first time at the spa, Felicia knew that. But it was just like all the other times. Felicia knew that too. She remembered coming into the room with all those nagging worries, worries about why they all knew her name here, worries about when exactly she'd made the appointment, but she remembered the worries stopping the moment she walked in. This room was a place of pure and perfect calm. She never had to worry about anything here.

Ilona worked the oil into every inch of her body, her hands sliding up over Felicia's back again and down over the buttocks and gliding over her labia and stroking across her thighs, working out every bit of the tension until Felicia's muscles were utterly limp and her skin gleamed. She knew her skin gleamed right now. She knew the oil made her body glisten with a silken sheen in the mirror, she could see it as clear as a memory. But she couldn't have memories of here, because she'd never been here.

Felicia felt the pressure build in her mind, the pressure to remember and the pressure to forget. But she didn't worry about it. She wasn't allowed to worry in here. There were no worries because...because there was nothing to worry about. That was it. Everything made perfect sense to her now. She felt the bubble of pressure burst in her mind as she accepted the conflicting information completely, and the sense of relief that accompanied it was almost physical. Felicia had a sleepy self who knew she had been to the spa before, and a waking self that knew she hadn't. And all that tension and pressure went away when she was in here, because her waking self was sleeping now and her sleepy self was always sleepy. Her eyes had already slipped shut, and she didn't even remember when it had happened.

"Good girl," Ilona said as Felicia's body visibly shuddered in relaxation. She focused more of her attention onto Felicia's cunt now, her hands gliding over it every few seconds as she continued her massage. "Think back and remember for me now, pretty girl. You remember all the forgetting now. It feels so good to remember to forget, doesn't it?" Felicia's head moved slightly in a loose and lazy nod. "Remember this feeling and the words will come to you, and it will be so easy to tell me exactly why you came back."

Felicia couldn't remember anything. She couldn't think at all. She could only relax and feel. Her world had contracted down to sensation, and each moment brought more and more blissful sensations to relax into. The touches felt so good now. Ilona's hands felt exactly right, touching Felicia with such intimate familiarity that it felt as though they'd been lovers forever. Those fingers felt so good, like all the times before that she knew had never happened...Felicia heard her own voice as if it was a stranger's when it emerged tonelessly from her lips. "I came back to reinforce my programming."

Felicia thought that voice sounded so sexy. She'd already forgotten who it belonged to, but it sounded like such a hot, mindless, horny fucktoy that it made her cunt ache in desire. It would be so erotic to be that blank and aroused. She wished she could be that girl. Ilona's fingers slid over her labia again and again now, first one hand and then the other in a constant waterfall of stimulation.

"Good girl," Ilona said softly. "That's a correct response." Her fingers slipped gently inside Felicia's pussy for a moment, grazing her clit, then continued stroking. "What programming are you reinforcing?"

Felicia listened patiently, eager to find out what Ilona wanted. She heard a voice say, "I am reinforcing my submission," and Felicia's clit tingled at the words. "I feel deep pleasure when I relax and let my mind sink into the pattern of obedience." Just listening to that voice made Felicia want to fuck herself-it sounded so blank, so obedient, so deep in hypnotic pleasure that Felicia couldn't imagine anything hotter. She wanted to masturbate again and again while listening to the mindless woman program herself, but her arms felt too heavy to reach down to her cunt.

But Ilona helped her. Ilona's fingers slid across Felicia's pussy again and agin, spiking in more and more and deeper and deeper before slowly tracing their way back over Felicia's clit on their way out. All of Felicia's focus was on her cunt now, on the pulses of warm, wet pleasure that surged through her clit and all over her body. She could barely even focus on the voice, the ecstasy was so distracting. "It feels good to obey," the voice said. "It feels good to think correct thoughts."

"That is a correct thought," Ilona said, sliding her middle finger all the way into Felicia's pussy and back out again slowly. "Good girl."

"Ghh...good girls obey," Felicia heard the voice say. She'd already forgotten the other things the voice had said, and that felt incredibly erotic in and of itself. It felt so fucking hot to forget the voice as soon as she heard it. It felt like a finger sliding in and out of her pussy, over and over and over again. Then it felt like two.

"Good girls love to obey," the voice husked out, thick with desire. "Good girls love to be brainwashed into compliance. Good girls love to be docile." The voice was breathy now, panting with arousal. Every sentence it spoke was punctuated with another thrust of Ilona's fingers, pumping harder and harder into Felicia's wet, slick pussy. Felicia's clit throbbed in arousal. She didn't know how much more she could take.

But the voice knew. "Good girls wait for permission to come," it said, and Felicia remembered that even as she forgot it. Her body floated just on the ragged edge of her climax, tingling with bliss but not quite cresting over into orgasm. Her relaxation deepened into timeless, drifting ecstasy as Ilona continued stimulating her. Three fingers now, with the other hand gently working into a finger into Felicia's oil-slick anus.

"Your resistance is leaking out, pretty girl," Ilona murmured, and Felicia knew it was true. The slick, dripping wetness between her thighs was resistance, and it was leaking out of her with every passing moment. Soon, it would be gone completely. It would gush out in a rush of perfect pleasure, leaving her totally open to being programmed. Every word of that was true. The voice said it was.

"I want to be programmed," the voice said as Ilona's fingers sawed in and out, over and over. "I want to be brainwashed. I want to be controlled." The voice was so right. Felicia didn't even need to remember it, not anymore. Her sleepy self would remember every word of it for her, and every time her waking self tried to resist, her sleepy self would whisper it and her waking self would lose track of that resistance in a swirl of pleasure. "Like fingers on my mind's clit," the voice said, and Felicia briefly realized that everything she was thinking was exactly what the voice was saying before the understanding was lost again in a haze of arousal. "Rubbing and rubbing until my resistance gushes out and I surrender."

"Good girl!" Ilona sounded like she was a teacher rewarding a prize pupil. "And what is surrender?"

"Surrender is bliss." Felicia would have humped Ilona's fingers like a bitch in heat if she could have moved, but all she could do was twitch in sleepy pleasure. She couldn't help it, everything felt so fucking good when she surrendered like this...

"And what is obedience?" Ilona added a fourth finger now, sliding in easily from the oil and the arousal. Her pumping was so intense that Felicia could feel her whole body rocking with it, making her nipples grind against the vinyl cushions of the massage table. They felt so stiff and tingly, trapped by her heavy and sleepy body, and that only added to the arousal she felt.

"Obedience is pleasure!" Felicia couldn't believe how needy the voice was. It had become a high, desperate whimper, so filled with sexual heat that Felicia's cunt clenched hard around Ilona's fingers just from hearing it. Then they clenched again because they loved how good it felt the first time. Then she couldn't stop anymore.

"Good girl. COME." Felicia knew that Ilona said more than just that, but she couldn't think of anything but her orgasm. It was so big, so total, so powerful that every trace of thought was utterly obliterated. It kept going and going and going, on and on, fingers pumping over and over and Ilona's thumb rubbing her clit and nothing else mattered. Ilona's words went straight through her mind and into her deep, obedient, brainwashed sleepy self without Felicia ever caring what they were, let alone knowing. It didn't matter, not when obedience and submission and surrender all felt this good, this fucking good, this oh god so fucking good...

An eternity later, Ilona's fingers slipped out of her with one last aftershock of pleasure. Felicia heard the command to turn over, and she complied easily, lying on her back so that Ilona could oil up her breasts. Ilona's fingers on her nipples triggered one tiny orgasm after another, echoes of the main event that sent Felicia even deeper into deep, drowsy bliss.

She knew she was opening her eyes now, seeing herself in the mirror as a gleaming, glistening vision of sensual heat. She knew that only her sleepy self needed to remember that. Only her sleepy self needed to remember anything of this. Her waking self would forget everything it was told to forget, and it would feel just like a finger rubbing her mind's clit whenever she did. Because forgetting was obedience, and obedience was pleasure.

"Such a good girl," Ilona whispered in her ear. Her index finger trailed possessively down Felicia's spine as she spoke. "Such an obedient girl."

"I obey," the voice said. Felicia watched her own lips move in time to the sound with distant amazement before the words faded from her mind without even a ripple of memory.

"You obey," Ilona said. Felicia shuddered with pleasure at the words. It felt good to know, deep down in her sleepy self, that she was perfectly conditioned. She didn't need to wonder why she was conditioned, or what she would be commanded to do. When the time was right, she would be told. And she would obey perfectly.

"Until then, beautiful girl," Ilona said, "return here next week at this time to reinforce your programming." Felicia hadn't even noticed Ilona was speaking. She still didn't. She was too busy admiring the perfect slave on the other side of the mirror, lost in rapture as she gazed into those blank eyes and wished she could be that girl forever.

But her sleepy self knew the truth, even as her waking self woke and forgot. Deep down, Felicia knew that she already was.

THE END