The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Ink Soaked Penumbra

Chapter 13: White Hot Contemplation and a Cryptic Confrontation

For someone who dressed all of her slaves in ink instead of real clothing she had a wide variety of clothes. I assumed it was for those different roles, but that might not really be the best explanation. After all, if she could easily rewrite their minds with the ink, why not change their clothes the same?

She’s lucky she kept my uniform after she took me out of it or I would probably still be thinking of burning the whole building down and the fire department be damned. Also luckily for Yana she’s quite the kinky woman and keeps around plenty of bonds that were used to tie her down to her own bed. If she hadn’t I would have had to use clothes, curtains, and one hell of a lot of sparks for my own peace of mind.

Alyssa and Susan are already leaving and on their way to the police with Helena and Celia. They remember a lot more than anyone else who was inked remembers and I need to finish some things up here before joining them. It’s better someone else go to the police anyway . . .

Book in hand I walk into her rather lavish kitchen that practically shines, and throw the musty old tome into the large sink. It takes a lot of searching through every drawer and cabinet but I eventually find a box of matches. They’re the strike anywhere kind, my favorite. Nothing has ever been quite so fun for me as quickly slashing something along the curve of my ass and having it catch fire. This did once almost lead to my own chrome hair going up in a puff of smoke, but things turned out for the best.

Down in the sink the book looks so simple. It felt powerful in my hands, sturdy, strong and definitely strong but . . . it doesn’t look it now. Reaching down, I open it up to an arbitrary page to set flame.

The page it turned to is actually readable. Setting down the match I lean closer to the book. Yanuka didn’t say anything about not looking through the book and if what Yana said was true, about your intentions and desires guiding the book, well, I want to know what my intention and spirit lead the book to.

“A spell for the purpose of disguise . . . This spell can change the outward appearance of any person to a limited extent. The person themselves can see the change but nothing is truly affected beyond the senses. Eye color, skin color, hair color and size . . . can all be changed and then reversed upon a simple whim . . .” With this spell I could hide my silver nature in an instant. I could keep on living as Lucia Colloten and just let out Silver Girl when she’s necessary. I could even be Patina if the situation called for it or . . .

No. I’m not going to use the book and not because Yanuka wants it burnt. I’m not a witch beyond blood. Even then only half of it qualifies. I’m hardly experienced enough to just start using magic as if it’s a harmless silver spark. Not only is that irresponsible it’s just . . . stupid. Yanta was much older than I am and her magic couldn’t stop her defeat. Lida doesn’t use it quite the same, but she used to.

If I used one spell I’d want to know more and that’s not a path I want to go down. There are good magic-users of the modern age out there, I’m sure but I’m already full of too much temptation.

This is one temptation that might be healthy to explore some day but not like some college student doing independent study for a thesis. Neither my beauty nor my powers are all that I am. Dorian was wrong to place so much value on youth. Just because others think of their power as their life, doesn’t mean I have to.

Besides, being forced to stay silver is a small thing that will keep me aware every day of how hard I worked when I didn’t have these gifts. Even without my sparks, I did so much good. Having them isn’t going to change that. It just gives me another tool. Blue dreams or silver sparks . . . there’s not much of a difference.

Striking the match across my ass for old time’s sake, I drop it on top of the page and watch it catch. Fire is such a pretty thing when it’s controlled. The initial orange color looks so simple and innocent. Anyone knows that if it got out of hand it would just take a damp cloth, a cup of water, something simple like that, and poof. The flame goes out, and everyone is safe. Everyone smiles and no one’s afraid. As the flames start to turn brighter and brighter and more heat rises, there’s less and less certainty. At any moment it could turn on you. If you look away and don’t worry over its movements, it will devour everything that its heat can.

Fire is no one’s slave.

Maybe fire and I have more in common than I do with Dorian. People think they can control fire, and time to time . . . they can. We can believe them and do as they wish, but as soon as a back is turned . . .

I’d like to think I’m a little bit more discriminate but I know that in the fury of passion for “justice” I’ve lost sight of that. What I do is inherently for more reasons than just the good ones. I don’t just hunt down criminals to help their minds rearrange for a public service. I do it because it makes me sizzle. Is that giving into temptation, or is that directing my own fire so it doesn’t consume me?

Is there even a difference?

Page after page the flames get brighter. These pages aren’t just kindling to the fire they’re intensifying it like gasoline, and by gasoline I mean real gasoline not television gasoline. It doesn’t explode in flashy colors but it is burning so hot and the flames are growing high enough that I feel more comfortable after I step back. My eyes are already seeing through the bright flame like I used to. I can see the colors it adds to the pages as they wilt and dissolve into the fire’s embrace but the form isn’t nearly as solid and bright as it would have been before my pretty sparks came back.

The smell reminds me of burning photographs. Comparatively there’s almost no smoke here but I’m tempted to get a fan or a clothespin every so often. Still, I don’t want to leave the flame alone and I want the satisfaction of seeing each and every page melt away. Yana thought she could use this to turn the world into her world. If she’d just written it countless women would have bought it, men too, but she had to turn fiction to fact.

Art imitates life. Life should bear in mind that imitating art is just repeating history. We do that enough without doing it deliberately . . .

A small part of me is sad to watch it burn. Who knows how much I could have learned from it, or even Valerie. Lida knew her ancestry from a glance. Maybe there’s a purple haired coven or clan or whatever they’re called. If I ever get the chance to ask, I will. A part of me truly believes that I will.

Olivia . . . Every page that burns away is another page that brings me closer and closer to being back in her arms. After it’s done I’ll question Yana and see what will be left of her slaves that I didn’t de-ink. Hopefully I won’t need to take the flower to every police woman and man myself. That would take forever! Mystic deserves a sniff too. I wish I knew everyone was okay . . .

I don’t know how long I watch the fire burn. If my eyes weren’t already regaining my high-light vision I know that I’d be red eyed and sore but I’m not. Eventually there are only a handful of pages left and the flame starts to shrink. The color grows brighter, a color of white that almost looks silver, and I can tell that the size is not an indication of intensity. In just a fraction of the time it took the other pages, these pages disappear in almost the wink of an eye. When I first tossed the match I was sure it wouldn’t be enough, but the flame is literally a shining white and I can see it tearing through the cloth that covered the metal.

The metal itself looks rather shiny too, almost chrome. Its title hadn’t been readable. I’m not much for foreign languages, and by foreign I mean anything that’s not American-English, but it almost looked Italian or Latin. None of the words for silver I knew were in the title, so I didn’t care to remember.

It keeps burning as if it were only made to burn. Maybe it was fated to burn today. Maybe I’m giving it a send off . . . one fire child to another. I guess I’ll never know. Maybe I don’t want to know.

Even the metal starts to slowly bubble and slide down the drain. It looks like it’s doing it oddly harmless to the plastic of the drain, but I don’t really care if it erodes it horribly. Yana must have a fortune to pay for all of the damage she’s done. That painting alone will probably go for a pretty damned high price at auction. As soon as people find out which stories Helena, Celia, and her third inkling wrote . . .

We couldn’t find her either. I’ll have to make that a priority. If she’s running around still inked, well . . . the woman deserves another chance at life.

Another long span of time passes, but I lose myself in the flame. Maybe it’s meditation, maybe it’s a self induced trance . . . but I can feel the flame flickering through me, hot white and cleansing. I imagine the flame coursing through the sorest parts of my body and warming the lingering cold from staying sparked for so much longer than I ever would have before. I imagine the heat coursing over my lips and through my mind, trying to help heal the self induced pain of the hate I’ve been stabbing myself with for still having feelings for Valerie.

Past the flame, past the cleansing . . . I can feel Olivia. Not Aureus, not my partner on the back of Sylvia criticizing me for driving like a maniac, but my lover curling up against me and criticizing me for eating too fast and being a little too judgmental.

If she can accept me as I am then I can let myself be happy with her. I can give myself to her and stop holding that last quarter of myself back. I need to stop feeling unworthy and torn . . .

The flame in the sink melts away as if I’d turned on the water and all that’s left is a small circular chunk of metal that looks unharmed. There’s a little bit of rust but it could be an intended oxidization and not a butchering by time. Engraved to just barely fit inside of the circle is a feminine eye that reminds me of the temple from the dreams The Domina was giving me.

I turn on the water to cool the metal off and steam rises out of the sink like a geyser. Once I’m convinced nothing could still be even warm, and the steam remaining is from the initial burst of water I grab a towel, turn off the water and pull the chunk out from the sink.

“Wow . . .” As soon as it’s dry I slide a silver fingertip across the surface and it’s the smoothest thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I can almost swear that the pupil shines for just a moment . . .

“What did you expect? Would a witch fill a magic book with potent spells and not protect them with a powerful magic? If that book had not been burned by silver hand, it would remain strong as long as the earth had sand.” Yanuka’s voice breaks my reverie, and I turn to face her. Of course, she’s dressed just as the last time I saw her but her smile is much broader. “It would seem that for all your whining of strings, you barely once felt a sting . . . nor did your vision’s refinement worry you of confinement.”

Snorting I look back down to the metal disk and run a fingertip along the edge. I would never believe a random fire caused such a perfect circle of metal to remain if I hadn’t seen it happen myself. “You’re right. You do talk like a children’s book . . . Thanks. So, you wanted me to burn this because a Nesatealia can’t destroy it, only a LaSilvas?”

“Did I say LaSilvas, silver? No. I said one of silver hand. Do not think that the LaSilvas name is the only tied to those pretty little lights of yours . . . though I’m sure your family would prefer it. Still, let’s not fall into that trap of family arguments. After all, during this encounter I’ve done you no wrong have I? I gave you back what I took away so that you could end a mutual worry.” She grins and pulls off her hat, shaking her head to let the bright orange-red hair spill out more elegantly as she holds the hat to her chest. “Your strings barely resemble the ropes they could have been.”

If I never see another witch in my life I’ll die a happy woman. All of them have one thing or another about them that makes me want to let my tongue slip and get myself killed or worse. She’s just so arrogant, so infuriating, so . . . gah, worthy of being full of herself. “You’re right.”

She wouldn’t be here unless there was something more for her to gain. Just because she said something doesn’t mean anything. I don’t think she ever had any intention of giving me my sparks back, and she let The Domina believe that she’d stopped Yanuka with the same efficiency we’d both stopped Yanta. I really wish I hadn’t sparked her mind to oblivion, but given the same choice I would do it again.

I did it in my dreams more than once. Sparked fists slamming away at her mind . . . Far more violent an approach than I’d take now I admit, but she needed to be taken down more than a peg.

“Yet you don’t trust me. Do I need to have an ulterior motive to have motive enough to be here and interested in concluding our business? The devil is in the details, but the devil rarely makes bad on her side of the deals. After all, Jade never suddenly turned back into a burnt out shell. Dust never suddenly started dripping ink from her disappointingly thin physique. You’ve stayed unlocked.” Her beautiful lips curl again as she fluffs her hat before holing it in mid air behind herself. A moment later she leans back and sits on it as if it were a chair. “The Domina was even released.”

“Then she came back to Midas and started a wonderful philanthropist’s organization.” Sneering I move to beside the sink and boost myself up to sit on the countertop with my legs crossed at their ankles. “You might have heard of it? The Argentum Project? It was going to fire a slave ray at the earth?”

Yanuka laughs and it’s so hard not to want to hum a certain bell ringing melody underneath my breath. “And you think that I’m responsible for that? The Domina explained her motives to you. I watched it myself. When she left my possession, she left free of any influence . . . That is, unless you think that my simple act of watching her caused her to go on a mad domination frenzy? Dear, she gets that from your mother’s side, or do I need to remind you of her favored invention?”

That is one thing I can’t argue with. Lida made the slave rod that was shoved into my head. I’m sure that it was powered by silver sparks somehow concocted to make the word “obey” repeat ad nauseam into a subject’s head. She wasn’t proud of her past but she never denied that she was acting of her own free will.

Lida wanted to start doing right but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in her nature to do wrong. No small part of me can deny that my tavern conquests weren’t similar. Sure, I used them for information and I gave them a gift of passion, but they didn’t agree to having their minds shut off.

If Yanuka wanted to make The Domina do something I’m sure she would have made it even more Machiavellian. Sure, The Domina took the girl that I was head over heels for but she didn’t make me wish that I was never born before casting me off of the array and back to earth to live as the only willful woman in the world as everyone else fell in perfect line in her new world order. There were no deals.

“You can’t blame me for thinking of it as a possibility can you? You said we were even, but then you let The Domina go. Why? Why would you let her go? Did you find someone silver-tinted that was somehow more exotic?” My voice keeps taking a nasty edge, but I can’t hold it back.

Lucky for me, she doesn’t seem to care. “I could, silver, and even make you a believer. You didn’t ask me to let The Domina go. When I let her go, it was my choice. It is my choice what I do with my possessions even if you don’t want them to be my possessions. Unless you or someone else strips me of them, then they are an important part of my dwelling’s ecosystem. As for telling you the precise reason . . . perhaps I saw a chance for entertainment beyond keeping her on my shelf as a stuffed toy.”

“So you set her free just to watch the chaos she would strew through both of our eyes, and you loved each and every moment of it . . .” My hands turn into fists against the edge of the counter but try as I might I can’t seem to really feel angry.

As far as evil motives go, that one is solid and not even the worst I’ve heard. She gave my doppelganger freedom because it would be more entertaining than keeping her. For all I know that could be the exact same reason she let me go. Duplicates like The Domina and I must be at least a little valuable for trading if nothing else. Not all of her ‘circle’ must share her desires for only possessing one of everything, if she wasn’t lying. I get the feeling that there must be times she lies just because there’s no difference between the truth and a lie if no one believes anything you say.

She nods, and her magic carries her slowly closer to me. “Yes. And to answer your unasked question? Perhaps. You’ve come a long way from a cursed half-blood. I actually find you quite intriguing.”

Yanuka could answer so many questions that I wish Lida could answer for me, but I would trust Lida’s answers so much more. My reason kicks in too quickly for me to be tempted by just how intriguing she finds me. Smirking I slide my arms behind me and lean back. “Either way I appreciate it. My freedom that is . . . and The Domina’s too. And I suppose you wouldn’t take those last drops of your watching ink out of me, would you?”

“Maybe, but why should I? I love seeing through your keen eye. You see things with a young naïveté that I’d like to think I once had, though never in the same way as you with . . . your moral ambiguity. Its fun to let myself experience your life and pretend to be below triple digits again . . . but, I could see myself rescinding that privilege. For one thing only.” Her tone of voice is so husky it makes me shudder, and her eyes are hooded to such an extent that I can barely see half of her pupil that is dilated in a way that I’ve seen enough to know just what it means.

“What would that thing be, if I were to accept your offer . . .?” Something tells me already that I should point blank refuse, but I like the idea of being free of her constant gaze. With a flick of her wrist she could just “scry” me up or whatever the word is, but not to the same extent I’d like to imagine.

The flame haired witch hovers closer and leans herself over my body. I can feel her warmth resonating with her heartbeat, so loud that I can hear it in my own ears as if it were my own. Her hair falls forward and lightly touches my face. Her soft lips part against my ear and her quivering breath makes a shudder roll down my body and my thighs clench hard. “In exchange for removing my last taint, I would like a tender kiss from you, my sweet silver saint . . .”

Involuntarily I find myself arching more towards her, and I can feel the soft texture of her fabric through the texture of my own. Her smell is like arousal and lust purified and poured over her as if from a waterfall. Even knowing all that she’s done to me, I can feel myself dampen and tighten.

If I refuse I know I’ll never feel truly alone or have any privacy until the ink is gone but that’s not why I want to accept. Just one kiss would be so torturous, but so pleasant, and after this . . .

Sometimes dramatic events are the best ones to take oaths by. If I kiss her now, then my lips will only be for Olivia or the predators that haunt Midas City like viruses. The flames that will sear through me at the touch of her lips will set me on my path. I can doubt, but I won’t let myself waver. It’s a big thing to do, and I know I’m not thinking like myself but only in the fact that I’m taking something seriously when I’m aroused, seduced, and afraid.

“Just . . . just one kiss . . . no other strings attached . . . and you’ll take away those last drops . . .?” I have to be sure, but . . . if she says . . .

“Yes, silver . . . the kiss will be like the shot of a revolver . . . and we will truly be even. Just one moment of romance, that’s all I ask, and your mind will be free from my . . .” Her hand slowly slides along the curve of my cheek and down along my neck, stroking the very base in the right way to make my eyes roll and a whimper roll helplessly from my lips. “Free . . . from my penetrating glance . . .”

I know what she’s tempting me with . . . what her ulterior motive is. She could be tempted to do much more than just a kiss, but there would be caveats every step of the way, and everything that I am would be destroyed in the process. I’m sure she’d love to see it, to feel it through her own eyes.

As tempted as I am . . . I want to be free. Deep down inside, even if I crave to be silver like I was with The Lady . . . I want to be free and not just someone’s mere possession. “Then . . . a kiss it is.”

“I hoped you’d say yes . . . Now close your eyes . . . And let our tongues . . . Play a sweet game of passion.” Before I even let my body succumb to her words my lids melt closed on their own and her lips press into mine. Fire spreads through my body, and as her hand not on my neck wraps around the small of my back, I wrap both of mine around her. My hands run along the curves of her back and the curves of her sides as I try to press as much of myself into the passion I can feel searing in her lips.

This isn’t temptation—this is soul screaming nature tearing through me rapturously like nothing I’ve ever even imagined. This is who I am manifesting through a kiss, through a single action . . . Passionate, needy, but strong and unashamed.

Our lips part, and as her fingers slide through my hair and mine slide through hers I feel her tongue connect with mine and it feels unlike anything else. Her kiss draws my sparks out, but not into her, just to the surface, and my sparks draw something out of her, some heat, some lust that I can’t describe or explain, just a deep strong thigh clenching need that is so much stronger than any craving I’ve ever felt before.

Her tongue slides along mine and I mimic the touch feeling so much younger and inexperienced. This isn’t the kiss of two women. This is the kiss of two witches with powers that complement each other so sweetly. Like the light and dark that I imagined inside of Silhouette, this is that same dichotomy.

Relief and need, craving and soothing tenderness wrap and entwine, and even though I know that her fingers are inside of my hair and not parting my nether lips it feels like even more. I can feel her tongue stroking the quivering flame of my desire and all it does is make it white hot, silver hot, just like the fire that burned away the book. If she wanted, if I wanted . . . we could burn ourselves away, burn our clothes away, and just writhe, reaching the epoch of pleasure with just this kiss and wandering but still innocent hands.

Just as I can feel myself start to shake, my thoughts start to fog over with too much of her magic lust, her magic craving . . . her fingers start to twine out from me, her warmth receding . . . hands sliding along my body before she flicks both of my nipples again through my top . . . and I can feel it.

When Susan and Aniela suckled the ink out of me, it was slow, but this time the two remaining drops slide right out of me, and I can feel them staining my top. Her tongue withdraws from mine and I whimper loud as I can as her lips do the same followed by the smacking lips that end any real kiss . . . and I melt back against the counter, my hands like jelly as I struggle to use them to hold me up.

All I can think about is her, is that kiss is . . . an oath that doesn’t matter, silly thoughts made in false epiphany, just a person I want to be not a person I am, something idealized not something personified . . .

She speaks, and her voice doesn’t sound like an enemy’s voice. It sounds like a lover’s, tender and sweet, and I can feel it resonating deep in my mind and even deeper between my thighs. “Just for you . . . I’ve assured that the violet Raine-drop and the hidden shadow are both free of my daughter’s touch . . . as is your golden hearted love. Keep the flower . . . as a lover’s memento. Keep the eye too . . . Maybe in time . . . it will bring you more than just questions . . .”

My lips try to part to ask something, to say something, but I can’t find the thoughts to voice. My mind is swimming and my panties feel like a sauna. As soon as I can try to center myself she disappears in rippling heat, and I just stare at where she was . . .

The flower is upstairs where it fell . . . but I know that I’ll keep it . . . if only to remind myself that my vampire friend Pandora is not the only woman whose mind can be ruled by below her waist.

“Maybe we’ll meet again . . .” Even if there’s no chance that meeting a Nesatealia again can be for the best, I know that if I do see her again my first thought will be of this kiss, and I can just imagine the dreams . . . but right now, I need to get my head on straight, and get Yana ready to take down to a police station, finish all of this, and find Olivia . . .

We have a lot to talk about.