They were all staring at her. Carly could feel the pressure of five sets of eyes on the back of her neck, all of them silently demanding she look back at them, and she was quietly grateful for the challenge of navigating the bare wooden floor on crutches for the excuse it gave her to look straight down without turning it into an unspoken admission of what she knew. The other women watched her huff and grunt with the strain of her exertion, still a little unused to being upright and mobile again, and it wasn't until Carly was halfway across the room that one of them murmured, "It's so good to have you back again, dearest."

Carly froze. She'd known this wasn't going to be easy, but keeping her head pointed straight down at the floor even when all her instincts told her to look up and see who was speaking was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. She could feel the treacherous urge, masquerading as her own thoughts or social politesse or whatever it thought would trick her into meeting the other woman's gaze. Even treacherous curiosity got into the act, itching at the back of her brain and making her wonder whether that was Shelly or Asia or Penny or Liv or Lucy speaking to her. Carly would never know unless she looked. She'd never know unless she met the other woman's eyes.

Then she guessed she'd never know. "I, um, I only came to pick up a few things," she mumbled, hoping the bright flush in her cheeks could be mistaken for exertion. "It was, uhh, it was real nice of you to let me stay so long, but I have to--" Her voice momentarily dried up in her throat as she imagined all five faces taking on a disapproving scowl, and for a moment it was all Carly could do not to blurt out an apology. "I have to go home," she finally finished, struggling to get the words out through her suddenly tight windpipe.

"Oh, dearest," another of them said--Carly thought it was Lucy, but all of their voices were so sweet and soft and musical that it was difficult to differentiate them. "This is home," she continued, but so swiftly that it felt like they were thinking each other's thoughts as well as finishing each other's sentences another said, "Your home away from home," and Carly felt an icy shiver go down her spine as she recalled how intertwined their conversations had been. It was always five or six or seven against one when talking to them, and Carly always felt outranked and outvoted as well as outmatched and outfoxed. Not for the first time, she wondered if she hadn't made a mistake coming back here.

But everything she owned was sitting in that locker at the foot of her bed, everything from her passport to her bank cards to the travel voucher she was going to need if she wanted to make her way back to the States. Carly didn't know what would happen if she simply left it all behind and threw herself on the mercy of the American embassy, especially when she'd eventually have to admit that none of it was lost or stolen and she was just afraid to visit the hostel she left it at out of fear of....

Well. If she admitted that part, she'd probably get her ticket punched straight to a mental institution. Better to keep hobbling across the room, keep her head down, and hope they didn't try to stop her. They'd never used force before, not the whole time she was here, but Carly didn't know if they couldn't or if they just always felt supremely confident that they didn't have to.

Certainly she could hear them moving around the room, closing the gap between them, but none of them stepped in to block Carly's path... which only terrified her more, somehow, because it meant at least some of them were behind her. She thanked her lucky stars that the others were all busy somewhere, although she tried not to think too much about it because she knew what they'd be busy with and she had enough trouble persuading her thoroughly disloyal mind not to look up as it was.

The silence pressed down on her like a weight as she took step after halting step, until finally she couldn't help huffing out a response. "N-no, you've been... you've been so nice," she mumbled, exertion swallowing the words as she struggled to move the crutches in unfamiliar rhythm and kept catching the rubber tips on the wooden floor. "It's just I, I overstayed my visa a little, and--nnfh--and I, I really should get home before classes start in the fall, and--" She gave up talking. The words felt hollow and meaningless to her, and she knew none of the inhabitants of the hostel cared about them either. If they had their way, she'd never leave.

If Carly had her way, she'd never leave either. That was what terrified her so much during her first few days in the hospital, the slowly dawning realization that there was something perverse and unnatural about her aching desire to get back on her feet and get right back to all the beautiful women she'd come to worship and adore. If not for the accident, she'd probably still be here, drifting aimlessly from room to room and sinking into the limitless depths of all those pairs of dangerously seductive eyes. She'd never been so grateful to be hit by a car in her entire life.

But none of it meant anything if she looked up now. "I, I have to go home," she muttered again, as much to her self as to her temptresses, and she pushed back the dawning awareness of her own cramping neck muscles to continue hobbling toward the bed she'd spent so many of her days and nights in of late. If she looked up, she'd stare directly into someone's wine-dark eyes, and she'd be instantly lost to herself. If she looked up, the pain in her broken leg and the discomfort in her aching muscles would melt away into a pleasure so intense her mind would simply dissolve into it. If she looked up, she would never, ever leave here again and even though a part of Carly craved that more than breath itself she kept looking down until she got to her own locker.

"Would you like a hand with that?" Asia asked, stepping in close enough that Carly could see her feet as she struggled her way down into a seated position to get at the lock. Carly was more than a little dismayed that she could recognize the women here just from her memories of kissing and sucking their perfect toes, and she struggled to push the recollection out of her head and insert the key into the lock with shaking, trembling fingers. How had she never noticed just how lust-drunk they'd made her? Why hadn't she ever questioned her own submission?

Because of those eyes. Because of those deep brown eyes, so dark they were almost black on black, swallowing her up into a waking dream of sex and submission she never wanted to wake from. Those eyes were incalculably dangerous, like a dagger held right to the heart of Carly's freedom of thought, and she'd never been more terrified than she was in this moment because she knew she'd never have the strength to resist them twice. She didn't really have the strength to resist them even once. They would swallow her whole if she looked into them now and she would never, ever escape.

And she didn't want that, Carly forcibly reminded herself as she turned the key in the lock. She didn't want to join the lesbian harem of a cult of magical, impossible women and live out her life in a Mykonos hostel fucking herself stupid. She didn't want to spend her days and nights eating pussy and grinding her cunt against another slave's thigh and thinking of nothing more than the next meal and the next orgasm. The part of her that craved the depths of those mesmerizing eyes was... it was just the lingering conditioning, it wasn't really who she was. Carly knew that. She was sure of it.

That was why it had to be an accident when she fell flat on her back trying to get up again without putting weight on her broken leg and wound up staring directly into Asia's deep, beautiful, incalculably hypnotic eyes. Because Carly would never have tricked herself into surrendering like that. "Oh, there's my pretty girl," the seductive siren cooed, and Carly felt the strength go out of her with a sleepy sigh that seemed to expel every last bit of her breath and leave her worn out and weary on the wooden floor.

She'd somehow thought that being on her guard might buy her at least a moment to look away, that experience had to inoculate her at least slightly from their hypnotic power, but if anything it was just the opposite--Carly's resistance had already been weakened from so many days and nights lost in those beautiful eyes that whatever feeble attempt she made at defiance crumbled to powder before it had a chance even to take form, and she grunted in helpless pleasure as her cunt slickened with anticipation almost before she understood what was happening to her.

"Here, darling, let us help you up onto the bed," Liv murmured gently, hooking her arms under Carly's armpits while Shelly and Asia carefully supported her hips and buttocks. They lifted her up with that same effortless strength Carly remembered, and she wondered idly how she could ever have mistaken any of them for human, but the throb in her clit sent the thought drifting back out of her head as easily as it arrived and she found herself questioning only how she was going to get her clothes off with that cast in the way.

Thankfully Penny had the perfect answer. "You won't be needing these anymore," she purred, delicately and carefully cutting the fabric away from Carly's skin with a sharp and ancient-looking dagger before pulling it free to leave the young woman naked on the bed. "Not now that we've learned how accident-prone you can be. We wouldn't want to lose you again, now, would we?" Carly heard herself meekly simpering out grunts of thoughtless agreement, but her own words were little more than babble to her now and she only wanted to feel her lovers' touch on her sopping, leaking cunt so she could cum her brains out and surrender even more completely to their irresistible power.

And it didn't take long for that promise to be fulfilled. "Just relax, dearest," Lucy cooed gently, the very words instantly rendering Carly bonelessly limp despite her instinctive desire to tense up in ecstasy. "Just relax and stop thinking and soon you won't want to leave us ever, ever again." Her fingers slid easily into the slick channel between Carly's labia, but it wasn't the deft, dexterous touch that made her cum. It was those eyes. Those perfect, infinite, captivating eyes. Carly felt herself give into them with the utmost of gratitude as even the memory of her previous terror deserted her. She could never have wanted anything but this. She could never have desired anything as much as she wanted slavery right now.

Carly had no idea how many times she came for the women of the hostel; orgasm blended into trance which blended into sleep which blended back into trance so smoothly and easily she didn't even notice the passing of days and nights unless someone directed her to. She ate when she was told, she stared and served and lusted like all the other good girls who'd been ensnared by that impossible gaze, and she only noticed the passage of time at all when she was finally able to take her cast off and kneel with shaky legs the way she'd been craving to for so many weeks. Her independence and resistance had been pared away with surgical precision by her new mistresses... and if Carly ever dreamed of the life she intended for herself, she forgot it on waking into those wine-dark hypnotic eyes.

THE END