"I do want you to know that I'm very impressed," Edwina cooed, as Gloria took another long, slow, glacial blink that seemed to last a solid minute before she managed to lever her drooping eyelids back open and her gaze once again fixated involuntarily on the screen. "I love a woman with spirit, and this display of yours is definitely going to make you a favorite once you give up on this adorable little show of defiance and surrender to me. Honestly, I might even make you forget you're my brainwashed plaything just so we can let this play out again... assuming, of course, that we haven't already."

The leggy brunette favored Gloria with a smile she saw only out of the corner of her eye, but the mirrored sunglasses the other woman wore kept Gloria from observing whether or not it was truly genuine. She doubted it was--for all that Edwina projected an air of unshakable confidence, the very fact that she was directly engaging Gloria implied that she was just a tiny bit worried that one of her potential conquests was on the verge of discovering enough willpower to stumble out of the room and escape Edwina's hold over her. Maybe not much, certainly not enough to do anything as overt and potentially antagonizing as physically restraining Gloria, but some.

Which meant Gloria still had a chance. Even though her feet felt like they were rooted to the floor, even though the spiral kept tugging her gaze endlessly down into its center as if her pupils were magnetized, even though every other woman in the room had already sunk to their knees and couldn't stop themselves from droning out a chant of mindless obedience that rose up everywhere around Gloria and perpetually enticed her to stop struggling and give up her will to the hypnotic power reaching out to claim her... Gloria knew she still had a hope of fighting back.

That only made it more demoralizing when Edwina moved around behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of the older woman's body against her back, and said, "I know what you're thinking,darling. And it really is adorable that you think you can fight it. But you've just been standing here, staring vacantly into space and... ahem... drooling...." She reached around to trace the collar of Gloria's dress, her pale fingers vividly contrasting with Gloria's rich mahogany skin as she brushed against something wet. "For almost thirty minutes now. You're not walking away from this. You can't even move without someone telling you to."

It didn't feel like a lie, that was the worst part. Even though Gloria understood, intellectually, that if Edwina really believed she only had to stand around and wait for the last of Gloria's resistance to sputter and fail like an airplane running on fumes then she wouldn't even bother talking to her, the words still had the ring of inescapable truth. Nobody else had managed to resist, after all. Fifteen young professionals, each one of them brilliant and driven and ambitious in their own particular fields, and every last one of them was down on their knees with their chins slumped forward onto their chests chanting, "My soul and my spirit are dedicated to obedience." How much longer could she hold out than they did?

Edwina must have picked up on some subtle vulnerability her current line of attack was exposing, because she took the liberty of pushing Gloria's collar a bit further down to expose more of her sensitive skin. "Last of anything is always special, darling," she cooed, her breath tickling the back of Gloria's neck in the most deliciously erotic way. "You can definitely be proud of that spark of defiance, even after it's been stroked and teased right out of your sleepy little head. But you've proven everything you need to, and it's time to stop pretending and *drop* for me."

That little bit of emphasis made Gloria's knees wobble, and she sucked in her breath at the intense and erotic thrill of pleasure her sudden weakness gave her. She'd never given a ton of thought to other women, or other men, for that matter, even during her teenage years when her hormones were at their most active; she knew by sixteen that she wanted to be a music producer, and spending time and energy on a relationship only felt like it was going to drag her down. But the way Edwina's fingernails lightly scratched at the edge of her areola, exposing it bit by bit as the spiral tugged at her gaze and her will, made Gloria wet in a way she never thought possible.

Edwina knew it, too. "Oh, my sweet girl," she growled, her husky contralto sending shivers straight down Gloria's spine all the way into her clit. "It's going to be so nice to finally show you what pleasure truly is, once you give in and let go and dedicate yourself to obedience. I'm sure you think of sex as some itch that occasionally needs scratching, a tension you can release with your favorite toy whenever you finally get too horny and distracted to concentrate properly, but let me assure you there are whole new dimensions of pleasure we can explore together. Once you surrender to trance, once your arousal isn't a distraction anymore because it's leashed to my unbreakable control, you'll find yourself yearning for every chance you get to become my toy."

She chuckled. "That's why I do all this, in the end. Do you know how many women just like you I find every year, pretending to themselves that they want to network and build mentorships while deep down they're just lonely little girls who crave my loving control? You think you're helping yourself by fighting me, but once you've submitted like all the others you won't be able to believe you ever wanted anything as foolish as resistance. You will thank me for defeating these confused vestiges of defiance, thank me with three fingers in your pussy all the way to the knuckle, and every climax will remind you how good obedience can truly be."

Her hands finally and fully exposed Gloria's ebony nipples as she spoke, tweaking and teasing them with a skill that spoke to literal decades of experience pleasuring other women, and Gloria finally understood the drawbacks of being the last one standing. With no one to distract her, Edwina was able to fully focus her natural charisma on Gloria and Gloria alone, and it felt like being in the focus of a magnifying glass to be under that kind of intense, deeply personal scrutiny. Her resistance withered in the heat of Edwina's charm, leaving behind nothing but the laughably pathetic defiance of a toddler insisting she wasn't sleepy in the last moments before she nodded off.

And yet her knees refused to bend. Gloria herself didn't know why anymore, her strapless cocktail dress had given up the ghost of modesty and now lay in a puddle around her ankles while Edwina found ways to tease her pert breasts that left Gloria's breath whistling like a steam train in her own ears... but still she didn't kneel. Even though her eyelids fluttered so intently that she could only see the vaguest suggestion of the spiral, even though the only motion she was still capable of was an involuntary shudder of arousal and the door seemed like it was a million miles away, something deep down inside her simply refused to let Edwina win. A symbolic victory was still a victory, and on the raw and elemental level of her basic identity Gloria relished taking an older white woman down a peg or two.

And the more Edwina postured, the more Gloria could tell it galled the other woman to be challenged. "Listen to them, Gloria," she whispered, trying without success to hide the urgency behind her voice. "They all thought just like you did, they all believed they were too strong and stubborn to ever see themselves down on their knees with their cunts leaking and their minds desperate to submit. Each and every one of them fell to me, one by one, their defiance collapsing into ecstasy as their wills melted into sweet, slick obedience. What makes you think you're going to be any different?"

Gloria almost answered her, but something intuitively told her that Edwina would twist anything she said into agreement with the older woman and she chose instead to give back nothing. The older woman had been mentoring women just like Gloria for decades now, she'd had so many chances to study the hidden vulnerabilities of driven and demanding personalities and had a hundred secret insights on how to exploit all the weaknesses Gloria didn't even know she had. Silence was her best weapon--her only weapon, honestly. She wasn't ready to surrender it yet.

Edwina's hand went down between Gloria's thighs, a clear sign of the older woman's impatience but one that Gloria had to admit made her knees wobble even harder with pure, helpless pleasure. "You've soaked these pretty panties clean through, darling," Edwina murmured, rubbing and stroking with an almost telepathic gift for finding the exact way Gloria wanted to be touched. "Surely a strong-willed, independent girl like you isn't getting all wet and horny at the prospect of being taken and tamed and made into my obedient slut, is she?"

Her lips brushed the back of Gloria's neck, a kiss somehow more intimate than sex. "I'll let you in on a little secret. It's making me wet, too. I love a defiant girl, and the challenge of breaking you like this, it's... well, it's more excitement than I've had at one of these little events in a very long time." She was lying again, Gloria knew it as sure as she knew up was up, but calling her out on it meant engaging with her and Gloria felt certain that was a trap. The less she gave, the less Edwina could take from her and the longer she would last. Whatever that meant in this doomed, no-win game of defiance they were playing.

"But the time for challenges is over, darling," Edwina added, contradicting herself almost immediately and giving Gloria a tiny thrill of satisfaction that felt even better than the fingers rubbing her sopping cunt. "We've had our fun and you've been a very good girl, but you know you can't win. You can't look away. You can't even reach up and play with your own tits without permission, and we both know how much your nipples are aching right now. So why don't you let go, drop to your knees, and enjoy all that pleasure you've been denying yourself?"

There was no way that one was going to work. Despite Edwina's efforts to follow it up with sexual teasing that left Gloria panting and whimpering and stuck on the very edge of orgasm, Gloria knew deep down in her heart of hearts that no climax would ever feel as good as the satisfaction she received from denying Edwina her victory. Her eyes had completely slipped shut now, eyelids so tightly stuck closed that she couldn't possibly imagine levering them open again, but mingling with the mental image of the endlessly swirling spiral she saw a vision of Edwina's smug grin tightening into a forced rictus of frustration and it gave her the strength to hold out. She knew she was hypnotized. She knew she'd submitted in all the ways that mattered. But the bitch hadn't made her kneel.

Edwina knew it, too. The rubbing finally stopped, leaving Gloria gasping and trembling and swaying where she stood with a craving for release so powerful she could practically reach out and touch it, and the older woman's voice filled with false cheer as she said, "Very good, dear! You've won. That was all a test, and you passed it perfectly. I'm so proud of you, you've done so well, and now it's time for your reward. Do you know what you want for a reward, sweetie? Do you know what you want right now more than anything?"

Gloria's head rose ever so slightly from where it had slumped forward onto her chest. Her eyelids fluttered just a tiny fraction of an inch open, Edwina's question prompting a bit of clarity back into her head that she almost never expected to feel again. She thought, really thought for herself for the first time in almost a solid hour of teasing and hypnosis, considering everything that had happened and everything Edwina had said to her. It was difficult with the spiral right there in front of her, continuing to tease her with the promise of endless pleasure, but at last she knew.

Gloria sank to her knees, of her own will and by her own choice, and let herself collapse into obedience. And Edwina knelt down behind her and fingered her to the most powerful orgasm of her life.

THE END