Elise sees the strangers before they see her. She's just stepped out onto the balcony after the shower, reveling in the way the wind caresses her scalp where her long dark hair has been cropped down to the stubble on one side and the far naughtier way it blows up under the towel that's wrapped around her pale body, and she happens to notice two people working their way door to door down the narrow Rue Aubriot. They hold something up every time someone answers, a flyer or a photo or something Elise can't make out from this distance, and the people who respond all point in Elise's general direction. Uncomfortable, she darts quickly back inside.

She decides to get dressed--it's a shame, really, she has the whole day to herself and she was looking forward to spending the morning in bed with nothing but her favorite vibrator and the edging file Maitresse made for her last week. But she has an odd, inexplicable conviction that the strangers won't go away just because she's hiding in her room; they'll wait outside the front door until they get a response no matter how long it takes. She wishes Maitresse was here. Her lover... her owner, if Elise is being perfectly honest with herself... is so much better at dealing with the unexpected little challenges that always leave Elise so timid and overwhelmed.

She manages to wriggle into a pair of leggings and a loose bulky sweater, the kind that won't show her nipples too prominently through her clothing. Elise has a few bras remaining, and a couple pairs of panties shoved away in a drawer somewhere, but her shapely breasts don't really need support and anyway, it's rare these days that she can muster up the focus to cope with the complicated straps and fasteners and, um... holes. Elise blushes, admitting to herself that her inability to put on underwear has very little to do with the item itself and everything to do with the delicious, sensual way that Maitresse makes being ditzy and dizzy so very attractive.

They're already knocking by the time she reaches the staircase, and Elise freezes in a momentary anxiety she hasn't felt in months at the sound of their insistent presence outside. She knows she didn't recognize them, but something about the way they looked up at her in the instant before she ducked back into the safety of the apartment gave Elise a sense of familiar dread, as though some long-prophesied doom had finally arrived for her. That feeling hasn't gone away. It still clings to her. Some part of her is utterly certain that answering that knock will destroy the wonderful life she and Maitresse have made together.

But she can't not answer it. Elise steps hesitantly down the stairs into the foyer, and opens the front door.

*    *    *    *    *

"I can't." Nikki really hoped Marie could hear the sincere regret in her voice; her friend's English wasn't always the best, but usually Nikki could get tone across even if she did have to stick to short, simple sentences without any idioms. "I want to, I really do, but... there's just no way. I have classes, I have work, I have bills, I'm having dinner with my parents on Wednesday, I--it's just not possible. C'est, um, impossible." Nikki's crude French made Marie's English sound fluent, she knew, but sometimes it got the point across in ways that her native language couldn't.

But this time Marie only chuckled. "Eet, uh, eet ees somezink you say beecauz you want too beeleeve eet, ma cherie," she drawled, her voice coming through Nikki's gaming headset like she was a French maid in a 60s sex farce. It was almost inconveniently hot when Nikki was trying to keep her mind on taking out enemy gunnery platforms, especially since she was stuck in bed for the next fifteen minutes with an uncomfortably large medical-grade phallus dilating her vagina. Not that she'd ever really done anything more than a few sessions of phone sex with the beautiful young Parisienne with the long blonde hair and wide blue eyes, but Marie had made it clear that she would welcome anything Nikki had to offer.

That was what this whole conversation was about, in fact. "You have, uh, how ees zey say? Spreeng Break. In, qu'est-ce que c'est, a week? Zat ees half ze time right zere. And ze professeurs, zey accept remote learning at your school. You can log een from my, uh, my... c'est dit appartement?" Nikki gave another private prayer of gratitude to whatever Norman conquerors mashed Old English and medieval French together. Half the time they could make a random stab at a word and have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right in both languages.

"Yes, apartment," she confirmed, shifting position slightly as she respawned after an ugly death at the hands of an enemy sniper. "But it's not just class, I have two jobs to go to. They won't, I mean I can't... I can't just pack up and leave on a trip to Paris with just a week's notice, even if I could afford to go. They'd, I'd, it would...." She heard herself trailing off into stammering silence, anxiety and stress bubbling up and catastrophizing everything into a single sticky mass of panic in the back of her mind, and wished it wasn't such a familiar sensation.

But Marie continued to politely but firmly steamroller over all Nikki's objections. "Eet ees ze Great Renonciation,  ees eet not?" she said pointedly, a chuckle in her voice that Nikki could hear even from across the Atlantic Ocean. Everee one needs employees. Even eef zey dared to fire you, you could find anuzzer job like zat." Nikki heard Marie snap her fingers, just as her character momentarily wheeled awkwardly to the right into the side of a wall. She couldn't hold back a tiny giggle at the sight.

"And your parents, well...." Marie's voice turned serious for a moment. "I cannot lie, ma cherie. Zey are part of what you need to geet away from." Nikki winced, feeling momentarily seen despite their voice-only connection--she'd been hanging out with Marie for the better part of a year now, gaming with her at odd hours of the morning when stress left her an insomniac wreck, and they'd gotten a little too close for Nikki to pretend she didn't know what her friend was talking about. Half the reason she hadn't dropped out of grad school six months ago was the sickening dread she felt every time she pictured breaking the news to her family. Two weeks without any calls, any texts, any awkward questions from Marge and Mason Sheppard at family dinner about when her bachelor's degree was going to get her a real job instead of just some make-work position at Chase Manhattan and a side hustle at Starbucks on the weekends... it sounded kind of like heaven.

But heaven could wait. It had to. "Even so, Marie, I can't just... that's over a thousand dollars just for the tickets, I couldn't possibly expect you to drop that kind of money on me. I'd, it's, I'm...." Nikki trailed off again, knowing what Marie would say if she told her she wasn't worth it. And that was her ultimate argument, the one all the others were merely smokescreens for. She didn't feel like she deserved a two-week all-expenses-paid trip to France, even if her apparently very wealthy friend could drop that kind of cash without batting an eye. And Marie felt differently.

"Oh, fine," she sighed, putting all her misgivings behind her in a sudden rush of giddy impulsiveness. "Go ahead and buy the tickets, I'll request the time off tomorrow. Now can we please get our minds back on the game before the human race winds up overrun?" Marie chuckled, and Nikki lost herself in the musical laughter for a long moment before she began shooting again. Nothing could go wrong when her best friend was laughing like that. Nothing in the world.

*    *    *    *    *

Elise's focus, first and foremost, is on the picture. The people holding it are kind of a blur, a pair of unremarkable Americans around her age who look at her with hopeful, worried smiles on their bland and unmemorable faces, but the picture... the picture is astonishing. It's a marvel out of one of those operatically absurd thrillers Maitresse likes to watch while she gets Elise stoned and plays with her pussy until she's a moaning, whimpering mess. Who was the one she always loved, the one who kept conjuring up ever more melodramatic plots around twins and doubles? De Palma, that was it. She's somehow stepped into a Brian De Palma movie.

The woman in the photo is posed with the strangers in front of some American tourist trap, somewhere bright and sunny like... Elise's knowledge of America, never particularly sound, fails her entirely here. California or Florida or wherever they have the Disney parks. She's sitting on top of a big fiberglass alligator, so maybe that would make it Florida, but... Elise's clit throbs, fuzzing the knowledge away in a blur of arousal that makes her wish she could slam the door and go off to masturbate, but the strangers keep looking at her expectantly and she wants to let them down easy.

"izzityuunick? izzitrilliuu?" Elise doesn't understand their babble, any more than she understands the tourists who sometimes accost her while she's out running errands and repeat the same gibberish louder and slower in the hopes that this time it will produce a different result. She gives them a wide, helpless smile and shakes her head, but the whole time her eyes keep coming back to the woman in the photo, the one on top of the alligator. Because Elise has to admit, that woman looks a lot like her.

Almost identical, in fact. Elise sees the same watery blue eyes, the same long dark hair cut in an identical side shave--even the same curves, give or take a few years of hormone therapy. Likewise, the face is a little more angular, a little less filled out, but if Elise had any photos of herself five years ago she feels certain they would look exactly like this. These people... they must think Elise is this woman. Or was this woman. Or something--god, can't they go away so she can settle the distracting arousal in her clit and think clearly for a change?

"Miss. Miss, duyuspeegennglesh?" She understands the first couple of words, but after that it all descends into gibberish again. Maybe if they weren't so frantic, she could at least pick out the very few bits of English vocabulary she did recognize, but they're clearly very excited about her resemblance to the American woman. It feels like it's all they can do to keep from grabbing at her, and their unpredictable energy awakens a quiet terror inside her. She wonders if she's about to be kidnapped. She wonders if the strangers are so desperate to find their friend that they're going to simply take Elise and force her to believe she's the woman they want her to be.

"No, no [English]," she murmurs haltingly, the unfamiliar word sitting awkwardly on her tongue. She reverts to French, hoping they understand at least a little of what she's trying to say and speaking slowly in an unintentional impersonation of the tourists who frustrate her so much. "Please, please go away, I don't know her and I don't know you--" Elise breaks off. It's no good. She can tell they didn't understand a bit of it. The language barrier is insurmountable without a translator. She wishes Maitresse were here--she'd make them understand. More importantly, she'd make them leave.

And the whole time, that woman in the photo keeps smiling back at her, staring at her with those wide blue eyes as if she didn't have a care in the world. It's a lie, Elise can tell; she's looked into a face just like that enough to spot the tiny little creases of worry and stress that her twin thinks she's hiding. Whoever she was, wherever she was, she felt guilty for enjoying herself so much doing something so silly. She hid it well, but the photo betrays it all. Elise feels sorry for her, even before the entirely reasonable assumption that she went missing somewhere and her friends are trying to find her without any luck.

"saaryeye--" one of them says, another woman with a tight, anxious face that feels like it could erupt into anger at any moment. "ahduntandustaannd, ah--" She breaks off. Confusion begins to creep into those tense features. They have to be wondering whether they're right. They have to be questioning themselves. Elise wants to encourage their doubt, but she doesn't have the words. She's annoyed and terrified in equal measures.

They thrust the photo at her again, repeating something forcefully. Elise shrugs, the gesture almost a flinch in the face of their intensity. She wants them to go away, but they won't leave. And the throb in her pussy only keeps getting stronger.

*    *    *    *    *

It was all going so well at first.

The flight had been absolutely luxurious--Nikki had flown first class once or twice, cashing in her dad's frequent flyer miles for a little extra leg room and the chance to board early, but that was on a domestic flight. Flying first class across the Atlantic was an entirely different level of comfort and style that left her almost floating on a warm cloud of peace and relaxation despite the yammering little voice of anxiety in the back of her head. Even if she came back to find that her bosses had changed their minds and fired her after all, even if she dropped a whole point off her GPA from starting classes a week late, she still had this moment of happiness. It was refreshing.

And then she got off the plane and Marie met her at the airport, and the way the taller woman looked down shyly at her and leaned intimately into Nikki's presence awakened all of the American's dominant instincts. She wound up gripping the blonde hair at the base of Marie's neck and steering her into a long, soulful kiss that lasted almost a full ten count before tugging her away and saying, "I've wanted to do that for a long time now." She didn't let go of Marie's hair. Marie didn't ask her to.

They took a taxi back to Marie's small but sumptuously appointed apartment, and tumbled almost directly into bed with one another. Marie turned out to have a very nice selection of sex toys, and any concerns Nikki might have had about topping someone a good six inches taller than she was melted away when she realized that Marie looked a good deal smaller lying down. She cuffed the French woman to the bed, then teased her wet opening with a vibrator that was almost aspirationally thick before giving Marie a nice light spanking. Nothing that would make sitting down too uncomfortable, but definitely the promise of two very delicious weeks in each other's company.

The next few hours were a blur of unleashed sexual tension, filled with flavored lube and buzzing silicone cocks and kissing and licking and oh god Nikki hadn't had this many orgasms since she first got her new clitoris. It ended with them curled up amiably against one another, dozing on the sweat-soaked mattress with their limbs entangled and intertwined in playful intimacy. Nikki hadn't realized she was going to go that hard at someone she was still thinking of as a friend just a few days ago, but the chemistry just felt so right the moment they were in physical space together, and sex finally seemed to banish that voice of anxiety that had been nagging at her for so long.

It wasn't just the sex, though. It was stepping into that role that did it, shedding the Nikki that she usually was and becoming someone else in the space of their scene together. Confident, growling Dominant Nikki didn't worry about jobs or grades or being deadnamed by her parents; she was outside herself just a tiny bit, almost as though another person was taking charge of her body, and it made her troubles seem like they were someone else's too. Nikki tucked away that little realization as it came to her in her half-sleep, planning to unfold it later.

But 'later' turned into a night on the town, hitting the clubs of Paris in the company of a wealthy heiress who spent money like it was water and knew all the right people in all the right places. Nikki tried absinthe for the first time, wincing at the burning sensation on her tastebuds and scraping her tongue against her teeth to get rid of the licorice aftertaste. She took a tiny amount of ecstasy, looking nervously over her shoulder as if expecting the cops--or worse, her parents--to spot her at any moment. She got silly drunk and loopy stoned, and all her revelations about enjoying life more when she wasn't quite herself disappeared into a very different kind of altered mental state as she melted into a giggly, bubbly, uninhibited party girl who danced until her feet ached and laughed until her throat was hoarse. And finally, at something that approached four o'clock in the morning, Marie (whose tolerance was so much higher for this kind of lifestyle) poured her into another taxi, brought her back home, and put her to bed with an almost maternal tenderness.

And the next morning her passport was missing.

Not just her passport, although that would have been disastrous enough--when Nikki went through her purse, she realized that her ID, her wallet, virtually every form of identification she had and every form of identification she was absolutely required to have with her at all times in order to stay in Paris without the threat of deportation had simply vanished. She searched, she searched again, she dumped out her bag onto Marie's bed and she dumped out her suitcase onto the living room floor and she was just about ready to sprint out the door and go back to every single bar they visited that night when Elise put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Pleese, ma cherie, do not so much worry," the French woman said, her thick and lilting accent somehow absurd even at the height of Nikki's nightmares-come-true. "Zee travel viza, eet lasts a month, no? And les professeurs, zey will let you work remotely for a while. Ze passport weel turn up, someone weel find it and turn eet een at ze embassie, and everyzing weel be well. I weel geet you a flight home when ze time comes, I promise."

Nikki's mouth flapped for a moment in overwhelmed panic. "But I, I should report it stolen, I should tell the--the State Department to expect it or, or get things going on a replacement, I... I can't just ignore it, Marie! It's important!"

But the blonde only chuckled. "Only eef you let it be," she said, her unruffled temperament rubbing off on Nikki. "Eef you do not tell ze Americans, zey will not know until the passport shows up on zeir doorstep and ze problem ees solved. And eef worst comez to worst, ma pere can make zings right. He has friends een high places, he can pool some streengs." Nikki's eyes widened in surprise. She knew Marie's family had money, but she didn't realize that she was that well-connected. Could she really just snap her fingers and make a passport materialize out of thin air? She'd certainly seemed unworried about buying drugs last night at the club, and France had some of the strictest possession laws in Europe.

"Eet will be fine, ma cherie," Marie cooed, giving Nikki a kiss on the lips. "Trust me." Nikki thought about the embarrassment of being put on a flight home on the second day of her vacation, the stinging humiliation of having to call her parents from a ride home from the airport, and shrugged helplessly. She really didn't see what other options she had.

*    *    *    *    *

The man has his foot in the door. He's pressing forward urgently, leaning in with one foot on the threshold, not quite ready to commit the unforgivable act of trespass that would give Elise the excuse to call the police and have the strangers arrested but definitely positioning himself in a way that prevents Elise from shutting them out and pretending the whole strange exchange never happened. "yugotalasantuss, knick!" he snaps, his face contorted in impotent frustration. She can see the tightness in his shoulders, the compulsive clutching of his hands into fists. He wants to grab her, she can tell, but he's terrified of making a mistake and assaulting some innocent French woman.

Elise tried to stammer out an explanation, something that would placate them, but her broken English can manage little beyond, "[Not me]," and it's clear from the look on their faces that they don't believe her. She switches to French, rapidly blurting out, "Don't you see you've made a mistake?", and it's clear it has more of an effect on them than her exaggerated shrugs and head shakes. Whoever this missing person is, her friends didn't expect her to speak anything other than English.

The woman looks past Elise, trying to get a sense of the apartment behind her, and Elise wonders if she's looking for men with guns or something. Again, she can't shake the sense of melodrama that threads through the entire encounter, the feeling that she's stepped into some kind of American thriller made by Alfred Hitchcock or one of his many imitators. It would be absurd if it wasn't really happening. It's even more absurd because it is really happening. They say truth is stranger than fiction, but Elise is discovering to her horror that she greatly prefers it the other way around.

And the entire time, they keep showing her that photo, gesticulating wildly at it and babbling incomprehensible phrases at her as if they expect at any moment for her to remember an entire language to communicate with them in. But all Elise notices is the deep, heavy throb of arousal in her clit, getting stronger and louder inside her head the more she stares at the woman in the picture and racks her brains for any memory of her. There's something about the whole situation that feels familiar, but the familiarity just makes her pussy ache harder with need. She'd lock herself in her bedroom and masturbate if she wasn't terrified they would follow her.

The man reaches out, but the woman puts her hand on his arm. She shakes her head and says something in English, something Elise doesn't understand and doesn't really want to know. She tries to remember where she left her cell phone, to gauge whether she could get to it before the man tackled her and dragged her out of the building. It suddenly seems like the most important question in the world, but Elise has never been very good with these kind of little details. That was what Maitresse was for, to help her think when her fuzzy and befuddled mind wasn't up to the task.

She has no idea when Maitresse will be back. It might not be for hours, yet. Elise is on her own. "Please go away," she murmurs, her eyes wide and timid and plaintive. But even though the woman's face contorts in desperate confusion, the man only seems more determined to force her into his world.

*    *    *    *    *

"Gnnnnhhhhh!" Nikki closed the laptop cover hard and sat there, fists half-clenched, vibrating with rage. The frustration bounced around impotently inside her, unable to release itself--it was a sensation Nikki had gotten all too familiar with over the years, wanting to scream or throw something or pound her fist on the desk until it bruised, but so terrified of somehow making a scene that all she could do was let out an inarticulate growl and wait for the tension to subside.

But this time Marie was here. "Ohh, ma cherie, ees zere more troubles?" she asked, putting her hand on the back of Nikki's neck and gently rubbing the frustration away. It shouldn't have worked--Nikki was used to stress, it fit inside of her brain like a hand in a glove--but somehow after only a few seconds she found the tightness in her shoulders easing and her vision melting into a soft blur as the tiny little muscles in her eyes relaxed. She let out a long, heavy sigh, unable to hold on even to the air she breathed when Marie's magic touch was doing its work.

Nikki luxuriated in the sensation for a moment before remembering that Marie was waiting for a response. "Just... more connection issues," she groused, her voice now more weary than frustrated. School had started back up two weeks ago now, and Nikki had already missed more class in those two weeks than she had in the twenty years preceding them. It seemed like practically every time she logged on, the video started lagging and pixelating within mere moments, and she hadn't managed to get more than five minutes into a single lecture before it cut out entirely. Her professors were thankfully sympathetic... but she could tell that they were getting less so every day.

And troubleshooting had proved useless. Or at least, Nikki had proved useless at it. Normally she was pretty good with connectivity issues, but the stress of worrying about her passport--which still hadn't turned up, even after three weeks--had dulled her wits with frustration until her every effort at tracing the problem left her chasing fruitlessly in circles. If it wasn't for Marie physically pulling her away from the laptop for a relaxing massage every so often, she probably would have broken the damn thing in half by now.

Nikki felt the familiar tug of Marie's hand on her wrist again, dragging her over to the bed that was so tantalizingly close, but she resisted. She knew full well that if she let herself be drawn away now, it would easily be an hour or two before she wound up disentangling herself from her lover's warm embrace to get back to the laptop's connection problems, and by then the issue would have vanished the way it always did and her class would be over. And then Nikki would have to try staring at the textbook all on her lonesome, struggling vainly to parse academic jargon that made her eyes blur and her head swim with confusion until the stress got to be too much for her and... and....

"That's eet, ma cherie," Marie's coaxing voice purred as Nikki felt herself pushing back the chair and rising to her feet. She knew it was a mistake, she knew she'd regret it later, but every time she thought about the consequences of that mistake her mind catastrophized everything so badly that she couldn't help needing a release from the stress and anxiety and tension. And Marie was right there, her magic fingers ready and waiting, and their massages always led to the most wonderful sex once Nikki's lover relaxed her mind and her body with that warm, soft, sensual touch. "Let eet bee for now."

Nikki nodded. "Is... is it okay if I'm not feeling very toppy right now? Je suis, um, e-epuisee?" She still wasn't getting the accent right, and her vocabulary was kind of all over the place, but Marie's face always lit up so brightly whenever Nikki spoke to her in French that she was happy to make the extra effort. And it was nice to know that she was still capable of learning something, at least. Lord knew she was fucking it up academically, and her computer skills seemed to have atrophied overnight, but at least her brain still processed language.

Marie chuckled. "Mais oui, Maitresse," she cooed, a playful smile crooking the corners of her lips. "Let your, uh, 'good gurrl' take care of you, c'est bon?" She lay Nikki down on the bed and undressed her, fingers finding more and better places to rub away that stress and tension until the supine woman's eyes rolled back in her head in quiet bliss. And then, when Nikki was entirely naked, Marie's tongue replaced her fingers and Nikki's eyelids slipped entirely shut.

Time dissolved into a warm, heady sea of pleasure for a while as Marie licked her clit again and again until Nikki's climaxes blended together into one long symphony of rapture. She tried to tell herself she was still being dominant, that it was Marie down between Nikki's thighs servicing her pussy and not the other way around, but she couldn't really sustain that role. The powerful, confident energy that seemed to come from outside Nikki's body and made her feel strong and invulnerable and carefree just wasn't there, and all she wanted to do was lie back and be caressed and hear someone telling her there was nothing to worry about.

And eventually, as Marie alternated between using her mouth and her fingers on Nikki's cunt and spoke to her in soothing French that Nikki barely understood, that was exactly what she got. She missed another class, she got a stern message from her professor to go with the increasingly ominous emails from her employers. But she felt happy. That had to be worth something.

*    *    *    *    *

Elise doesn't know what the Americans must think of her right now. She knows she's shocking them, she can see it on their faces and hear it in the tone of their incomprehensible babble as they stare in horrified fascination at Elise's awkwardly spread thighs and relentlessly rubbing fingers. She feels a little bit ashamed when she sees their dismayed expressions--not so much because of the sex, Elise knows that Americans are all prudes, but because of her own lack of self-control. She really hoped to be able to wait them out before she gave in to the insistent urge to masturbate.

She held out as long as she could, she really did. But the more she stared at that photo, the more she looked at the mysterious stranger who resembled her so closely living a life that Elise had no memory of, the deeper and more potent her arousal grew. Elise couldn't be expected to resist it forever, could she? Not when she knew that she could turn that arousal into pleasure with just a touch of her fingers and the memory of Maitresse's smooth, calming voice.

Maitresse's pleasure is always so much stronger than anything else in Elise's head. She has a vague, distant memory of other times like this, of a struggle in her brain that she only consciously notices as a growing arousal that gradually eclipses any distractions before they can even take root, but... but even that memory is itself overwhelmed and defeated by the heavy weight of ecstasy inside Elise's mind. Trying to resist it is like walking up an ever-increasing slope, the gradient rising and rising the harder she exerts herself until eventually she has to slide back down into soft, drowsy bliss.

She realizes she's reciting something under her breath, panting out the words, "I crave the freedom of surrender," over and over while her fingers brush against her stiff clit until the photo becomes a blur in front of her unfocused eyes, but she realizes with a giddy smile that the two Americans won't understand a word she's saying. She's never been so glad of a language barrier. She's never been so ecstatically happy to try and fail to understand why that makes her so glad.

The man and the woman look at each other, clearly thrown off by Elise's unexpected masturbatory reverie. They exchange a few words, but Elise is done processing the sounds coming out of their mouth now even in the loosest and most phonetic of senses. It's all just noise, she doesn't need to think about it and she doesn't need to worry about it. She's cocooned in Maitresse's pleasure now, wrapped up all snug and warm in a soft blanket of easy bliss that makes thought as unnecessary as it is impossible. Only her cunt matters. And her cunt is so much stronger than her will.

Elise sinks down to her knees, the position feeling so right and good and fulfilling that her eyes roll back in her head until the Americans become a mere fluttering blur seen out of the corner of a warm red haze. She clutches the edge of the door with her free hand, her voice slurred and almost incomprehensible even to another fluent French speaker as the pleasure intensifies. Everything is orgasm now, the stranger in the photo swept out of Elise's head on a tide of ecstasy as she masturbates away all the confusion and finds herself centered once more in the blank, blissful rapture of her true self. She's a good girl. She's Maitresse's good girl. That's all that matters.

Even when the man reaches down and begins shaking her by the shoulders, angrily shouting nonsense at her with increasing urgency, Elise barely notices. And her only response is to sink ever more helplessly into the endless bliss of Maitresse's control.

*    *    *    *    *

"Oh, does someone like that? Does she want to ask for more, mm?" Marie's teasing blandishments ended in a musical giggle, and whatever pretense of dominance Nikki had managed to muster up melted into desperate arousal as her brain fogged over and she lost herself to the hunger in her cunt. She spread her legs as wide as they would go and thrust her vulva up towards Marie's warm, wet mouth, but her lover had easily anticipated her actions and remained just out of reach, waiting for Nikki to reply. And as was so often the case these days, Nikki's will broke long before her supposed submissive's.

"Please," she whimpered, quietly astonished by how good her French was getting, "Please lick my pussy, please give me more, I, I need it, I... please!" After Marie had decided to stop speaking or responding to English around her, Nikki found herself even thinking in her lover's native language most days. It was really the only way she had to make herself understood--Nikki's visa had expired almost a month ago now, and she didn't dare leave the apartment out of an irrational worry that someone might ask her for identification and turn her in to the police when she couldn't produce it.

Even translating her professor's emails into English in her head felt too much like work these days, especially since the reward for figuring out what they were saying to her was usually another dire warning about missed assignments, missed lectures, and the very real danger of going onto academic probation if she didn't wade through the sea of incomprehensible jargon that her textbook had become lately. It was no wonder that Nikki had retreated ever deeper into the comforts of mindless sex with her girlfriend--thinking about the real world made her head hurt. Better to lose herself topping Marie than to stress herself out with questions about how she was going to make rent when she got home without a job to go back to.

Marie's tongue took all that away. Relaxing into that soft, sleepy pleasure that her lover's enthusiastic cunnilingus provided in abundance made Nikki's cares melt into orgasm after drowsy orgasm, allowing her to forget her troubles in a way that nothing else did. Even though she could never really hold on to the scene for very long anymore, even though her mind got slower and simpler whenever she got turned on, even though her commands dissolved into begging and pleading easier and easier these last few days until Marie could play her horny and distracted brain like a violin without any apparent effort....

"There's my pretty girl. There's a pretty little slut for Maitresse Marie." Nikki tried to recall the beginning of her train of thought and the point she was trying to make to herself. It seemed almost absurdly difficult.

She bucked her hips in helpless ecstasy as Marie's well-lubed fingers slid into her hungry cunt, and the wild surge of ecstasy she felt took everything else clean out of her head. All she could do was grunt in thoughtless agreement now, her mind so completely focused on the pleasure in her pussy that she barely even noticed what Marie was saying anymore. It was the same distraction from herself that she experienced when she was topping, only moreso--if Nikki felt like a different person when she was dominating someone, then that went double when she was flat on her back cumming like a porn star for 'Maitresse Marie'. No wonder her lover liked to submit so much. There was a kind of freedom to completely surrendering to another woman that Nikki found herself absolutely craving.

"My pretty little pet doesn't even want to be boring old Nikki anymore, does she?" Marie cooed sensuously. "She wants to be someone sweeter, someone sexier, someone more submissive for me." There was more after that, but Nikki wasn't really listening. She was grinding hard against the thumb on her clit, sinking into that deep and blissful relaxation that had become second nature to her after weeks of Marie's soothing massages, and the precise details of what the other woman was saying didn't matter so much. She only wanted to drift along on the tide of Marie's peaceful, calming voice and slide into amiable acceptance. 

Nikki finally surfaced from the perpetual orgasm what felt like hours later, her brain still sluggish and dazed from the heavy dose of dopamine she'd gotten and her eyes prone to staring vacantly into the distance for long stretches as she drifted back to the hazy memories of Marie's touch. Nikki didn't need much convincing to curl up under the covers with her lover... her Mistress, if Nikki was being perfectly honest with herself... and simply letting herself be held and cuddled and comforted. Dominance could wait for another time. So could salvaging the wreck of her doctorate. She just wanted to forget she even existed for a while.

*    *    *    *    *

It's beginning to get genuinely terrifying when Maitresse finally shows up. Elise is struggling, her legs spreading not in their usual pose of submission to her owner but in an attempt to somehow hook the door frame with her ankles and make it harder for the American man to drag her out into the street. Elise's compulsion to masturbate, so irresistible under any other circumstances, has been overridden by a desperate desire to cling by her fingernails to anything she can grab. And her usual screams of hoarse, submissive pleasure are just... well, screams.

The woman is screaming too, telling the man something in an angry shout that would probably be a lot more comforting to Elise if she knew what the hell she was saying, and the whole thing is making a dreadful scene. Elise doesn't like lots of attention under the best of circumstances, and 'being dragged out of your own home by your armpits while your leggings rip in a really embarrassing place because you rub yourself through them so often that the fabric has worn thin' is not the best of circumstances. She's hoping and dreading that someone will call the police when she hears the sound of rushing footsteps approaching.

It's not a dramatic entrance. The Americans don't turn around to see Maitresse standing there with her arms crossed just waiting for them to notice her, a grim smile on her face and a witty quip on her lips that cuts them down to size. She's flushed and sweaty from sprinting nearly an entire block, her hands rest on her hips in a way that suggests two blocks more would have been about the limit of her capacity for sudden exertion, and when she finally does speak, the only thing she manages to say is, "What the hell are you doing with my girlfriend?" But it's enough as far as Elise is concerned. She wriggles free with a plea of desperate gratitude in her eyes.

The Americans turn to look at her, and Maitresse lashes out at them in a torrent of rapid-fire, heavily accented English--Elise didn't even know Maitresse spoke the language, she's only ever heard French coming from her owner's lips, but it's clear that she has a few hidden talents. The man and the woman try to stammer out a response, evidently caught off-guard by the sudden reframing of their behavior as assault and attempted kidnapping instead of some righteous rescue, but Maitresse isn't having it. She brushes angrily past them and into the apartment. Meekly, Elise follows.

Inside, she goes to the kitchen counter where Elise set her purse yesterday after getting back from shopping, and rifles brusquely through it. She comes up with Elise's national identity card and stomps back into the foyer, brandishing it like a crucifix in front of a vampire and shouting furiously at the Americans--Elise can only pick up a few words, mostly her name and the word "[police]", but it's not hard to get the gist of it from her tone and body language. She's letting them know that they're harassing a complete and total stranger who has proof of her identity right there, and they should shove off before Maitresse decides to stop being nice and call the gendarmes. It clearly works--the Americans put up their hands placatingly, pointing to the photograph to emphasize the honesty of their mistake.

It only makes Maitresse madder. Elise has never seen her like this--usually she's all softness and sweetness, a coaxing adoration that makes her submissive slut eager to melt into blissful obedience, but these people have triggered a deep and possessive instinct in the dominant woman. It should frighten Elise, and perhaps it does a little, but it mainly makes her feel even more blissfully owned. She's in the hands of someone who will fight to keep her, and that feels desperately erotic in an uncomfortably comfortable way. Elise knows she shouldn't want to be treated as a prize to be won, but her cunt isn't listening to her head right now and it loves every second of this. She's going to want to be fucked as soon as the strangers leave.

That won't be long now. They're already out the door, babbling apologies, stumbling out a few halting words of French that Elise understands as "Please, sorry, thank you," even through their thick accents and terrible pronunciation. Maitresse watches them leave, a scowl on her face even after they turn the corner and vanish from sight, and it's only when she closes out the world and leaves them behind completely that she's able to enfold Elise in a gentle hug that melts away the young woman's confusion and fear.

*    *    *    *    *

Nikki looked down at the small rectangle of plastic. "W-what is this?" she asked, but it was a rhetorical question and they both knew it. The title emblazoned across the top made it immediately recognizable as an ID card, and Nikki knew her own face even if she didn't have any recollection of taking this particular picture. And the name... Nikki blushed fiercely, unable to escape the undertow of drifting pleasure that took her back into the memories of night after night spent whimpering and pleading for more pleasure, more arousal, more obedience. It was supposed to be a pet name between the two of them, but there it was in official text staring back at her and defying her not to respond to it. 'Elise Bergier'. She retained just barely enough knowledge of both languages to get the joke.

Marie gave Nikki a possessive hug that wrapped all the way around her chest and ended with the seductive blonde's hands cupping her breasts. "I think we both know," she said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. "It's been six months, my dear. Your passport is gone, and it's not like the American embassy would believe you if you showed up claiming to be some student overstaying her visa. You needed an identity, and my father just happens to be very well placed to push through the necessary paperwork. Think of it as a gift from your Maitresse Marie to her very good little slut."

Nikki shook her head numbly, struggling to find words for concepts that felt surprisingly difficult to wrap her head around. "But, I, but... no, I have a family, a life back in New York. They, they won't just turn me away, I've got American citizenship, they can look me up and find me in their records. Even if the passport is missing, even if I don't have my driver's license anymore, they've got, um, something in their, uh, uh, their... computers and stuff." God, she didn't sound like a grad student with a Master's degree in literature. She sounded like she barely knew what words were, let alone how to string them together. Her nipples tingled under Marie's touch, and it was all she could do to stop herself from pulling her shirt down to give her lover better access to her tits.

"Mhmm, I see, sweetie," Marie chuckled, in tones dripping with condescension. "And can you tell me what you would say to them? [Een Eenglish?]" Nikki felt a dull, throbbing ache of pleasure in her clit as she realized just how long it had been since she'd heard her native language spoken to her. Even when they were watching American movies together, Marie made sure to get dubbed versions; six months of total immersion in the French tongue had left her struggling to remember vocabulary that had once been comically basic to her.

"I, I... yes, I'd... um, [a-allo, I am... Amereecan]," she stumbled out, hearing her own words come out with an accent thicker and more exaggerated than Marie's ever was. "[I, I leeve in Noo Yawrk, and I... I... I....]" It was no good. Every time she tried to grope for even the simplest words, things like 'passport' and 'airplane', her clit tingled harder and harder until the effort of thought became too much for her and she reverted back to French inside her mind. Anyone she spoke to at the State Department would laugh her right out of the building.

"Let's be honest, my dear," Marie purred, her breath tickling the back of Nikki's neck and making her clit throb even harder. "Even if you found someone who spoke French, you're simply not bright enough to explain the situation without help. You'd need me there to answer all those hard questions, and I'd very much rather you stayed here with me where I can play with your pretty pussy and keep you as my good girl. And isn't that what you always wanted anyway?" Nikki's head drooped forward, jolted into sudden relaxation by the warm pleasure and the instinctive desire to nod in agreement. She couldn't remember whether she really thought that, or whether the notion had been planted by her deeply conditioned desire to comply with Maitresse's words. It felt increasingly difficult to differentiate the two anyway.

"I, um, I could... I could ask, um, um, um...." She trailed off into silence again, her head whirling with chaotic plans that crumbled into uselessness whenever she tried to examine them. She'd forgotten the password for her laptop weeks ago, and even if she managed to log in she didn't think she could compose a whole email in English. Her jobs had fired her, her college had expelled her, and the more she struggled to come up with an explanation that would satisfy them the more her cunt silently cajoled her to give up and stop thinking and simply enjoy the pleasure Marie's touch promised.

She tried to find something to hold on to, some part of her identity that she could use to bolster her struggle against the ever-growing beat of arousal that pulsed between her thighs like a second heartbeat, but... but everything was soft, everything crumbled around her the more Nikki tried to cling to it. Her job was never anything more than work, work that she no longer believed her feeble and sluggish mind to be capable of. Her academic career, laughable as it was, consisted of a degree in the literature of a language she now barely spoke. Her parents had always made their disappointment clear, her friends had never really understood her transition despite their efforts to be supportive, and the only time she'd been truly happy was with....

Marie. She tried to tell herself that it wasn't real, that the other woman was gaslighting her into blissed-out, brainwashed compliance while distracting Nikki's befuddled mind with pleasure, but... but it felt real. It felt more real than any reality she was familiar with, even if she could hear Marie's cooing voice in her ears reinforcing her dazed and submissive thoughts. "Isn't it so much easier to be my pretty pet?" Marie asked, and Nikki felt drool spilling from her lips onto her tingling tits as she struggled and failed to find 'no' in any of the languages she knew.

Her body went limp in Marie's embrace, the last of her resistance dissolving into hot bliss as she gave in and succumbed to the throb in her clit. An orgasm flared up between her legs, cementing her mind into submission, and she let out a helpless sigh and sank into the trance she didn't know she was experiencing. Nikki Sheppard closed her eyes... and slowly, sleepily, Elise Bergier opened them.

*    *    *    *    *

Elise shivers in Maitresse's embrace, willing herself to forget the strange and terrifying encounter she just experienced. It's not difficult--the pleasure in her pussy ramps up, constantly building, continually coaxing her to empty out anything that gets between her and her lover until she looks up at Maitresse with a blank, blissful smile and says, "I'm so glad you're home. It's been so dull without you here."

Maitresse gives her a gentle kiss on top of the forehead, looking relieved for reasons that Elise can no longer comprehend. "Of course it has, my dear. You belong with me. Just as I belong with you." Elise nods. The words seem self-evident to her now that the strangers and their disturbing, threatening picture have been removed from her thoughts as well as her presence. And if anything remains of Nikki, it's happy to sleep in the back of her mind and allow her to stay cozy and comforted in Marie's control.

THE END