"I--I'm not sleepy," Zelda snapped preemptively, putting on a burst of speed to try to dart past Rhonda and into her dorm room. "It's three in the afternoon, okay? I'm not sleepy." She'd be fine once she got inside, she had a pair of noise-canceling headphones by her bed that she kept reminding herself to bring to class and kept forgetting for reasons that slipped out of her head every time she tried to think about them, but it all depended on getting past Rhonda before the butch brunette managed to--

"Oh, I think you're always sleepy," Rhonda growled, stepping easily into Zelda's path and forcing the petite Black woman to come to a screeching halt. That was the most unfair part about all this; wasn't the cliche supposed to be that the one with all the sneaky mentalist tricks who could get inside your head was also scrawny and weak and reliant on their big brain? Instead, Rhonda had a good eighteen inches in height on Zelda and probably stood twice as broad across the shoulders. If she wanted to she could probably just tuck Zelda under her arm and walk back to her bedroom with her, never mind about the--

Zelda blushed, grateful her skin was too dark to show it. She felt a sudden pulse of warm, wet lust between her thighs, and for a moment she didn't know exactly where to look. Rhonda's chest was right there in front of her face, and even though the taller woman didn't exactly have much in the way of breasts she also didn't bother with a bra, and Zelda could see the tight buds of her nipples through the thin cotton shirt. "I, um, I, I, I'm not," she protested, uncertain of what else to say under the circumstances. "I don't, I, I wouldn't, um--"

Rhonda chuckled, putting out an arm against the wall to make it clear that Zelda had gotten about as far as she was going to. "You don't and you wouldn't, but you did and you will. It's not a magic spell, sweetie, I'm not doing anything to you that you couldn't stop if you really wanted to. If you find yourself feeling tired, babe, if you find those pretty eyes getting tired when you hear me start to sing you off to sleep, it's because deep down you're ready to go ahead and slip away into a nice little naptime for Miss Rhonda. And really, don't you enjoy getting all drowsy for me?" She looked down at Zelda, and of course Zelda had to look way way up to meet her commanding gaze.

And of course she was right. Zelda couldn't look into those hazel eyes and pretend anything else, not even to herself. There was a warmth and a comfort in those strong muscles, a sense of safety Zelda felt whenever Rhonda hummed that special tune of hers and Zelda slumped up against her like a sleepy baby who just needed to be held until she drifted off into dreamland. Even now, just thinking about it, Zelda could feel her head drooping forward and her eyes rolling back and her eyelids fluttering with the barely-suppressed desire to simply doze off in the bigger, stronger woman's arms. "I, um, we, um, we," she mumbled, blinking heavily as she tried to figure out where to take that garbled sentence to get her to an outcome that didn't involve being flat on her back in Rhonda's dorm all afternoon.

Rhonda chuckled. "Sounds like someone's a little too sleepy to think straight, mm?" she asked, lightly stroking Zelda's ebony cheek with the back of her hand. "Maybe even a little too tired to be straight. Is that why you keep fighting it, sweetie? Because then you can say it's not your fault you wound up in my bedroom again?" Zelda flinched a little at Rhonda's words, but she couldn't deny that was at least a part of it. She'd fought like hell to go to UT instead of Baylor, and despite her scholarships she was still dependent on her parents for a hefty chunk of her tuition. If they ever got the idea that she was drifting away from the meek and polite little girl they raised, she'd probably be gone by the end of the semester.

But it was more than that. Because the truth was, Zelda really was still the meek and polite little girl her parents raised her to be, and Rhonda was exactly the kind of forceful personality she didn't know how to deal with. It was so hard to draw a firm boundary when you spent your entire life being told to be dutiful and respect authority and avoid confrontation and only stand up to yourself when it was convenient to the people who raised you, and Zelda knew that if she let herself be swept up into Rhonda's orbit it would be terrifyingly easy to lose track of where her desires ended and Rhonda's began.

All of which ignored one big insurmountable problem, though. Because Zelda at least knew where her desires *didn't* end, and it was on this side of the doorway with her clothes on and her knees together. "I, y-you, I--" she squeaked out through a throat that seemed to be closing up so tight she could barely breathe, let alone speak. She stood frozen and trembling, the warmth of Rhonda's skin against hers a reminder of almost a dozen previous encounters that all started just like this. She was frightened of where a relationship with Rhonda might lead, terrified of losing herself... but she was also horny as fuck, and Rhonda knew just how to make her cum until her brain leaked clean out of her pussy.

Rhonda favored her with a smirk, hazel eyes glittering with amused excitement. "Sssh," she murmured, pressing a finger to Zelda's mouth before tracing her lips with it, an implied eroticism that made Zelda's clit throb like a second heartbeat. "You're never going to get anywhere like this, sweetie. Your mind's all scattered. Just take a moment, give me a nice deep breath... that's it, inhale, hold, and exhale... there we go. Calming down now. Feeling focused and centered. Keep your eyes on mind, let go of all that nervous energy. You're relaxed now. You're here in my eyes and all those worries have floated away."

Zelda knew what the other woman was doing to her. She wasn't stupid. But it felt so nice and soothing to be given a path through the fluttering storm of emotions that was buffeting her around just moments ago that she found herself clinging to Rhonda's hazel eyes like a lifeline. Her shoulders sagged, her breathing slowed to a calm and measured pace, and her head bobbed up and down in a tranquil, relaxed nod. She did feel more centered. She did feel more focused. It made her almost pathetically grateful to be guided like this.

Zelda's smirk softened into an indulgent smile. "There we go," she cooed, cupping Zelda's chin in her big strong hand and allowing it to droop into her grip. "That's better. Now. Tell me you're sleepy." Her voice was sweet, calm, even coaxing, but at the same time it admitted no possibility of dissent.

"I'm sleepy," Zelda heard herself say, her voice small and drowsy in her own ears. There was no will behind it, no volition, simply a rote and thoughtless repetition of someone else's thoughts back to them. And yet, somehow, when the words came from her own lips they created a kind of false conviction to them. Zelda fully believed herself in that instant, because why would she have said it if she didn't mean it? Her eyelids began to sink lower, convinced by the power of suggestion that she needed to slip off into slumber.

"Good girl. Tell me you want a lullaby." Zelda knew exactly what Rhonda meant--the first time they were together, when it was just the two of them alone in Zelda's room for a 'study session' that turned into a whole night of steamy lesbian sex, Rhonda put a trigger into Zelda's mind to help her find her way back to exactly this state of dreamy, amiable lethargy. It was a little snatch of a song she could hum, a tune that only Zelda would recognize as anything more than a vague and tuneless melody, and Zelda spent every night craving to hear it again no matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise. She smiled sleepily, knowing what she was about to say and knowing she couldn't stop herself if she tried.

"I want a lullaby," she sighed, the drowsy plea of a small child fighting sleep. But Zelda wasn't fighting anymore, not when it felt so good to sink into Rhonda's grip and feel that strength holding her upright. She'd never realized how good it felt to be weak for someone who cared for her, who used that power to protect her and hold her and enfold her the way Rhonda did, and she was so glad she'd opened up to Rhonda about her fears and her desires over the course of her many trances.

Especially her desires. Zelda's fingers twitched with the desire to rub herself, but her arms hung too limp and lazy at her sides to make it happen. "That's a good girl," Rhonda praised, taking Zelda by the wrist and leading her into Rhonda's dorm room before closing the door behind them. "That's my good, sleepy little girl. Are you ready to go to bed now, Zelda?" The hypnotized woman felt strong hands on her body before she could even speak, tugging at buttons and undoing clasps, undressing Zelda until she stood naked and trembling with lust before her commanding lover.

"I'm ready to go to bed now," Zelda droned out, her head now slumped forward onto her chin and her eyes merely a band of white behind her fluttering eyelids. It all seemed so much simpler when she was deep in trance like this, so much more connected with her own emotions and the feelings she had underneath her tangled social programming. Of course she wanted to fuck Rhonda. She wanted to be owned by her, to take the vulnerability she knew she couldn't escape and devote it to someone who would love her and protect her and keep her safe. That was why Rhonda never listened to Zelda's feeble, ineffectual protests. Because Zelda herself had begged her not to.

She heard the lullaby then, a softly hummed bit of music that made Zelda swoon forward into Rhonda's strong, muscular arms almost before she realized she couldn't hold herself upright anymore, and then she was lying on the bed with her legs parted and Rhonda's tongue lapping away between her thighs. The taller, stronger, more experienced woman always seemed to know exactly where to lick to leave Zelda quivering and mewling with pleasure, and soon she found herself tumbling through fathoms of wine-dark ecstasy that almost ceased to be orgasms and became some new and perpetual state of bliss.

It didn't seem like the pleasure would ever end; even when Rhonda maneuvered her body around so it was Zelda doing the licking, she still felt an echo of every sensation she elicited from the butch woman's slick cunt. Time itself ceased to have any meaning for a while, in fact, with Zelda's blank and docile mind so lost in her erotic trance that the whole experience stretched out into a rapturous eternity she never wanted to leave. But eventually she had to wake, coming out of her drowsy reverie to find herself spooning in Rhonda's arms like she was nothing but her lover's cuddled teddy bear. "Did I, uhh, did I fall asleep?" she asked, her voice muzzy with bemusement as she tried to process sensory details her brain simply refused to acknowledge.

"You kinda did," Rhonda chuckled, reaching over Zelda to snag her dress from the floor. "Here, go ahead and put this on, we've got a Calc midterm to cram for." Zelda did as she was told, not even questioning her own nudity, and only vaguely aware of the warm feeling of satisfaction she received from following Rhonda's instructions. Deep down, she knew she'd have to have another conversation with Rhonda one of these days, one they were both wide awake for and emotionally honest about... but until then, she was happy to pretend she had no choice but to sink into her lover's spell night after night. And judging by the way Rhonda gave her ass a casually possessive squeeze before it disappeared behind the swath of fabric, she wasn't the only one willing to accept the current state of affairs.

THE END