"Come on, Tia, for me?"

She laughs. "That's usually my line."

I grinned. "Maybe I've been learning from you, love."

"Could do a lot worse."

"Speaking of learning from you..." My fingers went to the ouroboros pendant around my neck. "I'll make it worth your while..."

"Oooh. You know how to convince a girl." Tia giggled. "Or at least how to convince me."

I slipped my t-shirt over my head. "I've become very, very good at convincing you..."

She stepped around behind me and wrapped me up in her arms, running her fingers over my bare belly. "You know that pendant isn't the only thing you can use to convince me."

"Mmm, I know," I said, reaching for the tie on my skirt.

"And it's not the only way I have to convince you," she whispered in my ear. "Isn't that right?"

I shivered. "That's true..."

Her fingers danced. My body wouldn't listen to my directions.

"And if I want to stay in tonight?"

I swallowed. It took effort to reply. "Then I'm gonna take off my clothes and convince you to go out."

"Oh, you're gonna take off your clothes, alright." Tia chuckled that beautiful dark chuckle in my ear.

My fingers worked the tie of my skirt. "But?"

"But I'm gonna convince you to stay here."

My skirt pooled around my feet, and I was just two steps away from having her in my power. But I couldn't make my hands listen to me. Her hands, meanwhile, were doing splendidly, becoming more vertically aligned, with a couple fingers of her right hand heading under the waistband of my panties, while her left thumb teased at the bottom of my bra.

"How're you—" I muttered.

"—gonna do that?" she finished for me, her voice low and even and seductive. "While you have the ouroboros, even?" She nibbled on my earlobe. "Remember the last time you had the charm and you couldn't make me do what you wanted?"

"That..." I breathed hard, trying to muster the will to talk. "Was like... a month..."

"Yep. Last month. What did you do to me to get me in line?"

I swallowed. "I... hypnotized you..." Her fingers doing such wonderful things, I couldn't seem to concentrate enough to make my arms do what I wanted.

She purred in my ear. "That's right, sweetie, and before we found that lovely snake, what did you do when you wanted a little bit of control over me?"

The words were easier the second time. "I hypnotized you."

Her fingers were playing in my curls. My knees felt weak, but not like they would buckle; instead, they felt too weak to bend. Tia was still talking. "Very good, Pel. Brilliant, really. You always were a smart one."

I flushed with pride. And other things.

"And how about when we met, how did you convince me that you could do all the things you said online?"

I sighed, remembering. "I hypnotized you." That had been a very good night. The first of many.

Her fingers were under my bra, now, and doing amazing things. "Mhmm, and after we were done with that, what did I do to you?"

That, too, was a great memory. "You hypnotized me," I breathed.

She was whispering in my ear. "And the next morning?"

I was shaking. Trembling, really. Her fingers were fluttering over my lower lips beautifully. "You hypnotized me."

"And when I don't have the ouroboros, and I want your attention, what did I do?

"You hypnotized me."

My panties slipped to the ground. "And what happened just a moment ago?"

What had... "You hypnotized me," I said. Wait... she did what?

Her fingers curled inside me. I saw spots. "That's right, what I'm doing now, since I don't have the ouroboros. That means I had to do what?"

It was so obvious now. Like looking at a picture of a vase and seeing two faces, and then never being able not to see them. "You hypnotized me." Obvious as it was, my voice was shaking with heat and arousal, and I don't think it came out above a whisper.

"That's right, sweetie, I did, and you're really enjoying it."

My attempt to say "Uh huh" came out just as one big, long, Huuuuuuuuuuh. Now my body was starting to fold. Tia helped me down to the ground, and somehow out of my bra, too. She was kneeling behind me, not looking at the ouroboros. I think one hand was even covering it from view, but maybe she was just fondling my tits. Just by the way we were sitting, she couldn't keep her hand on my pussy, but she guided one of mine to take its place, and that's where we sat. She was kneeling behind me and whispering in my ear, her hands on my bust, holding me up and not looking at my chest; me sitting there, limp and loose as a rag doll, except for my hand (I think my right, but I couldn't be sure) pushing my arousal further and further.

I lost track of things. Everything. Words. Thoughts. Ideas. Feelings. Everything melted together. I came at least once. At some point I wound up lying on the ground, breathing deep, trying to refocus, trying to figure out what were my own thoughts and what were Tia's words, and I think I lost track of that a couple times, too.

When I finally mustered the energy to speak, all I could say was her name. "Tia?"

"Yes?"

Her voice was flat, cold, empty. She was sitting on her ankles, head bowed, hands on her knees, her gaze fixed on my chest.

On the ouroboros.

Fun ideas started to form in my brain, ideas for what to do with a mindless, obedient puppet. "On your feet, then help me up." I was about to drag my partner to bed, and we weren't going to move from there until morning.