She wasn’t running away. That’s what Dottie kept telling herself, anyway, as she wandered aimlessly through the streets of Split.

The name of her destination seemed apt, given the recent messy end of her relationship. Ever since she’d pried herself away from him, and his toxic, possessive ways, she’d been trying to be OK on her own again, to function without him constantly deciding things for her, manipulating, isolating and gaslighting her. She’d been certain that she would feel better - that the misery she felt in the aftermath of their breakup was only temporary, and that soon she’d be back to her old effervescent self. She’d pursued old hobbies, got back in touch with old friends, started a new job, all with the goal of rebuilding her independent life.

But no matter what she’d tried, she couldn’t be happy. She was certainly better off than she had been, but half a year had passed and she still felt lost, lonely and bereft. So she thought she’d try a change of scenery, for a little while.

Dottie breathed deeply, letting the warm Croatian air permeate her body as she admired her surroundings. She’d visited Split before, several years ago. It had been long enough that she couldn’t recall many details - who she went with, what they’d done, where they’d gone - but she still remembered it as the best holiday she’d ever had. Familiar enough to feel comforting, and beautiful enough to occupy her mind, to distract her from thoughts of her ex... mostly.

She wasn’t running away. She wasn’t. She just needed a break - some time and space to recuperate, somewhere fun and peaceful and beautiful. Somewhere she wouldn’t see, or be reminded of, him.

So it was quite a shock when she rounded a corner and saw him standing ten feet away.

He was leaning against a stone wall, hands in his pockets, utterly relaxed and complacent. He didn’t look the slightest bit startled to see Dottie, but he did straighten up with a broad, wolfish smile, stepping towards her. She stopped in her tracks, frozen in shock.

“There’s my Dottie doll,” he said fondly as he approached her. “I was starting to wonder if you would show up.” Then he snorted a little. “No, I wasn’t, actually. I was just wondering how long it’d take...”

Her eyes widened. “H-how -?”

“How did I know you’d be here?” he chuckled.

He was so near to her now. She should turn and walk away, never looking back. Yet her feet refused to move, as if she were buried up to her ankles in the ground below, and her body, paralysed with dread, wouldn’t so much as lean backwards as he closed the gap between them.

“You’re so funny, dolly,” he teased as he came to a stop a couple of feet away, and she felt herself flush, so easily embarrassed by his condescension as always. “I’m the one who arranged for us to meet here, the last time we spoke.”

She tried to blurt a denial, but her voice wouldn’t co-operate. No, she wanted to shout. You can’t fool me the way you used to - you didn’t make this happen! I chose to come here on my own! I came here to get away from you, to stop thinking about you...! (Not that she had been running away, of course.)

Her disbelief and outrage must have shown on her face, because he continued, “Oh, of course you don’t remember - you wouldn’t. Well, it was six months ago, the day we broke up. You were so insistent that you didn’t want to be mine any more, but I could tell you were worried you were making a mistake. So I gave you a chance to fix things, to come back to me - if that’s what you truly wanted.

“So I interrupted your little tantrum, gave you a cuddle, played with your hair for a bit... and I talked to you in my most soothing voice, until you went sleepies. And then I told you to meet me here - on the street corner where we first met, six months on from the day of our breakup - if you changed your mind. If, deep down, you wanted to be mine again. And when I woke you up, you remembered to forget, like a good little puppet.”

She blinked in complete bewilderment. What the hell was he talking about? Nothing he was saying made any sense. They didn’t meet in Split, they met in... they met... well, she couldn’t remember exactly, but that was just because being around him always made her so confused. It was like his voice, and his eyes, filled her head with static. That was half the problem with him. And what was this about him putting her to sleep during her breakup speech, and arranging to meet up and get back together? That didn’t happen! She was certain of that...

Or she had been. Because when he told her things that so contradicted what she thought and believed, with such incontestable confidence, it left her feeling a lot less sure of herself. As if his words were shaking the ground beneath her feet, pulling it out from under her.

She stared at him in horror, transfixed by his calmly smug expression and his piercing blue eyes. Could it be that he was telling the truth - that he’d planted some idea in her sleeping mind, luring her all the way to Croatia, just so she could stumble back into his arms...? “N-no,” she mumbled, “nooo...”

“Yes, puppet,” he said gently, almost kindly. “You wanted to be free. You wanted to get your independence back. You were fighting me for it, every day. So rather than keep having to break you down over and over again, I let you go instead. I gave you a chance to experience life without me - to see what it’s like, without me making all the decisions for you and making everything so much easier for your poor little dolly brain. But I did whisper to you where, when and how you could find me again, when you wanted.

“And here you are. You’ve come running back, just as I knew you would, to the only person - the only thing - that makes you truly happy. Your deep self already understood that, puppet... and now the rest of you does, too.”

Her gaze dropped below his face, her face a blank mask of anguish as she stared at his upper chest and tried to process these revelations. He took the opportunity to casually reach forwards and take hold of her boobs, and she squeaked with surprise as he started to squeeze them through her shirt.

“The last few months haven’t been easy for me either, if it’s any consolation,” he told her as she gaped at him. He wasn’t even making eye contact, staring off thoughtfully past her as he reflected on the half-year since their last meeting, while he nonchalantly continued to rub her tits. “I’ve missed you very much. But I could comfort myself with the knowledge, the near-certainty, that we’d meet again. You didn’t have that to look forward to - not consciously, at least.”

She was desperate to tell him to let go, to stop groping her in public. But her voice failed her, and her arms hung limply at her sides, as always. She had found, through long experience, that she was powerless to resist him whenever he touched her breasts.

He met her eye at last, grimacing sympathetically at her. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like, Dottie doll. But now neither one of us have to be without the other again. You made the right choice, and now you can be happy in the knowledge that I’ll never let you go again.”

Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes prickled with tears. Her face burned with humiliation, and shame. Her ex was playing with her boobies in the middle of the street, and she was too weak-willed to fight back in any way. She was such a dumb Dottie dolly.

“Look at you,” he said fondly. “Your face is a picture! Poor puppet. Relax.”

And she did. She couldn’t help it. All the tension in her body evaporated, the cloud of sorrow saturating her soul dissipated, and she slumped forwards with a soft sigh, melting into his grasp. Suddenly, she wasn’t quite as upset as she had been a moment ago. She wasn’t happy, or contented, but she wasn’t perturbed either. She was relaxed, because her Master had told her to be.

She knew, abstractly, that she still ought to be resisting, but she couldn’t find it in herself. Apart from anything else, she was slowly starting to remember just how good this felt. How good it felt to submit, to give in, to be his puppet and let him play with her however he wished. Another firm squeeze of her chest brought a placid, pleasure-drunk smile to her face.

“There she is,” he beamed. “There’s my Dottie doll! You couldn’t wait to give in, could you? Couldn’t wait to just let go, and be my happy, pretty, pleasure puppet again. You just needed permission, didn’t you? You needed me to tell you it was OK to give up, and belong to me again. Isn’t that right?”

He seemed to be waiting for a response, but she couldn’t put one together. She couldn’t figure out how to form words right now. It vaguely occurred to her that being rendered speechless as her Master fondled her was a very familiar feeling.

As she kept gazing at him dumbly, he lifted one hand from her chest, extended his index finger, and pressed its tip into the top of her forehead, right at the centre of her hairline. Her eyes crossed as she tried to follow the fingertip up her face, rolling up to stare through her own skull at it, which also felt very familiar. He pushed her head down, and then up again, making her nod repeatedly while he said in a high-pitched, squeaky, stereotypically ‘girly’ voice, “‘Yes Sir, you’re so right, I just wanna be your hypno doll again!’”

“Yes, Sir, you’re so right,” Dottie found herself repeating, in a dreamy voice slightly higher than her usual tone. “I just wanna be your hypno doll again.” She had no real idea what a ‘hypno doll’ was, but it sounded really nice.

“Good dolly.” He removed his finger, but she kept nodding for a few seconds longer like a bobblehead. “Now come on, let’s get you back to my hotel room.” And he turned and sauntered away, and even if he hadn’t still been holding onto one of her tits, which he was, Dottie doll would still have meekly followed him, which she did.

She hadn’t been running away from him, she knew that now. She’d been running back to him, as fast as her legs would carry her. And now she could stay with him, and be his pretty pleasure puppet, forever.