“Y’ don’t have to be sneaky, we’re awake,” Alyssa called out, her voice muffled by a mound of both her and Jelly Doll’s hair.

“OK,” Hailee giggled, dropping down from tiptoes as it approached its bed, in which its guests lay snuggled up together, AJ spooning Jelly, one of their legs straddling its waist. “We were wondering where you guys vanished to! You feelin’ tired?”

“Mm, lil sleepy,” Danielle mumbled, giving her girlfriend a squeeze around the waist. “We just grabbed dolly for some, some cosy cuddles.”

“Adorable! I’m guessing it didn’t protest too much...”

“You guessed right,” Jelly replied.

Hailee jumped a little. “Oh, you’re not frozen! I kinda thought you would be - don’t they normally make you their body pillow?”

Jelly grinned. “Yeah, but they wanted it to be able to snuggle them back a little bit.”

“Fair.” The fucktoy gazed wistfully at the cuddling couple. “Don’t suppose you got room for one more in there?”

“Oh hell yeah,” AJ blurted, half-raising their head to grin at it, strands of hair spider-webbing across their face. “I was just thinking I wanted someone spooning me too.”

“Happy to be of service,” Hailee smirked, sliding under the covers close behind its guest and wrapping its arms around her. It groaned with satisfaction as it sank into the mattress, rubbing its face in its new lover’s auburn mane. “Mmm... your hair is so soft!”

“I know, right?”

“God, this is just what I needed,” it sighed, the softness surrounding it soothing its aches and pains. “I fuckin’ love getting the seven bells knocked outta me, but I do need the softness after, sometimes. Hurt/comfort, y’know?”

“Aftercare, yeah,” Alyssa agreed, shifting slightly in its embrace. “Very important, ’n’ necessary.”

“What d’you guys do for aftercare?”

“Uh... mostly just spend lots of time with Richard without him bossing us around! Just relaxing, watching TV, showering together, getting cuddled and told we did a good job. Eating - we eat a lot for aftercare. Slavin’ for the Fuck Hawk takes a lotta energy.”

“After Jelly Doll’s been frozen a lot, or for a long time, it just goes all noodly,” Jelly chimed in. “Basically it just lies around and does nothing for a while. Not much different, it just goes from ‘action figure’ to ‘ragdoll’! And yeah, it gets cuddles and praise. That’s Richard’s aftercare too, it thinks.”

“Mm, compliments and physical affection are kinda his love language. Giving and receiving. We always tell him he’s been a good Master, too.”

“Important,” Hailee nodded.

“What d’you do?”

“Well, baths, massages, backrubs - focused on easing the pain, y’know...?”

“Found ’em!” came a shout from the near distance. Blinking in surprise, Hailee lifted its head from the hair-covered pillow and saw Sabrina in the doorway, smiling broadly. “Aww, look at you guys,” she cooed, strolling across the room. “You look so cute together like that!”

“Feel free to join,” Alyssa said. “More the merrier!”

“Oooh, yes,” Sabby gasped, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Cuddle pile! I love that. Selena, c’mon, you get in too.”

“Affirmative,” Selena snickered, sauntering into the room behind her.

Typically, the robot girl was still wearing her nanosuit, while Sabby was back in her pink lingerie nightie that looked barely bigger than a napkin, although she was now wearing panties beneath it. By contrast Hailee was just wearing a big white T-shirt, loose and comfy, which had belonged to Milo until it’d appropriated it as part of its casual wear. It often wore it as a pyjama top these days. AJ only had boxer shorts on, while Jelly Doll was naked. Hailee’s arm was laid across both girls’ sides, reaching far enough around Jelly’s torso to idly fiddle with its left nipple.

“You get in behind Hailee,” Sabrina told the android, scurrying over to the opposite side of the bed. “I’ve gotta try the famous body pillow!”

Hailee pouted at her. “I thought I was your body pillow!”

“No, you’re my plushie,” the blonde replied with a wink. “And I’ve slept with you before, I’ve never cuddled up with Jelly.”

“Fair.” Hailee couldn’t bring itself to complain too much, as it suddenly felt the silken surface of Selena’s nanosuit against its battered flesh, the fembot’s limbs encircling it.

As their latest bedfellows settled in place, Alyssa let out a loud, happy sigh, “Ahhhh...”

“You enjoyin’ being the filling in this sandwich, hun?” Sabrina sniggered.

“Fuck, yeah.”

The bed rumbled with giggles from its five occupants as they squished together, Selena spooning Hailee spooning AJ spooning Jelly, while Sabby faced towards Jelly at the end. “This is more of a cuddle train than a cuddle pile,” Hailee remarked.

“Semantics,” AJ tutted.

“You smell incredible, by the way. Kinda nutty.”

“We are kinda nutty,” the plural submissive snickered. “And thank you! It’s my perfume, it’s chestnut-scented. We love yours, by the way - what is that, coconut?”

“Yeah, that’s my body wash.”

“D’you guys always talk this much when you’re napping?” Sabrina teased.

“Hey, it was meant to be more of a lie-down than an actual nap,” AJ replied. “Why - you all tuckered out, kitten?”

Sabby blushed and buried her face in Jelly’s neck, mumbling an incoherent response. She abruptly let out a squeak, and then started purring. Raising its head again to see what had provoked those reactions, Hailee grinned at the sight of the living doll stroking her behind the ear and along the back of her neck.

“This unit was wondering whether it should enter its charging cycle,” Selena said casually. “It will remain in position regardless.”

“Yeah, probably not,” AJ mused, “we might not be here for too long...” The last few words were distorted by a yawn that she couldn’t contain. “Although we are sleepy,” she noted. “And being in the middle of you guys is very cosy...”

“If you wanna nap, nap,” Hailee encouraged her. “We don’t have to rush anything or go anywhere.”

“Mm,” her new lover hummed noncommittally, not moving.

Hailee rested its nose in the curtain of reddish-brown hair before it, closing its eyes. It had to admit, this cuddle pile - or cuddle train, or cuddle conga, or whatever - was really comfortable, and Alyssa’s soft hair was seductively soporific. It hadn’t felt particularly tired before getting in bed with AJ and Jelly, but now, surrounded by beautiful women who emanated warmth and safety, it couldn’t help feeling drowsy. But not irresistibly so - it wasn’t like it was going to drop off to sleep any seco-

***

“Well, don’t you all look snug?”

Heaving its eyes open, Hailee blearily stared across the room, to see Richard leaning against the doorway with a fond smile on his face. It felt its bedfellows shift position, gradually regaining consciousness with yawns and groans, sighs and stretches. Without discussing it, each of them rolled onto their backs and slid their arms under each other, staying snuggled close under the duvet, heads and chins resting against shoulders and upper arms.

“That was awesome,” AJ beamed, giving Hailee and Jelly Doll a squeeze. “I need to always sleep with four hot chicks around me from now on!”

“Guess we’d better get more girlfriends back in LA, then,” Richard chuckled. “Unless you’re planning to take these three back with us...”

“Oh, that was exactly what I was thinking,” she said matter-of-factly. “I mean, that’d be doable, right? Hailee and Selena are basically luggage, they can go in the cargo hold. Sabby’d have to be checked in as a pet, we’d probably have to put her in a cat carrier...”

“Nooo,” Sabby whine-giggled, playfully slapping AJ on the hand currently resting on Jelly’s ribcage. Hailee and Selena just laughed, offering no objections. The fucktoy had to admit, the mental picture its lover had painted was quite appealing...

“You all look very comfortable cuddled up like that,” Richard noted, sauntering into the room and sitting down on Hailee’s toybox. As the girls gave murmurs of agreement and pressed even further into each other’s bodies (if that was even possible), he tapped a finger against his chin thoughtfully. “In fact, while you’re all here - while you’re there, all squashed together - I have an idea for something I’d like to try, if you’re up for it. A kind of induction/scene thing - it’s a little weird, but I think you guys might enjoy it...”

More murmurs of assent. “I’m game,” Hailee said nonchalantly.

Alyssa grinned ruefully at her Master. “What fresh hell have you concocted for us now?”

“I could tell you, but I kinda like the idea of surprising you with this one,” he replied. “So, get yourselves as comfy as you can, but stay close together. If you’re fine as you are now, then great, stay like that.” There was a little movement, but everyone was, indeed, pretty much fine in their current positions. There was still a layer of Alyssa’s hair beneath Hailee’s head, and it allowed itself to sink into the silky softness of it, and their embrace, their left arm around its back and its waist, their hand on its left hip. Selena rested her chin on its left shoulder, sending shivers through it wherever her velvety polyester jumpsuit met its skin.

“OK. And now find a point on the ceiling, and just gaze at it as you continue to listen to me.” Hailee obliged, its eyelids already starting to feel heavy as it stared upwards, as if in anticipation for the impending trance. “Very good. So relaxed and comfortable, nestled together like that. Warm and snug, surrounded by your gorgeous friends and lovers... It’s so nice and peaceful, to lie there embracing each other like that, isn’t it?”

Hailee smiled faintly, enjoying the soothing induction. Although it usually liked to be slapped down into trance, it wasn’t averse to some relaxing hypnosis once in a while. And Richard certainly had a compelling voice - it was little wonder Alyssa and Jelly Doll were so deep under his control. It made a tiny elated sigh as he continued to speak, its well-trained brain easily accepting - even embracing - the suggestions he was feeding it.

“Such good girls. Such good subjects. So easy to hypnotise. After all, you do it all the time, so slipping back down for me as you stare at the ceiling is perfectly natural. And you notice your eyelids drooping, and it’s so hard to hold them open now, so hard to keep looking up, so hard to stop yourself from dropping into a deep trance for me...”

It heard him chuckle as its eyes began to roll back. “But of course, you don’t really want to stop that, do you? No, if there’s one thing I know about all of you, it’s that you share a mutual love of hypnosis and submission. You want to give in. You want to let go. You want to sink into the Spiral Seas and sleep.” Sure enough, as soon as it heard the magic word, Hailee relinquished its grip on reality without hesitation, its eyelids snapping shut as it plummeted down, leaving its mind behind, its last conscious thought being the certainty that its bedfellows had dropped just as deep in the same moment.

“Good girls. Good toys. Good pets. Drifting deep for me, blank and blissful. Far away from your bodies, far away from your thoughts, just a tiny spark of sentience floating in that familiar void. And in this empty space, in the depths of the Spiral Seas, you’re surrounded by impenetrable darkness. You know that - that’s obvious, that’s right and true, nothing new to you.”

It thought nothing. It felt nothing. It almost was nothing. Whatever was left of it was cast adrift, lost in a pitch-black expanse, and it felt wonderful.

“But you might not have considered, with your attention so captured by the darkness around you, how you look, floating along there as a disembodied consciousness. And I’ll tell you - you look like light. Tiny, flickering, feeble in the face of the endless night - but bright enough to be seen. And each of you look a little different - different colours of light, different arrangements... You might look like a simple, sparkling ball of light. Maybe a fizzing firework. A wisp of magic. A cluster of data. A binary star system.”

All of a sudden, now Richard was prompting it to picture itself, Hailee could look inwards and see its own being - a flickering, pulsating purple orb, suspended in space. As it perceived itself, it grew brighter, tiny violet crackles of electricity dancing across its surface.

“And here’s the thing - you’re not alone down there. You have each other. Just as you shared a bed, you share a void. And you can reach out with your minds, and find each other in the darkness.”

The bright ball of Hailee spun, searching for its friends in the black vacuum. For a few long moments that could have been a second or a year, it found nothing. Then suddenly, as if they’d always been there, it could see other lights in the distance. Tiny twin suns orbiting each other. An undulating greeny-yellow glow that looked almost cat-shaped. A mass of neon blue pixels shifting and tessellating together. A faint sprinkle of white stardust, glittering and gyrating lazily.

“And as you find one another, as you reach out and touch, you find yourselves blending together. You find your light spreading through them, and theirs through you, and through each other...”

Hailee sent out some electricity towards the cyan Rubik’s cube, and got some back. It vibrated with shock and ecstasy as the neon sparks crackled into it. At the same time, solar flares and sparkling stardust were spreading across the void towards it. Before too long, all of them were linked together, flowing into each other, multicoloured threads woven between them, magic and starlight and electricity all mixing and firing through each other.

More and more blazing tendrils spread out, drawing them closer and closer together, their different light intermingling more and more, until it was hard to distinguish any gaps between them. They were blending, bonding, melding into one vast, colourful cloud of combined consciousness.

“And now you can begin to rise from trance together - but when you awaken, you’ll find that your bodies have joined together too. Merging your minds has merged your flesh as well, so now you have one mind and one body.”

As the unified mind rose towards the surface of the Spiral Seas, it began to feel exactly what that distant, all-knowing voice had described. It could feel its physical form - it felt big, thick, unwieldy, a clump of flesh all squashed together on a soft surface. It started to twitch and move, experimentally tugging in different directions to see if it could pull its conjoined bodies apart, only to find it impossible - their flesh was fused, skin melded without a dividing line, as if they had always been one organism. It couldn’t quite grasp what was so strange about that, or about itself, because it was having trouble remembering much before the deep darkness.

Its eyes drifted open, and it noticed, to its faint surprise, that it had quite a lot of them, all looking at different parts of the ceiling above it. It rolled its five heads on their respective necks, flexing its jaws. It tried to speak, but struggled to remember how to articulate sounds, making involuntary croaks and groans out of each set of vocal chords. “Uggh,” it gurgled with one of its mouths. “Hnneh,” another whimpered.

At least one of its faces frowned. It was finding it very difficult to control its body. Parts of it seemed to be moving against its volition, although not very effectively. Its many legs wriggled and writhed and wound together like the tentacles of a jellyfish. They weren’t functional at all right now, too uncoordinated, too haphazard. Just useless fronds, nowhere near ready for the challenge of supporting its behemoth body.

It tried to sit up, but couldn’t lift itself from the bed, its own weight pulling it back down. It was left lying on the mattress, its limbs flailing, powerless as a newborn - which, in a sense, it was. It was quite frustrating.

At the same time, it was noticing how sensitive it was. Anything it felt, any touch or nudge or stroke, was magnified fivefold. It could rub a nose on a shoulder, and felt its other noses tingle pleasurably. As it turned its outer heads inwards, one of the short, stubby arms protruding from the middle of its mass of flesh fumbled for one of its bare breasts (of which four of the ten were, thankfully), and began to roll the nipple between its fingertips. The gasps and moans it made in response were almost deafening, the sensations immeasurably stronger than it had ever felt in that blank, forgotten before-time.

A figure loomed over it - a man, standing over the bed and watching as it toyed with its tit. He smiled fondly as it stared up at him, with ten wide eyes and five mouths opening and closing wordlessly, like a shoal of dumbstruck guppies. He looked familiar - it was sure he was very important to it, but it was having trouble remembering how, or putting a name to his face. ‘Master’ popped into its heads, which seemed to fit him, although there was something not quite right about it - as if some of its mind felt the title was appropriate, but other parts didn’t entirely agree. Whatever - it would do for now.

“Look at you,” he said, awestruck. “Such a good thing. Such a wonderful thing. Such a sexy heap of flesh.” It quivered at his praise. “We should probably give you a name, shouldn’t we, thing? Let’s think for a moment... How about ‘Connie’? Since we’ve all come together for a hypno con.”

An euphoric giggle emitted from the mouth furthest to its right, and rippled through the rest of it, each of its bodies in turn shuddering with mirth. ‘Connie’, from ‘con’! It liked that. ‘Connie’ it would be, then.

It’d had other names before, it knew that. Somewhere at the back of its merged minds it still had its memories, it sensed, but they felt distant, out of reach, irrelevant to who and what it was now. It wasn’t any of the things it was before. It was a new thing, a thing of meat and metal, of flesh and fabric, of veins and wires, of plastic and... pussies.

It had five pussies. It was painfully aware of them, now. And of how needy they were. It wanted to touch itself - and if everything it felt was exponentially multiplied...

A few of its arms had melded with the mass of flesh, palms glued to backs and bellies and butt cheeks, but most seemed free and able to move, although some needed to ease beneath it and hook under thighs. It couldn’t reach all of its cunts - a couple of them were hidden beneath clothing - but that didn’t matter, because they each felt every caress on the others anyway. The feedback spread through every part of it, rocketing it to heights of pleasure it was sure its separated selves had never previously reached.

A cacophonous chorus of mounting arousal boomed through the room as it quickly neared the edge. It turned two of its heads towards each other and managed to make them kiss, despite the awkward angles. Feeling the lips meet and the tongues tangle, the other three mouths began to messily make out with mid-air, muffling its moans momentarily. Soon it felt itself cresting, so much stronger than ever before, clinging onto itselves for dear life as its deft fingers brought it to an earth-shattering quintuple orgasm. The climax seemed to keep going for hours, ricocheting and amplifying across its combined body.

Finally, it relaxed, completely spent, its many limbs limp and loose, its heads sinking into their various pillows. The man who’d named it, the man it thought of as Master, stood at the foot of the bed with three other men, all of them gazing at it in admiration.

“That looked like a lovely quingasm,” Master smiled. “And I’m going to put you back in trance now, my beautiful thing, and separate you out again. But you never know, we might put you back together in the future, if all of you want to...”

As it began to sink back into trance, Connie grinned with all five of its mouths. It felt sure its six selves would be more than willing to merge into it again.