Iris Chen was not happy with her job.

She was a journalist, goddamnit, not just a pretty face to stick in front of a camera and record filler puff pieces three times a week. She could be out investigating corruption or police brutality or even just doing consumer-protection stuff. God knows there was enough of it to go around. But no, instead it's a steady diet of human interest pieces that no human would find interesting. Small animals doing things that an animal wouldn't normally do were a staple. She'd done better and more-hard hitting work at her campus paper than this pap. But that was how the tv news worked: she was pretty enough to be in front of a camera, not pretty enough to be an anchor, and nothing else was relevant to the job. Honestly, she'd do a piece on the terrible news judgement and worse management at channel 5 news, if she had a budget or time or even the slightest iota of editorial independence.

Still, though. This latest was a low point. "Local businesswoman becomes CEO of midsized industrial conglomerate"—there were angles there, absolutely, and none of them were going to interview her with softball questions about how she'd done it and how it feels to be a woman in business and then doing nothing else. At her goddamn palatial home, not even an office. It was ridiculous.

Still, though, Iris was a professional, and when the secretary or executive assistant or maid or whoever led her into a garden sunroom that she could have fit her whole apartment into, she smiled politely and extended a hand. "Iris Chen, channel five, here for the interview."

"Lucy Slater, charmed, I'm sure." Lucy Slater was a gorgeous woman in a beautiful tailored suit, suprisingly young—she couldn't have been more than a few years older than Iris, barely out of university herself. She shook hands: Slater's were long and slim with a firm grip and immaculately manicured nails in deep red. Iris blinked for a moment, trying to determine why she had noticed that. "We can do the interview here, if that's all right with you?"

"Yes, that's fine," she said distractedly. "I mean, Bill, it'll work here?" Bill, her camera and sound guy, was also gawking awkwardly at Slater and blinking as he broke off to take in the lighting.

"Yeah. Um. We'll set up over here I guess and you can be there. That'd work."

"Excellent," said Slater decisively, "get to it," and a tiny flash of irritation shot through Iris. It was her job to order Bill around, not the other woman's. Still, as Bill unfolded his tripod and Christa came over to make her and Slater up for the lighting, she took a mental breath and tried to steady herself. She'd interviewed smug asshole rentiers before, and hadn't been this on tilt; she'd interviewed the obnoxiously, frustratingly beautiful. Maybe it was just that Slater was both? She was sitting there patiently as Christa tried to find something to do for her, her complexion flawless even in the hard solarium light; her lips full and red, lashes thick and dark, hair in a neat tight coil with not even a strand out of place.

Christa stepped back and nodded, as if she'd had something to do with Slater's flawless beauty, and Slater smiled indulgently. Christa practically simpered as she backed out of Bill's shot. Iris felt another odd flash of irritation. Christa was also with her, not this woman's plaything, even if she was just the assistant free this morning and less of a regular team than her and Bill. She blinked again.

"All right," said Slater—

"All right," said Iris, firmly, "we're ready to begin, Ms Slater, if you please." Slater gave her an amused, a-hair-this-side-of-condescending smile.

"Of course."

The indicator light went on on Bill's camera. Iris smiled blandly into it for a few seconds for editing safety, then began. "The Arboria Group is one of the largest manufacturers in the state, employing over six hundred people at its Springfield plant alone. It also made $15bn in gross revenue last year; the first year of operation under its new sole owner and CEO, Lucy Slater." A pause for Bill to swing the camera to her—it'd be edited out later, easier than if they'd been doing this live—then continuing from off-camera. "Ms Slater. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be the CEO at such a young age?" Iris had initally assumed the answer was "a long career of predatory high-frequency trading, followed by buyout," but after meeting Slater in person she was leaning more towards "quadrillionaire parents bought it for her as a birthday present".

"Of course, Ms Chen," said Slater, smiling dazzlingly at the camera. "It's quite an interesting story, if I do say so myself, and I'm sure your viewers will enjoy it too.

"Two years ago, I was a broke, unemployed fine arts graduate. I was subsisting off Twitter porn commissions and occasional manual labour for my roommate's boyfriend's moving company. I was out for a walk—buying a big stack of ramen for eating for the next week—and I came across this little antiques shop, or art gallery, or both I suppose, and I'd never seen it before. Not to give away the ending, but when I went looking for it a few weeks later, the building was boarded up and clearly abandoned for years."

Iris nodded and smiled to encourage her to keep going, and thought 'what the fuck!?'

"I went in, because I like galleries and, as I said, I'd never seen it before. Lovely little place, tiny and crowded and just full of the weirdest stuff. All of it out of my budget, of course. But then I found this." She tugged a necklace out from under her suit jacket. The pendant was a strange swirl of gold and silver with thick blocky chunks of lapis lazuli embedded in it. She stroked it gently with one fingertip, red-on-blue-on-gold. "I loved it immediately. The store owner—this little old lady, of course—told me I could have it for $115. There was no way that was a reasonable price, even if it wasn't real precious metals and stones, which it is. But I had $118 left in my bank account after buying all the ramen, and I bought it on the spot. She wished me good fortune with it. It certainly has brought me that, and other things."

Her finger was still stroking the necklace. It gleamed in the light. "I came home, wearing the necklace. Yolanda, my roommate, was already home. The first thing she said was 'God, you look hot, Lucy'. Which was strange because she had a boyfriend and, as far as I knew, was straight. But in the moment it just seemed right. I felt hot. I felt powerful and in control. She wanted me and I wanted her, and David wasn't relevant to anything. I shoved her down on the floor of our apartment and straddled her. She was moaning something incoherent, 'yes, yes, please, yes', and I ripped her shirt off. Just tore it right in half. I wanted to ride her face but that didnt seem right and I took a moment to figure out what it was. I needed to have my pants off for that and I shouldn't have to take my own pants off. Yolanda should to it for me, the subby slutty little bitch. So I told her that: 'take my pants off, you subby slutty little bitch.'"

No, seriously, what the fuck is going on with this interview, thought Iris. She glanced over at Bill and Christa, both of them staring unabashedly at this gorgeous woman enthusiastically recounting a pornographic story. Christa was rubbing the front of her pants, and Bill, who still had both hands on his camera, had a tiny damp spot forming at the peak of his very tented pants. It was humiliating watching her coworkers embarass themselves like this; and more than that, it was infuriating. They shouldn't be working themselves up over this woman, they should be... Iris tore her gaze away before quite finishing the thought and looked at Slater again. Slater locked eyes with her—she felt unaccountably hot—and flicked her gaze for a moment over to the crew, back to Iris, and smiled just the tiniest little smirk for a moment, before continuing. Somehow that made Iris feel even hotter.

"She did it instantly, practically gasping with pleasure at the chance to obey me. I know because she said so: 'thank you for commanding me oh God it feels so good to obey I want to obey you.' It felt good to me to hear her beg to be commanded like that. It was right, it was her place to obey, and my place to command. When she got my panties off I wanted to just jam myself onto her mouth and grind her skull into the floor, but I knew how much better it would be to order her. 'Service me, fucktoy,' I told her, and she started eating me like her life depended on it.

"I came so many times that afternoon. I had no limits, even though my whole body was on fire, and Yolanda had infinite energy and enthusiasm, just so long as I kept ordering her to serve me. She came too—every time I did, she bucked and rocked and screamed underneath me. It sounded like like was a having having better time time I was, almost, except that I was in control and that felt even better than any of the excellent orgasms she was giving me. I just kept fucking her face, endlessly, until David, her boyfriend, came home.

"He came in and looked at us, still fucking on the floor of the living room where I'd pounced on Yolanda hours before. I kept grinding on her, slower, rolling my naked hips and belly over her face. He stood there watching us for a minute, and then said 'you're so fucking hot, Lucy.'

"'That's right,' I said, 'now get over here and help your fellow slutslave pleasure me.' I got off Yolanda'a face and told her to undress him. Then—"

"Ms Slater," said Iris, as firmly as she could. She didn't dare look at what Bill and Christa were doing. "You were going to tell us about Arboria Group."

Slater gave her that cool, amused look again. "If you like. A very, very, long story short, the necklace brought out my natural dominant side, and the natural submissiveness of everyone around me. Once we'd figured out that, I just looked up the biggest company headquartered in town and walked in."

"Ah," said Iris flatly.

"I didn't fuck any of the old owners, of course. They were all a bunch of smug asshole rentiers. They get to continuously know how much they're pleasing me by donating away all their money, but honestly except for occasionally like this I don't think about them at all. Some of the support staff were better. Carol was somebody or other's executive assistant, but smart as a whip and basically runs the company for me these days. Not the only sentence about her and whips I could come up with, either. She gets to fuck me as often as anyone except maybe Yolanda and David." Slater smiled wickedly and kept stroking the necklace.

"Thank you for your time, then," said Iris. "I'm sure our viewers will be... fascinated by your story."

"Ah, I'm sorry," said Slater. She didn't look or sound sorry at all. "I misled you a bit at the beginning of the meeting. This interview was for my entertainment only. We'll do a second, boring interview for the TV later, explain to everyone how I'm totally benign and have no magic powers at all."

"I think this version was more newsworthy," said Iris.

"Yes," said Slater, with that pleased little smirk, "but you've been in a room with me and my necklace for half an hour. I think you'll find that what you really want is to obey my every command."

"Like hell, you maniac," said Iris, angrily.

Slater raised her perfect eyebrows. "Oh, we've got a fighter here. Slave!" She pointed to Bill. "Film this. Iris and I are both going to enjoy watching it afterwards. Slave—" to Christa "—edge him with your mouth. Edge yourself with your hand while you do it. Don't worry about when to stop. When she makes me come, you'll know."

"Oh, fuck, yes, thank you mistress," said Christa and Bill, more or less in unison, and Bill swung the camera to Iris while Christa knelt and began fumbling with his belt. Iris was furious. She couldn't do this to Bill and Christa! They loved what they were doing, it was good and right and proper that they obey, but they shouldn't obey Slater. The thoughts squirmed and twisted, hot and angry in her head.

"You can feel it, can't you," said Slater, standing and walking towards her. "The magic. It's helping you become what you always wanted to be. You will be confident, driven, sexy, and it's not even changing anything about you. It's just unleashing all the potential you have but couldn't tap without me. Serving me like your goddess isn't even a price, it's just understandable gratitude. Well, that, and the natural order of things: I command, and everyone around me obeys. You can already feel its rightness, can't you."

Iris tried to stand and face Slater down, and failed. She slid bonelessly to the floor, and started trembling, then twitching, then thrashing. She could feel the magic running through her. Slater was right. It was barely touching her, just breaking the cultural and social and biological chains that had been holding her down. Pleasure coursed through her, the pleasure of freedom and the pleasure of the magic coursing through her body, building like a climax but stronger, more total. She could do anything she wanted, be anything she had dreamed of. Hot. Smart. Powerful. Wasn't choosing to freely offer herself to Mistress a suitable way to repay this, just like Mistress had said?

It seemed so inarguably right and proper, but the angry red voice in her mind was screaming no. She didn't know what to do, and squirmed on the tiled floor of Mistress' sunroom. NO! Not 'Mistress'! She couldn't think, she was pinned between the natural need to obey Mistress and the furious demands of the voice. The magic moved on and on, gently snapping chains.

The magic freed the voice.

It all made sense, with a suddenness that was dizzying. The voice was a part of her, always had been, and the magic of the necklace had been feeding it, just like it had been so much more feeding the desire to submit to Slater. But she wasn't going to. That inner voice was free and she was free. She was hot and smart and powerful, just like the magic had promised, and she was in control. She gasped, raggedly, and then grabbed the magic. It was already seeping out of her, its task complete, but she held on to it and felt, in a way that wasn't quite feeling, a chunk of it tear off in her grip, which wasn't quite a grip. The rest of the magic left with a tiny quick lick at her burning, desperate sex, keyed up beyond any previous experience from the power that had been coursing through her, and she came, screaming.

She was on the floor. The orgasm had been glorious, but it was undignified to be on the floor like this, and she had things to be doing.

"That never happened to anyone else before," she heard Slater say, above her.

"Well," she said, with the same arrogant purr that Slater had, "I'm not anyone else." She stood up. Her body wasn't different, she didn't think: she just filled it better, her flesh and will in perfect synchronicity. Her clothes had changed, a hint more black, just a touch sharper, almost the same but better suited to someone as sexy and powerful as her. Around her neck was a necklace, gold and silver and bright blue lapis, its design distinct but evocative of Slater's. She couldn't feel the magic anymore, and wasn't sure if she would again, now that it was done with her; but she knew it was there, and it served her. Like everyone should. "I love what you've done with me, though. Lucy."

She had almost expected Lucy to look shorter - she didn't, was as gorgeous and imposing as ever, it just mattered less to her now. "Iris," said Lucy, looking her up and down. If she was shocked, or suprised, or angry, when she saw the second necklace around Iris' neck, that same phenomenal self-possession that Iris had too now keeping her still, cool, and in-control, until she met Iris' eyes and smiled. "This was completely unexpected, but on consideration, I like it too."

Iris had plans for when she got back to the station, now. There'd be some changes in content, and production, and a lot of changes in management. But she was a professional, even if she was also a magically-empowered domme who was going to literally rule local journalism in a month or two. She would get this interview in the can first.

"Bill! Christa!" she said, barely bothering to glance at them. They were still edging each other, like Lucy had ordered before. "Set up for the first shot again."

"Yes, Ms Chen," they said almost in unison. She knew Lucy wouldn't begrudge her two obedient servants, especially since she really was just taking them back. If either of them noticed that they hadn't been allowed to come yet, neither cared, compared to the pleasure of obeying their Mistress.

"Now then, Ms Slater," she said, as she seated herself across from Lucy once more and the camera started rolling again. "Could you tell our viewers how you came to be the head of Arboria Group at such a young age? I'm sure I have a lot to learn from you."

They ended up having to do three interviews.