Jilly was a bleach-blonde, bubble-headed bimbo.

A lot of my girls could barely stand to have her around, but there were a couple of clients who wanted to fuck the dumbest chick possible-- presumably the ones who would feel threatened by a girl with a brain. I usually send Tammy, who fakes idiocy well, but there's something to be said for a natural talent, and one guy in particular favored Jilly nearly exclusively and very frequently. After he was arrested (on completely unrelated charges, I assure you), Jilly's... well, I guess you could call it her "productivity"... declined significantly. I was this close to turning her out on the street, though I really thought it was a waste to let someone with her face and figure go to waste on a street corner or in a paltry strip club. It occurred to me that, as a last resort, I had the ability to mold her into whatever I wanted to. It wasn't like anything about her would be a great loss if I screwed it up too badly.

Let me explain: most of my girls are fairly open-minded by nature-- you don't get many whores who haven't long ago had their inhibitions worn away by the prospect of dollar signs-- but from time to time they need a little bit of help. For example, Dayna wouldn't take it in the ass, no matter what her clients were offering to have her there, and since no fewer than three of them personally communicated to me that they were planning on going 'cross town to Madame Darlene's dirty little hut unless Dayna delivered the goods, stronger measures had been required.

I called an old employer of mine, Harry Pinchon aka "The Great Master Pinchon", whose "beautiful assistant" I had been in the bad old showbiz days, and asked him for a favor. Not too much later, he showed up as a weekend entertainer for the girls and did his entire stage hypnotist spiel for fun at one of our parties, and I made sure Dayna was volunteered as a subject. Though that night all Harry did was make her bark like a dog and sing showtunes, he embedded a post-hypnotic suggestion that would let him access her later on, at our convenience, and it wasn't long before our Dayna was happily presenting her rear to all comers, unsolicited.

Or there was the time when Peggy almost got killed by that wacko with the rope fetish; she was unable to perform for months afterward, and any time a man touched her she was brought to tears by the memory of nearly being strangled. Since we don't have that many female clients, she was essentially a charity case in my house until Harry helped her to forget the incident.

At any rate, I'd found that hypnosis was a great tool, but though I liked Harry fine, I was sick of paying his ass to help out my girls. For whatever reason, he wouldn't take his fees in pussy, just in cold green, and that was painful in harder times, like after I had to bribe that District Attorney. Now, I'd seen him do his show hundreds of times, and had seen him in the back rooms of countless clubs for "private sessions" (guess what kind of sessions those were?), so it seemed to me I knew how this hypnotism thing went down. If a somewhat goofy-looking middle-aged guy like him could put girls into trance, why couldn't I?

The answer was, of course, that I could, and very soon did. I tried Dayna first, because I knew she was susceptible, and after an hour's "relaxation exercises" she was staring blankly at my ceiling and telling me about being abused by her step-father. The tale was pretty gruesome, and I could see why she used to resist having it up the ass. It moved me enough that I resolved to steer the anal-fetishist guys towards Kandy from now on, though I still reinforced to Dayna that she'd give it up to her current clientele as before. I'm a softie, but I'm also a businesswoman and I didn't want to lose anybody. I have to admit that having her lying there so docile was getting me hot, and it wasn't long before I was fucking her face, all the time giving her instructions on how to improve her technique, and I have to say it paid off brilliantly because, to this day, she's still the choice pussylicker of all my most discerning clients.

But I digress: this is not her story.

I started considering my options for Jilly-- what was missing in my business model? I had the dommes and the subs (or those who could pretend at either), I had the white girls and black girls and Asian girls and the Hispanic girls, and girls who could fake most other nationalities with the proper cosmetics. I had Sally-Lynn who liked pain, Grace the bull-dyke, Diana the "full-figured" lady, and Fifi, whose surgical enhancements defied the imagination. I had tall girls and short girls, and enough wigs and hair dye to manufacture any requested coloration. What was missing that couldn't be otherwise faked?

The answer came to me after Clarence told me it would be his last visit. That happens all the time, by the way. The guy's getting married, or has gone religious, or has gotten through whatever part of his life made him seek my girls out. And a good fifty percent of the time it actually turns out to be true. But not always, and Clarence didn't seem the type to be leaving permanently. I hugged him, wished him luck, and politely asked him why.

"I can't talk to any of these girls, Tess."

I smiled. "That's not exactly their specialty, darling."

He reddened. "I know, but... before. Afterward. It helps me if there's some kind of connection." I succeeded in not rolling my eyes-- at least outwardly. It's not like I'd never heard this from a client before, but really! A "house" doesn't get its "ill repute" from a lot of jabberring tender-loving care. The bucks roll in when the girls are hot and ready to trot. Aside from that, as long as they're friendly and polite and don't demean their customers (except the ones who want to be demeaned, of course), my girls will be successful, and therefore so will I.

"I understand," I lied. "Well, I hope you find what you're looking for, Clarence."

"I probably won't," he admitted. "But there's always the internet." And with a wave and a sad smile, he was out of there.

That last bit stuck in my craw, for some reason. Actually, for a very obvious reason: I've been in this business for twenty-five years, and the last ten have been touch-and-go because of all the "talent", amateur and otherwise, to be found with a few mouse clicks or a search engine. Don't get me wrong: I have a website myself, detailing all of my girls and their proclivities; it's not been entirely bad. But it's done out of survival more than anything else. I'm old-fashioned, and tend to think fucking for cash should be done discreetly and recommendations passed on by word of mouth. The internet just seems like a good way to get sent to jail when the authorities decide one day to stop turning a blind eye. Regardless, the point is that I'd lost a number of customers over the years because of some bit they found online somewhere, and anytime a customer mentioned it I had to choke down fury. Damned faceless techies who wouldn't know how to fuck if someone handed them a Kama Sutra and a magnifying glass, but who could throw enough suggestive photos and purple prose together to steal my client base.

I strode from the foyer, where Clarence had made his farewells, into my office. I flopped unceremoniously into the leather chair and opened up a web browser and a search engine, half-heartedly paging through the local set of independent "escorts". I don't know what it was-- Clarence's words, or maybe I was just on my game that day, waiting for enlightenment-- but after the seventh or eighth girl promising "a true GFE (girl-friend experience)" from a "college-educated" woman, it suddenly clicked for me. The thing Clarence had been seeking and, more generally, the niche market my girls failed to fill: the brainy, college-girl set.

Now, I'd never gone to college myself. I had stripped for a couple of years right out of high school, done some burlesque theatre (which didn't pay shit), then spent the next ten on my back for Madame Belle's establishment before taking over when the old coot kicked off-- twelve years ago this fall, it was. So my education, while hardly nonexistent (I attended the School of Life, thanksverymuch), was minimal when it came to book-smarts. But I'd done the sexy librarian role-playing enough times (and had my girls do it lots more) to know there's a certain appeal to the smart girl motif. What I hadn't counted on, and what had become clear to me in the last several hours, was that there seemed to be a mostly-untapped clientele out there who wanted it to go a little farther than the glasses and the prim hairstyles-- they actually wanted to discuss poetry or sociology or ancient Roman history with these broads before fucking them senseless.

And I had to admit that none of my girls was up to the challenge.

Seeing a business opportunity here, I started paging through the independents again, to see if I could find one that looked desperate enough to want to work for me on at least a part-time basis. I'd just jotted down a couple of email addresses and was about to compose a message to these women when Jilly knocked on my doorframe and stepped inside.

"Can I come in?"

My reflex was to be annoyed at this unpleasant (and unprofitable!) presence; after all, she was the precise opposite of what I was currently seeking, and frankly I was planning on housing the new girl, whoever she ended up being, in Jilly's room. Jilly's former room, I already thought of it as. "You're already in, dear. What do you need?"

What do you need? I stopped cold. What did she need? I ignored, for the moment, whatever it was she was blathering about, and concentrated on what she really did need: a reason for existence. Something to make her worth keeping around this place. And I needed someone around the house with some pretty specific traits-- but was it possible, even with hypnosis? Using (I looked, disbelieving, at the vacant eyes across from me...) this as raw materials? Surely not. But...

"... and I just don't know if I should do it, ya know?" She snapped a bubble from her gum and looked at me expectantly.

"Um... Jilly, I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I was zoning."

"Sure! Happens to me all the time." She giggled. "I was just asking if you think I should get the double-Ds like Nikki said I should."

Sigh. Nikki hated Jilly, and was always trying to get her to look stupid. Stupider. Once she'd convinced the girl to draw pubic hair on her naked cunt with an eyebrow pencil. At any rate, Jilly's five-foot-one frame was much too small for double-D breasts, and she'd just end up looking ridiculous-- and for johns who wanted "ridiculous", I already had Fifi.

"Jilly, dear, your breasts are fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Okay, Tess, I trust you."

And those last three words were the catalyst for everything which happened afterward.

* * *

It was surprisingly difficult to put her under.

She had all of the calm and attention span of a four-year-old who'd just eaten a fistful of candy, and I had nearly given up after an hour's trying, having had to remove her gum, her hair clip, and even her dangly earrings. It was these last which finally helped out; as I saw her staring at the glass gems that hung from them, it occurred to me to try using those. Harry had always just used his hands as a focus for his inductions, and sometimes some stroking of the subject's temples, so that was the method I'd adopted, but when I saw her eyes fixed on the removed earrings, I remembered numerous bad movies with hypnotic subjects entranced using stopwatches or diamond pendants. Huh, I thought. The stereotype had to have come from somewhere.

"This hypno thing is hard, Tess. I thought you said it would be easy."

"Trust me, dear. It will work."

"Good, 'cause I really want to be able to give better head."

Ahem. That was how I'd gotten her in the chair, of course. I'd found out by experimenting on Carlita that a couple of suggestions would allow a girl to completely and easily suppress the gag-reflex, and even to provide better "milking" action using rhythmic movement of the throat muscles. Carlita's "returning customer" rate had skyrocketed: and she wasn't just for guys with the black antebellum servant-girl fantasies anymore. I'd performed this magic on Su Lin and Peggy as well, and had seen similar effects on the cash they brought in, so I had let Jilly know I thought it would increase the money she would produce. Since she'd been complaining lately that she wanted an "iPod thingy" like Grace had (how in the world would she ever operate it?), the comment about money made her decision for her, after I helped explain it to her.

She laid back on the bed and I tossed one of the gaudy earrings aside, retaining the other for use in the process.

"All right, Jilly, dear, let's try this a different way. I want you to look at the... jewel... on this earring. It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, it's, like, my favorite. It's so sparkly, and goes well with my--"

"Hush, sweetie. No talking, just looking and listening."

"'Kay."

"Stare into the sparkles, Jilly. They shine brightly, and as I move them in the light they swirl from place to place. They're pretty, aren't they? So pretty that you don't want to look at less pretty things, just at the beautiful stone and the swirling sparkles. Keep looking, even if it gets harder to do. Keep looking especially if it gets harder to do. Looking at the sparkles, now, not a care in the world, feeling calm and soothed looking at the sparkles. Eyes may be getting heavy, now, but don't let them close, don't let them close because then you won't see the pretty spiraling sparkles. Looking at the sparkles will make them even heavier, make you sleepier, but still you should just relax and stare at them without closing your eyes." I looked at her face, now, and this method was obviously having more of an effect. The small crinkles in her brow softened, and her eyes blinked infrequently now-- and when they did, it was a long, slow, languorous motion which looked like a struggle between two opposing forces. I kept repeating this monotonously for a couple of minutes, as I saw her eyes go blank. "Your eyes need to close now, you can barely keep them open to see the sparkles. Don't worry, when they do close, you'll still be able to see them in your mind. You can close them when I tell you so. Keep staring into the stone and let your mind think only of how pretty the spiraling sparkles are... and now you can close your eyes."

She'd been a more difficult subject than most of my girls, but it was evident she was under. "Jilly, do you hear me?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you feel very relaxed and happy?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you still see the sparkles?"

"Uh huh. Pretty."

"Yes, they're lovely, I'm sure. Jilly, dear, keep looking at the pretty sparkles, but while you're doing that I'd like you to answer some questions for me."

"Mmkay."

"Jilly, dear, how old are you?"

"Twenty-six."

"Did you go to high school?"

"Sure." I was surprised.

"Did you finish high school?"

"Yeah." I was even more surprised.

"You passed all your classes?"

"All except biology. I had to give Mr. Morris head every day for weeks to even get a D-. The other teachers I fucked gave me Cs." I was less surprised.

"All right, dear. Have you always had trouble with school?"

"No."

"Can you think back to a time when you didn't?"

"Okay."

"How old were you, then?"

"Six."

"You were good at school when you were six?"

"Uh huh."

"What made you stop doing well at school?"

"I was stupid."

"But how could you have done well at school before then if you were stupid?"

"I didn't know I was stupid until Daddy told me so."

"Explain that for me, Jilly. What happened?"

"I didn't mean to do it. Really! I didn't know I wasn't supposed to tell Mommy about Daddy's friends."

"Daddy's friends?"

"Paula and Cindy and Jamie and Violet and--"

"Okay, Jilly. I understand. What happened, then?"

"Mommy left the house and didn't come back, and Daddy spanked my butt and yelled at me. I cried and told him that I was sorry, but he kept telling me I was so stupid, that I fucked everything up. That it was my fault Mommy left, and that I would never learn."

Poor kid. Reminded me of my old man. The bastard.

"And then you didn't do well at school anymore?"

"The next day in school I got two problems wrong in subtracting and I told the teacher it was because I was stupid and I fucked everything up, and she sent me to the principal's office. He was nice to me and gave me a lollipop, and sent me back to class. I liked the lollipops."

"Jilly, I'm going to give you a lollipop, now. Would you like that?"

"Mmm hmm."

"It's a very special lollipop-- it will make you into a genius very quickly. Would you like that?"

"Sure." It sounded unconvincing; I could tell she was going to need some positive reinforcement (I didn't go to college, but as you can see, I read a lot of books).

"Once you finish the lollipop, your brain will be like a sponge for knowledge, and every time you learn something new, you'll feel very excited and sexy. In fact, you'll have the best orgasms of your life after you've learned something new. And you'll know that you feel this way because you're learning to be smarter. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

"Jilly, dear, what will happen every time you learn something new?"

"I'll feel excited and sexy and have the best orgasms of my life."

"Why?"

"Because I feel that way when I'm learning to be smarter."

"Right, dear. That's very good. Now I don't want you to remember this talk we've just had, I just want you to do what I told you, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good." My hopes were not high, but it had been worth a shot. At the very least... "Now, Jilly, as you finish off your lollipop, there, let me tell you some new things about your throat muscles..."

* * *

It wasn't long before Jilly was picking up more than just back-issues of Cosmo the other girls left lying around. As I think I mentioned, I'm an avid reader, and I had a decent collection of books. Jilly went crazy over them, finishing off all the Oprah Book Club recommendations I had in the next few weeks. Despite her "dumb" persona, it was evident the girl could read well enough. That or those books really were written at the fifth grade level, as that Time article had suggested.

Soon, however, she wanted more non-fiction, and if there's one thing my bookshelves lack it's the tedium of non-fiction. I gave Jilly what I had, but it wasn't much: some information on AIDS, abortion, and prostitution laws. Practical stuff. She finished it in under a week, spending a lot of time alone in her room with the books. I interrupted her once on a pretext, to see what she was doing in there, and was hit by the smell of sex when she opened the door. That, coupled with her blushed face, let me know she was eagerly frigging herself to get off due to the influence of my post-hypnotic suggestions and her reading material.

When she ran out of non-fiction, I brought up the possibility of going to the library to get more, and she looked at me like I was Moses, leading her to the promised land. She asked to go the very next day, and I called her a cab for the morning drive there; I planned on doing some shopping and then picking Jilly up on the way back home that afternoon.

Now I'm not exactly aware of what went down, but some fraction of it filtered to me through Jilly herself, and I believe what she told me. It seems she'd picked out six or seven books, and finally settled in the archaeology section, finding a book on ancient Mesopotamia and sitting at one of the corner tables. She'd opened the book up, skipped the preface, and by the end of page two her nipples had tightened and her cunt was slick. As she'd read of the priests-kings, of the priestesses of Ishtar, her thighs had slowly parted and her hands slowly crept between their pantiless expanse.

It wasn't until she'd reached her third silent, panting climax that she realized she had an audience. Three young men-- high school boys, probably-- had seen what she was doing and were staring, rapt, at a fantasy come true. Unfortunately, at the same moment, someone else discovered her audience, too, and with an offended cry had leapt towards her.

She'd run, then, down the staircase to the front door, and in a huff, trying to appear casual, she'd proceeded to check out the books she had. The librarian, coming down the stairs a minute and a half later, winded, hadn't been fooled, but had apparently not wanted to make a scene. She'd waited until after Jilly had checked out the books, seized her elbow, and dragged her to the front door.

I was there to pick her up when I saw her escorted from the library building by a stuffy-looking old bat in a red blazer. The woman had her by the arm, and as soon as she was out the front door flung Jilly away from her as hard as she could without risking injury. Jilly kept her balance, but in the process her armful of books and a little white card collapsed onto the sidewalk. The elderly woman, no doubt an administrator at the library, snarled "Disgusting slut!" at her and returned to the building. I got out of the car and helped pick up Jilly's books.

I looked at her library card as I handed it back to her, along with all the books she'd dropped. "'Jill'?"

She blushed. "Well, you know, 'Jilly' is kind of... um... babyish, don't you think?"

I shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat, sweetie."

So Jill it was.

* * *

The second time Jill got kicked out of the library, they almost arrested her, and at that point I forbade her to go back. She was crushed, and sulked for days until I finally told her she could use the computer in my office to connect to the internet. It wasn't a library, exactly, but I was sure that it would be an adequate substitute, for her purposes.

Of course, she had no idea how to use a computer, so I had to teach her the basics, which was kind of a pain in the ass. She was a quick study, though, eager and open, and after she learned elementary mouse-clicking and web-browsing she excused herself to go to the adjacent rest room. I shook my head and laughed to myself, and when she returned flushed and reeking of cunt it became clear she had been fingering herself to a messy orgasm while away.

I indicated she should sit down, got my purse, and headed for the door. She looked embarrassed when I said, on the way out, "Perhaps you could sit on a towel, so you don't ruin my nice leather?" but I heard her clicking away as the door swung shut behind me.

* * *

Jill's first customer in her new role was Clarence. It was actually her idea to contact him, as word had gotten around my house that he preferred brains to pussy. While I make it a point not to contact customers at home, I had an email address for him, so I dropped him a brief note: "Think I may have something that would interest you. Contact me for details. Tess."

A couple of days later, he called me and I told him I had a new girl he might like to meet. "She was a college gal who had to drop out in her senior year because her college found out about her escort business and expelled her."

Clarence was skeptical. "On what grounds could they do that?"

How the hell was I supposed to know? I'd just made it up on the spot! "She was doing it out of her dorm room. I'm not sure of the details, Clarence. But I'd like you to meet her and see what you think. No strings attached. Heck, if she decides she's into you, she may even give you a freebie." My girls never did, of course, but there was nothing wrong with letting the customer think it was a possibility.

In the end, Clarence decided to give it a shot, and she met him on a Tuesday night in the downstairs foyer. She had scorned her usual lycra micromini and tube-top, instead opting for something more subtle. She'd raided my costume vault for something a bit more dressy, but not formal: I recognized the Sexy Woman Executive suit, but she'd dropped the businesslike blouse in favor of a transparent top made of form-fitting nylon. She kept the suit jacket buttoned, but it was evident her 38Ds were only covered by a delightfully thin film underneath. I introduced them, and watched as Clarence's eyes bulged.

They moved to one of the fuckrooms, and I moved to my office to watch it on closed circuit.

Jill had classed the place up a bit with a vase of flowers and a tablecloth, and had some bottled wine and fresh bread on the table, at the ready. She was sitting across from him, her legs crossed at the ankle, leaning in to look into his eyes. I couldn't get all of the dialogue, but I caught the highlights. She was asking him about his hobbies, and apparently they got on the topic of crime novels. She was a fan of James Ellroy, he liked Dennis Lehane, they bantered lightly about their difference of opinion, and she touched his hand whenever she made a point. Soon she was laughing out loud with him, and stealing meaningful glances in his direction. Good fake-demure stylings; I wouldn't have believed this was Jilly if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I suppose really it wasn't: it was "Jill".

After a particularly vigorous laugh, Jill's ankle left its shoe, crossing his under the table, and slowly, throughout the subsequent conversation, it made its way up his calf to his knee. She pointed her toes and stroked his thigh that way, and she was suddenly quiet and thoughtful. She said something to him under her breath, and the look on his face was priceless. He slid his hand from her foot up past her knees and atop her thigh, and she lidded her eyes in apparent arousal when his hands penetrated her skirt. She moaned, leaning back (and pushing her ass forward on the seat) as he penetrated more than her skirt. She made little encouraging noises and there may even have been some words in there, but whatever sounds were coming out of her mouth were having a wonderful effect on Clarence. She suddenly grabbed his wrist under her dress and held the hand to her crotch, grinding on it with full force, and it was only seconds later that she cried out his name. As she panted there, and he panted in his chair, she brought the hand out from under her dress and took his fuckfinger in her mouth to the third joint, sucking it clean.

That was too much for her customer, who smashed the table aside, pushed her down to the floor, and tore his pants off with little ceremony. His lips on hers, his hands cupping her breasts, he was so lost in this scenario that he forgot to put on a condom, but Jill was ready and slid it onto his cock with an artistry even I had to admire, stroking him and cupping his balls as if aroused by the very act. He was ready to burst, and when he was properly adorned he thrust into her with a brute force which astounded me-- keep in mind I'd seen him with at least three of my girls. Nothing compared to this. He pushed hard at her, and was growling sheer animal noises into the cup of her throat, and she urged him on with vigor. When he came, his face was a rictus of near-agony, and Jill matched his tone with intense screams of her own. He collapsed on top of her, and she patted his head as he rested. Afterward, they just laid on the floor and talked of politics, of all things. When it was time for him to go, he picked her up off the floor, kissed her hand in a manner unseen since the 1960s, and asked when he could see her again. She told him she'd have to check her schedule (good girl!), but that sometime soon would be best of all. And with that, he gathered his belongings and moved into the nearby washroom. She was gone by the time he came out.

Clarence tipped big that night, and he left with a smile on his face. He even kissed my cheek on the way out the door.

Clarence's friends Todd and Ahmed called within the week to make appointments with Jill. And that was just the beginning.

* * *

Jill was making shitloads of cash for me, now. Not only had I opened up a whole new vista of customers by putting the cultured college co-ed fantasy out there, but the other clients started to favor her more, too. Val Vincent, who used to have a real thing for short brunettes who would spank him and call him degrading names in Spanish, was now regularly seeking Jill out instead of Maria-- a fact which pissed the latter off to no end. I had to break up a catfight in the dining room one morning; I had no idea what a "puta" was, but judging from the vehemence with which Maria had emitted it, it was not intended to be complimentary. Jill had apparently understood the term, though; while I'm not sure it insulted her, I think she was just sick of taking guff from the other girls. She'd plunged into her own tirade en español, sunk her claws into the Hispanic girl's hair, and yanked her across the table before several of the other ladies had started pulling them apart. I docked them both a hundred bucks that week for fighting-- I can't have that sort of behavior going on in my establishment. Outside of the bedroom, of course; Ted Slobodov pays good money to jerk off while watching two elegantly coiffed and (faux-)Gucci-dressed ladies scratching and hair-pulling and at each other's throats.

The punishment annoyed Maria, but Jill was devastated. She'd been very close to some financial goal or other, and pleaded with me to punish her in some other way, but I was firm.

Thus it was a little under a month before Jill got enough cash scraped together to buy herself a computer. Who knew she could budget?

It amused me more than surprised me; the iPod had been forgotten once little Jill had tasted the wonders to be found on the internet. She spent more and more time at my desk, constantly reading about one topic or another-- one week it was animal husbandry and the next it was early Siamese monarchs. At first it was merely annoying, but when it started to interfere with my work (and the office started to smell more and more like Jill's pussy-- I run a whorehouse, but I don't need that in my personal space, thank you), I cut her access time down to twice a day, one hour per session. She got surly, but adapted when my tone of voice grew very chilly and it became evident two hours per day would be better than none. Grace charged Jill fifty bucks an hour to use hers, and I'm sure she partook fairly often-- I don't think she could help herself.

I should have guessed she'd soon want her own, and when she did finally get a large package delivery in the mail, her eyes glowed with glee and she offered the mail guy a freebie (which I don't object to, in principle, as long as my girls pay back the house out of their own pockets for the lost revenue). He stammered something about being a married man and hurriedly left the premises (he returned as a paying customer months later, but that's another story), and Jill asked one of the other girls to help her lug all the boxes into her room.

After that, she was locked up in there for hours, setting it up, and didn't come out again until her eight o'clock appointment with Mr. Sosnowski. He was a new customer: a not-unattractive college professor who had obvious ethical issues with fucking his students but had even-more-obvious sexual issues with not fucking his students. Jill (or "Gillian", as she went by when she played the college-gal role) led him into one of the fuckrooms and begged him to help her pass his class. Before the door shut, she had asked him for special tutoring on molecular biology, and I could tell, with a twinge of pride at my own cleverness, that the eagerness in her voice was not faked as he began to lecture his way into her panties. She spent four whole hours with him (cha-ching!) before reluctantly letting him leave, but at least she was happy to go back to her room and play with her new toy. I listened outside the door as she emitted sighs and moans, and from time to time I heard words like "operating system" and "partition" and figured she must have been reading a manual or an online tutorial of some sort. I grinned, wandered back to my own office, and laughed out loud when I got an email from "gilliangirl" thanking me for being so nice to her and letting her work for me.

I added the good professor's latest contribution to the Tess VanTrin Retirement Fund into my accounting software, and I'm sure I looked smug as I did it.

* * *

It didn't take long for Gillian to get sick of using AOL.

It was kind of funny, actually; I heard her bitching about the idiocy of the software at breakfast one morning, and the other girls were absolutely floored. Maria made some not-so-subtle comments about Gillian getting too big for her britches, but Gillian blew the comments off completely. Which only made Maria angrier, of course, as will happen when the target of your offense refuses to get offended.

Gillian was going on and on now about how we should get broadband so our access times and download speeds would be faster, and the other girls basically glazed over. All except for Grace, who was ecstatic because it would improve her ability to get music from iTunes. She was fully in favor, and both ladies came over to my table to ask if we could get high-speed cable access. I informed them that I didn't see a reason to, at which point they offered to pay the full cost monthly, and Gillian even offered to network the brothel so that all three of us could share the connection. How could I possibly say no to a deal like that?

So two days later Grace had over a thousand songs on her iPod, my web pages were available at blinding speed, and Gillian was spending more and more time fucking herself silly in her room to the cadences of coefficients of sliding friction, analyses of Ibsen's dramatic plays, and cognitive science (whatever that was) She was not derelict in her duties, of course, and our good friend Dr. Sosnowski had apparently recommended her services to several colleagues. I was surprised, but not shocked, at how many tenured professors of both sexes harbored desires to fuck their students, and had even added a new fuckroom, complete with desk, chairs, and shelves holding several textbooks I'd scrounged from some sale on eBay-- that had been Gillian's idea. Or "Anne-Gillian", her new moniker. I asked her why she'd changed it again, and she said that the hyphenated name carried connotations of high-class with it, and that this subtly improved the mood and arousal of her clients. I thought that pseudo-psychological tirade sounded like absolute nonsense, and told her so, but I had to admit the new name was fetching. It got me a bit horny when I heard Sharee Blimtonhaus, dean of a local women's college, yelling "Anne-Gillian Raydon, you will eat my pussy right now or I will have you expelled." I spent an entire hour online finding co-ed pornography and vibrating my clit while mouse clicking with the other hand. I'd been spending more time online lately, what with the broadband access and all, and there was definitely a lot of good fuckmyself material out there. I came hard when I saw a petite blonde with pigtails and a plaid skirt slurping on the twat of a stereotypical schoolmarm. Spending time on my computer was giving me more orgasms, lately, than I'd enjoyed in the last ten years of whorehouse management and "sampling the goods".

The money was rolling in, now, and this goldmine made me think that perhaps I needed to alter the other girls in a similar way-- Anne-Gillian had only so many hours a day to spread. I considered each girl individually, and decided that the vast majority just weren't suitable for the hypnotic modification.. The only ones I could come up with, solidly, were Nikki and Maria. Both were the fairly unintelligent sort, though never as moronic as the old Jilly had been, and both were smoking hot fucks (and I verified that with my own pussy the moment I had them hypnotized). I gave them the "orgasms for knowledge" spiel and watched them go to work. There was enough money pouring in that I bought Anne-Gillian a beautiful new laptop on the sole condition that she would give her old computer to Nikki and Maria, and I encountered little resistance from her.

The new laptop was apparently enough to smooth over any antagonisms of the past, but she warned me that the old computer was running Linux instead of Windows and that she'd have to do something to it (delete partitions? modify the boot sector?) in order to make it more easy for them to understand. I waved it off, knowing she knew a hell of a lot more about that crap than I did, and delivered unto her the Laptop of Gloriousness, and I know she spent all morning in her room with her hand up her snatch-- because I spent the whole time watching the hidden USB camera I'd installed in her room while she was on an outcall at the university. She was looking at websites about particle physics and something called "Linear A". Or so I gathered from the things she was chanting in between sucking her own juices off her fingers.

* * *

Maria and Nikki didn't advance as quickly as Anne-Gillian had; perhaps it was because they had more limited intellectual capacity to begin with, rather than merely having a psychological aversion to learning, as was the case with their predecessor. Still, the two women did learn how to use the computer in their room (I had moved them in together to facilitate their improvement), and even advanced enough to spend time teaching some of the other girls how to use it, too. Soon enough, Anne-Gillian was not the only whore I had who could play the smart, cultured girl role, though, unlike her, they plateaued at a certain level and didn't progress much farther. They certainly didn't spend time in their room looking up obscure facts about biofeedback mechanisms and opto-electronics; instead, they took turns reading translations of ancient Greek verses to each other, the listener using her tongue to reduce the orator to convulsions whose meter had little to do with the poetry. Their increased intelligence must have given them some sort of empathy for Anne-Gillian, and after a tearful apology the three girls became close friends. Sometimes they'd take turns letting Anne-Gillian read them poetry.

Anne-Gillian herself had gone back to her natural color, or perhaps a shade darker, and was making more outcalls; she'd get dolled up in expensive dresses and jewelry and leave the house for entire nights, bringing back some cash from her conquests and putting it in my coffers-- and it was always extravagant, so I didn't worry about her cheating me or anything. Too much, anyway.

When, one night in my office, I mentioned that some of her clients missed her and asked her about where she'd been going, she hesitated a bit, and I took the opportunity to put her under with a little trigger phrase I'd implanted when I'd first given her the learning bug. While in trance, she had no compunction about telling me what I wanted to know: she'd been frequenting high-class bars and even getting invited to parties where she plied her trade, under the name "Angeline", with high-power executives. That was the source of the cash influx, and I wasn't upset with her for buying herself expensive clothes with some of the money-- that was mere "investment capital", as she called it, for the real money she raked in as a result. I had a hard time disagreeing with that logic, though I was a little miffed at her for not telling me straight up. I gave her the suggestion that from now on she would tell me anything I asked of her, and she agreed without hesitation, smiling at me with her eyes closed.

My cunt was puddling into my panties as I watched her lie there; she was so much tastier as a brilliant little brunette vamp than she ever had been as a dopey blonde, even though she now wore clothes which covered her body more thoroughly than ever. "Angeline," I said, "tell me how you feel right now."

"I am sexually aroused, Tess. Very intensely."

"Very good, dear. Because I am about to lick your cunt until you scream. Feel free to lie back and enjoy my tongue and the ecstasy it brings you, dear."

And she did, drenching my cheeks and chin with her wet, drooling sex, even grabbing my head with her interlaced hands as she fucked my face. It was wonderful, and I don't even remember bringing her back out of trance afterward. She must have snapped out of it on her own, because when I woke up on the floor of my office, my face smelling of Angeline, I was alone. I used one hand to funnel the aroma from my mouth to my nose while I fingered myself thinking of her, what I'd done to her, and what she'd just done to me.

My cunt was sore from coming when my hands finally gave it a rest.

* * *

Things kept improving for Angeline; she raked in the cash from the outside at night, and spent her days alternating between sleep and fucking the most high-profile college professors she could seduce into our little house. Maria and Nikki behaved similarly, but were always willing to give Angeline her pick of the litter; they'd come to that agreement at some point. I don't think they got as much out of the infodumps as she did; each was happier staring at their computer screen, whispering what she'd found there while being serviced by her partner. Consequently, their customer base was both narrower and less affluent than Angeline's. They didn't seem to mind, though.

Me? I collected the money, as usual, but Angeline commented that she was concerned the tax men were going to notice the large influx of cash in my current bank accounts. She recommended some offshore banks and guided me through the steps to make the cash virtually untraceable. I thanked her with pussylove, and she smiled and told me, "Anything for you, Tess, baby."

I laughed my ass off when Nikki brought me the morning paper, and there, right on the page six, was Angeline's photo, under the headline, "Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Mitchell Schaeffer Hobnobs With Elite at Charity Ball". On the illustrious little man's arm was, of course, my delightful, profitable protege, identified as "socialite Evangeline Royton". After Nikki left, I dug through the camera archives for the last several nights. Sure enough, two nights before, "Evangeline" had dragged a slightly drunken Mr. Nobel-Prize-Guy into her room. I fast-forwarded to the good part.

Evangeline was astride Schaeffer, and I was impressed the guy could hold his own against her sharp, powerful strokes without breaking. Her eyes were wild, her movements uncontrolled, and she was urging him to "Come on, baby, just a little bit more..." It was evident she was right on the edge, but what threw her over-- I shit you not-- was when the old geezer groaned something about wavefunctions and intrinsic mass coefficients. She exploded into a frenzy of screams unmatched by anything I'd ever seen before (let alone given her), and ground her pussy into his lap, heels curled under the chair to give her more leverage. For his part, he was gasping and slightly blue in the face, but he was able to thrust into her with his fading strength as he climaxed.

He relaxed back onto the chair and caught his breath, and as he drifted off to sleep she slowly extricated herself from his collapsed embrace. She tucked his deflated manhood back into his slacks, gave his bald pate a light kiss, and drew her skirt back down to knee-level. I personally thought she should have checked his pulse before she left, but she pulled a compact from her purse and checked her makeup instead. When everything was satisfactory, she unlocked the door and strode out of view of the camera. He'd left an hour later; she'd not returned that night.

For my own part, I didn't replay the recording I'd made of the event more than once. That night, anyway.

Twice, maybe. Three times, maximum.

* * *

Evangeline hardly ever showed up at the brothel anymore, but over the next year or so she showed up on decreasingly smaller page numbers in the newspaper.

I worried, at first, that all of this publicity would be dangerous to my business; prostitution is tolerated, at best, by law enforcement, and if people-- especially gossip columnists-- made any sort of connection between high-society parties and high-priced hookers, I would be in jail faster than you could say "Heidi Fleiss". But Evangeline was entirely discreet, and I found myself worrying about it less and less. After all, if she's got this big apartment flat in the ritzy side of town, she's barely ever going to be seen here, anyway. But I missed her. Her pussy most of all.

Business was still excellent, though admittedly the college kids and professors missed "Anne-Gillian" a lot. Nikki and Maria double-timed them, and that brought in sufficient revenue. I sent their earnings overseas, and even lost track of how much of it was in there. I didn't need it-- all the working capital I needed to run the business was available from the take on the other girls. This I was stashing away for some other purpose.

It wasn't until my final meeting with Evangeline that I understood what that purpose was.

She called me on my cell phone and told me to meet her at a lunch establishment downtown. I'd been there before-- had made my play at paying off the D.A. there, in fact-- but it was very expensive. I chose my most stylish dress and heels, and hoped that if I wore no panties she'd get the hint and we could go somewhere more private. I'm not bad looking for my age, and I still know a few tricks for seducing men and women.

She arrived late, the valet taking her BMW into his care as she threw him what I was sure was a large denomination bill.

She looked amazing.

Her dress was satiny, short, but all class. Her makeup was professionally applied, and I complimented her salon-styled hair as she shook my hand delicately and sat down across from me. I pulsed with erotic tension as her manicured nails left my palm, and I looked at her with what felt like love.

"Tess, darling, how are you?" Even her intonation had changed, subtly. She spoke with more confidence, and an air of joy with life. Why, then, did it sound sinister to me?

"Evangeline, you're stunning."

She didn't need to be told. "You're too kind, dear. But thank you, anyway."

"We've missed you, back at the house."

"I know." She smiled. I thought of vipers and my stomach tightened. "That's one of the reasons we need to talk. I'm not coming back to the house. Not now. Not ever."

I was stunned. How could she not come back? She was the center of the new business, she was the help I needed to shift the money around properly... and I wanted her. Needed her. How could she?

"Evangeline, no! Dear, if it's the workload, I assure you, you don't have to do anything with clients. Nikki and Maria are handling the education-fetish set, and the money they bring in is entirely sufficient. You won't have to do anything except act as my assistant." I discarded my shoe and slid my toes up her silken-hosed leg to let her know how I'd assist her. Or she'd assist me, rather.

"Tess, you stupid fucking whore, stop it before someone sees you." She hissed at me, eyes flicking to either side to ensure no one had seen either my movements or her angry retort. I instantly withdrew my foot from the early depths of her skirt, hurt, embarrassed, and angry. "I have a reputation to keep up, and it's dangerous enough to be meeting you here in public without you letting your pussy doing your thinking for you."

I sat quietly for a moment as she explained further. I didn't hear most of it, as I was slowly building to my own monologue. Before she was finished, I interrupted her.

"May I make a comment, Evangeline? Or should I say, 'Jilly'?"

She looked furious but, smiling fiercely, gestured to me, letting me continue.

"You can't do this to me, Evangeline. You can't, and you won't, and let me tell you why. I own you."

She rolled her eyes.

"Oh, you don't think so, you think you're too good for us anymore, with your high-society parties and your Versace dresses, but I have one thing you don't know about. I have video."

She arched an eyebrow.

"Lots of video, in fact. Of you fucking countless men-- old men, young men. And women. In pigtails, in schoolgirl outfits, in leather and vinyl. And those are videos I don't think you want getting out in the society pages, hmmm?"

"You don't know. That could drive me up in their estimation." She smiled wryly. "So that's it? If I don't come back and work for you, you'll expose me for a dirty, filthy whore and ruin everything I've built?"

I was charitable. "Now, Evangeline, dear, you can certainly keep most of what you have built. I just want you to come back to me. To us." I smiled thinly. "And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get you back."

"I see. Fuck you, too, Tess. I'm not going for it. If you dare try that, I'll have your whole operation exposed and destroyed, and you'll be in jail."

The bitch had called my bluff, but I had my ace in the hole. "Well, dear, there's no need to get nasty about it. Casablanca potato."

It was her trigger phrase, the one that would put her under for me. I could easily get her to come back to me, now.

Unfortunately, instead of falling into a compliant trance, she laughed at me. Loudly. People were staring.

"Oh, Tess, you're hilarious."

"Did you hear what I said? I said--"

"'Casablanca potato', my trigger phrase. And a stupid one, at that, you obscene cow. That's old news, dearie. It was one of the first things I removed."

"You... removed...?"

She was smiling broadly. "Tess, you're incredibly stupid, and it's a wonder you didn't fuck me up seriously with your stage hypnosis. I wasn't about to have you put me in trance again at your whim. There was no telling what else you'd do to my head."

I was stunned. "How did you know?"

"That you'd put in a trigger phrase? I guessed, but I wasn't sure until you told me."

"Told you? You mean when I triggered you to find out where you'd been going at night, you somehow knew?"

More laughter. "No, I faked that night, too. I was never under for you, since that first time." She paused and looked me in the eyes, a smirk playfully gilding her mouth. "You told me in your email, and don't remember a damn thing about it, do you?"

I had no idea what she was talking about...

"Tess, I've been in full ownership of your mind for months. What do you think smart girls do?" She paused and winked. "Well, I suppose they're not all sociopaths like myself. Most of them have grown up smart and well-adjusted to a life of being bright, and of people treating them as bright. Not me," and now she was bitter, "Not me. No, I'm an obsessive, somewhat loony bitch with a brilliant mind, a newfound superiority complex, and a hatred for the people who took advantage of me when I wasn't all that intelligent. That includes my father, that includes most of my old clients, and that includes you."

I said nothing. What did she mean by "full ownership"?

It didn't take long to find out.

"Cognitive science is an interesting field, and I know all about it, now. Adjacent to it is behavioral science, and I learned all about that. I've been told by experts in the field that I have the rough equivalent of PhD knowledge in both disciplines. Or at least I do, now, after fucking the best data out of them. I'm also an expert in several other fields, none of which you'd understand, relating to subliminal messaging and computer-generated signaling. Your PC has been serving as a tool to subvert you almost since the day I networked it. And I got you to forget about emailing me, of course, but I certainly have not forgotten what you wrote.

"It wasn't too long after you altered me that I figured out what must have happened; I was desperate, craving more and more information each day, and coming loudly when I obtained it, and it was obviously not natural behavior. I started looking around on the internet, and found some very interesting sites. Hell, there are even people who get off on reading about hypnosis and other mind control. Fucking sickos. Anyway, I knew you had hypnotized me to be smarter somehow, but I didn't trust you and wanted details, so I ordered you to tell me what you'd done to me while I was in trance."

"Ordered? How?"

"You think you're the only one who comes up with trigger phrases? I programmed your computer, and your computer programmed you. And those fucking bitches Nikki and Maria, for that matter. It's all very simple. When I tell you--"

(And here, whatever it was she said, my nipples stiffened and everything grew fuzzy and surreal...)

"-- you'll go compliant for me and... Oh, I see it's working." I saw her grin through a haze of mushy obedience.

"I'll admit, my first idea was to make you reverse the whole thing, to make me normal again... but, why? Why be 'normal'? Why go through life like everyone else does, stumbling from day to day, year to year, bored out of their skulls? No, I enjoyed learning. Even beyond the orgasms, it felt good. I suspect the orgasms conditioned me to associate learning with pleasure in general, but whatever the source, I'm now long past caring." I saw a look in her eye I normally associated with people in need of a cigarette-- or a crack pipe. "And I wouldn't give it up. I just keep wanting more and more."

Even in my mental state, I think I looked at her like she was nuts. Technically, she probably was.

"And that's how you're going to help me, Tess. You, who never helped any one of 'her girls' unless there was a percentage in it for herself."

"What do you mean, Evangeline?"

"The offshore accounts I set up were not meant for you. I'm taking them. You will keep filling them, and I will drain them whenever I need to."

"But... what...?"

"I need investment capital. I'm starting my own company, and I need to put up some of my own cash or venture capitalists won't even talk to me."

"Your own company?" It was hard to think, to question. "To do what?"

Here she smiled and got a far away look in her eyes. "The eyes and ears can only process so much so quickly, Tess. I've got some ideas on making it all much faster."

I could only guess what she was playing at. "Why do you need my money? These venture... people... Can't you just control them like... like you've done me?" I loved her, why shouldn't everyone else?

She shook her head. "I suppose I could, but it takes too long, and I'd need to know them a lot better. And have control of their entire network or the traffic would be obvious. No," she continued, "I've analyzed the risks, and this is the highest leverage path to what I need. Your cash is mine.

"And you'll keep providing it for as long as I want you to. Won't you?"

"Yes, Evangeline."

"And do your best to hide from anyone who you're really working for?"

"Yes, Evangeline."

"Very good, Tess. You bitch."

I smiled at the term of endearment. There were more instructions, but I don't remember them. I'm sure they were too important for me to know.

* * *

And that's the way of the world, now. It's business as usual, of course: my girls give men what they want, collect the proceeds, and I rake it all in. A substantial chunk of those proceeds is now squirreled away into Evangeline's offshore accounts, for use when she needs working capital (or probably even just a new pair of shoes). I think her investments are more profitable than anything I can provide, and that she just keeps this arrangement going with me because she is vindictive about our former relationship.

Last night I saw a front page spread in the paper which showed a victorious-looking Evangeline, with the caption, "Royton Enterprises CEO reveals new brain implant technology." The article said that Evangeline's company had perfected an interface between the neurons of the human brain and an external computer which could, with some effort, be used to pass information from the electronic system to a person's conscious awareness. The article went on to discuss the potential medical uses of the device in assisting handicapped people, but all I could picture was Evangeline, my Evangeline, with a wire jacked into her skull, data pouring in, and her body coursing with orgasm, repeated over and over, as she learned anything and everything the world of man could provide her.

I wondered what the limit was to how much information the human mind could contain, and how soon she would reach it. I wondered if Royton Enterprises would eventually discover how to let her exceed this limit with offline data storage, or if they'd find her a way to erase what she'd already learned so she could "learn" it again. Her head swiss-cheesed with hardware so she could eke out that one last strand of knowledge and hit the orgasm she craved, as she instructed subordinates to discover more and more ways and things for her to learn.

I wondered, and I fucked myself in front of the computer, this tool which had been used to enslave me. Sick with horror, and lust, I came to orgasm after orgasm at the thought of Evangeline, inhuman, cyborged, knowing everything which could be known.

And wishing she'd let me join her, love her, lick her. She's made me think that, I know, but that only makes it all the more delicious.