She couldn't breathe. Heat crawled up her neck and spread across her face. Her collar felt too tight, like someone had yanked it from behind. Sweat broke out along her hairline and trickled down her temples, making her blouse stick to her back. Meredith's heart hammered so hard she was sure people at nearby tables could hear it.

Meredith’s thighs pressed together. She curled her fingers into her lap, nails biting into her palm, hoping to anchor herself against the ache that threatened to betray her further. She could still see the afterimage of Ava and Rachel’s kiss, and the tangle of limbs and hands, the wanton glisten at the corners of their mouths.

“Excuse me,” she said. She stood abruptly, chair groaning backward with a sound that even startled her.

She needed distance from her own embarrassing inability to compose herself. Meredith kept her gaze on the floor and made for the nearest bathroom.

Inside, the world changed instantly. The air was cooler and sharp with the clean, almost medicinal scent of lemony disinfectant. The lighting was harsh, too honest, and the banks of mirrors multiplied her image into a gallery of flushed, disordered women. Meredith gripped the edge of the sink and stared into the mirror, demanding accountability from her reflection. She looked wild, almost feverish, her cheeks splotched with color, and her eyes glassy and wide and rimmed with disbelief. Her hands were also trembling.

She tried to steady herself by splashing a handful of icy water onto her cheeks, but the chill only made her shudder harder. She pressed her forehead to the glass, felt the coolness bleed into her skin, and willed the intrusive thoughts away. This was already more than she had bargained for.

But that was the power of Mistress Susan, wasn’t it? To make a hypnotic scene out of anything, with barely any effort at all. Meredith remembered the way the hypnodomme had looked at her during that kiss as if daring Meredith to respond, to break or submit or both. It was as if the mesmerizing woman had already mapped out every possible avenue of Meredith’s capitulation and was simply waiting for her to catch up.

A door opened behind her. Meredith stiffened, then forced herself to remain still, determined not to turn around. She stared at her own reflection, rehearsing possible scripts for how to explain her sudden escape from the table.

But there was no need to rehearse. The footsteps that approached were unhurried, heels tapping a rhythm that felt as inevitable as a ticking clock. In the mirror, Meredith watched Mistress Susan enter and close the door behind her. She strode directly up to Meredith, hands planted lightly on the marble ledge.

They locked eyes in the mirror. Mistress Susan’s gaze was calm, almost amused, but the intensity in it was unmistakable.

“Collecting yourself?” Mistress Susan asked.

Meredith tried to answer, but no words came out. She nodded instead, which seemed to please Susan, who simply allowed the silence to expand between them.

“You don’t have to run away,” the hypnodomme continued. "It’s only natural to feel something."

Meredith opened her mouth, closed it, and finally replied, “I didn’t want to make a scene.”

Mistress Susan smiled. “You wouldn’t have. That’s not the scene I’m interested in.”

There was a new tension in the air now, something taut and humming. Meredith was acutely aware of every inch of her body, of the dampness at her temples, and the way her breath clouded the mirror.

Mistress Susan reached out and touched Meredith’s shoulder with a single fingertip. The gesture had the gravity of a command, and Meredith felt any remaining resistance slip away. She let her head drop, eyes closing briefly, as if the touch had flipped a switch somewhere deep inside her.

“Inhale,” Susan instructed quietly, and Meredith complied.

“Exhale.”

Meredith did, and felt her body loosen, as if she were being uncoiled from the inside out.

Mistress Susan’s hand drifted from her shoulder to the base of her neck, fingers splaying gently along the collar. She hooked a finger under the starched band and gave it a slight, deliberate tug, just enough to loosen it and remind Meredith who was in control. The sensation was not just physical, but existential, a soft promise that Susan could orchestrate both discomfort and release, and that Meredith would be subject to both.

“Better?” Mistress Susan murmured.

Meredith nodded, unable to trust her own voice. The trembling in her hands had stopped, but now it was replaced by a different kind of tremor, one that started in her chest and radiated outward, a mixture of anticipation, dread, and desire.

“Good.” 

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Meredith could feel every point of contact: Susan’s hand, the cold edge of the sink beneath her palm, the heated flush in her own face. She was hyperaware, her senses sharpened to a needlepoint.

“You’re wondering what happens next,” Susan said, voice a near-whisper, as if they shared a secret language.

Meredith blinked, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. She nodded, the motion small but utterly honest.

Susan smiled in the mirror, but her eyes never left Meredith’s. “You’ll come back to the table. You’ll sit with the others, and you’ll watch, and you’ll feel all of it. And you’ll remember that this feeling belongs to you, too.” The words were spoken with the air of a promise, a tantalizing gateway into more hypnotic bliss.

Meredith swallowed, trying to steady herself, but the words lodged deep in her bones. She understood, on some level, that this was not a suggestion but a command, that Mistress Susan had seen through her to the place where want and shame bled together and found it wanting.

Susan’s hand moved again, this time to Meredith’s cheek, tilting her face upward so that their eyes met directly in the mirror. The touch was gentle, but the control was absolute. Meredith felt herself falling, falling into those eyes, into the inescapable gravity of Mistress Susan’s will.

In the bright, antiseptic light of the bathroom, it was clear: There would be no escape, only surrender.