Mistress Susan’s grip was firm as she guided Meredith back to the table where Ava and Rachel were waiting. The surrounding ambient noise rushed back, but Meredith wasn’t distracted by the clinking glasses and muted conversations of the other attendees. All she wanted to know was what was going to happen next. Her pulse thrummed in her ears.
The other two women sat exactly as they had been, their postures unchanged. They, too, were curious, already anticipating another delightful game from their hypnodomme.

Meredith felt Susan's hand slide from her elbow to her back, a subtle pressure that meant: sit. She sank into her chair, hyper-aware of the fabric against her skin and the potential weight of gazes she couldn't quite meet.

“Where were we?” Mistress Susan asked, as if nothing remarkable had occurred.

“We should finish eating, yes?” Rachel noted. “Lunch time is almost over.”

“You’re right, my dear,” the hypnodomme nodded. “Speaking of eating, you need to try this dish, Meredith. It’s absolutely divine!”

Mistress Susan's fork glinted under the soft lighting as she speared a delicate morsel from her plate. The plate held something that looked both elegant and mysterious - pale and glistening, with a hint of something amber-colored drizzled across the surface. Meredith was temporarily confused. She thought she knew everything that was being served that day, but apparently not. Then again, Dominic had overseen the final catering demands, so…

She looked at the bite being offered and was surprised that so small a thing had such a staggering effect in her mind. Her mouth went dry.

“Take it slowly,” Mistress Susan instructed. “Really experience each moment.” 

The words weren't just about the food. Meredith recognized the layered command but avoided thinking about it. Her hand trembled slightly as she leaned forward.

The first bite touched her tongue - cool, then warm, with complex flavors that bloomed gradually. Salt. Something herbal. A whisper of sweetness underneath. Meredith closed her eyes, letting the taste spread across her palate exactly as Susan had suggested: one careful moment at a time.

When she opened them again, another bite followed, Mistress Susan’s hand never quite leaving Meredith’s. Her cool fingers grazed the skin between Meredith’s thumb and index finger.

This time the fork held something darker, a complex nugget with a glistening sauce clinging to its edges, and the scent - earthy, sweet, and almost feral - rose to meet Meredith’s face as it neared her mouth. She let her lips part, more readily this time, and felt the unsteady pressure of Susan’s palm urging her onward. 

The flavor struck harder than before: a wave of umami, edged nearly with bitterness, softened by something creamy that lingered long after the mouthful was gone. The transitions, from texture to taste to aftertaste, seemed to detach from the passage of time, and Meredith felt herself flinching at how rapidly the sensations overtook her.

She heard the clatter of cutlery from somewhere to her left, a discordant echo, but the noise was remote, muffled as if behind a thick pane of glass. Her peripheral vision softened and wobbled. The only real clarity was the face before her.

Meredith’s mouth, still buzzing from the previous bite, opened again on cue when Susan drew the fork away and replaced it with another morsel, this time a wafer-thin slice of something translucent and luminous, tinged with gold and resting on the tip of her tongue like a coin of sunlight.

“Good girl. You love to do as you’re told,” Mistress Susan intoned softly, and the words struck Meredith’s ear with the gentle force of an inarguable fact. There was a cadence to Susan’s voice, a hypnotic music that seemed designed to bypass any skepticism or resistance. It was the same tone she had used earlier, during the demonstration, but here it was even more potent: a private message, delivered directly into Meredith’s soul. 

Instantly, her shoulders slackened and her breath deepened. She chewed carefully, as if the act itself were an act of worship or devotion. Each muscle in her jaw moved with exaggerated slowness, the food melting away, its essence leaving a tang on her palate that seemed to echo the taste of Susan’s command.

She was falling again. Deeper. Harder. As she sank, she had a moment of clarity, a flash where she understood that the meal had become a sacred-like ritual. Each bite was not merely sustenance, but a lesson pressed into her by Mistress Susan’s will. The more she ate, the less agency she seemed to possess. Her thoughts were not taken from her, not exactly, but they became translucent, insubstantial, like the thin golden sliver Mistress Susan had just fed her. She could observe them floating by, but could no longer claim them as her own.

Another bite, and another. This one was hot, a burst of pepper and oil that shocked her tongue and burned a pleasant path down her throat. She swallowed quickly and felt a wave of warmth radiate outward from the center of her chest. 

Susan continued to feed her, never hurrying, always watching. The intervals between bites were perfectly timed, allowing Meredith to catch her breath, to anticipate, to surrender fully to the next phase of flavor and command. More words filtered in: “That’s it. Eating and falling. Falling and surrendering. Surrendering and obeying.” The instructions layered themselves onto her experience until Meredith could not distinguish between the taste of food and the taste of obedience. Each time she thought she had reached a plateau of submission, Susan raised the stakes and drew her a little further down the spiral.

At some point, Rachel and Ava resumed eating, but even their movements seemed synchronized with the rhythm Susan had set. Cutlery lifted and dipped, wineglasses were tilted, but the focus of the table remained Meredith’s small, exquisite humiliation. She became aware of the heat rising in her cheeks, the delicate sheen of sweat forming at her hairline. She tried to speak, to break the spell with some banal comment, but the words caught in her throat and dissolved before they reached her lips.

Susan smiled. The gesture was gentle, almost maternal. “No resistance, just trance. Food for the mind you can’t get enough of…” she said, and the phrase rippled inside Meredith, unlocking something deep and pliant in her core.

Bite followed bite, the food now indistinguishable, a blur of texture and taste. The table, the people, the very room itself dissolved into a single point of focus: Susan’s eyes, steady and bright. Meredith was transparent now, her boundaries fading, until the concept of “self” was less a fact and more a suggestion, one that Susan could edit or erase at her whim.

“You will obey me, Meredith,” Mistress Susan declared as she set down the fork, and the conference organizer’s expression became completely blank.