There was, Andrew thought privately, something very reassuring about eye test rooms. Becoming an ophthalmologist hadn’t been his first pick of career; on the other hand, his college French professor was, these days, his obedient live-in lover. Nobody’s plans went exactly as they’d hoped that they would.

That was rather more true when your uncle Greg had passed down a small magical stone that could take over the wills of those he exposed it to, assuming that he had charged it up first and followed through with a ritual, of course.

As opticians went, he wasn’t bad; he’d paid diligent attention through the qualifications, and he had developed a knack for explaining the results he found in ways that made their choices clear.

It would be fair to say, however, that this wasn’t really why he’d pursued this career.

That was all down to the stone. He’d been able to put it into play already several times, and that afternoon he expected to do the same thing again. He’d slept with the stone under his pillow for a while - this recharged its power; he didn’t know how, but the more he raised the topic with his uncle, the more he doubted that his uncle really understood it himself.

Caitlin was booked in that afternoon for a follow-up appointment. Caitlin was an exchange student from Scotland; he didn’t know much beyond that - there’s only so much small talk that can be run through in one eye test - but there was something about the soft burr of her accent that had set the back of his scalp tingling with excitement.

Of course, her figure hadn’t hurt. She stood tall and curvy, her long auburn hair worn apparently casually but (life with Juliet had taught him) almost certainly taking real effort to get like that. On her previous visit she’d been wearing shorts and a belly tee which showed off the intricate tattoos running down her left arm, a black and white sketchbook of animals, and the two lines of poetry set inside a picture frame tattooed on her right thigh. She was, indisputably, a head turner.

Honestly there hadn’t really been any need for a follow-up appointment but by the end of her eye text he’d found a plausible pretext for one, and had told her that the cost would be covered by her first appointment. He’d worked for his firm long enough now to know that the occasional ‘freebie’ was perfectly acceptable.

He didn’t intend to push that too far - this was too good a thing to abandon - but there was at the back of his mind the vague acknowledgement that one day he might be in a position to either take over the practice, Dr. Warner being an older if hale gentleman, or to start out on his own.

When she came through to his office this time, she had adopted the belly top once again, but in place of her shorts she was instead wearing a tartan short skirt.

“Clan tartan?” he asked cheerily. There weren’t many icebreakers about a woman’s appearance or dress that were entirely safe in a professional environment, but this one, he felt confident, should be fine.

“Eh?” Caitlin looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced down at herself and laughed. “Nae, nothin’ o’ the sort. Just a pattern Ah like.”

After the usual half-second of re-running what she’d said through his head to be sure he understood her, Andrew nodded. “Which makes just as much sense. Take a seat, please.”

Caitlin did just that, settling herself in the heavy old chair. “How long will Ah have to wait fuir the finished pair?” she asked.

This didn’t take as long to translate as some of what she’d said did, purely because it was such a typical question to ask. “Usual turnaround time is a little under two weeks,” he said. “But that varies a little. It can be as quick as one week.”

She nodded, presumably satisfied. “That’s fine.”

Andrew smiled and sat down at his desk, within easy reach of her. “Just a last couple of quick checks and we’ll be sorted. Alright?”

“Aye.”

“Alright, then. Have a look at the big board.”

She turned her attention to it, and Andrew opened a small drawer in his desk and took out the stone while her focus was elsewhere. He held out his hand in front of her line of sight, watching as her eyes refocused onto it.

“What’s this, ye daft…”

There could have been, and quite possibly were, some tiny little signs that the magic was beginning to work before the subject’s eyes took on that faint pink sheen. Andrew was never in the most dispassionate mood when he saw it, so he hadn’t exactly made a study of it. He still started to relax properly once the pink was present.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Aye,” she said, her voice soft and faint as if full of wonder. “‘Tis that.”

“Would you like to see it more closely?”

When he’d first done this, he had rushed through this sequence. His first time had been born more from panic than desire, and until he had got used to the enchantment, he’d always worried that they might fight back in some way he couldn’t overcome.

With a little more practice under his belt he was much more relaxed and had developed almost a teasing approach to it all.

“Aye,” she answered.

He brought it closer with a flourish, a sweeping gesture, just so he could watch her eyes react to keep it in focus. “Do you believe in magic, Caitlin?”

“Lot o’ nonsense,” she said promptly, Andrew had the feeling she’d been asked before. But her voice still faltered as she spoke, coping only as best she could with the invading enchantment.

“Even with this in front of you?”

“Ah dinnae know what this is, but Ah dinnae see any reason tae change mah mind.” Again, the firm and forthright choice of words undercut by the weakness of her voice as the magic continued to take hold.

He brought the stone further forward, pressing it against her forehead. Beneath it her pink eyes rolled back until almost nothing of either eye was showing, keeping her gaze in line with the stone even if there was no way she could see it now.

“You hear me,” he said.

“Ah hear ye.”

“You hear me,” he said again, “and you obey.”

“Ah hear ye an’ Ah obey.”

The pinkness in the lower half of the iris he could see grew deeper.

“You feel the stone.”

“Ah feel th’ stone.”

“You feel the stone, and it weighs down your will.”

“Ah feel th’ stone an’ it weighs doon mah will.”

“Caitlin, do you hear me?”

“Aye.”

“And that means?”

“Ah hear ye, an’ Ah obey.”

Andrew smiled. This might not be the quick session he’d promised Caitlin, but he was going to enjoy this version a lot more.

He drew the stone away from her forehead and tucked it back into the drawer. As he returned his attention to her he saw that her head had turned, following the motion of the stone until she couldn’t see it anymore, and now fixed on the drawer.

“Look at me,” he said.

She turned her head to face him. Her eyes still had the pink sheen, and would do for probably another twenty minutes or so. He smiled to himself, and reached out to fondle her nearer breast through her top.

Caitlin sat patiently as he groped her, raising no objection. Andrew suspected that just minutes before, she would have had plenty. But that didn’t matter.

He’d have his fun with her, and then he’d command her to forget what had happened and he’d get on with his life. Simple and effective.

“Enjoy my touch,” he said softly. “Do you hear me?”

“Ah hear an’ Ah obey. Ah enjoy yuir touch.”

He squeezed, and Caitlin made a growl of hungry satisfaction, a possessive, almost primal reverberation. Coupled with the pink glow in her eyes it was startling.

“Stand up,” he said.

“Ah hear,” she answered. “And Ah obey.” And she rose to her feet, effortlessly graceful even as she seemed somehow still and artificial.

Andrew stood with her, close to her. He wasn’t a tall man and Caitlin was a tall woman; when she had walked into his office he would have said she was taller than him. Now he felt as if he was looking slightly down at her. All that has changed was that the confidence with which she carried herself was… not gone, but in abeyance, not absent, but merely switched off.

He slid his hands under her top, ran them up to her bra, pulled its cups down. Her nipples were pierced, he discovered at once, and when he put the tip of a thumb against one bar and pushed it upward, just a minute amount, the faintest echo of that satisfied growl sounded again.

In intrigued experiment he teased both piercings at once. The sound was not as low and not as assertive, not a growl but an accepting groan.

Telling her she obeyed his touch had been a cheat mode, he thought, but he also thought that he would not have needed to tell her that; not doing this. He grinned. “You’re not used to this, are you?”

“Used tae what?”

“Not being in charge?”

“Nae, Ah’m nae.” Her nose wrinkled. “Ah dinnae like it.”

“But you like what I’m doing?”

“Ah enjoy yuir touch.” She was prim and self-contained. He doubted that was her usual reaction.

She was controlled. No. The word his instinct wanted to use was tamed. The thought invigorated him into the passion that was carefully reined in within her.

He pulled her tee off her in a surge of energy, tossing it aside where it rested adorning his computer monitor, then tugged the shoulder straps of her bra down around her shoulder.

Her eyes flicked down to take in his actions, then back up to his face. There was a faint blush to her cheeks now.

“Don’t be nervous.”

*

“Ah’m nae nervous,” Caitlin said. She meant it as a retort, but as had been the case with a couple of her earlier comments, the force had all gone out of it before it reached her lips.

She wasn’t angry, she found. She was puzzled. But it was a peaceful sensation, floating on something soft and fluffy, insulated from reality. Like she was riding on a dream, being carried along.

His fingers traced the outline of her shoulder tattoo and the flesh beneath his fingers quivered. She was enjoying it, much as that surprised her; She didn’t typically like it when someone else took charge. Would assert her own independence and push back hard.

Now here was a man undressing her as she stood in front of him and she was standing still for it, enjoying the feeling of his touch against her skin.

The comment about magic had, she could see, been a bit of a tease. Having denied its existence she wasn’t to be fool enough to also deny what was plainly happening to her. This was magic.

Having finished tracing her tattoo, he put his hand on her thigh, lifted her skirt, slid his hand up higher. He chuckled.

“Get wet,” he told her, one finger pressing against the soft fabric of her panties. She felt her body give in to its building arousal, her pussy slickening, could feel the panties soak through around his finger.

“Ah hear an’ Ah obey,” she told him. She wasn’t imagining it, she decided. He was really enjoying not just that slogan but her voice. Americans loved a brogue, the stronger the better.

It was pleasant to please him, she thought. She couldn’t decide if that was him - he had a confidence that made him somewhat attractive, although given what was happening she wasn’t surprised that he should be so confident - or the magic.

“Kiss me,” he said next. She leaned forward obediently, a little uncertain as to what he wanted.

This was wrong, Caitlin told herself abruptly. She wanted to please him, sure. But you didn’t do that by dithering uncertainly. You were never going to get a good kiss that way.

She lifted her arms, wrapping them slowly but firmly together behind his neck, and pulled him into a kiss, her mouth immediately open but not yielding, passionate and hungry.

Caitlin could always tell when the people she kissed noticed her tongue piercing. Across the board there was a moment of pause; sometimes the kiss held no hesitation, but their body under her hand would tense for just a moment.

It was a mark, she felt, of them realising what they were dealing with. After his hesitation, he moved the hand between her legs; instead of one finger against her wetness he had a thumb against her mound, his other fingers cupping her between her thighs. He started to roll his thumb around in a circle, firm but not pushing too deep.

She had her own moment of sudden still surprise, and was kissing more eagerly afterward.

It didn’t take long before he wanted to push further, and the kiss broke again so he could say - well, could tell her - “Take your panties off.”

And he squeezed, just briefly, with that hand, leaving her writhing in his grip, which was then almost tauntingly withdrawn.

But that was, of course, all to the good; it meant she could herself reach under her skirt and extract her panties, letting them fall to the floor. “Ah hear, an’ Ah obey.” She stepped out of them and as she did he moved past her, unbuckling his own belt.

Sparing a brief glance at the drawer that magical stone had been put away in, she turned back to face him. By this stage he was sat on the examination chair, his pants down below his knees, his cock on full display.

Caitlin had known this surely must be coming, but it didn’t stop this catching her eye. “Ah enjoy yuir touch,” she said again, though the words seemed to come from somewhere she didn’t feel completely in control of.

“You’re going to like this even better,” he told her.

“Ah hear,” she said. “An’ Ah obey.”

He probably hadn’t meant it as a command, but she felt like it was implied. Bracing her hands against his chest, she climbed up onto his lap and wriggled down onto his cock, giving him a friendly squeeze of welcome as she did so.

She was smiling. He was grinning, a hunter in the midst of his victory. It wasn’t unattractive, she thought; certainly this was more fun than she’d expected.

She started him off slow, taking advantage of being on top to set the pace herself, but she knew that pacing would be overruled before long. Welcomed it, in fact. His hands found her hips and he started to guide her, but she was on top of him, milking him, rolling her hips forward as she rose and fell with the flex of her thighs.

Caitlin didn’t keep herself strong and fit for sex, but it was a wonderful side benefit. Looking him in the eye as she rode him, she could tell how much he was enjoying it.

It made no sense to her, but his enjoyment was more important to her than whether or not she enjoyed herself. She was enjoying herself through him. That had never happened before. She wasn’t at all sure she liked it. She thought the spell she was under might be liking it for her.

He pulled her head down for another kiss and she squirmed up against him, a growl of pleasure in her throat. It might be artificial pleasure but she was less and less confident of a distinction. What she knew was that pleasing him felt good, that she enjoyed his touch, that the touch of his cock in her pussy or his tongue in her mouth she enjoyed even more so, the magic and the orders and her own physical satisfaction all rolled together, all combined into her sensation.

Without her conscious volition one of her hands came up and braced against the shirt he was wearing. Her breath coming in quick inhalations through her nose, her mouth vigorously occupied otherwise, her fingers curled against the fabric of his shirt, her nails trailing across them.

He could feel her touch through his shirt, she had no doubt of that; not with the way he redoubled his effort. The chair he was sat in would have made it much simpler to just let her do all the work but he had one hand braced against an arm now and was using that and firmly-planted feet to buck under her, driving her upward with every thrust of his hips.

Caitlin cackled into his mouth, delighted above all to have driven him to these heights. There could be no better proof that she pleased him beyond all his expectation, she thought, and the thought was satisfying.

When their lips broke from the kiss she buried her head forward into his neck. Her teeth nipped at his skin and she felt a shudder of excitement pass up his spine.

She would have done more, but it was all too easy to imagine he might not be happy to leave his office and walk out past the receptionist with the marks of her attention visible on her neck. She did not want to displease him.

It was the only thing that stopped her. Instead she put her focus onto his cock, her whole body dedicating itself to wring every last drop of pleasure from him that she could.

When at last he grunted and clutched her closer, Caitlin felt the warm satisfaction of a job worth doing done well. She let herself settle against him for a moment; in her experience it didn’t do to show how energised sex had made her when it so often seemed to take it all out of her male partners. Better to let herself feel what they felt in those moments, and she was sure he was feeling something wonderful in any case.

They were still resting there quietly when, a minute and a half later, the building’s fire alarm went off.

*

Andrew jerked back into high adrenaline from the peaceful lull he’d been enjoying, his latest conquest dozing in his arms. “Shit!”

Getting up from the chair was complicated at first by the woman on his lap, but fortunately Caitlin proved to be quick on the uptake and was already scrambling to her feet.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he said, “or someone’s going to wonder…” His attention was on his pants, pulling them back up hastily, making sure his shirt was tucked in and he was as presentable as he could be. Caitlin was bustling by his side.

“Ah willnae get ye in trouble,” she said, her voice soft and reassuring, the confidence that had struck him on first meeting her reasserting itself fully. “That wouldnae be verah good thanks fuir what we just did.”

He was too hurried to run her words back through his head more slowly. “Yeah,” he said, without clearly listening. “Are you presentable?”

“Aye.”

“This way, then.” He scooped up the tiny backpack she’d worn and passed it to her, ushering her to the door, and they joined everyone else in filing out of the office and into the car park. He rubbed absently at his neck where her teeth had grazed him and hoped he wasn’t too obviously marked.

*

“You were with the young Scottish girl when the alarm went off, weren’t you?” asked Elise as the staff filed back in, a half hour later.

“Yes,” Andrew said. He was instantly on alert; Elise had a sharp eye for the goings-on of the clinic, and this wasn’t the first time he’d wondered if she knew something. “Why?”

“Lots of tattoos,” she said. “Probably a few piercings, I shouldn’t wonder. Very interested in body modification.”

“I suppose so,” Andrew said heavily. This just felt judgemental.

“Is there something like that for people’s eyes?”

“Uh, what?”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing,” Elise said, pausing at the door into her reception cubicle. “Just for a few moments out there, before we sent all the patients off, I could have sworn her eyes were pink.”

He hadn’t expected this specific moment, but something along these lines had always been a risk. Andrew gave as hearty a laugh as he could muster under the circumstances and gave his prepared line. “I just gave her an eye exam,” he said. “I think I would have noticed.”

He had been fairly confident of its effectiveness - it certainly had the force of logic behind it - but this was its first proper test and he was nervous as he waited for her response. He could see her mulling it over. “Hm.” She said at last.

“Maybe it was some trick of the light,” he suggested.

“Maybe.”

She was trying to sound skeptical, but Andrew knew the thought process. It can be hard to admit you must have been mistaken. Before you walk it back internally, it’s almost essential to put on a front. Sometimes you could hear in someone’s voice that they just hadn’t admitted it yet.

He was breathing a sigh of relief to himself about that when he walked back into his own office, where his eyes were immediately drawn to the panties lying on the floor just in front of his chair.

He flushed, and scurried across the room to scoop them up and tuck them into the same drawer where he kept his stone.

This done, he dropped into the computer chair for a moment and waited for his heart rate to steady and slow again. It was only then that he realised he hadn’t erased her memory.

He leaned back, closed his eyes, and groaned out “Oh, fuck my life…”

*

The rest of the day kept Andrew busy, which wasn’t uncommon. Really the office was understaffed, but as it does everywhere, this manifested itself as far more appointments for the people actually present.

As much as he’d wanted to pull up Caitlin’s file and jot down her phone number, he hadn’t had the chance. To make matters worse, it was Elise’s turn to lock up on the duty roster. There was no flexibility, no working late, no extra-five-minutes-to-check-something when she was handling lockup. Any extra moments he got always had to be used collecting the stone (and, in this case, he had also pocketed Caitlin’s panties, just in case the office cleaners went through drawers as he sometimes suspected).

He was in the car leaving the parking lot without having had the ability to find contact details for Caitlin. Which meant he could either go loiter round campus and hope he saw her before security decided they were curious about him, or he could write off that night as a wash for finding her and hope nothing would go wrong with her remembering what had happened overnight.

He decided that while worried, he wasn’t desperate enough to waste an evening making a whole separate scandal more likely. In turn that meant driving back home, and that meant Juliet. And that meant he couldn’t help but smile.

Technically, it was Juliet’s home. She had taken the lease before the two of them even met, and she’d been happy enough - more than happy enough - to start the buying process on his command, oh, a couple of years ago now.

He’d moved in unofficially very early on, but he’d only started using it as his address once he’d graduated and there was no longer anything improper about their outward relationship.

Propriety and impropriety, of course, were defined by society, and society didn’t really have a good way of assessing the relationship he and Juliet actually had, that of a master and his enchanted live-in slave. The stone had enthralled her and ever since then his pleasure had been the purest source of her own.

Thankfully, relearning English had not been as big a challenge as he’d originally feared she would find it. Equally thankfully, reasserting her free will was either too great a challenge for her or simply one she had no interest in beating.

She was waiting for him as he let himself in the front door, standing in the hallway.

In one hand she held a bottle of his favourite beer, wrapped in a chiller sleeve. Her hair was gathered back and tied up in a long ponytail, something he’d remarked on enjoying once. Ever since, she’d styled it that way as soon as she was going to be alone with him, every time.

Her choice of clothing changed daily, though there were a few old favourites that made regular appearances. That day she was wearing a pair of soft jean-look flannel pyjama shorts which, on her physique, clung and defined the curves of hips and buttocks as if she was wearing booty shorts. She also wore a lacy red bra, decorated in the cleavage with a bright pink bow.

The two items didn’t look like they belonged in the same outfit, but they showed her off and gave her at the same time a soft domestic appearance that Andrew loved to see, so he had no objection.

“Bonsoir, m’sieur,” she declared prettily, her knees and hips bobbing in a curtsey as she did so, her eyes demurely downcast. “How was your day?”

He closed the door behind him - one day, he feared, he would delay that moment too long and a neighbour would see how she dressed for him and speculate - and stepped forward, cupping her chin in his hand and lifting her lips to his.

They kissed without further conversation, losing themselves in one another’s lips. His arms found themselves around her, her free arm slid across the small of his back, holding him to her.

Andrew had not dreamed, to begin with, that turning someone into an obedient loveslave could blossom into the kind of warm affection which, so far as his experience taught him, many couples never actually managed to hit. After some years to settle into it, he found that the idea made perfect sense.

Couples that were happy together were couples which shared enough pleasures and whose frustrations didn’t clash with one another. Juliet’s pleasures were all rooted in pleasing him, and it was impossible for anything he did to truly frustrate her. As the months rolled by, she hadn’t just recovered her grasp of the English language; she had come to recognise these facts for herself.

Once they had properly kissed, both of them feeling the tensions and frustrations of the working day seem to fall away as they did so, she took a step back and offered him the beer bottle. Andrew took it gratefully; Juliet moved behind him to remove his jacket.

She went through the pockets as she hung it up. Drawing out the stone, she kissed it with the reverence born-again faithful show their crucifixes, then set it aside - she would ensure it was under his pillow to charge again before they went to bed that night.

Then she drew out a pair of panties, which raised a smile. She tucked them into the hip of her shorts so that they hung down the side, a trophy on display. It was her experience that Andrew was very easily excitable on days he’d had a new conquest, and she hoped to provoke his excitement again.

“How was the girl today?” she asked, pausing at the doorway to the lounge, where Andrew was by now sprawled comfortably over most of the sofa, enjoying having been able to put his feet up for the first time that evening. At her question he blinked several times, then sighed.

“Ah, fuck,” he murmured.

She slipped into the room immediately, her eyes on him, her other tasks forgotten. She quickly took up position by the side of the sofa, resting her hands on his shoulders for a moment. When he didn’t brush her away she quickly began massaging his shoulders. There was a surprising amount of tension in here, she thought, tension she hadn’t noticed at first.

“She was great, actually,” he said after a moment. “But we got interrupted.”

“Oh, dear. Was there enough charge in the stone left to solve that?”

“Huh? No… not interrupted like that,” he said. After a quiet moment he continued. “Like you say, that would probably be fine if the stone held enough charge. No, we were interrupted by a fire alarm just after we finished up.

“She left the area before I could make her forget.”

“Oh.” Her hands continued to massage his shoulders. Juliet fell quiet, deep in thought. Andrew, also preoccupied with his own thoughts, didn’t notice her reticence.

Juliet was remembering how she had felt when first affected, and during the comedown after the spell’s peak effectiveness finally subsided. That burst of confusion, surprise, the blossoming of obedience, the growing feelings of submission which had surrounded it all as Andrew gained the confidence to take what he wanted of her.

He had done his level best to keep her where he could see her and give her direct orders as needed. If she’d been left to her own devices, she could easily have created problems, ether for him (she shuddered at the idea; that would never do) or, just as simply, for herself.

She wondered about the girl who had taken her master’s fancy, and who was now wandering around with a submissive urge to serve someone she only knew from his place of work.

How would she feel about it? What would she be doing?

Juliet took it as a point of faith that in all the ways that mattered save the most important of all, she was unchanged from the woman she had been before she was enthralled. It would have been a difficult challenge for her.

She knew nothing about this latest conquest except that she was a college student and, of course, Juliet had some idea of her taste in panties.

She hoped the woman was taking it all better than she would have done.