Osana had found the others’ reactions curious. She often did, though - Americans just didn’t behave the same way Europeans did, not about some topics - and she’d learned to be careful about voicing her puzzlement until she had some sense what the reaction would be.

Accordingly, she’d gone home after their drinks, and she’d picked up her Switch and distracted herself for a few hours. This was a habit she’d developed a long time ago; the back of her mind would go to work on whatever problem she had without her getting in its way, and all she had to do was occupy her head with something else. It was a satisfying way to make mental progress on a problem.

She had grown up believing that America was the modern land of opportunity, and her friendship had offered her a chance to seize that opportunity when it helped her arrive in the country.

Nonetheless fortune was slow to arrive, and not for want of her trying. Osana had tried to work diligently. She had tried to lean on the connections of her friends. When neither of these had worked within what seemed to her a satisfactory time limit, she had contrived to be visible in places where theatre producers were known to lunch and to drink, while maintaining her efforts in other directions.

Yet for the most part her work was as a nurse to a child who probably had more disposable income at any given time than she did. Saving up wasn’t something she could do if she continued to go out for jobs in entertainment, jobs modelling, anything she could try to push herself closer to a fortune of her own. That was even more the case considering the amount of work she had cut out for her keeping her looks the way she wanted them. Osana watched her diet with a near religious fervour and had a fitness regime she didn’t dare deviate from even for a day.

She was aware that almost all of this was superstition, but the goal was still out there in front of her.

Osana was losing her focus on that goal, she realised. Yet it was hard for her, at that moment, to think of losing focus in that way as a negative.

And if anything, that worried her even more than the loss of focus itself. It spoke of disillusionment. Of frustration.

Osana did not ever want to speak to her parents and have them realise she no longer believed in the goals she had left their country behind for. She wasn’t sure if their reaction would be sympathy, disappointment, or pity. It didn’t matter; she feared all three just the same.

The more she played at her game that night, the more the concern on her friends’ faces stood out in her memory. Distracting herself just wasn’t working.

She set down the Switch and pulled up her phone. One by one, she called up definitions of the words which had puzzled her.

Docile

1. Easily managed or handled

2. Readily trained or taught

Malleable

1. Capable of being shaped by hammering or pressure

2. Adaptable or tractable

Susceptible

1. Accessible or especially liable or subject to some influence, mood, agency, etc.

Suggestible

1. Subject to or easily influenced by suggestion

Many of these definitions were no clearer to Osana than the originals, and she spent some time reading up on each in turn.

Finally she sat back in her chair and tried to compare what she’d learned with what had been happening in the podcast. It was difficult to do; as she’d told her friends, for whatever reasons the words she understood hadn’t stuck in her memory nearly as well as the words she didn’t, and even the basic context seemed somehow tantalisingly out of reach, except that the Voice had become more reassuring to listen to the longer she’d been listening to it.

She was still thinking about this odd fact when she drifted off to sleep…

*

Liv opened her eyes to find herself standing, fully nude, in her kitchen. The lights in the room were on, the blinds were raised, and the windows showed darkness outside.

It had been light the last thing she remembered, which was some short while into listening to her podcast. Too, she had not been in the kitchen.

What had happened in the intervening time, and how had she lost the evening?

She could see her own naked body clearly reflected in her kitchen window. At least, she thought, it wasn’t on the ground floor.

And, of course, at least her body was in pretty good shape, she thought, examining herself thoughtfully now the capacity for thought appeared to have returned to her. Considering her age, and considering how little time she seemed to have for exercise, her diet still kept her looking roughly the way she wanted to.

Liv frowned. That wasn’t right, was it?

She usually tried to avoid thinking about her body in too much detail. Not that this was exactly hard, unless she got into one of the negativity spirals she tried to make sure her friends would never even suspect. But from time to time, if the mirrors in the bathroom weren’t steamed up enough when she emerged from the shower, those negative, harsh, self-critical thoughts would arise without her feeling like she had a way to silence them.

Liv was in her mid-thirties now, but the back of her head still wanted to hold her body to standards she’d set herself a decade and more ago, in her early twenties. Her life was very different, her metabolism slower, and her body itself had been adjusting to a more… comfortable… physique in any case. It wasn’t as if she was meant to still look like that, but she always felt guilty that she didn’t.

Looking at herself reflected in the window, Liv had a new admiration of and appreciation for her own soft, full breasts, even though they sat a little lower than she wanted them to. She focused less on the dimples and the wobble of her thighs and her buttocks, saw instead their shapes and their curves. What she saw was still hot, and the more so for relaxing into and accepting her age.

She had a sudden flash of insight; she wasn’t looking at herself in a new light, she was simply looking at herself the way someone else might. Her rare lovers all seemed to pick up on her dissatisfaction with her looks; many of them devoted more time than she wanted them to in trying to persuade her she was wrong.

She’d always ignored them, knowing that it was her body, and so she had better insight than they; she was right in her evaluation, and they were wrong.

But now she saw herself the way they did.

How had that happened?

Had that started while she’d been unaware?

And shouldn’t she be more uncomfortable that she’d been unaware for some time?

She shook her head, as if she was trying to clear it, but there was a sensation instead of something falling into place, like one of those square-peg square-hole toys very young kids had, where the square peg had been just out of line with the hole and a brisk shake allowed it to fit.

Liv watched her lips curl into a satisfied, sensual smile. Her body began to move of what seemed like its own accord.

She caught sight of her tablet, propped up against the salt and pepper, as she turned away from the window. It caught her eye because her own naked form was showing on the screen, so the camera was on. It was either recording or broadcasting.

Liv was sure that wasn’t something she wanted, wasn’t even something she should be comfortable with. Yet she found herself thinking about it coolly, not upset by the idea at all, and without the curiosity even to wonder how it had happened.

The whole thing felt so dreamlike that it was all but impossible for Liv to believe it was happening - except for the fact there was some strange certainty in her that it was, and that it was important. But that, too, was something you often experienced in dreams.

She seemed almost to watch herself opening the fridge, rather than have any part in it. Her fingers found her milk carton, and she turned back to face her phone. Her lips still wore that sensual, knowing smile, though she felt like she knew nothing at all. But what she showed was more important than what she felt; what she thought mattered less than what was thought of her. And those were the first parts of this alien new mindset she had which felt comfortably like herself.

Part of her success in the workplace had always been driven by her understanding that what your boss thinks of you is more important than any measurable KPI. She took pride in doing good work, but she also took pride in always being the employee her employers would want to see, in being the supervisor those below her would trust.

She wasn’t sure what she was here. The sex object a man might want?

She tilted her wrist and began drenching her breasts with the cool milk from the fridge, feeling it pour off her at all angles from the curve of her chest, her breath catching from the shock of the immersion, and she struck a pose, cocking one hip, pushing her chest out to show it off more.

She found herself hoping that whoever was watching was enjoying the show. If she was now a sex object, she wanted to be the best sex object she could be. To climb the ranks of… of…

The metaphor didn’t hold up. There was no guarantee there would be other objects for her to outperform.

And Liv had virtually no libido of her own.

All the same, she now wanted - wanted as firmly as she’d once wanted to be promoted at work - not just to be a sex object, but to be the best.

She had been experiencing all of this passively, but it was her own decision, while smiling for the camera, to mouth Call me anytime. Then she winked.

It seemed less like a dream the more of it she was doing of her own accord. So long as she followed the path she’d found herself on, it felt more real and more delightful, more delicious.

The tingle of her scalp was euphoric.

The last of the milk dripped from her hard nipple to the floor, and Liv blew the camera in her tablet a kiss, then curtseyed.

“I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did,” Liv purred. It was almost a direct lift of the behaviour of a woman she’d had to fire, a few months ago, the dialogue lifted from her favourite podcast, but she only realised that after she’d finished speaking. To opt into the role of sex object as deeply as she could had been purely instinctive.

She hesitated for a moment, then shut off her tablet. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but she lingered, thinking back over how she had felt throughout.

She wanted to feel that again. Except… why?

There was only really one thing that had changed in her life that could have prompted this, but it made no sense that it would have done.

*

Karin was still in bed, half-asleep, well past the time her alarm went off the following morning.

It was hard to want to get up. Especially given that the alternative involved replaying the Voice’s words in her head and playing with her tits, her soft, welcoming tits that the Voice had approved of so much.

She’d barely stopped for long enough to sleep after the call. It would have felt like she was pushing the terms of her bargain, and that was something she absolutely did not want to do. The longer she’d played, the more tender she felt, so the slower she played, but now she’d reached the point where her whole body was just deliciously sensitive; fondling herself or even writhing under her bedcovers sent pulses of erotic pleasure through her body.

She was working almost on autopilot, only aware of the pleasure she felt, not of the passage of time. Hyperfocused for the first time in her life on her own sensuality.

When at last she stopped, it was something close to psychological exhaustion that made it happen. She lay in the still darkened room, enjoying the afterglow, and thinking about how much things had changed for her, and how little time it had taken for those things to happen in.

She understood now the changes that had visited the characters in the podcast. Simply taking a deal seemed like such a small, basic step; but it carried with it the inevitability of the next mile’s worth of steps.

And now here she was, some distance from the act of giving in, which itself had felt an inevitability after she’d called Lola at just the wrong (right?) time.

She didn’t regret any of it. She wanted more, wanted to plunge deeper, to forsake everything the Voice didn’t need her to retain.

But the Voice had not told her to abandon anything. She thought the Voice had not made a decision, but that was enough reason not to do as she wanted; the idea of making her own choice, based only on her own information and assumptions, didn’t seem like a good one. What if she got it wrong in some way that would cost the Voice something he would later decide he wanted?

That would be no service at all, and having heard Lola address the Voice as Master, Karin found she desperately wanted to do the same. She wanted to serve.

Lola had been so happy to tell the Voice he would enjoy Karin. So eager. Karin now completely understood that eagerness, even if how she’d become so eager made no sense to her at all.

Her thoughts on the matter had been going round in circles for some time when she realised that work was starting far too soon, and she hurried to the shower.

Was there any service, she wondered, that she could offer the Voice without needing to know his wishes beforehand? Was there any way she could show her submission to him without his guidance?

*

As Karin hurried to work, the man behind the Voice was seated business class in a plane, flying out from New York to Louisville. There wasn’t much to his trip, really; he was enjoying relatively newfound wealth supplied by many who had made deals with the Voice, and part of that was going to see events that had always interested him.

In this case it was the Kentucky Derby, where he intended to bet with some of the money his obedient playthings had provided him with, hobnob with the rich and famous, and, possibly most importantly to his mind, pay a call on Tallulah.

Tallulah had been one of the earliest listeners that It Comes at a Price had had. She wasn’t the first one to have reached the point in her indoctrination that had compelled her to reach out to the Voice, but she got there not long afterwards. She had, however, rapidly caught his interest; unlike most of the other first few conquests (outside his core recording cast) Tallulah had disposable income and time on her hands, having recently (she had freely, obediently, confessed) divorced a husband from old Kentucky money, and being old money herself (without which, he gathered, there never would have been a wedding in the first place.)

Tallulah was about ten years his senior, but if he were to be honest with himself (which happened only rarely) he would concede that she was in better health than he was, and certainly better shape, one arrived at through good genes and cosmetic surgery and maintained by dedication to a rigorous physical fitness regimen.

It was when Tallulah first opened a video call to him, unthinking, barely aware, and topless, that he was sure the podcast would pay off with more than his small circle of New York theatrical conquests. It was she, along with four or five of his other first podcast submissives (as he thought of them), who had meant his financial situation had gone from precarious to cockily buoyant.

He hadn’t had a good excuse to get down to Kentucky yet, though, so he’d only actually been able to dally with Tallulah during a trip he’d had her take to New York, and then it had felt slightly uncomfortable being a visible presence in her hotel room.

He was sure he’d have no such misgivings in her home, where real ownership, at least from a decision-making perspective, absolutely resided with him.

Tallulah was waiting for him as he passed baggage claim - not that he had exactly packed heavily; he didn’t figure to be clothed much except at the Derby and on the way back, because who was there to tell him no? - and she had dressed for the occasion, in a not-quite-opaque black silk blouse that, while it didn’t quite cling to her figure, hugged it in enough places to show off her figure, atop a short charcoal grey skirt that he couldn’t believe she hadn’t had to stitch into place over her hips, so tight was it. The black tights were a shade more transparent than the blouse, and a pair of sensible black patent leather heels, not quite too long for comfortable driving.

She’d accessorised by gathering her long, chestnut hair back into a severe bun, adding a bright red tie, and lipstick of the same bright red.

Even after all that effort invested in showing herself off to her best advantage, what nearly stopped him in his tracks was the smile that shone from her face the moment she’d seen and recognised him.

Like every one of his contests he’d met to date, she was so utterly, divinely happy to have been conquered.

That had never been his intention. All he’d set out looking for was control. It had happened that the way he’d found to lock his control around people, to fasten his leashes around their brains, had been through this blend of pleasure and loving devotion.

Tallulah approached him, but she stopped a pace or two short, clasping her hands behind her back - a gesture which, as her shoulders went up and back, did wonderful things to his view - and bowing her head. Unlike Lola, Tallulah didn’t feel she was worthy to meet his eyes; Lola (Tallulah argued) had helped spread his word and his control. All she had done was fund his entertainment.

He stepped in close, cradling her chin with his thumb and forefinger, and lifting her head until she met his gaze. He savoured her nervous blush for a moment, then bent his head to kiss her.

She melted against him hungrily, eager for the kiss, her chest pressed against his in an instinctual gesture of offering. Without direct command, she wasn’t willing to put her hands on him, but he could tell from her posture they were no longer clasped behind her. Instead they hung, helpless, by her side. He slipped an arm of his own under hers, spread the fingers of that hand wide, gripped her by the ass, and enjoyed the sound of her mewling helplessly into the kiss.

He was well aware that they were going to be seen by everyone in the lounge. That didn’t bother him, but it might embarrass Tallulah. He rather thought it was, by the sounds she was making; on the other hand, by the sounds she was making, he knew she was getting off on that in spite of herself.

He could do anything, he thought; anything that wouldn’t get him arrested. If he fondled her tits on the way out people would be shocked, appalled, scandalised; but they probably wouldn’t actually get anyone official involved.

It was very tempting, if only to see just what Tallulah would do.

He handed her his baggage. “Let’s get to the car,” he said.

She bobbed a small curtsey. “Yes, Master,” she said, her voice pitched quietly enough nobody else should hear. He thought about having her repeat it, louder. But all it would do was embarrass her, without actually making him happier.

She turned and led the way out, and he followed close behind. Despite his impulses, he mostly restrained himself, with the one indulgence he permitted himself being a ringing slap on the ass just before they reached the door.

Tallulah squealed and jumped at the impact, but she resumed her dutiful walk to the car without any further reaction. Well, possibly she wiggled her hips a little more as she walked afterward.

“Good to see you,” he said cheerfully once they were out of earshot.

“Thank you, Master.”

“I like the outfit choice,” he continued. “Shows your body off, but still looks professional. And underlines your service role.”

He was walking alongside her by that point, and he was watching her expression from the side as he spoke. There were certain suggestions and wordings that Tallulah had shown especially strong responses to once he started working with her on a one-to-one conditioning level. He’d brought out an exhibitionist streak she’d suppressed all her life. He’d found and cultivated her embrace of submission through service - something, he didn’t yet know, he would find Karin shared with her - and used that to undermine all her old assumptions of life at the top, building it until something she’d had a mild interest in had become a primary fetish.

Now he could see just how effective his work had been as she twitched or bit her lip at all the key words. In three sentences, he’d reinforced her submission, his ownership, and her heightened drive to embrace life as a possession. As a sex object.

God, once they were past a certain point, it was so easy.

“Are you wearing panties?” he asked as they exited the elevator in the parking garage, on the level where Tallulah had left her convertible.

“Yes, Master.”

A quick scan of the level told him it was all but deserted. As they fetched up by her car he said “Give them to me before you get in the car.”

He was expecting some hesitation, but aside from a pinkening of her cheeks, her only reaction was to say “Yes, Master,” and set down his bag so she could hike up her skirt, pause as she contemplated the issue presented by her tights, then rip her tights at the top of each thigh so she could take down both her panties and the crotch of her tights at once.

He wasn’t surprised to see how damp they were before she managed to pull them off. She was about to adjust her skirt down when he said “Get in the car.”

Again, Tallulah didn’t hesitate; with a breathy, needy “Yes, Master,” she switched her direction of motion entirely, opening the door and settling her bare ass down on the black leather seats.

That’ll need cleaning, he thought privately, but all he said was “Good girl.”

Tallulah whimpered audibly as he took a seat of his own. “Thank you, Master.”

“Do you know what you are?” he asked.

“I am bound by agreement, Master.”

He chuckled. “And what are you bound to do?”

“Give pleasure and receive it in turn,” she answered. “Serve, and receive dominance in return.”

“And what does that make you?”

“A pleased pleasure toy, Master.”

“And what does that make me?”

“My owner and my Master, Master.”

He secured his seatbelt. “Take me to your home, then.”

“Yes, Master.”

Once they were out on the open road he reached across, resting a hand on her upper thigh. His fingers traced up to where her tights had been ripped, where the fabric had already started to slip, and then on beyond, to her waiting wetness.

He ran his fingertips lightly back and forth over her pussy lips and only stopped when Tallulah nearly swerved into the next lane. “Oh, well,” he said lazily, sounding amused, “I guess if you’re not up to multi-tasking, you can wait for my cock.”

Her hungry, needy, submissive response was a delight to watch, to the point he almost ordered her to pull over so she could ride him in the passenger seat. The only thing that stopped him was that he’d just told her she’d have to wait, so he held himself back.

*

It had been difficult for Liv to focus on work all morning. The step forward she thought - well, hoped would be nearer the mark - she’d taken with regard to the Voice (and how that made sense she had no idea; the Voice was a fictional character in a podcast, which didn’t exactly make him someone she could be a sex object for. All the same, on an illogical, instinctive level, she felt the Voice was the one watching when she’d performed for the camera) was too firmly on her mind for her to actually pay attention to what she was doing. Added to that was her confusion as to how this was happening, a puzzle she’d attempted to solve the previous night and been unable to. She needed more information than she had, she’d ultimately decided.

Luckily for Liv, she was very, very good at her job, and a lot of the tasks crossing her desk that morning could be done nearly on autopilot.

She was sat pretending to stare at a spreadsheet when her boss walked by and Liv caught her new perfume on the wind. That was enough to jolt Liv out of her quiet thoughts, for the simple reason that her boss didn’t wear scents at work.

Liv’s eyes flicked away from her screen.

Susan was known for power suits, and favoured pantsuits unless meeting with a tremendously conservative client. Today she was wearing a short-skirted suit, short enough that the hem of the skirt was only barely visible beneath the jacket. And when she paused at the printer, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Liv could catch sight of a stocking top when the hem rose up a little.

That just wasn’t like her at all. Liv wondered for only a few seconds before a realisation settled on her with a cold, certainty.

Whatever she’d experienced last night, Susan was experiencing too. And as Liv had only taken up the podcast at her boss’ recommendation, she was probably actually more exposed to it than Liv was.

Which meant Liv might be seeing her own future in Susan.

She watched her retrieve her documents from the printer and make her way back toward her office. Liv waited a few moments, then got up and followed her, Pausing at the doorway, she knocked politely on the frame and entered before Susan could decide she shouldn’t, closing the door behind her.

“Is this important, Liv? You have your job so I don’t need to worry about your department.”

It was a warning, but this was too important for Liv’s job-first instincts to override. “It’s not about that, Susan.”

Susan sat back in her chair, all attention immediately dedicated to Liv. “Go on.”

Liv took a seat of her own. “Are you still listening to It Comes at a Price?”

She’d been looking for any kind of reaction, and she wasn’t disappointed. Susan was immediately wary. “Yes?”

“I’ve been listening too.” Liv drew a deep breath; this was the thing that made her uncomfortable. This wasn’t something she was at all sure she wanted to do.

But while she didn’t want to do it, she knew she had to. “And it’s been… affecting me. Changing me.”

Susan must have anticipated something of this; her reaction was much more controlled. All the same, her eyes showed something. Recognition?

“It’s doing the same to you, isn’t it?” Liv pushed on, but her boss remained silent.

“I’m… not sure I can still stop it,” Liv confessed, and for all her excitement in the way it felt, it was a fear she hadn’t realised was gnawing at her until she’d followed Susan back to her office.

The silence stretched out until Liv was almost uncomfortable enough to give up and leave. Then, with a sigh so heavy that Liv finally understood why novelists mentioned ‘wrenching sighs’, Susan spoke.

“I’m not sure I can still want to,” she said, her voice small, her eyes not meeting Liv’s.