2012

Once upon a time, there was nothing Evelyn had loved so much as a big gala dinner. On the arm of her husband, Senator Raines, she’d attended so many; for his and her benefit, she’d hosted dozens. You didn’t get to be a Senator or a Senator’s wife - and Evelyn didn’t know a single Senator who didn’t work as a team with their wife, even if they’d fallen out of love - without attending big events more or less non-stop.

Galas were some of the best, because people who weren’t yet used to playing the game would feel like the rules didn’t count there. You could find out all kinds of information at a gala without ever asking and without anyone realising you knew, just by eavesdropping.

Evelyn’s love for gala dinners had been waning a few years earlier, along with her love for her husband. She had been much more interested in one of their hired help, physically; spiritually she had become numb. It had been hard for her not to feel that they had already achieved everything they could; what was left was maintenance, and she had not cared for that like her husband did.

Six years ago her home had been invaded by a curvaceous mad scientist, her assistant practically spilling out of her maid costume, and a bevy of buxom brainwashed superbabes. Evelyn hadn’t exactly been in a position to kick them out, and had rapidly found herself in a deep hypnotic state.

Perhaps the biggest humiliation, as Evelyn had seen it, had come when she was compelled to stand completely still while the scientist fucked her lover in front of her eyes. Even by then, though, Evelyn’s own self-absorbed outlook had been beginning to crack. Something inside her had recognised she wouldn’t be escaping from that encounter mentally unscathed, and perhaps that part of her had been finding ways to give in easily, in case the struggle might be worse.

During her reprogramming, she had learned that she’d been paid for by her own husband. Whether he’d suspected her affair, sensed that her heart was no longer in it, or just wanted more control over her and decided to take it while he had the means to do so, Senator Raines had paid the scientist’s own Master to brainwash Evelyn into a devoted slave, once again becoming not only his perfect helpmeet in the political arena, but also a willing, devoted, and ever-horny loveslave.

And so Evelyn now was, with one exception unsuspected by her husband; while she was her husband’s slave, her true Master was one Doctor Bimbeau, the man who had designed the control techniques used on Evelyn alongside the scientist who’d come to visit - and who had brainwashed that scientist, Doctor Kraft, in turn. She was loyal to her husband in almost every way, and her passion for the game of politics was back; but if her true Master ever needed her, or if her own judgement said that her husband and her Master had opposed interests, she would work for Doctor Bimbeau in a heartbeat.

She had never met him, but she had been conditioned to the point that he owned her, that his presence dominated her force whenever she was not active on her husband’s requirements. He had resculpted Doctor Kraft’s body, with tits that looked unreal but were not, long legs, thick thighs, and an ass that didn’t require hypnotic compulsions to make you want to worship it. In her turn, she had adjusted Evelyn’s own body, making her something closer to her husband’s desires. Privately, Evelyn hoped one day her true Master would call on her and require the use of her.

That would be the ultimate submission to her ultimate owner, after all.

She was up on the balcony of the great hall, her long blue ballgown clinging to her chest and her rear in a way it had slowly stopped doing, despite her best efforts in the gym, over the past decade. Now, with her body remade as well as her mind, she was displaying it proudly once again, enjoying the mutterings about cosmetic surgery she sometimes heard from the jealous in her wake.

“Evelyn!”

Evelyn turned and beheld Penelope Rutherford striding toward her. The two had been to college together at Mount Holyoke, where both had made no secret of their intention to enter the world of politics; of course, it was the family business for both of them, and so this was perhaps not so surprising.

Their paths had diverged when Evelyn decided the role of a politician’s wife was the surer path to power, while Penelope had remained single. Still wielding her sexuality as a weapon, Penelope had over the decades still given Evelyn too few clues to have any confidence about her friend’s preferences. Rumours of affairs abounded but all appeared to be based on political advantage rather than pleasure.

Penelope was a good three inches taller than Evelyn which became four inches at formal occasions like these, where Penelope would dare anything in terms of heel height to give herself the psychological advantage; this was also why her long blonde hair was gathered up into an artistic construction atop her head. Her gown was a light purple and, while nobody would comment on it, the lines of the dress confirmed inbuilt corsetry in the gown.

Evelyn received Penelope’s outstretched arms with a welcoming embrace and the two kissed each other’s cheeks. “How good to see you again,” Evelyn said cheerfully. She found her meetings with her lifelong friend a little more challenging nowadays; there had been a time once where she would happily have told Penny anything, kept no secrets from her. Since her conversion, of course, one particularly important secret had to be squirrelled away.

“You too,” Penny smiled. “Are you going to tell me your beauty secret yet?”

Evelyn smiled warmly. “One day, perhaps,” she said. Penny had been able to tell that what had happened to Evelyn, whatever it was, couldn’t be called cosmetic surgery. Fortunately, she had no way to guess what kind of advanced technology would be needed. “We should talk later, though.”

Penny’s eyes gleamed. “Absolutely. I have some things to raise that would be of real advantage to your husband…”

*

The gala had gone very well, all things considered. A number of powerful people had expressed gratitude to Evelyn for hosting, and her husband was swaggering around with a renewed sense of his own importance, which made Evelyn glad.

Tables had been cleared from the main floor, and the band played on, but many attendees had moved on, including the majority of the most important. Her husband now outranked everyone else in attendance, and he and Evelyn were only still in place themselves because they were the hosts and had to stay.

Evelyn would go down and enjoy herself on the dance floor soon, but for the moment she was watching the order of departure from an upper-floor window. She liked to do this; it gave her a better sense of where people thought they were in the pecking order.

That was rarely if ever where they actually were, but knowing what people thought was still useful.

She caught sight of Penelope walking down to the low walls at the edge of the grounds. There was security in place at the gateway, and some people were getting into their cars before they even reached the walls; others had relied on private cars, and Penelope was one of those; usually she’d leave one function and hurry away to another, and it was easier for her to use vehicles provided by her next host than to retain a driver of her own.

Well. Easier wasn’t the word, Evelyn corrected herself. It was one fewer expense, and Penny played the political game for money. Privy to Penny’s plans, Evelyn expected that Penny would leave politics behind in a year or two and, one way or another, start a family; her goal had been the kind of money where generations of a family wouldn’t have to work unless they wanted to. A safety net for her children, of a kind that her cousins hadn’t had.

Penny usually left the function when she summoned her car to the next location; it was her way of avoiding any new, long conversations that could interrupt her schedule.

Evelyn watched Penny reach the gates in the wall, step outside, and come to a halt. She could just about see Penny fumbling in her bag; doubtless her friend would have her phone out.

*

Penelope was still getting used to her iPhone having a ‘virtual assistant’. Most of her counterparts were still relying on paper diaries or, if they were a bit more advanced, a Google Calendar, but Penelope couldn’t shake the feeling that ignoring Siri was ignoring something that could be really useful in future.

She didn’t trust voice commands, though.

She paged her way through the menu of installed apps, looking for her email, when she heard a vehicle pull in to a halt beside her, heard the handbrake applied. Surprised, she looked up; in front of her was a white van, no windows in the back, no business logos. Completely out of place in the neighbourhood, Penelope thought, as the side door slid open and a young man hopped out.

He had long brown hair tied back in the sort of ponytail you got when you didn’t actually care how it looked but just wanted your hair out of your face. He wore dark blue coveralls with a logo picked out over the breast in red. You pretty much had to be as close as Penelope was to notice anything about him that wasn’t interchangeable.

He raised a hand directly in front of her, and Penelope caught sight of an intricate web of thick black lines tattooed down that arm, a tiny fraction poking out beyond the coveralls sleeve. He’d said nothing.

At this point, the quick mental calculus women have to run whenever approached by a man on the street told Penelope this was not only suspicious but that she was the only likely target. She shifted her grip so she could get her pepper spray from her bag, but something was happening.

The tip of the man’s finger took on a glow, a soft yellow shine that, once her eyes flicked to it, was hard to look away from. He moved his hand in an arc, and it was now clear that it wasn’t his finger that was glowing; instead, even less likely, but inescapably what was happening in front of her, a curved line glowed in the air.

Penelope was still fumbling for her pepper spray when the man suddenly reversed his direction, drawing a horizontal line under the curve. He made several more quick passes as Penelope’s fingers became useless, nerveless, failing to register anything they touched, failing to grip anything she might have taken hold of, and then her hand stopped moving entirely without Penelope’s intent.

Her jaw was slackening, her eyes locked on the glowing sigil hanging in the air, and her limbs were growing sluggish. The man in front of her completed tracing the arcane shape and it hung in the air without his hand, glowing golden, then orange, then red, then pink, and then Penelope’s vision went entirely pink as her eyes rolled back into her head and her limbs, no longer frozen, instead flopped like a puppet with her strings cut.

The man caught her, twisting her round and turning her somehow as she fell, so that she stopped with her back against his chest, his arms under hers, his hands on her tits. Penelope was dimly aware of a sudden shock of arousal and the sense of movement. She half-heard the sound of the van door sliding shut. Anything more than that was beyond her.

*

Evelyn was too far away to make out any clear details, but what she did see was unquestionable. Her friend had just been abducted, and from the way she’d collapsed, she’d been knocked out somehow.

Penny had money, but that money was controlled by her; nobody else had access. If you knew who she was, the only reason to grab her would be to either stop her doing what she did, or to get her to do it for you.

Evelyn pulled out her phone and dialled 911. First things first; the police might be able to solve this. Especially when the commissioner was about to find out there was a big fundraiser in it for him.

*

There was something in her mouth.

Coming slowly back to consciousness, Penelope was aware of a dull ache at her jaw, her mouth open around… something. She reached up to - well, no. She didn’t. She tried to move her hand and it would only move so far, and that brought Penelope to full awareness.

She was lying sprawled on her front, her hands behind her, and the reason they could only move so far was that her wrists were tied together. She wriggled her knees up under her and rose, eyes opening, looking around her.

This was someone’s living room, and not someone with a huge amount of taste, she thought; the walls were a dark red, the lights not really bright enough for that, and in place of art, on the wall were a pair of titty posters and a map of DC and its surroundings.

Her feet weren’t restrained. It wasn’t easy to stand up with her hands behind her back, but she managed it. Looking down at her rumpled ballgown she could see one of her own breasts had either popped free or been tugged out of its covering. No wonder she felt so sore.

She turned a full circle within the room. There was only one door out, but that didn’t catch her attention nearly so much as the mirror on the dresser beside it.

The reason her jaw ached was that someone had gagged her. Some kind of kink gag; a pink cylinder with grooves in it.

The grooves seemed to be channelling her saliva into drool.

All thoughts of escape deserted Penelope. She couldn’t possibly be found like this. It would end her career.

And what was she, apart from her career?

Penelope had let everything else go in her efforts to rise to the top. She’d told herself over and over again that there would be time to focus on other things once she was ready to leave politics behind, once she’d accomplished everything she had to accomplish.

Being found wandering the streets, her hands bound behind her, gagged, her body partly exposed… there would be no coming back from that. She was a woman lobbyist, not a Congressman.

The first priority was just getting herself unbound. She was assessing the room again for anything with sharp edges, more than prepared to put movies’ advice to rub rope against edges until it snapped to the test, when the door opened.

Without the coveralls on over his band T-shirt and skate shorts, the man who’d grabbed her looked very different; she wouldn’t have overlooked him like she had if he’d still been dressed like that, completely out of place in the area. Behind him was another man with similarly long hair and scruffy beard and a woman, shorter, pouty, her hair cropped close and undercut, but the three of them seemed to fit together. Stoner chic, Penelope would have called it, dismissively.

She could hardly dismiss them now.

She glared at them, wishing she wasn’t gagged. If she wasn’t, she was sure she could talk her way out of this. She’d start by asking them what they thought they were doing, and negotiate from there.

Not that she couldn’t guess their goals anyway. She got warnings about people like this every so often. Young people with views that weren’t represented in government, freshly discovering that lobbyists existed, would often try to persuade lobbyists their jobs were a perversion of democracy. That corporations and rich people shouldn’t be able to pay for the ear of politicians. Mostly this was a peaceful, low-key protest.

Sometimes there would be an attempt to directly debate. And very occasionally, a warning would go out from DC police that activists believed to be willing to commit criminal acts were in town, and those lobbyists whose usual patterns opposed theirs should take care.

Penelope had never found good reason to take care at these times. These idealists rarely had anything in the way of criminal experience and were no match for the local police.

If the man who’d grabbed her hadn’t… hadn’t…

Well, Penelope wasn’t at all sure what he’d done, but he’d done something.

And now he was smirking at her. “Right on time,” he said. Penelope was used to people trying to make out they knew more than they did. She could usually hear something in their voice that gave it away. This guy wasn’t faking anything. He wasn’t bluffing. He might not be right about what he knew, but if so, he’d guessed correctly.

Suddenly she wished she hadn’t written off escape. Penelope was finally scared, wondering if these three had more in store for her than a ‘shape up and stop lobbying’ visit.

She kicked out at the man in front, landing a disoriented, off-balance, hit in the inner thigh. He grunted and dropped to one knee. Penelope surged forward, but the people behind him caught her arms by the elbow, and she wasn’t in a position to do much more than kick out at them, and not from an angle with a solid connection.

She tried. Oh, how she tried; attempting to squirm and struggle free. The others held her firm, and she couldn’t kick well to her sides, not in the ballgown she was wearing.

When she got out of this, she told herself firmly, she’d start evaluating her future wardrobes in terms of feasibility for escapes. She’d hire a personal defence trainer. All the things she’d felt her money and influence kept her clear of.

Tears filled her eyes, and the man she’d kicked, now behind her, said “Turn her around.”

The other two spoke for the first time in Penelope’s presence. Their voices were soft and low and gave the curious impression that they’d somehow been muted. “To hear is to obey,” they both said, and they said it in unison.

Penelope was yanked by the arms, roughly handled, spun around so quickly she was disoriented for a moment afterward. She turned her head to look at the woman, disconcerted by the way they’d spoken.

In the centre of each of the other woman’s pupils was a single glowing red pinprick.

Penelope’s breath caught in her throat and she found herself staring. Eyes didn’t do that. Eyes didn’t do anything like that, even under the right lighting conditions to make them seem to shine in various ways. And besides, this was none of those. The pinpricks of light were in the eye.

The other one, the leader, took her jaw in his hand and turned her head to face him. He was glowering, his expression one of a man who felt himself unfairly tested.

“You’d be a lot better off just staying quiet and letting things happen,” he said firmly. “Now, I’m prepared to let this slide. Just once. Only once can I, nor will I, let you slide on something like that.

“You’re big into plans, aren’t you, Ms Rutherford? Laying plans, making plans, being paid to get politicians to stick to the plan. Well, if I tell you I have a plan, you’ll hopefully understand that I’m really not fucking around.” He glowered. “Do you understand?”

The noise she made around her gag was inarticulate and uncomfortable. She tilted her head, opened her eyes wide. Mimicking pleading, but it was also a prompt. Penelope had spent long enough talking to people to have learned several ways to coax people into doing things without coming out and saying it.

When the other person in the conversation believed they were in a position of power, there were things you could do that just invited an explanation. A gloat, even. And most of the time, people didn’t even recognise they were reacting to something.

“You’re going to be a good little asset,” he said. “You’re going to get a few line items into a few bills. Just like you do usually. That’s all.” His eyes flicked down to her bare breasts. “Well, OK, maybe that’s not exactly all.” He smiled. “But that only has to happen if you want to.”

Fat chance of that, Penelope thought. For the first time she was grateful for her gag; it kept her from blurting out that thought. She shifted slightly, thinking she could still get out of this all right. And then once she was away, once she was back to dealmaking, she’d be out of their reach; she could go to security, she could turn them in.

It was strange they couldn’t see that.

He raised his other hand and held it up, one finger extended, the fingertip level with her eyes. Something began to glow at its tip, but this time the glow was a deep red, like the embers of a log fire.

It was the exact same glow as the pinpricks in the other woman’s eyes… wasn’t it?

Penelope tried to look, to check, but although her head would turn, her eyes stayed fixated on the red glow at his fingertip; she found, too, that she couldn’t turn her head so far that she couldn’t see that glow with both eyes. It wasn’t the eerie immobility she’d experienced before, but something stranger and less pleasant; she felt she was being restricted, somehow, though that made no sense. How would that even happen?

He started to move his finger, and the glow became a trail. This close, and without the sound of a running engine nearby, Penelope could hear something as it moved, a quiet hum.

Her breathing was slower and deeper as the man continued to trace his design in the air. “Of course,” he said, “I can’t exactly just trust you not to run to the cops, can I? That’s OK, though. You might already notice some changes.”

The people who’d been restraining her had released her arms. Penelope could turn and run. Except that she didn’t. Except that she couldn’t. Her body was free, but her… her self was restricted. There was only one thing she could do, which was to stand and watch.

It was a strange feeling, an impossible one, and her spine was tingling, her scalp seemed to be fizzing, and - to her shame - she could feel a warmth spreading between her legs. Was that jut because he’d got her thinking about it with that leering comment? One of those shame reactions, where embarrassment made you feel the thing you were worried about?

It couldn’t be any more than that, could it?

Her moan of surprise was stifled by the gag. The shape the man was tracing was really quite complex now and the more of it hung in the air and glowed, the more intense the sensations Penelope experienced, and the more a pressure seemed to build behind her forehead, like a bubble was growing there, pressing against her thoughts, pressing against… against…

…the best Penelope could do to express it, especially while that bubble was in the way of her thinking and her processing, was that it was pressing against her identity, against her intent. It was uncomfortable, but she barely noticed that now, so pleasurable the sensation across her scalp, so needy had her pussy become. Within the helpless constraints of her inability to move, she could just about grind her thighs together, and that was some relief, but not enough.

Her nipples were rock hard, and she knew the man in front of her was going to comment on that. She wasn’t at all sure how she’d react.

A steady stream of drool was now escaping the edges of her gag, a long bead extending down below her chin. Behind the gag her breath was ragged, needy panting.

She could feel a warmth in her eyes that she was sure heralded a glowing pinprick of red light in her own eye.

The man completed the gesture that was his magical sign. The whole image hung in the air, molten red, and shone until it was all she saw, a flaring red that enveloped her and was suddenly gone.

Except that it wasn’t gone. It was inside her now. She felt the tension go out of her, her shoulders slump, would have heard herself sigh a calm exhalation if there hadn’t been a gag in her mouth. She had been, in her heels, as tall as the man casting this… this spell… but now she felt suddenly small and powerless in his presence, though their respective heights hadn’t actually changed.

It just felt as if she should be looking upward at him. As if that was the right way of it, as if height translated into power and she wanted to put herself more fully in his power.

And as soon as that thought had completed she went down to one knee, balancing herself unsteadily, trying to compensate for the arms tied behind her back. She looked up at him, patient, eager, wide-eyed.

A peace settled upon Penelope that she wasn’t at all used to. Gone was her unending drive for more. Gone was the constant idea she should be hurrying to the next item on her agenda. Gone was the nagging feeling that she wasn’t doing enough.

There was a way now to tell whether she’d done enough. If she didn’t hear any orders, she’d done enough.

“Remove her gag,” the man privileged to give her orders told the other man.

“To hear is to obey,” he answered. He gripped the base of Penelope’s head with one hand, bending her head forward. Penelope was saddened not to see the man who controlled her, whose presence dominated her thoughts, but she did nothing about it. This was all in accord with his orders, after all.

With his free hand the other man unbuckled her gag and pulled it free. Penelope heard the pop as it came loose, felt some of the saliva that had built up behind it spatter on her own bare chest, and lifted her head again to look at the only man who mattered the moment his servant’s grip was released.

“You are,” he told her, “quite literally under my spell.”

She gazed contentedly, submissively, up at him. His comment didn’t seem to need a reply, so she didn’t embarrass herself by offering one where it might not be wanted.

“And you’ll do anything I order.” Which, of course, Penelope knew to be true. But once again, it didn’t seem to need a reply, and she remained meekly silent.

That might have been the wrong decision; there was a spark of irritation in his eyes. “Won’t you?”

“I’ll do anything you order,” Penelope said. “To hear is to obey,” she added. She wasn’t copying the others; the words arose unbidden from the part of her mind that was filled with his magical sigil. They were the words to be said when given an order by one who rightfully could.

“Good.” He smirked, and he seemed to relax. Penelope thought he must not have been bringing people under his spell for long. Perhaps he’d spent much more of his life mastering his magic than deciding to take action.

Not that she thought he’d even reached thirty. She was owned, it seemed, by a young idealist. If she had kept her old mindset that would be cause for concern, but the new Penelope just wanted to please her owner.

The pleasurable ache between her thighs grew suddenly stronger with that thought, reminding her - who had completely forgotten under the peace of the completed spell - just how turned on she was. She knew she was older than her owner, but perhaps he enjoyed milf fantasies, she thought. Sex had never been important to Penelope, but her sexuality had been her tool all her adult life. She wanted now to place it at her owner’s service. To please rather than manipulate.

“So,” he said. “You’re going to be very useful to have in my pocket, in Washington. Aren’t you?”

“Yes. I will be useful.”

“But I also did say there were other things you could do for me.” Her heart leapt. “Provided you want to.” He held a silence for a moment, broadly smirking. Drew it out as long as possible.

Penelope wanted to admit how much she wanted to do anything he asked. She just wasn’t sure such behaviour was acceptable without prompting. Her eyes left his, finally, flickering down to his crotch and back a few times before settling there, drawn as if by inescapable gravity.

“And you want to, don’t you?”

“Yes. I want to.” She beamed happily, eyes still trying to imagine his cock from the curve of his jeans.

“Cut her free,” her owner told the other woman. Penelope had completely forgotten there were two others there, watching this. It was no embarrassment, though. Her owner could do as he liked, and she would be useful, would do anything he ordered. That was what she was for. It was the only good reason for existence.

“To hear is to obey,” the other woman intoned, and Penelope heard the quiet click of a knife unfolding. A few moments later the tightness of the ropes around her wrist slackened and, without the restraints, her arms fell limply to her sides.

“You ever titfucked someone before?” her owner asked Penelope. She shook her head regretfully. Why couldn’t her owner want something she was already skilled at?

“No better time to start,” he grinned.

“To hear is to obey,” she answered.