“Are you changing the subject?” Colleen asked.

But Cushla didn’t answer her. She had sat down cross-legged by the coffee table and was starting to clear the top, but paused and looked up at Colleen. “Join me,” she said with a smile, gesturing to the other side of the coffee table.

After a few moments of hesitation, Colleen moved around and settled herself down, perching on the very front edge of the sofa. “Did Ethan show you this?” she asked. It would at least explain why the two were linked.

Cushla had cleared a decent-sized space on the table. Now she opened a drawer in the side of the table and took out a small square of slate, about six inches on either side. “Not exactly,” she said, as she put the squat red candle she’d been holding on the slate.

Frankly, Colleen was impressed that she’d gone straight for it. She must have explored the drawers and cupboards that first morning, before Colleen woke up, and noticed it was there. Colleen would have reached that point, had nothing to put the candle on, and started worrying about getting wax on this lovely holiday let. Cushla was all prepared.

“What does not exactly mean? Did he give you the candle?” She hadn’t actually been too interested in the question - honestly, the moment she found out her friend had scored with the handyman, all had been explained and she only regretted that she’d been worrying because Cushla had forgotten to tell her - but now her friend’s answers had gone extremely cryptic, and that always meant there was something she was trying to dodge.

Colleen couldn’t hear those vague answers from Cushla and not want to worm the truth out of her. Prolonged questioning and insisting the topic changed back usually did the trick, but she knew it was a time-consuming process each time.

Usually by this stage, Cushla was starting to show visible signs of annoyance at the needling - that was just the way she was wired - but this time she seemed as calm as she had been at the start of the conversation.

Actually, Colleen mused, maybe that was why this seemed so strange. Cushla was a hot tempered woman, and she never got less emotional when she’d just had sex.

With everything in place, Cushla dipped her hand back into her pocket and produced a lighter. Colleen’s eyes widened.

“Where did you get that?” she asked. Neither of them smoked, so it was odd to see her friend with a lighter.

Cushla looked at it in the palm of her hand for a second, and Colleen thought she was nonplussed (although it was hard to tell, with how calm she seemed). “Probably Ethan?” she said after a moment. “I don’t remember.”

She turned back to the candle, flicking the lighter into flame and applying it to the wick. “You already don’t remember?” Colleen laughed, although it was a little hollow. “You must have had too much fun with the guy. Should I try and take him for a run myself?” Not that she wanted to - he wasn’t at all her style - but while it had only happened twice in a decade, ‘borrowing’ each others’ men had become a running joke.

“It’s not important,” Cushla said dismissively, her attention on the candleflame. “This is, here. I wanted to show you this.”

“Show me what?”

“Look.” Cushla gestured to the candle flame. “Trust me on this.”

“I don’t know what’s got into you,” Colleen muttered in quiet exasperation. All the same, she shifted position, sitting even further forward on the sofa and leaned forward, prepared to go along with whatever ridiculous thing her friend had come up with. “Go on. What am I looking at?”

“The flame.” Abruptly, Cushla’s voice was soft and low, with a strange urgency to it. “See how pretty it is?”

“Is this some kind of special flame? A special candle?” Colleen’s nose twitched as she wondered if there might be some scented oils she was missing. She peered closer at the flame itself. It could be described as pretty, she supposed, with the way it danced and flickered.

“Everything’s special. That’s the beauty of it. But this flame, what I like about it is that it’s almost opposite to us.” She was speaking, now, with a soft but steady rhythm. Colleen couldn’t help but think of the times the two of them had laughed at people spouting something this pretentious. “We only change slowly over the course of our life,” she continued. “A steady, slow shift in our understanding. But a flame, it changes with every heartbeat, every second. A flame flickers and shifts. And we, in our turn, we sit still and we watch, and we see the beauty of the ever-changing flame.”

Colleen studied the flame, wondering what had got into Cushla and where she was going with this. It was certainly true that the flame was beautiful. Certainly true that it changed frequently too.

“What we don’t always realise,” Cushla continued, “is that when we watch something fast, we become more still. When we see the flame dance and flicker, when we enjoy its beauty, we are touched by peace. By stillness.”

Colleen’s lips twitched, but she didn’t say anything. Anyone but her best friend would have been roundly mocked.

“It starts with the eyes, did you know that?” Cushla’s voice was a low purr now, not urgent so much as coaxing. “You’ve been watching the flame for minutes now. Drinking in peace as movement leaves you. And you will notice now that your eyes cannot leave the flame.”

Obviously this was wrong. Colleen proved it by looking up at her friend. Or at least that was the first thing she tried, but she noticed only after she felt like she had completed the movement that she was still looking directly at the flame. She had raised her head, but her gaze had remained rooted to the candle tip and the dancing fire atop it.

After a moment her head lowered again to watch the flame more comfortably.

“Your peace, your stillness, it’s what remains when everything you don’t need drains away,” Cushla continued. “Until you are sitting still, with a steady heartbeat, an unmoving body and a quiet mind. And you can feel it happening now, can’t you?”

Colleen made a noise. It might have been affirmation escaping stilled lips. Peace had settled upon her like a heavy, welcoming cloak, It had come abruptly, or perhaps it had been there for some time. It was hard to say, with how slowly her thoughts were moving, whether this process had started with Cushla explaining it, defining it almost, or whether she had noticed it simply because she had a description to compare herself to.

“That’s very good,” Cushla purred. Her brogue gave it a delicious roughness and Colleen felt a shiver run down her spine at her friend’s praise. Something in the other woman’s voice that she had never heard before, and that she was resonating to. “Just sitting still and quiet while the flame dances. Feeling peaceful. It’s good to feel peaceful. Colleen, my love, you’re happier now, just still and quiet, than you have been in weeks.”

There was a moment’s quiet, and Colleen felt the words she’d heard settling into her. Like the cloak she felt keeping her still and quiet, the words seemed to have a weight of their own. They sank into her and she felt herself changing shape around them, not like a flame, which would bounce back, continuing to change, but like something soft when a heavy item sinks into and deforms it.

“Isn’t that right?” Cushla asked, and there was a sweet sing-song to her voice, as soft and gentle as it still was.

Colleen made another noise, but this one had more definition than the last. “‘S,” she said.

“It feels so right to be still and peaceful,” Cushla returned. “It feels so good to be still and peaceful. And it makes you better to be still and peaceful. Do you know why?”

Colleen’s tongue flickered across her dry lower lip and she swallowed. Then she answered, quietly, “No.” It seemed that she could speak without disturbing the delicious stillness upon her. She wondered, very slowly it seemed to her, what else could be done without disturbing her still and peaceful state.

She thought that quite a lot might be possible.

And yet she felt no impetus to do anything at all.

“When you’re still and peaceful, the changes that do happen have meaning,” Cushla told her. “When you’re still and peaceful, the changes made to you can last. And we want that, Colleen. We need to be changed. You’re happier now than you have been in weeks. Don’t you want to be this happy for longer?”

“Yes,” Colleen said. It felt like a confession, but she wasn’t sure if she was confessing to Cushla (who in any case seemed to know all of this already, somehow) or to herself.

If someone had told her either one, she would have believed them without question, and that would have been her own opinion from that point on. But nobody did and so she sat, still and peaceful, and wondering, and somewhat expecting to be changed.

Instead there was ongoing quiet - or near quiet. She heard the soft padding of sock feet against a wooden floor. Cushla must have got up and moved, then. She hadn’t seen. She saw nothing but the flickering of the light.

The footsteps returned, and they were accompanied by heavier steps. Boots on wood, unless Colleen missed her guess.

“Very good, Cushla,” she heard a voice say. Her cheeks burned with a startled embarrassment as she recognised Ethan’s voice, but somehow this reaction did not shake her overall stillness and peace. She certainly did not move. (Well. Perhaps she had blinked. But she had not noticed doing so.)

“Mmm…” Cushla’s answer was somewhere between purr and groan of happiness. “Thank you, Sir.”

“She does look deep, doesn’t she?” There was delight in his voice. It sounded like praise, and Colleen thought it applied to her, but she did not understand it. Nonetheless, praise was pleasing.

“If you say so, Sir.”

Ethan chuckled. “I do say so,” he said. “Colleen, do you hear me?”

Again she needed to wet dried lips, her tongue this time running across top and bottom. She lingered over the task, uncertain whether she was doing so because everything was slow or because of a new happiness, a greater intensity, that was washing over her at the feeling she was being praised. “Yes.”

“Very good, both of you. Colleen, in a few moments I will tell you to close your eyes. When I do, you will do so, and you will keep them closed until you have counted five in your mind. Afterwards, you will open them, and you will find you can look away from the flame. But for as long as its afterimages remain in your eyes, you will remain in this state. If that is clear, answer ‘I hear and understand’.”

Colleen did not hesitate. “I hear and understand,” she said.

“Good girl,” he told her. She felt the lightly quirked corners of her lips tighten into a happy smile. That confirmed it. Praise was important. She liked praise. Praise was one thing that she would be happy to have change her in this changeable state.

“Close your eyes.”

Colleen did as she was told. She counted to five in her mind, and she took her time over it, even though Cushla was moaning softly and her curiosity was bubbling away beneath the cloak of stillness and peace.

When she opened her eyes, Ethan was standing over the coffee table opposite her, looking down at her and the candle. In front of him stood Cushla, with a strangely empty smile on her lips and stripped down to the waist. Ethan had one hand on her hip, the other on her breast, and she had a hand on his other hip, reaching back, and was grinding back against him, slow oscillations of her hips shuddering into his crotch.

At any time before now Colleen would have favoured them both with the snarkiest putdown that occurred to her, then either told them to get into Cushla’s room or gone into her own, depending on her mood. Instead she simply sat on the edge of the sofa looking up at them placidly, feeling happier than she had in weeks.

“Do you know what’s happened to you?” Ethan asked her.

“No,” she said. It required no effort to answer now, but there were still afterimages in her eyes, so she could not have changed much from when she could only see the flame.

“You are hypnotised,” Ethan told her. “And so is your friend. And you’ll be more deeply so by tomorrow. Deeply enough that you’ll ask me to keep doing it. Right?”

It would have been impossible to think of a comeback while she was so still and peaceful, but in any case the words settled into her with a weight that changed the shape of her, pulling her into a contortion where it was completely true.

“I hear and understand,” she answered.

“As well as understanding, while you are hypnotised, you will obey,” Ethan said. “You will obey me, and you will obey my word when Cushla tells you she brings my word to you. Clear?”

“I hear and understand.”

“Cushla, tell her the correct response when given a command to carry out.”

“I hear and I obey,” Cushla said. Her glassy eyes briefly focused on Colleen. “The correct response is ‘I hear and I obey’.” Ethan chuckled. Cushla’s expression gave no impression that she’d noticed the repetition in her behaviour. Colleen could understand why; the two uses had been for different reasons.

I hear and understand,” she answered.

“It’s natural to obey me, for you both,” Ethan continued. “You’ll learn this because, every time I give you a command and you carry it out, you will feel pleasure growing within you, starting deep in your pussy and aching more and more. That pleasure is what you crave more than anything else, a pleasure that does not disrupt the way you feel. Isn’t that right?”

“I hear and understand,” Colleen answered again. The way he was saying it, she was sure he had said this many times before, and polished it, perhaps through trial and error, until it would echo through the minds of any who heard it whenever those minds were otherwise empty.

“And you will return to this state,” he told her, smiling, “whenever you hear me - and only me - say ‘Colleen, relight the flame.’ What phrase will I use?”

“Colleen, relight the flame.”

“What will you do?”

“I will return to this state.”

“Who must say the phrase for it to work?”

“You must.”

“Excellent.” He stopped instructing her, turning his attention back to Cushla, and lowered his head to kiss the side of her neck. Her head lolled slightly, mewling happily. Colleen watched her friend please this man, and she understood that her friend must have had the same things happen to her as Colleen had now had, and she found that she felt an echo of her friend’s pleasure, as if in sympathy. It was a surprising high, a giddying, delightful sensation.

Ethan growled something into Cushla’s ear, to which the answer was “I hear and I obey.” Before she finished the sentence, she had begun sinking to her knees. Her hands came to rest on her thighs, but after a few moments she moved them behind her back and straightened slightly. Comfort? Command? Both? Colleen had no way of knowing.

“Colleen,” Ethan then said, “Rise.”

“I hear and I obey,” she answered. Her perch on the edge of the couch was perfect for this; she barely needed to move her hands, straightening fully with core strength alone.

“Pick up the candle,” he said, “and hand it to me.”

“I hear and I obey,” Colleen repeated. She stooped slightly forward, but lifted the candle and passed it into his hand before straightening again. Her hands unconsciously gripped and straightened the lower hem of her top.

Neither command had taken effort to carry out, but the second had felt… easier, perhaps, or simply more natural. Hard to say which. She wondered if the next command would be even more so. Wondered, too, why the consistency of the wax had felt slightly different to normal.

With his free hand, Ethan took a handful of Cushla’s hair and drew it back, tipping her face up to see him but also tilting her torso slightly upward.

Then he turned the candle, just slightly, just enough that the melted wax could run down the slope and pour off onto her.

It landed just above the slope of Cushla’s breast. Her breath hissed out in a long exhale, her eyes not just glassy now but blissed out, and Ethan moved his hand in a smooth swirl before righting the candle again.

Colleen stared down at her friend. Drying and crusting on her skin was red wax in the shape of a cursive ‘e’.

She knew some people played with wax. Someone had to have solved the problem that liquid wax could cause serious burns, surely?

Cushla had looked, when it had first hit her, as if it had hurt - stung at least. But she now looked merely very happy with the aftermath. Perhaps kink candles melted less hot?

It didn’t matter. Her friend was euphoric, Ethan had a smug, fierce heat to his grin, and she had handed him the candle. She basked in the pleasure reward of obedient complicity.

“Strip topless, Colleen,” Ethan instructed her directly. “Before you girls take me to bed, I want you both wearing my mark.”

“I hear and understand,” she acknowledged. “I hear and I obey.” And with that, she drew her top off, the cosy hoodie she’d worn when she’d resigned herself to a quiet evening alone, and dropped it behind her onto the sofa. She had disarranged her hair by doing so; automatically, she touched it to help herself coax it back into place, but then it struck her that the scrunchie holding it back had no place in her hair if she was to be topless. She pulled it loose and dropped it to one side, running her fingers through her hair.

The white tee underneath she had planned to be part of her club outfit. With a deep V neckline, a tight fit, and a decorative lacy hem, it was one of her favourites. She pulled it off and dropped it across the coffee table, then unsnapped her bra and shrugged free of the shoulder straps.

Her arms fell back to her sides and her fingers opened loosely, the command carried out. She stood uncertainly, but her eyes were on his, and she throbbed with pleasure at the way he was examining her tits. The fact he wasn’t her type seemed currently irrelevant.

“Lie down on the couch,” Ethan told her.

“I hear and I obey.” She was already settling back onto the sofa, turning and lifting her legs onto it as she reclined. The faux-leather material would likely be uncomfortable against her bare skin if she stayed there for long enough.

Not that that mattered to her.

Ethan stepped out from behind the kneeling Cushla and stood over Colleen, looking down at her. The afterimages in her vision were fading, but they seemed to come back when he rolled a nipple between thumb and forefinger. The contact thrilled through her, not actually pushing her to the edge but making her feel like it should. He had said they were taking him to bed; she couldn’t wait.

But first, he anointed her, another hand-drawn e in candlewax. The heat was a sting with bite, but it cooled quickly, and her concern that there was any burning effect was gone. The excitement inside her was a needy ache.

“Both of you,” he said, “stand.”

“I hear and I obey,” they said, and they were very nearly in sync as they did so. They rose to their feet, both of them facing him. Ethan raised the candle as if he were toasting them with a wineglass, then winked. “Follow the flame,” he said. “Through into the master bedroom.”

“I hear and I obey,” they echoed again, and continued to walk. Colleen briefly glanced down at the red wax mark on her pale skin. It had dried now; soon, she thought, it would probably flake off.

She felt a pang of regret at that.

In the bedroom he set the candle down on the dressing table, just below a tall, wide mirror. “Pants and panties off, ladies,” Ethan said.

“I hear and I obey,” they chorused. As they stripped themselves down to stand fully naked before him, Ethan had begun to shrug off layers of his own. By the end he was standing in just his boxers, his hairy chest and legs on full display.

Colleen would have privately conceded that his body was more to her liking than she’d assumed under the layers; outside of whatever he was doing now, it was safe to say he made his living with his hands, and there was strength in those broad arms, across that chest, in those thick legs. The slight softness in the swell of his belly might have disqualified him as a movie star, but even if Colleen were the one making decisions - and in this headspace, she certainly was not - she would have welcomed him to her bed.

“You remember how you got me ready last time?” he asked Cushla.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do it again,” he said, and Cushla started to dance, hips and shoulders swaying to a beat nobody else in the room could hear, her hands rising well above her head.

She danced over to him just as if she was in a club and had made her selection from the available options, turning just as she got there. She had ground herself against his jeans when Colleen first looked up from the flame; now her bare ass was grinding against his boxers, and to judge by the brrr of satisfaction in his throat, doing a good job of it.

Cushla’s sex life was something Colleen usually didn’t think about except to check her friend was okay. But for whatever reason, in this strange state she was continuing to feel that echo of her friend’s pleasure, and so it seemed to her as if just watching Cushla dance to make his cock hard was making her wetter and needier, too.

After, presumably, some point of progress she had been told to monitor for, Cushla spun around, pushing her butt out as she squatted down to be eye level with his cock. Wetness from precum sopping through his boxers now glistened on the globes of her buttocks, too; the boxers themselves were darker from the stain she had inspired.

She kissed the highest point of the stain through the fabric, then worked the waistband down and pulled his cock free. Colleen watched her friend open her mouth and take the man’s length in with one fluid motion, engulfing him with an mmmm of satisfaction. And then she slid her head back off him, leaving him standing proud, his cock glistening, lubricated with her saliva.

“Not you this time,” he told her affectionately. “Face the mirror and watch.”

“I hear and I obey,” Cushla answered, turning to do just that without straightening from her squat. If she maintained that throughout, Colleen thought, it would do wonders for the muscle tone of her thighs. These are the observations that fill an otherwise empty mind that craves a command to fill it.

“Onto the bed,” he told her. “All fours. Face the mirror so your friend has a show.”

“I hear and understand. I hear and I obey.” She was already moving to obey before she had finished the first syllable, a level of excitement and eagerness in her she couldn’t otherwise explain. She was wet enough that as she balanced on all fours, she could feel a trickle of her own juices down one inner thigh.

Ethan climbed up behind her, resting his hand on her back for stability as he did so. She felt as if she had received an implicit command, and was as reliably still and steady as if she had been an item of furniture.

And then he was inside her, fucking her, and she was humping back against him with the pent-up need of everything that had happened and the pleasure she had been instructed to feel in it, and even in a perverse satisfaction that the ‘borrow your man’ joke had paid off so satisfyingly, and perhaps with more reasons - she was not capable, at that moment, of self-reflection, only of the feeling of his cock inside her, and just how right it felt when she thrust back against him, squeezing him, milking his cock, trying to give him as much pleasure as he clearly wanted to take.

She understood without hearing. She obeyed without hearing.

As Cushla began to finger herself while watching, Colleen wondered if Ethan knew that.