Miss Li was seated cross-legged on the dojo’s matting, her arms clasped behind her back, her jaw slack within the white, full-face hood she wore, her eyes on Lewis’ finger, her mind so deeply in trance it would seem impossible to find even a trace of independent thought before she was awoken, and possibly not even then.

Her legs were shown off by her white leggings, her waist decorated with the golden belt, her lips the bright scarlet adopted for Madame X. Between the golden belt and the bottom line of the hood, she was nude except for a pair of nipple clamps from which dangled a pair of gold-plated miniature throwing stars, which had nothing to do with Miss Li’s martial practice or her culture but which had gone down very well with Madame X’s paying audience since they first appeared.

The rest of the students were not long gone; Lewis had taken long enough to shower and changed, while Miss Li, devotedly following her training, had settled down cross-legged to wait. Off to one side, Lex walked up and down the length of the dojo. In front of her was the camera Master Lewis had taken to using for the Madame X videos.

“No power,” she was saying, “no control, no choice. No power, no control, no choice. No power, no control, no choice.

“No power, no control, no choice.” She had no idea, really, how long she had been reciting these words. No idea anymore that Lex was nearby. She was simply gone, deep in her trance, deep in her submission, knowing little and thinking less.

“Very good,” Master Lewis said. “Stop now.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You understand your duty for this video?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” Though to Miss Li, at that moment, it was not a question of duty. It was simply what she would do. She was her programming and her programming was her; this was true more and more often as time wore on in any case, but it was especially true when Master Lewis took the time to deepen her all the way down to black.

Thus far, every Madame X video had been filmed with her at black depth.

If, at that time, Miss Li had been capable of thought, she might have marvelled at the fact that Master Lewis had been in the dojo for less than thirty minutes, and yet she was in this state, and he had also attended to Lex’s education, too…

*

There had been a time when the dojo was swept after each evening’s final lesson by volunteers from the class. An evolution and adaptation of the older days where a purpose-built dojo would be tended by its students, it was a measure Miss Li had put in place to reduce the amount of work it always took her to keep the place up to standards.

This was still true after the final lesson on three days of each week. However, on Lewis’s lesson day and on Alexandra’s lesson day, the rule had changed.

On that particular day, with the day’s lessons over, Lex, as she was increasingly called, had done something she often did as class came to an end, and she had carefully faded into the background, lingering behind as the others went into the showers or to change, going into shower when everyone else was dressing.

She had found that it was simple enough to unobtrusively get left behind, so long as she was willing to make herself smaller, make herself less evident.

Lex wasn’t a huge fan of doing that. But it suited her training - and Master Lewis’ purposes - for her to do so, and for that reason she was willing.

Once there was only herself and Miss Li in the building - Lex making a slow sweep toward the end to be sure - the two women stood facing one another and Lex bowed to Miss Li formally.

The door to the dojo opened again, Master Lewis stepping inside and closing the door behind him. He smirked as both women turned and bowed to him in unison, their hands resting on their thighs, their heads tilted forward so that even after they straightened up they were deferentially not meeting his eye.

He raised one hand, his index finger extended upward, and watched as both women’s gazes snapped to it, moving as quickly as if a magnet had pulled their attention in.

Lewis started to rock his finger back and forth, not that he really needed to with how well he had them both trained by now; all the same, it was a useful thing to do sometimes, when he wanted the atmosphere to settle over them.

He watched the motion of their eyes; watched as they went from following his finger to anticipating it, confirming for him that their minds had tripped across from keeping up with the world around them to that trance state of suggestibility.

The thing to do next was to break the pattern, thereby causing their minds to short-circuit in a way that could drop them directly into trance - especially if it was him doing it, with all the priming they’d been given up to now.

So he thrust his hand forward, carrying the finger out of their lines of sight, breaking the pattern both of them had fallen in to anticipating. His hand went forward around their eyelines - they were not quite the same height, so he did have to approximate slightly - and between them.

Their heads turned to follow but the pattern was already broken, the lattice beneath their consciousness collapsing them into trance. Their eyes were glassy before they made eye contact with one another, which second shock, he knew, would serve as another deepener.

Both women gave that little moan-sigh so characteristic of someone dropping into trance, a shock that was also a relief at surrender.

“Very good,” he said approvingly. “How deep are you?”

“Purple,” Miss Li answered just as Lex said “Red,” but both went on, their voices falling into synchronisation, to drone “Master Lewis.”

Purple was a lesser belt than the red belt; it would have been easy to assume that this meant Miss Li had not sunk so deep as Lex, but the two of them had both been told to grade their depth of trance based on the maximum depth each had achieved. Miss Li sank far deeper, far more easily, and Lewis knew that. Asking the question was partly to assess how much further they could be conditioned, should he need to, and partly to give Lex another hint that she had further to fall before she could be considered Miss Li’s equal.

Lex believing herself better than she was had been a serious issue at one time, and the fact that had changed didn’t stop Lewis from worrying whether it might rear its ugly head again. It was worth his while, if he could creat an opportunity, tricking her into underlining that she was the lesser of his obedient playthings.

“Reveal,” he said next.

“Yes, Master Lewis,” they monotoned in chorus. Their heads turned back to face front, their backs straightened, their shoulders came up to stand proud, and they undid the belts around their gis.

Their fingers immediately released their grip on the belts, something they no longer needed, allowing them to drop to the floor; their hands were already moving again in any case, tugging their gis apart to show Lex’s bare breasts, she having recently been compelled to believe, the feedback given her by her body notwithstanding, that her sports bra was not necessary when learning at the dojo, and to show the nipple clamps and the small weights which Miss Li wore proudly, believing them to be corrective aids for her balance.

Lewis reached out and hooked a finger under one weight, flexing very gently, watching Miss Li flinch with a pain she sublimated into deeper submission. “Very good,” he said again. “Lex, are you here to sweep the dojo?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” Despite the muted mewls of Miss Li as Lewis continued to toy with one clamp, Lex had not looked toward the source of the sound and the clear focus of Lewis’ attention. She had simply stayed motionless, standing and waiting. The discipline Miss Li had thought she lacked was improving.

Was it improving quickly enough, Lewis wondered. “Miss Li?”

“Yes, Master Lewis?”

“Did Lex attempt to showboat during her lesson?”

He saw a flicker of something on Lex’s impassive face. Resignation, perhaps, or realisation, or regret - or something else. She hadn’t realised he would check with Miss Li, or at least hadn’t realised she would hear the result.

He knew before Miss Li answered “Yes, Master Lewis,” that that would be her answer, because Lex clearly expected negative consequences. She hadn’t learned to keep her discipline. But there was no sign of resistance.

Not so far, at least.

“Well, then.” He turned toward Lex. “Lex, did you intend to showboat?”

“Yes, Master Lewis,” she answered. Was he picking up on a slight tightening of her jawline, as if she’d tried to stop herself saying that, or was he imagining it?

It was easier for him to be confident of his reads on microexpressions in his daily practice, working with therapeutic clients, than with Lex, or even Miss Li on the now-rare occasions that she showed any. So much of their personalities now were either their minds processing instructions he had given them or their attempts to subvert or resist programming, if they did that. There was just so much more that these moments could indicate.

He could have interrogated her further, but it would have worked against his purpose. His goal was to have her set aside her own desires, her drive to be stand out for her own reasons. He didn’t need to know why she was acting up, not when asking her might send a message that it gave her the spotlight.

So he said instead “Lex, if you cannot fade into the background and do your duty, you must be taught to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Very good. Your duty this evening is to sweep the dojo. Miss Li and I will ensure you do not showboat as you do so. Afterwards, you will thank us for it.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Miss Li, pick up Lex’s belt, and stand behind her.”

“Yes, Master Lewis,” Miss Li droned. She took a pace back, then drew her other foot back level with the first to move, so she was standing a pace further away, still at attention. The weights on her nipples swung slightly from the sudden momentum.

Then she sidestepped behind Lex, and brought her other foot across, so now she was stood at attention a pace behind the other hypnotised woman.

After a moment, she bent at ankles and knees, her back staying vertical and straight as she lowered herself into a thighs-together squat, her knees just brushing against the back of Lex’s calves. At her lowest, she reached out with one arm and then the other, lifting the other woman’s belt until it lay across both raised palms, her elbows bent.

Then her ankles and knees straightened out smoothly. What might, in a more conscious mind, have been a much less fluid sequence of moves, might even have left her off-balance or failed entirely, was simple for a hypnotised mindset that knew only purpose, where it seemed that only the needed parts of her mind would activate for any given instruction.

Lewis stepped slightly to one side himself so that he was directly in line with both women. He raised a hand to her chin and lifted Lex’s eyes to meet his own, loving how glassy they were, wanting her to understand the importance of this moment to him. “Miss Li, bind Lex’s wrists behind her back with her belt,” he said.

“Yes, Master Lewis.” He had no fears of Miss Li trying to rebel at this stage, not that he was very worried that Lex would push it either; all the same, there was still a need for more emphasis in shaping Lex.

By having Miss Li do some of the work and by impressing upon Lex that she was under scrutiny and would have to measure up, he wanted to give her the right framing to develop. “Make it a secure knot,” he said, as an afterthought. “One Lex will have to depend on us to undo.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” Miss Li’s voice in trance was monotone, Lewis had learned, only theoretically; in practice it was often very possible to tell what she felt about something even from such flat tones, if you had experience. She was enjoying this.

Once she was done he released Lex’s chin, though she continued to hold it upright now, knowing his wishes, and he stepped behind her to inspect the tie.

He pulled it a little tighter, just to be sure in himself Lex would detect no weakness in the knot. “Fetch the broom,” he directed Miss Li.

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

Miss Li trotted away obediently. Lewis passed the time it took her to fetch in fondling Lex’s bare breasts, tweaking first one nipple than the other, coaxing a series of squeaks and mewls from his enthralled subject. “Having bigger tits doesn’t make you better than Miss Li,” he told her. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You begin in this dojo at the lowest rank. You rise only at our approval. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“And you want to rise in the rankings, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He dropped his hand from her bare chest to cup her crotch through the loose pants of her gi. Gripping her tightly against his hand with his four fingers, he ground the base of his thumb against her pussy, a trick he knew from long experience was highly effective in showing Lex how little control she truly had.

Her glassy eyes crossed briefly and her mewls became needy moans, panting between each one to draw air raggedly back into her body. Lex had to process arousal and instructions at once, leaving her in her current state with no ability to think.

As Miss Li returned with the broom, Lewis smiled and held out his free hand for it. “Open your mouth, Lex,” he directed.

“Yes, Master Lewis,” she answered, and rather than shut her mouth at the end of the final syllable her jaw lowered as she formed her mouth into a perfect O.

Lewis released her pussy, leaving her needily on the edge, and lowered her head onto the broomhandle with both hands, until the brush rested on the floor and the broom extended up from it into her mouth.

“Since you showboated today, Lex, this is how you will sweep the dojo. Afterwards, if you do well, you may be rewarded for your dilligence.” He was smirking; this was an idea he had come up with a day or so previous while letting his mind wander at work, and now it was about to come to fruition, he realised he was already hard.

Lex would be getting her reward regardless, but she didn’t need to know that. “Do you understand?” he asked.

“Yff, Mffr Lwthhh.”

“Send her on her way, Miss Li.”

“Yes, Master Lewis,” Miss Li echoed, and her hand came down on Lex’s rear in a spank with a crack that echoed around the room. Lex dropped out of her attentive stance, turned, and walked toward one corner to begin.

*

Lex was making a steady circuit of the room, trudging up and down, one broom-width row at a time. The first few turns had been difficult, but both Miss Li and Master Lewis had been involved in setting her this task and so she would not, could not let them down.

She was very aware, as she walked, of her panties, particularly the spreading wetness of her own arousal.

Lex was always aroused around Master Lewis, which she took to be because she wanted to be like Miss Li, whose desire for the man was obvious. She always allowed Master Lewis to grope her in private or in front of Miss Li, because those were the rules and that was one of her duties.

But she rarely felt so aroused and excited about it all as she was feeling at that moment. She wasn’t entirely sure but she thought the wet spot might be spreading from her panties to the pants of her gi.

Across the room, in an area she had been told not to sweep until they had finished, she could see Miss Li, wearing her mask, her leggings, and the throwing-star nipple decorations, sitting pretzel-style in front of a camera, which Master Lewis was fiddling with. He had changed into a gi of his own, and Lex had too little capacity for thought available to her to wonder why.

Lex was jealous of Miss Li’s success in her training. It seemed to her sometimes as if Miss Li could do no wrong for Lewis, and she could at times feel resentful that the same wasn’t true for her; in her trance state, though, she was afforded no such illusions. In trance, she did not have the mind to lie to herself, and was fully aware that Miss Li’s success came from a single-minded dedication.

Lex was not, yet, capable of being so single-minded. Sometimes her own mind tried to interfere with Master Lewis’s, which was really the only mind that should count.

She reached the end of another straight and turned, and as she did she saw Master Lewis step out from behind the camera. He moved in a wide arc out, and came to a halt somewhere he must have determined was outside its field of vision.

“Miss Li,” he said, “Meditate.”

Those scarlet lips shaped “Yes, Master Lewis,” and she lifted her hands, turning them so that they rested palm-up on her thighs, just above each knee, before forming her fingers into appropriately meditative mudras.

The image of Madame X, Lex had noted over time, drew on all manner of Asian stereotypes. Master Lewis was indeed taking requests for new Madame X training videos - the requests that paid most handsomely - and it was clear that everyone buying had different ideas of what they would want to see.

Lex had an opinion on this, but had not spoken it to either Master Lewis or Miss Li, in case it turned out that she shouldn’t have an opinion.

“Close your eyes, Miss Li.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

The two of them fell silent for a short while, doubtless to make it easier for Lewis to cut any identifying dialogue out of the edit before he released this latest video. Lex saw Master Lewis take his cock out of the baggy gi pants, and moaned reflexively around the rubber handgrip of the broom shaft in her mouth, jealousy rearing its head again.

She reached the other end of the room, and that meant she turned at the perfect time to see Master Lewis step into shot, placing a hand on Miss Li’s hooded head and turning it just enough that as his cock approached her, her opening mouth could accommodate it sliding in.

Miss Li ommmmmed around Master Lewis’ cock, there was no other way to put it. A deep, excited, aroused parody of meditation. After a moment of hesitation, her head began to piston on his cock, her hands rising from her thighs while maintaining their mudra gestures.

Later, Lex knew, the social media accounts Master Lewis had made her set up would be used to promote this video, once it was edited, and she would be compelled to watch the full release, in detail and close-up, before she started to forward them on.

But it was a very different thing to experience it in the way she was, and she was aware of a thin trickle of her own arousal that had escaped her sopping, saturated panties to now begin making its slow way down her inner thigh, and she wanted so badly to earn Master Lewis’ reward.

So intense was that desire, so strong was the determination not to fall short of her duty on this occasion but instead to give herself fully over to Master Lewis’ wishes, that a little more of her capacity to recognise when she should and could push back against a hypnotic suggestion seemed to burn away.

Four lengths of the dojo later, she turned around to the sound of Miss Li choking on the bounty their Master had spilled inside her, glanced across to see Master Lewis’ cock emerge from her mouth with a thick, delicious rope of his cum and her drool connecting the two, and watched as Madame X turned to face the camera, opening her scarlet lips and extending her tongue to show off how much of his reward she had in her mouth, before swallowing.

A moment later, she turned back to his cock and began to kiss and lick it clean.

He clapped his hands, up above shot, and Miss Li’s hands moved from the mudra in which they had held. One rose to cup and caress his balls, but the other was stroking at her own clit, through the skintight leggings.

Anyone watching the finished video would see exactly how needy Madame X was, how much she wanted to cum.

But they would also see the caption superimposed above that long shot, which read: Thanks to your votes, Madame X is learning who has a right to pleasure.

And then, after a while, it said instead: Madame X has given pleasure to her trainer. Before this class, she believed this on its own meant she deserved pleasure for herself.

The next update ran: Because of your votes, Madame X has learned that she receives pleasure only when her trainer allows.

As she continued to finger herself, hips bucking and humping back against them now, her need more and more obvious, the caption updated one final time: In our first livestream, Madame X will not cum until donations cease.

That was where the video ended, only three or four frustrated minutes after she had begun to play with herself; but she stayed there until after Lex had finished sweeping the floor and Lewis had checked the footage and packed away the tripod and phone.

*

Lewis had Miss Li drive the three of them to his apartment afterwards. It had taken some time to condition her into a worthy chauffeuse, had in fact required him to rework her thoughts to idealise herself in service to him, and while part of him wanted to transfer the duty on to Lex as the lowest ranking, he had some notions that he could make it into a status symbol for them; therefore, Lex would only be the driver when Miss Li was elsewhere.

The apartment being on the fifth floor, and not the only one, he couldn’t bring them home in his choice of outfits, nor could he trance them in the elevator or even in the corridor outside his home. He would have to plan out moving in with Miss Li, he told himself. Her house was a much easier venue for trancing people immediately.

Instead he had to wait until the three of them were through his front door and it was closed before he could pull out his cock and say “Ladies, if I could have your attention for a moment?”

Their two expressions as they turned back to him, before they saw his cocktip and felt it drawing them back into trance, were a study in differences; Miss Li was placid, even happy, not only to be in his apartment - which did require some tidying, he was prepared to concede - but also to be patronised slightly, as she doubtless felt his message to be.

Lex, on the other hand, was only deferentially pleased to see Lewis when in the dojo or in trance. She wasn’t quite scowling, but she was certainly on edge and displeased as she turned around.

For Lewis’ mid-range plans to succeed, he needed Lex to be just as docile and dutiful as Miss Li, and he also needed to prove to himself that he could make her just as dutiful and docile; that Miss Li had not been a pure fluke, an opportunity born out of her own personality and some hidden submissive streak. He didn’t think she’d had one, he was pretty confident that the techniques he was developing, even if eh’d stumbled on some of the first steps by nothing much more than chance and intuition, were to credit for her behaviour.

But he still needed to know, and Lex was the test subject for that.

With his cock in line of sight, their expressions swiftly grew less different, and also vaguer; within a blink of an eye, or at least within two, both pairs of eyes were vacant, both jaws were slack, and the similarly extended beyond facial expression into body language, too, with shoulders slumping, arms hanging limply, any sense of readiness or initiative gone from their stances.

The three of them seemed suddenly more crowded into the little entryway-space than they had been when all three of them had active minds. Lewis decided to reclaim some of that space. “Both of you kneel,” he directed.

“Yes, Master Lewis,” they droned in chorus. As she had done earlier, Miss Li fluidly bent at ankle and knee, settling to the floor in one swift, graceful motion; Lex lowered one leg then the other, folding them under her, legs crossing at the ankle and thighs apart, one hand bracing herself against the wall.

Neither woman had taken their eyes from his cocktip at any point. Both of them knew it to be hypnotic, to bind their attention to it, and it did not occur to either of them that this effect did not seem to sink in when it suited Master Lewis for it not to; therefore they felt they had no reason to question their belief.

He stepped past Lex, who had been the hindmost of the two, and then past Miss Li, turning as he did so to ensure his cock was facing inward toward them, which allowed them to turn and track it. With a smile, he walked backward into his living room, turning a corner, such that his two enthralled ‘students’ had to crawl to follow him if they wanted to keep the hypnotic object in sight - as, of course, they did.

The sight of them crawling into his room, eyes glazed, expressions vacant, made him twitch, and as each of them flicked their eyes slightly to follow the motion he almost laughed; and then he realised he could laugh all he wanted, as neither of them would think anything of it. And so he laughed.

“Miss Li,” he said, “Strip Lex naked.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” Obediently, she turned to do so, but her eyes stayed locked to his cocktip. He settled into a chair to watch, expecting the process to take a little time when Miss Li couldn’t actively watch what she was doing.

Off came the soft black leather jacket, pulled off unresponsive shoulders, tugged free of unresisting arms. The t-shirt proved a little more complicated, if only because Miss Li applied more strength than she should and was positioned at the wrong angle. The T-shirt tore slightly around the collar before it came off.

Lewis was again struck by his inability to read Lex’s microexpressions while she was entranced. He had expected to read annoyance, frustration, even pain there. But that hadn’t been what he saw. He’d have read her expression as excitement or surprise, if he hadn’t known better.

There was no need to remove a bra; Lex did not wear one. However, her leggings required her cooperation to remove. Lewis was… not surprised, exactly, but he would go as far as saying he was pleasantly relieved… to see Lex cooperate from the off.

He’d half expected her to either remain vacantly motionless or to actively sandbag against any movement, but evidently she was more interested in complying than in any point she might feel she had to prove. The leggings came off therefore relatively easily, although not without the process entertaining Lewis, as two mindlessly hypnotised women attempted to coax the fabric from one of them without either having to look away from his cock.

When finally that was done and Miss Li was beginning to unpeel her sodden panties from her skin, Lewis said “Stop.”

Miss Li stilled immediately. “Yes, Master Lewis,” she acknowledged, then settled back from leaning over Lex to rest her hands on her thighs, her thighs on her calves, kneeling and staring hungrily.

“I’ll do that myself,” he said. “Do you both understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis,” they chorused in monotone.

Standing, he kicked off his shoes, stepped out of his pants, for all the world as if there were nobody at hand to pass judgement.

He stepped closer to them both. “Miss Li,” he said, “when I wake you, you will go through that door,” he pointed, “into my kitchen. You will know it is your duty,” he emphasised the word, “to take stock of what I have in and to prepare a meal for three. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“When the meal is ready, you will bring it through into my bedroom. You will not hesitate in case you disturb our fucking. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Good.” He turned so that his cock could not be seen by her, and only by Lex. “Wake now, Miss Li.”

“Yes, Master Lewis,” she agreed. A moment later he heard an indrawn breath of surprise as her consciousness swam back to the top of her mind.

Then she was up and moving, and only the fact she wore shoes and the room had no carpet meant that he heard her moving.

“Lex,” he continued, “When you wake, you will remember how important it is to be my lover to advance your studies. You know it’s important, don’t you?” It was a part of her conditioning to know it, but the reminder never hurt.

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Very good. So it doesn’t matter that you’re somewhere you’ve never been. It doesn’t matter that you’re on your knees. All that will matter is that you take me to my bed and you give me the best time you can. That you do whatever I ask. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“The presence of Miss Li will make perfect sense to you. You won’t question it, or anything else I have either of you do. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He turned, breaking her line of sight to his cocktip, and started walking toward his room. “Wake now, Lex.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He paused in the doorway, looked over his shoulder, and smirked at the confusion on her face. “Follow me, Lex.”

Her look of confusion became a timid, excited blush. “All right,” she said, and rose to her feet to follow. “Is this your nome?”

“Yes.”

“It could use a clean.”

“Mm. Maybe I’ll get you to do that, since you’re so good with a broom.”

“What?” She was confused, but her blush had deepened. Part of her remembered. And part of her was having underlined for her how total his authority could be.

She was close enough now. He reached out, putting his hand around the back of her neck, and he pulled her in for a kiss. His hand found her bare breast, caressing and toying as he had earlier, and she sagged against him and into him, a passion suddenly deeply urgent within her.

He released her neck, not needing it to keep the kiss going, and his freed hand found her wet panties, the base of his thumb pressing against her again. She broke the kiss for a moment, overwhelmed, before returning to it with a new ferocity.

Lewis let her have that for a few moments, then broke the kiss. He steered her fully into his bedroom.

“You want me?” he asked softly.

“More than I can understand,” was her answer, somewhere between spoken and groaned.

“Then get on the bed,” he answered with a grin, “and I’ll tell you how this has to be.”