Try as she might, Lisa didn’t remember buying the sweater.

A turtleneck top, figure-hugging, was the first thing her hands found that morning. She took it out, looked at it, wondering...

Crossing to the window, she held it up to the sunlight, considering, evaluating it. It had been chosen by someone who knew Lisa’s tastes and look very well, and the only reasonable assumption was that that person was her.

Nonetheless... she couldn’t remember buying them.

As recently as the previous week, that idea would have worried her – as the other manipulations she’d only recently endured had done, perhaps even more so. (At least she could remember buying the red gemstone necklace)

But with surrender came... freedom? No, not quite the right word.

With surrender came acceptance. And with acceptance came the freedom to be happy about the changes being made – being made to her.

She discarded the bra she’d picked out – it was obvious at a glance how closely this would hug her curves, and a bra would be, well, too, too obvious, the strap clear across her back.

It was time, Master had apparently decided, for a new approach, at least for a while – and this would certainly hide her collar.

She smoothed down the hem of her sweater, watching herself in the mirror. She decided that this would work; you couldn’t even see, unless you already knew, that last week’s free (if slowly succumbing) woman was this week’s hypnotised submissive in training.

Time to face the outside world once again. On her way out of the door she smiled; that pretty clearly meant that no deliveries were due that day.

***

Work went well, mostly; on a trip to the water cooler Ellen slipped across to stand beside her, smiling slightly. “New look?”

Lisa’s hand went to her throat before she could stop it. She could feel the blush growing, and Ellen’s slight smile became a broad grin.

“Who is this guy?” she said. Lisa smiled in turn, mumbling... something, she herself wasn’t entirely sure what... in polite brush-off reflex.

“Seriously,” Ellen said, her tone abruptly matching the words. “You’ve worked here, what, four years? In all that time you pretty much had the same look, and for the last... month and a half, maybe? The last little while, you’ve changed your look two or three times, you’re definitely going for the show-off style too.

“You weren’t like this with Dominic, were you?”

Lisa shook her head, not trusting herself to speak, unable to deny the truth of it. For a moment she almost felt sorry for Dominic; he’d been fun, but nothing more, and both people knew it.

Ellen nodded. “Exactly. Whoever this guy is, there’s clearly something about him. Right?”

Lisa finally turned her head, looking to make eye contact, to at least seem like she wasn’t burning with embarrassment.

She blinked.

Suddenly, the world was different.

***

Ellen stood out in her vision. Lisa’s scalp was tingling; everything about her told her that this moment was going to be important, in some way. Time seemed to slow down, and for the first time in years – possibly the first time ever – Lisa really looked at her colleague.

Remember your first day at the office? When you were introduced to your co-workers? That whirl of names and faces, of bodies all in similar shirtsleeves or blouses, their shapes – unless extraordinarily thin, remarkably obese – pretty much just assumed.

Stop, for a moment, and ask yourself what any of your colleagues looks like, really looks like. That first impression is fleeting; it’s a rare person, nonetheless, who actually builds on that, who has a fixed, accurate vision in their mind of how these people actually look, beyond the very basics.

Lisa was not one of those people. But now, as if for the first time, she drank Ellen in.

She knew Ellen to be a couple of inches shorter than her; she knew her to be blonde, her short hair often tipped with one dye or another to add a little variety, hair cropped boyishly to keep it from becoming a mass of curls.

She knew that impish smile; she knew Ellen’s figure to be trim, though she had never had reason to remark on it.

But now Ellen had her (someone’s) full attention.

So: a face that was not beautiful, nor pretty, but which, when she smiled that pixie smile, lit up and became compelling, attractive. Laughing brown eyes (Lisa wondered how they’d look glazed, with the light of shining intelligence snuffed out, and shivered happily at the thought) and a shapely mouth – perhaps, in fact, the closest she came to conventional beauty.

While short, Ellen was slender, her bustline modest but appreciable, and her legs long for her height.

Lisa judged her to be an attractive woman, overall, as she was. A nagging doubt at the back of her mind hung over the question of whether or not Ellen would still be attractive while enthralled – setting aside, that was, her growing fetish for the concept of thralldom that would make any woman drawn into trance compelling to Lisa.

Something clicked over in the back of her mind, in the areas Lisa was forbidden to look closely.

She blinked.

***

“I... guess you could say that,” Lisa conceded, the guiding presence which had compelled that assessment gone. She smiled slightly, a smile that came almost entirely from outside her own impulse at that moment, a kind of defensive camouflage in the shape of a knowing, reminiscent smile.

“And you’re dressing up for him during work hours, too,” Ellen continued. “Now that’s dedication.” A wide grin. “So, are we likely to meet this guy?”

Lisa opened her mouth to say no, but found she couldn’t make herself. So she tried yes, but that also refused to come out.

So she settled for something that was not instinct, or considered thought, but just the simple truth.

“I don’t know, Ellen,” she said. “I...” She shrugged helplessly (God, what a wonderful word) and turned to head back to her desk. “Watch this space, I guess.”

***

As lunch began, Lisa stepped briskly out of her office into the sunlight. She headed over to the ATM for cash; lunch wasn’t going to buy itself...

Hm.

That was... a lot less money in her account than she’d expected. A lot less.

Oh, it was enough to live on – comfortably – and provided for all her regular expenses. But it still wasn’t even nearly what she’d expect.

She punched up a printout; her expenses over the last month, and she skimmed it.

Skimming it was all she could do; some of the entries were ones her eyes slid over, and try as she might, she couldn’t make them focus on the entries. After perhaps four or five attempts, she realised why; these were entries where Master had decided she shouldn’t know the details.

Once she knew that, the desire to understand them melted away, seemed almost to entirely vanish.

And yet there were others; four or five purchases she couldn’t remember making but which she could read about, prices and the companies who’d received her custom. One she recognised from her new turtleneck’s label; well, that was simple enough.

But there were things here, then, that Master permitted her to know about which she did not.

Lisa resolved to search her home thoroughly after work.

***

During the afternoon, while her fingers clattered across the keyboard with the accuracy despite inattention that all office workers eventually acquire, a thought occurred to Lisa.

She’d realised Master had placed a block on her... and immediately she’d stopped trying to beat it.

His wish, alone, had been enough.

And now, as she thought about it... she asked herself if there was anything about that missing information she wanted to uncover.

Lisa was absolutely confident that the items she wasn’t permitted to see the purchase records for were items she wouldn’t notice, even if she had to move them out of the way to search the things she could see. She didn’t believe searching out the things Master had permitted her to discover was against his will, against his wishes; not when he could, as easily, have simply hidden them from her.

In fact, him having hidden only half... well, didn’t that mean that she was supposed to find the others? That he wanted her to discover them?

And if that was the case...

She didn’t want to know ahead of time. No – that wasn’t it. She wanted not to know until Master thought it was time, which was different from not wanting to know, in a very real way...

And that meant...

That meant she knew which programming she’d selected. Finally, she could tell what her subconscious mind had chosen under the compulsion to choose; she could know what she was becoming.

The screen burned in her memory. The options were so clear to her.

What kind of servitude seems hottest to you?

1. Complete mindlessness
2. Pleasure in obedience
3. A change of attitude to suit your Master’s whim
4. Being unaware of just how deep Master’s hold goes

It had to be C. It couldn’t be anything else.

Lisa knew what she was becoming, and she knew why she was happy that she was.

That was exactly how C must work.

It was strange... had you asked her, these past couple of weeks, Lisa would’ve told you she had no stress at all. But, as the simple fact of her new life sank in...

A weight had been lifted from her shoulders. One she had never – probably could never – have known was there, until it was gone. She knew. That was enough.

***

The evening’s chase after Lisa’s unnoticed purchases resembled nothing so much as the world’s kinkiest scavenger hunt, not least because, when Diana had offered to join in, Lisa had reflexively tranced her and frozen her in place.

Only after that did she stop and take stock of her action, considering the whys and wherefores of what she’d done, and realise her motivation.

Perhaps it was her Master’s will. Perhaps it was hers. (Was there any valid difference, when her decision was so instinctive, so deep-rooted? She was becoming his will, after all...)

The simple fact of the matter was that Diana would not have the instructions that would warn her against noticing those things Lisa wasn’t allowed to know. She couldn’t be allowed to take part... even a casual glance might ruin things.

Still... Diana could be trouble, but DeeDee could be controlled, DeeDee could be relied upon. And so she spent the hunt frozen in place; meanwhile, Lisa was avidly exploring.

(Well. Not quite true; with DeeDee frozen and unaware, she couldn’t resist the temptation to strip her naked and pose her – but once that was done, the hunt was on.)

It took two hours, maybe two and a half. In the end, Lisa found what she was looking for somewhere she should have checked first; in two boxes neatly stacked in plain sight on top of the wardrobe.

She searched her memories, and they’d been there, visible as she was getting dressed, every day for a week.

Carefully she lifted the taller box down, setting it on her bed almost reverently. Opening it, she teased away a layer of paper, revealing...

Yes.

The boots were dark red leather, tall, around mid-thigh in height on her, with five inches of stiletto heel. Her immediate judgement, by sight, was that they were a perfect fit – she wondered if she’d tried them on; they looked like a custom order, however – and something inside her moaned in pleasure just at the sight.

She was not, however, sure that these were to be worn yet... Lisa smiled. She’d keep these pristine until the day – the glorious day – when Master called her away from her previous life.

Next had to come the other box. The store’s logo on this one she didn’t recognise. She’d never been there, never walked past it; this had to be something else she’d ordered online and taken delivery of, all unnoticed.

So off came the lid. And...

The first thing Lisa noticed was the lines of the corset; very much a fashion statement, and the statement was the kind all Master’s women seemed compelled to make. But it was the second that took her breath away.

Even without having worn one before, something was clear.

At her current size, she wouldn’t nearly fill the cups. Her breasts were at least two cup sizes, maybe three, below the size required.

Lisa’s life changed. She understood why, today, she had been permitted to discover these clothes.

She headed over to where her computer sat. She had research to do.

Tonight was the night she would arrange the breast implants that Master (that she) desired.