July 2013

Doctor Candace Kraft drummed her fingernails along her bare thigh as she knelt before her Master, Dr Alphonse Bimbeau, her eyes as almost always focused on his crotch.

“You are right, of course,” she told him. This went without saying. It was a simple fact of the programming that governed what she could think that Dr Bimbeau was always right. There had been a time, once, when Candace had considered herself his intellectual superior, though not by much; they had been friends and colleagues at a university.

While they had studied in different disciplines, a quirk of budget and administration had placed them in the same office. This shared contact had created a friendship, one which spilled over to Candace's husband and to the wife of the man who was now her Master.

This had been a positive working relationship for both of them until his wife passed away, at which time he had seemed to go into a deep depression. In hindsight, she understood now that depression was a poor way to explain this. That something else had happened, perhaps as a result, perhaps simply mistaken for it. He had emerged from this with a focused drive which had led to a breakthrough in mind control technology.

He had then used this technology to co-opt her mind and her knowledge, which had been then put to work to develop his ideas fervour. From that day forward she had been his loving, worshipful slave.

“The way you say that,” he answered, the amusement clear in his voice, “it sounds quite a lot like you think I may not be right. Why is that?”

The heat that Candace always felt in the presence of her master she now felt also in her cheeks, an embarrassment but for her mingled deliciously with the arousal of submission. She bit her lower lip, still staring at his crotch, experience and programmed fascination allowing her to easily tell, even through the loose fabric, that teasing her like this was arising him.

She could see the first stirring of his erection clearly in her mind's eye, and knew exactly what that would look like under the loose shorts he had favoured since they arrived on the island.

“There are two questions that I have, Master,” she said. “Question number one is, how it is that you know she has this ability?”

“Because,” he said, “we now have a mole inside the California Institute for Psychical Research. As you will recall from your last mission.“

She nodded. “I did not realise that the Institute had the ability to monitor non-members.“

“No,” he said, and she could hear the amusement in his voice grow stronger and she could see the cocktip twitch beneath the loose fabric of his shorts. After some time on the island, his legs were properly starting to develop the tan of someone who went in the sun. It had taken much longer for him than for her, though this was likely the dress code on her and complete lack of dress code on him than anything else.

“I didn’t see any reason to tell you yet. You know how I enjoy having my secrets.”

It was true. One thing Candace had noticed was that for the Doctor, knowing more than her was a demonstration of power and that, in itself, was an aphrodisiac. “Yes, Master,” she agreed. She was smiling herself; the more pleasure the Master felt, the more fed back to her.

She quietly assumed that his attention had been drawn to the Institute by one of his other slaves, who would be the one who had first picked up on whatever new advance this was.

Still, she knew that one of the things that attracted the doctor to her was her intelligence. It might not measure up to his, she was programmed to understand, but nonetheless she had seen just how excited he got - and how much more aggressive his lovemaking was - when she was able to provide him with a reminder of the power of the intellect his control made his slave.

So she said “I presume that they have some sort of monitoring system now, then?”

“Very good,” he said. “They have some sort of monitoring mast which I am told is heavily disguised, which allows them to identify psionic activity.”

“And you say this... woman registers?” Candice had had to stop herself from saying actress, realising as she asked the question that it was her own prejudice alone that had decided an actress could not possibly also be a powerful projecting empath.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “They can identify any source of empathic projection or other psionic broadcast greater than… Well I don't understand the measurements, but beyond a certain level. She's not on a par with any of the big name heroes or villains, but for someone who's flown under the radar for so long, her output is remarkable.” He frowned thoughtfully. “They're currently speculating on whether or not she's had any training, whether she's consciously worked to develop her ability or whether this is just raw power without focus. I'd really like an answer to that, but…”

The Doctor shrugged. “I don't think anybody's going to know unless we can ask her,” he said.

“And you think if someone else asks her first, she'll be on her guard for manipulation?” Candace asked.

“I can't see how you could not be.” He placed one hand for a moment on his thigh and then turned it palm upwards. A finger crooked to point up and drawing her attention above his crotch.

Candace's eyes obediently followed the gesture upwards, until she met his own gaze smiling back at her. There was always an electricity and excitement in her mind when their eyes met and Candice had long since stopped wondering how much of that was her programming and how much of it emerged out of her own personality and her exposure to him over time.

It wasn't just that he was the father of her son; it wasn't some strange Stockholm syndrome, or at least she didn't think so, but they had been partners in everything (with her taking the role of subservient junior partner, of course, as her programming taught her was right) since 2005, and they had worked closely together on so many projects that even if her sexual preferences had not slowly evolved to become the same as his, their thought patterns practically intertwined with one another, so similar was their thinking on so many topics.

And, of course, it was hard coded into the very structure of her brain to consider him the most attractive man possible, and to always want to please him.

“What was your second question?” he asked her.

For a startled moment she genuinely could not remember, so struck had she been by the connection that she felt between the two of them. And then it came back to her. “If we do collect her,” she said, “do you wish to keep her, or do we simply sample and leave her alone?”

Bimbeau smiled and put one hand against the top of his shorts. Hooking a thumb into the waistband, he rose slightly on his chair and drew the shorts down to reveal his cock standing proud beneath. He patted his thighs, just once each, with his hands, and Candice obediently rose as invited, then stepped forward around the chair he was in.

Resting her hands on his shoulders, she sat down onto his thighs, angling herself such that her pussy lips brushed against his tip. Then, obedient to her programming, her hips and thighs and knees locked into place. As much as she wanted him inside her, it would be impossible for her to move so that he was inside without his direct instruction.

Her smile answered his, and she took her hands from his shoulders folding them behind her back where she took her right wrist in her left hand, resting them both just above the uppermost swell of her buttocks.

“Are you feeling jealous, my dear?” he purred.

It was not a difficult question to answer. “No, Master.” And this was, in fact, true. Candace knew, in a way that most people could not, that she would always be one of her master's proudest possessions. Yet there was a curious feeling of… uncertainty… which gripped her when she considered that she might not have as much time in his direct service as before.

The Doctor reached out, one hand sliding his fingers inside her long red hair. His eyes bored into hers; she knew from long experience that she would not be able to look away if she tried, but she had no idea why she would ever try in the first place. “That's good,” he reassured her, “because you are my first, Candace. You are my greatest experiment. And I... I am very proud of the results of that experiment, the results we have achieved together.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said. Her heart glowed with affection with programming and with his praise. “May I?”

He nodded and immediately her knees and her hips flexed and she was on him, riding him, his cock deep inside her. She cooed with pleasure, knowing herself well used and seeing in that only cause for delight and pride. And then he was fucking her, and she was fucking him, and the two of them lost the thread of their conversation for a while, hidden somewhere in their mutual attraction, out of sight behind her bio-sculpted beauty.

*

Annabelle Franklin, known to friends, family, directors, and close colleagues as Annie, had grown used to feeling bored toward the end of the gap between seasons. From a very early age, she had wanted nothing more than to be an actress; from not much later, it had been clear that she had the talent to succeed if the opportunities were there.

She had become a child star, and even there had quickly moved beyond the occasional TV advert role. A protective mother had refused to take auditions for properties run by the bigger kids channel; not for Annie the Disney kids live action series or the toy driven flavour of the month gimmick kid shows that filled so many other channels.

Instead she had found herself, in the early 1990s, playing one of two token children's roles on the latest instalment of a TV sci-fi franchise set largely on a starship or on planets that looked like landmarks in the Thirty Mile Zone around Los Angeles. She had been lucky that there were two kids roles on the show, with less being expected from the girl role than from the boy. The inevitable rage and early email rants had largely been directed to her young colleague, not to her.

She had moved briefly into films, but again shrewd parents had put their feet down as she began to move into adolescence and, accordingly, she had stepped away for a few years. To this day, when when fans asked her, she would tell them that the decision had been made that she should focus on her schooling. This was not untrue, but it did not encompass the full reasoning behind her parents' decision. She had gone on to see in the way that other young actresses were treated, exactly what kind of early, speculative sexualization she would have been subjected to. In years following, she had come to realise just how heavy a burden this would have been.

Annie had made a return to acting rather than go on to college. Her career was no longer controlled by her parents but she still took their guidance in hand and, as a result, her first few roles back had been as the supportive best friend or occasionally (and a thrill whenever it happened) she had played the villain's henchwoman.

Hollywood got used to having Annabelle Franklin around, but her choice of roles meant that she was rarely made aware of any great speculation on her body or on her sex life. This was the way Frankie liked it.

For the past five years Annie had reprised her biggest childhood role; The little girl starship stowaway had been rehabilitated by time and nostalgia and, with Annie available, she had become a main cast member on one of the later incarnations of the franchise.

In the months between seasons, the cast theoretically relaxed; however, for Annie at least, the time when she was not performing couldn't reasonably be compared to the times when she got to perform. There was something about acting, something about the way people reacted when she descended into a role and got everything correct, something that she had never found elsewhere.

She had never quite noticed let alone come to understand that the boredom she felt between seasons intensified once the show was off the air. It would not have occurred to her to question why that was.

Between previous seasons, she had often looked to fill her time with film projects. This year, for one reason and another, that had not been a possibility. Last night had been the next best thing, as she had Being one of the special guests on a late night chat show.

Downsides of these interviews were that she was not playing a part, that she always had to dress up and so found that the day afterwards there would always be more comments on her appearance than usual, and that she would always have to dredge up some true or half true story from her private life. On the other hand, the positive that overwhelmed all that was an echo of that same rush of audience feedback that she always felt when acting. When she didn't have the opportunity to act, it was an acceptable substitute.

*

Bimbeau had arrived in LA the same evening that Annie's interview had been broadcast. Accompanied by Candace and by his former military brainwashed slave Rikki, the three of them dressed in suits of varying expense and degrees of customisation, he had taken a suite at a mid-level hotel under the name of Mr Alphonse.

Ostensibly, Mr Alphonse represented an obscure European film production company which had been responsible for a best foreign picture nominee three years previously. In reality, of course, he had nothing to do with them.

That morning, he breakfasted relatively early (he found it harder to get out of bed early with two soft yielding obedient slaves in bed with him) and left the hotel, accompanied by Rikki, to hunt down Annabelle Franklin's agent.

He had been fairly sure that attempting to arrange these meetings over the phone or via email, with his lack of verifiable bona fides, would not go well. This was a job that would require face-to-face contact, and he did not expect to be recognised in Hollywood, not a full two years after he had last been in the states when on trial by the federal government in closed court.

Back in the hotel, he had Candace working as best she could to gain electric access to the schedule of Francesca Stein, Annabelle's agent.

Candace was no hacker, but they had been expanding their interests into nominally criminal actions for over eight years now and the Doctor was banking on the fact that most people are relatively easy to hack or social engineer. In any case, all they really wanted was to know where Francesca would be at any given time. Bimbeau would do the rest himself.

Rikki walked close behind him. Almost as tall as he was, the suit she wore was not cheap but was all the same visibly lower quality than his tailored outfit. Being off the peg, it was also tight enough in some places to make the musculature of the woman accompanying him as visible as the bio-sculpted cleavage and the ample rear end.

In this town, nobody would take her as anything but security. In another town someone might have looked at her soft, full lips and the other signs of femininity that had gradually grown in over the brainwashed marine that Bimbeau had started with, and they might have assumed something else.

*

Francesca had just finished a business breakfast at Spago's when she became aware of a commotion near the entrance . Looking up, she saw an unknown man and woman making their way through the rows of tables to… well. To somewhere near her, presumably.

Trailing them, protesting somewhat feebly, was the maitre d’ and one of the waiting staff. She watched with idle curiosity, wondering who they were, who they were trying to meet, and why, given how obviously their claims had not been enough to impress the wait staff, they had thought they had the cachet to pull something like this.

Most of the other Diners were ignoring them. Francesca suspected that a few of the celebrities working hardest to ignore them were as agog for more information as she was; one of the good things about being a behind the scenes facilitator rather than a camera facing ‘personality’ was that she rarely had to be conscious of her own reactions.

They were, now, getting very close; she glanced around, refreshing her memory on the diners in on nearby tables, but she couldn't see anyone with a high enough profile to be that obvious target. And then, as the man passed another table, her eyes met his and she realised when he did not look away that in fact she was the objective of his search.

Now Francesca had a decision to make. What was going to be the right move? She could acknowledge these visitors, welcome them to her table, and immediately that would be no more fuss, no more concern from Spago's; on the other hand, she didn't know who they were and if they were looking for her then they probably wanted to catch her and pitch a project for one of her clients. A project they were not comfortable, or perhaps not qualified, to approach her worth through the usual channels.

For all the talk of Hollywood accounting, dubious investors, and drugs in the town there was surprisingly little active and overt connection in Tinseltown between the movie makers and the underworld. Every once in a while, though, some bright spark affiliated with organised crime got the idea to launder their money through some kind of entertainment project, and they all ended up in Hollywood.

If she was a betting woman, Francesca would have put money on this fact having something to do with this approach. All the same, that wasn’t the only possibility, and as they got closer she got a proper look at the woman trailing the man.

The immediate thought was muscle. That was the first impression this woman gave, Not just because her biceps were clearly defined against the two tight sleeves of her suit jacket, but also because she carried herself in a way that reminded Francesca of many bodyguards she had arranged for her clients.

The only thing that sat oddly against that was that the second thought that seeing the woman put into your head was glamour. She was not wearing makeup, or rather what makeup she was wearing was subtle enough to pass unnoticed at this distance, but all the same the curves that the suit also showed, her long, well managed hair, and something about the way she held herself in relation to the man she trailed spoke of a deep sexuality that somehow dispelled the idea that she was security.

Francesca was more than aware that some celebrities slept with their security, however something about this just did not seem to be the same thing.

So what was she? The guess that Francesca made was that she was a fighter of some kind, maybe one of those ex-MMA glamazons who had started to take roles In bigger budget productions over the past decade.

That meant that there were more positive possibilities from this approach. She decided to take a gamble, and she stood up and smiled as if she had been expecting them the whole time.

The man seemed to relax slightly as he saw this, perhaps seeing an easier path forwards; the woman's expression did not change. Somehow, This made Francesca even more certain that she was a former fighter looking to move into entertainment.

“Thank you, Henry,” she said. “these people are with me.”

The maitre d’ hesitated, and she could see that he knew she wasn't telling the truth. However, he was too well trained to dispute her version of events and he simply nodded. “I shall fetch a menu then.”

And with that, he withdrew. Meanwhile the man and woman settled themselves at her table. They took seats on either side of her rather than sit beside one another.

“Thank you for understanding,” the man said. “Please forgive the unexpected intrusion. May I introduce myself?”

“Please.”

“My name is Mr Alphonse. I would assume that it is not a name you have heard before?”

She shook her head. “You're British, aren't you?”

He nodded. “Yes, although I haven't lived there for some time. I divide my time between Europe and the States, mostly Europe.”

She nodded as if she understood. A few more moments of silence hung over the table before he spoke again.

“The fact of the matter is, I have rarely had reason to come all the way out to LA before now,” he told her. “I have high hopes that I will have reason to be out here more often in the near future. However, I am here in no small part to talk to one of your clients. ”

It hadn't escaped Francesca's attention that he had yet to introduce the woman. There were two possibilities; first, she might have misunderstood the nature of these two's relationship. Second, he might assume that the woman was well enough known in whatever combat sport she had made her name in that she would be immediately recognised even in so self-absorbed a town.

“Which one?”

“Annabelle Franklin.”

Francesca was surprised. Annie was a well known name, and as she usually took on a film project between seasons, she was certainly sought after on a fairly regular basis. All the same, she wasn't the biggest name in Francesca’s book of clients; she also tended to back only big name projects or projects where she already had a personal connection to a mover and shaker who was on board before she joined.

This made her someone where any approach being made was usually at least somewhat telegraphed in advance. True, this guy had not yet got used to LA, but Annie's reputation was by now fairly well known, and anybody who had bothered to look up the name of her agent really should have done basic research. “I'm going to need to know something about the project before I can say anything about her availability,” she said.

This Alphonse guy smiled, either at Francesca or past her at the woman. “Perhaps,” he said, “you could tell me something about why she might be interested in a new project?”

He really hadn't done the research, then. “look,” she said, “I'm really not sure -”

She broke off in surprise, having felt the woman's hand come to rest on her thigh. Before she could look across the woman, Mr Alphonse had already reached out, taking her chin in his hand, turning her to face him. She felt a sudden jolt of apprehension and a certain giddy confusion.

What was this? What were they up to? That was enough strategy to what they were doing to make her think that they had some kind of plan, even though it was one which didn’t take into account everything they should have known; all the same, she couldn't see why they would be doing this, why a business negotiation would abruptly turn into something that seemed closer to a tag team seduction.

“And you'd like to be sure, wouldn't you?” he asked. There was something new in the way that he was speaking, a tone or a rhythm or a pace that had not been there before. Something that completely transformed his voice, that if she were not able to see him would have completely changed her perspective on who this Mr Alphonse was.

At that moment, she did not picture him as a businessman but as… some strange kind of predator. Yes, she decided. That seemed like the right description - but how was she his prey? And what did he want?

He held her chin firmly in his hand, he held her gaze equally firmly with his eyes. The woman, simply by her close presence, held her to her chair. Her hand was now starting to stroke the top of Francesca's thigh, fingernails prickling against her stockings, tracing out strangely distracting patterns. Francesca felt her body begin to respond in spite of herself.

Alphonse was still bearing down on her with his gaze alone, and it actually made her feel somehow small and out of control. “Yes, you really like the idea of being able to be sure about something, don't you?” he half-asked, half-purred.

Her scalp was tingling, her thigh was trembling against her better judgement, her field of vision seemed to have shrunk down to the eyes boring into her own. She seemed to have an unusual level of focus and awareness of these few things, to the point that she was not aware of anything else happening in the restaurant or, really, even aware of what exactly he was saying.

Holding her chin he bobbed her head up and down in a quick nod without breaking eye contact. “You've never been sure about anything, have you?” he asked, and her head was again turned this time quickly side to side in a brief shake. Francesca felt like she was agreeing or disagreeing, simply because of the intensity of the experience and the fact that her head was moving as if she agreed or disagreed.

“What you need is a purpose,” he said. “Don't you?” And again he was nodding her head for her, and again she felt herself agreeing. Still only dimly aware of the words he was speaking she had picked up need and purpose, and that felt somehow very true and honest, insightful even. The woman was tracing spirals on her thigh now, on her inner thigh, spirals that crept closer and closer with every swirl to her panties.

“Your mind is spinning,” he said. “Your thoughts are adrift, and you are finding that you cannot catch up with your own thoughts. That's okay, that's perfectly OK. In fact, in a moment I'm going to let go of you and you're going to find your head dropping forwards and your mind dropping away into trance, and there will be nothing you can do about it and you will be perfectly OK with that fact.”

The woman's fingers now were still tracing that spiral but it was not on her thumb, it was on her panties, with the centre of the spiral having found her own centre. Her thighs had parted to allow the woman better access, and the pleasure flooding her from below mingled with the confusion and the delight at the focus upon her that seeped down from her tingling scalp into her melting brain.

Francesca did not understand what hypnosis was, could not have told you what it meant to be hypnotised, and had no idea that that was what was happening to her. All she knew (and at this point it really was all she knew) was that she was enjoying it, far more than made any sense. He let go of her jaw and her eyes rolled up into her head and her eyelids closed and her head slumped forward until her chin rested against the top of her collarbone.

Moments later, a waiter arrived with menus, and Ricky and Bimbeau ordered food while their captive drifted deeper and deeper into trance without understanding what she was doing or why. She sat there, unmoving and unthinking, for half an hour as the others dined. From time to time, Bimbeau leaned in and whispered in her ear and at the end of it all her eyes opened and her head lifted up straight again and she rose and she led the pair out of Spago's and to her waiting car, her panties sodden and a trickle of juice running down her thighs.

*

“Francesca?” Annie asked. “Is this about last night's show?” She couldn’t imagine another reason why her agent would be calling her.

“Annie, baby, last night was absolutely fine, believe me,” her agent assured her. “Don't even worry about it.”

“OK…” Annie hesitated. Usually Francesca was quite roundabout when it came to telling Annie what she wanted, or sometimes had already arranged. She knew that this was something her agent had become used to due to the reactions of other clients but personally she found it much more frustrating when the topic couldn't be clearly discussed from the beginning.

Small talk was something Annabelle Franklin would much rather reserve for her friends and family, and while she and Francesca were very fond of one another, neither of them would ever lose sight of the fact it was a business relationship. “So, is it you who can do something for me or me who can do something for you this morning?”

“Well, Annie, since you ask... I've had an interesting request.” Even with this direct prompting, Francesca would never quite come up to it, always feeling the need to lay some groundwork first.

“What?”

“A pair of journalists from this British indie magazine are in town, and they've asked if they can do an interview with you. It's an odd one, But they strike me as being the kind of people who do in depth stuff, the kind of thing that keeps going viral for months afterwards. It could be really useful…”

Annie took a deep breath and wondered whether she could be bothered to push back for her own privacy for as long as it would take to get Francesca off the phone, or whether it would be simpler to agree now and get it out of the way.