Troy stashed the gear he intended to use under the bed, out of any risk of being seen by Kristen before he could put his plan into action, but close to hand all the same. He spent a while on the internet, trying to find something that suited the doll’s description of what had been on the TV.

And then, with all preparations made, he sat in his kitchenette and stared at the blank screen of the downstairs TV, not seeing it, and asked himself again if he was going to do this, knowing all the while that the process had gone too far for him to accept the answer ‘no’.

Kristen was amazing. Great body, great smile, great mind, and when they made it to the bedroom - less and less often these days - they were wonderfully compatible. But all the same, he was sure he was losing her - and that wasn’t something he liked thinking about.

Liam’s doll was just a great body, and probably still very compatible in the bedroom. The mind wasn’t there anymore; whoever she had been was gone.

Was he prepared to settle for Kristen’s body and her willing obedience?

Troy frowned.

Settle? No. If that was all he got, he’d accept it. But settle…

How confident was he that Liam’s method had to carry the cost Liam had paid? The answer was, really, that he wasn’t sure of that at all.

He pulled out the notes he’d made again and started going over them, this time beginning from the presumption that Liam had screwed up, somewhere along the way.

*

The three letters she’d been kind of dreading had popped up on her phone, and Kristen wasn’t at all sure what she felt about it.

Alright, ‘dreading’ was being overly dramatic, but she’d had plans for that night; the problem was, the plans were to sit back, cook herself a nice light pasta dinner, and do nothing.

It was a Friday night; you either wanted to be using those for fun or to recharge after a tough week, and this had been one of the toughest weeks she’d had in a while.

And now Troy had sent just three letters:

wyd

Kristen didn’t want to be doing anything. She wanted to make it through the last hour at work, go home, and recharge.

But telling someone that, especially when they’re hoping for your company, is a harsh thing to say, and she couldn’t bring herself to.

She did what she always did when she was frustrated; she asked herself if there were any upsides.

It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy Troy. She didn’t love him - she’d been coming to that conclusion pretty inescapably for about four months now - but she did enjoy him, and if there was a future with him, she’d probably have far fewer doubts than she did.

So sure, she’d enjoy the evening. If he’d sent the message that way, he was probably looking for sex as much as companionship, and a Troy motivated by sex was actually a great way to spend an evening.

It wouldn’t be a chance for her to recharge, but it might well be fun enough to make up for that…

She texted back.

u, if u order pizza

It wasn’t long before a reply came back, which was actually a surprise; usually Troy left anything else until she got there.

feelin kinky?

She stared at that for a long time. He’d never asked that before, and aside from occasionally liking to slap her ass when they were going doggy style, he hadn’t shown much inclination to anything more adventurous than an unusual position.

It wasn’t exactly easy to decode with the little information she had, so she decided to shelve the problem for now and deal with it later.

*

“What kind of pizza?” Troy asked as he opened the door to her.

“Never mind that,” she retorted. “What does ‘feelin kinky?’ mean?”

Troy’s face immediately went beet red, and she couldn’t help but laugh. It was like seeing a deer in the headlights. “You can’t believe you actually sent that, can you?” she asked.

He coughed once and didn’t meet her eyes. “It’s a long, weird story,” he said. “I just… I thought some stuff would be fun. I’ve, uh…” His eyes lit up, and Kristen didn’t entirely believe the next thing he said as a result. “I’ve been on AO3.”

So if that’s a lie, what’s the truth?

Curious though she was, she opted not to press the issue. He had kink on his mind, he was embarrassed about why, and as a result he wasn’t going to tell her. It barely even counted as a lie in Kristen’s eyes.

And besides, it had her attention. Her crazy-vanilla boyfriend was suddenly keen on kink. She’d kept her own interest concealed (she hoped) as it was, really, mostly just a curiosity. She hadn’t wanted to be judged for it, and had this idea in her head that one day she’d meet someone where she’d know she wouldn’t be judged and she’d just be able to be honest about it.

She leaned forward, impulsively, and planted a hand at the back of his neck, pulling him in for a kiss. He made a startled, if not unhappy, noise and leaned in against her, his own hand sweeping around her waist to find purchase on her butt.

“Pizza first,” she said after breaking the kiss. “Then you can tell me what kinky ideas you have, and we’ll figure out where we stand from there. Do we have a deal?”

He smiled back down at her. “This brings me back to what kind of pizza you want…”

He had beer waiting for them both in the living room, and while he was putting the pizza order in she made a start on hers. It had been that kind of a week, and she wanted to keep her spirits up; and, too, she was enough of a kink novice not to know that drinking before negotiation and play can be frowned on - not that she intended to drink much in any case.

The beer had an odd flavour to it; she champed her lips together a couple of times, brow furrowed, trying to place it, but it wasn’t really a taste she recognised; just an oddly astringent note to the beer itself.

She sniffed at the can curiously, but all she got from it was the reassuring aroma of hops. Troy picked his own can up and took a long pull; he didn’t seem to notice any strangeness to the taste at all, so Kristen carried on drinking.

Around halfway down the can she felt a prickle on her scalp that rapidly turned into a pleasing tingle. “Ooo…” she said, though she half thought she’d imagined it.

She sank back into the sofa like her scalp was being massaged like an expert. Troy set his can down on the coffee table and sat up, watching her; she smiled hazily back at him, making no comment.

Every inch of her felt so good, every nerve on her body signalling pleasure in waves that coruscated up and down her body, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

There was something odd about the beer, she thought vaguely, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. She lifted her head forward from where it had sunk and brought her hand up to try and look at the can, the can itself turning in her hand, and Troy had to reach forward saying “Whoa now” to stop her from holding the can sideways and pouring it all over her thighs.

Troy’s fingers around her wrists was electric, a physical rush that went directly to the tingling part of her scalp and punched her buttons further.

Just the contact between them was endorphins, arousal, a dizzying experience that all but overwhelmed her.

“Careful,” Troy said. “You nearly spilled that.” She looked at the can in her hand, and to the extent she was thinking at all, she wondered why he seemed to care so much.

His free hand came up to cup her chin, his thumb resting in the shallow between chin and lip, and he used just a little light pressure to open her mouth; as he did so, he lifted her wrist back toward her lips, and she was so out of it, so deliciously, delightfully spacey, that she hadn’t even begun to object before he was pouring the odd-tasting beer into her open mouth.

Kristen gulped it all down in reflex, the tingle from her scalp running up and down her spine.

“You feeling kinky?” Troy asked again, his voice quiet, and she giggled.

“If you’re not gonna be a li’l bitch about it,” she said, although her words came out slurred. Still, the way his smile changed told her she’d made herself understood. He took the empty can from her hand and set it down carefully on the coffee table, then he stood and offered her his hand.

“Let’s get you in place before the pizza gets here,” he said, and she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

It was strangely easy to follow along with what he was saying.

“What’s in that beer?” she asked curiously, and Troy didn’t answer. But then, her speech was even more slurred than before; he might not have understood.

*

Consciousness seemed to come back to Kristen all at once. She ached and could barely move; her body was bombarding her with as much pleasure as discomfort; her head still seemed dizzy and slow.

It was hard to take stock.

She was kneeling on his bed, the toes of each foot nearly touching, the knees out toward different corners of the room, her back arched, her wrists cuffed to her ankles, and she couldn’t for the life of her think how she’d got there.

There was something around her neck, too, something that kept her head up high and prevented her from turning it. The fizzing across her scalp had lessened, and there was an ache in her joints that made her wonder how long she’d been there, unmoving and unable to move.

Not only could she not turn her head, but in front of her there was the big screen TV Troy had mounted across from his bed, and on that screen was a huge black and white spiral, and Kristen’s eyes were locked on its centre.

Any time she tried to glance away she didn’t reach the edge of the screen before one of the white lines caught her gaze and she found herself following it through its swirling path back to the centre.

And every time she did, the dizziness in her head increased.

Held pretty much in place though it was, her left thigh was twitching, her pussy aching, and she could feel the wand that had been strapped in place along her inner thigh humming away, nicely placed to get a reaction but not quite accurate enough to do more than edge her, especially not in the awkward position she was in.

"Sorry,” Troy said, and she wasn’t sure where he was but he didn’t sound sorry, he sounded quite casual, “but I couldn’t leave the pizza outside.” The bed shifted slightly as he sat on it. “Kristen, are you listening?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears, though not as strange as anything else going on.

Shouldn’t she be protesting?

“Good,” Troy said. “You have to tell me the truth, Kristen. Understand?”

“I understand.” Her voice wavered slightly, as if she wasn’t sure why she understood. She wasn’t, but then she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten into this position from being downstairs drinking beer either. Like she’d blacked out the time in between those moments.

That surely wasn’t what had happened, though, was it?

She opened her mouth to ask, except she realised that she hadn’t, and when she tried again she still didn’t, her mouth rebelling against her own instincts and refusing to speak.

A fragmentary moment of memory bubbled through. “Until I say otherwise,” Troy had said, sometime after her eyes met the spiral on the screen, “you will only speak when spoken to. Say it.”

“I will only speak when spoken to,” she echoed, and there was something in saying it for herself that made it become true.

“Do you love me?” Troy asked. Her every instinct was to soften the blow.

“No,” she said, because it was the truth, and she had to tell him the truth. And, she thought, perhaps she had to speak, because she had been spoken to.

She couldn’t look away from the spiral but she could picture in her minds eye the little facial flinch he would have made, hearing that. She didn’t want to hurt him, just because he wasn’t the one.

“Did you ever love me?”

“No,” she said, and she marvelled at how peaceful her voice was. The ache in his was clear, and she knew him well enough to know his next question would be why not, and she was curious what she would say, because she wasn’t at all sure she knew the truth of that herself. It just wasn’t a way she’d felt.

“Would you like to?” he asked. It took her by surprise.

“I don’t know,” she said. Interesting. Hearing her own words was telling her the truth, telling her truths she didn’t know until she heard herself say them aloud. There were countless questions she’d like to be asked in that state, but she had no control over what Troy asked.

Every question he asked, and so every truth she learned, would be built on his priorities, his goals.

“Is there anyone you’re in love with?” he asked, and her heart ached for him.

Another flash of memory; he kissed her forehead as he fastened the heavy, bulky posture collar around her neck. It was solid enough that her head was set into one position. “It’s going to be OK,” he told her, and she made a cooing, happy noise that wasn’t even a word in response.

“No,” she said, and with every sense of her body either superfocused on her own sensations or locked into staring at a spiral, at the spiral he’d turned on just after the posture collar was in place, making it harder to look away, she was still sure she could feel him relax at that. The male ego was a strange thing.

“What do you want, Kristen?” he asked. She wasn’t sure that was specific enough for there to be a single truth she could answer to, but she found herself speaking all the same; there must be something there.

"I want a family and a better life.” Not, she chided herself, that she was exactly doing much to achieve that.

Troy was quiet for a while. In fact, the room was quiet long enough that Kristen’s mind went quiet too, went back to the unaware state she’d been in before consciousness returned. She could only think when Troy spoke to her.

She’d learned something, but couldn’t even wonder what it meant, her mind quiet and still against her will.

Everything was still but the spiral, and memory bubbled up: Troy fumbling with her belt, tugging her jeans down her legs, struggling with them despite her floppy, giggly state meaning she couldn’t have moved against him if she’d wanted to; rather than do it again with her panties he just picked up a pair of scissors and cut the waistband in two places and tossed them aside.

She could see he was doing something and the something was important to him, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to notice anything else.

“OK,” Troy said at last. “I’m going to level with you, Kristen. I’m just going to tell you what’s going on, and if that turns out to be a bad idea, I’ll tell you to forget it and you will.”

She would? A shiver ran down her spine; Troy was never that certain of anything. There was no way he’d be saying it like that if he didn’t know for sure.

“In the meantime, you’re going to listen and you’re not going to protest. Understand?”

“I understand,” she said, and her voice was the same calm acceptance it had been the last time she said so. There was nothing in her capable of objecting.

“Right.” She heard him take a deep breath. As helpless as she felt, he was nervous. “When I untie you, you’re going to be a different person,” he said. “My buddy I went to visit? He turned someone into this… this walking sex toy. He calls her his doll. And she’s really just a blow-up doll you can give orders to. There’s nothing left of her.”

Kristen should, she knew, be panicking. But she’d been told not to be, so she wasn’t. It wasn’t even the stillness of her mind, because now he was talking again, her mind wasn’t still any longer; if his voice was in her head, her head worked properly.

“I found out how he did it. And… And I do love you,” he said, his voice cracking, “but I knew already you don’t feel the same way.

“I decided I wasn’t going to lose you. But I’d like to lose as little as possible. You’ve worked out you’re being brainwashed, right?”

“No,” she answered simply, and again a chill went down her spine, but again, her reactions didn’t blossom into panic, couldn’t.

“What’s in this beer?” she’d asked again as Troy cuffed her right wrist to her right ankle.

“Drugs, sweetie,” he said absently. “Just enough to open you up. How do you feel?”

“…Good…”

“That’s alright, then,” he’d said, and she’d decided it was probably alright.

“Okay,” she said, and saying it aloud seemed to make it truer.

She hadn’t seen it coming. Why would she? This wasn’t something people actually did. If it was anything it happened offstage in bad cartoons and worse action movies.

“Okay. Well, you are. So by the time I untie you, you’re going to be my toy.” He paused. “Say it.”

“I’m going to be your toy,” she echoed, and the moment the sentence had finished, she felt it to be true, knew it to be her future, and it was to her an unquestionable, inevitable future. Whatever the drug in the beer was, it was clearly messing with her.

“Right. But Liam, he’s turned his girl into some cheap, bargain basement thing. And I don’t want that.” He took a deep breath. “You’re precious to me, Kristen. You know that?”

“Yes,” she said, and felt it more deeply than she had before.

“I don’t want to turn you into something cheap,” he said. “I want you to be state of the art, the best toy on the market, the best anyone can get. You. Or you-plus, even.

“I think maybe Liam fucked up. I think this process can do that. But I think I probably need your help.

“Since you’re going to be my toy anyway, will you help me make you the best toy you can be?”

Anger, she knew, or spite, or both, should have led her to say no. It should have left her fighting him with everything she had, make his victory turn to ash.

“Yes,” she said, and she wasn’t at all sure why. Was it the drugs, or was there something underlying it all?

“You’re going to brainwash yourself for me,” he said. “Say it.”

“I’m going to brainwash myself for you.” Anything she said in this state was true. She really wanted to know what the drug was she’d been given. It had more uses than just this, she was sure.

“You’re in love with me.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“You want to make this work.”

“I want to make this work.”

“You’re going to make this work.”

“I’m going to make this work.”

“What Troy says goes.”

“What Troy says goes.” Which, in the state her head was starting to set into, seemed like it wasn’t even worth his mentioning. Anything he said, anything she repeated, it became how she was.

“If your pussy isn’t ready for me, your mouth is.”

“If my pussy isn’t ready for you, my mouth is.” What Troy meant by love, Kristen thought, might not be exactly identical to what she meant. But she wanted to make it work, so she was going to make it work.

“I am the heart of your better life.”

“You are the heart of my better life.” Her heart swelled. He’d listened. Would he-

“We’ll build a family together.”

“We’ll build a family together.” She was only a toy, but her owner was still listening to her desires. That felt so right, so wonderful.

“You’ll make our place home.”

“I’ll make our place home.” Kristen had never thought of herself as a homemaker, but when it was just part of building the family she wanted with the man she loved, with the heart of the better life she wanted, it seemed like a natural, logical step forward.

And besides, what Troy says goes.

Silence fell for a few moments, and Kristen knew he was going over everything in his head.

“You can’t imagine anyone else’s cock being better for your body than mine.”

“I can’t imagine anyone else’s cock being better for my body than yours.” It hurt her heart that he was clearly still worried her affections could be stolen by another. She’d have to find some way to show him that he was the centre of her world, that he never needed to worry about this.

“Is there anything else I should be telling you, babe?” he asked.

“Tell me that I’m horny whenever you’re horny,” she said without hesitation. It had to be the single point of conflict they’d had most often.

“You’re horny whenever I’m horny,” he said.

“I’m horny whenever you’re horny.”

“If I’m happy, you’re happy.”

“If you’re happy, I’m happy.” He’d always been quick on the uptake.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Good. Do you want some pizza?”

It seemed like such a random question, but she easily said “Yes.”

“Open wide,” he told her, and of course she obeyed. Still trapped in the heart of the spiral, she knelt on aching thighs as he fed her the first slice of the cooling pizza they’d ordered before all this began, and she smiled, happy because he was happy but also delighted to be a toy with an owner who took such good care of his precious collection.