Minta glanced up from her book to see Rachel facing her in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. Her arms were crossed, and she said nothing, just stood there, looking all Rachel-like. All amused and superior. Like the cat that ate the canary, Minta thought.

Calculated to annoy. Minta couldn’t help taking the bait. “What?” she said sharply.

Rachel shrugged, made a sort of I’m-just-saying noise in her throat. “Interesting reading position,” she said.

Minta was kneeling upright in the middle of her bed. She looked down at herself, at the imprint her knees made on the duvet. Did people not read this way? Did she not? Minta found herself drawing a blank suddenly about what her own habits were.

And that of course was Rachel, getting in her head again. Always making Minta second-guess herself. She was a master of that. Why shouldn’t I kneel in bed to read, if that’s what I feel like? Why do I have to justify it to you?

Why was she here? Minta tried to remember what she’d been doing when she picked up the book.  “It was … it was up high. On the shelf,” she said sullenly. “I had to reach for it.” Why are you making excuses, she asked herself. She was always making excuses to Rachel, it felt like, and every time she did it made her feel weak.

“What shelf?” Rachel scoffed. “You don’t keep books in this room.”

Reflexively Minta thought I do so have books. She glanced over to the side, to the near wall. It was empty. She knew it would be. But hadn’t there been a bookcase there? Not so long ago? Like, before they’d put this big girly four-poster in that took up all the space in the room. The one she’d spent way too much money on.

Or maybe she was just remembering her room from when she was little. Kneeling up while she chose her book for before bed. She’d been such a big reader then. Everyone always said it, what a big reader she was.

Rachel lifted herself off the doorframe and came a few steps in. She craned over to one side, affecting an effort to see the book’s front cover. It was a large hardback that lay flat in Minta’s upturned left hand. She was holding it just below the level of her breasts, the way you might hold a serving tray.

“So what book is it?” Rachel asked. She perched herself at the vanity near the foot of the bed, besides the nightstand the only other piece of furniture in the room. “Must be a sexy one, huh.”

Because that’s all a girl like me’s good for? Minta looked daggers at Rachel out of the corner of her eye. “You don’t know,” she said.

“Well I mean,” Rachel made a gesture toward Minta with her hand, “what am I gonna think? Look atcha.”

Minta was in a black lace demi bra with sheer cups, and sheer matching panties. Somehow she hadn’t noticed it before. She couldn’t remember putting the underwear on, or stripping down to it. Or even owning it. She blushed hard. It didn’t matter, Rachel seeing her all but naked, but Minta was furious at herself for giving her roommate that kind of ammunition.

“Shut up,” Minta said. The more flustered Rachel got her, the dumber her comebacks.

“Can’t tell whether you’re tryna read the book or fuck it.” Rachel snickered. She left the vanity and sauntered over to the bed. “Go on then, read me some. Lemme hear what gets you hot.” Stop fucking taunting me, Minta thought furiously. She could feel her chest getting tight. “You know, if you’re not so horny you’ve forgotten how to.”

Rachel got up onto the bed behind Minta and settled her chin on Minta’s shoulder. She was shorter than Minta, who had to sag a little to let her do it. “Just make sure I can check your work here,” Rachel said. Her skin was hot against Minta’s neck.

God, she’s not really going to make me read out loud, is she? Minta's annoyance made it hard for her to make out the whatsis, the text. Or did she usually wear glasses for this? Maybe she wasn't holding the book the right way. There was a page that was kind of caught between two fingers of her right hand and it was sticking up in the air. She could at least put that down, stop it messing up her view. If she could remember which direction you were supposed to turn the pages in.

“Come on,” Rachel said. She moved aside a strand of hair that had fallen over Minta’s eye and tucked it behind her ear. Minta pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. She felt a flush of shame crawling over her, like when the teacher announced a pop quiz and you hadn't done the assignment. Anything she knew about the book she was holding, about books at all, seemed to have flown out of Minta’s head. She couldn’t tell what words were what, or where she should even start from.

Rachel was waiting. Minta grasped hopefully at one of the words she recognized. “The,” and then she was immediately at sea, “the … girl?—slave, girl was … was … on the bed …” Failure gathered around her like a cloud. Her voice got smaller and thinner the further she tried to go.

Rachel laughed, and in one motion reached forward, slid the book out of Minta’s hands and snapped it shut. The sound and the suddenness made a kind of explosion in Minta. It emptied her out. She froze in place, hands still lifting the non-book and the non-page like she was a store mannequin. She stared down between them, wondering at the nothing there, wondering what might have been there a moment ago, before the nothing.

Rachel took Minta’s right hand and posed it on the sheer cloth over her right breast. Automatically the girl’s fingers began working her nipple.

Minta was kneeling upright in the middle of her bed. There seemed to be a little gap. She had been somewhere else in the house, alone, and now she was here. Some kind of a little gap. But Rachel was there, just behind her, pressing warm against Minta's back, and there was nothing to worry about.

Rachel took Minta’s left hand in hers, and held it. She kissed Minta on the neck. She trailed her mouth up to the girl’s ear, and in a low tone she said, “What was Minta doing, pet?”

“She was trying to read a book, Daddy,” pet sighed. It felt nice, being allowed to remember. She thought of something mean she could say that Daddy would like, and it made her giggle. “Minta thinks she’s such a big reader.”

Rachel stroked the girl’s hand with her thumb. “And she’s not, is she pet?”

“Minta was naughty, Daddy,” pet said. Primly she added, “Good little sluts only read when Daddy tells them to read.”

“Mm-hmm.” Rachel guided the hand she was holding down into her pet’s panties. She was shamefully wet. The thought that the panties had let Daddy see how wet made her wetter still. “So what did my pet do?” Rachel asked.

Pet giggled again. “Pet took her clothes off, and went to the special shelf, waaay up high, and got one of her trance books and came in here with it, Daddy.” She said it with the satisfaction of a schoolgirl reciting a perfectly learned lesson.

“Barely able to wait to rat yourself out to me.” Rachel’s tone had turned hard. Pet drew in a shuddering breath. The hand at her tit and the one at her pussy were working in tandem now. “Bad naughty Minta Daddy,” Rachel said mockingly. "Sniveling cunt."

Pet whimpered. Rachel kissed her on the neck again, ending it with a bite. “Well, what reward does a snitchy little whore deserve, do you think?” She sounded amused again. She hefted the book briefly and held it up to her pet’s view, then chucked it back down. “What do you think it’d say there, huh? if you could read? Would it say come? or brainwash? What’s the book say that snitchy little whores need the most?”

The book must have said brainwash, because while pet tried to think of an answer she felt the earbuds already pressing into place. After that she was gone, even before the lights went out and the spirals started up. No Minta, no book, no Daddy: just her own voice in her ears, her slave voice, reciting what she was and what she wanted; and her fingers at her slave cunt reminding her everything she heard was true.