In spite of Lewis’ promise to himself to proceed carefully with Dana, he gave into temptation the next day, asking her via intercom to step into his office just as his last client before lunch departed.

Partly he was curious to see whether she’d be willing to oblige him; she’d have flatly refused just a few weeks ago, and might have come by grudgingly after the lunch break was over to see what he wanted. Still, he felt like her gut opinion of him might be a bit more positive now, guided by the changes he was starting to steer in her subconscious.

Mostly, though, it was temptation; the thrill of seeing whether or not he could get away with it, the same adrenaline trap he’d sworn to avoid when Miss Li was his only conditioned plaything.

One last time, he promised himself, for a fun memory.

He was in the middle of musingly justifying to himself that it wasn’t his fault risk could add so much erotic spice when the door opened and she walked in. Lewis smiled at her, trying to make it as welcoming as he could, and not as smug as he wanted it to be.

Dana answered him with a polite, if reserved, smile of her own. “Can I help you, Lewis?”

“Take a seat.” He leaned back in his chair and gestured to the other. Dana’s eyes flicked from him to the chair and back and he picked up on a mild note of low-level irritation; all the same, she made her way across and sat down.

“What is this about?” she asked, again. It made sense; subconsciously she was warming to the position he was steering her into, but consciously some pushback was only to be expected.

With that being the case, he didn’t bother answering her properly, but leaned forward across the desk, holding out one hand with two fingers outstretched. Dana managed the interesting feat of recoiling without backing away.

“You know you want to,” Lewis grinned, “and you now know you have permission.”

Dana frowned at him, brow wrinkling indignantly. She opened her mouth as if to retort, and her head bobbed forward on its heck, and her lips closed around his fingers, her eyes crossing as she began to suck.

Lewis actually laughed, an impromptu cackle of glee. “You didn’t even let yourself realise you were about to do that, did you?” he asked, and her shoulders swayed from side to side below her neck, as if she were trying to shake her head without turning it around its important contents.

“Very good,” he said. “Stand up.”

Dana obediently stood, arms hanging limp by her sides, very literally hanging uncontrolled. Something about it made her seem for a moment almost artificial, a battery toy without charge, waiting to be activated.

He was about to direct her to come around the desk, but then thought better of it and tried an experiment instead; he moved his arm in a slow arc, sending her sidestepping sideways. It would have been scurrying if she’d been conscious, but as it was, enough of her seemed still at any given time that there was no sign of haste.

“Now, Dana,” he began, “you don’t remember our last trance, do you?”

Again, her shoulders swayed in what was presumably her equivalent to a shake of the head. He smiled. “But you know you enjoyed it, don’t you?”

She nodded, very fractionally, and her lips slid further down his fingers from the motion. Her eyes seemed to glaze further.

“You want to be hypnotised more often,” he told her. “You want to be hypnotised by me whenever you can. Right?”

She nodded again. “But,” Lewis continued, “You know I decide when you can be hypnotised. It’s my choice, isn’t it?”

A third nod, her eyes showing now a total absence, her mind hanging on his words as closely as her mouth hung on her fingers.

“Very good,” Lewis said. With his other hand he was exploring under her top, running his hand across her bra, enjoying the tremors of excitement that shook her blank body with shudders as he did so. “You know that for me to hypnotise you, you must bring me value, don’t you?”

This brought him her fourth nod in quick succession, her expression entirely blissed out.

“So you want me to fuck you for trance, don’t you?” Lewis was grinning, not just because he was enjoying himself but because if you could get four quick yeses, it was very easy to push another yes out of them before they realised. True to form, Dana’s eyes widened as she eagerly nodded herself further down his fingers.

“Very good,” he said again. "Dana, I want you to pull your skirt up over your hips.”

Wordlessly, still blissfully sucking, she did so. Lewis felt himself getting hard again, not just as he drank in her legs properly for the first time but as he revelled in control over someone else.

Was it even control, he wondered, or was it the act of turning her into someone who wanted it? Corrupting her into someone submissive and meek, someone different, someone who would have to obey?

It didn’t matter, he told himself, before he realised it did, if only because if corruption was what he needed, he would need a continuous stream of new subjects, new women to enthral and bind to him.

“Very good. Now, your panties need to be down around your ankles.”

Dana complied even though there was no direct order, working them down obediently, and Lewis bent her forward over the desk, his fingers still in her mouth but more and more awkwardly as he planted his feet behind her, her back arched to take him in, and fumbled with his belt with the other hand.

*

Eventually, Shauna had texted Miss Li.

Can we discuss this somewhere?

Sure, Miss Li had answered, and then followed up with I need coffee most mornings. Saturday morning?

Shauna had sent a thumbs-up and then done her best to put the question out of her mind until the meeting.

That Saturday, they had agreed on a takeout coffee place by one of the nicer of the city’s parks. Shauna had been a little surprised to see Miss Li accompanied by a taller blonde, but once introduced to Lex she guessed it did make sense for Miss Li to have brought the other trainer along.

They walked along the concrete paths between the grassy openings, drinking their coffee. “Did Miss Li tell you I had reservations?” Shauna asked Lex, and Lex nodded.

“Miss Li’s very honest and open,” Lex said. “She’s a good teacher. Whatever weird stuff went down.”

If Shauna had known Lex better, she might have wondered at just how flatly that comment about ‘weird stuff’ was delivered. She knew, though, that a lot of adults who took up a hobby like this and focused on it closely enough to potentially become a teacher in turn often spoke in a more matter-of-fact way than others.

“I guess that’s right,” she said. “But it was really weird.”

“Is that why you’re not sure?” Miss Li asked, and Shauna winced. She hadn’t intended for Miss Li to realise what she was talking about, even though it was obvious she would. She’d just been talking to one of them, forgetting the other.

“Uh… I…”

“It’s alright not to be sure, you know,” Lex said suddenly, and Miss Li nodded. Now out of nowhere they weren’t walking together, they were standing close by each other, three points in a triangle, and she was the focus of the attention of both other corners.

She looked to Lex, who was nodding in agreement with her own statement, and then Miss Li cut in. “That’s right,” she said. “Some people are never sure. Always wondering.”

No sooner had Shauna turned her head to look at Miss Li but Lex was speaking again. “People can find themselves so uncertain. So indecisive.”

Miss Li followed right on the heels of that statement. “Sometimes you just want someone to take the lead.”

“Someone you can follow,” Lex echoed. Shauna’s gaze was tracking back and forth between the two of them, her head swimming as she tried to keep up with the way they seemed to be trading off.

The words themselves were starting to slip by her, coming too fast and with too many switches for her to track them. She wasn’t sure when, but both of the other women had reached out at some point, both of them running their fingertips down her arm, then reaching back up to begin the process again, not quite in sync.

“Someone whose decisions are always right,” Miss Li said, and her tone was so soothing that even the words Shauna could pick out slipped past her attention.

“Someone to obey,” Lex said. Shauna wasn’t sure of anything anymore; her scalp was tingling, her arms tingled where their fingers stroked, her attention was gone.

She felt their focus as a warmth, their attention seemed a soothing blanket, and in some way the fact she was holding a two-thirds-full coffee cup seemed to hold her back from stopping them or shaking her head or trying to asset herself in the conversation.

“It’s perfectly normal,” Miss Li said.

“It’s the right thing to do,” said Lex.

“It’s natural.”

“It’s correct.”

“Join us, Shauna. Follow with us.”

“If you’re not sure, you should serve.”

“If you’re not sure, you should serve.”

“You’ll feel better once you let go.”

“Shauna, you’re going to agree to be an instructor with us,” Miss Li said. “We know it.”

“Now you do too.”

“You don’t need to know why.”

“You don’t need to remember how we persuaded you.”

“You don’t need to question.”

“You just need to feel good about it.”

“So agree,” Miss Li said, and they fell silent, and Shauna blinked, sleepily and somehow sluggish, and she agreed.

*

Lewis was finding the contortions necessary to keep his fingers in Dana’s mouth as he prepared to fuck her uncomfortable. Probably, he was prepared to admit, not as much as she must be, the torque she was putting on her spine.

But it was in his own interests that he said “Now, Dana, you know you’re very deeply hypnotised, don’t you? Back your ass up against me for yes.”

Barely had he finished speaking before her bare ass was pressed firmly against his crotch. He hadn’t quite finished working the zipper - the other problem with having only one hand, especially when he really didn’t want to rip the fabric - but his hardness was suddenly pressed against her firm, inviting softness and he was grinning all the same.

“You want to stay hypnotised, don’t you?”

She began grinding against him, slow rolls of her hips dragging her buttocks back and forth across his cock and balls, and he couldn’t help but moan in delight. That seemed to spark something in her, and she added a shimmy for a brief moment before stopping, her answer given.

“So when my fingers come out of your mouth, you won’t wake up, no matter what, until I tell you. Isn’t that right?”

As she began grinding again he grinned, realising he’d started another yes loop, this time with a physical pleasure component to it. “Whenever any part of me is inside you, you want to sink deeper than I am in you, don’t you?”

The grinding didn’t stop.

“You want to be fucked deeper into trance, isn’t that right?”

And her eager, needy grinding intensified. Lewis laughed, then slowly pulled his fingers from her mouth, hearing a satisfying whimper in response. She didn’t stop her motion, though, still grinding bare-assed against him.

“Reach back and undo my pants,” he said, “without stopping what you’re doing.”

Dana complied wordlessly. Lewis was loving it, but there was definitely something missing. He wasn’t sure what just yet.

“Now, then,” he said as her eager fingers found his zipper and started to blindly coax it open. “Dana, we both know you’re the company gossip, aren’t you? You may speak to answer, since your hips can’t stop.”

“Yes,” she said, the truth coming out easily where persuading her to admit it without trance would have become a struggle.

“And you always make out you’re better than the rest of the staff, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not better than me, Dana.”

Silence.

“Say it.”

“I’m not better than you.” She had undone his zipper and eased his pants over his hips, was tugging them further down with one hand. The other was stroking circles on his upper thigh between his hip and his balls, probably without her being aware of it.

“I think we need the company to realise you’re as bad as the rest of us,” he told her, “and that means you think so too.” After a moment he added “Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

That, he realised, was what was missing. “The correct response while I am programming you is ‘Yes, Master Lewis’.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He nearly came there and then, delighted by her complete lack of resistance now she’d been informed of the rules, but he managed to stop himself. “Take my boxers down.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

Moments after she had complied he was in her. “You are not to make a sound that can be heard from outside this room,” he instructed.

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“And next week, you are going to gossip about yourself to the other receptionists.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You’re going to tell them you met me late on Friday night in a bar, realised I was drunk, and seduced me.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You’re going to tell them you had to have me, just like you’re getting me right now.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He was loving this. She had shifted from grinding to humping urgently and eagerly back against him so, so easily. “You’re going to make yourself sound like you do this all the time.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You’re going to make yourself seem like such a slut.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He grinned. As soon as that was done, if anyone noticed a new attitude toward him from her, there would be a perfectly good explanation…

*

Hua Li and her student and fellow instructor Lex got out of Lex’s car. It had seemed perfectly natural to both of them that Lex should drive while Miss Li sat in the back seat, though neither of them could have told you why. They had driven quietly, a few moments of conversation about Shauna having petered out some time before.

They crossed the road in silence and filed into the same small shop door in silence. Hua Li took a little time looking around the shopfront, studying the walls full of photos, many of them faded from years of sun through the windows, all of them showing freshly tattooed skin with one design or another.

Behind the reception desk, another young woman, her bare arms covered in an intricate pattern of musical notes, thorns, and flowers, her low-cut top revealing a royal flush of hearts spread just over her decolletage, her hair dyed bright purple and brighter teal and bound up in two perky bunches, fastened her attention on Lex.

“Can I help you, ladies?” she asked. Miss Li could read in that simple, professional glance and narrowing of focus, friendly though it was, a clear judgement: the blonde knows what she’s about, the quiet smaller one is either there to keep her company or because she’s nervous to ask and needs the blonde to handle it for her.

She could play to that, of course. But only Lewis truly outranked her, and deferring to Lex in particular felt wrong.

So she said, “We’re looking for a pair of matching tattoos. I want one on my hip, Lex wants one just over her butt.”

“A tramp stamp,” Lex said instantly, almost compulsively, as if the woman talking to them wouldn’t know immediately. She started blushing a moment later.

“Well, we can do that,” the tattooist said with a grin. “Something to celebrate?”

“We’re partnering up,” Lex said, again blurting it out, and again her flush grew deeper and redder as she realised what she’d said.

“I love to hear it,” the tattooist said. “Do you have a design in mind?”

“A spiral,” they said in unison, and Hua Li joined Lex in blushing.

*

Dana was all eagerness now - slightly mechanical obedience, her body following a rhythm like clockwork, but eagerness nonetheless - especially now she had a part of him back inside her.

He rather wished he had a mirror set up to see her face, unable as he was to see if it was glassily blank or cockdrunkenly delirious with pleasure, and unsure in his guess.

Yet her long, lowing moans of pleasure were quiet enough that the sound of her ass slapping back against him seemed like punctuation to a confession of happy submission in a language neither spoke yet both understood.

“Dana,” he said, “you don’t want this to be the last time you’re hypnotised, do you?”

Her answer was a scandalised exclamation, and yet no louder - or quieter - than her moans of pleasure. “No, Master Lewis!”

“Very good. You want me to keep on hypnotising you, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You want those who follow me to keep on hypnotising you, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You will soon want nothing more than to live a hypnotised life,” he said, and Dana whimpered and mewled happily on his cock. “Say it,” he directed.

“I will soon want nnn… nnn…”

“Say it, Dana. Know it to be true.”

“I will soon want nn… nothing more than t-to live a… hypnotised life…”

He took hold of one of her tits through her top and bra and squeezed, intending it as a reward, and she squealed just as loudly as her mind permitted her to do.

“Again,” he told her.

“I will soon want nothing more than to live a hypnotised life.”

It was smoother every time, more deeply embedded in her head every time, and Lewis knew that it would soon be a part of her unconscious agenda.

“In a few days, I’ll hand you a flyer for a self-defence class,” he told her, still fighting to hold off his own eruption, wanting to complete her new programming before he came, “and you will sign up for it, so you can better live a hypnotised life. Do you understand?”

“Yesss…”

“What will you do?”

“Sssign up…”

He really wished he could see her face now. She sounded so far gone. “Why?”

“To better live a hypnotised life.”

Lewis came inside her, unable to hold it back in the face of his own delight, and Dana’s enthralled mind muffled her own cries of delight.

*

Her thigh still seemed to tingle under the bandage. Hua Li kept wanting to touch the tattoo, but knew she shouldn’t yet; she kept wanting to look at it, but knew she couldn’t yet.

Lex seemed to be the same about the small of her back, from what she’d seen; Lex was still chauffeuring her around, even though the only things Hua Li remembered them planning to do together that day were the tattoo and the coffee with Shauna, both of which had gone so well.

This time, when Lex parked up, her passenger remained seated in the back seat, at least until Lex got out and opened the door.

At that point, Hua Li smiled warmly up at her and rose out of the car, putting a hand on her shoulder proprietorially as she passed. She walked across the sidewalk, opened the door, and stepped into her destination.

Behind her, Lex returned to her seat behind the steering wheel and settled down to wait, a soft smile on her lips and a warm blush on her cheeks.

The more she hung around with Lewis and Miss Li, the more often she was there when Lewis fucked one or both of them, the more she felt like she was…

Like she was somehow the lowest of them. Like Miss Li and Lewis, Lewis especially, outranked her somehow. It didn’t make sense, but she guessed feelings didn’t have to make sense, just like they’d been explaining to Shauna earlier.

Shauna was a puzzle, too, as far as Lex was concerned. Miss Li had felt they needed a third pair of eyes for the new class, and she’d chosen Shauna.

She and Lewis had then had a lengthy conversation about how Shauna didn’t like Lewis and how she probably didn’t trust him either.

Lex didn’t understand how Shauna had stayed on the list of potentials given this information, which not only made her a problem but also, in Lex’s grudging opinion, showcased really bad taste.

Admittedly it had taken her time to warm up to Lewis, but she looked back on the days where she didn’t want to fuck him now with the same bewilderment as she did Shauna’s disinterest.

Lewis was always right. It was, it turned out, an addictively attractive trait and she was more than happy to have seen that, to get to fuck him and to be fucked by him.

And that, too, was the other thing; Lewis could just fuck Lex, treating her pleasure as being only tangentially relevant, taking all of it for himself, arranging things just how he liked them without a care for her preferences.

There weren’t many people who could get away with that. Even fewer could get away with it with Lex, and if you tried to make a list of the people who could just fuck Lex, keeping their own pleasure as the primary and overriding goal of the encounter, in front of the other person they were fucking - even just having another person they were fucking - and get away with it, your list would only be Lewis.

So Shauna actively disliking and distrusting him wasn’t a positive sign. And if she was going to get involved in their class?

Well, it was little wonder that Master Lewis has told them both to hypnotise her first. Lex still thought someone with better taste, who was less of a liability, would have been a better choice, but she’d noticed that Master Lewis would sometimes indulge Miss Li, but never herself.

There was a pecking order, and she knew where she was on it.

She realised that just thinking about it while waiting, she found herself more comfortable with it, better reconciled to it, than before.

Pulling out her phone, she settled down to read until Miss Li would emerge from the parlour and want to be driven back to the dojo.

Inside, meanwhile, Hua Li had just stripped bare to the waist.

“Are you sure you want them both doing at once?” the technician asked, and Hua Li nodded.

“I wouldn’t ask, but the only other piercings I see are your earlobes, and it doesn’t seem like you’ve been, uh…” she groped for the polite words, “adventurous… before.”

Hua Li was not at all sure what to say. It was possible she didn’t need to say anything to fulfil Master Lewis’ direct instruction; she might be able simply to have it done. But at the same time, she wasn’t sure Master Lewis would want her to stick in the technician’s memory and potentially, later, to be talked about.

She opted simply for what she’d said in the tattoo parlour. “It’s a celebration.”

The technician blinked, but nodded. “Okay. Bit of an unusual one. Unless maybe you’re celebrating getting away from something. Someone, really.”

Hua Li shrugged. “I did leave a relationship recently,” she conceded.

“I guess he wouldn’t have approved, then,” was the reply. “OK. If you’re sure.”

“I am,” she nodded. “And, like I said, I’ll be building up to attaching weights to them.”

“Mmm.” The tech was scrutinising her closely; it was a drier, more professional examination than she’d been programmed to be turned on by, but something about it excited her in any case. “Yeah, it looks like maybe you’ve used weights already? Clamps?”

Hua Li just nodded.

“Okay,” the tech said. “Here’s how we’ll do this. You’re getting your piercings, but I won’t sell you anything you can weight up until you’re ready. You follow my aftercare instructions. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.”

“Right.” She nodded. “Okay then. Take a seat and I’ll start the prep.”

Hua Li sat down and waited, and thought about how much her life had changed in the past few months. Thought about how Lewis had become Master Lewis.

How she’d hounded him, begged him repeatedly to hypnotise her again, probably much against his own instincts.

How it had taken her time to come to realise how wise he was, to see that his advice could shape her, direct her, take her to new levels of success professionally and personally.

How she’d discovered just how good it was to suck his cock, to let him fuck her, to pleasure him.

Master Lewis was always right, but she had needed, all the same, to push him to use her as a sex object.

She thought he had known she would be a good servant if properly trained, though. He had been so patient with her as she discovered how much she wanted that same training.

Afterwards, he had not been so patient, because patience is not what you show someone who needs training; discipline is. She understood that; she’d shown it to others. She’d had it before as she mastered her own craft.

Looking back now, she knew it had been hubris to imagine that she didn’t need continued training. But she also knew that Master Lewis’ training came with a better reward.

So, if he decided she and Lex needed to be marked, Hua Li was only too happy to obey.

It was fascinating to her that Master Lewis would hypnotise Lex not just to establish discipline but in order to make Lex obey. He’d never needed to hypnotise Hua Li for her to obey him. After all, Master Lewis was always right.

*

When Madame X next appeared online, it was a livestream. Still wearing her mask and her white leggings, she was otherwise nude, which showed off the two glittering bar piercings in her nipples.

She was standing, to begin with, directly facing the camera.

She stood entirely still for the first five minutes of the stream, after a tweet had been sent out about it, while new viewers joined. A caption on screen read simply Madame X demonstrates the patience we thank you for.

Shortly after the five minute mark, with a hundred or so people watching, a new caption appeared: This is Madame X’s pleasure denial training. You will determine how much pleasure she must deny.

Moments later Madame X herself moved, and some of those watching surely must have seen that before she started to move her entire body appeared to untense, as if she had somehow been held more stiffly than a person normally did as they stood.

She sidestepped with her usual fluid grace to the edge of the screen, where she turned and wheeled a small cart into view.

The next caption read: Madame X will be allowed to take pleasure in her stimulation when there has been no donation of at least $5 in thirty seconds.

Madame X was assembling a metal stand that rose to about her waist height. She attached a wand to the top of the stand, then hooked the wand to a power cord. She then stepped behind the stand, so that anyone watching the stream could see where the wand head came up to on her.

She then took up a spreader bar and bolted it near the base of the stand, before strapping her ankles to it, one at a time, so that she would always be close to the wand.

Taking up her precious black belt she wrapped it around her waist and the stand, such that the wand head was firmly embedded against her crotch, and tied it off.

Lastly, she picked up a pair of handcuffs, attaching it to her left wrist. She turned the wand on, and then upped its intensity, before bringing both hands behind her back, where she cuffed her left wrist also.

The caption read. Madame X now has no option but to deny herself the pleasure you inflict on her.

There was no display showing the tally or any donations.

*

Lewis looked up from one of the screens.

“That was very good,” he informed the entranced blonde sat to his side.

“Thank you, Master Lewis,” Lex droned blankly, her fingers on the keyboard, her eyes staring straight ahead.

Lewis grinned. “Your typing is faster than mine. Less mistakes too.”

“That can’t be true, Master Lewis.”

“Oh?” He was surprised. “Why not?”

“Because Master Lewis is always right.”

He sat there for a moment before he laughed. “I can’t wait until you’re conditioned well enough that I can let you understand what you are.” After a brief thought, he added, “Neither can you.”

“Thank you, Master Lewis.” She remained unmoving.

“Very good.” He turned his attention back to his screen, where he could see that donations were starting to roll in.

His smile grew. “Dictation,” he said. As he continued to talk, Lex typed alongside him, like an obedient, unobtrusive secretary. She didn’t have the mental resources to know it but, in essence, she was duplicating the approach of her own. “Madame X will not thank you for your donations. But we will. You are teaching Madame X true discipline.”

As he finished speaking, Lex hit the Enter key and his statement appeared on the stream as a caption.

Lewis watched the payments coming in, and wondered when to introduce Madame X’s student. He had the perfect idea for how Madame X could discipline her, and he was sure Miss Li would enjoy it if she was instructed to.